CHAPTER 7
               THE FUNCTION OF EVOLUTIONARY LOVE 

                          Introduction       

     After exploring the need for creating new urban environments
for our mental and physical well-being, as well as examining the
archetype of the nuclear family house which is causing our disease,
let us now turn to the inner structure of love and its intimate
connection with space.  As previously stated, the metaphor which
both artists and scientists are using to describe this emerging
reality is the concept of a planetary superorganism, Gaia, named
after the Greek Goddess of the Earth.

     However, this concept has not as yet fully evolved.  After
reading James Lovelock's book _The Ages of Gaia: A
Biography of Our Living Earth_, Michael Allaby's book _A Guide to
Gaia:  A Survey of the New Science of Our Living Earth_, and Dorion
Sagan's book _Biospheres: Metamorphosis of Planet Earth_, it is
fairly obvious why their Gaian worldview has not brought about the
revolutionary paradigm shift in consciousness this planet so
desperately needs:  Their religious formula for the reproduction of
Gaia through technological advances in urban structures such as
Biosphere II, is, in fact, the same Judeo-Christian formula which
is causing our ecological and social demise.

     Feminist authoress Starhawk, who has authored many books on
the Goddess tradition was in Northampton lecturing on "Magic,
Vision, and Action:  Creating Peace in a World at War" (1991). 
Following her lecture in which she spoke about the Gaia theory, I
told her about my trouble trying to communicate with some of the
Gaian scientists who refuse to acknowledge me as a creative thinker
within the movement.  She advised me to forget about the scientists
who are unwilling to take the theory to its ultimate conclusions. 
Nevertheless, this is not to suggest we turn away from science and
technology, a virtual impossibility in the contemporary world. 
Archie J. Bahm writes in _The Philosopher's World Model_, "Since
present global predicaments result partly from deficiencies caused
by scientists and others who hold false or inadequate philosophies
of science, nothing is more central to our quantum-leap system
gestalt than its philosophy of science" (111). 

     Therefore, it is a moral duty to try to bring the arts and
sciences together in a harmonious relationship so that it becomes
possible to create a powerful mass movement to eliminate the
destructive Christian-Newtonian era.  It would seem this union is
the one way to avoid cosmic tragedy on both the global and the
personal level.  The challenge of the artist today is to lead us
back to the religious symbolic truth of the female powers which the
scientific cult of rationalism and realism has suppressed,
resulting in our inability to live in peace on the biosphere,
within ourselves and with others.  The task of this chapter is to
suggest directions for achieving this harmonious relationship.

The Ways of Aphrodite and Eros 

     According to Dallas Kenmare in his book _The 
Philosophy of Love_, "It would be safe to say that all our troubles
originate in a misunderstanding of sex...and it is not an
exaggeration to assert that, traced to its source, almost every
human tragedy is a tragedy of love" (14).  The evil of ancient and
modern civilization has been caused by our frustration and failure
to understand the meaning of sex.  In _The Art of Loving_, Erich
Fromm proposes that "love" in the modern world is a highly indivi-
dualist, marginal phenomenon, not the social force it is meant to
be since love is the only power which can solve the global
problems.

     Through trying to understand these problems we create
religion.  William Irwin Thompson writes, "Religion is not
identical with spirituality;  rather, religion is the form
spirituality takes in a civilization;  it is not so much the opiate
of the masses as it is the antidote for the poisons of
civilization" (Thompson 1981, 105).      

     Francesco Alberoni's points out in his book _Falling in Love_ 
that love is a collective movement between two individuals who are
involved in the sublimation of sex and the caprice of the
imagination.  He writes, 

     There is a very close relationship between the great
     collective movements of history and falling in love. The
     forces they both liberate and put to work are of the same type; 
     they involve many similar experiences of solidarity, joy in life
     and renewal. The fundamental difference between them lies in the
     fact that the great collective movements are composed of
     large numbers of people and are open to still more
     (Alberoni 1983, 4).   

This leads me to believe that true love can no longer exist without
the involvement of collective forces.  Without the collective
forces liberating Aphrodite and Eros to conduct the building of
arcologies, Gaia will not be able to maintain us.  Richard Register
writes in his book _Ecocity Berkeley_,  
     
     An ecocity is an ecologically healthy city. No such city
     exists...The garden is the paradise of nature, and the city is
     the paradise of culture. Or at least they could be. Today, both
     are out of balance (Register  1987, 3). 
     
     What is needed now in order to gain the balance between the
individual and the collective is the meeting of the biological and
the religious so that the global civilization can fall in love with
nature and redesign the cities into evolved ecostructures.  Through
the ovarian insight, the birth of biospheric cities can be
delivered into a world of peace.  Witness Dorion Sagan's statement,

     From the viewpoint of long-term evolution, it seems
     incontestable that we must ground ourselves and our
     products in the ancient ways of Earth if we are to
     survive. As a global civilization we must fall in with
     nature as one would fall in love (Sagan 1990, 68).  
 
    Since the end of the Neolithic age and the development of
agriculture which led to the rise of patriarchy, the principles of
material equality, justice, and love have failed to govern the
social order.  To have conviction in the power of love requires us
to have faith that Aphrodite and Eros can build arcologies to
fulfill our most noble aspirations and rebuild the world.  In
Arthur Blaustein and Roger Woock's book _Man Against Poverty_,
there is reference to Paul Goodman who said, "Power at its best is
love implementing the demands of justice.  Justice at its best is
love correcting everything that stands against love" (Blaustein
1968, 195).  The scepter of justice commands us to build arcologies
so that the eternal flame of romantic love does not go out. 

     According to Mary Daly, the problem is that sexism 
has divided the human psyche.  She points out that "love cut off
from power and justice is pseudo-love, power isolated from love and
justice is unauthentic power of dominance, and justice is a
meaningless facade of legalism split off from love and real power
of being" (Daly 1973, 127).  These divisions have caused "love" to
be restricted to the private sector as "power" reigns over the
political order, summed up by the cliches: "Man is the head, woman
is the heart," and "Woman is;  Man does."  Power split from love
not only makes love impotent, but sex becomes an obscenity, a force
causing us to destroy ourselves.

     In Plato's theory of love, there are different kinds of erotic
understanding.  The lower kind, body eros, is based on the lust of
the flesh.  The fruit of such sexual energy are physical offspring. 
The higher kind, soul eros, is based on the ideal of the beautiful
bearing spiritual offspring which Plato considers to be more
immortal and beautiful in nature.  These offspring, in the forms of
works of art, science, and philosophy become humanity's greatest
and most virtuous output.  The best women and men are they who
subordinate everything else to true love.  This degree of Aphrodite
and Eros is sent to save life from extinction by returning sex to
its sacred purpose. 

     Rollo May points out that when "the release of tension takes
the place of creative eros, the downfall of civilization is
assured" (May 1969, 98).  When this happens, people become
indifferent to art.  Many artists prostitute their talents in order
to make money to eat.  Sex, at the end of the twentieth century,
has degenerated into nothing more than a release of bodily fluids
and the deadly social diseases it has brought to us.  Modern
children, who are born with an innate understanding in the power of
love, lose their organic-cosmic understanding when contact with 
materialistic dogma robs them of their natural faith and philoso-
phic inquiry.  Modern science has voided life of   conscious
purpose and profound meaning.  

     Without the maturity of love, the mental adolescence of
today's world leaders will continue to drive the world into
apocalyptic ruin.  Modern civilization has lost touch or never
understood its connection with the primordial forces. Sex has
became a social arrangement divorced from its mythological sacred
purpose which is to provide moral leadership.  When society has
forgotten the role love plays in our cosmology, moral catastrophe
plagues the world as we are witnessing now in everyday life.  If we
continue to ignore Gaia's wisdom and tolerate exponential growth of
population, the superorganism will exterminate us.      

     Philosophic Aphrodite and Eros are the most important and
central part of a living cosmology, giving us an ancient religious
orientation.  According to Alan Watts, "Religion without sex is a
rattling skeleton, and sex without religion is a mass of mush"
(Watts 1971, 80).  True lovers yearn for metaphysical reality,
which means that the elegant ritual dance between Aphrodite and
Eros belongs at the heart of worship.  Through the sanctification
of romantic love, which is the greatest human drama of the
superorganism, the holocracy can then continue to rejuvenate its
divinity, century after century, as the universal chord of romantic
love reveals itself.  Holocracy is the total system of whole things
in nature, the original whole which is made up of the smaller whole
parts.  

     To restore the sexual act to its former significance, 
philosophic lovers, whose mission is to embody Gaia's reproductive
metaphor, must become the "royal artists" who create the new
planetary ethos.  The two lovers up-date the romantic story
providing it with enough novelty and variation to preserve its
influence and charm.  The sovereign power of love can in no way be
based on heredity privileges which have always degenerated into an
artificial aristocracy.  When love guides the world, the 
romantic stories will change generation after generation, renewing
the holy mysteries of the life-force.  

     The basis of education will then become a living cosmology,
teaching children that the life-force is love.  Youth are taught
that by pursuing one's unique contribution in life, i.e., the work
one loves to do that brings forth one's unique self, then romantic
love will fall into place.  Work is no longer done to serve an end,
such as for financial security or a comfortable retirement, but to
realize its sacred purpose in the survival of life (Whitmont 1982,
102).     

