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Both genders need a well-differentiated masculine and a well-differentiated feminine. The power structures of patriarchy have pro-foundly wounded both, making mature relationships almost impossi-ble without hard psychic work. As a culture, we are presently stuckin the parental complexes. any women have worked for years tryingto find their own identity, freed from the mother and father com-plexes. en, too, are working to find their own feeling values, valuesthat are not dependent on pleasing or hating other and !ather andall they represent. The archetype of the Black adonna, or "ilith, or ary agdalene may be a way to freedom for both. #twould be a great relief to forget the words, but the fact remains thatthe balance of energies in the dream cannot be understood without arecognition of the interplay between the male and female figures.

$The dream images are rooted in the instincts.% This interplay enactsthe balance or lack of balance between the two complementary ener-gies that are continually relating to each other within us and without,continually struggling to compensate for the one-sided world of con-sciousness. The &hinese yang and yin represent the two energies astwo fish in a circle, each containing part of the other. The 'indusrepresent them as (hiva and (hakti, the universal lovers out of whosedivine embrace everything is born. And vival)we reali*e that like +arth, nature, our bodies, we too are thevessels of an energy far greater than anything that tries to contain it. ,hile we are clarifying words, we need also to note that patri-archy and masculinity are not synonymous. !emale patriarchs can be-ust as domineering as males. "ike their male counterparts, they livein a patriarchal ethos that operates through control over others, overthemselves, over nature. ,e need to recogni*e also that many menhave a more finely honed femininity than many women. ,e all arethe children of patriarchy and, therefore, we all have to take responsi-bility for a killer power shadow that would massacre the feminineand the masculine in whatever form they manifest. as the nurturing, cherishing, protective feminine. ,e in the ,est split those characteristics off from the voracious, devouring, terrible.eath /oddess. At the same time, we know that if we fail to breakout of the feathered nest in our adolescence, we may find ourselvesincapable of standing free. ,e may then be compelled to find an-other mother who will tenderly take away our strength.

#f, on the other hand, we were raised by a -udgmental, evenre-ecting, mother, we may have assimilated her strength in order tosurvive. (imply by contending with her every day, we finally stoodon our own feet) liberated. And free to find a liberated partner, freeto create a mature partnership. ,ith the broader perspective, we can see that the words positiveand negative do not ultimately apply. They become -udgmental words.The fact is the /oddess who gives life is the /oddess who takes lifeaway. That fact allows for no sentimentality. #n feminine thinking,we hold the paradox beyond the contradictions. (he is the flux oflife in which creation gives place to destruction, destruction in serviceto life gives place to creation. pass from son to mature man, they need the strength to hold ontothe totality of themselvestheir full humanity, shadow included.That humanity is grounded in the love that holds the cells of thebody together. The life force is another aspect of the Goddess. Men'sbodies, like women's bodies, carry both the masculine and feminineenergies The real work in many relationship problems for both men andwomen is separating their new femininity, their own virgin, from themother complex. Thus, instead of acting from intro-ected, automaticresponses, the virgin learns to live spontaneously from the emotionsand values that are grounded in her own musculature. The initiatedvirgin is the feminine who is who she is because that0s who she is."ike the virgin forest, she is full of her own life force, full of poten-tial, pregnant. 'er characteristics cannot be totally separated frommother and crone. 1ne day, hopefully, mother, virgin, crone becomean integrated whole. !or purposes of differentiating the 2irgin, let us look onceagain at the workshop associations3 resonating, veiled, embodied,connected, erotic, natural rhythms, fearless, fecundity, living in the4ow, poetry, light in the darkness, consciousness in the darkness,complete within herself, black. According to 5obert/raves in his ex6uisite version of The Song of Songs, 78t9he words blackand wise 8are9 almost indistinguishable in (emitic script.7 !urtherexplaining the connection between black and wise he writes, 7Themany black 2irgins in (pain and (outhern !rance . . . are blackbecause the (aracen occupation during the iddle Ages taught thelocal &hristians to e6uate 0black0 with ;wise0)hence the 0Black Arts0were originally the ,ise Arts.7
: <

Today her darkness is associated with the unknown, repressedside of our femininity. She is intimately tied to the integration ofshadow materials as compensation for the one sidedness of logocen tric thinking, even, as we shall see, as the acausal behavior of atomsat a subatomic level compensates for an overdetermined perceptionof their classically conceived rational behavior. !"periencing her inour body is a startling step toward e"periencing ourselves whole. That sense of wholeness is essential to healing. #t cannot, we shallsuggest, be achieved until we are able to surrender in trust to a realitythat cannot be contained in a rational system of causality, a systemthat the

new physics has now, if not abandoned, at least corrected bymaking it answerable to a larger indeterminacy.

