Myths and Mentalities

Teresa Barro

                   A very startling feature that inmediately comes to light whenever we examine the ideologies behind marriage and parenthood is the fact that the best known of those ideologies have their basis in myth. Or at least that myths were used and are still being used to lend some sort of respectability or divine origin, to ways of living and organizing societies that would have otherwise been open to the sharpest of criticism.

The creation of the world according to the Bible

                   It is in the opening pages of the Bible that we find one of the myths that has exerted a far reaching influence on the minds and feelings of men throughout history.

                   The first book of the Bible,  Genesis, offers an account of how the world was made by God and how He created the first man and woman. Innumerable ideas and interpretations on our role and destiny on earth emerged from this tale. The fact that so many of the ethical dilemmas of our time still derive from here and are part of a battle against the kind of society and mentality created by Judaism and Christianity through the centuries, only goes to prove the extraordinary depth of penetration of a whole set of ideas born from this account. In our modern world we are still debating whether God can be considered female besides being, of course, male, or whether female is generally inferior to male, or whether the monogamous family should or can exist, or whether man has absolute rights to use the world around him as he pleases, or whether we should have as many children as we can beget, or whether the absolute rights of parents over their children should be open to question. The whole issue of women's rights takes on different nuances depending on the religious undertones of each society, but those religious undertones are always there. There is no doubt, for instance, that the popular belief derived from Judeo- Christian tradition to the effect that woman was made from man  and for man, comes directly from the Genesis myth of the creation of the world and its inhabitants.

                    Monogamy is also based on this myth, as is the idea of sin associated with sexuality, the concept of Evil as Temptation, the idea of a God who asks above all for blind obedience and punishes freedom, the idea of reproduction as essential to marriage and many others.

                   So deeply did all these ideas and images permeate our culture that, on a more or less unsconscious level, they are still very much alive in almost every man or woman belonging to Western society. After all, the Cosmogony provided in Genesis is the only available explanation so far as to how and why we are here, in this world, and, if only for that reason, it does have a vast appeal to our imagination. This is even further accentuated because of the depth to which this particular Cosmogony has penetrated in all the Arts (let us think, por instance, of the continuous reference, in Literature and paintings, to Adam and Eve, Paradise and the serpent, God as patriarch, and so forth), which have made it an essential feature of our civilization. Thus, it is not easy, even if it were possible, to dispense completely with such culturally transmitted images and inherited concepts, even if we choose not to believe in them from a religious point of view.

.                          It is easy to understand the enormous influence exerted by the biblical account of Creation in the minds of the followers of Judaism first, and the non-Catholic Christian Churches later, given the central role of the reading of the Old Testament in these two religious tendencies. Much more difficult to understand, however, is how it came about that the Roman Catholic Church, with its underlying attitude of mistrust towards the Old Testament, is to this day using the biblical account of the Creation of the world as the only basis to repudiate the use of contraceptives, or as justification for the belief that reproduction is essential to marriage.

                    Neither Judaism nor any of the Christian Churches are guilt-free as regards the setting up of patriarchal societies. All of them are also guilty of having transmitted the image of a rigid and authoritarian god, whose cruelty and whims bring more inmediately to mind the figure of a populist dictator than one that could fit Goodness itself, which is, after all, what God is supposed to be.

                    Yet, despite the very considerable weight of traditional interpretations of Creation in Genesis, there is nothing, or very little, to be found in this biblical tale that could go to explain all those notions unleashed through the ages, according to which woman's nature and destiny is inferior to man's and she was the main culprit in the series of events that precipitated man's  expulsion from Paradise.

                    Superstitious fear and a guilty conscience have undoubtedly contributed to the extraordinary vitality of traditional interpretations that would otherwise have had little chance of surviving with such tenacity or such a tight grip on our minds.

