Four levers end patriarchy. Safety is first.
Theme: Magicians Reporting for Duty
Week 36: Four levers end patriarchy. Safety is first.
Beautiful Magicians,
In last week’s Notes from the Field, I attempted to convey two massive ideas that arrived in the days before the lunar eclipse. Two ideas that have the capacity and power to change how we pray, how we live, and how we answer the call to step into possibility.
Possibility. Possibility of creating a better way to live in communion with one another and with our precious home. Possibility that we may not understand, but we know, and we know that we know, we cannot continue as we are.
Right now, it feels like, it looks like, the patriarchal powers of fascism and suffering are on top.
- But what if that’s a veneer.
- What if they’re making so much noise because change is happening and they’re just hanging on for as long as they can doing as much damage as they can.
- What if hope is accumulating in hearts around the world.
- What if the time has come and we are the ones we have been waiting for?
The first big idea I offered last week was Einstein’s quote: “We are here for the sake of each other.” I shared that a prayer group, Her Council of Love, immediately began to experiment with how to pray “for the sake of each other.” We did it by creating a virtual circle holding hands with those who are praying and those we are praying for. We could feel the beauty and power of praying literally for the sake of each other.
At the end of last Sunday’s newsletter, I said that when I asked “How does patriarchy end?” the answer came. It came quickly. It came as four levers. Four levers that reduce the power of patriarchy. The more we apply those levers, the less power patriarchal ideas have over us.
And the most beautiful and surprising thing is the four levers are beautiful ways to live. Patriarchy comes down not because of fighting. It ends because of love.
Could these really be the four levers that reduce patriarchy to dust? Is this really how patriarchy ends?
The levers that end patriarchy was such a big idea that I needed to sit with it for a week. I needed to talk about them with mystic friends. I kept asking: Could this be true? Are these the levers that end patriarchy? Are there really just four? Is this complete? Is anything missing? Could it really be this clear? And if this is how patriarchy ends, how do we begin?
I needed to pray about this in The Song of the Morning of the World prayer practice. I needed to deep soul write every day. Listen to my dreams. Capture pages of information flowing in the night and in morning theta.
Well, I’ve spent all week with the four levers, and I come to you with a tangle of feelings: surprise, hope, and the desire to begin.
I am not presenting the four levers as fact. But as discoveries.
As has been true in all my prayer intensives for the last eight years, I invite you to join an intensive, not to learn something that I think I know, but to share in the wonder of discovery. Mystical discovery. Mutual mystical discovery. In our time together, we don’t arrive at one conclusion. We don’t arrive at any conclusion, actually.
We arrive, holding hands, sharing insights and ideas, committed to this one precious thing: to find a way to live in reverence.
I’ve shared it over and over again, but it bears hearing once more. I was awakened in the night in July 2018 with:
“It wasn’t a power structure; it was a reverence structure.”
Look at this timeline of the last 40,000 years of human history that Cathy Stevens Pratt created for us.
The Pink is the 35,000 years of matrilineal, matrifocal, Goddess-centric, pre-religion, pre-war time stretching from the Paleolithic to the Bronze age.
The Grey illustrates our history starting around 6,000 years ago, when humans began to make weapons and tribes worshiping disembodied male sky gods used those weapons to destroy matriarchal cultures and impose patriarchal domination.
The X shows where we are right now. Look at it.
The X carries good news. Very good news. We are on the verge of the collapse of patriarchal power. The question is how do we, not just survive the transition, but assist in birthing a reverential way of life—the Green future, a future we have called Her Garden of Reverence ever since I was told “it was a reverence structure.”
And that brings us to the four levers.
The first one came from Tony Goncalves, our Minotaur initiated shaman guide in the upcoming Praying in the Dark intensive. In a prayer café in the first intensive, he blurted out: “When people feel safe, patriarchy falls apart.” The second he said it, I wrote it down, asked him to say it again. And again.
And in that moment, our upcoming intensive got its subtitle but, bigger than that, his sentence seeded all four levers.
So the first lever is safety.
When people feel safe, patriarchy falls apart.
Of course it does!
The entire point of domination and control is to keep you feeling afraid and unsafe so you will give up any sense of self and agency you might have and acquiesce to power. Under patriarchy, our homes, our relationships, our countries are not safe. Our food isn’t safe. Water isn’t safe. It feels like everything is collapsing.
But say the lever out loud and notice how it feels in your body. This lever isn’t ordering us to fight. It is encouraging us to create safety first in ourselves, then our relationships, then our work. It’s a series of ripples, expanding gently starting with finding real safety in ourselves.
