Diana’s Metamorphosis
Isabella Wentink 10268901 25th of June 2018Preface: Love for the Maagdenhuis liberation
On a cold winter’s night in February, a group of angry students and a few elderly revolutionaries stormed the 18th century fortress that is called the Maagdenhuis (the Virgin House) situated in Amsterdam. The palace had been occupied by the managerial elite of the University of Amsterdam, who used it as a bastion from which they decreed their laws and new reforms highly above and separated from the rest of the academic community. For some time a growing dissatisfaction had taken hold over a large part of the student and teacher body: extreme budget cuts threatened to almost completely wipe out the humanities department, ongoing reforms had confined the rights of the student representatives to a strict advisory role, while radical alterations to university policies had tenaciously been enforced without the consent of the of the university population. Students had started to organise themselves and decided that asking for change did not help, given the countless petitions and advises that had been ignored by the board in previous years. Without prior
consultation, that cold evening in February the students and staff had marched towards the palace and forced their way through the doors, pushing aside the badly paid guards. The Maagdenhuis was liberated, its doors opened and cries of victory filled the marble hall.
While long disputes took place between the rebel part of the students and the conservative members of the board, something extraordinary happened to the Maagdenhuis. The peasant revolt transformed the Maagdenhuis into an invigorating “free space” for personal development and social collaboration. The students and teachers were soon supported by a large part of Dutch society, as well as the international academic community. It was a part of society that had similarly felt drained by ongoing budget cuts and dogmatic reforms of the political elite that had terrible consequences for their lives. Some of the disillusioned ones joined in the Maagdenhuis, that had grown into a social get to together for people who had felt the urge to contribute in any way that they could. Some offered food, some offered to share their knowledge in the great hall in which talks were being organised about topics ranging from Marxist philosophy to spiritual awakenings, yoga sessions, dance, theatre, meditation, electronic music, anti-racist discussion groups and feminist
perspectives, while others offered to cook and clean. The Maagdenhuis had changed from a place inhabited by bureaucratic rules and regulations, big offices with shining desks and other expensive furniture, into an anarchistic place of refuge for a large group of people who had felt a need for shelter from the iron authoritarian constraints placed on society. In one of the offices we established an anti-racist movement, as we felt the university had not included enough non-Western source material, as well as refused to truly provide contexts of the atrocities committed by its own role in the oppression of “other” people. We hung the words of Malcolm X and Marian Wright Edelman on our door: “The question is not whether we can afford to invest in every child; it is whether we can afford not to”. Our demands were put on the table during the discussions with the board and our office became a meeting place for people to share their experiences with racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination they had endured at the university, and in society in general. The kitchen of the Maagdenhuis was run by a homeless woman from Ukraine who had been “sold” in Odessa, as many young women like her are to rich men from England, the Netherlands, America and other Western countries in order to escape a life of dire poverty. She was well versed in Russian literature and poetry and sounded like a liberated Anna Karenina who had escaped the bounds of the upper class and had found her freedom and autonomy at last.
There is no need to make these occurrences sound like an idealised utopian movement, for it was an ideal utopian moment. It was a moment that occurs so rarely, when the souls and spirits of people very briefly unite. United by a common belief: that it is possible to create change. It is not a fickle hope, but a firm and passionate belief that can draw people together and that makes it possible for them to see each other, beneath the layers of stigmas and words and categories that usually keep them divided. It is something that very rarely is expressed by philosophy, but always is expressed by artists: that moment when the beauty of the experience itself becomes most important. It is
something that arises, creates, unites, not only by using our minds during the insightful lectures that also took place, but also by connecting through our hearts. It was something unique that simply arose out of the shared experiences, passions and talents of all the people who contributed together.
It was built by ourselves. For the only thing that can truly inspire people is the passion of the heart, it is only then that you can be moved to act beyond your own individual needs; something deeper needs to be touched, needs to be awakened, passion and compassion: a firm believe in what is truly right. The revolt was inspired by anger against the despicable arrogance of the elite boards, but the Maagdenhuis itself was driven by a desire to create, to build, to share, to learn, to connect, to love. It was a happy mixture of lost souls who had suddenly found they were not alone, but saw each other eye to eye, and realised that we were not different from each other, that we shared common goals and that in our hearts the same fire arose that inspires life from within: love.
It is with this thesis that I hope to contribute to the Maagdenhuis occupation. For although its fire has gone out, the principles and beliefs with which we started the occupation, and the experiences we shared together in the cold rooms and halls, have become the driving force to take our ideas further into new concepts for understanding. To relate to the world in a way that does not undermine the well being of others, but to use the creative force of love to connect and built new inspiring forms of engagement and understanding. To connect to a deeper meaning in life, beyond the ideas of commercialisation. To acknowledge that there is a unique and true authentic self and that learning and being should not be separated, but should be united in personal authentic expressions and collaboration with others.
Introduction
In this thesis I would like to argue that art is a manifestation of a lost part of communication in which the soul is reunited with its source, i.e. the connection with others. Art is usually understood within the confinements of commerce, entertainment or allowed a privileged aesthetic position with those fortunate enough to be highly educated. The meaning of art however, and this is the driving motivation for my thesis, is part of a much older system of communication in which a person connects with a lost part of themselves that within ancient communities was celebrated as the most holy part of existence: the soul. The merging of the self with the community during the ancient rituals, which I will discuss in the first chapter of my thesis, meant a reverberation of the meaning of life within all those participating. This grand meaning, that was perceived and shared by all, meant an
emotional bond of union in which the self was manifested within and celebrated as the external reality around. The source simply was the great manifesting power of love, i.e. the bond, connection and union with and for others that consecrated a truth of being within the hearts of all. This beautiful dedication and involvement of immediate connection that luckily till this day has been preserved in communities across the world, became more and more suppressed by a force of alienation and fragmentation that was inspired by a relatively simple yet revolutionary technology that completely shifted the means of communication. The written word and its insistence on analysis, distance, separation, and reduction of the senses and immediate communication with others, disrupted the connection within ancient communities and installed a system of hierarchy and mass manipulation. I will discuss this transition in the second part of my thesis, where I will refer to the work of Marshall Mcluhan and his analysis of media communication as having profound life
in which the written word suppressed the means of communication and the sharing of love with others, there were still moments of brief delicate means of being in the rituals that were maintained but were now referred to as “art”. The moments of art and the means of communication that they inspire is one so profound, and yet so vastly misunderstood that it creates a breach between those privileged with an understanding of their being, and those who would be forced to see it as another means of suppression, given that art historically was preserved for the upper classes rich halls and libraries. The soul of the art work however is not different from the means of communication that had once been imagined by people joined together in union of love. In art that same profound feeling of connection is
maintained, a deep sensation of something that words would usually fail to utter, but which the rich voices of poets seem to emanate as if it is part of their DNA.
