Dave Green

“ The final section asked a series of questions concerning the ways in which participants themselves constructed gender; questions about the dimensions of gendered inequality; and, the potential benefits and/or consequences of Goddess-centred male spirituality at the personal, religious and societal levels. For example, Do you think that your life has changed, or that you have changed as a person since encountering the Goddess/Goddesses? If so, in what ways? Do you view Men and Women has being essentially different? Do you think that currently there is a ‘crisis’ in masculinity? ”

“ Just as some Pagan women place the idea of the essentialist expressive, nurturing woman at the heart of their practices – a figure akin to the archetypal housewife figure [32] − essentialism leads some Pagan men to adopt a ‘version of manhood which corresponds rather neatly with this
society’s dominant conception of masculinity.’ [33] That is, essentialized gender differences mirror gendered forms of discrimination. ”

“ Constructing Gender
Goddesses were often allied to respondents’ constructions of nature. However, this is not the essentialized identification of women with nature and men with culture one has seen in connection to Merchant’s work or in mainstream thealogy. Although female divinity – and by extension the participants’ conceptualizations of nature – was most commonly seen as nurturing and expressive, it also possessed what might be viewed as more traditionally masculine traits within Western culture. That is, goddesses universally possessed physical strength and aggression. ”

“ Whatever the authenticity of these histories, the equation of women and nature has influenced the form, content and direction of both Goddess spirituality and the wider Pagan movement. [23] In particular, as women attempt to forge new ways of being that are independent of patriarchy, they are also seeking innovative, non-instrumental ways of being with nature. [24] Thus, traditional correspondences of women with nature and sexuality still remain at the heart of Goddess feminism. ”

“ To shore-up conceptions of manhood many men have turned to archetypal images of masculinity found in New Age neo-Jungian therapeutic and spiritual movements. Men have enthusiastically embraced these movements’ essentialist and depoliticized constructions of gender, examples of which are freely harvested from myths and rituals across cultures and historical epochs. ”

“ As stated, survey participants consistently emphasized the importance of possession, and many of these used modifications of existing Pagan rituals and liturgies to accomplish this. Although I felt something of an outsider during John’s ritual there was no doubt in my mind that he was caught up in an ecstatic state of possession. Discussing the ritual with John he touched upon an issue that was common with survey respondents: ‘It’s through these rituals that I encounter the Goddess. The female energies complete me as a person ... Male and female come together in this sacred encounter ... ”

“ Anyone with a knowledge of mainstream Wiccan ritual will recognize that elements of this visualization are taking from the ritual of Drawing Down the Moon whereby the high priestess of a coven ‘draws down’ the Goddess into her body in an act of empowering possession. It often acts as a female counterpoint to the process of Drawing Down the Sun wherein the Horned God possesses the high priest. These acts conform to essentialized mythopoetic gender stereotypes of Pagan ritual practice. ”

“ For the MGM, ritual involves the dismantling of gender differences alongside the dismantling of normative constructions of modern masculinity. EilbergSchwartz contends that:
The dismantling of such differences is often accompanied by a concomitant process of interiorization, by which the differences that previously marked us off from our antitypes are now treated as differences within ourselves. The traits of the other may be interiorized as characteristics of our psyche or as aspects of our own cultural, social, and religious practices. ”

“ She argues for twin historical constructions of woman as nature and man as culture. [21] She contends that nature came to be viewed as ‘wild’, ‘fecund’ and ‘disordered’ in comparison to the increasingly neat ordered logic of the cultural realm. For Merchant, the conflict between the carnal, ‘disordered sexuality’ of the female and the cerebral male rationality catalysed the scapegoating of women during the witch craze of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries – the mythologized ‘burning times’ which codified the normative gender roles of modernity and the dominance of men. ”

“ This crisis of masculinity is driven both by the rise of second-wave feminism and the restructuring of work in the West, now rooted in a service-based knowledge economy rather than in traditional heavy industry. ”

“ The neopagan desire to use the designation Witch is an example of this modern process of rehabilitating and interiorizing our antitypes. Witches are no longer outside Western civilization but members of it. They have the same professions and the same human needs as other members of our society. The witch is among ‘us’ just like the Jew, the black, and the woman. [55]
It is in this way that the masculine antitype (goddesses) is interiorized into the profane psyches of practitioners. ”

“ Indeed, whereas innovative interdisciplinary research has been conducted in relation to constructions of masculinity within other world religions, particularly in Christianity and Judaism, [4] the few existing studies of masculinity within Paganisms provide one with a unilateral mythopoetic vision of Pagan men as instrumental hunters and providers who honour male deities and prize traditional masculine qualities such as strength, courage, competitiveness and stoicism. ”