     The love experience can be the most free and lofty experience
of all, for to love is to act freely.  Therefore, the love
cosmology is founded on the principles of freedom: the freedom to
do and be who one is.  In an unfree society, people are coerced
into doing and being who they are not, distorting their divine
selves.  In _The Ways and Power of Love_, Pitirim Sorokin writes,
"Compulsion is the negation of love" (78). The paradox of the
modern world is that  "We race to _save_ time in our ungratifying
jobs so we can _kill_ time in our leisure" (Whitmont 1982, 102).

A World of Juno and Genius

     Plato and other philosophers pointed out that wisdom is one of
the most beautiful evolvements of human juno and genius.  In the
conception of ideas, Aphrodite and Eros are seekers of the world-
arranging beauty.  Hence, Aphrodite and Eros are lovers of wisdom,
a philosopheress and philosopher whose roles are to convert our
souls back to a primordial union. The lovers become the
educator-rulers who conduct the superorganism's paradisiacal will. 
Through the embodiment of their love, the World of the Miraculous
can be created, for love, the simplest of concepts, is "the mystery
from which all miracles are born" (Kenmare 1942, 96).  When erotic
love is understood, everything else is clear.  Love ties us
together like nothing else can, the deepest emotional drive which
makes us selfless and altruistic.  It makes us strive to reach our
highest ideal in order to produce happiness in another.  Sorokin
writes, 

     It goes without saying that the finest, the noblest, and the
     happiest human society is the society of individuals bound
     together by a love relationship...It is the happiest society
     because loving and being loved is the highest form of
     happiness in human relations.  It is the most peaceful and
     harmonious society; it is also the most creative, most
     beautiful, and noblest (76). 

     The philosopheress and philosopher seek the conscious birth of
the Gaia worldview, whose world soul is erotic love, so that the
idealist child remains an idealist adult.  In the introduction of
_Mythopoesis:  Mythic Pattern in the Literary Classics_, Harry
Slochower writes, 
 
     The fateful import of the myth for our day stems from  the
     fact that it is pivotal to the idea of One World. It can
     determine whether this world is to be one of unity and
     totality or one of uniformity and  totalitarianism, whether
     the powers of men are to be freed or shackled (16).    

     Kenmare claims in his book, _The Nature of Genius_, that 
geniuses have a different kind of love than most people.  Their
passionate desire for philosophic Aphrodite and Eros is the
preeminent mark of their juno and genius.  For lovers of wisdom,
adventures of the mind are the only kind of intercourse they find
appealing, building partnerships in which work and love are one and
the same.  Carl Jung writes,

     creative geniuses must be considered in a class part of an
     entirely different _kind_ of psychological make-up. There will be
     little genuine progress, and  little peace among men, until these
      fundamental differences are recognized and accepted" (Kenmare
     1942, 70).  

Sorokin points out that without the creative mission of these junos
and geniuses, the ones who have tapped into the supraconsciousness,
becoming the main mission of humanity, the human race is "bound to
degenerate and die out" (487).

     In accepting the problems of the world, the greatest social
responsibility also brings about the greatest personal joy, a
divine state which only love can shower upon the mortal heads of
the junos and geniuses.  After one has experienced the
philosophical joy of metaphysical sex, body eros is unfulfilling
without higher eros.  Bodily union separated from Aphrodite and
Eros is a profound violation of the flesh.  The great musical
genius Beethoven declares,  "Sensual enjoyment without a union of
souls is bestial and will always remain bestial; after it one
experiences not a trace of noble sentiment but rather regret"
(Kenmare 1942, 148).

The Metaphysics of Sex 

     In order to achieve unity between the artists and scientists
a global vision of the reproduction of the planet is called for. 
Reproduction requires us to engage in  philosophic eros.  In
planetary reproduction, biology and morality, sex and love, nature
and idealization, must unite since there can be no creation without
union.  Through union we understand the great mysteries of life,
the renewal and fertility of the animal and plant kingdoms (Kenmare
1942, 128).  Therefore, it would follow that planetary union is not
asexual or sexless as the Gaian science writers advocate, but
sexual in nature.  In other words, Gaia works its miracle of
planetary birth through sexual union.  Since human love leads us to
divinity, the rebirth of the planet is a holy process involving
both female and male energies in a partnership.      

     Lynn White, in his famous essay "The Historical Roots of our
Ecological Crisis," firmly teaches us that Christian dogma and its
transcendental God, who has the power of virgin human conception,
is responsible for the ecological breakdown our technology and
science has caused.  He writes, "More science and more technology
are not going to get us our of the present ecological crisis until
we find a new religion, or rethink our old one" (White 1974, 28). 
Creating a new religious myth of creation requires the utter
destruction of the existing structures of thought which means
destroying the concept of the sexless virgin birth.  Joseph
Campbell thought that the scientific cosmology in the Bible was
scientifically outdated even before the text was put together in
the last centuries B.C. and first A.D.  He writes, "To be
effective, a mythology must be up-to-date scientifically, based on
a concept of the universe that is current, accepted, and
convincing" (Campbell 1970, 145). In this sense, the myth of
Immaculate Conception is the most dangerous scientific lie!

     In the Judeo-Christian story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of
Eden, Eve disobeying God's command of not picking the fruit off the
Tree of Life, curses the first woman and man on Earth with the
knowledge of good and evil.  The Serpent Goddess is seen as Satan
who is responsible for their demise.  Whitmont writes, "Good
becomes what is practical and collectively approved.  Bad is what
brings about visible harm or damage and is not in keeping with
custom" (53).  Consequently, sex-knowledge is associated with evil. 
Blaming woman for the fall of man from paradise made Eve, Adam's
spiritual twin, his first enemy.  Since sex-knowledge was
considered evil, the mutual ecstacy of erotic union is no longer
permissible.  Their love for each other became a crime of
disobedience, and their children were afflicted with their
"original sin."  Their paradisiacal bliss and supernatural powers
were taken from them as they became ashamed of their own bodies. 
Work then dominated over pleasure. "Her desire became his dominion"
as she became his submissive, unhappy wife (Trible 1978, 160). 
Lost was the inner, spiritual, and poetic connection they once had. 
She was now his external possession. 

     In God's kingdom "eros was superseded by agape."  Spontaneous
attraction was replaced by orthodox laws.  Human and animal
sacrifices were performed to vent man's violent, destructive, and
sadomasochistic urges and to "renew" himself of the sin and guilt
for taking part in "evil" acts.  Those who found themselves outside
the dominant group became scapegoats:  animals, slaves,
nonconformists, dissenters, prisoners of war, law breakers and
anyone outside the group or offenders against the group.  In a
word, outsiders were considered enemies (Whitmont 1982, 68).

     God was a jealous God who demanded Eve to love Him with all
her heart, mind, and soul;  before the Fall, Eros was inclusive,
but after the Fall Eros was repressed.  "The love between the two
welcomes the love and companionship of many."  Consequently, after
the Fall, love became a commandment enforced by His will.  Ever
since, Eve has tried to convince Him that using physical force,
electric shock treatments, or psychological drugs on her was not
going to stop her from longing for the time when her Word was
sacred.  While the Greeks believed the ideal of the beautiful
defined the highest communal good, the Hebrew God commanded one to
love Him above all else.  Following His commandments was the way to
the good world.  But it was impossible for Eve to love a world
where men ruled over her.  God had prevented sexuality and
destroyed equality between the sexes. Consequently, the war between
the sexes began.

     To return to the child-like beautiful state of the Garden is
possible only with the proper understanding of love and sacramental
sex act.  The new Eve is the temptress who dares Adam to become
"consciously aware of one's depth and of life as an undivided
whole" (Whitmont 186).  She uses the serpent power of the Word to
convince him that the survival of the planet depends on the
construction of her Neutopian vision and that the greatest social
need of the epoch is for him to sow the seed.  In order to work her
miracle, she uses dialectical progression rather than dualism. 

     She points out to man that the apostles of true love had
neither wealth, military armies, communication networks, nor any
other means of worldly influence, but still their creative love
made the world more conscious of its human potential.  Their power
came not from appealing to envy, greed, selfishness, or lust, but
by becoming examples of living spirits in the flesh.  She asks him
to recall the fact that the greatest conquerors and revolutionary
leaders do not compare "with these apostles of love in the
magnitude and durability of the change brought about by their
activities" (Sorokin 1954, 71).  Through their love, they could
redirect destructive energies into a creative direction of building
the ecocities of eroticism.  As Phyllis Trible asserts in _God and
the Rhetoric of Sexuality_, all nature extols the love of female
and male.  All animals serve love.  And the way to achieve this
remarkable harmony is for his "desire to become her delight."  As
spiritual equals no one tries to dominate the other or treat the
other as a possession.  She is no longer called his wife and the
bearer of his offspring, but their "sexual play intertwines with
work."  However, she makes it clear to him that a love story can
not exist without an emotional relationship between woman and man. 
She can not create the new religion alone.  Kenmore writes, 

     sex is one of the most sacred aspects of human life, sex is
     a vital element in the divine-human emotion of love between man
     and women--a vital element in this is love, but not the whole. 
     The truth, is always, a  paradox.  The spiritual and romantic
     element plays a greater part than actual sexual desire (Kenmare
     1942, 121).
 
