I have agonised over this blog all week. I was inspired to write something on this by something I saw on social media about the suppression of women in religion since Mary Magdalene. I researched, I wrote…and I realised I was going down a cul de sac with it. So I saved it, nearly deleted it, and now I’m back with it. From a slightly different angle.
I will freely admit that I am a feminist. I don’t hate men (I am a mother, wife, sister, cousin, daughter, friend of men), but I think the evidence remains incontrovertible that women have been given a rum deal in life. That there is inequality between men and women still is irrefutable. I don’t blame men for these inequalities – I do blame misogynistic men for their attitudes but there is a difference between the two. This blog is absolutely not a tirade against men, it is a celebration of women and, again, there is a difference. The question is, where does this patriarchal system come from? A system that is so ingrained in our society it feels as though it has become a part of our DNA.
It’s been in religion since ancient times. From ancient Greece and the open misogyny of philosophers such as Aristotle and Xenophon – ironic given their teacher or their teacher’s teacher was Socrates who was himself at the very least heavily influenced by Aspasia, a learned woman. Another who heavily influenced Socrates, Prodikos, said he himself learned about the philosophy of love from the mysterious woman Diotima. While there were many female goddesses in Ancient Greek culture, it was still a heavily paternalistic society with women also blamed for much of the ills of the world (think Pandora). Where Ancient Greece led in many things, Ancient Rome followed and the paternalistic society was echoed in that culture. At one point women were allowed to own property in Ancient Rome, but that was ultimately removed from them. While women achieved parity with men in Ancient Egypt and some women held positions of considerable power and influence, the levels of violence against women were significant with husbands being given complete control over their wives.
If we look at the major religions, we can see this custom continuing or getting worse. In the Old Testament there are relatively few women mentioned compared to men and it is primarily a patriarchal book written in a patriarchal time. Generally in Judaism, women don’t get much power and there have only been female rabbis in any number since the 1970s (the first was in 1930 in Germany) with the Orthodox branch of the religion resisting that to this day. In Christianity, women don’t fare much better. In the New Testament, Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene stand out. One was a virgin when she gave birth and is venerated as the mother of Jesus, and one was cast into the role of prostitute to be condemned. The Virgin Mary was always cast as such, with I think the first known citing of it being in the late 2nd century in the Protoevangelium of James. Mary Magdalene, however, was not always deemed a prostitute. In fact, there is the Gospel of Mary (Magdalene) which forms one of the Gnostic Gospels found in the mid-20th century. It was the Council of Nicaea in 325 which proclaimed her a sinner and which excluded the gospel written in her name from the Bible. At that Council, it was agreed that all priests of Christianity should be celibate and unmarried. Apparently like Jesus. That Mary Magdalene was important in some way to Jesus did not sit well with the new Church so they sought to condemn her and to exclude women, except the Virgin Mary, from any positions within it, reflecting a wider societal view of women. In Islam, there are four women of any significance in the Quran: Asiyah (Moses’ adopted mother and virginal wife of the Pharoah), the Virgin Mary who is highly venerated in Islam, Khadija the first wife of Muhammed, and Fatima, Muhammed’s favoured daughter. Outside of these four women, females are usually used as a cautionary tale such as the Queen of Sheba who is a problematic figure in Islam because she is a woman in power but who demonstrates some of the principles of Islam, and woman such as Zulaykha and The Ladies who are held up as examples of the ‘duplicitous and cunning nature of women’.
In the Sikh religion, however, women are equal to men. Though there are no female gurus, there are female Sikh saints and women who are role models of Sikh values. Women such as Mata Khivi the wife of the second Sikh Guru, Guru Angad Dev, Mata Gujri the wife of the ninth Sikh Guru and mother of the tenth who played a central role in the history of Sikhism, and Mai Bhajo who led Sikh soldiers against the Mughals in 1705 and was an exceptionally skilled warrior. A real contrast to the way the Catholic Church treated Joan of Arc 300 years earlier which burned her at the stake for heresy. In Hinduism there are three female deities. Saraswati the Hindu goddess of knowledge, Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth, fortune and prosperity, and Shakti which is the personified energy or power of a male deity through the feminine. In some parts of Hinduism, woman is celebrated as the most powerful and empowering force, as the creator of the universe possibly reflecting the female role as mother. In fact, Hinduism has the strongest presence of the divine feminine among the major world religions. Finally, in Buddhism it has always been accepted that women are equally able to find enlightenment as men, and women have held positions of influence and power in the religion from the beginning. Women were able to be ordained as nuns from the beginning of the religion albeit Buddha was apparently initially reluctant to implement this. Nevertheless, he did.
