The Stranger

“He is the unknown emissary of the gods, the initiator into sexual mysteries combining the physical and spiritual.” –Nancy Qualls Corbett in The Sacred Prostitute: Eternal Aspect of the Feminine

The phallus symbol, the potent masculine component of the female psyche is the “stranger animus” that initiates and catalyzes advanced states of consciousness and expanded levels of inter-relatedness and engagement, within the psyche and expressed outwardly between man and woman.

“In ancient times, often it was the priest of the temple who initiated women into the sexual and spiritual rites dedicated to the goddess, and taught her the art of love-making.” (ibid) The Stranger-animus appears as priest, mediator of the divine and earthy-nature god, one who confirms, acquaints and familiarizes the natural aspects of fecundity and Eros in the expression of woman’s desire and connection to spirit.  Therewith experiencing, woman reaches a level of consciousness whereby her “feminine being” contains forces instinctively natural and spiritual, blended into a rich elixir of abundant expression.

“The Stranger” initiates a distinctive process whereby a woman reaches fulfillment and potentiality unknown in its absence.

1. Repressed attitudes and roles that wound and limit feminine expression and experience are realized and released.
2. The importance of beauty and sexuality are realized and accepted.
3. Attitudes that debase the feminine are confronted and differentiated—between internal messages and judgments and outward influences of oppression.
4. The goodness and acceptance of the Goddess and her devotee –the Sacred Prostitute (or Dakini) is realized, allowing and encouraging the woman to expand in the fullness of love, in service to the divine.
5. Welcome and solicitation is extended to undeveloped aspects of the feminine Ego which become integrated and valued as a holistic awareness of self is developed.
6. The Masculine aspect is welcomed and recognized as essential to independent femininity, strength, decisiveness, and action vital to both inner and outer relationships.
7. All guilt is released. Guilt of “using” men, of inferiority, of jealousy, of competition; the woman stands complete, whole unto herself, virginal.
8. Completion is felt, reveling in the experience of femininity and love, sovereign, delighting in the giving and receiving of being woman.

How does “The Stranger” do this?
It is through intimate connection that the stranger-animus may facilitate a woman’s awareness of the greatness in her being, her sexuality, her autonomy. It takes an actual man to concretize this experience.

“The stranger’s eyes penetrate the woman’s inner being; his very presence awakens the dormant sacred prostitute and the sensuous feminine nature contained therein.”  “The stranger comes as an emissary of the divine, the moon goddess; if he is not welcomed; the goddess too is slighted and turns her dark side toward the woman. The consequence is that the woman remains cut off from her spirituality, which would contain and enhance her sexual nature.” (ibid)

Un-orchestrated, it is often the case that a literal stranger appears in the life of a woman to initiate her into these deeper realms of love and spiritual-erotic embodiment. Reemerging in today’s world is the Priest, or Daka, a spiritual-sexual-healer who consciously initiates and stewards a woman to intimate and profound connection of Spiritual-Eros embodiment. Without romance or overt plying or contrived intention on his part to save the woman from an empty existence, the Daka neither promises enduring relationship or planned, manipulated outcome—merely honest, simplistic, service and facilitation that releases and propels her to fullness of being and enlargement of expression.

By so submitting to “the Stranger,” and the unknown, is the unconscious loosened and the woman freed from maidenhood or dependency, and the compulsion to perform, gain, or keep a man’s attention as her security. Only thusly can she claim authentic connection with the goddess and accept in totality spirit’s life within her body as a full participant.

Women who are conscious of their full feminine being are free, and attentive to the wisdom of the heart. They trust and serve the wisdom of the body and its relationship to Eros, guided by spirit and instinctive nature.