                   Let us then examine the text  in question:

                   Surely one of the most remarkable facts to be found in the biblical account of the making of the Universe is the spirit in which God, or Yahweh, sets about creation, very much like a craftsman and an artist. The thought, patience, care, order and observation that He puts into what He does, corroborated by His final approval when He decides that what He has made is  'good'  (implying that the opposite could very well have happened), brings to mind the love and intelligence associated with any kind of human creativity. It is not the capricious tyranny of a ruler shouting orders and expecting blind obedience from servants and slaves. He himself does the work  -albeit with the help or approval he may have received from Wisdom herself, according to some ancient Jewish traditions. There is a noteworthy contrast between the friendly God of this myth of the origins of the Universe, who creates human beings as his sons and daughters, friends and companions, and other ancient myths where they are destined to be the servants of the gods and very much their subordinates. Such a spirit of definite hierarchy as present in most accounts of the origins of man is absent here, substituted by a spirit of obedience only to the cosmic order and respect for the harmony of the Universe. Whatever laws are decreed, now and later, lack personal arbitrariness, destined as they are to protect the whole of Creation from the possible abuses and excesses born of pride and imprudence in the exercise of human affairs.

                    There is a remarkable absence of total perfection in this vision of Creation   -- so remarkable that, according to some Jewish Kabbalists, it was due to the accidental overflowing of substances or  'ingredients'  which caused the appearance of evil forces in this world. It is this absence of perfection, however, which confirms the artistic nature of the task. A forceful and authoritarian god would have made a conclusive piece of work, in order to amuse himself and to prove his power, and would have proclaimed his absolute rights over it. In contrast, the work produced by this god-artist is meant to have a life of its own, a life that the author intends to respect at all moments and from the very beginning. This does not mean that he will no longer concern himself with its fate or that he will abandon it to its own devices, but it certainly means that any future intervention will have to be made with Him as either a teacher of a friend, and not as a chief or a king. The Author does not want to use his authority to force his will. So there is little else left to Him, after his work begins to 'live', than rejoice if things go in a satisfactory way and grieve if they go awry.

                    According to Genesis, Yahweh, having made the  'living creatures'  that inhabit the earth, created  'man' . Not the male side of mankind, but  'man'  as male and female:

So God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them...

Genesis  1,27-28

                   It is to this  'man',  male and female, that He refers when He says:

'Let us make man in our image and likeness to rule the fish in the sea, the birds of heaven, the cattle, all wild animals on earth, and all reptiles that crawl upon the earth.'  So God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and increase,

fill the earth and subdue it...

Genesis  1,26

                   From the very beginning of the book of Genesis it is made clear that humankind surges from a force or a power, energy, spirit or god in whom the male and the female principle coexist. Moreover, according to most biblical scholars, the Creator of the beginnings of human life is not Yahweh but Elohim, a plural name, which would explain that curious  'in our  image', more traditionally associated with the feminine principle than with the masculine one. It should be remembered at all times that powerful images are transmitted by the idiosyncrasies of any given language; thus, as some women scholars have already remarked, the word  'spirit'  was feminine in Hebrew, neuter in Greek and became masculine in Latin, from where it went on being masculine in all the Romance languages. A heavenly trinity composed by a Father, a Son and a masculine Spirit evokes an image of exclusive masculinity that would not exist had the word 'spirit' continued being feminine, or at least neuter, in gender.

                    The same idea of duality or plurality in the Creator and in 'man' as male and female is also implicit in all the symbolism that surrounds Creation. God creates the four basic Elements  (water, earth, air and fire, two of which, according to traditional interpretations of symbols, are 'feminine'  and the other two, 'masculine' ) . It is clear that there is an emphasis on the interplay of these two forces or principles and that this essential interplay becomes even more accentuated with the making of a 'man'  which is, very much like his author, male and female.

                    In the light of all this, it would seem that the spiritual basis of this Universe would be founded upon the interaction of the 'masculine' and 'feminine' forces or energies, the culmination of which is  'man'.

                   A more detailed account of how the first human beings were made by God then unfolds in the book of Genesis. In this story, the first man is made from the dust of the ground and then taken to the Garden of Eden. Later on the first woman is created from one of the man's ribs.