Poetry as Leader 

     Mythic events differ from historic events in that the former
is found in the subjective reality of the poetess, whereas the
latter is found in the so-called objective, rational world of the
politician.  I say poetess here, instead of poet, because in
Adrienne Rich's essay "When We Dead Awake: Writing as Re-Vision,"
she writes 

     "Political" poetry by men remains stranded amid the
     struggles for power among male groups; in condemning   U.S.
     imperialism or the Chilean junta the poet can claim to speak    
     for the oppressed while remaining, as male, part of a system of
     sexual oppression. The enemy  is always outside the self, the
     struggle somewhere  else (Rich 1985, 154). 

     The microcosm is discovered through subjective reality.
Objectivity is only a shallow, false, and destructive
misinterpretation of the workings of nature, separating the
individual from their soul-making capabilities.  It is the poetess
who possesses universal understanding and creates mythology, not
the politician or the poet who have focussed on the history-making
which has caused world despiritualization.  In other words, "one
cannot, then, stand outside love and see what it really is.  The
only objective perspective of love, Freud seems to suggest, is one
that works its way through love" (Lear 1990, 181).  Love is an
inner power which transforms one into a poetess or a poet whose
purpose it is to create the Gaian mythology.

     In the _Philosophy of Leadership_, Christopher Hodgkinson
discusses the four archetypes of leadership:  the careerist, the
politician, the technician, and the poet.  He writes, "The special
role and influence of the poet is reserved for the mutative leaps
in the unfolding of human affairs."  Starhawk points out that magic
is discovered through poetry, for our erotic dance of energy is
expressed through the poetic play of the Word.  Gaia becomes the
creative Word.  Through the Word consummation between the poetess
and poet, which comes before the actual sex act, the world is re-
spiritualized.  The Word calls prophetesses and prophets to look
within and bring purpose to life.  They become the revolutionary
mythic leaders of the historic moment of planetary metamorphosis,
the humanization of nature. All their actions are poetical, the 
ultimate action against war, modern science, and the
military/industrial complex. Consequently, the poetess and poet are 
the creatress and creator of the planetary culture of the One World Mind.  

     Since poetry, magic, and religion are intertwined, it is no
wonder why the superorganismic chooses poetic personalties to in-
still with charismatic powers in order to achieve its superorgasmic
will. In striking the microbial chords, which go deep into our
being, poetic juno and genius manifest the collective dream and the
fulfillment of the superorganism.  The true poetess and poet
subsume the lower archetypal levels of leadership by acting on the
highest ethical plane...the salvation of the biosphere.  The
poetess and poet, as Emerson states, comprise "the Messiah who
forever returns to dwell among fallen men, to lead them to the
Kingdom of Heaven."  Let me correct Emerson:  the return of the
Gaia Messiah is to lead us to rebuild the earth's environment where
people can learn to know themselves and fully realize their
potential. 

     Virginia Woolf also realizes that great poetesses do not die. 
She writes, "they are continuing presences;  they need only the
opportunity to walk among us in the flesh." She believes that when
we free our selves from our separate lives, and have the courage to
write exactly what we think, we then connect ourselves to the
common life of humanity and become the world soul.  Woolf writes,
"We escape a little from the common sitting room and see human
beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation
to reality" (Todd 1977, 173).

     Since all consciousness is one, the spirit of the Word
recognizes itself throughout time.  It is the same Word with the
same clear idealistic mission.  Norman O. Brown writes, "It is all
one book;  blossoms on one tree" (110).  Since the Word is the
medium for religious energy to be manifested, we must see the
"religious history of humankind as a global continuum" (Heisig
1989, 174).  For language to regain its power it must be based in
experience, which is why consummation of the Word must be followed
by rediscovery of the secret knowledge of sex.  In other words,
_the Word is not a substitute for life_.  The Word can only suggest
to us the way to act in order to fulfill our lives and achieve
immortality.  

The One World Mind    

     The politician believes the mythopoetess to be the ultimate
threat to the dying social order...and she is because she has the
power to call man to the ultimate commitment of which he is
capable.  By going to the source, the poetess finds truer stories
to tell which can annihilate the false perceptions of the
materialistic perspective.  This is the reason why the voice of the
One World Mind has been persecuted and suppressed throughout
history.  The voice of the One World Mind has the power to unite
the divisions and, therefore, create a just, ordered world (as
detailed in my poem _The Way to Neutopia_, 1989).  Thomas Berry
writes in _The Dream of the Earth_,

     No adequate scale of action can be expected until the human
     community is able to act in some unified way to establish a
     functional relation with the earth process, which itself does not
     recognize national boundaries. The sea and air and sky and sun-
     light and all living forms of earth establish a single
     planetary system (Berry 1988, 43). 

     Scientists who are skeptical of religious energy have good
reason to be if they look at what past religious superstition has
done to men such as Galileo and Giordano Bruno for standing for the
truth of their scientific convictions.  But scientists must realize
that churches and their institutions have also persecuted
visionaries who didn't go along with the established line. 
Scientists and mystics come to the basic truth through different
methodologies:  scientists through quantitative research in the
forms of logical propositions or mathematical formulae, and mystics
through qualitative intuition in the forms of pictures, images,
riddles, rituals, stories, and symbols.  But they are motivated by
the same questions:  What is the good world?  What is the meaning
to life?  What is love?  And yet these are the questions that
threaten the established doctrines.  This is why the root of
science is philosophy and not the other way around.  Max Planck
reiterates this point:  "Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery
of nature.  And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves
are part of nature and, therefore, part of the mystery that we are
trying to solve" (Weber 1986, 8). 

     Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan have given us a new creation
story in their saga on the evolution of life on Earth, in
_Microcosmos_.  In all the world's past myths including ancient
Mesopotamia, Syria, India, Greece, the early Christian, and the
Native American, stories were told about "a lost paradise together
with an eschatological view of history in which the end of time re-
actualized the beginning of time" (Sanford 1961, 5).  The story of
human being's relationship with bacteria takes us not only to the
beginning of the primordial stew and to the end of egocentric man,
but to the beginning of life on new worlds as we delve deeper into
the mysteries of our genetic codes. 

     In the past when science and technology changed human rela-
tionships with nature, changes in ideology have also been radically
altered.  For example, before the Neolithic times people had been
at the mercy of nature to provide them with food.  After the
discovery of agriculture, people's relationship with nature changed
as they became co-creatresses in the food supply.  Male hunters
were not as important to the survival of the species when their
communal bins were filled with the grains the females had
harvested.  Males began to trade products and produce weapons to
protect their wealth.  With the invention of warfare came the
overthrow of the ancient Goddess traditions and the split up
between art and science.  Science was said to be free of values, a
neutral force with no ethical considerations. 

     At the threshold of the colonization of new worlds by
spreading the bacteria of the life-force, we are again at a turning
point which requires us to perceive nature in a different and
radical way.  It is time for us to see love as the basic force of
the natural sciences.  However, the story of our bacterial
evolution cannot be consummated until a new sexual union between
the true Queen of the Universe and the King of the Microcosm opens
the doorway to the One World Mind.  Through the new/old
relationship between woman and man, a global renaissance inspired
by Aphrodite and Eros can overturn the deadly culture of the global
shopping mall and the nuclear power industry.  Radhakamal Mukerjee
writes in _The Social Function of Art_, 

     As humanity faces death and void in both physical and  social
     or moral planes, it is natural that a new art will be born
     accepting the challenge of death by its mystical vision of
     mankind [sic] that will triumph over the present blood-bath of
     the nations...As this vision  spreads from the aesthetic to the
     social, political and moral realms, universal humanity will be
     reborn, the earth will enjoy an eternal spring, and sorrow
     and despair will be conquered by art (29).

     The art which humanity so desperately needs is the art of
romance.  Romantic love meets the requirements of an art form
rather than a science since it supersedes the facts.  "It is not
interested in the literal truth of science but rather in the
symbolic truth of art" (Fromme 1965, 240).  It is romance which
will overthrow our present oblivious world state.  Love is the
paradigm shift which realigns our personalities and values causing
a great religious conversion into the world-wide Gaian state of
consciousness.

Summary

     In this chapter we have discussed the nature of love and the
role it plays in our evolutionary survival.  At the threshold of
sending life to other planets, we need to understand the workings
of love so that we get back in touch with the meaning of life. 
Love between the sexes manifests a new cosmology which is in
balance with the higher orders of life and is radically different
than the structures created during the epoch of dysfunctional
relationships between the sexes.  The order of love reveals itself
throughout the ages through artistic symbolism and poetry rather
than by scientific inquiry. 




                           CHAPTER 8 
             THE VIRGIN MOTHER AND THE DIVINE CRONE 

                          Introduction

     Motherhood as a metaphor of the planet is sexist and dangerous
to both women and men, just as God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
or Sky Father is a sexist and unscientific expression of the deity
and leads to gender stereotyping.  Patriarchy cannot exist without
matriarchy and vice versa.  Seeing the Earth as our mother
perpetuates the matriarchal-patriarchal social system which does
not foster a mature partnership with Gaia, but traps us in the
isolation and alienation of the nuclear family housing unit with
its unnatural property laws.  Both systems are models of domination
which will only lead us down the oily highway in the present
direction of human extinction.

