The above is a display of the feminine disposition, I spoke of.
Where a man (masculine) seeks to cut away and become distinct, superior, discriminating between ‘I’ and ‘it’ or ‘you’ or ‘other’ - independently self seeking its own completion - the woman (feminine) attempts to lose self in the multiplicity or through the union – dependently self seeking its own abolition.
Individuality, after all, is about discriminating.
The responsibility and isolation and insecurity of being a single entity cannot be tolerated for long and by all to the same degree.
One must take on the full responsibility of Becoming – not only of one’s own personal ephemeral life but for all the past that was part of this Becoming even before one existed.
When I become responsible I overcome my entire history. I surpass the decisions and choices of my every ancestor that participated in my existence. I break free.
Heidegger describes this as overcoming one’s vengeance against what has-been, when he analyzed Nietzsche’s metaphysical thought in “What is Thinkingâ€.
To exist is to be held accountable for what has-been and for what contributed to one’s existence.
I do not choose to exist, or where or when or how to exist, I do not choose my sex or my physical characteristics or my tastes – all this is decided for me – but I am held accountable for it and so I resent it and feel the burden of responsibility on account of it.
My father’s deeds are no less my deeds even though I try to deny them and to excuse myself from them.
One escapes it through the other. One sacrifices self for survival or comfort.
The process of feminization is one that makes each participant dependant on the whole, so that it cannot even imagine going at it alone, even if there were frontiers to escape into.
Then the male becomes introspective rather than explorative.
The frontiers of selfness are the only things left to it.
The description that is offered, in the previous post, is the sensation of losing self, the ecstasy of unburdening one’s self from freedom or responsibility. One grabs onto the other and tries to become greater with him or through him.
The experience becomes mystical, in that it cannot be explained in any other way but to surrender to the emotion and the sensation of it.
It has to remain magical because any explanation, any deconstruction, will break the magic of it.
Of course this is an idealized description since very few intimate experiences even approach this level of abandonment for long. The mind resists the loss and seeks to maintain the original unity of ‘self’ intact.
Consciousness is about discrimination and so mistrust and ego get in the way of a complete loss of self.
In creatures with less consciousness the experience approaches perfection. There is less individuality to overcome and less of a sense of self to lose. Ants act in unison because they lack human consciousness.
This is why social groups force a loss of consciousness, awareness so as to facilitate cohesion.
Dumbing-Down is necessary. The ‘dumber’ you are the more successful within the unity you will become.
In the previous post we can also see the difference between the male and female perspective.
The male perspective experiences the same thing as conquest, exaltation, domination and empowerment.
The female experiences the same thing as abandonment, surrender, absorption the ecstasy of loss of self, through emotional inebriation.
Love clouds the mind, like any chemical, and the sense of self is lost. Unity and interaction becomes possible to a living entity that knows only self and cares only about self.
Love becomes magical and mystical. It then can be raised to the status of Godliness.
God becomes Love, the glue that binds all existence and prevents any arrogant escape.
One must remain thankful to the other but it is this gratitude that he resents.
We secretly resent our benefactors because we have become dependant on their help and support – they dominate us with it and exhibit their superiority by giving.
Satyr, these posts get to the crux of what I might call the modern problem - my problem with modernity. I cannot give you enough praise and therefore I will refrain from it altogether. I do have some ideas I would like you to consider, though they do not necessarily form a unified whole in this post.
The first is this. I wrote it in a post on the KillDevilHill Philosophy forum last year.
There are wolves in Canada, aren’t there? I think I might understand why you are living there. So thinly populated, eh? Not to mention the environment.
I also wanted to say something about gods. You say the masculine pole of human nature is the Apollinian, the feminine one, the Dionysian. A Nietzschean I will call Moody Lawless has a different perspective:
In my various occult and religious studies (I am the one you scorned for being a devotee of Krishna on the already mentioned Philosophy forum; the one who said of you that he felt “the power of Shiva [was] strong within you”. I did not really mean Shiva then; I meant Rudra. But nevermind that now) - in my various studies I combined Aristotle’s system of the elements with the Indian system. The former looks like this:
First, let us interpret this scheme in the light of a fragment of Heraclitus:
Fire, dying and becoming air, moves through their shared property, heat.