                   It was always said that, by virtue of having been the first to be made, the male was for that reason superior to the female, especially because, according to tradition, the woman was made for  him. From here derived the belief that woman's existence has no sense whatsoever unless it is geared to the service of man. It was also deemed that she was inferior because she was made from a section of the man's body.

                    Yet, were we to interpret literally this account or myth, using the same kind of arguments hoisted through the ages to assert man's superiority over woman,  it would be fair to conclude that just the opposite is true, and that, if superiority was there from the beginning for one of the first pair of human beings, it was woman who was meant to be superior, and not man.  Brazen and very foolish indeed it was to have used the argument of progeniture to preach male superiority, seeing that the same argument can be easily inverted to prove quite the opposite.

                    There can be no doubt that the whole of Creation, as described in Genesis, goes gradually from the imperfect to the perfect.  We can speak of a continuum  spanning from the elements and the inanimate world through  'living creatures'  to man.

                   But the last and major task, the culmination of Creation, was the woman.  It would thus be reasonable to think of her as the most complex and perfect of all the works, and also, perhaps, as the most similar to the Creator.

                   Another of the traditional arguments employed to prove man's superiority over woman is based on the different substance or material from which male and female were formed.  Yet that argument is also fundamentally flawed.  Because, what this argument might well prove is, once again, the superiority of woman over man.

                    God makes man (the male side of 'man') from the dust of the earth:

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Thus the man because a living creature.

Genesis, 2, 7.

                   But for the making of woman God no longer uses the dust of the earth, a rough material useful to the artist because of its amorphousness, but neither precious nor noble. Woman is made from the most precious of all substances:

God put the man into a trance, and while he slept, he took one of his ribs and closed the flesh over the place. The Lord God then built up the rib, which he had taken out of the man, into a woman.

Genesis, 2, 21-22

                   The creation of the woman is more carefully crafted, her making is more elaborate. Also, her origins are undoubtedly more noble. She is made not only from  human  material, but also from what is already a living being. It is licit then to assume that she is not only more spiritual and  'unwordly' or less earthy than man, but also more complete and better finished. This is especially so because God had already had the opportunity to observe the man earlier  (the man had been living for quite a while, tilling the earth, caring for the garden of Eden and naming  'the living creatures' ) . As the artist that God was, it is fair to assume that He would have wanted to produce an even better work the second time round.

                    Moreover, this striking difference between man and woman is emphasized by God himself when he closes the Garden of Eden to them. On that occasion, He says to the man:

You shall gain your bread by the sweat of your brow until you return to the ground; for from it you were taken. Dust you are, to dust you shall return.

Genesis, 3,19

                   This was conveniently forgotten through the centuries. For once, all the religious hierarchies and Churches decided to eliminate unequality between the sexes and applied God's  words indiscriminately, both to man and woman. Or not so indiscriminately in practice, because it somehow came to be known, through the various religious teachings and traditions, that woman's nature was more 'earthy'  than man's . If we take this passage literally, nothing could be farther from the truth: it is man who comes directly from the earth and to the earth will return, not woman. Despite the insistence of the Churches on the more 'physical'  nature of woman, the threat or prophecy of becoming nothing other than dust was made directly to the man, and not to the woman. There is a hint of contempt towards the man that is absent in His words to the woman. It is all too easy to imagine what the traditional teachings would have been, had those words been directed to the woman.

                   In truth, nothing in the whole scene can be construed as evidence to support the patriarchal society, in which woman's role is to serve man's purpose and superior destiny. It is obvious, for instance, that God makes woman from a portion of the man's body which is especially precious. There are undoubtedly some parts which are more vital, whether practically or symbolically. Thus the spine is the axis of the body, distinguishing man from four legged animals, supporting the whole body and allowing man to direct his gaze upwards. There is, of course, abundant related symbolism  -- The Tree of Life, for example.

