New here? Catch up with The Radical Baddie - an Invocation and In the Beginning, God was a Woman 🌎
To summarize what we’ve covered so far in the evolution of human consciousness: we’ve spent basically the entirety of human existence biologically and psychologically wired to worship the Great Mother, followed by the Great Goddess.
During this time we lived precariously as hunter-gatherers, but we also were living in collectivist nomadic tribes where we developed some of the practices most culturally core to being human - telling stories, making art, rituals.
Things change when the men start... being men lol.
First, it must be said - we LOVE the Divine Masculine 🌞🦁
The SUN 🌞 Order out of Chaos!! Structure & Strategy!!! Linear Progress! Innovation!!! Action!!! WINDS OF CHANGE! 💨 Critical Thought & Praxis!!!
There is a lot we owe to the Divine Masculine for bringing forth the many comforts we enjoy today. Science. Reason, Logic, Debate. Architecture, Engineering, Transportation, the Internet.
The Boys in STEM really did their thing.
The thing that’s funny though about the Masculine across history, is that men seem to always think and do and design themselves into their own demise.
The Divine Masculine gave us Civilizations! and Culture!
But with the additional free time from agricultural innovation and settling down in one place, with the additional safety and lower levels of precariousness in surviving, and less of a need to go out hunting for meals, the Men get Bored.
So Men pick up weapons and invent stories to inspire adrenaline-pumping combat and conquest. They fashion feudal hierarchies and caste systems to establish order, efficiency, and maximizing productivity. Writing completely changes the course of human history, and with the same tools, Men invent Bureaucracy and the State as ways to consolidate and play with Power.1
The Agrarian Feudal system represented important breakthroughs in how humans organize that we still use today, like org charts and repeatable processes.
The problem is that we’ve evolved drastically in the 5,000 years that have passed since the Agrarian Age, but much of our world systems still operate with this model of command and control to dominate, oppress, and exploit the Global Majority for financial and political gain.
See: Government, Military, Church, School, Prison
Why is it that we tout innnovation, technology, growth, and progress, but we can’t seem to face the Death roiling behind in its wake?
Man’s Fear of Death 🖤☠️
The Christian Crusaders in their slaughter and plunder, brought back the Black Madonna from their travels. And Europe really ate Her up - she was a revered underground figure associated with fertility, nature, and earth.
The Age of the Black Virgin in Europe was cut short by the Black Plague in 1350s where HALF of Europe’s population was wiped out ☠️
Safe to say the survivors were traumatized.
What was the reason?! What was the Divine purpose of the pain they suffered?
“Man turned increasingly to his own rational power, and began to look upon Death, Nature, Woman, his own Body and Sexuality as being irrational, and therefore as something to be subdued and brought under more rigorous control.”
Dancing in the Flames
Through the unresolved trauma and chronic fear of Death, the Black Plague became the catalyst for major developments Humanity’s experienced in the last 500 years - cosmology, science, medicine, philosophy and religion.
The Imperial Core’s reactionary trauma response to the Black Plague spurred a millenia-long campaign to “control by power a dependent area or people.”
Through the Rise of Democracy, The Age of Reason/Enlightenment, The Industrial Revolution, and the Technological Revolution, the Colonial Agenda has persisted and taken on new names and forms.
What exactly is the difference between Oppression v. Exploitation v. Marginalization? This is a foundational essay from Readings for Diversity & Social Justice:
When Adam Smith describes the Invisible Hand of the Free Market, it sounds like a beautiful homeostasis-maintaining self-balancing natural marvel.
But Capitalism in reality operates more like a Machine. Big Business and Political Power collude to maintain a global caste system that serves the interests of the most rich and powerful.
If the Billionaires are on top of this man-made food chain, why are they all big whiny babies?
Billionaire Despair 💸😭
Although the Patriarchal Ego prides itself on being Reasonable, the twentieth century has been anything but the Age of Reason. In our collective neurosis, we have raped the earth, disrupted the delicate balance of nature, and created phallic missiles of mass destruction. Ironically in our desperate attempt to keep death at bay… We have brought ourselves to the brink of extinction.
Ironically, the very fear that led Patriarchy to repress Matriarchy has kept Patriarchy neurotically bound in a struggle for power to what it [represses]. What is repressed out of fear remerges in the form of its repression.2
I love the Billionaire Despair genre because it is an allegory for our time. Being ruled by our fear, greed, and our repressed feelings only yields endless unhappiness. Man will have everything, and never feel satisfied.
So a Jungian psychoanalyst would argue that the insatiable wealth hoarding of super millionaires and billionaires is at its core about unhealed trauma, a disintegrated Shadow, and disconnection from The Great Mother.
The unhealed Masculine acts out dramas, seeks out material and relational acquisitions, and strategizes endlessly to protect and prop up the Ego. They chase Happiness, Success, Pride, and Stability. And it always remains out of grasp.
This story should sound familiar to the Global Majority, as we also internalize violence, repress pain, and are ruled unconsciously by our trauma responses.
Oppressor and Oppressed, we all have the same work to do. We do it through reconnecting to our shared Indigenous Wisdom, balancing the Masculine, and turning to the suppressed Dark Divine Feminine for guidance on the way.
Dancing with the Flames