From: cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese)
Subject: Re: men's spirituality (was Re: New Pagans and Reading)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Organization: University of California, Irvine
Keywords: do it thineself
Date: 9 Sep 92 00:01:07 GMT

In article <1992Sep8.194508.4618@access.digex.com> corun@access.digex.com (Corun MacAnndra) writes:
>ailsa writes: 
>>
>>people seem to overlook the fact that WOMEN are creating women's mysteries.
>>women are creating women's spiritualiy.  a lot of work and love and creativity
>>and time has gone into the quest, and it is OUR grail we are seeking.  we are
>>not doing spirituality for you, we are doing it for us.  when i write we
>>ritual, i write one that moves me, that makes ME feel closer to the divine.
>
>I must really be uninformed. I have understood that the whole God/Goddess
>thing stemmed from our very early experiments with religion, and, at least
>in the Celtic traditions, there was a clear definition between the Horned
>God and the Goddess (don't know about Her horns and don't want to offend
>by only referring to fertility). But that they realized that the two were
>congruent. Anyway, I didn't realize that all this Mysteries stuff (men's
>and women's) was all new creations. I'd have sworn they were born out of
>ancient mysteries, and that the women's stuff was so pronounced simply
>because of a long needed recognition of women as equal partners in the
>overall scheme of things.

The women's mysteries are both born from old traditions and are newly
created; the point is that WOMEN are investigating them and adapting
them to modern lifes and each woman adapts them further to her own life.
All this garbage is being dug up after centuries of neglect by women for
women.  It's not a tablets-from-the-mountain thang (pardon the
metaphor).  Many of us are hands-in-the-dirt archaeologists,
researching this stuff as I am, and looking for "women's mysteries,"
whatever the hell they are.

It's not new creations, and it's not ancient mysteries.  It's more of a
digging-up of all the old stuff and interpreting it, rescuing it from
its moldering destiny on old bookshelves and anti-woman bashing.  These
things are a lot of work, even if they come from ancient inspiration. 

>I guess if it has so much to do with sex, that's why I missed it. I'm not
>to up on Tantric stuff. I tend to view sex as much more personal than to
>involve it in any religion. Maybe I'm too conservative (if my father could
>only hear me now <grin>).

I don't see it as related to *S*E*X* so much as just having to do with
looking to the past for inspiration since the present is so . . . 
well . . . uninspiring.  Again, women have been so badly shit on that
good images of us are almost totally absent, barring anomalies like Mae
West -- who *I* consider a total goddess.  We're looking for role
models, since nothing can be learned but by example.  There aren't any
for us in the present, so we're forced to mine the past.  It's really
pretty simple.  The women's spiritalities are born from the past, by
women who read the Mabinogi or a book in high school that mentions the
Great Goddess in Crete, and these women then start blazing a new path
with the scythes borrowed from the past.   

>Anyway, thanks for your reply. It's given me something to think about, and
>I may be beginning to understand whythe one session I went to was such a
>debacle.

The first tentative steps taken by women looking for their mysteries
were (and probably are still) just as chaotic.  Give it time -- and
failing that, just invent it for yourself, publish a book about it, and
see what happens! 

Blessings,
Janis