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| Visionary Dance Oracle Card #4: Masculinus |
[NOTE: Here is a YouTube video of Mary Power's "Visionary Dance Oracle #4: Masculinus," delivered from the Lodge Tea Room via Facebook Live on 8/22/21. This is the second in a series of Lodge presentations on her compelling new work, "Visionary Dance Oracle: A Book of the Soul." In this post, we have also included the full text of Mary's talk (see below). Our Facebook Live program is free and open to all. You can find us at https://www.facebook.com/sfts.lodge/ For more information on "Visionary Dance Oracle," visit Mary's Dance Art Cafe on etsy.com]
VIDEO: Mary Power - "Visionary Dance Oracle Card #4: Masculinus" (8/22/21)
Full Text of Mary's Remarks -
Welcome to the Facebook Live Broadcast from San Francisco Theosophical Society.
My name is Mary Power and I’m here, talking about the Visionary Dance Oracle Card number 4. Masculinus.
For
over a month now, I’ve been living with a large art poster of this
card, Masculinus. It’s been an intense meditation to say the least.
Consider it like a yoga practice of “union” where you can dive as deep
as you want to go. The book I wrote, Visionary Dance Oracle, A Book of the Soul
came out at the start of April this year (2021.) The cards I designed
correspond to the Major Arcana of the Tarot. Keep in mind this card,
Masculinus, relates to the Emperor card of the Tarot.
When
drawing only one card from the Visionary Dance Oracle Deck, it’s best to
use it as a living meditation. It’s an opening of the understanding to
mystery.
The discovery grows. And material for choreography and
plans are inspired by the growth, by the colors and images nourish inner
eyes seeking understanding, of oneself, of others. We are microcosmic
worlds within the macrocosm. These cards produce dance, both
metaphorically and literally. There’s no one single interpretation. It
reminds me of that story about the blind people describing what an
elephant looked like. It depended on their personal experience, location
and ability to communicate. One voice among them never came close to
describing an elephant. But all of their descriptions put together, came
closer to describing what an elephant looked like.
At the
lodge, we like those kinds of discussions. Since I am Madame President, I
invite you to contribute respectful insights and questions in the
comments section for online “discussion.”
I’m going to begin by stating the obvious, “Men are different from women.”
We
could effortlessly list our present and past grievances in our
differences, as well as the good points. Maybe we would uncover how the
patriarchal iron age affects us the same or differently. We could
identify and discuss in detail, with specific examples the public and
personal creative performances given by great men and by evil men and
the women in their shadow. His story shaped in his image, usually
erasing whole chunks of horrific actions, sometimes exaggerating
cowardly actions to heroic levels. Sometimes names of the real heroes no
matter gender, class, race, or economic status make it into history.
We are humans born out of dance into a world of cycles, both natural and manmade.
Man’s
world builds and destroys in war and peace, with rape and suffering,
with both great and terrible imposing architecture, with advanced
technology and all forms of slavery. The rise and fall of civilizations
seem to repeat without considerable mindfulness of the lesson to learn.
Nature is becoming ever more distant to human understanding.
Would
the human population be the problem if we knew how to live with nature?
I don’t know. We don’t know how to live with nature. Village life has
changed forever. Vital ceremonies once held us close to nature. Seasons
and moons caused ancient celebrations with appeals to the life-healing
forces of earth, moon and stars. Weused to implore the spirit of these
life-giving forces to increase our fecundity and well-being. Not just
for ourselves but for all the earth’s ecosystems. We can’t go back. East
meets West and North meets South. This is the center of where we are.
In the information age with the world library at our fingertips, we have
a new technologies in the mix with greater possibility to re-learn how
to be human.
I’ve been researching Pythagoras. It didn’t take
long to figure out that most of the ancient Greek philosophies could be
traced straight back to ancient goddesses. The women taught the men
ancient mysteries. Some men, like Pythagoras, carried it forward with
open doors for women and men in their schools. But mostly doors were
closed to women.
The ancient mystic Pythagoras was a student and
teacher of the Orphic and Delphic mysteries. A Greek man who discovered
the divine harmony within the length of musical strings and the wisdom
and beauty within numbers and mathematics. He found that all even
numbers feminine and all odd numbers masculine. He determined the number
4 to represent space, and justice. (For any feminist sci-artists here,
checkout Margaret Werthheim's Pythagoras’ Trousers 1997 and her other great titles).
