True to form, I'm not avoiding the difficult matters for the festal season. Yes, I'm using the Christmas word: my usual disenchantment with 'the Pagan community' pushes me into using the name for this feast of the predominant surrounding milieu. And of course that's the point of this post. Christians like to make out that Christ is the 'reason for the season'. And of course they're dead wrong. The reason for the season is the darkness. And we witches know you can't have darkness without its polar opposite, light, right kids?
But the image which illustrates this post has become a more common image of this season since the Christians came along, & interestingly brings with it one of the most complicated human relationships possible. The Christians, of course, have a slight difficulty with the apparent lack of femininity in their divinity, which is accounted for usually by Mary, or the image of the church as the spouse of Christ. The witches, as among those who have 'reclaimed' the feminine divine in the twentieth century, have exactly the opposite problem: we risk mummy issues creeping into our either bisexual or completely feminine perception of divinity. That said, mummy issues are almost the definitive feature of the witch:
'"I have found that people who know that they are preferred or favored by their mothers give evidence in their lives of a peculiar self-reliance and an unshakeable optimism which often bring actual success to their possessors."' (http://www.pbs.org/youngdrfreud/pages/family_mother.htm)
You will note that I'm using the phrase 'mummy issues' quite differently from its normal sense of a heterosexual man without a mother figure in his early years, who looks for a woman who will fill that void. it is only my personal opinion but I find it quite creepy the way straight men can both want sex & to be - almost - mothered by their lovers. That is my stereotyped perception of a particular human relationship seen from the outside. The stereotype extends to homosexual men having over-involved mothers. In fact both straight & gay men can have over- or under-interested mothers & thus various mummy issues.
This festival has therefore become one marking the *most* complicated relationship we humans have. Of course I'm sitting here secure in the knowledge that I'll never have children to fuck up, although I did manage to turn a nervous stray cat into a relaxed, happy old man. The whole tone for upbringing is set by the parents, the 'blame' will always somehow land there, they will always get it wrong to various degrees.
I hope, as a witch, I can sit with the fact that this relationship will never be 'right'. However if nothing else, I will not play at happy families - that is the way of falsehood & further screwiness.
Happy festival - go on, upset a relative. It's strangely liberating.
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