The #lack Madonna somehow carries the energy of the #lackspirituals as sung by #lacks passionate, rooted in suffering, lusty

The $rone is the third in the feminine trinity. %ords associ ated with her begin to take on a different dimension& timeless, space less, detached, fearless, free, beauty, guide, %isdom, surrender,spontaneity, parado".

'ot that she is withoutfeeling, certainly not without sensitivity. #ut she has seen enough tobe able to separate the irrelevant from the essence. (nd she hasneither the time nor the energy to waste on superficialities. )aving passed through her crossroads, the divine intersectingthe human, the $rone will have learned to accept the surrender ofher ego desires and, having accepted her own destiny, she is free andfearless. She no longer has to *ustify her e"istence, nor fear the *udg ment of others. This deep acceptance of herself unites her with the+irginthe +irgin forever transforming into the maturity of the$rone. The new sense of freedom brings with it a childlike energy spontaneity, play, creative ideas. %ith her well developed masculin ity, she may put her ideas into action in the world, ideas thatconfront causality with what ,ung calls synchronicity. #n a well-honed crone, we may feel the transparency of herbody that is open to another reality. Being with her, we feel thepresence of a timeless, spaceless world. ,e begin to see everythingfrom two sides)the side that is totally in life and the side that isalready dwelling in disembodied soul. The &rone helps us hold theparadox.unspeakable wisdom in the very cells of her body. The beauty andthe horror of the whole of life are held together in love.

The $rone energy is strong enough to guide men into the femi nine. She can hold the container in which they can e"perience theirown shadow rage without destroying themselves or others.
#t is time for the invocation3 =ali, be with us. 2iolence, destruction, receive our homage.'elp us to bring darkness into the light,To lift out the pain, the anger, ,here it can be seen for what it is) The balance-wheel for our vulnerable, aching love. >ut the wild hunger where it belongs, ,ithin the act of creation, &rude power that forges a balanceBetween hate and love. 'elp us to be the always hopeful/ardeners of the spirit
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,ho know that without darkness4othing comes to birth As without light 4othing flowers. Bear the roots in mind, ?ou, the dark one, =ali, Awesome power. M(- S(.T/'

The haloattests to 0ali's status as Goddess, to her need to be understood notonly as devourer, but also as transformer. She is black, dark as thematri", dark as the vorte", from which all creation comes and towhich it returns. To her devotees, she is like a black sapphire1 radi ance shines through her blackness. She dances and laughs with aban don, into"icated with the mystery she is. wrath. #n these few opening lines, the poet capturesthe essence of genuine /reat /oddess worship3 there must be a deathto the ego self@ there must be a transformation in which there is aletting go of all false values, of all the things that the egotisticalnature mistakenly clings to. #n the burial ground of the heart, =ali0senlightened devotees see beyond literal death to the death of valuesrooted in fear. ,hen they come to accept death as a necessary stepin their transformation, then =ali can dance her dance of perpetualbecoming1nce her cycles are accepted, those who love her are freeof the fear of death, free of their own vulnerability, free to live hermystery.

As ceaseless motion that has no purpose other than its own activity,=ali is as indifferent to the demands of the ego as she is to theinstinct to survive. The opposites of life and death, love and hate,humility and pride, poverty and riches, mercy and revenge, -usticeand tyranny, mean nothing to her, because with her there is no polar-ity. !or =ali, all experience is one)life as well as death.
firststage, the typhon, refers generally to the period of earliest Homo sapiens2'eanderthal and $ro Magnon3, and is itself a structure of con sciousness dominated by body bound mentality and instincts. 45nthe earliest typhonic times,4 %ilber writes, 4the Great Mother wasprobably not much more than an impact, a non verbal shock at sepa rate self e"istence, and an e"pression of simple biological depen dence.4' 5n this period, the Mother was the one who fed, whoprovided the necessities of life through plants, seeds, and animals.$aves afforded the protection of her womb, which eventually becamethe tomb in the cycle of life and death.
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"ife, in this first phase, was closely associated with blood. Themonthly bleeding of women was thought to be the source of cre-ation3 when a baby was being formed in the womb, the bleedingstopped. 4ew life was, therefore, assumed to come from the bloodof the mother. "ikewise, the /reat other created out of her blood.(he was the wombAtomb of existence. All physical existence and the+arth0s abundant provision for the sustenance of life flowed fromthat essential source)the other0s fertility.