Breaking the Incest Barrier

     Lovelock, Allaby, and Sagan each discuss the reproduction of
the planet in a similarly sexist way.  The common denominator of
their theories is that the planet is on the verge of reproduction
through a technological virgin birth.  

     Allaby states in _A Guide to Gaia_, 

     Yet the mother figure survives, even in the modern world,
     and if the image of the divine virgin who gives birth to and then
     protects and nourishes a male divinity sounds familiar, this
     is not coincidence. There is much of Gaia in the Virgin Mary
     (7).
 
     If the Earth is reproducing itself, therefore, it is doing
     so asexually...Asexual reproduction occurs in many species and
     especially among the prokaryote on which the Earth relies so
     heavily. There is no reason why the large organism should not
     employ a similar method (154). 

     Lovelock writes in _The Ages of Gaia_, 

     Many, I suspect, have trodden this same path through the
     mind. Those millions of Christians who make a special place in
     their hearts for the Virgin Mary   possibly respond as I do. The
     concept of Jahweh as remote, all-powerful, all-seeing is either
     frightening or unapproachable. Even the sense of presence of a
     more contemporary God, as a still, small voice within,
     may not be enough for those who need to communicate with
     someone outside. Mary is close and can be talked to.  She is 
     believable and manageable. It could be that the importance of the
     Virgin Mary in faith is something of this kind, but there may be 
     more to it. What if Mary is another name for Gaia? Then her
     capacity for virgin birth is no miracle or parthenogenetic 
     aberration, it is a role of Gaia since life began....(206).

     Sagan, who is incidentally a sleight-of-hand magician,
is more subtle in his description of the reproduction of the
planet.  He is even more revealing in his aversion towards
recombinant sex.  One can clearly see the same virgin birth formula
in these passages from _Biospheres_,     

     Human beings have fortuitously become involved in the 
     destiny of the Earth, as agents or midwives of its sexless
     reproduction (159).  
     
     Arising from Mother Earth we find ourselves incestuously
     involved in her reproduction (9).

     The reproductive metamorphosis of planet Earth is more
     like the complex, associative, mediated reproduction
     exemplified by the birds and the bees than it is like the
     immediate reproduction of amoeba or the sexual reproduction of
     people. If the biosphere uses humanity to produce technology to
     reproduce itself, then biospheric reproduction would appear more
     complex,  though no less an example of reproduction, than other
     reproductive acts in nature (103).

     For these three men the Earth is a virgin-mother who has the
power to reproduce herself asexually through advanced biospheric
technology.  In order for the planet to be considered a living
organism reproduction absolutely needs to take place.  Their theory
is that Gaia is using us to build biospheres capable of launching
the five biological "kingdoms" into the heavens in order to
colonize planets such as Mars.  Lovelock thinks that if people
would view the earth as the Virgin Mother who is the "source of
everlasting life" they would stop raping her.  But for the last
2,000 years, the Virgin Mother has not had the power to stop the
plunder of its creatures and resources to bring about a millennium
of peace on earth.  Marina Warner writes in her book _Alone of All
Her Sex:  The Myth of the Cult of the Virgin Mary_, "The Virgin
Mary is not the innate archetype of female nature, the dream
incarnated;  she is the instrument of a dynamic argument from the
Catholic Church about the structure of society, presented as a God-
given code" (338).

The Divine Role of the Crone

     In Barbara G. Walker's book, _The Crone:  Woman of Age,
Wisdom, and Power_, she explains the problem of the Christian
family formula and why the Virgin Mother has not had the power to
stop the plunder of the Earth.  In the ancient Goddess religion
there were three phases of the Goddess: the virgin, the mother, and
the crone.  The Crone is the female counterpart of the image of the
wise old man with a long white bread who commands the band of
angels.  The word Crone was derived from the word crown which
represented her moral judgment and rulership ability within the
community.  She is the culture-bearer, the prophetess of the One
World Mind.

     The Crone is symbolized as the dark moon, a menopausal woman
of experience and age.  However, I feel it is a misconception to
believe that the Crone has to be an old woman.  The important
characteristic of the Crone is that she is wise and has the self-
esteem to form her own value judgements and listen to her own inner
voice.  She has discovered her natural sovereignty and does not
succumb to male desires.  One of the reasons why the Crone has been
viewed as a menopausal women is not only because of the experiences
she has lived through, but because her child bearing years are
behind her.  Now, she no longer has to compromise her ideals by
following the Word of man in order to receive the sperm necessary
for childbirth and her initiation into motherhood.  

     Christianity combined the virgin-mother phases of the Goddess
in its mythology, but eliminated the divine prestige of the Crone,
then made her into a disrespectful "hag."  Males no longer found
her attractive so she was not sexually useful to him.  He
overlooked the supreme function she plays in planetary
reproduction.  Walker writes, "the Crone phase was too darkly
threatening to be so handled" (13).  What was threatening about the
power of the Crone?  Walker thinks that it is because she is the
birth giver and the death bringer, "the wounder who heals." 
Christianity and the other virgin birth religions fear sex and
death, as well as negate the cosmic law giving role of the Crone
Goddess.  On the microbial level, Margulis and Dorion Sagan state
in _Microcosmos_ that "while genetically fluid bacteria are
functionally immortal, in eukaryotes, sex comes linked with death"
(93).  Without the knowledge of the microbial world, death does
look like the final end.  But it is not. 
     Barbara Walker quotes Rosemary Radford Ruether, 

     Male eschatology is built on negation of the mother...The
     escape from sex and birth is ultimately an attempt to escape from
     death for which women as Eve and Mary are made responsible.  Male
     eschatology combines male womb envy with womb negation (82). 

Christian theologians claim before, during, and after the birth of
Jesus, Mary's body stayed "intact." After her death, traditions say
her body never decomposed or gave off offensive smells, but stayed
in perfect condition.  In denying the continuity between life and
death, males try to avoid the great mysteries of the unknown,
denying our connection with the universal recycling of life. 

     During the prehistorical times of the reign of the Goddess,
death was part of the natural life cycle.  The basis of the prim-
ordial fertility rites was death and decay which were seen as a
process where energy was transformed from one state to the next
(Gadon 1989).  Certainly, we can see the negation of sexual repro-
ductive birth through the words of Sagan, Lovelock, and Allaby. 
Allaby fears the Crone energy so much that he does not mention the
word Goddess once in his book on Gaia!

The Relationship Between the Hera and the Hero

     The most difficult task of the hero, proposes Carl Jung, is to
break away from mother.  As a civilization we must break away from
our asexual, incestuous relationship with Mother Earth, and begin
a new relationship with Her in order to reach a mature steady-state
relationship with nature.  But in order to break our infantile bond
with the planet, the birth of the myth of the hero is necessary in
order for men to have a model of an eternal man who is no longer
afraid of death and sex or envious of the prophecies of the womb. 
The hero's call is to establish a new relationship with woman based
on the mysterious forces of erotic mysticism.  His task, then, is
to become a love-maker, to put an end to the war between the sexes.

     No longer can man cling to his mother thinking that she will
save him.  Nor will his father save him.  Male unconscious
infantile bond with Mother Earth is the reason why we continue
thinking the planet will continue to supply us with natural
resources and recycle our polluted air and water without regard to
population.  Dorion Sagan admits, "People are not in charge right
now.  For the most part, we are just a tunnel-visioned,
self-serving species, highly dangerous to ourselves and to a few
other species, and fascinated by the technology we image in our
own" (Sagan 1990, 19).  Thus, we live in a state of world anarchy.

     The new heras and heroes must achieve independence from the
mother-father in order to widen the narrow restrictions of the
nuclear family, so their message speaks to the entire world.  The
new mythology must be sexual if we are to understand Gaia and live
by its ancient wisdom.  G. S. Kirk writes in the _Nature of Greek
Myths_  that "all myths are about nature and natural phenomena, or
in other words, myths must always refer to some cosmological or
meteorological event" (50).  The cosmological event which is
presently occurring is our maternal break from Mother Earth through
the SEEDS of the biosphere achieved through a mature sexual
partnership between the two sexes.  (It is interesting to note that
the word "savior" means _one who sows the seed._) 

     According to Jung, the incest desire is not to co-habitat with
the mother, but to be reborn from her, becoming a child again
through her parental shelter.  This parental shelter is the single
family house, the structure which is causing our environmental
demise.  Incest is the way man finds himself back into the womb
without having come to terms with a mature sexual relationship. 
Incestual man may never find a metaphysical soulmate whose womb
encompasses the entire biosphere.  Here we can see the rejection of
the judgmental powers of the Crone in favor of the unconditional
love of the Mother who may condemn or condone but plays no part in
the dispensing of justice.  In Christian mythology the incest
relationship is finally fulfilled after the Virgin Mary's death. 
She ascends to heaven where she becomes the Queen of God's kingdom,
married not only to God, but to her son-god Jesus Christ.