                   The rib cage, which encloses and protects the heart and the lungs, constitutes part of this vital axis, so that the man experiences the desire to become one with her and will feel the irresistible attraction of that other human being, so similar and yet so different to him. In this poetical scene it is indicated that woman is the completion of man, who, without her, will feel lost and inadequate. Without her, he will be barren and unable to create. But, would it not have been much more in consonance with the patriarchal mentality had it been woman who was feeling lost and lonely, and man the one who came to save and complete her?

                    What is more, a very remarkable comment follows after the man rejoices before this woman who has been introduced to him by God:

This is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and the two become one flesh.

Genesis, 2, 24

                   From the patriarchal point of view, this is anathema. It would have been far more appropriate for God to have said just the opposite, i.e. that  'that is why a woman leaves her father and mother and is united to her husband'  . Which is what happened in practice, but most certainly not  because it had been decreed by God from the beginning

.                   From the scene of the Fall, which tells of the disobedience of Adam and Eve, emerged the image of woman as a temptress. Also, according to the traditional teachings and sayings of Judaism and Christianity, woman was the one deserving the greater portion of blame for the sequence of events that led to expulsion from Paradise. The serpent addressed her first, and it was she who offered the forbidden fruit to Adam, thus becoming the first sinner and an agent of corruption. It goes without saying that, had the man been addressed first by the serpent, it would have been interpreted as one more proof of his superiority over woman and his right to be  'head of the family' . Also, it would have been said that, naturally, the serpent went first to him because he was the more intellectually gifted of the two and, consequently, the more open to philosophical speculation.

                    This episode became popularly associated with the  "carnal sin", pointing again to woman as a temptress. The religious hierarchies did not do much to dispel this convenient error, despite their knowledge that such sin as there was originated in the mind and not in the 'body' . Both the man and the woman discover  'the flesh'  after eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, yet once more the story was used to convey a strong connection between woman and flesh, as opposed to man and innocent mind.

                    Let us then examine this episode within Creation, bearing in mind that, as with any myth, it should be read as poetry. We can unearth in it essential truths about the world and about human nature in the knowledge, however, that any truth discovered there should always be open to interpretation and updating when necessary.

                   Let us imagine then a freshly made Garden, where everything is new, beginning to blossom and flower, still at a very delicate stage and in need of extra care and attention. In this Garden, full of beautiful trees and flowers, rivers and streams, fish, reptile, cattle and birds, created as a splendid setting for a human race as a work of Art and with a glorious position and destiny, we find three main characters: Adam, Eve and Elohim, who is apparently teaching them the necessary arts and crafts to deal with the world. At some point, a fourth character comes on to the scene who is neither divine nor human: the serpent, who like the dragon in other cultures, is a powerful symbol of duality, wisdom and regeneration.

                    It is to be expected that, in this recently made Garden, the man and the woman, newly born too, would have had to undergo a careful training. It is reasonable to imagine them, at such an early stage of their lives and surrounded by a new world, spending most of their time learning and being taught. This teaching, which they were in all probability receiving from God Himself, would have had to be gradual and step by step. After all, having been made in the likeness of God, they were undoubtedly destined to be collaborators in the task of Creation. There is no reason to believe that the prohibition on touching the Tree of Knowledge was to apply for ever. Only the common preference for the idea of a God whose paternal or maternal feelings were substituted by the cruelty of the patriarchal 'father', could have prompted us to believe that the Tree was there as a Temptation, to test the filial obedience and submission of Adam and Eve.

                    Nowadays our eyes have been opened to the dangers inherent in newly discovered energies, such as nuclear energy. Consequently, it is easier for us to imagine what may very well have happened prior to the closure of the Garden to Adam and Eve.

