How the West Lost the Moon

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The earliest human cultures, stretching back perhaps two to four million years, were
hunter-gatherer cultures. These cultures of small groups of humans lived a timeless
existence compared to modern man. Nothing changed for 100,000’s of years! The only
visible indications of time were the cycles of the moon and the cycles of the year.
Women’s menstruation matched the monthly cycle of the Moon. The hunting seasons and
gathering seasons repeated the same every year. The seasons…Spring, Summer, Autumn,
and Winter…came around regularly…the same every year.
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It was the predictability of the seasons and the abundance and bounty that Nature
provided that gave humans a chance to exist and evolve. To early humans, the Powers of
Nature were evidence of the beneficent nature of “the gods”, and Nature taught man
about the nature of Reality. These forces of Nature were themselves soon seen as Divine
Powers. Among them, the Moon and her cycle were the silver Queen of the Sky, the
Goddess Herself, who ruled fertility of the women, sexuality, joy in life, pleasure,
nurturance, home and hearth, the instinctive needs of the body-mind, the balance of life
in Nature (the Law of Predator and Prey), and Life and Death.
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Since only women in these indigenous cultures could bear young, they took on some of
the numinous quality of the Goddess. Women’s roles in tribal cultures embodied the
Goddess in human life, and so Women were accorded respect by Males on a spiritual
level. Their specific roles in their cultures were the gifts of the Goddess: the nurturing of
children, sharing in group activities, holding their extended families together,
homemaking, cooking, gathering food, and being lovers for and givers of pleasure to their
men. Families were large and extended, with multiple generations living together and
supporting one another. Men were hunters and warriors, defending their homes and
families. The Women grounded their cultures in the fertility and abundance of the Earth,
while the work of Men was to protect and support their Women and Children.
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The qualities of the feminine were recognized as associated with the Goddess:
intuitiveness, receptivity, creativity, groundedness, cycles, love, nurturing, feeling,
emotions, physicalness, relationships, and community. Their spirituality, and that of the
Goddess, was of the Earth Herself, as the wise women and medicine women communed
with the Earth and the spirits of the Plants. Males in their roles, on the other hand, tended
to be individualistic, less grounded, focused upon efficiencies and doing, active, tough,
unemotional, and aggressive. They had to hunt and kill game and be prepared to fight
hostile tribes and animals. Their spirituality tended to the realms beyond the physical,
involving the use of hallucinogenic drugs and communion with the ancestors and the
spirits of the animals.
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The people related to their Nature gods, accepting the harshness of life and finding
meaning in life. The Goddess was the goddess of not only birth, but death and war. She
took some. She left some. But she gave the women babies too. Life was lived in cycles…
just like the crops, the animals, the Sun (which was born and died each day), and the
Moon Herself as she passed through Her own cycles in the sky. In order to survive, each
person in the tribe had his or her role and was valued, was needed. Each person found
meaning in their life and their role in the tribe. The old died and became the tribe’s
ancestors, who protected the land and the living. The tribe was bonded to their past
through their ancestors and appealed to their gods for good hunting, healthy babies, and
mild weather.
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This pattern of living survived for hundreds of thousands of years even before the
development of cultivation of the land, herding animals, and living in cities. And this
pattern remains in the genes of humanity as an archetypal way of life that lends stability
and emotional support to life.
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This timeless era, living by the cycles of the Moon and the Seasons of the Year, is today
called “The Eternal Round.” It is characterized by peaceful acceptance of the cycles of
life…birth, growth, maturity, and death…and the feeling that life has meaning, that the
experience of the body is deeply sensuous, pleasurable, joyful, without guilt or shame.
This is living life from instinct and not ego. It is not a state of becoming or seeking,
exploration or expansion of consciousness. It is a state of Being and contentment with
simply living and meeting basic needs...hunger, sex, community, belonging, and comfort.
This is, of course, Lunar consciousness. Lunar conscious is a state of mind in which the
person lets go of their sense of self, or ego, and comes present in their life. They let go of
the past and the future and focus on what is happening right now. The mind grows quiet
and thoughts subside. They align with the Reality of this Moment, without striving or
worrying about their futures or agonizing about their past. So we see that without the
possibility of lunar consciousness, there is no possibility of happiness in life.
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Solar consciousness is expansive, but on the other hand involves struggle and seeking,
striving and failure, and separation from the state of peaceful acceptance of ordinary life.
The ego is engaged, and a person can easily become lost in thoughts or emotional turmoil
of insecurity, fear, feeling excluded, feeling unimportant etc.