     Jung says in _Symbols of Transformation_ that the hero is
reborn when the love he feels for his mother is transferred to his
wife.  He writes, "The first birth makes him a mortal man, the
second an immortal half-god" (322). More than other men, Jung
writes, the hero finds his mother in the woman he loves.  When he
finds his mother's symbolic equivalent he is born again.  Jung
continues, 

     In this tie to the maternal source lies the strength that
     gives the hero his extraordinary powers, his true genius,
     which he frees from the embrace of the unconscious by his daring
     and sovereign independence.   Thus the god is born in him.  The
     mystery of the "mother" is the divine creative power" (336).

     I question whether the way of rebirth is through the dual
mother and what the hero does is to transfer his maternal need to
another woman who is the "symbolic equivalent" of his mother.  This
leaves his mate with no power of her own denying her unique merit
and diminishing her divine role.  It puts the evolutionary
importance of the woman's metaphysical union with the hero on the
biological level with that of the mother.  Because the incest
barrier is not broken in Jungian theory, the hero is unable to go
to explore the unknown forces beyond the symbolic truth.  He is
trapped in his animal instincts.  Unable to understand the primal
reason for his erotic union with the Crone, he is stuck in the
mind-set of the transcendental God.  

     If his marriage with his soulmate does not happen, the hero
will continue to degenerate through his incestuous relationship,
running away from the Second Coming of Woman which is his only
chance for salvation.  

     When we fail to individuate, because of "childish laziness or
timidity" or from the fear of death, neuroses can develop and even
destroy the individual.  Since, according to Freud, our society is
based on an incestuous relationship with the Virgin Mother, the
entire civilization is neurotic, if not on the verge of collapse. 
        
     It seems vital to our species that the son be liberated from
the incestuous relationship and from his subordination to God the
Father.  Since under patriarchal rule the son is unable to surpass
the father's authority until after his death, the father is but
another stumbling block to the evolutionary consciousness.  The
hero's liberation from Mother Earth and God the Father seems to be
the key to the maturation our planet so urgently needs in order to
create a sustainable civilization and a functional cosmology.  The
ultimate goal of the Gaia Theory is to create homeostasis between
the sexes.   Matthew Fox writes, 

     The scientific word for justice today is homeostasis, which
     is the quest for balance and equilibrium that is found in all
     organisms and even in the universe itself. Mysticism is about
     returning homeostasis to the human mind (Fox 1980, 63). 

Plato thought that such a state rested in health, beauty, 
medicine and music. 

     To become the leaders of a new social system, the hera/hero
must revolutionize the traditional patterns of motherhood;  the
hero's mother is not only a part of this pattern, but a slave to
it, and unwittingly perpetuates it.  The relationship must then
shift from mother/son to hera/hero.  This shift not only opens up
new pathways for biochemical interaction, but opens up a
metaphysical communication beyond the incestuous bond between
mother and son.  Consequently, the reproduction of planet Earth is
not based on the sexless relationship between mother and son, but
is based on a philosophic sexual union between lovers of the
opposite sex.  

     By being liberated from the parents the new wo/man becomes the
center of a new social system and so, the Gaian revolution is born
as he falls in love with the pythoness of peace.  Jung writes, "The
hero who sets himself the task of renewing the world and conquering
death personifies the world-creating power which, brooding on
itself in introversion, coiled round its own egg like a snake,
threatens life with its poisonous bite, so that the living may die
and be born again from the darkness" (382). Throughout the world
the snake has represented the power of renewal.  The serpent is the
kingmaker.     

     Without this revolutionary partnership emancipating our
libidos from incest, Mother Earth, the main symbol of woman's
psychological domination and castration of men, will continue, as
well as, Father Sky's external domination and intellectual
belittlement of women.  The female is trapped in the image of
biological reproduction as her spiritual mission, resulting in the
suppression of the Goddess of wisdom within her, while the male
enslaves himself to the mother/son incest fantasy which prevents
the god of wisdom within him from ever achieving the manhood needed
to make love with the Great Goddess.  

     The romance between the hera and hero is the story of the
inner process of maturation of both the female and male
counterparts.  Without the sexes physically connecting with each
other, neither one can be saved or find the wisdom to save our
species and all the others.

Returning to the Garden 

     In Carol P. Christ's essay, "Why Women Need the Goddess:
Phenomenological, Psychological, and Political Reflections," she
writes, 

     Patriarchal religion has enforced the view that female
     initiative and will are evil through the juxtaposition of
     Eve and Mary.  Eve caused the fall by asserting her will against
     the command of God, while Mary began the new age with her
     response to God's initiative, "let it be done to me according to
     Thy Word" (Luke 1:38)    (Christ 1982, 81).
 
Mary who is worshipped for her physical ability to birth and
nurture the male deity, becomes a second-rate citizen, a saint, not
a Goddess, lacking the will to release the power in her own self.
She becomes a non-being, the obedient wife of the Son of God.  For
one to be human is to be the Son of God, a male, not a female. 
Mary is subordinate to the word of the male deity who worships her
primarily for her womb.  All women are seen similarly.  

     Feminist theologians have pointed out that when God announced
that Mary had been chosen to carry the baby Jesus she had no choice
as to whether or not to accept or reject his Immaculate Conception. 
When Mary asked the angel how she could become pregnant in as much
as she was a virgin, the angel replied, "The Holy Spirit shall come
upon you, and the power of God shall overshadow you; so the baby
born to you will be utterly holy--the Son of God" (Luke 1:23, 36). 
One of the definitions for the word "overshadow" is "to make
insignificant by comparison;  dominate."  Therefore, Mary was
denied her natural sovereignty of having consent to the sex act. 
Consequently, his insemination was an act of rape.  In modern
terms, she is artificially inseminated, even denying her the
pleasure of an orgasm.

     In Vladimir Solovyov's book, _The Meaning of Love_, he points
out that in biblical stories love between the sexes does not play
an essential role.  The "fathers of God" are those who arranged the
births and sexual combinations.  Solovyov writes, "Love is of
course, encountered in the Bible, but only as an independent fact
and not as an instrument in the process of the genealogy of
Christ."  Christ is a product of faith, not of love.  He continues,

     In sacred, as well as general history, sexual love is not a
     means to, or the instrument of, historical ends; it does not
     subserve the human species. That is why, when subjective
     feeling tells us that love is an independent good and that it
     possesses an absolute value of its own for our personal
     existence, then this feeling corresponds also in objective
     reality with the fact that a powerful, individualized love never
     exists as an instrument of service for the ends of the
     species, which are attained apart from it. In general
     history, as in sacred history, sexual love (in the real
     sense of the word) plays no role in, and shows no direct
     influence upon, the historical process;  its positive
     significance must have its roots in individual life (32).     

It is apparent from this that the biblical stories are not simply
stories of love between the sexes, but also accounts of blind
obedience, incest, rape, and murder. 

Men's Part in Reproduction

      Men do great harm and disservice to themselves when they view
the earth as the virgin mother and fail to see the _necessary_ part
they play in the reproductive process.  In Christianity, the church
replaces the womb of the virgin mother, dividing sacred and profane
places.  This schism  results in the building of unhealthy,
fragmented cities.  For Christians, enlightenment is not found
through erotic mysticism, but through direct communion with Christ. 
Kenmare writes, 

     It is precisely because the Church as a whole has failed
     to understand sex in its totality, has isolated sex from love
     (not love from sex), that by far the greater majority not only
     find no appeal in the Christian teaching, but positively fear
     and shun it, believing it to be full of prohibitions and hard
     rules against which the innate warmth and instinctive needs of
     the personality has no choice but to rebel (Kenmare 1942, 180).

Although these may be an adolescent rebellion from the church,
often times they go back to the church after failure in life.  This
return is mainly due from their lack of understanding about the
nature of love:  they seek consultation from the church since they
have no alternative to which they can turn for guidance.  Gaian and
Neutopian thought give us an alternative worldview.  It is
interesting to note that alternative is from alter, in Latin,
meaning second or other, and natus, birth or nation. 

     Gaia is not only the antichrist, but the antichurch. Mary Daly
believes antichurch should be thought of in a positive way since it
is not trying to capture equal ground in sexist space, but bringing
into the world a rebirth of the Second Coming of Woman.  Her theory
challenges the credibility of myths contrived to support the
structures of patriarchal alienation (Daly 1973, 139). 

     It is no wonder that the status quo experiences no authentic
religious experiences when the majority marry for social
convenience and the begetting of children, and not for love.  Their
mindsets are locked into the existing social systems.  A return to
the biospheric garden "can come, but only and always through a
proper understanding of love and a deep sense of the sacramental"
(Kenmare 1942, 121).  Agape, the love of humanity without the
embodiment of Aphrodite and Eros, is not the way to enlightenment
because the microbial life-force is incarnated in the flesh.  Alan
Watts says that the division between sexuality and spirit has
caused us to be dangerously insane and on the verge of global
suicide.  He writes, "Obviously, only those who believe that the
world of spirit is more real than the world of life, biology, and
sex will gamble on detonating the atomic bomb" (Watts 1971, 111). 
     