Now the classical Indian elements are the same foursome. But the Indians do not divide them into properties such as heat, but in sattva, rajas and tamas. Tamas, usually translated as “ignorance”, literally means 'darkness". As you can see, both Aristotle and the Indians divide the four elements over three properties.
I hope you will bear with me. I am getting somewhere.
I have identified rajas with Bhairava (Rudra/Shiva), who, according to the Transgressive Sacrality homepage - http://www.svabhinava.org/articles/index.php - corresponds to Dionysus, and sattva with Vishnu, who accordingly corresponds to Apollo.
Now - and I guess I should have said this earlier, for clarity’s sake - the Indians do not divide the elements into two characteristics which share equally in their make-up, but divide them as follows:
Fire is sattva above rajas;
Air is rajas above sattva;
Water rajas above tamas;
and Earth is tamas above rajas.
We can now interpret Fire and Air as follows.
Fire is Apollo above Dionysus: the Dionysian passion is controlled.
Air is Dionysus above Apollo, the water breaking through or overflowing its dams.
Fire is both hot and dry. About dryness, Heraclitus said the following:
“The dry soul is the wisest and the best.”
In the transition from Fire to Air, however, the soul loses its property of dryness:
“A person, when he gets drunk, is led by a beardless lad, tripping, knowing not where he steps, having his soul moist.”
[again, Heraclitus.]
Dionysus is, of course, the god of drunkenness.
Okay, so now we have arrived at the element in which the Dionysian rules, of which you said that it was the feminine pole. But according to Moody Lawless, Apollo/Dionysus is but the polarity of the Greek male. I think the Apollinian is indeed male-only, but not so the Dionysian. The Dionysian, rajas, wetness, is shared by the female. So the female polarity includes Dionysus, as its highest pole (whereas in the male it is the lowest). Dionysus is both intensely masculine and intensely feminine. Ovidius has a female devotee say the following of him in his Metamorphoses:
“Your countenance is beautiful like a girl’s,
When you show yourself without horns”.
In archaic depictions, Dionysus is shown as a satyr, whereas later he is depicted more and more womanlike. The female devotees of Dionysus are the Maenads, literally “madwomen” (I know I do not need to tell you this): they are mad in the head, but still women, still human. The satyrs however, which I consider to be his male devotees, are transfigured: they are no longer human; they become demigods, half god half beast. Their madness comes not from above, but from below. It comes from the ground, it is the dark, earthly fire, which transforms their legs into goat’s legs. The male’s reason comes from the sun, Apollo, whereas his passion comes from the earth, Dionysus.
But I am digressing. What concerns us now is the polarity of the female. One of these, the highest, is Dionysus. Then what is the lowest?
Note that Moody Lawless compares the splendid male archetype to the Greek, and the not so splendid, but no less awe-inspiring female archetype to the Amazon. The Amazon is a force to be reckoned with. She is a devotee of Artemis, the moon goddess, who in Greek mythology is, of course, Apollo’s sister.
Now we have Dionysus and Artemis as the two poles of the female archetype. Artemis is a moon goddess; the elements composing the female archetype are Water and Earth. Moon, water, earth - can we fail to be reminded of the menstrual cycle?
Now Dion Fortune, herself a woman, gives the following description of Artemis in The Mystical Qabalah:
That is to say: there are times when the female is receptive, indeed, positively yearning for Dionysus; and there are times when her wellspring has dried up, when she is infertile. Then she is in the element Earth, which is cold and dry, and not in Water, which is cold and wet. That the female is cold and the male is hot may be explained as follows. When Apollo controls Dionysus, the moistness of the male soul is overcome. When Dionysus preponderates, the male soul is overcome by moistness. But moistness, the downfall or at least temptation of the male soul, is salvation for the female. It is here that the male and the female unite. It is here that the female is impregnated. It is here that the male, in modern society, makes himself dependent of the female (from which moment on his soul belongs to the Satan, to the archenemy of the male - to "God’ (the herd)).
It is there, in Water, that the female’s passion predominates over her tamas, her inertia. When her inertia predominates there is dearth. It is the wintry cold in which Persephone sleeps. She is only warmed, only made into Demeter, by Zeus.