The soul therefore needs to be understood as that moment of profound engagement and essential union with others, where the feeling of love becomes possible of elevating the veil of separation and a sparse moment of deep-rooted belonging occurs that people are otherwise deprived off. This manifestation that would otherwise be called creation, is nothing less than the ancient old ritual of love that the ancient communities celebrated and that is still preserved in the concept of “hieros gamos”: the union, merging of the Feminine and Masculine forces in oneself and with another. This deepest heartfelt connection is the absolute manifestation of the soul, as it connects in loving bliss by allowing the other to see and feel deep within during the holy ritual of intercourse. It allows a person to penetrate the core of reality inside the Feminine force and grasp that essence through which a new
manifestation arises due to this most intimate bondage: the manifestation of new life, of creation, of being. It immediately initiates a person in the deepest cosmic truth, an
That love really is the most essential basis of reality through which all arises and which comforts us in moments of separation, the establishment of the love for a new being. It is the power to know that life is love. The ultimate goal: to procreate life, to see it blossom and to love its fruit as one’s own.
Chapter 1: The Mother
1.1 The Origin
Around 7000 - 3000 BCE, the neolithic age, the communities in the world looked according to most scholars (Gimbutas; Read; Condren; Dyer; Prakashana; Engels; Marx) completely different from the societies we see today. The villages and communities that once thrived are now but a lost remnant of our imagination, and even the natural environments which they inhabited are slowly dissolving into myths. The behaviour, beliefs and practices of these ancient societies belonged to an older conception of life that till this day remains hidden in ancient sources, cultures and expressions of art, but which has been neglected by Western media and thought conceptions. The same beautiful stories however can be found all over the world and they offer an interesting perspective on our forgotten past that still haunts the imagination in the ruins of for instance Stonehenge and Göbekli Tepe. What is peculiar, is
that there is one common characteristic throughout these ancient remnants: the source which they all referred to as the Great Mother (Gimbutas; Read).
The Great Mother was seen as the origin of life. 1
According to the ancient cosmology of the Dogon, a still existing African tribe in Mali, it was Amma, in the shape of an egg that contained the material and the structure of the universe; the 266 signs that embraced the essence of all things. It is a myth that is also found within the
hunter-gatherer cultural groups who preceded the establishment of agricultural
communities (Asanta & Mazama, 40). In oceanic, Indonesian, the Americas, Chinese and Indian culture there exist the same creation myth from the cosmic egg (Meletinsky, 183). The idea of the Mother egg remained prevalent within the neolithic communities that started to use agricultural forms of living.
According to archaeologist Maria Gimbutas, the neolithic societies were matriarchal in nature, in line with the idea of the Great Mother. They were egalitarian societies, probably like the paleolithic communities, with hardly no distinctions made on the basis of gender or class except for the fact that they were matrilocal. Although the societies depended on a matrilineal structure there is no evidence that women dominated men in the same way that later patriarchal communities dominated women by renouncing their power and forcing them into obedience (Gimbutas, 97). Matrilineal implies that the property and lineage of the clan was passed through women (mothers), the key relationships were that between sisters and mother and child. The relationship between father and child was however important too, though the relationship between the brother of the mother and her children was more important (Sanderson, 40). The basic needs were shared with the community equally, and also the unrestricted (sexual) relations meant that the communities were connected physically and emotionally and a sense of responsibility for all was ensured (Engels, 21). It was a system in which the communal bonds relied on kinship of blood relations which created complex interrelated connections that shaped order. Love was the foundation that connected the members of the community through rituals and dance, and through the important act of lovemaking.
Fertility, both of the land as well as its inhabitants, meant the survival of the society. The most holy ritual within these communities therefore was that of love-making, from
which new life around and within originated. This sacred ritual that preserved and celebrated life is still remembered in holy songs and rituals as the sacred love of the Sky “God” and the Earth “Goddess, the Hieros Gamos (Alban; Gimbutas; van Dijk; Prakasha). Innana, and other Goddesses throughout the world, such as Yemaya the Ocean Goddess in West Africa, Isis the Mother Goddess of the Egyptians, Hera in Greece and Diana in Rome, all representations of the great Mother, were seen as the providers of life through their “holy vulva”, as well as the receiver in death (Read, 1989). Intercourse with the Goddess played a sacred role. The oldest written record of the holy marriage is found in Sumer, modern day Iraq, in the love poem of “Innana: Queen of Heaven and Earth” (Wolkenstein & Kramer, 1983). Writing began in Sumer in the 4th millenium B.C.E and acknowledges explicitly the Goddess Inanna as the “global One Goddess, the Primal Mother, goddess of life, death, heaven and star, fertility, compassion” (Heimann, 4-10). She was the goddess who enlightened the world with civilization and culture, of which
the art of love making was seen as the highest form of creation (Merrit, 138). She was the tree of life, the Garden of Eden herself (Alban, 254). It is through her marriage to the shepherd king/God Dumuzi (also named Tammuz), her son (as all beings of the Mother Goddess are her children), that the fertilization of her land, her womb, and the earth itself was secured:
“He watered my womb.
He laid his hands on my holy vulva, He smoothed my black boat with cream, He quickened my narrow boat with milk,
He caressed me on the bed” (Wolkenstein & Kramer, 43). 2
The ancient love story of the Goddess and God in holy matrimony is found all over the world. It is from this sacred union that understanding of nature was derived, of all beings, of life itself. Fertility had been crucial for the people in small communities during the paleolithic age, but the fertility of the earth was essential to the new agricultural societies that
depended on regeneration. The holy cycle of life was revered, the earth and all its
inhabitants were held in great esteem and vital to existence, as the Mother was seen as the embodiment of all (Gimbutas). The masculine principle, the king/son, was also sacred as he had to fertilize the Goddess. His seed engendered the blossoming of nature. But like nature dies in winter and goes underground, so too the king was sacrificed every year and
succeeded by the next king who would take his ceremonial place by making love to the Goddess to ensure the fertility of life (Fielder & King, 181).
The people in the communities would celebrate in this divine act of creation by encountering each other in similar ways: by making love too. Hieros Gamos was celebrated by the ancient people inside the temple with wine, music, and love-making to honour the Mother Goddess and to be part of her holy cycle of life (Merrit, 138).
