Note: I use the following terms synonymously – Divine, Sacred, True – when describing the Feminine and the Masculine.
Recently, I have begun trying to understand the place of the Divine Masculine. I realize this may come as a surprise since I don’t think I have ever discussed this topic here before. It came as a bit of a surprise to me as well, but it was one of those things that the Universe knocked me upside the head with. It was time to open myself to learning the True essence of the Divine Masculine and more fully let go of the essence I had had ingrained in me as a child growing up in the Christian Church. My initial fears were potent: if I let the Divine Masculine in, it’ll take over and the Sacred Feminine I have worked so hard to exhume from the depths of my being will be snuffed out; the Divine Masculine is really a more powerful representation of the Patriarchical masculine; there cannot be a balance between the two; the Sacred Feminine needs my voice more than the Divine Masculine does, and if I let it in, my voice will again be lost after my just having found it, etc.
I think those of us who (re)discover the Sacred Feminine in our lives feel the need to cling to it, to hold on for dear life and never open our clenched little fists from around our Mother’s skirts. I think this is wholly understandable for many women. I want to be clear in that. When my friend Fox first brought up her desire to address the True Masculine a month or so ago, I responded with the rage of Lillith. NO!! I roared. It is not time yet! The Masculine has had his time and look what he has done with it! Now is the time for the Sacred Feminine! I remember being surprised at the strength of my reaction to her. But as she explained that while the Sacred Feminine has been lost, the True Masculine has been perverted into Patriarchy, I knew that I knew it was True. What is paraded around right now, particularly by the Church, as the Divine Masculine is not the Divine Masculine at all. It is the Patriarchy in costume.
As I’ve begun to embrace the concept of Oneness as Truth, I have realized that I cannot exclude a full half of that One, and that I would need to begin to try to See the Divine Masculine for what it truly is and eliminate what it is not. But my fear of it overpowering the feminine still remained. How do I study the Divine Masculine while remaining firmly rooted in my Sacred Femininity?
I began reading I Sit Listening by Judith Duerk – the sequel to Circle of Stones. In it, Duerk describes the Yang within each woman and what it can do to her inner Yin. I haven’t finished the book yet, but so far, some of the content is rubbing me the wrong way. I’ve interpreted (and I don’t remember if she explicitly stated this) the Yang as each woman’s Divine Masculine, and I have serious issue with Duerk saying that a major quality of the Yang is to dominate. She describes its approach as bold, direct, demonstrative (which I do agree with), but what I See in her description is not the Divine Masculine as it is the Patriarchy. That, to me, is not the Divine Masculine. I’m just beginning the struggle of wrapping myself around it, but so far, the best way (and what I think of as the Truest way) for me to conceptualize the True Masculine and the Sacred Feminine is that each is the other’s beloved. They ache for each other equally. And let me tell you, it is huge for me to sit here, type this, and say that, from what I’ve read so far, Judith Duerk doesn’t get what the Divine Masculine in a woman CAN BE. We are told that these kind of circumstances are depictions of ‘hubris of the young/ignorant/insert any other word here.’ That is the kind of experience that is meant to quiet us, to steal our voice. I refuse to succumb to it anymore. I am celebrating this moment as I tune in to my inner knowing and say that a woman who is a published author might be wrong. And maybe as I continue reading, these issues will be addressed, but I am not going to lose out on the opportunity to revel in asserting my inner knowing.
But Duerk does address our need to stay grounded in our Sacred Feminine while not shutting the Masculine out. So what will this look like for me as I explore the Divine Masculine in its Truth? My inner knowing tells me that I need to explore it in its relation to the Divine Feminine. To study the two and their dynamic with each other. I feel that this is how we will bring about a more equal society. If we are to only study the Sacred Feminine, little will be in place to stop the pendulum from swinging to the other side. But if we are to study the Truth of the Two together, we stand a far greater chance of ending up where, I believe, we are meant to be.
And yet, I think it is equally important to sit and be with where we are right now, how far off we have gotten. Not in the sense of stagnation and wallowing so as to not be able to move forward, but as a sense of honoring our pain and suffering so that we can truly Know where it is we have been and where it is we need to go. How very stereotypically Masculine it is to immediately try to fix something, and yet, how very extreme Feminine it is to sit with something and let it marinate in our beings, perhaps some times too long. Do you see? The two need each other.
I came to my parents for Thanskgiving and as I was waiting for my mom to get home from work and my dad had left for his work several hours before, I went to their piano. I used to play piano for about 11 yrs and was pretty good, though I haven’t played in a long time. I started out with a simple blues line. And as I was playing, I began to see it in music, too. The Masculine is the left hand base line providing the structure for the Feminine melody to be showcased in the right. And how wonderful that even in that they were switched – the right was Feminine and the left was Masculine. Balance.
During a recent conversation with signmom when I realized a lot of the fears I have about opening myself to the Divine Masculine, she explained how she saw the relationship of the Divine Masculine and Feminine with each other. She spoke of the face of an opal and told me how if you look at one part of an opal in a certain light, it might be blue. Then, if you tilt it to a slightly different angle, that same part becomes another color. So it is with the Divine Masculine and Feminine. They are not two separate entities, they are parts of a whole, fluid, with one moving through the other constantly.
http://aerolin.wordpress.com/2007/11/22/the-divine-masculine/