Funny.
I got banned from that forum over 6 years ago.
Yes. The climate is also conducive for seclusion.
But I live in a city.
There can be no more isolating place than a city.
I agree with your thoughts.
I use the metaphor of the wine drinker, myself.
A wine connoisseur with a sensitive palate will be more selective and discriminating with what wine he prefers to have at his table.
He might drink any swill when the other offers it but his taste will make accepting inferior wine difficult to ….swallow.
The ignorant, common, insensitive wine drinker will drink anything within a certain price range and taste range.
His palate can be satisfied with a lesser wine. He is ‘happy’ with less because he cannot appreciate anything more and never becomes aware of an imperfection or perfection.
‘Ignorance is bliss.’ The less aware you are the more likely you are to be satisfied because you cannot tell the difference.
This is why animals are so ‘satisfied’.
This discriminating sensitivity identifies or distinguishes the wine connoisseur.
It characterizes him in relation to another or to the more insensitive wine drinker.
Sartre, I think, mentioned how identity is built on deciding what one is not so as to establish what one is in relation to another, as all value judgments are comparisons.
I am me because I am not you or him.
This is discrimination.
The more self-conscious I am the less tolerant I am of another’s intervention – the less I need a common, average other. I seek a more satisfying companion and I would prefer solitude to just anybody.
The more sense of self you have, the more discriminating your tastes are, the more sensitive your awareness is, and the more a sense of identity you possess then the les likely you are to accept dissolution of self.
You become more distrustful of anything that demands a sacrifice of self or of personal identity or of independence.
Women, for me, represent the more primitive, instinctive elements of human nature.
They are instinct/intuition to male intellect/reason.
Both elements coexist within both males and females to different degrees.
The amazons represent nature gone wild, unleashed and uncontrolled.
Gender-rolls and self-image are quite cultural, and “masculine” in one land can potentially be “feminine” in the other.
But I was wondering:
On average, which of the two sexes is more destructive?
[I know about the violent crimes and rape ratios, and I know feminist hate-forms grew in reaction to the worst of the male idiots [and then got deformed by the female idiots]… but really, which of the sexes is more healthy to be around?]
I disagree.
Gender is partly cultural and partly natural.
There are commonalities to gender roles across cultures.
I would say that it is preferable to be around females.
Being social and civil and diplomatic is what females do best.
If, on the other hand, you seek a challenge then a male is your best companion.
‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’‘’’
Then again…
The ancient Greeks separated love into agape and eros.
They thought women were capable of eros but not of agape. Only men could feel this deeper connection.
I tend to agree.
I think men develop emotions for someone slower but the emotions they develop are deeper and longer lasting.
I think we are getting lost in symbolism and male narcissism.
Is it a male form of satisfaction without sex to adore yourself with the pretty picture of your monumental and intellectual self-image?
Why are you persuading yourself about your greatness and individuality? Isn’t it obvious? It seems it is not for you.
You didn’t answer really my argument, that “I think there is only one female quality: to give birth to a child. There is just one male quality: to impregnate a female.”.
From this basic idea, you can scientifically prove, that what is the difference and why is a difference between male and female behaviour.
A male and a female in itself is not a human, only a handicapped person.
A handicapped person can convince itself that it is good and magnificent to be handicapped, but it is just an illusion.
Why do you hate me, Zunya? Were you raped or something? If so, you have to realize it’s not the fault of all men. But you obviously can’t really understand men, since you aren’t one.
No, I certainly don’t understand women. You yourself have pointed out that a man can’t understand a woman for that same reason. What you don’t seem to grasp is that you can’t understand any person that isn’t you- and you’ve got your hands full even understanding yourself.
Well, this was in 2003, I guess. It is true that I had not seen you for awhile, but you were there for a short time - if you are indeed the one called WANDERER.
But I’ve changed garbs.
I’ve taken off the Wanderer’s torn Apollonian traveling gear – backpack included; Thus Spake Zarathustra optional – and I now adorn myself with goat’s hooves, horns and a Dionysian pan’s pipe.
It all began with a New Year’s resolution.