                   It would be reasonable to conceive of those two trees central to the story, the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life, as essential sources of energy for the whole of Creation. The warning given to Adam and Eve that they were not to touch the Tree of Knowledge sounds very similar to the one we would give to a child to stay away from a dangerous place or not to play with fire. Adam and Eve must have been, at that early stage of their development, very much like innocent children; there is every reason to suspect that their development was meant to be gradual, until, at some time in the future, they could learn how to manage the powerful energies needed to create; at some time they would have reached the degree of maturity necessary to use those energies in a wise manner. What they did was to try to sidestep the system to get ahead as quick as possible in this newly ordered universe. In other words, they committed an act of daring for which  they were not yet prepared. Everything points to their actions having contained the seeds of an ecological crime. Wanting to play and to show their power over the world, they became highly dangerous in their destructiveness. In past ages, men were not as aware as we are now of how easy it is to destroy life on this planet, as it will be in the very near future to destroy the whole Cosmos. We shudder to think of someone 'pushing the button'  and triggering a nuclear catastrophe. Touching the Tree of Knowledge and  'playing'  with it was probably the equivalent to letting children loose in a nuclear power station, only the energies involved in this story of the beginnings could only have been infinitely more powerful, with the whole Universe affected as a consequence.

                   The Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life were undoubtedly related to each other. God, afraid that they will also tamper with the Tree of Life, decides to close the Garden of Eden to Adam and Eve, and stations the Cherubim at the gates to guard it.

The man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; what if he now reaches out his hand and takes fruit from the tree of life also, eats it and lives for ever?

Genesis 3 ,22

                   After God discovers that Adam and Eve, having disregarded his warnings, eat the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, there follows a scene of confrontation in which the man gives this answer to God's  queries:

The woman you gave me for a companion, she gave me fruit from the tree and I ate it.

Genesis  3, 12-13

                   Such an answer was not criticized by the same religious authorities who were so quick to point to Eve as the temptress. Had the roles been reversed and the woman been the one to give that disagreeable answer, it would have been alleged that those words were another proof of the tainted nature of woman, and that such an answer revealed innate disloyalty, faithlessness and irresponsibility.

                    Hildegarde of Bingen, the German mystic and visionary of the thirteenth century, stated that one of the reasons for which Adam fell into disfavour with God was because he was lacking in sensual appreciation of the world created by Him.  Was there in Adam a tendency to be a malcontent, dissatisfied with everything made by God?  Was there a taint of envy in his reactions? Did he resent the better understanding between God and Eve?  Could these factors together have given him a rather jaundiced perspective?  Perhaps. The readiness of the man to accuse his companion reveals at best disloyalty and at worst a somewhat dubious nature. Above all, it reveals an inclination to begrudge the works of God that could suggest a possible jealousy of His power.

                    God feared that they and their descendants would reach eternity in the underdeveloped state in which they were then, very much like destructive children in charge of a cosmic order that they could not or would not understand nor respect. So, the only way to avert that horrifying possibility was to banish them from the Garden and cut off further access to those sources of energy which, had they been willing to wait for their training to  be complete, would have allowed them to master the natural and cosmic forces. As a consequence of their irresponsibility, instead of being capable of effortlessly mastering Nature as before, they now had to submit to its laws, death of course being one of them. Thus, from that moment on, access to eternity had to be 'won'  through spiritual improvement, in order to become attuned once more to the divine harmony and in order to cease to be discordant, as Adam and Eve chose to be.

                    Whereas the Tree of Knowledge symbolises tension between different forces and duality, the Tree of Life signifies duality as a divisive force surpassed and transcended by cosmic unity. The closure of the Garden of Eden to  'man'  secures universal harmony and prevents the quality of eternal life also being affected by human pride and destructive urges.

                    There is yet another widespread  'proof'  of woman's inferiority to man in this episode of the Fall :  God's  'curse', the words He addressed to them announcing the different ways in which both would find their punishment. Here another justification was thereby laid down to reinforce woman's  subordination to man.

                   Again, this part of the story was interpreted  through the rules of the patriarchal code, according to which fathers were expected to curse their children whenever they dared to disobey their orders, and also to disinherit and expel them from the paternal home. God's  words were read as the patriarch's  anger and thunder directed against his rebellious children, but, in truth, they were just a prediction of what was going to happen to them as a consequence of their transgression. What those words most certainly did not intend to transmit were commandments or laws dictated by God; on the contrary, they were a prophecy of undesirable occurrences that would befall them in the future as a result of their separation from the main sources of energy which they had brought about by their irresponsible actions.