“Surrendering to sensual-sexual desires was seen as a devotional path, a religious channel to worshipping the Love Goddess” (Hillel, 102). 3
In the ancient communities there was no distinction between the sacred and the mundane, the temples sanctified every day experiences for the entire community, and consisted of
2 c. 2500 BCE Inanna & Dumuzi, British Museum.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumuzid#/media/File:Dumuzi_aux_enfers.jpg
3Non-heterosexual relations were not excluded from these sacred rites. Though there are no written records,
evidence has been found of a 5000 year old burial site belonging to a person without a fixed gender.
(https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8433527/First-homosexual-caveman-found.ht ml).
bread ovens, weaving, grinding stones and love making (Gimbutas, 98). This suggests that bread, pottery, cloths and sex had a sacred meaning. Aspects of life that in modern times would be called “ordinary” were in fact a celebration of life and were hold in great honour. The temple was an essential part through which the offerings and connection with the Mother could rejoice the soul and allow the continuance of life through rituals. The temple belonged to the realm of women, or priestesses. There is no evidence that men practised there as well, although they did participate in the rituals (Gimbutas, 98). The temple also held an important position in relation to the afterlife and regeneration. In ancient
cosmologies the soul transpasses into other realms in which it obtains its true form before returning to relive in another form and to experience life in a way designed to achieve fulfillment. Like the myths of Demeter and Persephone in Greece who enter the
“underworld” (Davy, 100). It is a perspective that modern day religions still acknowledge when they refer to the immortality of the soul. As everything in life was hold sacred, wars were not present within this early stage of societies (Gimbutas, 33), instead there was solidarity and exchange between the different communities that helped build a network of communication that still exist till this day in the form of buildings that have lost their meanings due to misplaced interpretations. Stonehenge, Avebury and the other megalithic sculptures that were built all across the world were connected to each other. They are the last remnants of a trademark of the Mother cult, the large machinery stone objects that were disseminated across the world and which probably functioned as a communication network
to send and receive information (Hitching, 145). Artefacts hold an important position within
4
cosmology artefacts carried meanings that ensured the wellbeing of the community, referring to nature, fertility and (re)generation on which life depended. Bird-shaped vases, nude female figurines and male fertility symbols are found all over the world. The
beautifully carved objects were the offerings to the Goddess, to thank her for her splendour and richness with which the communities were able to live and thrive (Gimbutas, 81). They were therefore not “static” or “aesthetic objects”, but carriers of power and immanent manifestations of life that ensured a connection between the people, nature, their own bodies and with the soul, i.e. the sexual, love creative power that generates life.
“The connection between women’s bodies, earth and Goddess are not metaphors, but living
5
realities of female power. The centrality of the female yoni in the ancient artifacts expresses a deep reverence for the mysterious interconnectedness of the female to the earth, moon and cosmos that has persisted to this day in the Kathmandu Valley and parts of India” (Amazzone, 28).
The artefacts had a crucial meaning as the ancient people had to maintain and ensure their survival on the basis of a deep
profound interconnectivity with their environment. The temple, as a central position in their lives, illuminates that deep held sacred awareness and
connection of the immanent power in the universe of which they knew they were part. The temple was not a secluded isolated tower, but an immanent part of life in which all shared together and felt the presence of the life force deep within and with each other, especially during lovemaking. The artefacts that were used in the ceremonies were not a
5 Mesopotamian Goddess Ishtar, c.a. 2000 BCE. Louvre Museum.
representation of this life force, but another embodiment. They carried the meaning of the universe inside them as they embodied the creative power of the universe, the sexual generative power of love that manifests all life.
The cosmology of the ancients matriarchal communities, embodied by the artefacts and the complex rituals that were practised for thousands of years, and that are perhaps as old as human beings themselves (Read) was not lost. The knowledge was preserved in written records that till this day hold a sacred meaning in ancient cultures across the world. In the next part I will try to illuminate how the rituals of the goddess and her consort during the hieros gamos rite, and the understanding of the life force that was seen as the Great Mother were more systematically expressed and explained in texts. Instead of rich decorative artefacts, such as the statue of Willendorf and the images I have shown above, the Mother started to be explained in carefully delineated lines of reasoning that tried to grasp her nature in words.
1.2 The Goddess Continued
In Hinduism there are still remnants of the old knowledge of the Mother cult. The ancient scriptures of the Vedas consist of complex interpretations and philosophical inquiries into the nature of existence that have also had a large influence on Western science and
philosophy (Torwestern, 1985). The Upanishads text, one of the four Vedas, discusses the primal power in the universe, and in creation itself, which is referred to by different schools under different names as “Kundalini Shakti”, or “Adi Parashakti”. It is the “infinite, eternal, immutable, immovable, unborn, formless, sexless, ever free”, the supreme spirit beyond
said that only up to a certain point are our minds capable of grasping this vast endless being. It is the power of oneness (Advaita meaning non dual) that is also referred to as Brahman, another word to encompass the entire “being” that is life (Narayanananda, 12). According to Tantric philosophy, which is seen as a precursor to the Vedic texts (Bjonnes), Brahman is constituted of two elemental powers. On the one side it constitutes Shakti, the Feminine principle, and on the other the Masculine principle of Shiva (Prakasha, 1). This Feminine power of Shakti, that is the Mother energy of the universe, is the creative force that manifests, she is the essence of sexuality which creates life and (re)generates. She is the embodiment of all that exists. It is through her that all life is connected: “Shakti connects each of us to our essence, as she weaves her way through the web of life and connects us all” (Prakasha, 2). As everything that exists is Shakti she is the life force that holds the universe together. Her consort, Shiva, the Masculine aspect is pure consciousness, the aspect that abides her. Shiva is awareness through which understanding and recognition of the Mother force, of the (inner) nature arises. Shiva is the sun that illuminates life (Lingham).
