Female and Male Principles
"When we speak of “female principle” or energy and “male principle” or energy, it has nothing to do with one’s physical gender. We are referring to a type of energy. All people, men and women, have both “male” and “female” energy within. If we did not, we would be so unbalanced we would not be able to function on a day to day basis. Call it Yin and Yang, if you like. It is only because the woman’s body is the living symbol of the Goddess who gives birth, that the woman takes the role of High Priestess and represents the Goddess in a ritual circle. The patriarchal obsession with who is on top, who decides for the others, has no place in our tradition. In our McFarland Dianic Path, males are welcomed members, yet there is a need to release the common “take charge” attitude that is often expected of men in our culture. In ritual matters, the High Priestess, as a representative of the Goddess, rules supreme. The High Priest, as the representative of Her Son and Consort, functions to assist, protect, and serve the coven. Outside the ritual circle, all coveners are equal and most group decisions are made on a consensual basis. "Consensual" means that all decisions that affect one person or more in ritual matters must be agreed upon by all. This means any one person has the same responsibility as any other. There is sometimes a sense of frustration if one cannot directly influence the decisions of others by force of will. Women will sometimes sense this as well. In action our persuasive powers come into play, and we must reveal our true selves if we will be honest. How can the allowance of personal innovation and consensual decision making be described or taught if we do not release our instinctual desire to control others, based upon the belief that we are powerless? We must give up something in order to give space for something new, opening our hands to let drop whatever binds us and accepting the unlimited energy within us." All High Priestesses are autonomous."
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Famous quotes containing the words female, male and/or principles:
“We are all androgynous, not only because we are all born of a woman impregnated by the seed of a man but because each of us, helplessly and forever, contains the other—male in female, female in male, white in black and black in white. We are a part of each other. Many of my countrymen appear to find this fact exceedingly inconvenient and even unfair, and so, very often, do I. But none of us can do anything about it.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)
“We have seen over and over that white male historians in general have tended to dismiss any history they didn’t themselves write, on the grounds that it is unserious, unscholarly, a fad, too “political,” “merely” oral and thus unreliable.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Amidst the downward tendency and proneness of things, when every voice is raised for a new road or another statute or a subscription of stock; for an improvement in dress, or in dentistry; for a new house or a larger business; for a political party, or the division of an estate;Mwill you not tolerate one or two solitary voices in the land, speaking for thoughts and principles not marketable or perishable?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)