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March-Women's History Month: Honoring Feminine Sages

By Marcia Mason

sage - one (as a profound philosopher) distinguished for wisdom; a mature or venerable [person] of sound judgment; knowing; wise through reflection and experience; proceeding from or characterized by wisdom, prudence, and good judgment.
- Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 1994
While man may not have treated the women around him with wisdom, he has tried to make up for this by the deification of feminine virtues.

For instance, Lakshmi (of India) typifies all the richness of well being; the Greek goddess Persephone represents the glamour of womanhood, Demeter, or Geo-Maer, is the primordial conception of the Earth-Mother. Saraswati, another Hindu female deity, personifies beauty, music and knowledge.

Beyond these, pure wisdom was seen as the highest feminine value. In ancient times, wisdom was never imagined or idealized as a male, but always as a female. Whether it was King Solomon or a long-ago Indian sage singing in praise of wisdom, the reference was always to the feminine. Also personified as female were fate, fortune, earth and fertility.

In many dialogues of the Christian mystics, the male disciple conversed with the feminine figure of Wisdom. Similarly, Socrates sat at the feet of a female guru called Diotima. Hypatia was the acknowledged head of the Greek philosophic world centered in the Platonic Academy at Alexandria. In modern Catholic theology, the role is assigned to Mary, Queen of Heaven, while her Buddhist counterpart is named Kwan-yin.

Of women who held political power, the best known was Cleopatra VII (69-30 B.C.). She was a ruler of energy, skill and intelligence who forestalled the Roman annexation of her kingdom. She ruled for 20 turbulent years before her ultimate defeat.

Women who created new nations are little known. In the fourth century, Himiko, Queen of Wa, united dozens of warring clans into a single national unit to rule what we now know as Japan; in 40 A.D., the sisters Trung Trai and Trung Nhi raised an army of 80,000 troops, commanded by female generals, and won Vietnamese autonomy from the Chinese for three years; Mana Ocllo, along with her three sisters and four brothers, founded the Incan empire in present-day Peru; Queen Eire, leader of the People of the Goddess Dana, was a warrior queen who mustered a powerful military force against the invading Milesians before 400 B.C. to defend the land now known as Ireland.

In the arts, Sappho of Lesbos, the earliest known female poet, was the most brilliant poet of her day. Her descriptions of the feelings love evokes have been remembered through the centuries.

Female mystics-such as Julian of Norwich (a 14th century English nun), Saint Teresa of Avila (a 6th century Spanish nun) and Hildegard of Bingen (a 12th century Flemish nun)-were educated, well-read and prolific writers. They decried the corruption of the church and its hierarchy.

Julian of Norwich focused on the feminine aspects of the divine, regarding the Mother as the second part of the Trinity. She wrote of the Mother as the "depth of Wisdom," and described the "three ways of seeing motherhood in God": as creator in giving the "sensual" to our natures; in "the activity of motherhood;" and in the nurturing of our souls.

Hildegard of Bingen most fully used the power open to women of the Church-by educating her nuns and by admonishing emperors and popes, many of whom came to view her as a prophet receiving divine revelation. She also envisioned the Creator as feminine, nurturing and sustaining. Hildegard had a unique breadth of knowledge, ranging from the scientific, to the musical, to the theological.

St. Teresa, given the title "doctor of the church," felt driven to help others through her prayers and teachings. Her writings inspired many to lead spiritual lives, while her books, verses and letters influenced male theologians.

In 15th century France, the teenage Joan of Arc defied almost every tradition of the peasant woman's world. Everything about her manner, her demands and her actions was unorthodox and she was perceived as a heroine, zealous and strong, sent by God for the salvation of the kingdom.

No one better exemplified how faith might empower a woman than the Englishwoman Margaret Fell (the 17th-century mother of Quakerism). During her many years of imprisonment, she wrote about the equality of the sexes and of women's equal right to preach. For Fell, woman was the symbol of the Church.

What happened to change these circumstances? Why are today's female elders generally ignored and often abused?

The transformation took place over many centuries, beginning around 8000 BC with the rise of patriarchy in the form of powerful warrior priests and male gods of war. Male domination systematically transformed the peaceful, partnership, life-giving ethic that had existed along the southern European coast to a model of exploitation, violence and hierarchic and authoritarian social structures.

