Matriarchy / Matriarchal Cultures / Matriarchal Consciousness
matriarchal / matrifocal / matricentric / matrilineal / matrilocal / gynecocratic
The matriarchy debate includes many theoretical approaches and descriptions depending on the intent, objectives, time context and scientific discipline of the autorea.
Our understanding of matriarchy and matriarchal consciousness is explained below:
We consider ethnic groups whose focus is on the mother, the maternal principle (nurturing, caring, birthing) to be matriarchal cultures. For the most part they are egalitarian communities, which does not mean that men and women do the same things, but that their actions are based on balance and consensus.
The culture of inheritance of a matriarchal community is organized matrilineally. The clan’s communal property is preserved and administered through the daughter.
Relationships are defined through the mother’s line, matrilineal. All the decedents of a common great-grandmother along the female line are related. This includes the son, but not the children sired by that son. Giving birth is decisive for belonging, not siring offspring.
Nuclear families as we understand them do not exist in matriarchal cultures. There are clans, which are primarily matrilocal. That means a woman does not move in with her husband, (or go to a new place with him), but the man moves in with his wife’s clan. Much evidence indicates that there may have been times when there people did not marry at all, like the Mosuo in China today.
When all members of a culture remain focused on the mother – it is a matriarchal community. Many researchers prefer the term matrifocality in order to resolve the centuries old academic dispute over matriarchy. Other researchers are unwilling to concede this momentous designation, to name some examples, the board of MatriaVal and The Hagia Academy.
Matriarchal Consciousness – What ist that?
Through our landscape of public education we learn little about matriarchal theories, histories, cultures, values, etc. They aren’t included in our history books – when they are, then with an incorrect definition of matriarchy as rule by women, which has been used for decades. The public education canon never tires of emphasizing that there has never been such a society. We matriarchal instructors and researchers never tire of confirming that while adding a large YET. Because the meaning of the Greek word arché is not only rule, but first and foremost “in the beginning”.
Matriarchies as rule by women never existed – yet cultures which are peaceful, egalitarian and centered on mothers have existed and some exist today. In the beginning the mother – that is the beginning of another story.