Reclaiming the Pole

Reclaiming the pole= internalizing the patriarchy. It’s like a Stockholm syndrome, identifying with the captor and it’s sad.

Hi, Angela!

That show sounds like a male porno fantasy piece — even if it was written by a woman.

I love that you let your intuition and your gut get you out of that theater! Some vibrational healers call the gut the second brain — it has more nerve endings that the brain in our heads and does far more than digest our physical food. It is a sensing organ for the emotions that can tell for sure when something is dung and needs to be expelled.

For a woman to reclaim her sexuality is a challenge because the imagery of female sexuality has been defined by men in a man-culture, and for most woman this imagery feels like reality because it is introjected in our psyches. It’s like an implant that is in our brains that plays out when we get aroused. We mistake that imagery for our own natural experience.

Dance was once sacred and so was sex, and what that means is that the “little death” could clear the vibrational system through the chakras and take us outside the mind, beyond imagery of the physical world, so that we could harmonize with All That Is.

Now dance and sex often just activate old imagery of woman-as-object that keeps the mind in control of the body and the spirit. Nothing sacred there, especially since the mind-in-control is all tied up with the dominator imagery put there by the man-culture.

The “pole” is a phallic symbol, of course, but originally, pole dances, even the Maypole dances of my youth, were rituals that had ties with the ancient goddess cultures in which the Divine Feminine chose her male consort. She got to choose her partner, so there could be a Sacred Union that could bring forth something divine.

Even the anointing of Jesus’ feet by Mary Magdalene with the “nard” in the gospels is a ritual anointing of the phallus or “pole” — a choosing by the woman of someone who was her equal. There was no question of her worth or equality. The task was for her to find someone who was of the same spiritual ilk! Of course, Mary Magdalene got turned into a whore by the patriarchal church and the meaning of this “marriage ritual” hidden until recently.

I read somewhere that even belly-dancing, that most sensuous of dances, originated as exercise to help the spine be supple for birth, not for seduction! I take that on the metaphorical level, too, so dance is an awakening of spirit in the body, so something new can be created through that union.

I bet your dance show will create a whole new set of images for the beauty and power of dance and re-sacralize it! That’s what the Goddess does. She doesn’t call forth the inherent dominator tendency of the de-sacralized male by making herself into an object and then act like that means she’s in charge!

Good luck to you on your show!!

Sandra