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Taming Patriarchy The Emergence of the Black Goddess an interview with Marion Woodman  WIE: In your books, you’ve written quite extensively about the relationship between "the feminine" and "the masculine." What do these words mean to you, and how does the relationship between them express itself in our lives? MARION WOODMAN: As I understand it from my work with dreams, there are two energies in our bodies, just as there are two energies controlling nature. There’s a very active, analytical, logical energy symbolized by the sun and a synthesizing, relating energy symbolized by the moon. In our bodies, as in nature, we are dependent upon this balance of energy between day and night in order to live. In the caduceus, the "logo" of the medical profession, these two energies come forward as two snakes that start together from the bottom and climb up through the various arcs until, at the top, they are about to kiss. Well, in our lives, these two energies are working all the time to find this balance. The words that I would associate with the feminine energy are "presence"—being able to live right here, in the here and now; "paradox"—being able to accept what appears to be contradictory as two parts of the same thing; "process"—valuing process as opposed to putting all the value on the product; "receptivity" and "resonance" in the body—having a body that is like a musical instrument, open enough to be able to resonate, literally resonate with what is coming both from the inside and from the outside, so that one is able to surrender to powers greater than oneself. So, for example, a dancer may perfect the instrument as much as he possibly can, the muscles can be as strong as it is possible for them to be, and the whole body will be as highly sensitized as technical work can make it, but still, the greatness of the dancer lies in his ability to surrender to the power of the Divine as it is coming through in the music. WIE: And that would be an expression of the feminine? MW: Yes, exactly—the word "surrender." The principle of the feminine is openness to life, death, rebirth and the unity of all things within that cycle. It’s the world of nature, you see. And that’s the world that’s striving so hard now to be recognized. WIE: What is the expression of the masculine, then? MW: The masculine—to contrast it with the feminine images that I’ve used—tends to leap ahead to the future, to some idealized future. It tends to make things into black or white; it tends to look at life as an either/or situation instead of being able to hold a paradox. Now here I must point out that I don’t think "patriarchy" and "masculinity" are synonymous. I think that the patriarchy has become identified with power, and that as such it kills the masculine just as much as it kills the feminine. So patriarchy exaggerates the either/or, exaggerates the black or white. But the masculine is simply analytic, and it simply recognizes the either/or. It’s more focused than the feminine in that it can go for a goal; it can discriminate between what is essential to that goal and what is not essential. It can discern, can use the sword, can cut off what is not essential to the action at hand. And these are positive attributes as long as they are in relationship to the feminine. I see these two energies as being in both men and women, and the masculine will always be in relationship to the feminine, so that it will be protecting the feminine, honoring the feminine and recognizing the values of the feminine. The feminine is the "being" side, and the masculine takes that "beingness" out into the world. It can also be the meditative "connector" inside, meaning that it can connect the soul to the Divine. A woman who is writing, for example, needs the masculine to begin her process, to put the words on the paper in a logical, informed way. She needs those masculine discriminatory powers to open the way for the Divine to come in, take over her arm and let her writing happen, and she also needs the masculine courage and strength to allow herself to be taken over. In that moment, she’s trying to discriminate between the personal and the transpersonal. That can be very frightening, and that’s where masculine courage and strength are required. It takes tremendous courage to surrender at that point. Now, this is as true in a male artist as it is in a female, so my point is simply that there’s a divine marriage going on between the feminine and the masculine in every creative process. WIE: In a condition of balance, or wholeness, what is the relationship between the feminine and the masculine energies, not only in the individual but in society as a whole? MW: In the individual, as I said, it is a harmonic balance where the values of the feminine are defended and honored by the masculine. Now that is so far beyond where our society is that it’s hard to imagine it at that level, but maybe the example of a relationship or marriage might help. Suppose a woman decides that her marriage is no longer a big enough container for the person she’s becoming. She holds the value that she has to grow into her full maturity as a woman, but she is related enough so she doesn’t want to hurt the soul of her husband. She may use a sword to get out of the marriage, but she learns to use it with love. Because if you get out of a relationship or a job that you’ve loved with hatred, you damage your own soul as much as you damage the other. It’s this relatedness between the masculine and feminine that is so important, and that’s a very hard balance to find when you’re at a transition in life. There has to be the masculine courage to make a cut if it has to be made, but there also has to be the feminine love that respects the soul of the other. Now in our society the same thing applies, but so far, most people are depending on anger and violence to try to make these cuts, and so there’s no balance at all between the masculine and the feminine. WIE: What would the relationship between the feminine and the masculine be like under ideal circumstances? MW: Well, think of a person like Gandhi, for example, where you have that magnificent femininity along with incredible masculine strength. Or take an example from the theater world: Garbo developed a strong masculine side and became all the more feminine, all the more attractive, as her own inner masculine brought out her own inner feminine. The more a woman develops her masculinity the more feminine she becomes, and the more a man develops his femininity the more masculine he becomes. So to answer your question, I see this condition of balance in mature people who know what their own values are because they’ve worked very hard to discriminate between what belongs to their own soul and what does not belong to their own soul—mature people who value their dreams and who recognize that the soul has its own pattern and its own life to live, and who give it a chance to live that life. But in order to do that, they would have to be in touch, as I said, with their own inner imagery. And they’d have to be in touch with their own inner feelings, which is a frightening thing to say in a society where most people are cut off at the neck and honestly do not know what is going on at a feeling level in their gut or their kidneys or their heart or any of the other parts of their torso. And that’s the tragedy, because then it erupts in rage. There’s no discrimination. The masculine doesn’t have a chance to come in with any kind of discriminatory action; action becomes acting out. In a society where citizens are in balance, they have those emotions—that rage, for example—but it is contained until it can be put into cultural forms such as a play or a dance. That’s what culture is. It’s holding the passion at a vital point until it can be put into a civilized form. But in our culture, there’s a tendency to not even attempt to hold the container, to give creative form to the tension between these opposites. Instead, let the bombs or the knives or the bullets fly, and act out the rage. And where are the values in that? Next Page http://maxpages.com/marionwoodman/woodman4 |
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