Comments for Men and The Goddess

Comment on I’m Back! by Richard

Richard — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 06:29:46 +0000

Hi Joseph! Thanks for staying in touch. And I have been following your progress on “The Masculine Conspiracy” – have it stashed away for my reading pleasure. I’ll comment as I can but as you can see from my post today I’ve been a bit otherwise occupied!

It’s good to be “home”!

Comment on I’m Back! by Joseph

Joseph — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 00:59:47 +0000

Welcome home
FYI, I finished The Masculinity Conspiracy since you last posted:
http://masculinityconspiracy.com

Comment on The Mythopoetic Men’s Movement and My Personal Experience within it by jim Maroosis

jim Maroosis — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 23:30:14 +0000

The mythiopeotic movement… is really the old liberal arts tradition… that teaches virtue through the arts… virtue here meaning right action…and right action being what the great stories and fairy tales teach… my course explores the almost complete lack of femininity in both genders in our world…. remarkably this is one of the things that Bly and others seem to allude to… the utter lack and destitution of the feminine in men and women’s lives…

The disregard and disdain of the feminine by both men and women… leads to a huge psychic backlash… and makes a meaningful understanding of the inner marriage very difficult to understand… when we approach this wound in terms of function and not sex or gender… a lot of the rhetoric that surrounds these questions collapse… the question for men and women is where is the place for the feminine in our lives… and how can we embrace it in a way to help make us whole… here we are talking Cordelia and not Athena… and an understanding of leadership grounded in knowing who and what to follow…

Comment on The Mythopoetic Men’s Movement and My Personal Experience within it by Richard

Richard — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 06:53:55 +0000

Not Richard Beal…Richard Bredeson. But no problem searching. Your course sounds good!

Comment on The Mythopoetic Men’s Movement and My Personal Experience within it by cresenab

cresenab — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 01:13:29 +0000

“Feminists voiced concern that it championed a return to strong patriarchy; there was a fear that Bly’s “soft male” would become hard and violent. I believe there was a lot of misunderstanding by those who viewed the movement from the outside and through the literature only. Myths and archetypes presented within the movement were never meant to be models for behavior but teaching tools to gain a deeper understanding of who we men are in an evolving and ever more complex society. We were learning to be present and participating men rather than the absent and withdrawn, or violent and domineering. My wife encouraged me to participate in the movement; her women’s book group read Iron John with enthusiasm and reportedly gained much understanding of their husbands, sons and even daughters.”
You can read more about it?

Comment on The Mythopoetic Men’s Movement and My Personal Experience within it by JIm Maroosis

JIm Maroosis — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 16:23:44 +0000

Richard Beal?

is that possible… we met The Warrier Witin at Omega… ages ago… if not, sorry, if so… I am teaching a course that is hoping to explore masculine and feminine function… and was goggling around and came to this blog…

all the best,

Jim

Comment on Goddess Guidance Oracle Cards: Athena and The Teacher by Son of Wisdom

Son of Wisdom — Sun, 30 May 2010 13:41:18 +0000

I have been thinking about what the relationship with Athena and Sophia as they are both related to Wisdom. Thanks for blogging a bit about Athena.

Comment on Review of “The Hidden Spirituality of Men” Part 3 by Jeremy

Jeremy — Sun, 16 May 2010 17:28:53 +0000

Oh, don't even get me started on James Ray. The faster he goes to jail, the better off the spiritual community will be. I'd suggest Kerr Cuhulain's Wiccan Warrior and Full-Contact Magick as a better basis for my point of view. And I'm not talking about "Warrior" equating to "Masculine"; I know plenty of female Warriors. And I'm not advocating violence in any sense. I'm advocating defense. There's a very large difference. You can't get rid of the Warrior side without the same things happening, just like you can't switch over to a matriarchal society without it turning into the patriarchal society we have now, just with a different gender in charge. It falls on those of us who can hold the Warrior in balance to teach those who can't.

Comment on Review of “The Hidden Spirituality of Men” Part 3 by Richard

Richard — Sun, 16 May 2010 15:36:25 +0000

Thank you, Joseph, for your powerful and deeply thoughtful response to Jeremy. This is so much better coming from you than me, his cousin! Your bringing James Ray into the discussion is an excellent example of trying to “fight fire with fire.” Even the best trained “warriors” get burned or burn others despite their best intentions!

Comment on Review of “The Hidden Spirituality of Men” Part 3 by Joseph

Joseph — Sun, 16 May 2010 06:12:33 +0000

It might be possible for some people with a sophisticated sense of self to hold the warrior motif in balance (although, to be honest I can’t see why you’d want to), but unfortunately there are plenty who cannot. For these people, the search for the spiritual warrior can have some very unfortunate consequences.

In the context of an “alternative” spirituality, we see this with James Ray’s “spiritual warrior” sweat lodge deaths. In contemporary Christianity, it has recently been discovered that John Eldredge’s best-selling book Wild at Heart (which is saturated with the spiritual warrior) is used by the violent Mexican Christian drugs cartel, La Familia, to provide a model of masculinity which results in being, quite literally, murderous.

The fact that so many people wish to retain the spiritual warrior while re-framing it as somehow noble and peacekeeping/non-violent speaks to society’s deeply ingrained acceptance (and even glorification) of violence. (This plays out in various forums, and not just the obvious like gang violence and economically-motivated wars, but also less obvious like the physical punishment of children and brutal farming of animals: the “norm” in all these circumstances is actually very extreme, but most people are too conditioned into violence to notice.)