How do we do that? That is exactly what we are going to discover together in Praying in the Dark: When People Feels Safe, Patriarchy Falls Apart.
Everything starts with safety. I mean everything.
In 1997, I called the police when my ex-husband trapped our son and me in the car, prevented me from driving away, and only stopped screaming and terrorizing us when the cops came.
The next day, a victim advocate from the police department called and gave me quite the lecture about “safety first.” She had me write down a list of ways to keep my son and me safe. When other women have been frightened of their partners, I have known exactly how to drill “safety first” into them.
You do not have to have been through domestic terror yourself, to know that safety comes first. Before anything else can happen, you and your children and your home have to be safe.
The second lever is a gift from the plants.
From the Earth. Look at the pink section. Everything is alive, conscious, and in communication. This is the real world. Not the dead world patriarchy tells us is only good for extracting profit.
In several of my intensives we have entered the world of the rocks, of the plants, of the waters to learn how to listen to their languages. I’ve long said it with this simple sentence: The World is a Who.
And so, the second lever, is:
When the world is who, patriarchy falls apart.
Of course it does!
You can’t have factory farming or forest clearing or the damming of rivers if you realize that the animals and plants and waters are living beings. Our food and water would not be poisoned if we perceived the Earth and all her creatures as a living organism.
The third lever is a gift from Einstein.
There are many ways to describe living in community, but I think he said it most elegantly:
When we are here for the sake of each other, patriarchy falls apart.
Of course it does.
The entire point of patriarchal control is to separate us. When we are isolated and alone, when we have no support, no community, no ability to muster a collective will, patriarchy can continue to amass power and wealth.
The final lever is the green future on the timeline.
The green that harkens back to the pink. And to the truth: it was a reverence structure.
What is a reverence structure? We don’t know the details. But creating safety, treating the world as a who, and living for the sake of one another, give us a solid foundation on which to let Her Garden of Reverence bloom
So the fourth lever is:
When we live in reverence, patriarchy falls apart.
Of course it does.
Reverence is the diametric opposite of domination. Of control. Of abuse. If I live in a state of reverence, if we live in a state of reverence, there is no oxygen for abusive power.
And so we begin at the beginning with safety. I do hope you will join us in Praying in the Dark: When People Feel Safe, Patriarchy Falls Apart.
In our first gathering, we are going to not just talk about safety, or imagine a world of safety in the matriarchal pink, we are going to go there. Cathy is a magician at creating journeys that take us deep into a mystical experience.
We’ve never had a journey quite like this, and both Cathy and Tony are listening to their guides, but here’s the basic concept.
Tony is going to share his breathtaking Minotaur initiation, an initiation that was both a profound memory of a sacred shamanic past, but also a living reality today. Cathy will listen intently to her cosmic guides and following their instructions, will call us to gather around the fire at Tony’s initiation, where we too will meet the original holy masculine Minotaur, receive special Minotaur blessings, and be given permission to take one of his embers.
Carrying the blessing and wisdom of the original sacred masculine, the masculine untainted by patriarchy, the masculine who radiates safety and protection, we will be prepared and fortified to explore how to create safety in ourselves, our prayers, our relationships, our work, and our world.
This is how we heed the call of possibility.
And begin the holy work of creating a world filled with safety, beauty, life, reverence, and love
Praying in the Dark: When People Feel Safe, Patriarchy Falls Apart opens September 15.
- We have four Live gatherings on Tuesdays at 6:00-7:45 pm Eastern, a time that works well for the Americas and the Pacific Rim
- We have Watch Parties on Thursdays at 1pm Eastern for our friends in Europe and Africa
- To make sure everyone can come to a live discussion cafe, we meet on Sundays at both 1p and 6p
- Plus, for those who wish to pray, we gather every Wednesday at 5p eastern and once a month on Sunday at 1pm to pray The Song of the Morning of the World rosary
Follow the link below for full schedule and details.
When you register, I'll send the big Welcome email with access to an array of bonus materials to get you started, including videos of me reading the chapter on Lair of the Minotaur in the only good book about the Minotaur.
Life is fragile, handle with reverence
as we gently press on the four levers that end patriarchy
Janet
PS: if you don't want to use paypal, I can send you an invoice, you can use Venmo, you can send me a check (ask for my address), or pay through zelle.
PSS: If you haven't, consider getting the first intensive, Praying in the Dark: How Visionaries Pray in a Time of Collapse. On-Demand at $88. You can watch it at any time. You don't have to finish it before we open.
But watch it at some point, so you get comfortable with the theology-free prayers of this rosary, especially the couplets, which are all about safety.
Questions? Write to me janet@janetconner.com
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