On a manifested level Shakti is referred to as “Prakriti”, which refers to the
underlying principle that sets in motion through action, desire, the innate impulse to grow, the spiralling life force, birth and the will to create: it is experience. It contains in embryonic form everything that can possibly be experienced, the foundation of the true self. The
dynamic potent energy that constitutes life through the senses and the physical form of DNA spirals (Prakasha, 13). This power cannot exist without the Masculine principle of
consciousness that is Shiva, but on the manifested level is referred to as Purusha. Purusha ensures the guiding force of Prakriti that allows it to form into the manifestations. It ensures the establishment of the potential that lies within the embryonic form. It is the recognition, awareness of who a person really is, understanding and focussing attention on
the prakriti. They are two aspects of the same being. The Masculine is the constitutive energy, the activating energy while the Feminine is the immanent aspect, its essence and content. Like the seed of sperm generating the transformation of the egg. Together they are Brahman, the harmony and union of the masculine and feminine: love. It is the elemental life force that is comprised of these two
foundational aspects that unite together as one, and therefore are impossible to separate. Life is “shaped matter”, or “acknowledged energy”:
conscious being. The union, divine marriage of the feminine and masculine. They are beautifully expressed in the Tantric images: the God and Goddess in divine loving, sexual embrace, Hieros
Gamos. 6
According to this ancient source, these forces refer to the energy that comprises all life, including all (human) beings. Each being is part of Brahman and holds their own personal aspect of this unifying principle, referred to as “Atman”. Atman is the union of the Masculine and Feminine in oneself (in the West usually referred to as the soul). The soul is a microcosmos of the larger cosmic principles of which it is an integral part (Kraig, 40). It is necessary to emphasize that the Masculine and Feminine do not refer to gender but to energy, in order to prevent any destructive discriminatory ideas. Shiva and Shakti do not imply that every woman is “Shakti”, that she is by definition “material” and therefore devoid of “consciousness”, awareness and understanding. Nor does it suggest that a man is “Shiva”, “consciousness”, separate from nature and physical experiences, as if he has a monopoly on
thoughts and is separated from the other senses of his body. It is crucial to underscore that these perspectives refer to the immanence of all manifestations of life, each being in itself is a mixture of the holy union, of both the Masculine and Feminine. Per definition, the soul is the most holy aspect, a part of the Mother/Brahman itself in their own unique way.
Homosexuality therefore is not at all excluded from holy divine sexual unions. According to Hinduism each being consists of both the Feminine and Masculine, a holy marriage of Shiva/Shakti (the Hieros Gamos) in oneself. The oneness of the Mother, or Brahman, therefore is also the oneness of the Self.
The ancient texts of the Vedas try to decipher and determine the nature of existence on the basis of texts, through contemplative, conceptual representations of what used to be the ancient rituals and artefacts of love shared and enacted by the community. The emphasis is placed on profound rich expressions, which need to be read in their own wording in order to grasp the emotional depth of their meaning. I condensed their meaning for my thesis in order to illustrate how the idea of the Mother, as the immanent Feminine and Masculine aspects in existence, were preserved and enacted thousands of years later. The ancient texts of the Vedas however were not available to all citizens, but belonged to the upper caste of Brahmani to study and contemplate. This separation that occured and that caused a rift within society between those who had knowledge of life, and those who had no longer access to the wisdoms I will further try to illustrate by a radical shift that occurred in
Mesopotamia/Babylon around 2100 BCE. Here, in the same region where once Goddess Inanna had reigned supreme, a new power arose that focussed on the Masculine aspect of existence and which distorted the holy union between Shiva & Shakti. A power that can perhaps be seen to mark a shift in consciousness and cosmology in which the Masculine and
Feminine become detached and the broken connection of life starts to take place, with terrible consequences. The soul that embodied the two life forces as love as the foundational energy in all, the immanent source of the Mother, was not rewritten.
1.3 The Rise of the Masculine
A new ideology had started to arise all across the world, though it is difficult to pinpoint when exactly this change took place historically (Lerner, 1986). An account of a definite break with the ancient ritual of Hieros Gamos seems to occur in Mesopotamia/Babylon, where a new type of relationship was shaped between the Goddess Ishtar, a reformed continuation of Inanna, and a new king, Gilgamesh, not based on love, but on dismissal. The Gilgamesh epos (2100 BCE) is fundamentally different from the song of love in the holy marriage between Tammuz (Dumuzi) and Inanna. Written approximately thousand years later, king Gilgamesh was in power, and a different type of engagement with the natural
environments, with other beings in life, had taken shape: he destroyed the sacred cedar forest, the bull of the Gods (an important fertility symbol
for the agricultural communities) and refused the holy ritual of lovemaking with the Goddess of fertility and love Ishtar:
“But what advantage would it be to me to take you in marriage? 7 In the cold season you would surely fail me!
Like a pan full of burning coals which go out
You are but a back door which does not stay shut
You are the great palace which collapses on its honoured guests
The headdress that unravels,
The pitch that blackens the hands of the bearer,
The water-skin that rubs the back raw as it is carried,
The limestone which undermines the rampart
A siege engine thrown up against the walls of the enemy,
The shoe that pinches the foot of its owner
What lover did you love forever?
Which of your shepherds is there
Who has satisfied you for long?
Come, I will tell you the tales of your lovers:
For Tammuz, your young husband,
For him we wail year after year!
He who dies each autumn and comes back each spring!” (Gilgamesh Epos, Tablet VI)
The song is no longer infused with admiration, dedication and passion for the Feminine and her life giving power, but permeated with suspicion and contempt for the love of the
Goddess. She becomes the embodiment of distrust and the association with the downfall of man: entering into the Feminine, in a union of love, sexual bliss and fertility was suddenly seen as taking away the Masculine power. The Feminine became an aspect of existence to be feared, as the emphasis was more and more placed on the Masculine as the means to obtain happiness, joy and success. A new belief was propagated, one that celebrated Masculine power as not needing the Feminine, as not necessarily needing others and love. The
Gilgamesh epos marks the end of the sacred connection between man and nature, man and woman and the love rite that infuses all. It breaks up the Shakti source, as the immanent
manifestation of all, and emphasizes male virility and strength as sources of power and creation. Gilgamesh is weary of the love of the great Goddess and her tendency to sacrifice her lovers, he breaks his sacred bond and duty of marrying the Goddess and instead wants to reach immortality and heroic glory as the greatest king of all.
It is argued by scholars (Hayes) that the Gilgamesh epos has been the inspiration and source for the old Testament. It marks the beginning of the monotheistic religions as the Masculine becomes the sole power detaching himself from the Feminine. It is the beginning of a definite break with the ancient matrilineal community and its conception of life. With the Israelites the sole provider, the creator of life, was seen as a single God, Yahweh. The
connection with this new God was not made in deep union with others, but by following the covenants that he dictated. It was not a sexual act of creation, union, and bondage, but a new one-way communication of laws to establish order within the community. God, Yahweh, as all the other consort gods, however had once been married to the goddess of motherhood and fertility, Asherah. Up until the 8th century BC she 8
was still worshipped on stone tablets that acknowledged her as his wife (Stavrakopoulou). She was a mother goddess, a descendant of the Innana cult that belonged to the Sumerian pantheon (Lanner, 77). The image of the Mother goddess however was slowly but surely distorted in an image of evil and fear, her new consort Yawhew reinforced his antagonism against the Feminine further than Gilgamesh and ordered his followers to destroy her
image: “You shall break down their altars, and dash their pillars in pieces, and burn their Asherah poles with fire. You shall cut down the engraved images of their gods. You shall destroy their name out of that place. You shall not do so to Yahweh your God” (Deuteronomy 12:3-4 , The English Standard Bible).