     Moveover, a union of Aphrodite and Eros which is narrowly
focused on the flesh results in deadly narcissism.  Without
understanding its divine social purpose, the inner necessity and
evolutionary reason for copulation in the relationship will end in
failure.   Erich Fromm writes, 
 
     One can often find two people "in love" with each other
     who feel no love for anybody else. Their loves is, in fact,
     an egotism a deux;  they are two people who identify themselves
     with each other, and who solve the problem of separateness by
     enlarging the single individual into two. They have the
     experience of overcoming aloneness; yet, since they are 
     separated from the rest of mankind [sic], they remain
     separated from each other and alienated from themselves;
     their experience of union is an illusion. Erotic love is
     exclusive, but it loves in the other person all of mankind
     [sic], all that is alive (Fromm 1956, 47). 
 
    Since Aphrodite and Eros are basic to the inner understanding
of the microcosm, and are the force which guides us to our
soulmates, the liberation of women from domesticity and the
architectural pattern of development it has created is imperative
if we are to control the population and save the species.  The
fecund Virgin Mother who was raped by God the Father must be
replaced with the image of a creative, intelligent Crone who is in
touch with her unique gifts and bears important social roles for
the betterment of the Superorganism.  With love between the sexes
living by the ancient wisdom of bacteria, galactic gardens of peace
will open up to us.  

     The dangerous myths which have shaped our world have
indoctrinated girls to believe it is their female duty to bear
children and boys their heroic duty to go to war to protect the
motherland.  It is time for us to acknowledge the vital role the
child-free woman plays in the survival of the human race.  Edward
Carpenter writes, "Sometimes it seems possible that a new sex is on
the make--like the feminine neuters of Ants and Bees--not adapted
for child-bearing, but with a marvelous, and perfect instinct of
social service, indispensable for the maintenance of the common
life" (68).

Mother Mary and Mary Magdalene  

     As we understand the shortcomings of worshipping the Mother
Mary as Mother Earth, we begin to understand the Second Coming of
Women in terms of Mary Magdalene, a Crone who was the first heretic
of Christianity after Peter formed the church hierarchy without her
vital sexual knowledge and holy wisdom.  It was Mary Magdalene, not
Mother Mary, who possessed the way of creating peace on Earth!  Let
me now engage in the mythopoetic enterprise.  

     Magdalene, the new Eve, was the female counterpart of Christ,
the new Adam.  Through their love they shared intimate knowledge
which may have been the reason for the release of the holy myth-
making forces of their life stories.  Like Christ, she was both a
receiver and a revealer of gnosis, the insight of self-knowledge. 
Being the companion of Christ made her not a saint, as the Church
proclaimed, but the prophetess of the religion.  Magdalene taught
that ultimate reality was found through self-knowledge and faith
was a result of trusting one's own experiences.  For her,
divination was revealed through the intuitive and creative forces
of self-discipline.  She taught that in order to find love, one
must surrender one's ego to the great works of the superorganism,
the building of the New Jerusalem, an arcology of love.  To her,
Christ was not the Lord, but a spiritual guide to the New Ordered
World. 

     Mother Mary, on the other hand, was a pawn of rational
knowledge.  Faith to her was blind obedience and acceptance of the
literal biblical tales apart from one's own personal experience. 
Mother Mary believed that people who heard voices or saw
imaginative visions related to the unseen ESP capacities, or swayed
with the changing tides and rhythms of life were schizophrenic. 
Under her rule, reality was limited to the visible world.  In her
church, revelation was relegated to the unconditional acceptance of
the laws of the clerical hierarchy.  This meant obeying the customs
and traditions of the tribe over one's personal needs, desires, and
urges.  In order to receive the blessing of the tribe and family,
one had to prove one's usefulness by way of acquisitions and
achievements.  For Mother Mary, the resurrection of Christ was a
material phenomena which could be observed as an historical event. 
It symbolized "one's will over the natural forces," whereas
Magdalene taught that the resurrection occurred within the
imagination of the individual, a spiritual and unique process in
which one rediscovers the way to the true self.

     When Magdalene was first to see the resurrected Christ, Peter
became envious of her privileged position as a teacher of prophecy,
miracle worker, and the gnosis which she shared with Christ.  She
became a target of his jealousy and doubt. The apostles referred to
her as the "sinner" who anointed Christ.  To Peter, Magdalene was
inferior to Christ since she was a women, and as a woman,
associated with matter and evil, she must repent in order to become
"white and good."  Christ, on the other hand, being male, was
associated with what was good and spiritual.  Whitmont sums up the
problem,

     As the reasoning light of the mind grabs the world in  its
     outer, concrete manifestation, the inner _gnosis_, with its
     magical, instinctual attunement of fundamental survival needs
     and collective dynamics is lost to consciousness. The world of
     the Feminine, of the Goddess and her consort Dionysus or Pan,
     yields to the  God whose name is "I am that I am" (68). 
     
     Mother Mary's womb became the church of orthodox external
knowledge, void of the mysteries and joy of erotic union.  Mary
Magdalene became the outsider, a homeless "prostitute," albeit the
sleeping beauty with the "forbidden knowledge" surrounded by an
ugly, violent world.  Excluded from the Christian hierarchy, she
spent the rest of her life alone in the desert.  In whatever
particular bodily form she has appeared throughout the ages, her
universal message has always tried to destroy the counterfeit
spirit.  The counterfeit has always divided up the world into the
realm of light where the soul ascends to meet the "true God" in his
"Kingdom of Heaven" and the realm of evil matter where the corrupt
human body is imprisoned on Earth.

     Even Christ tried to make Magdalene into a hero when he told
Peter, "See, I shall head her, so that I will make her male, that
she too may become a living spirit, resembling you males.  For
every woman who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of
heaven."  By discrediting her divine wisdom by dismissing the role
of female prophecy and by declaring her his follower instead of his
equal, Christ made a fatal mistake.  

     Since Christ was unable to understand the place of erotic love
in religion, he preached the practice of celibacy (Pagels 1989b). 
He declared his soul married to the Church and that followers of
the gospel should give up their sexual relationships to carry out
his Word.  This gave Peter the authority to become the spokesman of
the group and allowed him to "exercise exclusive leadership over
churches as the successors of the apostle Peter."  Elaine Pagels
writes in _The Gnostic Gospels_, "For the second century, the
doctrine served to validate the apostolic succession of bishops,
the basis of papal authority to this day" (6). 

     But even with all his magical powers, Christ was unable to
make Magdalene into a man.  Marjorie M. Malvern writes in _Venus in
Sackcloth:  The Magdalen's Origins and Metamorphoses_,  "As a
female she rules over the present world, which is like to her, and
counts as the first prophetess;  she proclaims her prophecy with
all amongst those born of woman" (39).  Magdalene could not give up
her knowledge of sexual love since it is the fundamental mystery
necessary for regeneration.

The Secret Sexual Knowledge 

     Aphrodite can not conceive without Eros' magic phallus. 
Without the mysterious forces of erotic love, the reproductive act
is often reduced to prostitution, pornography, masturbation, and
rape which teaches nothing about the miracles of life.  The only
other alternative is artificial insemination which eliminates and
alienates the male from the sex act.  Mircea Eliade writes, "Except
in the modern world, sexuality has everywhere and always been a
hierophany, and the sexual act an integral action and also a means
of knowledge."  Consequently, without philosophic Aphrodite and
Eros working for Gaia, the technological virgin birth of the
biosphere could actually cause our species to spread its egocentric
diseases of war, lust, and greed throughout the galaxy.  In order
to stop this destructive process, we must come to terms with our
creatrix.  We are part of the microcosm.  Our bodies are the
temples where microbes live.  This is why it is a grave violation
to the life-force to pollute our bodies, or kill another human
being, or to separate sex from love, or death from life.  When we
realize our bodies are systems of organisms working to maintain
health and supply us with energy, we begin to be aware that we live
to serve the microbes who have been responsible for our
immortality. 

     Many male writers advocating the technological asexual birth
of the planet are reproducing the same patriarchal-matriarchal
formula which has caused our downfall in Gaia's garden.  Christian
agape seeks union with God in an asexual way, divorcing itself from
sexual and earthly responsibilities.  Agape fails to note that the 
superorganism which has produced us has made us into sexual creatures.
The bacteria speak to us through philosophic Aphrodite and Eros.  

     In his essay, "Bacterial Writing and the Metaphysics of Sex,"
Dorion Sagan examines the ideas that seeing the Earth as an
inseminable female is found all over the world and is the very root
of the Indo-European civilization.  In places where the terms were
reversed, and Father Earth and Moon Mother was perceived, the
unscientific division of gender relationships still prevailed. 
Sagan writes, "the asexual organism is not more female than male; 
Adam was not, in a simple reversal, extracted from Eve's rib.  If
females are not primordial, males are not redundant" (127). 

     According to Sagan, the sexism of the religious explanation of
the universe penetrated into the mytheme of science.  Females were
characterized by the plant world and males by animals.  When Anton
van Leeuwenhoek first looked at his own sperm under a microscope,
he called it spermatazoa combining the two Greek words for seed and
animals.  The sperm became the activists of life.  The redundant
ovaries became the passive receptacles and vegetable nutrition for
the incoming sperm.  Socially, this stereotype created the idea
that the assertive woman is one who intuitively knows the mysteries
of life without having to seek nor assert knowledge of the natural
world.  If a women does attempt to verbalize her knowledge she is
seen as taking on male characteristics.  In biological terms, women
are seen in terms of asexual reproduction which Dorion Sagan points
out can be seen in the use of the words "daughter cells," used to
describe an amoeba after mitosis, even though their "sexless" acts
do not create daughters or sons.  He calls this a metaphysical bias
which suppresses the right to differentiate.

