i believe we are creatures of balance and naturally are attracted to that which we believe will further complement us. as rumi says in this poem:
God’s wisdom made us lovers of one another.
In fact all particles of the world
are in love and looking for lovers.
and
A thirsty man calls out, ‘Delcious water,
where are you?’ while the water moans,
‘Where is the water drinker?’
This morning I woke up with images of the whore archetype and a longing for connection with this part of myself. As it goes on the earth plane, sometimes things can get confusing due to us all being from one source, yet simultaneously in separate bodies. We have full potential to embody everything in the universe, yet the nature of our individual identities means that we only express parts at a time, instead of the whole. So oftentimes we go looking for complementary parts or balancing characters which exist in forms outside of ourselves instead of uniting ourselves whole from within. I’m not saying there is no point in relationship and we should be ultimately whole within ourselves and alone, but that awareness is key in developing relationships and it can be helpful (wholesome) to be aware of projecting characteristics that are possible for us to embody onto other people (whether praise or judgment).
So I awoke this morning with a longing for the whore, a desire to be united with her. In particular, a feeling of a girl I dated for a hot second who magnifies the symbolism of this energy in my consciousness actually played in my mind. And if you’re interested in reading more about symbolic/realistic/spiritual writings on sex from me, including more in-depth poetics of my experiences, you may be interested in purhcasing Earthy, a chapbook I self-published on 12.21.12. I still have a handful of copies available here.
I have been reading The Heroine’s Journey by Maureen Murdock (she writes from a similar space as Jung & Campbell per the Hero’s Journey from a feminist perspective) and have been further enlightened/surprised at the manifestation of the prizing of the masculine over the feminine- even amid women. How women, like men, are encouraged to more fully embrace the masculine and have no balance of the feminine within themselves and how this is often rewarded in our culture, though it costs the woman a separation from herself. Feminine aspects such as nurturance, relationship building, cooperation, creativity often drop off the plane of crucial life-skills. Along with this often goes wild sexuality because this is an uncontrollable (therefore scary & unknowable) aspect of the feminine which has no place in a (approved, above-ground) masculine world. The book is enlightening and essential to understanding the development of our culture. How women are joining and rising to the top of the culturally sanctioned work-force but oftentimes do so by denying and forsaking their feminine nature.
This brings me back to the whore. If masculinity triumphs by doing away with the feminine and only has anything to do with it if it fits nicely into the sanctioned box, what about the whore? Yes, she is still attractive as ever, but within an anti-feminine, sexuality-safe-and-in-a-box perspective, she is relegated to the dark corners of the night. She is hidden & secret. The whore, naturally, is the aspect of femininity which is longed-for but hardly spoken of in the light of day. She is the at-night, dark-alley, secret-shhh, oh-god-i-want-it-so-bad-but-don’t-tell-anyone, luscious and plump aspect of female sexuality and sexuality in general that gives and gives and gives. She is pleasurable, unruly, boundless. And laughing. She is powerful.
It was this image I woke up to. To me, the whore is plump & fecund. She is everything the boxed-in female isn’t. She is loud & voluptuous, uproarious. She laughs in your face & sits at her make-up stand drinking a glass of chardonnay. She is cozy to me in her proportions and so generous. In her essence, the whore is generosity with knowledge of her own power. She is everything the scant, quiet, enslaved, ashamed aspect of femininity isn’t. She represents life and her cunt is open & inviting, beckoning.
As I read The Heroine’s Journey, I am shocked at the way pieces come together. It’s not that “men are bad” or inherently evil. And women certainly aren’t either, especially sexually. It’s that the archetypal dichotomy of feminine/masculine has long been tipped in favor of masculinity, that drive it home, push, aggressive, dominant, possessive, be strong, overpowering part. It’s that the nature of femininity has been naturally devalued in the face of a culture where outwardly one has to conform to the above-mentioned principles or else is trampled, forgotten, exploited or silenced. It’s not that men and women are only masculine or feminine, but that the feminine parts of ourselves have been devalued, pushed under and scared into submission, and, in a masculinity-dominated context, serve no primary function besides that of submissive counterpart. Archetypally, all of facets of our collective being exist, yet parts get hidden in the face of What Counts culturally. In the competitive game of survival, which our capitalistic economy is based on, the feminine aspect, which is an integral part of our evolution as mammals who live in community, nurture one another and cooperate to survive, is a subservient counterpart to the championed masculinity.
This is where the whore comes in. Oh she has not left us! But she does hold a place in the psyche that we wouldn’t bring over to show grandma or proudly champion in front of our bosses or children. The whore is the uniting aspect of the feminine that we need right now. She represents the extreme archetype to bring the boxed-in, silenced, emaciated, sexually-kept, acceptable feminine into harmony. For me, imagining the soft curves of my whore archetype~ the way she is so generous and open and affable, the way she expands in her freedom with a sense of humor and also is beautiful and regal and no, not perfect, but full. The way she gives and gives and gives helps me to come to more peace with my own femininity, with my own being and self. By accepting what she represents to me, I become more whole. No longer hidden, her brazenness to be herself, to be soft, to be BIG & in-her-power, to be SEXXXXY complements, fulfills and satisfies my image of woman and helps me grow.
i’m curious, what’s are your thoughts on your relationship with the whore archetype?
falling leaves as they come 