{"id":29556,"date":"2022-11-16T14:24:18","date_gmt":"2022-11-16T22:24:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=29556"},"modified":"2022-11-16T14:24:18","modified_gmt":"2022-11-16T22:24:18","slug":"the-enemy-is-in-me-mapping-the-feminine-principle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/the-enemy-is-in-me-mapping-the-feminine-principle\/","title":{"rendered":"The Enemy is in Me: Mapping the Feminine Principle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jordan B. Peterson’s book Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief,<\/em> is an in-depth look at the backdrop and intricacies of mythology, Jung\u2019s complex theory, archetypes of the collective unconscious, and how they affect belief and behavior. Peterson writes, \u201cMyth is not primitive proto-science. It is a qualitatively different phenomenon [\u2026] The mythic universe is a place to act, not a place to perceive.\u201d[1]<\/a> Joseph Campbell writes, \u201cA mythology may be understood as an organization of symbolic images and narratives, metaphorical of the possibilities of human experiences and the fulfillment of a given culture at a given time.\u201d[2]<\/a> The mythic, religious, or symbolic life deals with motivations, behavior, intrapersonal, and transpersonal relationships. Myths are meant to shed light on that which is hidden; therefore, myths are about integration, consciousness, relationship to self, others, and the divine.<\/p>\n

Peterson pulls significantly from various global\/historical mythologies, particularly creation myths. Peterson uses the story of the Mesopotamian gods Marduk and Tiamat from the oldest known creation myth, the Enuma elish<\/em>.[3]<\/a> In short, Marduk represents light, consciousness, and masculine principle, while Tiamat represents darkness, unconsciousness, and the feminine principle.[4]<\/a> Marduk and Tiamat are locked in a sexual embrace, which represents life and fertility. Long story short, Tiamat does some bad stuff. In retaliation, Marduk captures Tiamat in a net, cuts her body into pieces, which he uses to create the world.<\/p>\n

To the Modern Christian reader, this story seems primitive, brutal, and nearly outrageous. However, from a mythological perspective this is a story of life, death, and rebirth, which is essentially the story of Christianity. Robert Moore calls this life cycle the \u201cArchetype of Initiation\u201d; that is, the transcending and ontological pattern of how life begins, ends, and is begins again. Symbolically in this myth, the masculine principle does not lay waste to the feminine principle, but both are necessary for the creation and perpetuation of the world, of culture, of all creation.<\/p>\n

So, why does this matter? What does all this have to do with our maps or map-making today? There is a sense in Christianity that we still have multiple gods even though we say we believe in only one. First, we believe in the Trinity, which is three persons in union. Second, though we call this union \u201cGod\u201d \u201cwe\u201d also believe in a malevolent deity we call Satan. Third, we\u2019ve disidentified with the Satan archetype and solely identified with the \u201cGod\u201d archetype, in part because we\u2019ve taken our collective mythology as rational fact rather than myth. If we saw the Christian story as myth, then we could engage with all the characters and see them as parts of us. But since we see them as celestial facts, we choose to identify with one (God) over the other (Satan\/evil).<\/p>\n

It is my sense, that many Christians and Christian doctrine, have \u201ccreated\u201d humans in the image of our God, and thereby split off good from evil. The gods\/archetypes do not live in embrace or tension, as they do in our human experience, but they are rationally split off. When we have access only to that which is good, and lose access to that which is evil, it only gains more control and causes more destruction. (Of course, this is why shadow work is so essential.)<\/p>\n

Peterson substantiates the split by talking about the archetypal split of the great mother and the great father (or masculine and feminine principles) in the Genesis creation myth. As it\u2019s popularly understood, God creates order out of chaos in Genesis 1, and eventually expels the chaos of human sin out of the garden in Genesis 3.[5]<\/a> However, if we look back at Genesis 1 we see that God does not expel the darkness, but rather creates relationship between light and darkness. Similarly, when the humans are expelled from the garden, relationship with God remains.<\/p>\n

Considering the rational interpretation, there seems to be an inflation of the masculine principle of order, and a repression of the feminine principle and chaos. Myths bring chaos before they bring order and deeper clarity; however, we\u2019ve codified chaos and confusion with the deity Satan, who we\u2019ve given the nicknamed \u201cthe author of confusion\u201d. As Christians we are brought up to avoid chaos, confusion, transgression, and since we avoid it, when it shows up in our lives, we are faced with a crisis. Our God-image has become inflated with the masculine principle of consciousness, rightness, logos, and supremacy, and deflated with the feminine principle of unconsciousness, nebulousness, chaos, and humility.<\/p>\n

Finally, it is my sense that March 2020 marked a collective initiation into the feminine principle, the great mother archetype. Look around. Look at all the seeming disorder. There is religious deconstructionism, gender dysphoria, decolonization of institutions, calls for defunding the police, social services, and the FBI! Even science, something that has been nearly assumed in the western mind, is now up for debate within a variety of cultural and political domains. Meanwhile, the institutional church has by and large identified with the masculine principle of order, conservatism, structure, and tradition. When Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn penned the words \u201cmen have forgotten God\u201d he was to some degree calling upon the Russian people to remember the great mother because it had some deeply identified with the great father and had become inflated and tyrannical.<\/p>\n

Peterson writes, \u201cEvil is rejection of and sworn opposition to the process of creative exploration. Evil is a proud repudiation of the unknown, and willful failure to understand, transcend and transform the social world.\u201d Jesus symbolizes evil with the grain of wheat that falls to the earth and chooses to oppose its creative and unfolding identity, and opts for illumination to the exclusion of darkness, and for the unconscious womb of Eden to the exclusion of the transformational human experience.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Jordan B. Peterson, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief<\/em>, 1st edition (New York: Routledge, 1999). 9.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor<\/em>, ed. Eugene Kennedy (New World Library, 2013). 2.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Peterson, Maps of Meaning<\/em>. 100.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid. 114.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Ibid. 315.<\/p>\n

6 Genesis 1:3 NIV<\/p>\n

7 Joseph Campbell actually envisions the exodus from the garden as an initiatory process, which serves to deepen human consciousness and connection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jordan B. Peterson’s book Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, is an in-depth look at the backdrop and intricacies of mythology, Jung\u2019s complex theory, archetypes of the collective unconscious, and how they affect belief and behavior. Peterson writes, \u201cMyth is not primitive proto-science. It is a qualitatively different phenomenon [\u2026] The mythic universe is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":147,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1780,1778],"class_list":["post-29556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-jordan-peterson","tag-peterson","cohort-lgp11"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/147"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29557,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29556\/revisions\/29557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}