Masculine and Feminine
Creative Initiative believed that the transition from female to male leadership could take place because the men would have undergone the transformation process and in doing so would have acquired the necessary female characteristics. Only someone who had
gone through the transformation process would be able to act as both the feminine and the masculine because he then would have "brought into perfect balance the masculine and feminine components which are present in every human being." The model for this perfect combination of the two genders was Jesus who "demonstrated and exemplified this perfect balance."[1]
Creative Initiative borrowed the idea that a mature adult combined both masculine and feminine elements from the work of C. G. Jung. Jung contended that both men and women were born with a latent image of the opposite sex. He called the feminine aspect of men the "anima" and the masculine aspect of women the "animus." He thought people developed these images through their contacts with members of the opposite sex, reaching genuine maturity only when they had learned to use the qualities of the anima and animus appropriately.[2]
In Creative Initiative work the masculine and feminine principles, as they were usually called, were vital concepts in describing appropriate behavior for members. In theory Creative Initiative believed that each person had to cultivate those properties usually associated with the opposite sex in order to become whole. Their material, however, stressed gender distinctions so aggressively that it was easy to forget that the ultimate goal was gender synthesis. For example, a part of the A seminar in 1973 described male and female personality characteristics as sexual analogs. According to the course, "Even the genitals bear this out. Woman is inner—the male is outer. Because the feminine is subjective and the masculine objective, we can also say that the feminine is passive, a receiver, and the masculine is active, a doer." The material went on to say that women's "passive, subjective nature allows her to receive and to let the creative birth process take place within her," but men, deprived of this biological opportunity to create life, created in the world. That, said the course, was why the great music, art, poetry, design, and even cooking had been produced by men.[3] The categorization of masculine and feminine characteristics in course material was extensive and often included elaborate charts in which the various traits were lined up in columns, sometimes with the "given" trait paired with its "misuse." For example, the "given" feminine trait of "nurturing" was paired to its "misuse" as "smothering." This pair in turn was contrasted with the "given" masculine trait of "aggressiveness" and its negative counterpart, "domination."[4]
Yet in Creative Initiative the ideal was some kind of synthesis of the masculine and feminine. They did not mean, however, that the mature
person was an equal balance of the two. When it was properly struck, the balance was always within the boundaries set by traditional gender roles. On the one hand, "A woman who is too unbalanced on the feminine side," explained a course curriculum, "could be very passive, sweet, helpless, dependent [and] would probably have a hard time standing on her own two feet." On the other hand, "If she denied her femininity and functioned mainly out of her masculine side, she would probably be one of those bossy, domineering, aggressive kind of women of which we all know at least one."[5] Women had to somehow be feminine but not too feminine, and at the same time be masculine but not too masculine. The same course curriculum ended by saying:
And as for women, there are times when she must use her animus nature. There are times when it's appropriate to lead out and be aggressive. There are times when she needs to think logically and rationally. In fact, this is exactly what women must do today—be willing to be actively involved in the objective world—to use their minds and their strength. But the catch is, she must do it in a feminine way, motivated by her deepest feminine instinct—caring.[6]
This basically Jungian view of human nature had a profound effect on Emilia and, through her, on the entire movement.[7] She tended to see individuals within the movement in terms of Jungian types and based much of the underlying ideology of Creative Initiative on gender role models legitimated by, if not actually derived from, a Jungian world view. As we noted earlier, Emilia explained to an advanced seminar in 1978 that Harry was the Jungian archetype of the wise old man. He was not, however, the dominant male—that role, she said, was played in one generation by another leader, Jim Burch, and in the next generation by her son Richard. She told the group that "since Harry was not the dominant male, I had to move into position and function as if I were a dominant male until the transition to Community could take place."[8] But once that transition had occurred, Emilia explained, she and the women who had founded and led the New Religion movement during its first decade had to step aside. Men had been stymied because they had limited their dominance to war and science, but the time had come for "the Dominant Male archetype [to] move beyond the physical and mental dimensions to become the Spiritual Warrior, or we've had it." "The women cannot finish this mission," she explained, "because we don't carry this archetype of Spiritual Warrior. In the world, a man must manifest it."[9]
Because they equated the receptive with women and the feminine
and the active with men and the masculine, Creative Initiative philosophy taught that women had almost always been first to understand new ideas in the history of humankind. Indeed, Emilia liked to claim that "the very first, most primitive cells were feminine in function and form," and in a grand leap of logic, she concluded, "that gives us some reasons as to why girls develop earlier than boys and we are considered older and wiser."[10] From Eve who tempted Adam, to Emilia and the first ten women in the New Religion, it was the feminine principle that was open to receive change, but it was the masculine that actually acted to bring that change about.[11]
