When I began my research into the myths most responsible for our understanding of masculinity today, I discovered that the masculine hadn’t always been conflated with the violence of hierarchy and domination. Long before the sword-wielding heroes of legend readily cut down forests, slaughtered the old deities, and vanquished their enemies, there were playful gods, animal-headed kings, mischievous lovers, vegetal magicians, trickster harpists, and riddling bards. These archetypes of ancient masculinities are mirrored by contemporary discoveries in biology, genetics, ecology, and quantum physics. My deepening study into myth and science blurred my ideas of gender distinction and, even more excitingly, my ideas of bounded individuality. — Sophie Strand1
At first, I was a bit skeptical about a book on sacred masculinity that was written by a young woman like Sophie Strand, who was not yet 29 when her book The Flowering Wand was published. Just as women are understandably wary of men appointing themselves as explainers of the feminine, I worried that even a well-meaning woman simply would not be able to navigate the volatility of testosterone and the challenges of inhabiting male bodies and identities in our troubled and fractious world. But my anxiety was allayed by this paragraph, found in the book’s introduction.
Men liberated from violence are men set free to play. Perhaps this is what Jesus was getting at with his instructions to “become like children” (Matthew 18:3). He wasn’t telling his followers to be immature, or powerless, or incapable of self-care. He was encouraging them — and by extension, all of us — to play. There’s nothing implicitly gendered here: Jesus is not just talking to men, but to us all. But then, like now, Jesus’s words come to us in a world marked by systems of power and privilege that benefit straight, cisgender men, at the expense of everyone else. But even the straight cis guys can be harmed by the “filthy, rotten system” (as Dorothy Day called it) that we live under. Powerful men make life hell for those with less power, in both big and small ways. Any system that is based on the unequal distribution of power will sooner or later bring suffering to everyone except those at the very top (and they, too, have their relatively mitigated suffering of having to always watch their back).
Playful gods, mischievous lovers, trickster harpists… Sophie Strand points out that there is something truly goofy and silly about masculinity at its best. This might be why Jungian analyst Ann Ulanov wrote a book on human sexual archetypes that paired “the clown” with “the witch.” Both clowns and witches subvert traditional hierarchies: the powerful witch undermines the limitations placed on women’s autonomy, while the clown liberates men from the role of oppressor by unleashing their inner foolishness.
Little boys can often be rascals, can’t they? They just love to play. I once read an article (I can’t recall the author) that suggested the reason why women like to have men around is because, at their best, men are playful and fun. Sophie Strand reminds us that there is a mythical foundation to this — and the wise, childlike Jesus seems to clearly agree.
Sophie Strand, The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine, Kindle Edition, p. 16.