From: corun@access.digex.com (Corun MacAnndra)
Subject: Re: New pagans and reading
Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA
Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1992 03:36:23 GMT

In article <2AAD3B9D.9909@news.service.uci.edu> cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese) writes:
>
>Basically, all I can echo here is ailsa's call to start making `em up!
>Women's mysteries are present because we felt such a profound need for
>them and crafted over years.  Because they haven't been openly stomped,
>men may not have felt that urgency for a feeling of sacredness RIGHT
>THIS VERY MINUTETOMORROW AT THE LATEST that a lot of women felt; after
>all the established religions think men are better than women.

I spoke with my Breda this evening and recounted our conversation and my
puzzlement over ailsa'a comments that I should make something up. She 
clarified for me the misconception that all the rituals women did were
from ancient times, and not simply paraphrased. That in fact there were
no rituals that dated earlier than the 20th century. Given what you've
said about women having to rediscover themselves, I can see the sense in
this. I believe I'm a little clearer now on the whole mysteries thing. They
are what you make them. As ailsa told me that she makes up her own rituals,
for her, I should do that for me. And it might only apply to me and not to
any other men. This could be something as simple as chanting the periodic
table of elements (a la Tom Lehrer?) as a mantra, or I may not need any
ritual at all. I've always taken my spirituality personally, even when I
was drawn to large groups a la my days as a young born again, long before
tje term came into vogue. In that case there was too much hypocrisy for me
to take them seriously, but that's another story. The point is I guess I've
always been what the pagan community call a solitary.

>However, due to this crapping on us, men have lost a great deal and have
>been psychically and psychologically crippled for years.  AND, you don't
>have a convenient place to point the FFFoF (the Flying Fickle Finger of
>Fate for those who remember Laugh-In).  Men's mysteries are sorely
>needed, IMHO, and they'll pop up.  Men just have to want them at large,
>after realizing that the psychological crippling that they've been
>subjected to is no damned good.

I remembered the FFFoF. ;-) Actually you can say that we've subjected 
ourselves to that crippling by keeping women down for so long. I'm in the
SCA, and my household emulates the Mongol society of the middle ages as
accurately as possible. There was no gender conflict among them. Work and
property were divided equally, with the men being the hunter/gatherers and
owning the herds, and the women owning the rest of the property and raising
the children and keeping the camps. Beyond that there was no separation as
there was (and still is) in the west. We use a Mongolian word, anda, when
talking about each other. It loosely translates to Brother, but we don't
assign the male gender to it. Rather we keep it neuter since there really 
isn't a good english equivalant. Among us it's anda, and among chagua, (not
anda) it's Brother. The Mongols also practiced religious tolerance, in fact
tolerance for what we call alternate lifestyles in general. My household
is made up of many facets, as is the finest jewel, each gleaming with it's
own beauty.

>I'm in the process of finding all that junk out for myself now.  I am a
>woman, but that doesn't mean that the women's spirituality movement fits
>me like a glove.  There are a lot of things rthat don't suit me well in
>it, so I'm trying to weave it together with the principles of science
>and language and custom-tailor the end product to suit me.  You may be
>forced to make your own method; this effort will be well-spent, though.
>I'm not exactly at peace, but I've faced things about myself since
>starting (the whole thing started when I realized I didn't want to be a
>physicist; one watershed revelation can set off others) that I've spent
>a long time burying continuously (these things don't stay buried once
>and for all; you have to do constant upkeep to keep them down).  Start
>blazing a new path.  It can only do good. 

It's one reason I've been drawn to the Oriental philosophies rather than
following the path of a deity. I can accept more things and embrace them,
thereby incorporating them into my store of philosophical knowledge. We
grow, and change is the only constant in the universe.

Peace and blessing,

-- 
===========================================================================
    Corun MacAnndra     |      But what if this hadn't been
  Dark Horde by birth   |        a rhetorical question?
    Moritu by choice    |                            C. Nelson