PRIMAL WAY and THE PATHOLOGY of CIVILIZATION

iUniverse, Inc.

Contents

Introduction to the Way........................................viiThe Way of the East: Giving Birth..............................1The Way of the South: Sacred Hoop..............................14The Way of the West: Coming of Age.............................30The Way of the North: Wisdom of the Elders.....................50The Way of the Center: Being Whole.............................75Bibliography...................................................87

Chapter One

Patriarchal civilization has been in existence for about six thousand years—this against a backdrop of more than a hundred thousand years of human existence. As such, patriarchal civilization is relatively recent. Moreover, it is a radical divergence from previous social conditions. It is my contention that this divergence is pathological.

Prior to the advent of patriarchal civilization, patterns of culture tended to be gynocentric. By this I mean that femaleness was (and for many tribal people still is) of central religious concern. In the primal worldview of gynocentric cultures, the Universe is seen as a living being. So `being' implies birth, and birthing is a female function. Thus, it is understood that insofar as life comes from the female, the Universe as a living being is of female origin. This femaleness is equivalent to Nature. Nature comes from herself to herself though the act of creation. She is, as such, the creator. Life gives life to herself though this act of self-creation, which is the act of birthing. In this way of understanding, femaleness is prior to maleness and is the all-inclusive origin of the web of existence. She is, as known in the Navajo mythos, Spider Woman who weaves the world from her own body. In the old mythos, the mother is first, and then she creates out of her body a male consort. Maleness exists within the context of what is given by the Great Mother.

This primal worldview—the prevailing mythos for most of human existence—was militantly overthrown and displaced by a different way of understanding. About six thousand years ago the Indo-Europeans began a massive military migration. They were a people who worshipped sky gods. Their social structure was hierarchical and required obedience and loyalty to the power structure. For them the Earth was not sacred, but reduced to a thing of property. In a similar manner, women were reduced to the status of human cattle. Femaleness was thus reduced to an inferior and subservient position under the power and authoritarianism of the sky gods, who were, by and large, male.

With the aid of the war chariot the Indo-European sociopolitical pattern spread like cancer. Often non-Indo-European people, like the Semites, Egyptians, and others, took on the Indo-European pattern, thus contributing to its spread. About four thousand years ago the Chinese learned the use of the war chariot, and with it the sociopolitics of patriarchy.

Prior to the Ch'in dynasty (221 B.C.), village life in China remained more or less gynocentric. Patriarchy was a social pattern of the imperial courts and the military. After the Ch'in dynasty, patriarchal Confucianism became the official state philosophy, and was culturally superimposed on village life, thus eroding gynocentric values. On the other hand, Taoism became the philosophy that preserved these older values. Gary Snyder in The Old Way, writes: "Taoism being, following dr. Joseph Needham's assessment of it in Science and Civilization in China, the largest single coherent chuck of the matrilineal descent, mother consciousness-oriented, Neolithic culture that went through the so to speak, sound barrier of civilization in the Iron Age and came out the other side halfway intact. Thus, through its whole political history it has been anti-feudal and anti-patriarchal ..."

The Chinese word "tao" translates into English as "way," and as a philosophical notion it means the Way of Nature. The Chinese notion of Nature is that which "happens of itself" or "self so." The aim of Taoism is harmony with Nature. This harmony is entered into by way of going with the self-happening of Nature without effort, or effortless action. What is entailed in this teaching is that Nature being that which is so of herself, to be in harmony with her is to be as she is, thus without effort. Harmony is like self-generative homeostasis. All one needs to do is center oneself on the Way, and without effort harmony comes about of itself.

The Taoist philosophy of harmony is expressed in the metaphysics of yin and yang. Yin is darkness. Yang is light. Together they form the T'ai Chi, or Great Ultimate. Yin and yang stand in bipolar relationship with one another, each one requiring the other for definition: without down, no up; without left, no right; without darkness, no light; without female, no male; without primary, no secondary, and so forth. This however does not entail duality, because the bipolar dynamic operates within a holistic context in which everything is inseparably interconnected with everything else. In Taoist metaphysics this insight is expressed as that the T'ai Chi originates from and is one with Wu Chi, whereas the Wu Chi is the Non-being ultimate, which is prior to and the source of all being, but which is in itself Non-being. Non-being does not mean nothingness in the literal sense, but no-thing-ness as in not anything in particular.

A misconception of yin/yang metaphysics is that yin and yang stand in relationship to one another as two sides of a balanced algebraic formula. It is not the case that yin and yang are of equal value. Yin is of greater value, for which yang is a secondary and augmentive value. Yin exists at two levels: first it is the Non-being that is prior and gives birth to being; and second is the relative non-being that stands alongside being in interdependent interaction with it. In the first sense, Non-being is absolute and prior to manifested existence. In the second sense, non-being exists within manifested relativity and is interdependent upon it. The two conditions of such are still related insofar as absolute Non-being enters into manifested relativity in order to produce being. Tao as Mother is that mode of Non-being producing the relative universe of being. Being as such has no existence apart from Non-being.

In biology there is what is known as parthenogenesis. Life comes from the female, and it is possible for life to self-generate from the female without the male. That is to say, all the bio-chemical components and mechanisms for regeneration of life exist within the female. The male acts as a stimulus to put the process in motion, and to contribute to genetic diversity. A male may be, in a manner of speaking, thought of as an incomplete female. In yin/ yang metaphysics, yin is parthenogenic, but acts through yang (which she creates out of herself) to create diversity. From Lao-tzu we read:

    "The way that can be talked about is not the constant Way.
    The name that can be named is not the constant Name.
    Non-being is the name of the origin of Heaven and Earth;
    Being is the name of the mother of all things.
    Therefore:
      Constantly in Non-being, one wishes to
      Contemplate its (the Way's)...