Wrote that last comment before I had actually watched the whole interview..... I really love your dialogue at the end about the need for balance between Masculine and Feminine, men and women, and for the deep respect and affection between all of us that most people want to live within. I do feel like with the discussion around religion, there's this rather modern competitive approach where it's like "Do we have the Masculine religion "win"?" or do we need to make sure the women come "first"?". This is all Americans saying this, of course- we can be such a culture of hustling and competition.
I like a religion where all of life wins. I didn't grow up going to church, my parents left the religious stuff but kept the morality- and eventually decided that the Episcopal Church was a place that had a God that felt right. Christ is actually bigger than Jesus the supposedly male avatar, Christ is an energetic concept like the Buddha..... and because Episcopalians honor the Feminine and have so many female priests now, in some services we use terms like Mother God and Father God, Source of All Life, etc. etc.
God is simply the Infinite. The Jesus and Magdalene path is one route to the Infinite I rather like and try my best to practice. But it is very much aligned with Riane Eisler's ideas about "Partnership Societies". I'm a man who likes to be around and learn from women, and maybe now and again they have been able to learn from me. We need each other. Adam and Eve may piss each other off in the Garden, but humans are here to Love and Learn, not Compete or "Win" over on one another. I hate that kind of speech.
True Love is beyond a partial victory. It involves lots of compromise and negotiation, lots of back and forth. It is all relational. All stuff I can be bad at, so I like to learn more :)
Another great one, this is the familiar boring on the surface straight white guy who's such a big fan of y'alls work. Sylvia and Simone both, though I've been tracking Sylvia's work for many years, only just encountered Simone.
I advocate for the reality of a sacred pattern in nature, and I believe our sacred patterns of Masculine and Feminine still matter within that. Apparently in 2025 in the modern West even just saying such a thing can get you boxed in as a right-wing reactionary, and I know first and second hand that there are a number of pretty liberal and educated women who are no believers in an oppressive patriarchy, but who have now gone down a right wing political path (in America that means Trump) solely because they no longer like what the late stage sexual liberated society tastes like. It's wild and kind of disturbing to see- how are Trump and Vance going to defend women and the feminine?- but gals who were comfortably liberal a decade ago have drifted into arenas that will probably end up hurting them. I've talked to them, listened to them, and can tell there needs to be a Third Way. Something beyond OnlyFans libertinism and Vance-like reactionary politics. I believe in the Third Way for Sacred Sexuality and Regenerative Intimacy, two things that were never really taught to me in the two sex education classes I took by 10th grade.
That's the bigger picture though, I also just want to express my admiration for the bravery you two are taking in having these conversations. It's rare the depth and openness with which you guys are discussing such topics. I am kind of totally against whatever stage our "sex for sale" era is at- I'm not super comfortable with the high tech birth control, babies coming from frozen eggs, people in oppressive situations calling themselves "sex workers", and a kind of desecrated vision of sexuality that isn't so much about sexuality but about America as a shopping mall. Equally, I believe that our Sexuality can and should be the most beautiful and honored element of our human experience, both within the context of conceiving and raising children and then also for pure pleasure and affection between humans. So I also hate this new age misogyny and a kind of reversion to a made up 1950s where these Little Patriarchal households create a fake Paradise. Whatever happened to natural sexuality? To the natural joy of our bodies? Natural orgasms, natural female and male pleasure, natural moon cycles for natural bodies on a natural planet. Speaking as a man who loves sex and loves and appreciates women, I know that's what all of my good guy friends want. We don't like the modern options based on the cheap, the fast, and the shallow. We want to get back to deep. To get back to the "inconvenience" of the sacred patterns that all religions are pointing us to and how most of human society operated before the industrial revolution.
I hate an oppressive Patriarchy. And I don't like a flip version Matriarchy is the answer. How about Sacred Balance? How about natural pleasure? And yes, natural child conception and child raising is a wonderful thing that we know how to do as creatures. This leads me to my radical belief that there is a big majority coalition between more conservative religious people and liberated women and men who all want a Sacred path. We have so much more in common than we are told by the media. We don't want desecration with a shopping mall approach, and we also don't want to oppress women, oppress men, or create a new-Taliban vision of Paradise. The name "Eve" in Genesis means "Spirit of Life", so without the Feminine being honored, there is no lifeforce. Us men are merely the dust of the earth without the Feminine to shelter, protect, and love.