“ In terms of constructions of gender, performance of masculinity, spiritual practice and orientation to goddesses, initial content analyses demonstrate that there do not appear to be significant differences between gay and straight practitioners. In sum, the demography of the MGM appears to be broadly in line with mainstream Paganisms. However, they appear even more educated, have an over-representation of gay men and a younger age profile. ”

“ We have to think of ourselves as people these days rather than men as opposed to women. So much that is ... wrong in society is as a result of ... inequality. The planet is threatened because of men. People are poor because of men ... People are dying in wars because of men. ”

“ Long suggests that the Goddess Movement has three major sources of inspiration: Paganism, feminism and, what she terms, feminist theological forms of Judeo-Christianity. [13] Indeed recent years has seen both a feminization of Contemporary Pagan liturgy and rhetoric accompanied by an increase in numbers of female practitioners. Indeed some studies suggest as many as two-thirds of Contemporary Pagans are women. [14] As Harvey argues:
In its Pagan manifestation this Goddess-talk has primarily been concerned with the embodied living of life by women. ”

“ Its simultaneous embrace and rejection of the modern demonstrates that more nuanced sociological understandings are required of both second wave male practitioners and the Pagan movement as a whole. The MGM reveals that a perspective is required which goes beyond procrustean categories such as ‘modern’ and ‘postmodern’ and which seeks to understand the interaction between Paganisms and these sociological antitypes. ”

“ Research participants saw the ritual interiorization of the female other as a crucial way of breaking down patriarchal structures which stifled the emotional lives of men and culturally marginalized women. The crisis in masculinity was often viewed as the first important expression of such a breakdown and, counter-intuitively, was greeted positively by respondents. The MGM was often perceived by respondents as a vanguard in a new social order based, like Eisler’s matriarchy, [57] upon co-operation rather than gendered domination. As John observed:
Society cannot go on as it has been ... ”

“ The socially marginalized female becomes the central motif in the spiritual life of these men and ritual becomes the dominant arena were new forms of masculinity are rehearsed and performed. Indeed, rituals act as loci of liminality where norms are inverted, and where opposites meet and are psychically interiorized. [56] Gender polarities are common within mainstream Pagan ritual practices, but, as we have seen, such polarities are built upon mythopoetic essentialisms. ”

“ In particular, he spoke of masturbatory rites in which he would imagine Goddess archetypes whilst, as he put it, ‘sacrificing my seed to the feminine divine.’ [8] He pointed to a small roughly hewn stone set beside the fireplace – a so-called Sheela na gig –, a grinning female figure holding open with her hands a swollen vulva – as emblematic of this feminization of his spirituality. John discussed the way in which this marked an important turning point in his spiritual and sexual life. ”

“ Such revisions concerning explicitly feminist and egalitarian models of worship by Goddess spiritualists also have had concomitant effects on the way they view the histories of patriarchy and misogyny. That is, goddess worship has often become associated with a revisionist historiography, accompanied by eco-feminist sentiment which equates nature with the feminine body. ”

“ Indeed, it is founded upon a rejection of those essentialist constructions of mythopoetic masculinity within the first wave of the Pagan Men’s Movement. [60] Demographically the MGM might conform closely to the broader Pagan movement, but it presents a radicalized version of mainstream dynamics, particularly in the arena of ritual practice. As stated, mainstream Paganisms are often constructed around essentialized polarities of gender. Wiccan ritual practice, for example, is empowered by the magical dynamic between masculinity and femininity (as exemplified by Drawing Down The Moon) . ”

“ Likewise, in terms of age, there was a divergence from mainstream Paganisms with a greater representation of younger men, particularly young gay men. Whilst Pagans as a whole are predominantly drawn from the generation of baby boomers (being born between 1946 and 1964) , the age profile of my participants was as follows:
For gay respondents, 67 per cent of practitioners were aged 39 or below. ”

“ Research consistently suggests that Pagans have overrepresentations of educated middle-class professionals. [40] The MGM, as it turned out, was even more dominated by educated professionals than other Paganisms. Eighty-six per cent of participants were educated to at least undergraduate degree level, with 31 per cent possessing postgraduate qualifications including 6 per cent possessing doctorates. Ninety-seven per cent of respondents classified themselves as either being ‘professional’ and/or ‘self-employed’. ”

“ Of the World.’ This notion that the Goddess completes the male psyche with ‘female energies’ is crucial to our understanding of MGM practices.
The Interiorization of Otherness
As the sociological profile of the MGM suggests, practitioners broadly conform to the wider dynamics of other Contemporary Pagan paths. Because of this the MGM shares many features with these spiritualities and can be theorized in congruent ways. Howard Eilberg-Schwartz has characterized Contemporary Paganism as part of an Enlightenment legacy which prizes premodern wisdom as a critique of modern life. ”

“ However, despite Smith’s fears, evidence suggests that numbers of Pagan men are turning away from androcentric mythopoetic figures such as the Green Man and the Horned God towards female spiritual archetypes. ”