The second stage of Great Mother mythology, as %ilber de scribes it, grew out of the earliest awareness of separation from themother. (s humans slowly separated out from nature, the primitiveemotions of life and *oy became differentiated from those of deathand pain. 5n this phase, 4the self sense 6was7 more structured, morearticulate, and so likewise the Great Mother. Men and women weremore conscious of their own tenuous e"istence, and thus more con scious of the Great Motherwhat she was, and what she de manded.4 (s life and death became polari8ed, humans began to
B

contemplate the possibility of nonbeinga terrifying prospect for afledgling consciousness. 9eath came to be invested with starknessand terror, and the :uestion then became, 4)ow do 5 please Motherso that she will give me life rather than death;4 6%7hat was the way to appease the Great Mother, to keep her asprotectress and prevent her wrathful +engeance; Give her what shedemandsblood< (nd likewise, invent a precise way to do it ritual<Thus, the first great ritual was a ritual of blood sacrifice, offered tothe Great Motherto Mother 'aturein a bartered attempt to:uench her desire for blood. . . . #lood is indeed bodily life, and ifyou want to purchase life, you buy it with blood. So goes paleologic1like magic it works with partial truths1 and like magic, since it isunable to grasp higher perspectives or wider conte"ts, it arrives atbarbaric conclusions.'
Cust prior to and during the early part of the pre-#ron Age, athird form of matriarchal mythology began to emerge. Those with amore highly evolved consciousness began to see beyond the concretereality of nature and saw into the underlying essence that pervadedand unified all things. ,ith this insight came the first glimmeringsof an awareness of the subtle or archetypal realm. The unifying lightin nature came to be worshiped as the /oddess, the mediator oftransformation.

The most important factor inthe evolution of consciousness is thatin reaching this level of archetypal1neness the individual dies to thesense of a separate self. As stated by,ilber,
That simple yet crucial insight)7the sacrifice of self discloses the+ternal7)was the esoteric insight empowering the mythology ofself-sacrifice to the /reat /oddess, sacrifice carried out in prayer, incontemplation, in meditative ritual and ceremony, in symbolic ass.00 ,orshiping the /reat other meant identifying with her andtrying to appease her great power over one0s life by offering a sacrificeoutside of oneself. The worship of the /oddess, on the other hand,involved entering into a process of self-transformation. #n order toreach the desired level of archetypal oneness, one had to transcendthe ego boundaries. At this early stage in ego development, transcen-dence could be very threatening. #t was safer merely to maintain par20ticipation mystique with the other. >enetration to the level of

archetypal 1neness involved moving beyond the body-self, beyondthe ego-self, to a reali*ation of soul consciousness.
,ith the onset of the #ron Age, worship of the (un /od, albeit a(un /od bound to the other, began to emerge. As consciousnessdeveloped, a sense of self began to emerge from the body-self. Thisis the natural course of human development. As the self developedeven further, human beings began to take their pro-ections of divinityoff the /reat other and the /oddess and to identify with theascendant

sy bol of the (un /od. ,hereas they had once takenpower from nature through bone, feathers, and blood, now theysought to exert power over nature. All the powers of nature that hadbeen an expression of the /reat other were transferred to the (un 'umanity moved from polytheism to monotheism. 4o longer didthe king serve as the phallic consort of the /reat other, but, inkeeping with the shift to monotheism, he assumed supremacy as therepresentative of the (un /od.

4ature, in this patriarchal paradigm, was seen as something tobe controlled and dominated. #n an odd reversal of roles, nature wasnow pressed into the service of man. >ower came to be perceived asderiving from strength. 2irtually unchanged since its inception, thisparadigm has dominated ,estern civili*ation down to the present.
4ow there are several fascinating aspects to this historical emergenceof the 'ero yth)the myth of the individual 'ero triumphingover the /reat other or one of her consorts, such as the old serpent-dragonuroboros, or over a /reat other derivative, such as the edusa with serpent-monster hair, or over a /reat other offspring,such as Typhon. The first aspect is that the Hero is simply the new egoicstructure of consciousness, which, coming into existence at this time $thelow egoic period%, is naturally given living expression in the mythol-ogy of the period.7 (ince she was rooted in the chaos of nature, the /reat otherwas defeated by the 'ero. 'er cyclical realm allowed only for repeti-tion, not for the linear sense of progression that the 'ero desires.#nstead of integrating the mother mythology, the 'ero dissociatedfrom it. (o complete was that dissociation that generations of chil-dren have grown up and come through the educational system with-out ever having heard of the /reat other. At best, it is an historicalfootnote of little significance.
Tragically, with the rise of ego consciousness, repression of the/reat /oddess as well as the /reat other occurred. The result wasa gradual eclipse of the understanding of the unifying light in cre-ation, the subtle 1neness of the /oddess that had begun to breakthrough into human awareness.