I
have been given this crown by my deer brother. I speak to you as I am,
one woman among sons, brothers, fathers, grandfathers, enemies, friends
and lovers. It is with bias, personal life experience, observation, deep
ongoing study and research from credible sources, that I tell you, the
feminine is cannot now nor will it ever be absent from the discussion on
the masculine. And vice versa. The masculine and feminine are
inseparable and different. The yin and yang are inseparable and
different.
Awareness of this IS the basis of the Oracle. It is
not linear and it is linear. There is reason and logic based on cause
and effect. Then there are unknown measures beyond cause and effect.
Holding the dilemma of time and space, is like holding the dilemma of
suffering and joy at once in your heart. It is the greatest challenge
for our times. (Rhythmic music like Funk music is helps keep the
response ability to joy circulating in your bones. I got ants in my
pants and I need to dance. Watching sports and/or playing sports with
friends releases steam.)
The attitude of inseparable flow of yin and yang, is taken from the study of the ancient Chinese master Fu Hi, precursor to the I Ching of Confucius and to the Tao te Ching of
Lao Tsu. As a woman and a dancer, I prefer this ancient line of wisdom
to guide my understanding of a world in perpetual motion. The
inseparable flow of yin and yang in motion endures any intellectual
logic by including the practicality of unknown possibility. Logic and
possibility are bound in a mutually crucial role of predictability. In
other words, it’s a view of the vertical alignments of time coming
together, moment by moment. We call it luck. Synchronicities inhabited
by logic seem unrelated. Even though their probability and possibility
presents innumerable opportunity.
I like this view because it’s a guilt-free view, sans the Judeo-Christian, Adam and Eve guilt. I’ve been looking at Carl Jung’s Mysterium Coniunctionis (1963).
Say it three times Coniunctionis man. Coniunctionis. It turns out the
medieval-Kabalistic alchemists embedded guilt and shame to new levels in
the Adam and Eve myth. According to Jung’s extensive research on the
alchemists of old regarding Adam and Eve, he found little to nothing on
the alchemy of Eve.
That’s infuriating but there’s more. The sophisticated alchemists of that time didn’t even notice.
They elevated the primordial man, Adam, as the esteemed androgynous Man.
In
this story, Adam as androgynous, never really needed Eve’s rib donation
anyway, no ribbing. Adam had alchemically absorbed the feminine/yin Eve
into him. At first this may sound promising, as an integration, as
Coniunctionis.
But no, it’s not conjunction it’s annihilation.
Adam’s absorption of the yin operates as an obliteration of the feminine
quality entirely. Not only that, the yin quality, the feminine and Eve
herself was further designated as a succubus, a feminine demon, a femon
who lived inside the man with the sole purpose to drive him insane. Yin
was evil within man.
It easily translated into physical violence
and the subjugation of women. It was and always has been the fault of
Eve, the fall of Eve. And without exception, she was the evil one when
Adam decided to use his swizzle stick to stir the cauldron. There it is
shame, blame and humiliation of the masculine-Adam, with a healthy
plopping of guilt and damnation all over everybody but especially the
whorish feminine-Eve.
In summary, fear of being a whole man, can
only be overcome possessing and subjugating the feminine quality.
Otherwise, the greater fear is going insane by being possessed by it. At
any rate, it’s her fault when he goes nuts.
Now back to
deepening our understanding of Masculinus from the Taoist view of
masculine-feminine, yin-yang as action-reception, light-dark. Here’s a
story that exemplifies how to use the perspective of yin and yang in
Oracle seer-ship. I’ve modernized the ancient story somewhat.
There was once a King Mountain, full, bountiful and cared for. It was
filled with beautiful ancient forests, timber, birds and all kinds of
wildlife. The name King is meant to imply a yang power. However, King
Mountain stood in the yin position to the higher and larger Queen
Mountain, implying a feminine power in the yang position. This
King-Queen Mountain symbol indicates the King was receptive to the
feminine power of the Queen.
The Queen Mountain by some evil
means had been stripped of all resource, of its gems and gold,
ecosystems and wildlife. It was no longer covered with an old-growth
forest canopy. The King Mountain remained the stronghold of such beauty,
sustaining all the old groves, their ecosystems and all manner of life
and timber. It was said, the King Mountain bowed with purpose and
understanding before the Queen Mountain, without a sense of inadequacy.
Unfortunately
as generations wore on, the nearby city filled with humans no longer in
touch with the value or care for the King Mountain. The people
justified bulldozing the forest completely. The old springs were covered
over with thick concrete and the ancient ecosystems were lost.
