The White Council

Re: More on magic, LOTR and otherwise

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

: :I'm trying to decide whether to talk about what happened regarding Neofeminism or Mexico. Mexico, I think

: won't you share the other story with us?

Shortened version, cuz I'm gettin' too far off subject, and only cuz you asked.

The book started with a What If. I had just had my first child, and was trying to nurse her and be a regular participant in society at the same time. It was wearying how difficult society made a simple natural thing like feeding your own child, and sometimes I got irritated, realizing how anti-child and selfish our culture really is. What if... there were a pro-child culture?

Traditionally, on an archetypal level, Life is associated with the feminine, because women give birth. I realize that says nothing about individual humans (I'm really not that naive). But in my mind, I wondered if a matriarchal culture wouldn't be more pro-life (in the larger sense, not limited to the abortion thing). (BTW, it wasn't.) And a novel started forming around a culture 2000 years in the future, matriarchal, agrarian, in a village in the mountains on top of an old landfill. But I needed a backstory that would get me from 1989 to 4000. And that's when I saw her.

Sometime around the millenium, a plague sweeps around the globe (most likely NOT AIDS but actually, I think, the flu) and in the chaos that arises many things happen, including the rise of a messiah -- a woman messiah. Technically she is the leader of the Neo-feminist movement, but it's not merely a woman thing but an all encompassing philosophy that values all life, man, woman, child, animal, plant ... earth. Of course, much of what she says gets misunderstood. I.e. when a reporter brings up the issue of the death threats and asks if she isn't afraid for the safety of her life and body, she reaches down for a handful of aromatic soil, lifts it, breaths deeply, and holds it out saying, "This is my body." 2000 years later, the oral tradition of this moment has made it into a ritual sacrament, and she is remembered not as the woman she was, but as the incarnation of Earth herself. She gets assassinated... But I'm meandering...

No sooner did I begin to mention this idea of Neofeminism on the net then there was an article in Time(?) which used this term, and at least one sentence was an exact quote of what I had posted. Did someone plagiarize me? That's just difficult to believe. Coincidence? Maybe... :-/ I let it slide... until the next time it happened.

Earlier in the summer, I was thinking about this back-story messiah again, and I thought, so why shouldn't I write up the ideas and post them on the net? Can't hurt. Might be interesting to see what happens. So I outlined and began writing a book called "Return to a More Feminine Mystique: Neofeminist Manafesto." It got far enough along that I started uploading parts of it onto the INFJ list, including the Table of Contents. The thesis is: feminism is useless accept as a subcategory of people-ism. Subpoints articulate problems with the original movement that needed to be redressed: the myth that contraception provides sex without consequences, the myth that the genders are the same except with regards to giving birth, the myth that men are unecessary, the myth that a woman can have it all, etc... I kid you not: the following Chapter outline is pasted from my table of contents:

Who Needs 'Em? We Do! 13 The Necessity of Men, Fathers, and Husbands Man-haters, and Society's Attack on the American Male How Man-Hating Has Hurt Women Where's Dad? How Children Suffer the Most Calling off the War, and Embracing Our Brothers

You will notice that part one of this chapter is about "Society's Attack on the American Male." About a week after I uploaded this onto the INFJ list, Susan Faludi's book came out. I just wanted to SCREAM! She of course said it differently, and took an entire book (yawn) to say what I said in a page and a half, although admittedly she was better a quoting sources, but essentially we had both written on the same thing. I told my friends on the list that they had to be my witnesses because no one would ever believe that I had written this independently.

A week later I spoke about this phenomenon with my youngest brother. Somehow, I get the strangest sensation that "She" does exist, but not here in this reality. Perhaps there is a quantum level or spiritual realm or some other dimension that we simply can't fathom, and she's looking for a way in, looking for a voice, talking to Susan Faludi, talking to me, talking to whomever will listen. Perhaps like some kind of archetypal spirit or energy? Or perhaps all of us are creating her? I don't know, it's hard to express what I sense in words; there simply isn't the vocabulary. I'm looking at everything I just wrote, and frankly I think it looks pretty stupid.

Sigh* I'm sure I'm going to regret I ever mentioned this, it appears so ridiculous. I know how *I* would be tactfully skeptical with anyone else who said crap like this.

But what if this is what authors can do? Tap into other realms? What if Tolkein did this? Lewis? Williams? Asimov? Mary Shelly? ...What if Middle Earth appears to us as a fantasy because that was the only way that Tolkein could put the vision into words? Oh I know he began with the idea to write a Myth for England, just as I began with my land-fill agrarian culture. But ideas like that don't stay put... What if authors look into Galadriel's Mirror, seeing visions which sometimes come true, even though sometimes they don't ... It does make you wonder.

Blessings

Galadriel, Lady of the Mirror