Goddesses and women of wisdom were enslaved or forced to become consorts to male gods. Diana of the Ephesians, with her innumerable breasts that suckled the entire creation, was transformed into the wifely consort of the highest gods.

Mass slaughter of human beings, destruction of whole cities, the institution of slavery, the sacrifice of women and slaves, and the reduction of women and children to the status of possessions-all this served to erase evidence and memory of the peaceful model of the wisdom and divinity of women.

Hypatia's end-murdered savagely by Christians in a church-illustrated this regression.

Hypatia lived during the reign of Theodosius in the city of Alexandria, which for hundreds of years had been a great meeting place where Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Persians and Indians met in commerce, religion and philosophy. To rise to academic eminence in such a center was difficult. Yet Hypatia, daughter of the Greek mathematician Theon, occupied the highest seat of honor. She was the incarnation of wisdom, a veritable Athena, a true disciple of Plato and Plotinus-modest, beautiful, eloquent and devoted to philosophy. She assisted her father in his learned commentaries, as well as writing commentaries of her own on subjects like astronomy and mathematics.

Many Christians eager to learn something of philosophy attended Hypatia's lectures. Among them was a student called Synusius, who afterwards became Bishop of Ptolemais. His letters to her are full of reverence. In one he asked about her invention of an instrument, called an astrolabe, that was used for ascertaining the positions of the planets and stars. She was also on friendly terms with the highest officer of Alexandria, a "pagan" named Orestes.

Why, then, was she murdered?

When Cyril became Bishop of Alexandria in the year 412, he began an inquisition to intended increase his power in the church. The Christians had destroyed the Egyptian Trinity of Osiris-Isis-Horus because it was seen as a rival to the newly revalued Christian Trinity. But the best minds around Cyril were being lured away by the beautiful pagan woman. Hypatia had to be stopped.

Led by one Peter the Reader, a mob of monks abducted Hypatia in March 415 as she was returning from one of her lectures. They stirred up a Christian crowd and carried Hypatia to a church. There they stripped her and burnt her body piecemeal.

Thus they thought to kill philosophy and feminine wisdom by murdering an innocent woman. The same thought process would unfold centuries later among the torturers of Spain and the witch-burners of Europe and Massachusetts.

Today, we have patriotic female divinities like Mother India, Britannia and La France. The female Statue of Liberty watches over the gateway to America, while throughout the world Justice is depicted as a woman deity presiding over law courts. India's androgynous Shiva, known as Ardha-narisha (Lord who is half-female), signifies an attempt to revise spirituality by declaring that both females and males are suitable embodiments of wisdom.

But what about the feminine sages of the 20th century?

What about the handful of women who made it to the rank of president or prime minister? Women such as Simimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka, Golda Meir of Israel, Indira Gandhi of India, Elizabeth Domitien of Central African Republic, and Norway's Gro Harlem Brundtland?

What about members of religious orders such as Mother Teresa of Calcutta?

What about the feminist scholars Betty Friedan of the U.S., Helen Caldicott of Australia, Berit As of Norway, Pakistan's Miriam Habib, Fawzia Fawzia of Palestine, and Sweden's Hilkka Pietila?

Or Nobel Prize winners Marie Curie, Jane Addams and Mairead Corrigan and Betty Williams?

What about women activists and humanitarians like Emma Goldman, Coretta Scott King and Eleanor Roosevelt of the U.S.; Rosika Schwimmer of Hungary; Shigeri Takayama of Japan; Winnie Mandela of South Africa; and Nawal El Saadawi of Egypt?

All of these women are distinguished for their wisdom; are mature or venerable [persons] of sound judgment, wise through reflection and experience, proceeding from or characterized by wisdom, prudence, and good judgment. The philosophies they espoused reflect the kind of wisdom necessary for unifying our world.

Let us remember these feminine sages on March 8, International Women's Day, and honor their work and the work of all women globally-paid or unpaid!

(Note: Much of this information was taken from the February 1956 issue of Values magazine.)

Marcia L. Mason is a feminist, Quaker, peace activist, world citizen, and World Syntegrity Project alumna who lives in Burlington, Vermont.


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