Bringing Father Sky ever more alive may assist us to move from anthropocentrism to a fuller realization of the interdependent events that have brought our earth and all its creatures into existence, our species included. It also assists us to know our origins better and to know Light better which is in fact what we are made of. (“Matter is frozen light” as physicist David Bohm reminds us)
The week ahead marks the unholy masculine attack on democracy one year ago that occurred on Epiphany Day. It offered a shadow Epiphany, a version that highlighted violence, out-of-control passion, hatred, intimidation of legislators, murder of individuals as well as principles of democracy.
How important it is to replace the dangerous masculine with a healthier masculine.
The launching of the Webb telescope supplies a rich segue into exploring more deeply the Sacred Masculine, for it is exploring Father Sky in whole new ways born of human science and ingenuity and chasing of the Light.
There is a deep reasons why I begin my book on recovering the sacred masculine with the archetype of Father Sky. There is also a reason why Jesus, when asked how to pray, begins his prayer with “Our Father who art in heaven” (though Aramaic scholars tell us his words can be translated “Our Father/Mother who art in heaven”). Heaven means the heavens, the sky.
Ninety percent of human cultures speak of “Father Sky” and “Mother Earth.” Ten percent speak of Mother Sky and Father Earth and there is an important lesson here which is that we are not speaking literally when we talk of Father Sky and Mother Earth but symbolically and metaphorically.
There is much important to learn for our souls and society and its institutions in learning from Father Sky, especially since for the modern era, we were told the Sky was inert and machine-like. This teaching in many ways killed the sacred masculine and told men to hunker down and obey and keep their deepest passions inside and that nothing important was going on out there because Father Sky was dead.
All that changed with post-modern science however.
To be continued.
See Matthew Fox, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine, pp. 3-18, 221-248.
To read a transcript of Matthew Fox’s video teaching, click HERE.
Banner IMage: Hawk flying in bright blue sky. Photo by Ian Tuck on Unsplash
Queries for Contemplation
What examples can you name of the price people paid when Father Sky was declared dead and inert, cold and machine-like?
Recommended Reading
The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine
To awaken what Fox calls “the sacred masculine,” he unearths ten metaphors, or archetypes, ranging from the Green Man, an ancient pagan symbol of our fundamental relationship with nature, to the Spiritual Warrior….These timeless archetypes can inspire men to pursue their higher calling to connect to their deepest selves and to reinvent the world.
“Every man on this planet should read this book — not to mention every woman who wants to understand the struggles, often unconscious, that shape the men they know.” — Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God
11 thoughts on “Awakening to Father Sky & The Sacred Masculine”
Within the Indigenious teachings that I received during my 10 year apprenticeship, was the connection between Father Sky and the Sacred Grandfathers. One of the images in today’s DM, with all of the faces of men whom have expressed the Sacred Masculine in our world, reflects how these ones became in the later seasons of their lives, mentoring elders, Sacred Grandfathers to other men and also other women. Within these teachings, Father Sky and the Grandfathers teach the knowledge and wisdom of the true meaning and purpose of the masculine archetype.
The price humanity has paid when Father Sky and the Sacred Grandfathers were declared as merely old and no longer of any real productive value to society, unfortunately has led to the loss of their mentoring eldership, as well as the knowledge and wisdom they have to offer through the storytelling of their invaluable teachings gained through years of lived experience of being and living in the true meaning and purpose of the Sacred Masculine archetype. This loss of mentorship is why brothers are so lost with regards to this aspect of their self identity.
The same has happened to Grandmother Earth and the Sacred Grandmothers and their mentoring leadership with regards to the Divine Feminine archetype and the invaluable teachings they too have to offer sisters and brothers, whom seem to have somehow in small ways retained some of this aspect of their self identity throughout history. I’m not certain as to why women seemed to hold fast to this, in relationship to men. Both have lost much, but it seems more so with the brothers.