Emilia developed a fairly elaborate theory about the female life-cycle, much of which appears to have been based on her own personal history. This theory dominated her ideas about the proper role of women through the mid-1970s and was a vital component in the overall philosophical structure of Creative Initiative. According to Emilia's theory, the first stage an adult woman entered was that of "lover." In this stage she surrendered the independence she had enjoyed as an unmarried woman and devoted herself completely to her husband from whom, in return, she expected reciprocal dedication. The key element in the first stage was the woman's willingness to give up herself for her husband—to "capitulate." The second stage was motherhood, in which the woman learned to love life through the life she had created. It was also in her role as mother that a woman cultivated "her certain talents, innate talents, on how to civilize and humanize the race so that [it] no longer will kill life but will be for life."[12]
It was, however, the third stage that was the key to the unique role of women in the transition to the third age and the salvation of the human race. In the third stage, said Emilia, the woman had to detach herself from the bonds she had forged in the first two stages: "She must detach herself from any demands of being loved by the lover. . . . She must surrender that, releasing the man so that he can help heal the planet. She must release her attachment to her children." In the third stage the woman had a new function, one that had been "predestined from the beginning of time," which was "releasing totally and aligning herself with everything that is for life."[13] The third-stage woman would transfer "her dependency on man to a dependency on a supra power, intelligence, will." The relationship she had once had with a man she would then have with "a power higher than man," who would become "the great love of her life."[14]
So profound was this transition to the third stage that it required
new nomenclature. If one broke down the word woman into its componant parts (a favorite Creative Initiative explicatory device, sometimes employed, as here, in a way that had nothing to do with the actual etymology of the word), one got "wo[e]-man." But the third-stage woman, the Third Age woman, would not bring woe to men but would be a source of blessings and therefore needed a new name. Creative Initiative called her Blessman. "To be the Blessman," they explained, "has a different ring to it from being the WO-man. To be the Blessman would be to embrace and become one with the living myth."[15] In fact, the word Blessman was used for a number of years as the complimentary closing in movement correspondence.
Yet once more the ambivalence that marked so much of Emilia's life expressed itself in her definition of Blessman. She was a charismatic and socially dynamic woman who had married a somewhat shy and introspective man; believing that woman should play a traditional role in the family, her entire adult life had been an attempt to reconcile emotionally and intellectually the clash between her assumptions and her reality. Carried away by the vision of women as the avant-garde of the New Religion and the new evolutionary stage, Emilia painted a picture of women who had moved beyond their husbands and families to devote all their energy to God's will. When it actually came to defining how this new woman, the Blessman, would act, however, the extreme rhetoric translated into a much more traditional reality.
According to Creative Initiative, the Blessman would use her special female gifts of nurturing and caring for life to nourish her relationships with others, especially her family; she would not blame others for family problems but would look to "her own state of mind to discover what is going on with her."[16] She would be aware that she was "the servant, the giver." That is, she would give without expecting to be appreciated. She would give because she knew there was a need: "A good servant gives and gives freely to whatever is needed. She is not preoccupied with the question: Will I be appreciated, recognized, or thanked?" This position was a variant of the surrender theme that characterized surrendering the individual will to the will of God. By accepting the needs of her family as legitimate in and of themselves and by finding satisfaction in fulfilling them, the new woman was practicing an analog of her relationship with God. She was, however, at the same time freeing herself from her dependency on her husband. No longer doing things for his approval, the Blessman was freer to express her feelings of both love and anger toward him.[17]
Although they never quoted the poem, Creative Initiative certainty embraced the theory of William Ross Wallace who wrote, "The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world." The poet whom they did quote frequently was Wallace's Victorian contemporary, Matthew Arnold, who predicted, "If ever the world sees a time when women shall come together purely and simply for the benefit and good of mankind, it will be a power such as the world has never known."[18] The sentiments of Victorian aesthetes were congenial to Creative Initiative's view of women because the movement had a basically Victorian conception of sex, sex roles, and the family. Much of Creative Initiative's views of women appears to have been a projection of Emilia's personal history and ideals, which were in fact of Victorian origins. She had been born and reared just after the turn of the century in an aristocratic Mexican environment, although an American father and schooling in the United States enabled her to escape the most extreme elements of that machismo culture. As a powerful and magnetic woman and a natural leader she had, nevertheless, to create for herself, and by herself, an environment in which to exercise her abilities and still be true to the values of her past.