                    It could not be argued on this point that the religious hierarchies of the Judeo-Christian tradition erred because of an overly literal reading of the text in question. There can be no doubt that they used it in bad faith, in their desire to provide ammunition for total male supremacy, even if that meant sadistic behaviour towards women. Christianity, having debated in the past whether woman had a soul, was still debating not so many years ago whether women could be allowed to get relief from the labour pains to which God had 'condemned'  them. The widespread reluctance to let them do so, even after the Church admission of its legitimacy, meant that there was no absence of voices preaching how good it was for women to stay as close to Nature as possible and how dangerous for the child to be born from an anaesthesized mother, who would not then be able to feel any love for the baby. If this is not sadism, then what is?

                    The man had been  'condemned'  by God to earn his daily bread by the sweat of his brow, yet men never felt any qualms about improving their working conditions so as to make sweating less necessary. Men assumed, and rightly so, that when improvements came, they should be accepted gladly. It was only when possible improvements came to women that they sanctimoniously chose to remember the  'commandments'  of God. It is only reasonable to think, if we agree with those who argue that God's hand is everywhere, that, had He not wanted those improvements to take place in order to alleviate the suffering caused by his  'punishment', He would not have allowed them to have been invented or discovered in the first place.

God, having said to the woman  'in labour you shall bear children' continues:

You shall be eager for your husband, and he shall be your master.

Genesis  3, 16

                   What these prophetic words mean is that, in their new condition, removed from the Garden and from the presence of God, the husband or man will in all probability take advantage of the more loving, gentler or more responsible woman's  nature and will exploit these qualities to establish a commanding position over her and her children. There can be no better proof of the undesirable nature of patriarchy and male supremacy in God's  eyes, considering that this is included amongst the evil  things that will come to pass as a result of the new and unwanted course of development in human affairs.

                    It follows from this story that human nature is now imperfect. Whether, without the fall, it would have been perfect, is open to discussion, but it seems somehow improbable. In any case, it seems that, from that moment on, the Creator harbours ambiguous feelings towards  'man' . His love for him/her is mixed with fear for the worst side of human nature and its powers of destruction.

                    A main consideration for our analysis arises from the fact that as soon as  man   comes into existence, begins his/her quest for independence. That God respects at all times the right in  'man'  to choose his or her ways is obvious in, for instance, the haste in which He seeks to adopt new plans to deal with new situations created by His children, and in His predisposition to argue and to enter into dialogue with them.

                    Almost anyone who has had the chance to watch closely the process of artistic creation will be ready to testify that there is always an element of surprise for the author in the work she or he is creating. It is as if the word acquired a life of its own and, as a result, a sort of dialogue has to start between the artist and his or her 'offspring', with the latter sometimes becoming unruly and going beyond the initial idea or will of its author. Moreover, the greater the work, the more this process is exarcebated. We can say that, the stronger the breadth and spirit with which the work has been conceived, the greater will be its need for freedom and the element of surprise and unexpectedness this brings about will correspondibly be greater too. Yet it is this breadth of the spirit which helps to carry the great work of creation over the years, until the truth within can be discerned. It survives thanks to its vitality, regardless of any initial difficulties or any fight against  'the elements' . When, on the contrary, the breadth of creation is substituted by routine and conformity, the result will be a product lacking in vitality and unable to survive for long; a product that, because of its inability to add anything of value to the web of life, is destined to disappear into nothingness.