,ith the loss of this burgeoning consciousness as a containerfor the process of transformation, an enormous split took place inthe psyche, both culturally and individually. The ncyclopedia of Human!ehavior describes a dissociative reaction as 7a psychoneurotic reactionin which a portion of experience is split off, or isolated, from con
scious awareness.70s This dissociation not only protects us fromthreatening impulses, it also allows us to act them out without havingto bear any conscious responsibility for our actions. ,e therebyavoid both anxiety and guilt. ,hen the dissociation takes place at a cultural level, it forms abasis for the neurosis of the whole culture. >atriarchy dissociatedfrom its maternal ground reconstructed that ground in the guise of aphallic

mother that appears, for example, as other &hurch, oth-erland, Alma ater. #ronically, the very fear that led patriarchy torepress matriarchy has kept patriarchy neurotically bound in a strug-gle for power to what it did and does repress. ,hat is repressed outof fear reemerges in the form of its repression. #t is not therefore theabsence of the feminine that should be lamented $both feminine andmasculine are always already present in some form%@ it is the distortedforms of their presence that exaggerate the tragic imbalance betweenthem

#f we look at the +nglish 5omantic poets of the early nine-teenth century, we see something very different going on. +ssentially,their gifts made them outcasts from patriarchal society. Their geniusopened them to the collective unconscious, and their poetry is anarticulation not only of their personal unconscious, but of the cultural unconscious as well. /reat poetry may be compared to bigdreams in that both come directly from the unconscious and are thenamplified in the waking state in order to understand them more fully.,hen Blake, (helley, and =eats were writing, they did not under-stand, nor did they have the means to understand, the unconsciousas it was unveiled by !reud and Cung in our century. The unifyinglight
The unifyinglight in creation, the !eminine that had been eclipsed particularlyduring the seventeenth century, began her return and made her pres-ence known in the unconscious of these male poets.

Although the patriarchal ego prides itself on being reasonable,the twentieth century has been anything but the Age of 5eason. #nour collective neurosis, we have raped the earth, disrupted the deli-cate balance of nature, and created phallic missiles of mass destruc-tion. #ronically, in our desperate attempt to keep death at bay $orprevent dissolution, from the point of view of the ego% we havebrought ourselves to the brink of extinction. (o long as we deny the/reat other and refuse to integrate her as /oddess in our psychicdevelopment, we will continue to act out neurotic fantasies and en-danger our very survival as a species. 5n this image, he is cut offfrom her by this immense animal that sleeps in the mud, the epitomeof inertia. The crocodile is near the beginning of the evolutionaryscale. Symbolically, it brings up images not only of the personalmother but also of the collective mother, that huge mother halfasleep in the unconscious, who can either suck us to our doom or fillus with creative energy. The transformative potential lies in her mas sive energy. This dreamer0s personal mother was depressed and needed herson to mirror her. (he became overprotective and constantly forbadehim to go swimming with the boys, climb trees, or do anything thatmight hurt him. 'is burgeoning masculinity and his yearning foraction were thus swallowed up. 'e lost his dog but he did manageto save his cat $feminine instinct%. 'e explored the realms of art,

andeventually achieved success in film, art, and music. #n his marriage,however, he was insecure and -ealous, fearing that other men, becausehe perceived them as more potent, would steal what he had. 'isenergy )isenergy, erratic at best, tended to flow toward depression and inertiain anything he did. The energy of his personal mother and the energyof the collective unconscious, which prefers sleeping in the mud totransforming in the fire, was in the Great Mother crocodile. )erenergies were not available to him, and he was therefore unable totransform them into higher levels of integration. Theimage 7mother7 is a tuning fork that sets off vibrations far beyondthe realm of the personal mother. #t resonates in the creative matrixat the core of the psyche)the matrix that contains both the devour-ing mother and the cherishing mother. #t is the ego0s fear of beingsucked into an earlier unconscious state that makes it regard the/reat other as negative. ,hen the ego is strong enough to relate to the Mother without losing its own identity, then Mother becomesthe source of all creativity. =arado"ically, so long as the ego fears theunconscious, it is at the same time magneti8ed by it. 9riven by fear,it moves into Mother in destructive waysdrugs, food, se", alcohol,spending money, whatever. These destructive ways indicate the hos tility that, :uickened by fear, inevitably lashes out against the motherand>or against oneself. ?alling into the maternal unconscious is a repeated theme inthe consulting room. ( woman has a dream in which a young manis riding toward her on a bicycle. )e falls into the ditch and ends upin the mud 2primeval matter3. )is mother appears behind him andsays, 4'ow come on home. !verything will be all right.4 This seem ingly simple dream reenacts the classical myths and summari8eswhole periods of history, both personal and cultural. 5n this dream the woman's new masculinity is seeking to breakout of the unconscious depths, but instead he is thrown into theprimal mud. Matter, mater, mother, and Mother are pulling his egointo the mud of oblivion. 4#e safe here. 5 will look after you. %hydo you want to leave home; Stay here and be a good boy.4 This is/edipus, who 4rebels against the solar father principle of a higherand more demanding mode of awareness, and seeks instead a unionwith the old comfort of the chthonic earth, an emotional se"ual in cest with the Mother, an immersion in her domain.4'' ,hen a young boy begins to separate out from his mother, hemay suddenly start imitating his father) walking like him, sittinglike him, dressing like him. As soon as he is tired or hurt, however,he runs to other for comfort. This pre-1edipal stage soon givesway to confrontations with !ather, and an increased turning to other for support. Thus, the process of separating out from other can often be waylaid. A man may remain locked into otherall his life, with varying amounts of resentment occasioned by a deep psychic fear of being cut adrift, of being alone physically or psycho-logically. Because his own inner feminine has not separated out from his mother, he is unable to express his