Hey, don’t laugh I quit a one-pack smoking habit using the same method.
I’ve abandoned the solitary life on the road for a rump into hedonistic superficiality and madness.
I want to come down off my mountain and walk within the cities.
Did I tell you I’m getting married?
The old ‘me’ would have never even dreamed of such a thing.
The new ‘me’ now laughs and takes few things seriously.
Life’s too short.
Phaedrus
And here we come to it again, the fleeing from ‘being known’ by falling back to the Kantian unknowable, and mysterious thing-in-itself.
“You cannot know me; you can only perceive me superficially†the mind comforts itself when what it is makes it feel uncomfortable or causes it to feel shame under the other’s look.
But I do not follow such bull.
I agree with Sartre on this.
The world reveals itself, completely and obviously, and it is only your eye that fails to perceive it.
The phenomenon is what it is. Its form, shape, color, taste, movement, smell or anything your senses can pick up is the phenomenon.
There is no hidden spirit, no inner core, and no pure soul.
Spirit is your past, participating in your present.
When something is blue, then this blueness is part of what the phenomenon is. It isn’t merely a superficial detail that says nothing.
Nature isn’t superfluous.
The only blueness that’s fake is the painted on kind, the added on blueness – the human intervention blue.
Clothing, makeup, ornaments: these are human interventions hiding, pretending, masking.
Yet, here too, the choice reveals the chooser.
Only the conscious mind can pretend and lie, using words and external add-ons and feigning acts.
But, here too, the words and hypocrisy can only mask so much.
Do I know a mouse?
No.
But the mouse reveals itself in its form and color and movement.
Its behavior is the mouse.
All I have to do is study it and analyze it correctly.
I can know the mouse by how it acts. I can then predict how the mouse will act, if my analysis is correct.
Is there a hidden part of the mouse I can never know?
Yes…perhaps, but it isn’t large enough to cause it to change its behavior and surprise me; it is, therefore, irrelevant.
Do I know a rock?:-?
It has always been humorous to me when I listen to individuals insinuate that there’s more to them than meets the eye or that they are somehow unique or more complicated than they appear to be or sound like, when, in fact, they fall into behavioral patterns and cultural norms that makes them all the more predictable and knowable.
Being female and male is such a pattern.
If human beings were unique and unknowable politics and marketing would be ineffective.
Psychology would have to study individual minds and not human behavior.
Biology, for that matter, would be forced to study individual creatures and it would never make general assumptions about a species nor would it be able to categorize creatures and group them into species and sub-species.
The world would be unknowable and chaotic.
In my experience the simpler a mind is the more complicated it wants to appear that it is and the more complicated it is the more it simplifies itself.
The simple mind wants to hide its simplicity; it feels shame.
The complicated mind wants to be known; it feels pride.
People want to distance themselves from their appearance because they are embarrassed by what they are. They want to be born special and so they believe in the mythological spirit or soul which makes them special without having to earn it.
A person’s opinion speaks volumes about who and what (s)he is; a persons movement and appearance and overall demeanor speaks volumes……
Can you read the signs?
Can you accurately extrapolate the unknown from the known?
That is the question.
All a person is is pulsating need. Which need dominates his psyche and how this need, in unison and in relation to all his needs and the controlling reason, expresses itself or what desires it results in is what makes the individual complicated.
The only thing that is unique about each individual is his personal experiences which influence what parts atrophy, which flourish, which parts have been repressed and which have been allowed free reign.
An individual is a unity of his entire history – going back to before his birth even – he becomes the culmination of every Becoming that participated in his Becoming; he is the peak of an iceberg - most of it lies hidden beneath the waters of time but what shows and how it is shaped says something about what does not show.
Actually, everyone can see that Aristotle divided the elements over four properties - doh! But at least we can say that when rajas is subdued there is drought (in Fire) or dearth (in Earth), whereas when it rules there is moistness/wetness.
All the shamanic Indo-European gods - e.g., Dionysus, Wotan, Shiva - are paradoxical gods, having contradictory characteristics, especially sexually. The Romans identified Wotan with Mercury. Of Mercury, Crowley said that “He is the Logos; and He is phallic.” But Mercury, or Hermes, the father of Hermaphroditus by Aphrodite, was himself kind of a hermaphroditic god.
