Book Extract
Book title: "Pagan Gods for Today's Man" "a beginner's guide" - Theresa and Howard Moorey - Hodder and Stoughton Educational, London Great Britain.1997
Men And Cyclicity
To women cyclicity is a fact of life, and from puberty onwards their monthly rhythms weld them to a sense of growth and subsiding, potential and contraction, life and death. Men, however, may find they are able to ignore fluctuation. It may have seemed manly to be above such considerations, to be 'master of nature', to carry on regardless with no sense of ebb and flow in one's capabilities. This attitude is now dying among many men, who are all too aware of the value of a sense of cycle and its reality in their lives. In fact, not to cultivate such an awareness can be dangerous, culturally and personally. Nicholas Mann has this to say:
"A woman's archetypal identity is based upon the visible periodicity... of her body. In her life, her womb, her menstrual cycle and in procreation she is the cosmos. A man's archetypal identity has to be carved out of the cosmos. He has to impose meaning and structure upon the natural world in acts of will and achievement. This has usually resulted in a preoccupation with external forms and in the making of laws... The trouble begins when men refuse to die, refuse to go back 'within' and attempt to fix their particular piece of the all as 'it' - as the 'real thing' forever. We have all seen the trouble that degenerate lines of descent... tyrannical laws, dogmatic institutionalised religions... have gotten us into. They are all attempts to fix, establish and institutionalise, in effect, the permanently erect and upward-reaching phallus. Well, we can relax...
Men have a yearning to 'relax' but many do not feel able. Their identity (or so they have been told) rests in making their mark, doing, fixing, building, achieving and getting it right and tight for ever and ever, Amen. The toll this takes on the male psyche and the health of the male body can be seen in statistics of divorce and coronary thrombosis. In natural cycles, men can find metaphors and attendant mythology to help them attune to tidal motion, to let go of having to be omnipotent builders of enduring bastions, and to find other sides, other aspects to their nature. This can enrich their inner life and their relationships."
exert from PAGAN GODS FOR TODAY'S MAN: A Beginner's Guide by Teresa and Howard Moore