real needs or stand up for his own values. 'e probably does not know what they are at a maturelevel. #ronically, he may be married to a woman who finds her strength in mothering her boy.

/irls can identify with other for a much longer period oftime, since there is no biological or social imperative for them to separate from her. ?et even with the most loving and caring of moth-ers, a girl needs to separate out and become her own person. !ailureto sever the unconscious bond eventually constellates a negative rela-tionship. The need to separate is captured in a young girl0s poem,which was written for a high school yearbook ,ho am #D # see the answer half at leastin your eyeswhen you smile at me -ust me focusing and defining me in time and space # feel the fine ground lenses of love
pulling me together oh how beautiful you make me seem you love me and give me life and courageand a way to be you surround me with yourself and # never notice that 5 don't e"ist apart from you.-ou are always here standing between me and the emptiness between meand mysele

#t is this fear of emptiness that blocks most people from coming to at-one-ment. To reach the place where we belong to ourselves, we have to sever the umbilical cord that binds us to archaic depend- 2"encies. #f we have never known a loving mother, that severing can be even more difficult, because we continue to long for what we havenever had. ,e continue to seek other in our relationships. 1ftenin analysis, the analyst

must hold the role of loving mother until the/reat and "oving /oddess has become a reality in the analysand0spsyche. 1ut of this reality comes a love affair with life and sheerdelight in creativity.
%hen the differentiation between mother and the young femi nine is about to begin, the young masculine usually asserts himself.The following dream focuses on the ego's decision to encourage theyoung boy to act&

5 am on a ship. %e are whale watching. The whales are gracefullyriding the waves. /n the other side of the boat there are two whales,one practically on the back of the other. ( little girl falls overboardand is swallowed whole by the whale. 5 encourage a young boy toopen the whale's mouth and take out the little girl. 5t's incrediblehow this happens. The whale seems to be in a playful mood, and itis no trouble for the boy to release the tiny girl. Then there is a partyto celebrate the girl's safe return. !veryone is in colorful costumesand there is dancing and lively music. This is not the patriarchal masculine, which makes the rules that keep people in their place. This is a new masculine conscious ness that can pull the feminine out of the inertia of the mother, bringing a new assertiveness, a new perspective on life.

Most men and women are appalled when they look at the con dition of their femininity in their dreams. They are more deeplyappalled when they talk to those female figures. Those female figureshave stories to tell, and they will tell them if they are listened to. /urculture has made us deaf and blind to feminine anguish. The mediais making us increasingly aware of marital batterings, assaults, harass ments, rape. (s a culture, however, we are still blind to the falseassumptions underlying many relationships, still deaf to the snideremarks some women make to undercut other women, still unable topull the feminine out of the mud. %hy has that energy become so mired; %orking with dreamsis like working on an e"cavation. %e have to dig through layer uponlayer of facades that cover the feminine before we can reach it. Theindividual psyche is a microcosm of the cultural macrocosm. $entu

(long with a vastly e"panded vision of life, the $rusadersbrought back to !urope many treasures of the !ast. (mong themwere e":uisite statues of the #lack Goddess, 5sis. These were en shrined as the #lack +irgin. 9evotion to her spread from cathedralsto small shrines dotted over the countryside in settings natural to thegoddess of fertility. @iterally hundreds of shrines to the #lack +irginsprang up throughout !urope in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries

1ne reason for the Black 2irgin0s great popularity during thisperiod was the growing adoration of the chaste 2irgin ary. &ourtlylove, the legend of the 'oly /rail, the veneration of the 2irgin, theascendancy of the ideali*ed woman, were balanced by the compensat-ing adoration of the Black 2irgin. (he was an underground figure@much of her so-called paganism still adhered to her $fertility, nature, 2#earth%. (he was revered in an underground way)the blessing of the crops in the field, the blessing of pregnancy and childbirth, the darkexcesses of sexuality and delight in the mysteries of the body, and the wisdom that can be e"perienced in lovemaking. She it was whoin the most intimate e"perience possible to the soul, opened herselfto the )oly

Spirit, was impregnated, and bore God a son. 5n heraloneness she was independenta liberated image of the feminine. The Age of the Black 2irgin, the twelfth and thirteenth centu-ries, was followed by the Black .eath of the fourteenth century. #nF:<G the Black .eath devastated +urope and by F:BF had killed upto one-half of the population. #n F:<9 alone, it killed at least a thirdof the population of +ngland. #n today0s terms, this would be thee6uivalent of a nuclear holocaust. #t had an enormous effect on thepsyche and the future development of the ,estern world. 'istorianBarbara Tuchman, writing about this period, concludes3 (urvivors of the plague, finding themselves neither destroyed nor im-proved, could discover no .ivine purpose in the pain they suffered./od0s purposes were usually mysterious, but this scourge had beentoo terrible to be accepted without 6uestioning. $f a disaster of suchmagnitude, the most lethal ever known, was a mere wanton act of/od or perhaps not /od0s work at all, then the absolutes of a fixedorder were loosed from their moorings. inds that opened to admit
these 6uestions could never again be shut. 1nce people envisionedthe possibility of change in a fixed order, the end of an age of submis-sion came in sight@ the turn to individual conscience lay ahead. Tothat extent the Black .eath may have been the unrecogni*ed begin-ning of modern man.H

The fi"ed order Tuchman refers to is the hierarchical orderthe feudal system& king, prince, dukes, all the way down to the serfs.!:ually rigid was the hierarchy of the $hurch& pope, bishops, clerics,laity, all fi"ed in their place by divine decree. 'ot only was the divinepurpose of the rigidly controlled patriarchal order :uestioned, but sowas the 9ivine purpose of death, which had hitherto been seen aspart of the natural order.

The plague was a catalyst for a ma-or shift in human perceptionin many areas)in cosmology, in science and medicine, in attitudestoward women, and in philosophy and religion itself. Inexplainedand irrational, death was an insult)an aberration thrown in the faceof man0s newly ac6uired image as the 7controller.7 an turned in-creasingly to his own rational power, and began to look upon death,nature, woman, his own body and sexuality as being irrational, andtherefore as something to be subdued and brought under more rigor-ous control. an began to be more resolute in his confrontationwith the created universe. 'is dominance over nature became oneexpression of his power. As +. !. (chumacher succinctly puts it, 4The old science looked upon nature as God's handiwork and man'smother1 the new science tends to look upon nature as an adversaryto be con:uered or a resource to be :uarried and e"ploited.4
JK

an began to put distance between himself and the forces ofdeath. The new order would create a more habitable world built ona more precise knowledge of the universe, including man himself. Allelements of chance were to be systematically eliminated.
The irrational elements that man so rigorously attempted to subdue after the fourteenth century, and well into our century, arethe very elements that we are now finally learning to creatively em-brace in, for example, contemporary science, depth psychology, andthe arts. The underground Black /oddess is surfacing again to

be-come the cathedra of the creative mind. This surfacing, first seen in itsmodern form in the visionary world of 5omanticism in the first %06uarter of the nineteenth century, is now finding its way into actual life, a life now e"perienced by most inhabitants of the planet as farmore acausal than causal, far more ine"plicable than e"plicable. #e fore we could arrive at this apparently chaotic state, however, ratio nalism had to bring us to the brink of e"tinction as a result of themind's determination to enslave the body.