Where would the spirit of the elder forest go?
Overtime
the ancient forest was forgotten as if it never existed in the first
place. It would seem King Mountain had always been a place of pay
parking lots and condominiums as if this was normal. It appeared to be
normal. Normal.
“In what is inherent in man, is there no sense
of love and righteousness? That which makes man disregard his good
nature is similar to what the axes and hatchets have done to the trees.
Battered incessantly day in day out, how can man’s good nature retain
its beauty? His diurnal rest and the balmy air of the dawn may indeed
restore to his good nature a semblance of human aspiration and aversion.
But then his daily activities tend to destroy it. As this destructive
process recurs again and again, he fails to preserve his nocturnal
breath with its recuperative potency, and this failure reduces him to a
state little different from a beast. And when people see him in this
beastly state, they think he never had any human attributes. Is this
normal nature of man?” (The original story is from a Confucian sage,
Mencius, and this excerpt of his story is taken from Henry Wei’s “The Guiding Light of Lao Tsu"published 1982).
The
historical idea of superiority is the basis of fascism, white
supremacy, racism, and misogyny. Its poison is insidious effecting all
relations, human, animal, flora and fauna ecosystems, mineral, earth,
sky, water, etc. The toxicity of superiority, the eons of patriarchal
reign that consume our world are not normal.
The magnitude of
abnormality and hubris is found with a blind certainty among some men in
power who believe the ultimate solution to total consumption and
destruction of climate earth is a fresh start on Mars. Have you seen the
rover pictures of Mars? I say good riddance. Please go, the sooner the
better.
And if you go, know this, humans will carry their evil
with them wherever they run. The lessons must be learned here on earth.
The balance of the earth’s ecosystems can be cared for, retained,
restored, recharged and related to. If Earth’s lessons aren’t learned,
woe to him who looks for solace on Mars. Just sayin’.
How are
we to restore, recharge? How do we relate again? By changing our view.
And by the way, it wouldn’t hurt to develop a functional sense of humor
with a healthy dose of common sense.
In the Visionary Dance
Oracle, A Book of the Soul I wrote the dance motif for Card 4.
Masculinus, to bring us into the way of response ability: “Examine
pathways already paved by historic and mythic figures, then create your
own long-lasting dance path. Go big or go home. Or take it down a notch
depending on insight and counsel, read the room. Make FRIENDS.” This
card signals you to draw upon your courage and lay the groundwork for
your dance piece/peace.
The superiority complex, the root of
Racism/Fascism destroys unity, to prove its stupid opinion is better
than everyone else’s Racism/Fascism demeans and isolates by inflicting
pain and suffering with injury so horrific it breaks the spirit, seeking
to extinguish the light of beauty. The brutal scars cannot fully heal
while oppression seeks to make the logical recourse bitterness and
hatred, perpetuating the cycle of evil. The venom of superiority is
murderous, not superior.
Fear is weaponized to oppress us. By
targeting and vilifying difference, fear is amplified. Everyone becomes
suspect, friend and foe. Fear is an excruciating blindness, an eye for
an eye, seems easier than the effort to make friends.
Courage
is not the absence of fear. Courage is some kind of clear light, the
light of seeing past present and future unbound. Once the clear light
rushes in, the guck of hundreds if not thousands of years is removed
from our heart-vision.
The source of the clear light cannot be
possessed or owned. It gives courage to grow our view beyond our pain
and sorrow and fear. We can discern friend from foe once again. We can.
It’s more than a seal of alliance between the King and the Queen,
Masculinus and Femininus. It is viewing the inseparable motion of yin
and yang with grave knowledge and joyous agreement in the value of
beauty within our world, the wisdom of taking heart.
Human actions are being called into question.
Man has within his power to stand in relationship with himself and nature.
He has the capacity to take up his rightful place as the King Mountain, Masculinus.
One so endowed becomes the strength within the whole awe-inspiring beauty of the mountain.
In
closing, our greatest challenge to see the power of beauty within and
guard it for all time. The toxicity of hate, and the destiny of all
haters, will destroy everything once loved and cared for. This card
helps to develop the wild spirit of beauty’s power within the
courageous.
Remember, Masculinus, you will become what you hate.
And also remember, the internal and external dance of yin and yang is
inseparable motion.
May all beings be well. May all being happy. Peace. Peace. Peace.
Thank you.
