THE NATURAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN

NB Please note the free email subscribe box at the top right of the page
In her book The Hunter-Gatherers Way, Ffyona Campbell talks of a tribe of pygmies who gather honey from high up in the trees. Being a difficult climb, the men undertake the task. The women remain at the bottom, reminding the men not to take all of the honey, but to leave some for the bees so that they can continue to live. Our whole ecological crisis is probably in that story.

In her walks in which she teaches groups of people how to gather wild foods, Ffyona Campbell has noticed that it is the men she has to restrain most from taking too much from nature, and she has despaired when she has overheard them conspiring to come back later to pick whatever hasn't been picked.

The Iroquois Confederacy was established between 5 different peoples in what is now NE USA, long before the white settlers arrived, to stop war between them. They have a council, and any disputes are brought there. It works. A man is selected from each nation as a representative, but he is initially put forward by the women, who reserve the right to remove him if he is not doing his job properly (see articles 17 & 18 in link above).

In our modern shamanic world, I have noticed that a disproportionate number of men are teachers, while women generally seem to find shamanic journeying comes to them more easily than it does to men.

There seems to be a principle here, going right back over time to different parts of the world, and pursuing us into the modern age (with its politicised ideology that men and women should be the same): namely, that men like to get things done, and the job of women is to ensure that it is done in the right way. Somewhere that relationship broke down for us - and let us not start attaching blame, that does not help, and we do not know how it happened - and we now have a very one-sided world in which women's function as guardians of the vision, of a balanced way of doing things, is not recognised.

                                                                     -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I offer Shamanic consultations, usually by skype, in which we can talk over anything you want to talk over. I may use the Medicine Wheel, Journeying, Astrology, Tarot or anything that works. And it centres around listening to ourselves in a deep way. I work on a donation basis, and I am happy with whatever is easy for you: I love this work. Contact: BWGoddard1@aol.co.uk

                                                                                                           -------------------------------------------------

Obviously I am dealing in generalities here, and they are not true for everyone. Human nature cannot be broken down into simple categories: some men are more feminine and vice-versa. And some men have the gift of feeling like they are a woman but are in a man's body, and vice-versa. People nowadays get terribly confused by this, and literalise it and think it needs a surgical solution, and often make what is joyful miserable. But it is the gift of being a Two-Spirit, and I think spirit needs to be trusted in what we have been given, instead of seeing it as a mistake.

In her essay Structural Forms of the Feminine Psyche, Jung's collaborator and lover Toni Wolff outlines 4 modes of the feminine psyche: Amazon, Medial, Hetaira and Maternal. One doesn't want to get too hung up on categories, but they can be useful pointers. The Medial is the woman who can be a guide to the Unconscious; the Hetaira specialises in love and guidance of the other's unfoldment; and the other two speak for themselves. 

TONI WOLFF: MEDIAL and HETAIRA

The Amazon is paired with the Medial - so that one who is gifted at one will generally find the other more difficult. And the same for Maternal and Hetaira.

BOADICEA: AMAZON and MATERNAL

And nowadays of course there is much societal pressure for every woman to be an Amazon like so many men are, and they can feel ashamed, or inferior, if they are not. And this is all wrong-headed. There is a much broader range of possibilities for women, according to their natures. And this scheme is dynamic, it is about bringing balance over the course of a lifetime. Yes, some will be Amazons. But most will not be.

And in my view the fundamental task of feminism is not about bringing sameness between the sexes, for we are not the same; nor should it be about a power struggle with men and blaming men and demonising their divine masculinity as 'toxic' - that simply perpetuates the conflicted nature of our times.

Yes we all need to press for equal opportunity in the workplace. But I think the fundamental, and urgent, task of feminism (and of men too), for the sake of humanity and for the sake of the planet, lies in restoring that right relationship between men and women, in which men will carry on doing the main leading in certain kinds of ways and probably doing the dangerous physical jobs, and in which women lead as vision-holders, in ensuring that things are done in the right way. 

For the sake of completion, one could refer to King, Warrior, Magician and Lover as the archeytal masculine forms, but I will leave the unfoldment of that to another time. But it is fun correlating them with Toni Wolff's archetypes, although putting different systems together doesn't always work very well.