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To: alt.magick.tyagi
From: shaksway@aol.com (Shaksway)
Subject: Deconstruction and Paganism
Date: 25 Jun 1997 20:38:45 GMT

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.