Jeanette, Very good thoughts, but you know what l said…
Leonard Shlain’s 1998 book THE ALPHABET VERSUS THE GODDESS: The Conflict Between Word and Image speaks to the issue of the divine feminine and Mary:
“By the fourth century…In front of altars, the literate, all-male clergy prayed to the masculine Trinity; behind them, the illiterate folk, resonating to the cadences of mass, sat lost in contemplation of the images of the saints and the Mother. At some unconscious level, the Church fathers recognized the threat that Mary posed, for they denied Mary essential attributes possessed by previous goddesses: she did not preside over the functions of fertility and was split away from the soil. They granted her the honorific “Queen of Heaven,” but not “Queen of the Earth” or “Queen of the Underworld.” As Yahweh instructed Adam, the power to name is the power to control. The male Church hierarchy reverently hailed Mary as the Mother of God, but never as God the Mother. To further divorce her from sex and procreation, the Church emphasized two antithetical aspects of Mary: she was the Virgin Mother.” [pp. 266-267]
This designation made Mary an impossible model to follow for flesh and blood women.
Thank you for this post Gwen.
Gwen, You are right that Mary has been held up as an impossible example. This is made clear in the ALPHABET VERSES THE GODDESS and also was made clear in the book, ALONE OF ALL HER SEX by Marian Warner. But what about Father Sky which is the topic today ???
Matthew, good introduction to the Sacred Masculine. So many men throughout history and up to our present modern societies have lost connection to our Creator — Father Sky and Mother Earth — with much consequent destructiveness of our earth/nature and human suffering through toxic masculinity in our patriarchal cultures and egocentricity… May the Spirit of Love~Wisdom~Power~Justice~Creativity~Oneness of the Divine Feminine and Sacred Masculine continue growing in our hearts, relations, and actions as co-Creators….
We have paid the price of weapons of mass destruction aimed both outward and inward. We are on a path of self-destruction of ourselves as a species. Recovery of the sense of the sacred is the only thing that we save us, in my opinion. The sacredness of all things leads to respect and care for them, including ourselves.
Sue, l sooo agree with you. Until we see the earth as sacred we will continue to exploit her. That’s why l wrote several years ago, LITURGIES OF THE EARTH to create liturgies to worship on the earth’s holy days (solstices, equinoxes, and quarter days)–to instill a sense of the sacredness of the earth.
Thank you Richard.
I did read Marina Warner’s ALONE OF ALL HER SEX.
I very much appreciate Matthew’s high-LIGHT-ing the word “vir-tue” and connecting it to male strength and courage, a virtue that women can also manifest. Matthew has given many sterling examples of men who have manifested such virtue at high stakes time of the need for social justice etc. I am privileged to know many men personally who manifest this kind of courage and deep soul authenticity. As I have said previously, Joseph of Nazareth was such a man. As Matthew notes, the connection between the Father Sky archetype and cosmology is timely and an important reality to explore. It is so compelling to hear that the Webb telescope was “launched on Christmas Day.” Matthew is certainly reading the ‘signs of our times’. Isn’t our cosmos a massive ‘web’?
I recall learning that it was necessary to have two genders in order to generate diversity. But I also learned that there is no such thing as an alpha male and alpha female, that gender is a continuum, and that every fetus is female for the first six weeks in utero at which time a rush of testosterone generates the male. I don’t know if testosterone is somehow connected to the ‘reptilian brain’ and its negative aspects, a part of the brain that Matthew references regularly.
Gwen, l agree wholeheartedly what you say, but l am especially interested in what you say in the last paragraph. You’re right, we all begin as females, and testosterone makes men more aggressive. And men are probably more affected by the reptilian brain, but maybe even more to the “little brain” that is controled by testosterone…
I think in addition to talking about the unhealthy masculine of the right wing we need to talk about the diseases masculinity of the domination system, the corporate world, and the military industrial complex. This system disinvested in men leaving them poor and without good jobs and eduction leaving them vulnerable to anger, racism, and conspiracy theories. This system demands allegiance to profit and exploitation just as patriarchy does. We need to talk about the liberal elites complicity in this with the likes of the Clintons and Obama and all the rest who both did the bidding of the system while presenting a feel your pain persona. The right obviously is worse when it comes to these issues but liberal elitism is also responsible for January 6 and all of the anger that is present in our system. We do well to focus on the complicity of those we vote for. But thanks Matt for your reflections. they are invaluable to me.