Apollo, by the way, was not only the opponent of Dionysus, but also the adversary of the monster Typhon, which had been created by Gaia, mother earth. This “dragonslayer” motive is widely spread. The dragon always has connections with the Great Mother, sometimes being even identified with her (as in the case of Tiamat). A sun god vanquishing the Mother/Dragon - this is perhaps the greatest symbol of patriarchy known to man.
Equally widely spread, I guess, is the motive of a fertility goddess whose consort dies, goes to the underworld, and is resurrected. The oldest of these stories is the story of Inanna/Ishtar and Dumuzi/Tammuz, which in Greek mythology is rendered as the story of Adonis and Aphrodite. The name “Adonis” is derived from Dumuzi/Tammuz. But it is my contention that the name “Dionysus” is also a “bastardisation” of this name.
Adonis, when he is in Hades, is the lover of Persephone, Demeter’s daughter. Aphrodite goes to the underworld to get him back. Likewise, Demeter descends into the underworld to get Persephone back.
In Greek mythology, Dionysus is born several times. Though the story of Zeus and Semele is well known, what is less well known is that he was already born as the son of Zeus and Demeter.
By the way, the jealous Hera is the mother goddess yet again, as Ishtar “was equated by the Greeks with either Hera (Latin Juno) or Aphrodite (Latin Venus)” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishtar]. This corresponds to the fact that originally, Isis, not Seth, was the murderer of Osiris, who would eventually be reborn as his son Horus.
This motive really permeates a great part of Greek mythology. I am now reminded of someone calling Zeus and Kronos the white and the black Adonis respectively. The black Adonis comes to power through a crime, but later order is restored by the white Adonis. Zeus is a thundergod, but also a sun god (from the PIE base *dyeu- “to shine”). In fact, I think that Zeus was originally the sun god and Kronos, the thunder god. Both aspects have later been given to Zeus, even as the aspects of both Wotan and Tyr (which is from the same PIE base) in Nordic mythology have later been given to Odin. Also, Wotan and Tyr correspond to Varuna and Mitra in Indian mythology, and “Varuna” is cognate to “Uranus”. But I am going too fast.
The Black Adonis is the thunderstorm, which consists of dark thunderclouds which are discharged and resolved by the redeeming lightning. After this, the tension is gone from the air, and the sun can shine again. So the transgressive act of the Black Adonis - the lightning flash - clears the way for the White Adonis - the sun.
In Indian mythology, Dyeus (also called “Dyaus Pitar”, compare Ju Piter) was the Sky Father, whose consort was the Earth mother (Gaia or Ge/De Meter). These correspond exactly to Uranus and Gaia. But this means that Uranus is really Zeus (Dyeus). So Zeus is castrated as Uranus by Kronos (with the help of Gaia), i.e., the sunny sky is obscured by dark thunderclouds, and this transgression is repeated by Zeus as Zeus (the lightning flash) which clears the way for his reign (the sun in the sky). Zeus, however, is warned by Kronos that the same will happen to him (even as Uranus had warned Kronos): he will be vanquished by his son.
So instead of being vanquished by his son, Zeus got a daughter which would become his favourite. - But with the same woman that told me of the Black and the White Adonis, I had the following conversation:
As my question to her suggests, my interest in these matters is indeed a psychological one. My question refers to Jung’s anima theory. According to Jung, the archetypal male has a masculine consciousness (ego) and a feminine personified unconscious (anima), whereas the archetypal female has a feminine consciousness and a masculine personified unconscious (animus). The female archetype, then, may be the pair Athena/Zeus. Note that Athena, the feminine consciousness, is highly calculating (perhaps this explains the notion of “coldness” discussed earlier). The male archetype, on the other hand, is not simply the opposite, as Zeus was not born from Athena.
In Egyptian mythology, there is the story of Sekhmet. I have been able to interpret about half of the Zodiac in the context of this story.