                    There is a very close similarity between this artistic phenomenom and what happens in regard to the children of our own flesh and blood. Whenever children are made following only the principles of reproduction and not those governing creation, parents are bound to behave as the absolute rulers of an  'object'  that is not expected to have freedom nor a life of its own, but to belong in body and soul to its makers. Breeding done as a matter of routine lays the foundations for the establishment of a state of affairs in which the parents believe the children to be their possessions and that they should be treated as such. Worst of all, these circumstances generate not only tyranny but also irresponsibility in the parents. The parents are not prepared to accept responsibility for that part of their 'work'  that, having a life of its own, will be perceived as  'different'  and alien. The same element of unexpectedness which, even if it startles sometimes the artistic creator, will be joyfully received by her or him, in the case of the lover of routine will be most unwelcome. The lover of routine will balk at anything that brings change. He or she will not want to learn anything new and, accordingly, will remain static. In the case of parenthood, such a parent will be unwilling to establish a dialogue with his or her children and will resent any changes introduced by them.

                    In this story of the beginnings of life on Earth there is a sentence attributed to God which had an excessive influence on our views on human reproduction: 'Be fruitful and increase'  (Genesis ,1,22) . The Roman Catholic Church, basing its teachings solely on these words, is today still stating that, within marriage, mass reproduction should be given priority over the couple as such. According to this Church, we should have as many children  'as God wants to give to us' . This means, of course, that ultimately it is God who makes our children and not us. Therefore, the burden of responsibility is also His. That children are born or not according to God's  will and that they are His way of showing approval for one's conduct, is an idea still so alive in the Judeo-Christian tradition that even today women unable to have children feel the stigma attached in the past to barrenness . They feel that God disapproves of them. How, in the case of the Catholic Church, it is possible to reconcile such a belief in the need to procreate as much as possible following God's will with the belief in the superiority of the state of celibacy in its priests over marriage itself, or how such an idea can concord with the celebration of Mary's virginity, will always remain an enigma. Genuine religious beliefs no doubt were blended with superstition and bad faith. The result was an oppressive situation for women and children, in other words for the whole of the human race.

                    It would be absurd to try to use a myth such as this one, written in different epochs by different people, each of them with their  mentalities and messages to pass to posterity, as if it was a book written directly by God, or as if it contained direct revelation. What is even more ludicrous in the common interpretation of the book of Genesis is the fact that its contents were not even followed literally by those who invoked its 'commandments', but used in bad faith to lend weight and respectability to ideas and ways of life alien to the will of God. Because, what finally transpires from this story of the beginnings of life has nothing in common with what we have been taught to expect. What follows from a close reading of the text is that, if there were some innate superiority of either the male or the female of the human species, it would be the latter who would be superior and not the former; that woman has in all probability a higher degree of spirituality than man; that woman was, from the very beginning, as much 'man' as the male part of a human being; and that it is woman who embodies the creative faculty in mankind, of which physical gestation and the giving of birth to a child is symbolic. It is she who is in charge of human fruitfulness, and this refers not only to physical fertility but also to spiritual productiveness.

                    In this Creation in which we live, everything would seem to point to the masculine principle being, in essence, a prompting and stimulating force, and to the feminine as being a force or energy capable of lending shape and of giving form to what is started.

                  Where the false reasoning comes into being is in the common interpretation of these two forces or principles as active and passive. A glance at the workings of human reproduction should be enough to show the extreme fallacy of such a belief.  Could the role of the male in the making of children, minimal as it is, be judged more  'active'  than that of the female, the one who really makes and gives form to the child? Where is the passivity of a task that requires the prolonged collaboration of all human faculties, the psychic as much as the physical ones?

                    The merging of different  or opposed forces or principles is one of the bases of human creation, and reproduction is symbolic of that process. A creative dynamism seems to emerge from the resolution of differences and from a unity constantly renewed through the division or separetedness of forces equal in strength. But, if one of those forces is nullified, cancelled out, or forcibly made to fit the other, the essential dynamics of creation will cease to exist. The oppresion of women brought about an artificial division between masculine and feminine qualities, in which the latter did not spring from true feminity but from a forced effeminacy, invented to serve and give pleasure to the males. As a consequence of such a grave destruction, the feminine qualities have not yet been properly developed. Thus, the world, lacking the necessary dynamism that can only come from the interplay between the masculine and the feminine, cannot evolve properly.

