(That's Right!) The Woman Are Smarter

How the Gynocracy Can Defeat the Broligarchs

***

Just got back from hiking the Dry Stone Route between coastal villages on the island of Mallorca.

First day we climbed up and over the Tramontana Mountains, over windswept ridges, down ancient stone paths lined with Moorish aqueducts and old shepherd camps, past prancing mountain goats that woulda made Dionysus proud.

Down, down underneath the steep cliffs to the little Boho village of Deia where the poet and writer (and one of my all time heroes) Robert Graves posted up and wrote I, Claudius and The White Goddess.

In that latter book, he unpacked (and socialized for the first time to modern Western audiences) the notion of the Triple Goddess, maiden/mother/crone, and how prevalent she was and is throughout world mythologies.

Like Joe Campbell’s subsequent monomyth (there is only the Hero’s Journey retold a thousand times), Grave’s universalism took some hits from more particular scholars in the decades to come.

But at the time, it was a revolutionary thesis, almost bordering on religious sacrilege.

As it turned out, the final leg of our hike was supposed to end at the mountain monastery at Lluc. (pronounced yook). Didn’t know much about it other than the fact that it was one of the more famous pilgrimage spots in the Balearic Islands, and worth a visit.

Wasn’t until we were googling it a bit before we set out that we realized it was in fact a shrine to the Black Madonna! One of the more interesting and esoteric characters in European Christian history.

(and, in one of those quirks of serendipity, a goddess I’d just name checked and shown an image of in a keynote presentation in Exeter on Easter Weekend )

#spookyactionatadistance

Unlike the the virginal Mary of most Christian iconography, the Black Madonna (most prevalent in Poland, and southern Spain) is more of a syncretic mashup of fertility goddess, divinity of the mysteries, saint of the people and animals and wild places.

She carried on the lineage of the ancient Anatolian fertility goddess Kybele, and followed her as she morphed into the more slender hipped Artemis, goddess of the hunt, while picking up whiffs of her distant cousin Kali from the subcontinent.

In short, very much in keeping with old Robert Graves’ Triple Goddess notion that he penned just down the coast.

And her origin story at the shrine of Lluc is fascinating too.

Supposedly a medieval Moorish goat herd name Lluc found a statue of her beside a spring in the forest. Intrigued, he packed up the icon and took it to the bishop in Palma.

The statue promptly disappeared from the cathedral and reappeared back in the mountains beside the spring.

The higher ups took this to mean she preferred to be worshipped in the wilds (this is a common motif, as the cathedrals at Notre Dame, Chartes and elsewhere were all originally built on sacred springs).

So what did the men of the cloth do?

Built an entire shrine and monastery around the Black Madonna!

Who’d hinted, in no uncertain terms, that she strongly preferred moonlit forest rites to the smells and bells of the Catholic liturgy.

#mansplainingFTW

But that’s the thing, isn’t it?

Men tend to be really good at three things:

Fighting stuff.

Fucking stuff.

and

Building stuff.

But on the count of when to fight, who to fuck and what to build?

Let’s just say our record is a bit more mixed.

#justthetip

That’s when we really should turn (back) to the women to give us a bit more steer.

After all, they’re the ones who tend to pay more attention to the children, to the elders, to the winged, finned and rooted.

Like the Black Madonna, Kybele and Kali–presiding as midwives over birthing, living and dying.

Over sacred springs and oaken groves.

Of mistletoe and ivy.

L’Chaim! (and all that)

***

We finally arrived at the monastery during the Golden Hour of a Sunday evening.

By another stroke of luck/Grace, we’d found an ancient pilgrim’s path through the mountains, a UNESCO bio park and cultural preserve.

The fourth generation owner of the little solar powered farm sent us up that way with a gift of homemade marmalade, the route his family had taken for centuries to visit the shrine on holy days—and we were the only ones in that entire, spectacular valley.

All the tourists and pilgrims had packed up, and we strolled onto the grounds and right to the entrance to the basilica.

And there, in the courtyard was a statue of one of Mallorca’s most beloved bishops, kneeling in supplication to the Black Madonna and her chapel!

given this week of Papal Conclaves and the likely pivot from liberation theology/birds and bees Francis to a pope who’s almost certainly gonna be more like #notanazi Ratzinger before him, the statue felt timely and appropriate.

There, the biggest swinging dick of the land, on his knees, deferring to the holy might of the Mother.

***

So couldn’t we put a prayer like that into the world right now?

That we might remember to kneel before her, and defer to her life giving wisdom and forgiveness?

Where are you Melania Trump, Usha Vance, Katie Miller and the strongest of Elon’s hareem?

Where have you gone Mrs. Modi, Netanyahu, Erdogan and Bolsanaro?)

Or Bezos’ Lauren Sanchez.

Or Zuck’s Priscilla Chan.

Or really any woman who’s minding these untethered deeply wounded men-children masquerading as gods?

As poet and MacArthur genius Wendell Berry put it so well, “so long as they don’t go cheap for power, please women more than men.”

That’s the thing though, isn’t it?

How many of these women, so tempted to go cheap for power (and be fabulously compensated for their complicity) are turning away from their Mother as well?

Casting a blind eye against the bitterness, the pettiness, the greed and spite that lesser men are wielding in the name of adolescent power?

Isn’t it time for a revival of the Sacred Feminine, and a right-sizing of what men are best suited for?

We fight stuff, fuck stuff and build stuff. That’s pretty much it.

But for the love of god, don’t also burden us with figuring out where to point our little rockets!

***

As the Black Madonna suggests, presiding over her sylvan sanctuary–

She’s best approached humbly from the valleys below.

Sweating our prayers in God’s cathedral, not man’s.

Timing our approach with the setting sun and horned moon.

Bringing gifts and offerings to honor her, like perfect chunky marmalade made with love.

On bended knee and bowed head like that bishop of Palma.

Forgive us, and guide us to the Light!

***

Let us put men and women together
See which one is smarter
Some say men, but I say no
The women got the men like a puppet show

Believe me, it's the people that say
That the men are leading the women astray
But I say that the women today
Are smarter than the men in every way

That's right, the women are smarter
That's right, the women are smarter
That's right, the women are smarter
The women are smarter than the men today!