On Wed, 22 Mar 1995, Katrin Zafiriadis wrote:
The gendering of the earth as woman happens in one of 4
> possible ways: 1. as a romanticized female needing protection, 2.as a
> victimized woman, 3.as a woman caretaker/breeder who constantly
> replenishes and provides for all as a mother would or as 4.as a wild
> uncontrollable woman- who needs to be subdued. These four depictions
> each have their own problems associated with them, briefly I will
> outline each.
>
This may be the way that you and some others perceive, but this is far
from the only perspective. All of these examples that you depict are the
result of patriarchal culture and saying that depicting the Earth as
Mother only perpetuates these perspectives then gives power back over to
cultural paradigm that depicts both the Earth and women this way.
I do not regard "mother" as any of these things. I regard mother as
protector/nurturer/life-giver/limit setter. I regard woman and mother as
a powerful being, a mysterious being, a magickal being.
Your objection is very similar to those who object to using the word
"witch" to describe one's self. That if we say "witch" then we will
alienate some people. This is probably true, but where the power is in
this is in the *reclaiming* of a word which is a very powerful,
empowering word.
>From Starhawk, _Truth or Dare_:
"Those who practice magic can be called many things: magicians, shamans,
mystics. I myself am a Witch. *Witch* comes from the Anglo-Saxon root
*wic* meaning to bend or shape - to shape reality, to make magic.
Witches bend energy and shape consciousness. We were-and are- shamans,
healers, explorers of powers that do not fit the usual systems of
control. Those powers are rightly perceived as dangerous to the
established order, and so we have been taught to view them as evil or
delusionary....
(a large explanation of witchcraft and it's history)
"I call myself a Witch even through I am fully aware that the word often
produces fear. until we confront the fears and stereotypes evoked by the
word, we cannot contact the powers that are also embedded there.
"The word *Witch* throws us back into a world who is a being, a world in
which everything is alive and speaking, if only we learn its language.
The word brings us back to the outlawed awareness of the immanence of the
sacred, and so it reeks of a holy stubbornness, an unwillingness to
believe that the living milk of nurture that we drink daily from the
flowing world can be reduced to formula administered from a machine.
"To be a Witch is to make a commitment to the Goddess, to the protection,
preservation, nurturing and fostering of the great powers of life as they
emerge in every being. In these discussions of power, that, then is my
bias: I am on the side of the power that emerges from within, that is
inherent in us as the power to grow in inherent in seed. As a shaper, as
one who practices magic, my work is to find that power, to call it foth,
to coax it out of hiding, tend it, and free it of contrictions. In a
society based on power-over, that work inevitably must result in conflict
with the forces of domination, for we cannot bear our own true fruit when
we are under another's control.
"To practice magic is to bear the responsibility for having a vision, for
we work magic by envisioning what we want to create, clearing the
obstacles in our way, and then directing energy through that vision.
Magic works through the concrete; our ideals, our visions, are
meaningless until they are in some way enacted. So, if our work is to
evoke power-from-within, we must clearly envision the conditions that
would allow that power to come forth, we must identify what blocks it,
and create the conditions that foster empowerment. Given a world based
on power-over, we must remake the world."
pp7-8
By calling ourselves Witch, then, we are giving ourselves back our power,
and reclaiming our responsibility to the world. By calling the Earth
Mother, we are giving Her back Her power, and confronting the energy of
the power-over paradigm that seeks to destroy Her. She is hardly the
"little woman", she is a powerful, forceful, creative being. She can
wreak havoc on us humans. But She also sustains us.
What I am really uncomfortable with is this disenfranchisement of what it
means to BE a mother. these things that you say are not my perception of
Mother at all, these are not my experience whatsoever. If this is the
way that patriarchy perceives Motherhood to be, then the problem is in
THEIR lack of vision, their lack of clarity, not in the Mother, nor in
our use of that word to define that role. If we want their perception to
change then we must show them what our perception is, we must confront
their lack of insight and challenge it at it's base. As long as we give
in to the very power-over paradigm which control the words we use, and
controls the way in which we challenge them, then we are giving into the
methods that caused the problems. If we give into their perception then
we have lost the battle before we've even gotten an opportunity to get
involved. Words are VERY powerful things. I purposefully use the E as
M, as a means to stir up consciousness, as a means to challenge the
power-over paradigm. It is akin to a spell. And from the discussion
here on this list, it seems to have worked! ;-)
I hope that I expressed this clearly, I know what I want to say inside,
but I think I might have muddled a bit, I'll probably comment on this
again, hopefully in a clearer manner.
Joy Williams
>From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thu Mar 23 13:20:07 MST 1995
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 1995 15:19:58 -0400 (EDT)
Date-warning: Date header was inserted by acs.wooster.edu
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Susan Clayton)
Subject: earth as mother
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
So many people have said things on both sides that I agree with.
Maybe it means something different for women to think of the Earth as
Mother (a strong, nurturing figure with which/whom they can identify) than
for men to think of the Earth as Mother (a limitless source of resources
which they can count on to give without expecting any return and which is,
for them, a somewhat incomprehensible figure). \
I hate to suggest that men and women have fundamentally different
perspectives. Maybe what I mean is that one way of thinking of the earth
as mother is more masculine (although some women share in this view) and
one way is more feminine (although some men share in this view). In using
such a metaphor, we would need to be aware of the implications for both
viewpoints.
That said, I myself am uncomfortable with the metaphor. My fear is that it
would stop being seen as a metaphor and be perceived as an equivalence. But
I don't mean to imply that my discomfort should generalize to anyone else.
Susan