Man's focus on the mind was to find its fullest e"pression inthe writings of 9escartes in the seventeenth century. 9escartes intro duced a view of mind as an incorporeal thinking substance, radicallydistinct from body. (s entirely mindless, matter or body had to becontrolled by mind, mind not being in matter but over matter as amaster ruling a slave. The mind as the enslaver of matter became, in the seventeenthcentury, a metaphor of the operation of the mind of God in itscreation of a material world. ?or Sir 5saac 'ewton, the cosmos itselfwas the enslaved body of an omnipotent mind which, having createdthe cosmos by an act of divine will, withdrew into the contemplationof itself, leaving the cosmos as an autonomous self regulating mecha nism. 5n this image of a vast self regulating mechanism lay for 'ew ton what Thomas #erry has called 4a model for human activity4 5behind which lay mind itself contemplating, like 9escartes' cogito ergosum 245 think therefore 5 am43, its own detached divinity.
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The goal of science as initiated by 9escartes and achieved by'ewton lay in the total submission of matter to mind, of slave tomaster. (s 4a model for human activity4 it affirmed man's rationalsubmission to the immutable laws of nature. That matter had a mindof its own that would eventually rebel against its enslavement be longed to the realm of fantasy rather than reality.

The dualism of mind and matter epitomi*ed by .escartesbegan, however, long before .escartes. #mmediately following theBlack >lague, nature was more and more perceived as a chaotic realmunrelated to the thinking principle. >rior to the plague, the body hadbeen studied not -ust by those wishing to become doctors, but also by those desiring a more intimate knowledge of /od. .uring theplague, however, the need to control disease and death gave the prac-tical applications of the study of anatomy greater impetus. The inter-action between self-knowledge and medical practice disappeared in asystem that was becoming more and more materialistic the furtheraway man moved from seeing himself as a part of the created order.The link between consciousness and body no longer applied. Thebody became a fascinating system to be studied in the same way asthe stars and planets. ,ith the nineteenth-century formulation ofthe .octrine of (pecific +tiology $namely, that a single agent such asa microbe can be the cause of disease%, the door was opened for the control of the spread of infectious diseases. an began to develop anew sense of power
over his own body. These advances in science were accompanied by a profoundalteration in man0s perception of woman and death. As >hilippeAries has observed, it was during this period that death began to takeon an erotic

meaning in art and literature. .eath and the sex act were7henceforth increasingly thought of as a transgression which tearsman from his daily life, from rational society, from his monotonouswork, in order to make him undergo a paroxysm, plunging him intoan irrational, violent, and beautiful world.7

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The intensified association of woman with death and eroticlove increased greatly the anxiety that man experienced. 'e began topro-ect his own guilt about his sexual impulses onto woman. Anexample of this re-enactment of Adam0s blaming +ve can be foundin a F<EB report by the .ominican in6uisitors, 'einrich =ramer andCames (prenger. ,hile guilt and carnality were pro-ected onto women in gen-eral, there occurred a compensating ideali*ation through the cult of%2virginity, both within and without the &hurch. ,ithin the &hurch, the emphasis was placed on chastity, since death and sexual couplingwere regarded as synonymous. Thus (t. Cohn &hrysostom wrote in&ella 'erginita( 7!or where there is death, there too is sexual coupling@ and where there is no death, there is no sexual coupling either. Butvirginity is not accompanied by such things. .osemary .uether sees the dis*unction that occurred in man'sperception of woman as a split between spirituali8ed femininity andcarnal femaleness. She points out that this split is analogous to theone between mind and body&
This split continued to grow more and more intense during the Mid dle (ges until it erupted in a veritable orgy of paranoia in the latemedieval period 65ABBs5CBBs7. 5t can hardly be a coincidence thatthe same period that saw Mariology reach the greatest heights oftheological definition and refinement with the triumph of the doc trine of the 5mmaculate $onception in nominalist theology also sawthe outbreak of witch hunts that took the lives of upwards of onemillion women between the 5Dth and 5Eth centuries.
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an0s split perception of woman manifested itself most clearlyin the witch hunts. 4ot only did woman carry the burden of man0sguilt and response to death, but she also became the scapegoat forthe economic instability that came in the wake of the plague. #n )estaTrevirorum we read3 7#nasmuch as it was popularly believed that thecontinued sterility of many years was caused by witches through themalice of the .evil, the whole country rose to exterminate thewitches.7 #n town after town, the #n6uisitors ordered countlesswomen stripped and shaved and sub-ected them to vaginal and rectalsearches. Those found to have the devil0s mark were hanged orburned at the stake. ,omen became the scapegoat, for, as the #n6uis itor concluded, 4all witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is inwomen insatiable.4
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(bout this time, devotion to Mary as Fniversal Mother beganto spread, as man started looking for a new source of security. Marybecame the disembodied Mother. (s Gueen of )eaven, she becamepart of the $hurch's redemptive theologynot as the #lack Ma donna, bridging se"uality and spirituality, but rather, as the obedient,chaste, 'irgin Mother. ,ith consciousness focused on the perfection of the 2irgin