Christian Clones   

     By ignoring the erotic impulse, agape love for the Christ
figure is also dangerous because it disallows people from finding
their unique characters as they become clones of Godhead who are
reborn through the virgin birth.  Yes, all is superorganism, but
agape leads to global totalitarianism when people are unable to
break the incest barrier with the Virgin Mother and must obey God,
the Father.  In contrast, Aphrodite and Eros find their unique and
mature selves by connecting with Gaia through inward understanding
and taking on a greater responsibility for their outer world, their
environments.  They use a symbolic language which neither causes
dogma nor superstitious traditional rituals.

     The union of Aphrodite and Eros leads to a personal and social
freedom which is only found by connecting with the superorganism
and being self-disciplined towards its creative will.  Thus
Aphrodite and Eros can liberate us by restoring meaning to our
lives.  Freedom is found only when we become whole.  

     William A. Saler, Jr. points out in his book, _Existence and
Love:  A New Approach in Existential Phenomenology_, 

     Man is also, and all too often, afraid of his freedom,
     particularly the freedom to exist within the infinite
     boundaries of love;  thus he seeks to escape from it (208).
     The greatness and mystery are too much for him. Thus man is often
     a compromiser, choosing little freedoms for trivial
     possibilities as cheap compensation for authentic freedom which
     he is too frightened to pursue (210). 

Man declares the greatness of love and the new world it creates to
be a fantasy.  In deceiving himself that love does not exist, he
"spins deceptions about himself.  In the web of history he is
caught and hung by his own deceptions" (Sadler 1969, 210).  By
ignoring the Great Goddess of Wisdom and commercialism and science
for religion, as Christianity and Capitalism do, we are denying
ourselves our connection with the life-force.  This can only cause
personal and social anarchy.  The "almighty buck" seems to be the
economic theory of laissez-faire capitalism which began the
exploitation of nature through property rights and challenged the
idea of communal ownership of the Earth.  With it came the rise of
the professionalism which manifested rationalism and scientific
domination.  Professionalism introduced and made people slaves to
credentials giving the professional class privileges over the
peasantry.  Professionalism was a neo-feudalistic change which
replaced the charters, grants and titles of the Middle Ages with a
system where credentials and formal documents (degrees, license,
diplomas, certificates) were issued by the State.  Without official
documentation one faced unemployment and homelessness (Hodgkinson
1983, 102).

     In _Love in the Machine Age_, Floyd Dell writes, "the middle
class has been and still is bringing up its sons and daughters as
if their lives were dominated by the requirements of land and
property.  It is blunderingly seeking to perpetuate the psycho-
logical attitudes which were necessary to the land--property
regime--the adult childishness which hampers the social and eco-
nomic arrangements of our time" (22).  Under capitalism, parents
keep their children chained to the bondage of inheritance rights
which are diametrically opposed to creating arcologies of human
love. 

     Neither totalitarianism nor anarchy are organic social struc-
tures which give us the individual power to work in unison with the
superorganism.  Both systems are immature: one makes people
submissive to authority and the other puts no restrictions on
personal wishes in respect to the collective vision, leaving
humanity without creative leadership (Kao 1975, 143).  Warren
Bennis writes in _Why Leaders Can't Lead_, "As a person cannot
function without a brain, a society cannot function without
leaders.  And so the decline goes on" (66). 

     In Neutopia, there is a balance between centralization and
localization allowing people to express their gifts in collective
ways.  The public needs the artists and scientists as much as the
artists and scientists need the public.  One becomes part of the
feminist hagiarchy of creative junos and geniuses by virtue of her
or his inward development.  Through works of love and wisdom we
find our natural leaders.  Through philosophic Aphrodite and Eros
we discover our royal artists, the futurists who synthesize the
arts and sciences to create an aesthetic Gaian life-style.  Through
the "One-Joined-Together," the vital leadership of life can flow
throughout the world. 

The Brain Cells of Gaia 

     Even though Michael Allaby calls the planet the Virgin Mother,
he refuses to acknowledge Gaia as an intelligent organism with a
moral consciousness, denying the Crone her essential function
within the biosphere.  He writes,

     The Gaian concept has no moral dimension unless you make
     the false assumption that Gaia is an intelligence, and in that
     case it is far from benign. This Gaia has no concern for human
     welfare, moral or even physical...For us to cast ourselves in the
     role of the planet's conscience is rather like criminals
     appointing themselves judges, and only judges at that (Allaby
     1989, 147). 

     Allaby goes on to say that we are on a spaceship as part of
the crew, a crew unable to guide its destiny, but with the power to
destroy the world.  He says that we are like delinquents who are
rebellious against a captain, in whose judgments we have lost
faith.  He asks, "As individuals, are we tempted through our vanity
and desire for knowledge, like Adam and Eve, so that mankind as a
whole, mainly through its science and technology, has come to
represent Satan, individual men and women the occupants of the
Garden?" (88)  This is a good question for Allaby to 
address to himself since in his book he advocates the use of
nuclear power to run the technology which dominates women and
nature.

     For Allaby, Gaia seems to be a complicated heartless
machine-like orb who rules us by fear since it can survive without
us, but we cannot survive without it.  He points out that
prokaryote, who have been around billions of years before the
development of plants and animals, are much more important to
planetary life than we are, since they are the regulators of the
planetary functions.  Allaby compares Gaia to an automobile who has
no need for a moral conscience.  He says that the driver needs
conscience, but it is ludicrous to think the car does.  But it was
only a few particular human beings who made the decision to build
cars and that has turned out to have such a destructive impact on
the environment since traffic deaths and pollution through auto
emissions have caused havoc to the entire health of the planet. 
Richard Register writes, 

     The fact is, if we want to leave any energy reserves and a
     reasonably healthy biosphere to our children, we will need to
     change the _whole system_ so that cars are no longer an integral
     part.  We will, in other words, have to completely rebuild our
     cities on ecocity lines  (Register 1987, 10). 

Unlike Register, Allaby's mind is still locked into the Newtonian
scientific worldview because he thinks science is value free!     

     By denying the role of the Crone, Allaby also denies himself
the role of the sage.  He fails to realize that we are the
microcosm!  He even suggests that it is better for us to not
question humanity's role within the planetary scheme of things.  He
writes, "at best we have no part" (147).  In Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi and Kevin Rathunde's essay "The Psychology of
Wisdom: an Evolutionary Interpretation," the authors state, "the
wise person is the one best equipped to judge and to keep the
commonwealth in order.  The ultimate requirement for ruling is
knowledge of how to optimize the well-being of the whole"
(Csikszentmihalyi 1990, 33).  Of course, the whole is the
biosphere, Gaia, the superorganism.  The ancient philosophers
thought that the beauty of the divine order was so attractive that
one would be compelled to follow its path and to submit to its
pattern.  Now, even more so than in Plato's time, the seeking of
wisdom, "the process by which people try to evaluate the ultimate
consequences of events in terms of each other," is absolutely
essential to our planetary survival.     

     Sagan, in his book _Biospheres_, seems to hold a different
opinion than Allaby of the nature of the biospheric intelligence. 
He finds comfort in thinking the superorganism has a superior
intelligence to human beings which is responsible for planetary
evolution.  Gaia has survived several massive extinctions in
Earth's past and would certainly survive a nuclear world war and
ecological collapse if humans are too stupid to avoid species
termination.  He says understanding this "superior being" of which
we are a part, would require "new techniques of unconscious
resonance, new means of speaking" (100).  Sagan sees us as "the
collective witness and main actor in a participatory spectacle of
sexual-symbiotic fascination" (123).  At least he questions the
possibility of humanity being the vital brain cells of the planet
constituting moral decision-making.  He writes, "I contend that the
biosphere, _through me_, may be writing or helping to write these
words.  But if I can say this, the very notion of an "I" separated
from the biosphere comes under question" (21).

     Sagan believes the "biosphere uses us to accomplish its own
ends," to which end he says is the planet's reproduction.  He
writes, 

     It may be that the time has come, from a biospheric vantage
     point, for us to glimpse a new role for ourselves;  no longer
     isolationists, selfishly rearing technology for our own ends, but
     integrationist--connectors and vectors of disparate parts
     of the biosphere--no longer murderers but intermediaries and
     matchmakers among the millions of  species participating in the
     life of the biosphere"   (105-104).

Thus humanity plays the role within the biosphere as the decision-
maker, the brain cell of Gaia.

Power of Ideas

     Since ideas do not come through committees, sects, or nations,
but through the individual, who, for Sagan, is the main actor?  Is
the midwife to the Gaian world view the collective, the individual,
or both?  Since biologically speaking there is no individual, since
our bodies are made up of a community of different organisms, the
answer must be both.  But how is the superorganism organized?  What
relationship do the parts have to the whole?

