A New Approach to Men’s Mysteries

by Rhys with Virginia Stewart, M.Ed.
Note: This is not intended to suggest that women can not be warriors. They can. I am.This is intended as a point of discussion. So before getting irritated, consider what is said, and what is suggested. VS
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Virtually everyone understands that there is something very wrong at the root of modern culture. Rape, murder, war, gangs, drugs, illiteracy are disturbing symptoms, and many groups and individuals would like to point the finger and place blame, which accomplishes nothing. At the base of the recent outcry is the women’s movement and the New Age movement, which would like for men and women to become more nurturing, more in touch with their emotions, more gentle: vegetarian, peaceloving, non-argumentative brothers and sisters working for a better world. While this is a nice vision, it can’t happen for several reasons, the most important being the ultimate suicide of the human race. Once humanity loses the edge, it will die out--if nothing else, out of boredom and loss of security. The wolves always eat the sheep, unless a bigger wolf comes along.

Biology, instinctive nature, has much more to do with how men and women interact than most people ever consider. The first step towards understanding must be the willingness to allow individuals to be who they are, without trying to change them into something they are unable, by birth, to be. The second thing is to understand that nature. The third, to reach meaningful agreements about how to express that nature in non-harmful, and non-destructive ways.

To dispense with the feminist revisionist version of how "the ancients" (read pre-patriarchal societies) conducted their affairs, there is no evidence to suggest that women or the Goddess were the Supreme Being, ruling, judging, Mothering and controlling everything, while men were nothing, or at best, peripheral. Cave paintings and artifacts suggest that the earliest Deities were the Goddess and the God, always appearing together, or close to one another; each with their own essential functions. The Mother image and the Wild God, the Maiden and the Hunter, the Crone and the Dying God. Pairs.

In paleolithic and neolithic society, the woman’s role was clearly defined. Hearth-maker, birth-giver, culture-maker--women held the tribe together by building homes, and continued the tribe by giving birth to future members of the group. Yet men played an essential role as well. If he didn’t hunt, the tribe would not survive. Death by starvation was an ever present threat. Women might have been good at finding roots, herbs, fruit, and firewood, but the winter hunt spelled the difference between life and death. This is what has been lost.

The hunt is more than killing. It is the central core of Men’s Mysteries. The Horned God, the Mammoth God, the Bison God, were real and a man had to move into the sphere of the God, moving with the wind, unseen, unheard. His weapon, spear knife or bow, was pitted against the equally formidable weapons of horn and tusk. The man had to become the God and move like and with Him in order to hunt successfully. The man becomes the God through death. Man cannot conquer the God, he Becomes the God. Food is provided; the hunt was successful. Man has proven his worth and shared the mystery alone, looking into the eyes of the God as He died, putting his life on the line for his family, his tribe, eating the God to assume his attributes so that the hunt will continue to be successful. It was and is about survival and the need to be essential. A man who would not put his life at risk to protect, preserve and provide for the tribe was declared to be a woman. This was not a place of dishonor, rather it was a basic understanding of a man’s relationship with the God of the Wild. A man who would not hunt was considered to be more in tune with the Goddess and was eligible to learn women’s mysteries. A woman also put her life on the line every time she was in childbed, and her courage and contribution to the survival of the tribe was revered. A woman who could or would not risk her life in this way participated in men’s mysteries or served the Goddess as a healer or Crone.

Men need to feel essential, they must have a sense of mission. To provide food because the entire society might die without it is a mission with a purpose--it was essential. A man instinctively needs to be someone and make his mark--he needs to matter. When society shifted from hunting/gathering to agriculture/herding something vital was stripped from the man’s role in culture. The Gods became gentle, plowing furrows; the gentle grain Gods who died to provide food; the Bull god who fertilized the Cow then went to the altar as food. What was lost was the need to put one’s life on the line in a meaningful way to ensure survival. The challenge was lost, men were stripped of their sense of mission. His validity was denied because circumstances required that he give up being essential. His life was no longer on the line because it mattered. While this was wonderful for women, who were at once more secure and more settled with men being around more often, it was done at the cost of making men feel the missing edge, the keen identification with something untamed and untamable that lies at the core of a man’s psyche.

For women, who are by biology more in tune with life through the birth process (even if the individual woman chooses not to give birth) life is the most important aspect. Women care little about the success of the job as long as the man survives. Men by biology and instinct are more connected to the death process by which life is possible. The God must die so that the people might live. It is the mission, the success of the hunt that matters, not the intent, not the effort, not the will, but the mission. A man who returns with no food might as well not have gone or come back. A man who returns with the deer or Mammoth has proved his worthiness, his manhood, and in essence, his Godhood.

A man must improvise. He doesn’t know what will happen, but must be ready to handle whatever happens to ensure the success of the mission. He is ready to sacrifice himself, if the mission succeeds. If one hunter dies, but the hunt was successful, he has not died in vain. His life had meaning and he is honored. Take that sense of purpose away and he is left with an emptiness that no amount of lovemaking, dancing, plowing, or herding can fill. His essentialness is gone.

This was perhaps the root of what has been termed the patriarchal invasions. Because that need to feel vital to the culture was lost, for around 2000 or 3000 years, most of the wildness had time to be sublimated and written out of society. The Mystery, the connection with the Divine balance was lost, and was replaced with manufactured meaning. War, contact sports, contests of strength, fights, gangs, revolutions, invasions, and quests were invented to replace this lost sense of worth. The adrenaline rush of putting one’s life on the line and beating the odds, of surviving, is like no other, and some men become addicted to it. In the dim recesses of his mind lies a million years or so of instinct in that looking at death and conquering it leads to self-meaning: a biological worthiness. It has been suggested that this is why soldiers commit rape. Having proven his worthiness, he must then express it, by procreating--proving to the woman that he is a superior member of the species. This adrenaline rush and the attendant sexual surge are biologically programmed responses. This does not excuse rape, by no means; intelligence and respect for the inherent Divinity of every individual superceeds biological programming, or at least it should. To do this the man must first recognize a woman as an individual person, not as claimable property. The need to procreate after outliving death is common, but the partner still must be willing.