ary, the dark shadow of lust constellated in the unconscious. Areflection of the mindAbody dichotomy, this virginAwhore splitdrove the feminine soul, the receptive, unifying principle that hadbegun to emerge, deeper into exile. The soul became an isolatedentity, the immortal and immaterial part of oneself that needed to be7saved7 out of the corrupting influence of the material world. Although it was woman who suffered the most through thisperiod, man also became painfully alienated from himself, torn as hewas between the need to ideali*e woman $reflected in the disem-bodied motherAvirgin% and the simultaneous need to dominate andcontrol her. There can be no real wholeness in heterosexual relation-ships until this split is healed in both man and woman. #n theirdreams, men often encounter the good little girl or docile motheralong with the seductive snake woman or beckoning whore. Thevirgin soul, meanwhile, lies buried in the basement or is dumped intoa trash can. (uch dreams of the exiled soul are among the mostcommon initiatory dreams. The virginAwhore split manifests in women0s dreams as well. Awoman dreams, for example, that she is visiting a construction site,where a house is being built. The dream ego, white and properlydressed, is supervising. A dark shadow woman is also present, forni-cating with the workmen. The dream ego wants to make a hastyretreat, but is fascinated by the energy of the shadowy whore. Theshadow is distracting the workmen $the constructive energies of theunconscious%, and it is she who will have to be integrated if theconstruction of the inner house is to go ahead.

/iven this split and the repression of the feminine, it is notdifficult to see why !reud mistakenly placed sexuality at the root ofthe underlying anxiety in the psyche. 1nly very recently has it be-come clear that patriarchal pathology is rooted in the dread of death,the fear of dissolution. 4ot since the plague of the fourteenth cen-tury have human beings been so traumati*ed by the sudden loss ofthe boundaries that established their security. The holocaust in+urope, the bombings of 'iroshima and 4agasaki, were a nightmarethat everyone has had to contend with ever since. 'ere was massdeath on an unprecedented scale. 4ow the terror was not the un-

known forces of nature rebelling against man, or /od punishing manfor his sins@ now it was 7man0s inhumanity to man7 that was to befeared. #nasmuch as the plague had forced man to relate differently to nature, so the (econd ,orld ,ar placed man in a new relation- ship to himself. 4ot only did men begin to fear each other, butman also began to fear himself, his own overwhelming capacity for destruction. The suppression of death, or 7forbidden death,7 to use Aries0sterm, has had a profound effect on the organi*ation of the self. #n!reud0s day, the suppression of sexuality took the form of hystericalneuroses and obsessions, which characteri*e the deterioration of the ego from internali*ed pressures. #n our own day, particularly follow-ing the (econd ,orld ,ar, the breakdown of the self has becomeevident in the predominance of the narcissistic personality. >ower-lessness, emptiness, and paranoia characteri*ed the neuroses of theeighties and continue to make their presence felt in the present dec-ade. As >eter /iovacchini writes, 7The growing prominence of 0char-acter disorders0 seems to signify an underlying change in theorgani*ation acter disorders0 seems to signify an underlying change in theorgani*ation of personality, from what has been called inner-direc-tion to narcissism.7J9 ichael Beldoch has this to say3 7Today0s pa-tients by and large do not suffer from hysterical paralyses of the legsor handwashing compulsions@ instead it is their very psychic selvesthat have gone numb or that they must scrub and rescrub in anexhausting and unending effort to come clean.7 These patients sufferfrom 7pervasive feelings of emptiness and a deep disturbance of self-esteem.7:H

The characteristic feature of borderline patients is an obsessiveneed to re-creat

,e have become alienated from the earth, from others, andfrom our own deepest feelings. #n such a condition we become nar-cissistic. #n all the mirrors that reflect reality we see only ourselves.,e have become highly self-conscious, but this state is a mere par-ody of true self-knowledge. (elfknowledge comes through a rela-tionship with and a commitment to something or someone beyondone0s self, beyond the gratification of one0s personal needs. (exualrepression has given way to sexual liberation, but neither has anything

e a womb, which will rescue them from their senseof emptiness. Addictive or dependent relationships are often soughtas an antidote to a traumati*ed ego. ,hile the regression to thewomb is predominant in the borderline personality, many people inour crumbling society seek to establish relationships based on partici-pation mystique through sharing drugs, alcohol, sex, or other addictivebehaviors. %e have become alienated from the earth, from others, andfrom our own deepest feelings. 5n such a condition we become nar cissistic. 5n all the mirrors that reflect reality we see only ourselves.%e have become highly self conscious, but this state is a mere par ody of true self knowledge. Self knowledge comes through a rela tionship with and a commitment to something or someone beyondone's self, beyond the gratification of one's personal needs. Se"ualrepression has given way to se"ual liberation, but neither has anything