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In these early cultures...both hunter-gather and agricultural...myth and spirituality were
identical. The oral stories told by the elders to tribal young held their myths of creation,
the birth of the gods, the making of mankind, and the nature of the relationship between
men and his gods. The wisdom of living of the tribe was also held in these tales. Animals
and the tribe’s gods were featured actors of these tales as well as humans. There were
many gods; each connected with some facet of nature…the wind, the fire, the earth, the
waters, the thunderstorms, the rivers, trees and spirits…Nature IS the face of the
Goddess. And life is good.
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About 12,000 years ago, some tribes in Asia Minor and the Middle East began staying in
one place and cultivating the rich soil of the rich alluvial plain of the Tigris and Euphrates
Rivers. Cities emerged here in this green and growing land, and people began
specializing in the ways they earned their living. Hierarchies and government were
invented. Religions centered on the Goddess and her “dying son/husband god”,
symbolizing the death of crops in the winter, started up with female priesthood. Time
began to assume a linear character. The seasons still ruled agriculture, but storehouses
kept the grains available years around, and trade began to move goods and food among
regions. People living in the cities of this rich plain began to live in a different concept of
time, freer from the cycles of the Moon and the seasons and freer from the lifestyles of
the past 4 million years. Nature began then to become a thing to be exploited and not a
living spiritual presence.
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The hold of the Moon, the Goddess and the Eternal Round began to decline as Time
began to assume a more linear character and the cycles of the year became less important
because mankind learned to control their environments to protect themselves from the
extremes of Nature; and trade, storage and preservation of foodstuffs were developed.
Mankind could not control Nature, but we began to learn to “use” nature to build wealth
and control some of the issues that came with being at the effect of Nature: death and
sickness, cold or heat, floods, water for the crops, and so forth. Nature became less a
spiritual power that determined Man’s fate and more a “resource” to be exploited for
power or wealth.
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These agriculture-oriented tribes were harassed by other nomadic tribes of the deserts and
steppes which chose to become horse cultures or herders of cattle, sheep and goats. These
nomadic tribes had to find grazing areas for their animals, and so often migrated into the
settled areas of the fertile crescent. When they did, they brought a threat to the survival of
the cities, because these desert tribes were warlike and often violent. These tribes lived in
harsh environments beneath an open sky. Their nature gods were fierce and merciless,
and thus their religions tended to be severe and unforgiving. And as the land upon which
they grazed their crops was often dry and wild..masculine in character--not lush and
green and feminine as the fertile river valleys...the gods of these places were given
masculine identities. It was from these cultures that the fierce and unforgiving patriarchal
religions began to grow.
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Through the past 12,000 years, mankind has experienced many traumatic changes to its
lifestyle. Through the 10,000 years until the Birth of Jesus Christ, war and tragedy
stalked the striving civilizations of the Middle East, Europe, the Mediterranean, Persia,
India and China. Life was unsure, short and brutal. Death by plagues carried by traders
and invading armies swept across the planet killing millions each year. And then, during
the 2,000 years following the birth of Christ, humans in Europe endured the stasis and
dominion of the Catholic Church and other religious movements, including Judaism and
Islam, while plague and armies again stormed across the land. Humankind began to look
to the Sky Gods to rescue them from the suffering of life on earth.
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Man’s connection to the cycles of the year and the Moon over these thousands of years
was lost, and many began to experience life as never-ending struggle towards Divine
forgiveness and escape from life on Earth. Only the Church, Temple or Mosque and the
traditions of feudalism promised salvation and escape. Endurance of life’s tragedies and
suffering would be rewarded by an eternity in Heaven. Religion and living obediently
within the protection of some feudal lord became the means to the only security in life.
However, that religion now was patriarchal…not matriarchal.
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First, the heavenly Father had to be placated, absolutely obeyed, and one’s sinfulness
forgiven. And the price of that was good behavior as defined by the Church. Good
behavior required that the natural instincts of the human being be denied, repressed, and
replaced by the ethical rules and ideals of a dogmatic church theology.
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These patriarchal religions made the Goddess and what she symbolized a symbol of
sinfulness and denial by the Sky God. It was Eve who disobeyed God and tempted Man
into disobeying God in the Garden, for example, in the Christian Book of Genesis. In the
Christian myth of Original Sin, a wound was given to humanity that even today remains
as a source of the loss of love of the body, the sacredness of sex and pleasure, the love
and respect of Nature, the cycles of time and the meaning they brought to life. Birth
became the doorway to a world of suffering. Death ended the suffering. But suffering on
earth was rewarded with a Heavenly home for good behavior and believing in the
theology of the Church. The result was a never-ending motive to seek within Western
society. This wound drove man out of the Eternal Round, out of peaceful abiding on the
Earth, out of unconsciousness. This wound drove Mankind towards a more conscious
future...but at the cost of peace of mind, acceptance of self, and the ability to relax into
life on the earth and stop striving.