The Stranger-animus is both an outward presence and inward reality that catalyzes growth and fullness of being. “Through it women come to realize their true instinctive nature as it unites with spirit, the male stranger, in the ritual of the sacred marriage.” (ibid)

Sunyata Satchitananda
www.SunyataSatchitananda.com

The Dionysian Male

Two gods stand in contrast: Apollo and Dionysus. The Apollonian male is a “straight arrow,” circumspect and careful, hero of the patriarchy. Dionysus, to the patriarchal male viewpoint, is slightly mad, impulsive, off-balance, strange and associated with archaic sensibilities. These "gods" portray two versions of masculinity present in our culture as it undergoes a great transformation away from patriarchy and into equitable egalitarianism.

Psychologically, Apollo represents “solar phallos” identified by order and regularity. Dionysus’ intrinsic connection with femininity causes emotion with intensity, to feel rather than talk about feeling. To an intellectual Apollonian "male" separated from one’s feelings, such wantonness of emotion is unbearable. To a Dionysian, it is part and parcel to being, the consequence of spirit and flesh incarnate and embodied.

Dionysus was called the “womanly one,” the “womanly stranger” and the “man-womanish.” Women encircled his experience: Ariadne his wife, Semele his mother, Aphrodite his consort, Nymphs and Maenads his associates. Women expressed themselves in wild excitement during his rituals and festivals. Males in his stories were Satyrs, Centaurs, and Selini, lascivious expressions of masculinity mirroring the ithyphallic (erect phallus) representations of the god. Thus, Dionysus represents the carnal “underworld” and shadow connection to one’s unimproved nature –a primal connection to the depths of one’s being, a marriage of chthonic masculine and chthonic feminine in irrational orgy.

"The slightly mad qualities of Dionysus and his flock belong to psychic reality, and room must be made for them, whether or not Apollonians enjoy the coexistence. The fusion and confusion of masculine and feminine in the psychoid unconscious is expressed in the archetypal image of Dionysus." (from Phallos: Sacred Image of the Masculine by Eugene Monick)

Dionysian wisdom is beyond pure Apollonian understanding –being sourced from embodied experience. Dionysus is the transpersonal experience of life transcending personal ego and stoic scientific pragmatism and infused with embodied realism of natural experience. Only by giving way to such does one transcend intellectual impression with experiential psychoid (of the psyche and physical) reality.

The Dionysian male contains within himself not only masculine, but also strongly feminine qualities in a fusion of coexistence that integrates his unconscious and conscious expression of being in a holistic-androgynous expression of “male.”  He does not have a sexual identity problem –whether expressly heterosexual or homosexual in nature, he knows himself to be male yet he shares with women in a way that no Apollonian male can.

"The integration of chthonic phallos (with its overtones of the feminine) and solar phallos is the task of consciousness, a process inherent in the Dionysian image." (ibid)

The brotherhood of “male” is changing as men transmute patriarchal stereotypes of masculinity. While Apollonian masculinity favors patriarchal values of linearity and regularity, which serve Ego-personality –Dionysian masculinity favors equitable egalitarianism; integrating the vast resource of the unconscious with the conscious personality with inclusive synthesis thereof.

"New Consciousness, the movement beyond patriarchy, no longer requires diminishment of the feminine for phallic establishment. Masculinity finds its center as inner phallic reality. This, together with the anima, constitutes a restoration of wholeness in a male." (ibid)

The Dionysian male is psychoid-androgynous and chooses to incorporate an owned portion of the opposite gender into his dominant identity. "An androgynous person does not pretend to be a member of the opposite sex. An androgynous male will not repress his feminine characteristics, however much he may, at times, decide to suppress them. He knows that they are part of him, he has worked on his ego resistence to integrating them. He knows there will be times when he will choose to think and perhaps behave according to the "her" within him." (ibid)

Dionysus represents the possibility of masculine expression that includes chthonic phallos and its feminine aspects with Apollonian, solar phallos. To the extent that this takes place, a man moves closer to expressing unus mundus –the totality of masculinity in integrated expression– not burdened by patriarchal bias and limitation. The more Dionysus is accepted and represented in a man’s personality the more he expresses the holistic benevolence of this divine masculine archetype in its beatific totality.

Sunyata Satchitananda
www.SunyataSatchitananda.com

The Divine Masculine

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