So, what is the problem? The religions themselves didn’t invent misogyny including the ancient ones. How was it always ‘there’? Within all of us is a divine masculine and feminine and balancing them within us is important for our own sakes. Equally, the divine masculine and feminine energy exists across this planet, and in the universe as a whole. The issue is that this energy isn’t, nor has ever been, balanced. It has been skewed towards the divine masculine which has grown in intensity until we get its worst excesses as the norm, issues such as greed, corruption and violence. Why do I think that’s happened? Well, women are vulnerable at certain times in their lives. They are vulnerable when they are menstruating, and they are vulnerable when they are pregnant and nursing an infant. Frankly, a woman’s childbearing years can be a shackle, tying her to the vagaries of her body and hormones. At a primordial level, she is searching for a mate with which to procreate and who can protect her while she is growing and then rearing children. And I think this vulnerability has allowed the divine masculine to be the dominant force.
But if a woman survives her childbearing years, she goes through a process to end those childbearing years, unlike men. And becomes something very different as a result.
Menopause is generally very rough on women. It’s hard. But as well as our ovaries packing up and going home and our heart not being protected by oestrogen anymore, our brains are changing. Our brains are becoming sharper, stronger, dare I say it…better than they were. As I read that, I immediately thought of the process the caterpillar goes through to become the butterfly – that at some point in the process the corporeal element of the insect becomes, basically, sludge neither caterpillar or butterfly. I think that’s menopause. Because what can come out the other side of menopause is potentially immense. Like the phoenix rising from the ashes of menopause. I remember when I was told I was perimenopausal thinking…what now? It felt as though my purpose as a woman was being removed and I didn’t know what my identity was anymore in a society that at some level only regards us as brood mares. And during that menopausal process, I often felt like sludge.
But now, I am emerging from that chrysalis. I am seeing the world very differently, I am thinking very differently and I am less likely to care what people think about what I have to say. And it got me thinking again…is it any coincidence that society seeks to disregard the post-menopausal woman? That many of the women found guilty of witchcraft were middle aged women? That in the UK, a woman over 50 is almost 10% more likely to be claiming unemployment benefit than men? That women were not allowed to open a bank account without a man until 1970 in the US and 1975 in the UK? That in the UK it was legal for a man to rape his wife until 1991 because women implicitly signed a ‘contract’ upon marriage that a man was always allowed his conjugal rights. This is the divine masculine at play, suppressing women even before they reach menopause. Because the magnificence of the post-menopausal women had to be denied.
And as women, we have bought into that narrative as well. Questioning ourselves post-menopause as to what is our purpose? Quietly fading away because we can’t do what is apparently our sole biological purpose. But that’s our corporeal body, our ego. What has the chance to shine now is our soul. We can come out, resplendent in our soul-led wonder to lead the lives we could only dream of before, when we were shackled by our primordial drives. Post-menopause, women can go and find their tribe, find their purpose, find themselves and be what they were always meant to be – glorious. But that is too much of a threat to the divine masculine so it has sought to crush any notion of that. The dialogue around menopause now is all the negativity – no one is talking about the post-menopause period. Because menopause does end. Yes, people need to understand more what women endure through that process because it’s tough and unpleasant…but it ends. And what emerges is absolutely mighty.
For some, the divine masculine is a very comfortable place to be. They usually represent the worst excesses of it, and are desperate to cling onto it (think Andrew Tait, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin et al) and there are many women who are complicit in this also – as I say, we all have divine feminine and masculine inside us. The world has been built to suit men, by and large. We can see that through the levels of investment into men’s health compared to women’s health where there is a woeful imbalance, we see it in the fact that only in the 21st century are we talking about issues such as the menopause and women’s menstrual cycles and the significant impact they have on women’s day-to-day life. I will never forget a man saying to me once that he didn’t trust anything that bled for a week and didn’t die. The fact also that women’s bodily autonomy is being rowed back in some so-called advanced nations is nothing short of barbaric but highlights how the divine masculine is coming to be threatened now.
We are entering a period where the divine feminine is becoming stronger. It is challenging the divine masculine for supremacy. This energy that is beginning to sweep the universe, ushering in a new age for earth. It won’t be a tranquil process as we are already finding as much of what is happening in the world is based on the egoic divine masculine fighting against its own contraction. So, the transition is going to be messy. But it’s going to happen. The divine feminine isn’t perfect, at its worst it is ungrounded and unfocused. We do, though, have an opportunity now to balance out our divine feminine and masculine by admitting that it is currently out of balance, and as a collective we can bring it back in line and create a future where we can remove the worst excesses of the divine masculine and celebrate the best of the divine feminine.
Women are not the supporting act to men. They are mighty and only get more so as they move through their lives. With the shift in energy, now is the time to celebrate this and use it to bring us together as one with nature and the earth so we can protect it from the worst excesses of the past.
Louisa Simpson 