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Modern western society has passed through several revolutions in roles for men and
women…but especially women. Today, women’s labor force participation rate rose
dramatically in the 20th Century from only about 15 percent during the 1800’s, extended
families and tribal groupings began to break up and be replaced by two parent families
and even single-parent with child families. Children began to spend more time alone,
without supervision or nurturing. More and more began to be taken care of by hired
nannies and babysitters. Focus within the family shifted from the Mother’s role to the
wealth building and labor market activities of the adults. Individualism supplanted
community and communal activities.
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In this transition, over thousands of years to a more patriarchal society, much has been
lost to Western societies. From community and intimate relationships with ones tribe, we
have moved to a society in which the individual is largely isolated and has few close
friends and more superficial relationships. Our families must be mobile, like those
nomadic tribes in the old days, and we follow the work opportunities. But moving
increases our isolation and reduces our access to the support of extended families. Greater
emphasis is therefore placed upon young adults, who have little parenting experience,
less life wisdom, and little time to devote to parenting, to support one another and their
children.
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Greater stress has been placed upon women in marriages and partnerships as they have
moved out into the work place seeking the fulfillment of careers. They not only have to
support their husbands’ needs, but they pursue their own and try to maintain home and
families. Less time is available for traditional feminine roles of nurturing and spending
time with their children.
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With less time in the home, Western food habits have changed. Now, most spend a large
portion of their income on commercially prepared food. Families now spend far less time
together and less often eat together or spend time talking about their days or problems.
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The end result of these changes has been a tremendous increase in stress and deprivation;
too many people living without nurture, without the guidance and support of experienced
elders, without community, without real intimacy, without guiltless physical pleasure,
without the grounding of the feminine center to mankind’s lifestyle. This stress has lead
to pathologies, to psychological and spiritual unwellness in society.
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The two great elements of the Monomyth, the archetypal process of psychological and
spiritual healing in the psyche are the Quest (or Hero’s Journey) and the Eternal Return.
But without the spiritual and psychological recognition and honoring of the Goddess, the
power of the Moon, the importance of the cycles of time in our lives, both men and
women find themselves on a perpetual quest without fulfillment, without peace, without
end, without self discovery…because they must always continue on to the next issue, the
next goal, the next achievement.
Neither men nor women today can relax into the present, stop struggling, stop
accumulating wealth, stop seeking power, stop seeking security, stop seeking for
something that might give life meaning, because there is no place of peace and meaning
to reach any more, no stopping the Quest. As soon as we try to stop, our restlessness,
sense of guilt or shame, our feeling of unworthiness, our unfulfilled need to feel special
(egotism), drives us on seeking adventure, power, love, or security again.
In fact, the seeking process itself fragments and shatters the psyche. The guilt and shame
associated with our needs to experience life physically, through sensation and pleasure,
have stolen from us our peace, our innocence, and our ability to stop the struggle for love,
safety, and self worth. For it is only through our bodies, and our instinctual nature, that
the ecstasy of being alive can be felt, that we can feel alive, that we can stop struggling,
and that we can experience life as pleasure.
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The lost treasure is the Eternal Return: the timeless realm of community life, life in the
body, the joy of family and tribal wisdoms, respect for Nature and the pleasures of the
flesh, family, relationships, meaning to life that is found outside the mindless
accumulation of wealth and neverending busyness of the mind, being at peace with one’s
gods and not living in fear of spiritual damnation, and peaceful acceptance of the cycles
of life…birth, growth, decline, death, life as it is. All of us need to get back in touch with
the Moon.
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There is nothing else to find on our Quests for Meaning but a state of peace, wellness and
grounding, where life can be experienced as pleasure, joy and abundance…the realm of
the Goddess, the rulership of the Moon. We are constantly called to engage with our
instinctual nature, to be well. But life constantly calls us on Quests, to maintain our egoic
nature, to test our wills, to re-engage with our sense of self and personal power. We may
find new meaning, but we stretch ourselves away from our peaceful state of
unconsciousness, of routine and family life. We need to come back to it, periodically, to
rest and wait until life calls us outside our selves once again.
Life lived simply and directly, in relationship and community, fulfills us. But it is no
longer enough for modern Mankind. We constantly make ourselves unwell by our
ambition and seeking, driven by insecurity, fear and need for love.