Divine Femininity

Someone has objected to my recent post Satanic Feminism. I'm not sure on exactly what grounds but it may be the juxtaposition of the word Satanic with that of Feminism. I should say that this phrase was not of my making but the name of a book published by the Oxford University Press, the premise of which I was discussing. I should also say that I was approaching the subject, as everything on this blog, from a metaphysical point of view and considering what the spiritual origin of this radical revolution was.

For feminism was a radical revolution, overturning thousands of years of a cultural norm that existed more or less everywhere in the world. I don't think people today really appreciate that. We in the secular West are so used to it and take it so much for granted that we never question it but perhaps we should. A spiritually aware person, and especially a Christian, cannot fail to see that feminism arose concurrently with the rejection of God. It goes against traditional teaching of all religions which may be a bad thing or a good thing but surely gives us valid grounds to examine its origins more deeply than we normally do.

My contention would be that a change in consciousness that was of divine inspiration and had an evolutionary purpose was hijacked by a counter-evolutionary force. Around 250 years ago developments that had been gathering pace started to come to full expression. A new form of consciousness, one that had appeared here and there for hundreds of years in pioneers of humanity, began to spread much more widely and impact the whole of society and culture. This was when the 'I' became fully aware of itself and of its ability to think and to act. No longer part of a tribe or group, it was now a full individual as a consequence of which it was spiritually cut off from the rest of the universe. A famous precursor of this form of consciousness would be the figure of Hamlet, often called the first modern person, but now it spread throughout all human beings, especially, to begin with, those in the West, and it led to the questioning of religion and the assertion of self. It had many benefits as people began to act independently, the development of science for one, but it also increased the sense of alienation. It was an advance because moving from group consciousness to self-consciousness is a necessary step to full and active participation in divine life but it also brought trouble in its wake as the separation from God became absolute. You cannot know yourself properly and be fully conscious of yourself if you retain the greater connection to universal life but when you lose the connection to universal life you may well be plunged into isolation and existential loneliness.

This change in consciousness lies behind everything of the last few centuries, good and bad. It lies behind feminism because it was experienced by both men and women equally who now had to negotiate life and being and relationships from a new perspective. Feminism from this perspective is an inevitable consequence of evolutionary development. As women become more aware of themselves as full individuals in a similar way to men so their inner life changes and that means their outer life must change too.

So feminism in its raw essence and origin was not Satanic. But what if that change was captured and re-routed? There are two forces in the universe, not two equal forces because ultimately everything comes from God, but still two forces that are in opposition. There is the divine force that seeks to bring human beings to spiritual completion and there is a counter force that we call evil because it opposes good. It is principally spiritual evil which means it seeks to do spiritual harm and if we do not understand what spiritual good is we may have a problem understanding how spiritual evil works. One way it works is by consolidating the material and worldly so some things that appear good in material and worldly terms actually work against the true and ultimate good. The aim of this evil force is to separate from God, not temporarily as in the sense of being a self-centred individual but permanently. This tells us that the current stage of full individual consciousness carries risks because if that sense of self is over-stimulated and encouraged it can lead to a much wider and deeper separation from God and the true good. Self-centred individuality is like adolescence, a temporary phase that should act as a springboard to a deeper adult engagement with God, but unfortunately the whole process has been derailed and we have got stuck and embedded in that phase. This has been due to interference from demonic sources but also, it has to be said, our own spiritual weakness.

This is the sense in which feminism can be described as Satanic as in the book cited earlier. A natural and healthy and spiritually positive change was hijacked and its material elements pushed and promoted while its spiritual ones were largely ignored, suppressed or denied. This means that the worldly ego was appealed to and its weaknesses exploited, while the redirecting of the ego to spiritual awakening, proper spiritual awakening I should stress because there are many forms which are to do with the ego self-medicating, failed to take place. Sunshine and rain cause both nourishing fruits and poisonous weeds to grow, depending on the receiving soil and the seeds that lie therein. A downpouring of spiritual energy can be reacted to by the soul or the ego depending on which one the subject is more attuned to. It can also be mis-channeled by the counter-evolutionary forces which can be identified under the traditional name of Satan, and this was what occurred.

What should have happened was what I mentioned in the earlier essay which was the development of a deeper understanding of both masculinity and femininity in their spiritual and creative aspects. If men and women had responded to spiritual energy spiritually they would have opened themselves up to their true spiritual archetypal qualities as man and woman, and this would have built on the Law and the Prophets rather than doing away with them which is the correct path of spiritual development. Feminism as we now know it is a perversion of a good. That is, its origins do lie in a certain truth but that truth has been corrupted.

For what it's worth, my understanding of man and woman and the relationship between them is based on the traditional Christian one qualified by an awareness of the recent development of consciousness, but this should have had an evolutionary impact rather than the revolutionary one it did have. Man and Woman are the two fundamental pillars of creation, equal in spiritual worth, different in spiritual function. The Satanic element of feminism is the confusion of worth and function.

You see, it is a metaphysical matter not a political or social or even a human, in the sense we now think of human, one. That is why people whose worldview is based on the ethos of modernity and secularism will not understand it. To such people a position such as the one I have outlined here will seem bad because it conflicts with their idea of good. But if you lack metaphysical understanding you cannot even know what the real good is. To learn about the true feminine mysteries discarded and rejected by feminism I would recommend a book written from the Catholic perspective by Alice von Hildebrand called Man and Woman: A Divine Invention. There is a divine femininity but it is not to be found in feminism.