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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in egalitarian matriarchy

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Matriarchies of the Midwest

I had to laugh when, at the annual Mahle Lecture at Hamline University in “St.” Paul this weekend, I heard feminist theologian Carol P. Christ describe the ideal human society as a “matriarchal egalitarianism.”

Really, I had to laugh.

The coven that I'm part of has been going strong for nearly 40 years now. Next fall we'll be 39 (a significant number = 3 x 13). We're a group of friends who share a spiritual life. Most (but not all) of us are women.

This group is the center of my social life, and the center of my spiritual life. We're deeply engaged with one another's lives. I've helped raise our youngest coven kid.

Hence my laughter.

Here in the heart of the American Midwest, I've lived in a matriarchal egalitarianism for decades.

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  • Hearth M Rising
    Hearth M Rising says #
    Thank you for this. Raising children is the central work in matriarchal communities, important in everyone's life, not just a nucl
  • Murphy Pizza
    Murphy Pizza says #
    Right on! And wasn't the Mahle Lecture blast! Such a thrill to get my battered copy of Weaving the Visions signed by both Carol Ch
What Is “Egalitarian Matriarchy” and Why Is It So Often Misunderstood? by Carol P. Christ

In their purest form, “egalitarian matriarchies” place the mother principle at the center of culture and society. Their highest values are the love, care, and generosity they associate with motherhood. These values are not limited to women and girls. Boys and men are also encouraged to honor mothers above all, to practice the traits of love, care, and generosity, and to value them in others.

“Egalitarian matriarchal” societies are matrilineal which means that family membership and descent are passed through the female line. They are also usually matrilocal, which means that women live in their maternal home all of their lives. Family groups are usually extended rather than nuclear. Often there is a “big house” in which groups of sisters, brothers, and cousins live together with mothers, aunts, grandmothers, and great-aunts. In what I imagine to have been the original form of the system (still practiced by the Mosuo of the Himalayas), men also live in their maternal house, visiting their lovers at night, and returning home in the morning.

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  • Ted Czukor
    Ted Czukor says #
    Thank you, Carol, for this thought-provoking explanation of terms. From my own experience as a 70 year-old male who was put on te
  • Carol P. Christ
    Carol P. Christ says #
    Thanks Ted. Currently I am re-reading Women at the Center. The egalitarian matriarchal Minangkabau people believe that without (re

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