                    There are qualities derived from the masculine force and others, less well known and generally underdeveloped, closely linked to the feminine force which forms and models that which has been set in motion. In this story of our beginnings found in Genesis, woman is renamed  'Life' or  'Mother', thus suggesting that she is the depositary of the creative energies and that in her there is the moral and spiritual strength needed to give form, to train and to educate. She has become 'chargé d'affaires'  in the germination of the seed of cosmic evolution.

                    It seems fair to conclude that the patriarchal system became embedded into human society at a very early stage and sought ways to justify itself making use of all or most religions. In the case of the Judeo-Christian religion, this was done by interpreting everything according to patriarchal rules, that is, forcing a hierarchical structure where there was none, and obscuring or misinterpreting anything that could go against that structure. An essential parte of this system is the establishment of hierarchies based on the belief that there are 'natural' superiors and inferiors and that this is the due order that humans should follow. As for Christianity in particular, there seems to be a very clear antipatriarchal message in everything Jesus did and the creative approach to life that he adopted and sustained. That message was, of course, distorted and misrepresented by the ecclesiastical authorities who were very much parte of the system and implicated in the authoritarian role that the patriarchal system reserves to all religions to bolster its own authoritarianism.

                    The family is the main tool of this authoritarian system. The patriarcal system is made up partly by a couple of procreators  --not creators—irretrievably unequal, who must bring children to this world and teach them to adapt to what is already there, removing any possibility that they could dismantle the established order. For that task, the parents are given absolute authority over their children, who are brought to the world with very few rights, if any (certainly not the right to work and lead a decent existence when they grow up, as those rights will have to be conquered by inserting themselves, if ever they are allowed, into the system and defending it). The couple itself and the children they beget are unimportant, as they are not supposed to add anything valuable nor bring progress or contribute to the harmonious evolution of humanity. The important thing is the Family itself, as an entity in which older people have absolute power over younger people, and to this everything else must be sacrificed.

                    This so-called family must teach inequality and injustice from birth, and make them appear as natural, desirable and good. This is done by many means, but above all by emphasizing and teaching the innate and indisputable superiority of males and by extension of all that is considered masculine, and the unquestionable inferiority of females and what is considered feminine.

 The mother is the decisive instrument that makes the whole system work. This is the reason why she is given some authority despite being a woman, provided that she delivers what is asked of her and surrenders her children to the established order. The patriarchal mother ceases to be inferior as a woman when she gives birth to a male and teaches him to become a useful tool of the system. This is why she collaborates with the system and becomes an important part of it, transmitting its values and inserting them into her children. She is in charge of instilling the corrupt feelings and emotions that the system needs to survive. Those misguided feelings and emotions are thus lent respectability and goodness, coming as they do from this maternal figure who is then promoted as a revered idol. The system promotes idolatry as the way to insert undisputable authority and blind obedience, and to amputate any possibility of creation.

                    Any possibility of allowing the forces of creation to intervene threatens a system based on repetition. The family, as the basic cell of the patriarchal system, must not be allowed to follow a creative destiny and must be kept as an authoritarian institution entrusted with the task of restraining the creative impulse in humanity.

                    Freedom and passion are two of the main components needed in the creative process, and these are the specific elements that the patriarchal family flattens and crushes. Instead of true freedom, the patriarchal family encourages the kind of profligacy and excess in a few that results in slavery for others; instead of fostering the capacity for passion that is characteristic of humans and can lead them to creation, it encourages willful obsessions that can only lead to annulment and destruction.

                    The aim of the patriarchal family is, above all, to preserve the status quo and establish a hierarchical order in society. Thus, it cannot allow human evolution and progress. Yet, the main aim of the family should be to stimulate the spirit of creation and to make a 'home' where creativity can develop. For a real family to exist, all is members should want to be creators and artistic instruments of human evolution. And neither creativity nor human progress can properly exist without every human being, but most especially women, been able to develop fully as potential creators, with the freedom, passion and dedication that the fostering of such capacity implies.