This week, Witchvox features my article Honor the Father, Honor the Sun:  A Summer Solstice Tribute.

I meant it when I said that women aren’t the only one doing reclaiming work here.  Men are, too.  No, they may not have had their sexual gender repressed, attacked, subverted and blamed for all that is wrong with the world.  But men are having to dig out from the pressure and the example of an authoritarian God.  Men are having to learn masculinity all over again because, I think we’d all admit, being male is NOT about being abusive, jealous, angry, inflexible, vengeful, chauvanistic, and superior.

I hope as we move forward as a spiritual community that we will continue to model and improve upon the model of balance between male and female.  In Tantra, no learning or evolution occurs without Shiva speaking to and answering Devi, without the Higher Self speaking to and embracing the Learning Self.  Being male and female simply illustrate the different polarities required for us to grow.  Sometimes we can be the fertilizing force in our contacts with others, impregnating them with an idea or the seed of an important transformation.  At other times we must be the receptive womb and receive, listen, open up fully and allow what we receive to become part of us so that we may birth it into the world.

Gender bias is not a pagan problem — it is a human problem.  It is an issue that requires us to accept, embrace and celebrate differences while understanding that, in this case, gender knows no rank.  Neither is better than the other… they may merely be equipped for different yet equally necessary functions.

I believe Pagans/Wiccans/Heathens to be ahead of the curve on this.  While other faiths are only now navigating the biases and taboos of female clergy, we are well beyond this hurdle.  When the masculine and feminine are yoked together, when Shiva and Devi teach each other of the secrets of the Universe as they curl around each other in an intimate embrace, there is nothing that cannot be accomplished… no secret of the Universe that cannot be known.

Photo by Nicolai Kjaergaard (via Flickr).