The supreme god Ra, more or less the Egyptian Zeus, had created man but was not happy with him. Man was becoming godless. Now Ra had two eyes - the sun and the moon. From one of these eyes, he created Sekhmet (compare this with Athena being born from Zeus’s head). In the Zodiac, it is my contention, these two eyes of Ra are the signs of Cancer and Leo, which are ruled by the moon and the sun respectively. From the sun eye of Ra, Sekhmet is created: this is the next sign, Virgo (note, again, the connection with Athena). As Athena was born fully grown and armed, so was Sekhmet. Sekhmet brought slaughter to the domain of man. She had bloodlust, literally - she drank the blood from the fields which were literally flooded with blood (there is also a parallel with Kali here - but nevermind that now). When Ra thought it had been enough, he flooded the plains with red beer. Sekhmet, thinking that it was blood, drank it and fell into a stupor. Thus came about the end of her carnage. But the story does not end here.
When she came to her senses, she was no longer the fierce lion-headed goddess. She had become Hathor, the Egyptian Venus. This is the next sign of the Zodiac, Libra (the Scales - equilibrium, which had been restored to the relation between man and Ra and to Sekhmet’s head, of course), which is indeed ruled by Venus. Hathor literally means “House of Horus”: she was the mother of Horus. We have already seen the connection between Hera and Aphrodite above. So Hathor is the Egyptian Aphrodite, and Isis, the Egyptian Hera.
The next sign of the Zodiac is Scorpio. Now the Scorpio symbol did not originally symbolize a scorpion; it symbolised an eagle and a serpent. And Horus, the son of Hathor, was a falcon-headed god. Now a falcon is not an eagle, but the two are often connected. For instance, the Chinese sign ? means either eagle or falcon (in Japanese, by the way, it either means falcon or hawk - and Ra had the head of a hawk) [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/鷹]. And both the Accapitridae family (eagles and hawks) and the Falconidae family (falcons and caracaras) are often regarded as belonging to the same group, the order of Falconiformes [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accipitriformes].
I said I had been able to interpret about half of the Zodiac in the context of Egyptian mythology. I have yet only discussed five signs. The sixth is the following.
There is a story that one of Ra’s eyes was shattered (I do not know the details) and glued together again by Thoth. I think this eye was the moon, which I could rather imagine being broken to pieces than the sun. In that case, Thoth is the sign of Gemini, which precedes the moon-ruled sign of Cancer, and is itself ruled by Mercury. Thoth was identified with Hermes by the Greeks, whereas Hermes in turn was identified with Mercury by the Romans.
To get to the point, however: I think the male archetype is best represented by Horus/Hathor, the anima being therefore a mother-type figure (this has, of course, been abundantly expounded by Freud). It is also the sun which rises from the earth, the sunlight representing consciousness, the earth (or the sea) the unconscious.
Sauwelios
Dionysus always struck me as feminine or at least ambiguous.
I couldn’t understand why the Greeks depicted him as male.
Concerning Athena.
She represents controlled violence as opposed to Ares.
Her femininity would represent her inability to dominate using brute force which makes her more guileful and strategic.
Being born from Zeus’s head she becomes an idealized female, born out of a male’s imagination.
According to Jung, Nietzsche’s Dionysus was rather like Wotan than like the Greek Dionysus:
I don’t think that Dionysus, up to the Archaic period at least (6th century BCE), exercised his influence mainly on women. I think the satyrs were really the male followers of Dionysus. Nietzsche agrees with me on that:
I think - and this is highly controversial - that the satyrs where really shamans. I was first put onto this track by Robert Graves:
I later found this same idea in the book “Shamanism and Tantra in the Himalayas”:
Psychedelics/entheogens/hallucinogens can have two distinct effects: either hallucinations (not only, but usually visual - i.e., Apollinian), or frenzy (Dionysian). But is it likely that the Greeks really used their brews to wash away the fly agaric?
Originally, Sabazios’ brew was not wine, but beer:
Now as for beer; in Shamanism and Tantra it is said, and sourced, that “among the Germanics it was common at any rate to use henbane in place of the hops.” The Kirati shamans still use henbane. And henbane;
You got me, there. 
But at least we can say that when rajas is subdued there is drought (in Fire) or dearth (in Earth), whereas when it rules there is moistness/wetness.