The love for the Mother was destroyed, quite literally through the massacre of her images, and the destruction of her shrines, as well as the images of all other Gods and Goddesses. The form that the Feminine was allowed to take was that of dismissive wife, the form that acknowledged only her fruit bearing gifts, but not her power. The genesis story of the Old Testament was to be the standard for the image of femininity. The new story of creation was one in which the Feminine was made servant to the Masculine, instead of an equal part of his soul. Divinity was not something that could be found on earth and in
(human) beings, nature, but according to these new sources, was designed and controlled by the sole power, God, who ruled from the heavens above. Feminine and Masculine were suddenly separated and assigned to people on the basis of gender. They were no longer the elementary, complementary energy forces that constitute/create the wholeness in life, but were seen as separate beings. It marks and fosters the separation between the Feminine and Masculine in oneself. In line with God the father in heaven, so too man on earth had to control his family/community. A fundamental change from the matriarchal societies in which women were seen as the providers and givers of life as the embodiment of the Mother. It is stated that even God controls the life giving force of the womb and that he assigns men to control the lives and desires of love/sexuality of women. “I will greatly increase your pain from conception to labor. In pain will you give birth to children. Your desire will be toward your husband, yet he must rule over you” (genesis 2:4-3:24, The English
What I have attempted to show thus far is how the ancient cosmology based on interrelated connections between the self and others in the community, and in the natural environment, was distorted. It is important to underscore this historic transition in ancient sources, in order to show how creation, love/sex, had changed from a position of deeply devoted lovemaking in physical union, to the idea that creation was possible without the loving admiration and appreciation of the Feminine and others. The believe had been instigated that creation could result solely from the Masculine will and force of suppression over the Feminine, to force her and others under his dominance in order to steer creation according to his desires. It disrupted the holy equilibrium that constituted the union in life based on the sacred marriage of the soul, instead the Feminine became enslaved.
The last remnants of the Goddess in the cultures of Greece and Rome around the time of Christendom already indicate this changing ideology, where the Feminine was no longer revered as the supreme Mother Goddess, but can be found only in mere fragments of the aspect that had once constituted her entire being. Diana, Goddess of the hunt, is one of these last remnants in which the Goddess makes an appearance in “Western” culture, but where she is further violated and ignored. It is in the story of Ovid’s Metamorphosis that the Feminine and Masculine are completely unable to connect, where their union of loving bliss in sexual embrace is broken. It marks a further disengagement from the Feminine influence in life, not only as a Goddess, but from her power of love, union, sexual attraction, her being and the connection of her warm embrace.
1.4 Diana & Actaeon
9In this thesis I focus upon Ovid’s story in his
Metamorphoses of the encounter between the Goddess
of Nature/hunt, Diana (in Greek Artemis), and the hunter Actaeon within the context of the ancient matriarchal rites. In the story a fundamentally different meeting between the Feminine and Masculine occurs compared to the ancient ritual of Hieros Gamos between Inanna & Dumuzi, and the beautiful Tantric interpretations of the union between Shiva & Shakti. In Rome, a perspective is given that illuminates the distortion of the
affectionate act of love making between the Feminine and Masculine. It is a story in which the prince/hunter Actaeon stumbles upon the magnificent Goddess Diana in the forest and gazes at her as she is about to bathe. The Goddess of nature acknowledges his presence by showing her naked body. Actaeon suddenly finds himself witness to the essence of universal beauty, power and truth: nature in her pure form, unclothed. Diana in anticipation awaits the handsome Actaeon, but instead of entering in the holy ritual of lovemaking with the Goddess, he stays at a distance, separating himself from her influence and attraction. It is the sacrilege act of the denial of his holy seed necessary for her to come to bare. His rejection implies the broken connection of the hearts affection and the sexual desire as the necessary connection and generation of life. Actaeon receives his holy insight without returning his honour, without sharing his love and instead turns away. Without the Masculine power and the loving embrace, the Feminine is unable to understand her own nature, her versatility
9“Diana & Aktaeon”, by Henryk Siemiradzki Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts, Yekaterinburg, Russia.
and power. The sacred bond of love between Inanna & her king, Shakti & Shiva, Diana & Actaeon is broken. Diana is left barren. Bereft of his “creamy milk” she is no longer able to bear the fruit of life. To show him his insolence she avails her vengeance: she turns him into a deer and lets his own hunters and dogs kill him.
The Roman story exemplifies the broken marriage/connection between the Feminine and Masculine. Actaeon’s gaze upon Diana is devoid of the loving exchange so desired by her. The gaze turns into a distanced method for observation, he sees her splendour, he understands nature, but is not emotionally, affectionately, (com)passionately touched. His gaze turns cold, not in ecstasy and passion, but reserved and distanced. The gaze is no longer part of the warm physical embrace in which the Masculine dissolves into oneness with the Feminine in holy union, the sacred marriage of Hieros Gamos. Instead he retains his grip and cools down his passion. His gaze becomes “neutral”, he stays at a distance, an isolated position, in order not to be seduced by her beauty, in order not to be captured by her presence that ignites his heart and inspires the flame of love in which she is able to express her truth. The connection of the Mother is broken, the Gazer becomes an individual isolated from the network of life, unable to feel her presence deep within. Consciousness becomes separated from the life force, from Shakti, from the creative, sexual power of love that constitutes and generates life, from the Feminine. Very literally.
The implications of this distortion had fundamental effects upon the organisation and connection within communities, it completely shifted the balance. It is necessary to show these implications in order to grasp the disconnection that occurred, not just within the soul (between the Feminine and Masculine in oneself), but also in connection with
others. The new ideology of the Masculine distancing oneself from the immanent network of the Feminine in all, disrupted the possibility for true intimate connections with others, all
other beings, which I hope to show in the third chapter of this thesis, was only refound in those sacred moments enjoyed in the engagement with art.
This historical break, that till this day defines almost all communities on earth, meant the fundamental disintegration of the wholeness in society. Love was no longer the driving, creative, generating uniting power that connected all the inhabitants in the community. Fragmentation, disintegration, separation and division of the community started to appear. Consciousness was no longer focussed upon the Mother as the immanent power of the life force of love in all, but on the Father as the ruler of the soul.
