The Wounded Masculine

I just finished teaching a dream retreat based within the Path of Pollen/Lyceum methodologies. As a result, my dreaming has been turned up a notch.

I have been dreaming of love and pain. In my dreams, I am both a man and a woman and we are in love. We are each other. In all dreams, as the woman, I am trying to save the man. And as the man, I am trying to protect the woman. It is always the man who is riddled with bullets or wounds. Who is hunted by the underworld god. Who is bleeding out. Who is fevered and dying. And it is always the woman who is trying to save him. In one, as I wipe away the blood from many bullet wounds I realise that underneath the blood he is covered in a thin layer of propolis. When I see this, I know that he is strong enough to survive. Propolis is, after all, the immune system of the honeybee, made in reverence with the budding life sap of the trees and the inner alchemy bee.

I know that it is not my job to save the wounded masculine, but this week I have been feeling him so strong. In me. In the world. In men. I have been feeling all the places the divine masculine sacrificed himself. All the places the divine masculine has been exiled to the edges of the sea and the desert. Exiled from our tidy, hurried lives. All the places he took the bullet so that we could survive. I know that it is Patriarchy, among other systems of dominance, that has wounded women. Laid claim to our sovereignty. Violated our womb and our bodies. Silenced us. Killed us. The same belief structure has created systems that harm the Earth and all her living creatures. But I also know the this system has cut wounds so deep in men and the masculine that he/we are now fevered with the impact. Burning up. Breaking down.

Today I am simply feeling compassion for all the places in ourselves that have been suppressed, oppressed and violated by the current system of dominance we live within. I want to cry tears into the bullet wounds I witnessed in my dreams and watch them wash the injuries clean.

Call it resurrection of the self. Call it saving each other. Call it the deep work. Call it the shadow. Call it the beloved. Call it what you will, but regardless of where you fall in the spectrum of expression that we call the masculine and the feminine, we are in the laboured work of healing. We need all of ourselves. We need the feminine flow and masculine sturdiness. We need the women’s holding and men’s tears. We need the moonblood and the salt. We are calling our exiled, wild soul back to ourselves.

Oh, my beloved, come close: I am willing to look into that dark chasm of wounding and coat it with my tears, my love, my lion’s roar, my propolis, and my honey.