For the last several months, I have been working on reorganizing my teaching series on the male mysteries, which ALWAYS is a source of consternation, contemplation, and inspiration.
On a personal level, the best part of delving deeper into the male mysteries is that it always deepens and strengthens my relationship with the masculine aspects and God.
The most difficult part of teaching is male mysteries is that I am not male in this life. This is not my personal issue, but rather the difficulty I have to deal with in teaching this subject. Some of the obstacles are (1) how you can teach male mysteries when you aren’t a male, (2) how can you possibly understand what it is like being a man and what “we” deal with, (3) how come you know (fill in the blank here) and we don’t, and (4) the unspoken, “No. I didn’t know this, but I don’t want you to know I didn’t know this.”
The usual first response is a very big sigh. I have tried over the years not to sigh, but I keep hoping that I won’t have to go through this part, but I always do. It is the lack of understanding of the mysteries that causes this reaction.
In the older Celtic tradition, before young boys they take their rite of passage, the Mother teaches them to fight. They arm them, name them, and arrange marriage contracts. It is the proud Celtic Mother who delivers a son to the Men for his rite of passage and then she walks away. She knows that she he is well “prepared by the female aspect” and can now journey forward and define himself as a man without her and as his own man in the company of men.
After he defines himself as his own man and has been “prepared by the male aspect” can he then enter into the great union with the female and both entirely able to stand side by side in a union of power. Both equal, but separate and different. This is critical to the Sacred Dance. The man and the woman must both be able to perform their own part of the dance – not on the shoulders of the other and without constant instruction or control by the other. I think this is best and most simply illustrated in a dancing couple who have had years together and they hear something and they both turn their head at the same time and look in the same direction.
And so, each time, the journey into the Male Mysteries begins…
Brightest of Blessings,
Mead Muse
