Science and Spirituality meet and dance in Holomovement
Emanual Kuntzelman and Jill Robinson have edited an inspiring anthology recently released called ‘The Holomovement: Embracing our collective purpose to unite humanity’. I thoroughly recommend buying a copy, and giving further copies to your friends and enemies. Holomovement is a scientific name for the order hidden deeply within this turbulent world, the recognising of which could help us all to find a collective path for humanity to survive the ecological and political crisis that is now upon us.
There is one feature I would like to point out with a view to balancing and equilibrating the future. I am a male feminist, in that I deeply believe in the necessity and equal value of two diverse genders (however you choose to define gender) whose partnering with mutual respect generates and replicates core life processes. I also acknowledge the global imbalance of devaluing the feminine that has resulted in exploitation of the natural world for profit over the last three Millennia at least. My purpose in writing is to spread a hope that resurgent feminism does not become man-hating, seeking ‘my turn’ for power and control.
In the spirit of mutual respect and valuing, I write in the hope that Sophia, the inner spirit of Wisdom, will invite men to step onto the dance floor of holomovement as confidently as men now welcome the female into the institutions that once were barred against them. With that held in mind, I draw attention to Chapter 7 of ‘The Holomovement’, by Lynne Twist and Mary Earle Chase, entitled ‘The Sophia Century: Divine Feminine Rising’.
Divine Feminine and Sacred Masculine Archetypes
My comment is simply that on Kindle Pages 108-9 four feminine and four masculine archetypes are presented. As a man, I find myself disagreeing wholeheartedly with the archetypal characterising of the Sacred Masculine presented here, and offer an alternative.
It seems to me (as a survivor of a 4-ACE traumatising family and now a teacher of healing pathways for troubled relationships) that the four Sacred Masculine archetypes that have been chosen reflect a feminine disappointment with fathering qualities, which may be highly prevalent among women in the world, where oppressive or absent men have been strong features of early family life.
As a male feminist I offer a constructive bit of fine tuning to the archetypal Sacred Masculine that could improve coherence and joy in the holomovement dance.
Lynne and Mary present the Divine Feminine as: The Queen; The Mother; The Wise Woman; and The Lover. They then try to match these as equivalences for the Sacred Masculine as: The King; The Warrior; The Magician; and The Lover. They characterise The King, I believe wrongly, as one ‘who brings order and safety’. They characterise The Warrior, I believe wrongly, as one ‘who protects and fights for the higher good’. I believe the popular response is, “In your dreams…”
Distortion, in the explicate order, of Truth in the implicate order
I have never yet known any man who went into the armed forces to protect and fight for the higher good, although they may be taught that that is their purpose on being sent into battle. In my experience and opinion, men mostly enrol because it makes them feel like kings, enjoying an outdoor life with equally powerful brothers-in-arms, and with a full catering service to back you up when you come ‘home’ to the barracks. Likewise, I am influenced in my different view of ‘The King’ archetype by an entry in the chronicles of the ancient Davidic Empire (1 Chronicles 20:1), ‘In the Spring, when kings go off to war…’
I believe the four Sacred Masculine archetypes should correctly be: The Warrior-King; The Father; and then perhaps The Magician and The Lover if aiming for equivalence with the Divine Feminine. The characterising of the first two Sacred Masculine archetypes would then have to be reversed… such that The Warrior-King protects and fights for the higher good, while The Father brings order and safety.
The problem I acknowledge is that this is not the earthly experience of many daughters and sons. Without detailing the horrors of our broken societies and our brain-washed and manipulated local communities, I do believe it is entirely reasonable, in general, for those of a feminine nature to be angry with men. I do NOT believe, however, that the problem should be labelled as Patriarchy, when power and control are correctly features of a Warrior-King mentality. Nor do I believe that the solution is to commit patricide, and to install ‘The Warrior Sophia’ instead, as Lynne and Mary propose. This will not achieve the declared hope of this enriching anthology of papers: ‘Embracing our collective purpose to unite humanity’. It will merely replicate misery for the masses, as Warrior-Kings tend to have done for their own ‘higher good’.
Making a start in the eternal-now
To balance Feminine and Masculine in the holomovement dance, Fatherhood needs to be mentally liberated from thousands of years of history (not just from Christian history) and restored. In the Christian Trinity, the Aramaic (Judaic) ‘ruach’ and the Greek ‘pneuma’ for Holy Spirit are both FEMININE nouns, as is ‘ruh’ in the Arabic of Islam. Holy Spirit is the feature of uniting movement in life, who actively connects the Spoken Word’s seeding (Fathering) of creative order and safety into the Mothering heart of Nature, diversifying and enlivening all human nature. This is the feature of the holomovement that unites us all in a dance of adaptive life. Learning to mentally liberate archetypal Fatherhood extensively from the now dreaded ‘human patriarchy’ is not a small or insignificant task. It is a process worth making a start on now, however, to unite archetypal humanity into a collective purpose.
It will mean letting go of hurts; and that process may also hurt for a while. Revenge might seem sweeter in the short term, but the Archetypes are not bad in themselves. Revenge only perpetuates this turbulent world’s confusion and noise, which has floated away from holomovement’s inner shared beauty and grace. Men’s spirituality is the feminine yin of their nature in the holomovement, just as a woman’s word is the masculine yang in their wholeness.