At the same time that the disintegration of the pantheon of Gods and Goddess started to appear, the new idea of the Father started to dominate the ideas of life and existence. The image of the Masculine Father God appeared not only with the Israelites. In Plato’s Timaeus there is specific emphasis on the “Father” as the creator of all, and though the Mother is mentioned as the primordial source (similar to how the ancients saw her), it is nevertheless the Father who is credited with being the creator of life, the one who shapes it, forms it and inspires it. Instead of seeing the soul/life as “activated matter”, the soul is described by Plato as being “pinned to the body” (Timaeus), in other words, consciousness, (Shiva), is seen as being distinct and of a different kind than its matter (Shakti) that it inhabits. In addition, according to the Timaeus the soul as the most “godly aspect” resides in the head and reigns over the rest of the body. The body is described as merely the “help”, the slave, of the head and needs to serve it as best as possible. From this emphasis on the head, there is also great emphasis placed on the eyes, which according to Plato has endowed “man” with the
opportunity to see the sky, the stars and the sun and that from our observance “numbers” were derived and philosophy was made possible, which, according to Timaios, is the
greatest gift the gods have given. “The face was given by the Father so that man might grasp/penetrate the universal consciousness in the heavens and to further our own consciousness” (Timaeus).
Actaeon’s Gaze became the sole means through which understanding derived. Instead of obtaining “universal consciousness” via the personal experience, connection, and through (love)making with others (which had been the source to knowledge for millenia), Plato argues that the insights into truth relied solely upon the scrutiny of the gaze. Truth was no longer an inner and physical experience, but a fixation of consciousness without the body, senses, and the connection with others. The body was discarded as a servant, not as the crucial power of being. Understanding of life was seen as separated from feeling, and focussed on a restriction, isolation and ignoring of the body, in order to procure, as “pure” as possible, without affectious relations/intercourse from and with others the meaning of life. To fixate the gaze using mathematical reduction and ‘intelligence’ as a force in itself, separated from the immanent connection of the body, with the Mother.
“God invented and gave us sight to the end that we might behold the courses of intelligence in the heaven, and apply them to the courses of our own intelligence which are akin to them, the
unperturbed to the perturbed; and that we, learning them and partaking of the natural truth of
reason, might imitate the absolutely unerring courses of God and regulate our own vagaries”
(Timaeus, 22).
This new cosmology also necessarily formed the basis for a new form of governance of the community in order to abide by God’s rule(s). In his Republic Plato continues his disquisition of the right order, by introducing the concept of the ideal State. According to Socrates, the community ought to be organised not by its family ties and interrelations of individual members, but by a centralised form of government. He lays the philosophical foundation for
an hierarchical structure in which people are confined to their work function in order to ensure the “basic needs” as well as luxuries that Greek culture had become accustomed to. As basic necessities Socrates refers to food, housing and cloths, which requires people to
become builders, farmers, weavers, and builds his ideal society from there (The Republic). It is striking that Socrates does not follow the historical development of societies, but develops a concept on the basis of “logic” verified by his apprentices and readers.
Unlike the ancient matriarchal communities, Socrates argues for a division of labour and a division of people according to their “nature” that qualifies them to perform specific tasks to help organize his ideal state. Being/existence, which was once a unique expression of self, was thus reduced to a function under the principle of the “commonwealth”. Work then no longer was a sacred personal interaction with nature, but a necessary obstacle/task designated to procure the needs, which, if necessary, had to be forcefully obtained from others through war. Each had to perform in accordance to “justice” in order to ensure the survival of the state. Justice is thus understood as the rules necessary to establish order and to ensure that every person performs their task rightly. The rules apply to all, but are constructed by a few: “the small group that lead and govern the rest” (The Republic). The philosophers should rule, who, as was mentioned, could designate their mind unperturbed by physical pleasures, by the emotions of the body through force of reason. Because the masses are not capable of suppressing their emotions and physical pleasures by adjusting their minds according to the divine laws of God, through reason and logic, the laws
therefore needed to be constructed by those who were capable of the “right” understanding: the philosophers.
““It is also true that the great mass of multifarious appetites and pleasures and pains will be found to occur chiefly in children and women and slaves, and among free men so called, in the inferior multitude;
whereas the simple and moderate desires which, with the aid of reason and right belief, are guided by reflection, you will find only in a few, and those with the best inborn dispositions and the best educated”
(The Republic).
This blatant discrimination classifies people within the pyramid of the State,
elevating those “best” born and educated. It states that those who are incapable of subjecting the “bad” part of their soul, need to be subjected and governed and controlled by the few people who are capable of fostering the “good” in their soul by controlling their pleasures and appetites. Like the head/mind needs to lead the servant body, so too the elite of philosophers needs to steer the women, children, slaves, and inferiors. Reason, rationality and logic need to suppress the pleasures of life and create the moderate will to dominate it. The bodily pleasures, feelings and expressions, once seen as the predominant force through which life was understood, was now subjugated as “bad” influences that needed to be controlled. Pure consciousness, awareness, devoid of all decorations and distractions, seen in the perfect mathematical perfect forms was celebrated as the ultimate truth.
It is necessary to emphasize the fundamental implications that the domination of the Masculine over the Feminine had as it immediately established profound separations within the community as well as within the self. As the Feminine inhabited the creative sexual power of love that connected all, the diminishing of this power ensured a new ideology depriving the Masculine of its fundamental essence. It forced a breach between the physical pleasures that united people, as well as the same force that inspired creative manifestations from the self. It obliterated common manifestations that connected people with nature, their own inner nature and the bond between them. Instead the isolatory position of thought and contemplation created a new insistence on rationality and reason. This new system could naturally not coincide with the matriarchal wisdoms. The new ideology
suppressed the ancient knowledge, making way for new understandings, new ways of living and new forms of engagement with others. It was in the centuries that followed that the Christian church, as a continuation of the monotheistic patriarchal perspective inspired by the Israelites, and greatly influenced by Plato’s ideas, fundamentally displaced the ancients wisdoms, not only in Europe, but all over the world.
1.5 The Christian Ideology
In the first century Paul the Apostle stated: “Do not think that just as the belly is made for food and
food for the belly, that in the same way the body is made for intercourse. It was made that it should be a temple to the Lord. Adam had a body in Paradise, but in Paradise he did not know Eve” (1 Corinthians
6:13). The attack on the body, already started by Plato, is further exacerbated by the fathers of the new Christian ideology. According to Paul it was only the unfortunate souls who were unable to dedicate their lives to God entirely that marriage to a woman and sex became an option. St. Clement from the School of Alexandria (150-215), who was greatly inspired by Plato, warned: “God has allowed us to marry wives, because not everyone is capable of the superior
condition, which is to be absolutely pure” (The Stromata, or Miscellanies). This conception he
takes further by describing effeminacy as a disease and targeting also homosexual relations: "All honor to that king of the Scythians, whoever Anacharsis was, who shot with an
arrow one of his subjects who imitated among the Scythians the mystery of the mother of the gods . . . condemning him as having become effeminate among the Greeks, and a teacher of the disease of effeminacy to the rest of the Scythians" (Exhortation to the Greeks 2 [A.D. 190]).
