Woman as Custodians of Life - Anne Baring

[Guest guest]

Upon women falls the task not only of throwing off their own economic

dependence, but of rescuing from the like thraldom the deepest

realities of which they were the first mothers.

Robert Briffault, The Mothers

 

If ever the world sees a time when women shall come together purely

and simply for the benefit of mankind, it will be a power such as the

world has never known.

Matthew Arnold (1822-88)

 

 

In 1942 Henry Moore painted a picture which shows a group of people

gazing up at a huge shrouded figure, their smallness dwarfed by its

towering height. Beneath the shroud and the ropes which hold it in

place is a feminine shape. This painting suggests that a new

archetypal image of the numinous was emerging from the collective

unconscious, waiting to be unveiled, waiting to be recognised and

received by humanity. Henry Moore's greatest sculptures have the same

feminine impress. His shelter drawings take us back to the maternal

womb hidden beneath the earth - the cave in which we sought shelter

as bombs rained death upon our cities. Both sculptures and drawings

point to the awakening of the feminine archetype in the human soul.

 

In his late work, Mysterium Coniunctionis, Jung wrote that

the " ultimate fate of every dogma is that it gradually becomes

soulless. Life wants to create new forms, and therefore, when a dogma

loses its vitality, it must perforce activate the archetype that has

always helped man to express the mystery of the soul. " (par. 488).

The last fifty years of the twentieth century have witnessed the

activation of the feminine archetype. A quest has been undertaken by

thousands of individuals seeking to discover what has been lost,

neglected or excluded from our cultural tradition. Their efforts have

recovered for us the mystical and shamanic traditions that had to go

underground during the long centuries of persecution as well as the

mythology and imagery of the goddess. Like the magma of the earth's

molten core, the feminine principle has been pushing up from below

the level of our conscious lives until at last it is emerging into

our awareness, manifesting itself as a call for radical change in our

values and our beliefs by inviting us to reconnect with nature, soul

and cosmos. As a result, our values and our understanding of

ourselves and our relationship with the planet and the cosmos are

changing. We are beginning to recover the lost sense of participation

in a sacred universe. This new phase in the evolution of

consciousness heralds what Owen Barfield aptly called " Final

Participation, " (1) when humanity enters into a conscious

relationship and partnership with life, seeking not to control and

dominate it but to relate to, serve and protect it with insight,

compassion and wisdom.

 

The influence of the feminine principle is responsible for our

growing concern for the integrity of the life systems of the planet

and the attraction to the mythic, the spiritual, the visionary, the

non-rational - all of which nourish the heart and the imagination,

inviting new perspectives on life, new ways of living in relationship

to body, soul and spirit, generating a new understanding of the

psyche. The flood of books now being written by men and women

responding to the prompting of their intuition and their feelings

would have been inconceivable fifty years ago.

 

Jung recognised that the Papal Bulls of 1950 and 1954 reflected the

fact that something of great significance was happening in the

collective psyche: the feminine archetype, personified by the Virgin

Mary, was being raised to the level of spirit, named as Queen of

Heaven and declared " Assumed into Heaven, Body and Soul. " A further

indication of the rehabilitation of the feminine principle was the

petition presented to the Pope in August 1997 asking that Mary be

declared co-redemptrix with Christ.

 

Jung anticipated a profound transformation of consciousness as

this " marriage " of the two great archetypal principles was realised

in the soul of humanity. To him it signified the reunion of spirit

and nature, mind and soul, thinking and feeling. Familiar with the

long mythological history which had led to this moment, he saw this

archetypal reunion as a new image of the sacred marriage - that

ancient ritual which once celebrated the union of heaven and earth.

He also saw it as the herald of the great event awaited in the Jewish

mystical tradition of Kabbalah - the wedding of the two indissoluble

but long separated aspects of the god-head - the Holy One and his

Shekinah.

 

There have been many books written by women which reflect the

awakening of the feminine principle but there is one book in

particular called The Fabric of the Future published in 1999 (see

booklist) which struck me as a splendid statement of the deepest

realities that Robert Briffault was referring to in the quotation

above. I have been moved and encouraged by this book which is a

symposium of short essays written by American women about how they

see the future and their role in it. Their insights offer a template

to women all over the world, throwing into high relief what is

essential if we are to act as custodians of the planet in the age to

come. These women of vision speak of our being in the midst of

a " vast transformation, " an " evolutionary awakening of global

proportions, " of a " deep and holy hunger " and a " revelatory

experience " , which they see as " the great turning " and " the rising of

the soul of the world " - the activation of the feminine principle

expressed as the law of relationship and love. They express the

dawning realisation that spirit is not something separate and distant

from ourselves but simply all that is and all that we are. What a

revolution in our values this realisation invites.

 

Dr. Joan Borysenko writes that from the 1960's onwards the green

shoots of regeneration began to become visible in the response to

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, the opposition to the Vietnam War, the

awakening of women in the feminist movement, the growing interest in

spirituality, meditation and healing and the " breaching of the doors

of perception " through the writings of Aldous Huxley and others. 20

million people (10.6% of the population of the United States) now

embrace the emergent values which have grown from these roots, with a

female/male ratio of two to one. Dr. Borysenko says that, born in

1945, she now finds herself surrounded by " a huge groundswell of

women and men whose values were forged in the 1960's. " These have now

come of age and have a growing influence in the culture. Jean Shinoda

Bolen confirms this with her own observation that at the millennium,

a critical mass of women reaching 50, women of wisdom, authority and

action, may determine the direction that humanity will take. " What we

do or fail to do at this liminal time, " she writes, " will not only

shape the course of our personal lives, but collectively will affect

the third millennium and with it, the future of the planet. "

 

Many writers speak of their having found support and companionship

with other women, sharing experience, insights and rituals at regular

meetings where the circle of women becomes a sanctuary - " a place for

divinity to dwell. " Sue Patton Thoele writes that rising from the

ashes of injustice, domination, and fear, women are reclaiming their

heritage as essentially spiritual beings. They are learning and

growing through shared experience, each contributing to the growth

and well-being of all. " We are, " writes Barbara Marx Hubbard, " at the

threshold of the emergence of a new archetype on Earth - the feminine

co-creator. The co-creative woman is one who is activated by spirit,

awakened in the heart to express her unique creativity in loving

action which evolves both herself and the world…We have had many

types of women - the mother, the mystic, the priestess, the artist,

the healer, the pioneering woman. The co-creative woman is a

synthesis of all of this and something more, something new, because

the world condition in which we are emerging is new. "

 

WOMAN AS CUSTODIAN OF LIFE

Anne Baring