Emilia found her solution within the New Religion as a spiritual leader. Like Victorian women who also made virtues out of necessities, the new religion acknowledged the secondary role of women in the world and their primary role in the home and then sought to show how they could exploit their positions to bring about the desired end. "It may be a long time yet before we shall be permitted to share temporal leadership and policy making at all levels," she wrote, "but spiritual leadership and power is ours for the taking at all levels, and we must assume it while we can still hope to turn the tide."[19] Emilia was able to attract other women to her new vision because they shared many of her life experiences, had similar problems, and sought similar answers. In the early 1960s, before real economic opportunities were open to women, and for women who had been raised to value being wives and mothers, becoming part of Creative Initiative both justified their preexisting beliefs and gave them a sense that they could move forward to work for the betterment of all humankind.
The women Emilia rallied to her cause may not have had power, but they did have a lot of discretionary, time they could devote to the work. "As economically emancipated housewives, living in a time of frozen foods and gadgetry, we know that conditions in the world must be changed and that it is our obligation to effect that change," announced a
flyer for an early seminar.[20] Creative Initiative always worked on the assumption that the women in the movement would be free to devote all their nonfamily time to the work. Indeed, theirs was a movement by and for women who did not work. For the first dozen years or so after Emilia's revelation in 1962, the group was completely dominated by women. "Men," as one participant remembers, "were almost incidental." Most of their meetings were held during the day, which made it extremely difficult for any interested working woman to participate. Moreover, as the same woman wrote, "a great deal of pressure was placed to reevaluate why a woman was working and to quit."[21] A workshop series put on especially for young mothers assured them that "the crisis in the world today is a result of the breakdown of relationships—the traditional role of mother" and urged them to resist the temptation to betray their true natures by looking for a place of prestige and power in the business world.[22]
Although the movement was never comfortable with working women, and working women (there were some) were never very comfortable in the movement, by the mid-1970s the women's movement had changed public attitudes sufficiently to make some concessions necessary. A speech to a women's gathering in 1974 acknowledged that women had moved out into areas once dominated by men, but "in the process [the woman] has abandoned or devalued her place of natural functioning." The speaker did go on to assure her audience, "this is not to say that woman must return to being tied to the home, stuck in roles in which she feels unfulfilled, but simply that woman must claim her feminine side, her natural side and make it conscious."[23] As late as 1977, nevertheless, they were using a guided meditation called "Arriving Home" which asked the man to "imagine in your mind's eye that you are driving home from work" but told the woman, "picture yourself in the house. It is late afternoon . . . You remember that your husband will be home shortly."[24]
The group built their theory of a special female strength using standard Victorian ideas about the nature of women. First, women bore children. "Every woman's task is to be a priestess to the flow of life," said an early paper, "to procreate, nurture, and fan the fires of creation.[25] From that undeniable biological fact they then deduced that women had a special aptitude for love. The narrator of a 1966 program told her audience that love "has been given to us as a gift that accompanies our role of giving birth to the race of man."[26] Love was defined not
as doing but as giving, as a form of self-sacrifice: "Woman's basic self derives from her basic function: to love, to give of herself, and through giving, realize herself."[27]
There was a curiously contradictory element to Creative Initiative's ideas about married love. They were quite sure that the family was a model for the world and that the love between spouses was analogous to the love of the individual for God, but they were not sure whether individuals developed a love for God by experiencing love for people or if a love for others followed from the love of God. "We learn to love God through the workout of learning to love people," said the syllabus to a 1982 marriage course, "therefore marriage is the perfect workshop for learning to love with totality."[28] But Emilia told people that real love between spouses occurred "only when both partners are committed to loving God first. You relate as 'sons' of God, 'brothers' committed to the same goal."[29]