The cosmology of the Mother is shamed and distorted. Life and people were dictated to connect only through that which is “pure”: the holy marriage with God, not with each other.
The carnal pleasure of sexual relations was seen as the inherent impurity that should be refrained from, and therefore could even be exercised in marriages when a person was unable to abstain completely. Feelings should be devoid of passion, for love should only be communicated with God. Continence is an ignoring of the body in accordance with the confession of
faith in God (St. Clement, Book III, chapter 1, verse 4). With the introduction of Christian
doctrine, a new light was shed on celibacy and virginity as being essential to reach the Kingdom of God, which was an “absolute novelty” from the older covenants (Pope John Paul II, 1) and an absolute insanity compared to the matriarchal cosmology.
These negative associations with women and sexual relations was further propelled by St. Augustine who discussed the concept of “Original sin” given that mankind derived from Adam and his seductress wife Eve, who tasted of the forbidden fruit. This concept of “sin” was aggravated by Tertullian in the third century, who wrote:
“You are the devil's gateway: you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree: you are the first
deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant
enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God's image, man. On account of your desert — that
is, death — even the Son of God had to die”(On the Apparel of Women, book 1, chapter 1).
A new “origin” for women was designed. Mother was no longer the origin of life, but the origin of sin: she was the seductress who had caused the downfall of man. Instead of the magnanimous Goddess of fertility who generates life from her “holy vulva”, she is rejected and ostracised for her sexual power of love. Instead of acknowledging her as the provider of life, through birth and (re)generation, she became the object through which “sin” is brought into the world. What is also striking is that this image of evil is suddenly appointed to all individual women. Whereas the ancient principles of Hieros Gamos refer to the Feminine and Masculine as energetic fields in both man and woman, and in everything else in life,
“femininity” became exclusively gender related within the religious dogma: all women in the world were Eve “And do you not know that you are (each) an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of
yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too” (On the Apparel of Women, book 1,
chapter 1).
Sin became everything that according to the fathers of the church was deemed “unnatural”:
"All other frenzies of the lusts which exceed the laws of nature, and are impious toward both [human] bodies and the sexes, we banish, not only from the threshold
but also from all shelter of the Church, for they are not sins so much as monstrosities" (Modesty 4 [A.D. 220]).
Sex became the ultimate antithesis to the new world order that had started to reshape the entire European continent, obliterating the old culture in which sex had preserved the most holy function of all. Homosexual relations were suddenly considered sinful, and though woman was per definition related to sin she was allowed to produce children according to the right order of the Father: without lust and passion, and within the confinements of marriage 10
The fact that sexual relations especially was ostracised underscores the power of the sexual act as the means through which powerful manifestations could take place. The godly power of creation was only allowed to the single god of the Christians, and no longer a source of power in people themselves, or in the life giving power of the Feminine in all life. Creation
10Mother Goddess Mary devoid of power, sexuality ( virgin), docile, pious within the confinements of the tower,
separated from her natural environment. Isolated, suppressed and secluded where she could do no “harm”.
Madonna Litta, Leonardo da Vinci (1490). Hermitage, St. Petersburg.
was ordained by God, not experienced in deep union and loving affection for oneself and others. In order to prevent these powerful forms of engagements that connected people within communities, thereby countering the power of the new ideology of separation and control, skillful devices were employed to counter any possible reunification with the
ancient matriarchal cosmologies. The “logic” of sin was taken further to state that because of it, man could become slave to the devil as it made him “lustful”. Continence became the new form of reaching enlightenment: “It is rather that self-control is granted to us, since it is a divine power and grace” (St. Clement, the Stromata, book 1, chapter 1). Only by following the decrees of the Church could there be redemption, or otherwise one’s soul suffered eternal damnation in the terrifying trogs of hell.
It is clear how the foundation of sexuality, the creative Feminine power, posed a threat to the new world order of “pure” untouched, unrelated and unconnected with others, except with the holy truth of God, reason. The foundation of this ideology resided on the perception that bodies, love and sexuality, everything related to the Feminine, were the reasons for disobedience to the will/laws of the Father, and therefore led man astray into that which was considered “foul”. Such a position not only reinforced the new doctrine of the Father, but at the same time undermined the power of the Goddess that till that time was still preserved in some communities and that had been the basis of all the others. The new ideology created a fundamental anxiety for a part deep within the self, the sexual motivation for love and physical engagement with others. Life became more and more confined by the new Christian doctrines, everything “outside” their governance, for instance people with their own spiritual power or thoughts, were considered evil and a threat to the purity of the soul (Misset, 143-44). The self, soul, was no longer something personal, i.e. a person’s unique marriage of the Feminine and Masculine in oneself, but
because the immanence of the Feminine had to be dominated, therefore also a fundamental part of the self and the connection with others had to be suppressed. The “right” and only allowed form of living was based on the doctrine of the Church, which, they argued, were the laws of “reason” decreed by the Father God. Life became curtailed and ruled by the church, an external force in which love, i.e. redemption by the Father, was only decreed on the condition of obedience. The Masculine was further separated from the Feminine, out of touch with the own inner, immanence and joy of the connection with others. Only then could one be pure, in line and in a new holy marriage with God, a new marriage based on power not on love. The Feminine aspect inside him and beside him, was reduced to the minimum. Diana was eradicated. 11
1.6 Women as Eves
The discrimination, vilification of the body, sexual love relations and feminity by the Christian thinkers completely changed the lives of people around the world. In this part I make an attempt to understand the implications of the Christian rhetorics on society, and how the destruction of the Feminine as the intrinsic power of love in life affected
11The Creation of Adam, Michelangelo 1512. Sistine Chapel.
communities around the world. I draw on the work of Silvia Federici who performed incredible research by showing how the discrimination of women led to large scale
proletarian and colonial exploitation during the transition from feudal to capitalist society. Marx & Engels were well aware of the matriarchal roots and the common ownership that the ancient communities had practiced yet they failed to underscore how the discrimination of women played a crucial role in the mass exploitation by the upper classes during the ages of capitalist cosmology. Federici corrects their analyses yet also forgets to show how the Feminine force of love as the essential power in life was abused through the mass incarceration by the new colonisers, both in Europe and in the rest of the world. It is through this lense that I wish to illuminate the exploitation that occurred under capitalism and its other intercontinental form: imperialism.
