Path: Supernews69!supernews.com!news-stk-3.sprintlink.net!news-west.sprintlink.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!portc03.blue.aol.com!portc01.blue.aol.com!audrey02.news.aol.com!not-for-mail From: shaksway@aol.com (Shaksway) Newsgroups: alt.magick.tyagi Subject: Deconstruction and Paganism Date: 25 Jun 1997 20:38:45 GMT Lines: 136 Message-ID: <19970625203801.QAA29389@ladder02.news.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: ladder02.news.aol.com X-Admin: news@aol.com Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Xref: Supernews69 alt.magick.tyagi:13178 Archetypes That Bind: Deconstruction Meets Pagan Reconstruction I would like to throw something out for discussion. The title goes along way in summing up my dilema. My question: Is the wholesale acceptance and perpetuation of mythological gender archetypes a good thing? Are Wiccan and Pagan archetypes empowering or narow and delimiting? Because Pagans have been on the margins for so long they and (some Wiccan communities) attempt to be inclusive and reflective about gender issues and the magical use of archetypes. However, a matriarchal religion or even a heterosexist co-archal model based on binary oppositions and fertility has at least the potential for evolving into a religion as overdetermined as the Catholic Church. Are we drawing upon the magical essence of the sexes or further perpetuating gender stereotypes. The Christian model after all derives in part from a Pagan one. A structural analysis of Pagan archetypes/dieties and rituals based on the natal body abound with binary oppositions. This has grown alarmingly clear to me over the years and is an interesting paradox given that in day to day practice most Pagans don't seem hung up on gender. Another paradox is that Paganism has benefitted from postmodern theoretical concepts (like that of Michel Focault) yet, because of its insularity within the liberal religious community, it seems immune to structural critique. Some Pagan and earth centered authors have addressed the issue briefly but one wonders how productive a formal dialogue on the subject migt be. Dig deep enough into the symbology and at the extreme edge of romanticism is a kind of nature based totalitarism that relies on the tension of binary opposites to prop itself up. This is sometimes unavoidable, but it can become dangerous when it is done unreflectively. The idea that romanticism or neo-romanticism can be dangerous is not news but is worth reiterating. In Women, Floods, Bodies, History, volume 1 of Male Fantasies, Klaus Theweleit analyzes the writings of the proto-Nazi Freikorps soldiers: "Most dangerous of all, though, are the floods within oneself...The "gigantic, filthy-red wave" that breaks over [the fascist male warrior] has really sloshed up inside him. He threatens "to drown" within himself...The flood is close at hand...either in oneself or on the outside. The men seem to relate every actual or imminent flood directly to themselves, each one to his own body. The terrain of their rage is always at the same time their own body; this feeling is found in every single utterance associated with the "Red Flood." (233) Fascism is an extreme that can result from the excesses of romanticism. Gender fascism, while not as graphic, is often just as insidious. This is because of its everyday and rather undramatic nature. It can be harbored in seemingly innocent ports and perpetuated by generous and gentle people when the basic ideas are turned to political ends. Are our rituals that celebrate the supposed union of binary opposites simply what Luce Irigaray calls the "reabsorption of otherness in the discourse of sameness" an illusion that reinforces the oppressive symbolic order. Do they makes us feel good because our sense of feminity and masculinity is symbolically and ritually reinforced. Through them we understand and are a part of the natural order, flow, and rhythm. While not addressing the Pagan community directly, Luce Irigaray has some important things to say about the concept of an emergent female divinity and the psychosymbolic role "femaleness" has played in religion throughout the ages. Below are a collection of quotes that I believe have import for the Pagan community as it begins to discuss what ___Alan Bonewitt??? Green Egg__ calls a pagan theology. IRIGARAY: "This leaves us in our infancy, in our bondage, slaves to the archaic powers and fears of elementary struggles for life that are divided between submission to a technical imperialism alien to us and regression to magical thinking." (An Ethics of Sexual Difference p-72) "To be the term of the other is nothing enviable. It paralyzes us in our becoming. As divinity or goddess of an for man, we are deprived of our own ends and means. It is essential that we be God for ourselves so that we can be divine for the other, not idols, fetishes, symbols that have already been outlined or determined." (An Ethics of Sexual Difference p-71). "Paradoxically, the cult of the mother in our cultures today is often associated with a scorn or neglect of nature. It is true that in patriarchal genelogy we are dealing with the cult of son's mother, to the detriment of the daughter's mother".(Sexes and Genelogies-p3) "When we become parts or multiples without future of our own this means simply that we are leaving it up to the other, or the Other of the other, to put us together." (Sexes and Genelogies p61) "It is important for us to remember that we have to respect nature in its cycles, its life, its growth; it is important for us to recall that events in history, that History itself, cannot and must not conceal cosmic events and rhythms. But all this must be done in the context of entering or furthering womanhood, not moving backwards. If we resist hierarchies (the man/woman hierarchy, or state/woman hierarchy, or a certain form of God/woman or machine/woman), only to fall back into the power (pouvoir) of nature/woman, animal/woman, even matriarchs/woman, women/women, we have not made much progress." (Sexes and Genealogies p-60) "The link uniting or reuniting masculine and feminine must be horizontal and vertical, terrestial amd heavenly." (An Ethics of Sexual Difference-p17) "Love of self, for man, seems to oscillate among three poles: - nostaligia for the mother-womb entity, - quest for God through the father, - love of one part of the self (conforming principally to the dominant sexual model)." (An Ethics of Sexual Difference-p61) Thanks for the opportunity to raise these questions. M. Joseph Costello M. Joseph Costello is a communication psychology and semiotics student in Springfield MO with an interest in interfaith, gender studies, and structural analysis.