     Humanity advances through the work of particular idealistic
individuals who influence others with their ideas.  Walker Abell,
in his book _The Collective Dream in Art_, points out that
inspirational ideas are a receptacle for a collective psychic
charge which arises from the unconscious or subliminal regions of
the mind.  At the moment of the inspiration, the artist works as a
conductor of the collective forces of the superorganism to make
them conscious.  Erich Neumann writes, "The Great Individual, on
the other hand, who really is a great man in the sense of being a
great personality, is characterized not only by the fact that the
unconscious content has him in its grip, but by the fact that his
conscious mind also has an active grip on the content" (Neumann
1954, 426).  The juno and genius are they who are most consciously
aware and sensitive to what is going on in their unconscious which
they strive to express with their ideas. 

     The ideas enter into the imagination and animate symbolic
visions to which humans then must give embodiment. This release of
the accumulative psychic impulses is established when there is an
"appropriate connective between its subjective source and an
objective outlet" (Abell 1957, 332).  The conscious mind is not the
generator of the ideas, only an interpreter or agent of the
inspired messages (Walker 1961, 35).  "Major artists are such,
precisely because responsiveness to collective motivation, charges
their creative activity with the full force of the master tensions
of their epoch" (Abell 1957, 332).  These seekers of a deeper
cultural reality other than the repressive market economy, become
free from personal competition when they seek union with others on
the creative quest to build a planetary science and culture of
love.  Abell writes, "Originality tends to unite one with one's
more sensitive contemporaries, and separates one only from one's
predecessors--that is to say from the exponents of cultural
situations that no longer exist" (333).  There are many different
kinds of cultural and scientific agents, each fulfilling their
destinies within the broad channel of planetary transformation. 
But it is Aphrodite and Eros who become the vortex of the
lovolution.  To join the lovolution is finding oneself within the
global drama, playing a role and _living_ for a cause, rather than
"losing oneself" and dying for a cause. 

     When the multitude is exposed to great ideas they enter into
their dreams.  But in essence, it is the individual who must absorb
the idea and act it out. Giordano Bruno states, "A creator is one
who makes others create."  Without a creative following the leader
cannot lead (Bell 1957, 334).  Aphrodite and Eros empower the
collective by providing the vision, wisdom, and immorality to live
in harmony with Gaia.  

    The history of utopian thought has attempted to discover the
organic social system of nature.  However, it seems that we have
not as yet discovered the formula to lead our way back to the
garden.  In order to rediscover ourselves we must come together to
study the Earth as a system.  But what then is the power that will
unite us?  Since the historical roots of our environmental crisis
are religious, the answer to the problem must be religious, thus
the manifestation of the Gaian religion.  In order to change the
system, we have to have a story more powerful than the existing
mythology.  The religion of Aphrodite and Eros binds us back to
this the mystical power.  It demands we enter the mysteries, shut
our five senses, and return to our origins!

     We must beware of the folly of thinking of ourselves as the
stewards or engineers in control of the environment.  The
ecological crisis, which we have caused ourselves, is already the
result of thinking that we are the superior members of the
biosphere whose transcendental God created nature for humanity's
exploitation.  However, in _Biospheres_, Sagan points out that the
destructive use of technology which we are witnessing now might
have been a necessary part of the metamorphosis.  The
Judeo-Christian duality between people and nature allowed
scientific investigation and technological development to flourish. 
During pagan times, the people saw guardian spirits in all forms of
nature, every tree, plant, stream, rock, etc.  The Judeo-Christian
revolution over paganism destroyed the pagan animism which saw
nature as a living revolution in which people were a part.  This
psychic revolution in the way people perceived nature ushered in
the way for human beings to exploit natural resources with
indifference to the consequences which resulted from
development.                  

Gaia is the Supreme Being(s) 

     Could the unseen microbes be the supreme beings which the
ancient pre-Christian nature worshipers saw as guardian spirits in
all forms of life?  

     Margulis and Sagan's description of the microbial world in
_Microcosmos_ could be read to correspond with Lawrence E.
Sullivan's description of supreme beings in the _Encyclopedia of
Religion_.  He says supreme beings can see and know everything and
are present everywhere.  We are made in their image even though
they remain invisible to us.  They are viewed as being the
foundation of all life, owning all that exists, the fertilizers of
vital forms of the universe.  Sullivan writes, "As the foundation
of all that is real, they may be the sovereign upholders of the
world order, rulers of all beings, and even providers of moral
commandments and socio-ethical mores" (167).  To those who are
transgressive, supreme beings punish in passive ways, by famine,
epidemics, and drought.  The ancient wisdom against engaging in
promiscuous sex can now be reaffirmed as sexually transmitted
diseases such as AIDS show us that the ancient morality had a
biological purpose.

     Sorin Sonea and Maurice Panisset write in _A New Bacteriology_
that bacteria are the "life-promoting stability of the chemical
features surrounding the living world" (8). The majority of
bacteria are benevolent and compose the essential organisms which
make up a global community.  Bacteria are responsible more than any
other living group to the fertility and stability of the planetary
ecology.  Not only are we surrounded by them, but we are made of
them.  They are our first ancestress.  When we are in harmony with
them, we serve them.  Since bacteria are the foundation of life on
earth, they are not unintelligent beings.  They are the mysterious
creative force in love, the hidden matchmaker behind human
evolution. 

     Could it then be said that bacteria are the voice within the
unconscious mind?  Furthermore that they have manifested the deity
of the Virgin Mother and transcendental father so that we would
develop the technology for their galactic reproduction?  If the
answer is yes, it is not surprising that bacteria have symbolized
themselves throughout our religious history as the image of the
Virgin Mother.  Percy Shelley is quoted in _Romantic Art Theories_,
"Only in artistic creation did the unconscious soul of nature merge
with the conscious soul of man [sic] to produce works in which
nature becomes spirit and spirit ennobled and redeemed nature"
(75).  Since religion is the art of sexuality, it makes sense that
bacteria may compose the unconscious soul of nature revealed in a
sense through the spiritual symbols of humanity, i.e., the madonna
and child.  It is urgent that we be aware of its religious
significance so that more evolved religious symbols of the true
nature of love will ennoble and redeem human nature. 

     Since our new knowledge of the bacterial superorganism pro-
mises to open up infinite possibilities for the creation and
improvement of genes, we are beginning to have a new, mature, even
divine relationship with the microorganisms as human beings become
the co-creators of life forms and new worlds.  Through the
superorganism's desire for reproduction, we become equal partners
with the microcosmic Great Goddess of life.  Gaia perfects us and
now we are perfecting Gaia.  This is not only a technological
partnership, but a spiritual one as well as we begin to educate our
population to the spiritual nature of the superorganism and begin
to direct the building of biospheric arcologies.

     Gaia can create global order out of world chaos.  It is
calling us to develop what Buckminster Fuller called "a world
computer data base" and G. H. Wells called the "World
Encyclopedia."  It is certainly a meaningful coincidence that Sorin
Sonea and Maurice Ranisset describe the superorganism as being a
"computer with a large data base," and these earlier futurists
expressed the same concept in their writings.  The intelligence
necessary to know how to ethically guide the world data base comes
through those engaged in philosophic Aphrodite and Eros whose union
makes them the mistresses and masters of the whole. 

     A mature relationship with the microcosm requires that we
develop a new understanding about the role of sex.  There is a
reason why we developed egg and sperm cells in the individual
sexes.  Sexual reproduction should not be thought of as a
biological waste of time and energy which should be eliminated,
even if asexual forms of reproduction by human cloning or
parthenogenesis are now becoming human possibilities through
advances in biotechnologies.  It could cause de-evolution.  Trying
to artificially breed people for intellectual or physical traits
using eugenics goes against the natural wisdom of the microbial
romance.  Aphrodite and Eros are the best determinants of who
should breed with whom.  Breeding for any reason other than for
love is an injustice to the law of life, making the sex act an act
of death.  In _Morality and Eros_, Richard Rubenstein writes, "Love
is the great opponent of death-in-life" (111).  Through the use
of advanced technology, messages and information about the ways in
which the superorganism works within us can be broadcast
universally.  Peter Russell points out in _The Global Brain_, "From
an evolutionary perspective, perhaps the ultimate purpose of
technology has been to enable society to make the shift" (173).  It
is no longer unreasonable to think that humanity's crones and sages
are indeed the consciousness of Gaia. 

Summary 

     In this chapter we have discussed the danger of using Mother
Earth or the Virgin Mother, as a metaphor for the planet.  The
Virgin Mother does not have the sexual wisdom necessary for our
planetary salvation.  The two sexes becoming the Unshakable One
leads to an understand of the One World Mind and the occult powers
it generates.  We have seen that what is needed is a creative hero
who has conquered his fear of sex and death by taking into his
heart Aphrodite's eternal love.  In order to do this, he must
individuate by breaking free of the incest bonds with his
biological parents in order to become a spokesperson for Gaia. 
Gaia, the microbial life-force of the planet, seems to be the
Supreme Being(s) throughout time.  It reveals a new morality of
life to us in the form of revolutionary archetypal energies which
artists then make known to the public.



























                       















and that the symbol of the fish is a worldwide symbol for the
Goddess. In the Greek language the words for fish and womb
(delphos) are synonymous.  Delphi was the place "believed to be the
navel of the earth, the connector to the womb" (Gadon 1989, 44). 
The Christians incorporated the fish symbol into their own system
as the vesica pisces which the early Christians chose to symbolize
Christ.  Matthew Fox writes in the preface to the Cosmic Christ,
that he received his inspiration on March 16th under the sign of
Pisces.