After Christianity became a state religion in the 4th century, it obliterated all traces of the Feminine power and autonomy by colonizing Europe (Federici, 37). The church was well aware of the sexual power that women had as givers of life and their attraction on men, and therefore expelled women from any moment of the liturgy and from the administration of the sacraments: “trying to usurp women's life-giving, magical powers by adopting a feminine dress; and making sexuality an object of shame - all these were the means by which a patriarchal caste tried to break the power of women and erotic attraction” (Federici, 37). Given that the autonomy and potential for power resided in the power that women had over their bodies, this had to be suppressed. Any form of autonomy of women was in discord with the teachings and therefore had to be punished. The church’s growing control over sexuality led to the holy sacrament of marriage between 1123 and 1139, which no power on earth was allowed to break, and to the prosecution of homosexuality and non-procreative sex around 1179 (Federici, 38). The sexual, creative, generating power of love through
physical expression was completely confined by the ideology of reason, Femininity had to be confined in order to be steered at will by the fathers of the church. Creation as the life giving force to produce new beings, was curtailed especially by the new doctrines, in order to control life and its new inhabitants completely.
With a new ideology that redefined life, so too were the matriarchal communities reshaped by the forced assimilation to the Christian doctrines on societal government. It implied drastic alterations to the family ties structure that had ensured the wellbeing of the communities under the female leaderships, in which all had belonged together for social unity and harmony. In the new power structures that arose within Christian dogma, the maternal ties were broken and a new system of “common good” was reinforced that obliterated the individual relations, and subdued them under “general laws” (Condren, 1989). (Not unlike the way Plato had envisioned for his ideal state). These common laws also consecrated the feudal system of power of the Church and elite. Given that the church was the only educated class, they had a tremendous powerful bureaucratic organisation to run and enforce the vast empire of Christian thought and rational. Its doctrines were the basis and starting point of all thought and what was constituted as “right” (Marx & Engels: On Religion). In order to enforce the new laws, the church, together with the landowners, the upper class, was able to control its territories via arbitrary taxes, and the commercialization of life through a monetary system which exacerbated inequality that sprung in the middle ages (Federici, 28-30).
Yet it was not until the privatization of land that true devastating forms of starvation started to occur. Throughout the middle ages the peasants and serfs had found a way to survive due to the “common lands”, the last remnants of matriarchal communities, that were part of their own right and property. The new laws that were enforced during the 15th
century however marked the beginning of the downfall of the “commons” and thereby also reinforced the supremacy of the upper classes. The new systems enforced a system of extreme dependence on the land of the nobility and church, and ensured the cooperation of the labourers due to enforced wage systems that were designed to undermine the property rights they once had. For it was the introduction of wages and the colonization and
enslavement of people in other parts of the world that helped ensure the wealthy upper classes their right to property, and the obedience of “their subjects” (Federici, 120).
The people in Europe were forced to accept wage labour, and without access to the common lands, were solely depended on the upper class, and fundamentally alienated from their own production and means of living. According to Marx the alienation that the worker experiences implies a fundamental estrangement due to the fact that the objects they create do not belong to them, but to a world external of which they have no influence. Through the process of the capitalist means of production, the worker becomes alienated from their own life force, the creative force and the objects they create.
“The more the worker spends himself, the more powerful becomes the alien world of objects which he creates over and against himself, the poorer he himself – his inner world – becomes, the less belongs to him as his own” (Marx, “Estranged Labour”). According to Federici this alienation also needs to be seen within the light of the position of (lower class) women, who became fundamentally alienated from the creative life force in themselves, as they were reduced to production, life generating machines for a proletarian workforce (Federici, 181). Both scholars describe the alienation as inspired by the capitalist, religious and upper class means of control over - and exploitation of the working class. The reduction of the body, of women and of the creative life force however in my opinion also needs to be seen in light of the transition of the larger struggle that was not only based on
class, but on reason.
So far in my thesis I have attempted to show that the interconnectivity of the ancient communities was driven by the affectious cosmology that celebrated the interrelationships through rituals and lovemaking. Affection, love and sexuality as the driving creative force of life, was acknowledged as the basis of the Feminine force, the Mother, that constituted all and through which all life was connected. With the rise of patriarchy however the Feminine and Masculine became divided, which led to the suppression of the Feminine force.
Everything connected to her, the physical union of love and the power of women through sex and regeneration and reproduction was criminalised. The eradication of this Feminine force needs to be seen as the fundamental disappearance of the interconnectivity through feelings of love and relations. It laid the foundation for a new cosmology based on division and separation from all other life forms, on the basis of elist laws that were designed to enforce an hierarchical system of division based on inequality. The suppression of the body, of emotions and physical experiences in general, implied the inability to connect and relate to others on a humane, affectionate and connected level as the idea of interrelatedness and fundamental oneness of the love that is the immanent life force of the Feminine had been distorted. Others were no longer the same as the self, but regarded as alien, of a different sort, just like the products and all other forms of creation were alienated from the self through the new ideology, even people’s very own children were alienated from them, and forced into servitude in a class they were designated. And even then in those destitute forms of enslavement mothers were unable to feed their children due to the new imposed
privatization of life, many starved to death (Fuchs). Everything in life started to be controlled to the rules and regulations of the church, who executed the “reasons”, of the Father, governing the new society based on his iron laws.
The incredible profound analyses of Marx & Engels, and other Marxist theorists, into the exploitive economical structures I do not mean to question. In this thesis I merely wish to see this struggle as more than a division of class and people, but to acknowledge that the driving principle that illuminates class struggle arises not just on the means of production due to class exploitation, but as a fundamental suppression of the Feminine force. It was the suppression of sex/love that caused horrific forms of abuse, extermination and
disintegration of life and equality in communities, as it ensured the desentization of the heart that disconnected the affectious communal ties.
The fundamental reversal of knowledge based on the physical experiences of the body, to control over the body was reinforced especially in the 17th century. Federici described the profound antagonism against the idea of the body as being part of the self within the philosophies that were established around that time. The body, people working with their bodies (such as proletarians, prostitutes), to people with “different” bodies, to animals, to nature in general, and to sexual physical experiences were all vilified in the age that saw the rise of Mechanical philosophy (Federici, 135-150) . The body was seen as devoid of anything reasonable or able to express anything of worth; it was seen as mere mindless “brute matter” (Federici, 139). It marked the fundamental distinction between “mind” and “body” proclaimed by Descartes by which the body became reduced to a slave, a machine devoid of feelings and thought. The expression of sense and sensibility became elevated to the domain of the “mind” according to the “right” conduct. The working class and women in general became tied to the idea of the body as a production machine, and were seen in a similar fashion: as needing to be controlled and directed by the mind of the ruling class. “In Mechanical Philosophy we perceive a new bourgeois spirit that calculates,