The love a woman felt toward her husband was defined as a "passive love" that taught her how to give; the love she felt toward her children taught her "pure love."[30] Women were told that just as they all had given love to their husbands and children they now had to give love to the whole world, to "give totally to a self-transcending cause." The group taught that giving love was the process of "civilizing."[31] "The only two things women can do better than men," wrote one leader in her personal notes, "is to bear children and civilize."[32] "Civilization" was used as a contrast to materialism and war, considered male in origin. A speaker at a 1969 women's meeting illustrated this point with an anecdote about her own children. Her sons had built a fort in the backyard, and one day her daughter went out and put curtains in the fort's windows, much to the disgust of the boys. "She was," said her mother, "trying to civilize at that early age."[33]
Putting curtains on the windows of the fort was a particularly apt example for women in Creative Initiative because one of the qualities that women were supposed to have to a greater degree than men was an appreciation of beauty. Beauty could have a functional role in helping people appreciate the mystical, or it could be seen as an important part in creating the right atmosphere for recruiting, but beauty could also be an expression of the woman's sense of self. In making the move toward taking responsibility for herself and for the work, one woman explained that the first thing she did was to "look at how I appeared." "It was quite a blow," she admitted, "20 pounds too heavy, no lipstick, very comfortable with 'Plain-Jane-Me.' "[34] Such an aesthetic self-assessment
was not incidental but part and parcel of the process by which women discovered their special abilities. Women were told to evaluate all the visual aspects of themselves and their environment, "home decor—color, objects, dress, make-up, attitude, walk, stance," and others in the group were urged to share with a new woman their views on her appearance.[35] It is hardly surprising then that a newspaper reporter described one spokeswoman as "wearing a chic lime green frock and looking more like a fashion model than a crusader."[36]
The beauty that women could create contrasted with the ugliness that was so often the product of male activities. In Emilia's mind there was no doubt that men were in fact the source of most of the world's problems. "This is the century of women," she wrote in a personal reflection. Man, she continued, had been "emancipated from the child bearing function and been allowed to develop his psychic spiritual function," but he had not done a very good job of it. "On the whole, except for rare individuals," she wrote, "men have rejected the prototypes of excellence in the domain of human nature. For the most part they are arrogant, violent destructive beasts." The time had come for women to "move into enlightenment and to declare to men what God wills, or they, men, will destroy the earth." She wrote that men had been poor stewards of the earth and should no longer be the "rulers, priests and guides of life."[37] Although such powerfully antimale sentiments never made their way into any of the movement's course material, they do reflect a profound ambivalence in Emilia's feelings toward men. On the surface, she and the other women in the movement were always loving and supportive of their spouses, but underlying that was the explicit belief that women were morally superior. There were two kinds of ethics, a movement spokeswoman told a reporter in 1975, and Creative Initiative had developed a "new feminism based on the need to stop acting on male ethics based on greed, power and war, and form new female ethics."[38]
Dramatic readings at an early presentation designed to recruit new women into the movement captured the richly female-centered nature of the work. The audience was told that women contained "those watching, waiting, loving characteristics of awareness that know intuitively the needs, the conditions, the relationships for beauty, harmony, joy, movement, well-being—the climb toward God," and that each woman had those qualities because she had "built into her body . . . the chalice, the response to sunlight, the living well of water filled to overflowing."[39] Creative Initiative truly believed that anatomy was destiny, not
merely for the individual woman but for the whole world. Through their use of Victorian gender stereotypes, however, the women of Creative Initiative were not locking themselves into the limited domestic sphere. They were saying instead that the whole world was their domestic sphere and that just as they could bring peace and love to their own families, they could do the same for all humankind.