The modern man has had every deep meaning stripped from him. He no longer feels essential and must manufacture ways to challenge death, to look the God in the eye. It might be a dangerous sport, such as mountain climbing or sports car racing. It might be a physical contest such as football or boxing. It might be war, and is more often than anything else. Proving the edge, the self-meaning that a man is indeed essential, can be done by defending, protecting, providing for, and preserving something greater than himself.

Fighting for God and Country is one manufactured way. "Be all you can be" has an allure for men that it never could for women. When one thinks about the mystique surrounding WWII, one remembers that it is often called "the good war." The fight was necessary; the enemy, death and destruction, had to be defeated. Women still worried more about the safe return of the husbands, brother, or fathers, but resigned themselves to the necessity of the cause--it was just. The men who returned were greeted as heroes; mates were readily available; nothing was too good for them; the government provided for them; their self-worth and essential role was affirmed constantly. These men were able to return to peaceful society with the unconscious knowledge that they made a difference, they mattered; they had proven their right to belong to the tribe.

One can Contrast this to the reception of soldiers who fought in Vietnam. The government made it impossible to fulfill the mission: loss number one. Instead of being hailed as heroes, they were spit upon and called "baby-killers," never mind that the Vietcong often used children and women as assassins, giving them guns or hand grenades and telling them to go blow up a few "Joes". These men were not affirmed for surviving. Many women preferred hippy peaceniks to "warmongers" and the biological imperative was denied. Having left to defend home and country, to prove self-worth and their essentialness, and surviving, thus proving their value; they then had their souls ripped out by a society who had changed all the rules and denied their worth upon their return.

Bewildered, scarred and rejected for the very things that they felt made them men, many despaired and committed suicide or began using chemicals to fill the gaping holes where their souls had been. Small wonder they despaired. When culture wars with biology, biology wins.

Through an equal number of years, a woman’s method of understanding and moving in her environment has become instinctive. For about the last 4-5000 years, women have been told that they are helpless, weak, stupid, and replaceable. While some have believed this, more often the myth is transparent because women know better. Men and women react differently. Women want to be in control of a situation by planning it and maneuvering to see that it happens the way they intended. Since individual men spend little time trying to pull hidden strings, being geared towards handling whatever happens in an impromptu fashion, they have been relatively easy to manipulate, unless they take themselves completely out of the sphere of women, or ruthlessly suppress them to the point of learned helplessness. The kind of control discussed when one mentions patriarchy has little to do with feelings or circumstances, but rather focuses on general rules and limits placed on behavior. Control is not manipulation, for it is too rigid. A man does not reveal how close he has come to being unworthy to belong to the tribe, for men judge one another on prowess and success; a leftover from those primitive imprints.

A woman talks to other women about virtually everything. It has been said that men sigh and women network. Men face things head on, to conquer it; women maneuver around it. Men need to preserve their worth in front of other men and in competition with them; a woman’s worth is affirmed in her relationships, and honesty in those relationships takes precedence over making a statement of worth. A woman’s worth is not revoked when "her" man does not perform well, or mistreats her, that is seen as a reflection on the man.

Sex is another area in which the differences between men and women are glaring. A man who is aroused shows obvious physical signs, which are equally obvious after he is satisfied. A woman has no trouble identifying the arousal before, during, and after. Conversely, a man has no obvious physical indication that a woman is aroused, interested, or satisfied after he is finished, unless she tells him. Women have been known to lie. Men know this.

They know it instinctively, that ultimately, she is in control of the situation, no matter what he does. Unless she tells him, he still will not know whether his "performance" was as gratifying for her. The women’s network will discuss his prowess before he ever hears about it, and he will find out only after he can not get a date with anyone for the next five years, or conversely, has women calling him day and night . The pressure and doubt engendered by this is enough to make any man break down. The solution to this is for women to be more honest and open with men, to communicate their feelings and needs before, during, and after sex. A man must learn to listen and appreciate these communications. All women are different (just as men) and what satisfied one woman will NOT satisfy another. It is not a comment on prowess or ability when a women explains her needs and desires, and men must learn to eliminate their egos from such exchanges by appreciating the personhood of the Divine Other.

The question of what to do with the imperative remains, and modern society offers few alternatives for a meaningful contribution that is not a manufactured placebo. This can be changed, however, by examining what is needed in the world. Poverty may need more compassion and individual sacrifice to solve, but the environment needs warriors. A man’s way of closing down a toxic waste producer will differ from the peaceful protests of women. Both will be necessary if the situation is to change. Nuclear power plants tend to ignore blockades; a men’s group of eco-warriors might just come up with something that works.

The preservation of the rain forests, and the overthrow of logging interests; the preservation of the oceans and ocean life; eliminating violent crime, including rape, murder and child abuse; fighting against human right’s abuses--for the rights of all people to be who they are instead of societal clones: these are all areas in which the active energy of men is needed. The peaceful approach has brought attention to these problems, but can not stop or solve them. At this point in history, the very survival of humans and Earth as we know Her is at stake, and it is time for false conflicts to be put away. The biological imperative, the natural ways in which men and women address issues of survival, is once again necessary for the preservation of the "tribe" of humanity. Men and women are needed for the work, in their own arenas of expertise. Women will fight in their own way for what is right, but let us not forget the warrior, who will do in his own way what is necessary to succeed in this most important of missions. The world needs heros, the only question now is: will they answer the call to action?

Copied from Mark Sumpter