People just want to live and love naturally. Back to Balance. Back to our Bodies. Away from the robot and AI hellish vision of the future. Back to the Earth. Keep it up guys, this is precious work, and peace and blessings on your path ahead.
The man of long comments here I know, and I imagine nobody is paying attention to this thread at this point. But the darn spirit called once more....
It seems Sylvia a lot of what you are doing in your work is a seeking for a new "Cloistering", as in a new set of sacred temples and lodges that can return us back to a holy Masculine/Feminine balance, and for life itself to get into balance. Which in the 21st century it clearly is not.
This is so similar to what I've been attempting to do since middle school, which was in the middle of a forest, followed by my main high school that worked like a communal kibbutz replete with a dairy farm. I've spend my whole life from youth to now (40 comes quickly, let me tell you) seeking for an Eden that lives in my bones but even the best of my friend circles still seem to dismiss as a pipe dream, because we "can't go back again" and anybody desiring for anything traditional is a reactionary. Everybody is forcing themselves to be modern, which is a ruthless religion in its own right, and where technology seems to be the main sacrament.
Christians have Cloisters, Buddhists do, Muslims do, Pagans and Wiccans and indigenous societies do.... really about everyone until the Enlightenment showed up. The Enlightenment forces everything into the box of reason and being able to be explained. These days in intimacy culture things like love and sex have to be explained, justified, broken down, engineered. It feels brutal and inhuman this world that I am supposed to live in and appreciate all my "privileges".
I believe we need to return to our indigenous soul. And the bring the Divine Feminine back. The Regenerative Masculinity that I've tried to follow is nigh on forgotten.... I have a female friend who told me the other night that what our modern culture mostly lives on in the "light masculine" aka bro culture of these aging boys who don't know how to nourish or listen to anybody or anything. Lost boys feeding on the world like vampires, who don't have a home or roots or much of Peace. I feel this lack of peace in my own body and wonder about all the other lost boys wandering the earth, and I do feel sorry for them. Hegseth and Vance and all them too.
So yes, return to Cloisters. To the womb knowledge, the original cloister. Birthing and the magic of women's wisdom around birthing used to happen in darkness and mystery, and that was kind of the point. Did the Enlightenment lead to the eventual hell of hospital births and the "sterilization" of the natural beautiful and bloody mess that are human bodies? Nowhere is more lit up than a hospital, but they're just a part of the overlit and overstimulated insanity that is the modern world, the modern mind, and modern ideologies that have conquered most of the religious paths even if and when they say they are sticking to tradition.
Keep building your Cloisters, sisters Sylvia. I've never encountered anybody else like you is attempting to harken back to such an ancient path- but also has not ceded to a bitterness about the current state of things, and stayed forgiving and compassionate. God, is that a challenge for me right now. There are times when all I feel around me in 2020s America is a bunch of small little boys posing as Adams, a lot of broken Eves cowering under the tree, and the whole Garden is on fire.
Is there a way out of this mess? You are one important light in the world. But you can only light your candle in darkness and mystery. You embrace mystery, so rare. You embrace the unknowing. Ignorance can help us enter into Grace.
Stay Graceful. Some of this work you're doing may take hundreds or thousands of years, but it is worth it. That kind of timescale puts me at ease so I can just try to do my bit too.
Wrote that last comment before I had actually watched the whole interview..... I really love your dialogue at the end about the need for balance between Masculine and Feminine, men and women, and for the deep respect and affection between all of us that most people want to live within. I do feel like with the discussion around religion, there's this rather modern competitive approach where it's like "Do we have the Masculine religion "win"?" or do we need to make sure the women come "first"?". This is all Americans saying this, of course- we can be such a culture of hustling and competition.
I like a religion where all of life wins. I didn't grow up going to church, my parents left the religious stuff but kept the morality- and eventually decided that the Episcopal Church was a place that had a God that felt right. Christ is actually bigger than Jesus the supposedly male avatar, Christ is an energetic concept like the Buddha..... and because Episcopalians honor the Feminine and have so many female priests now, in some services we use terms like Mother God and Father God, Source of All Life, etc. etc.
God is simply the Infinite. The Jesus and Magdalene path is one route to the Infinite I rather like and try my best to practice. But it is very much aligned with Riane Eisler's ideas about "Partnership Societies". I'm a man who likes to be around and learn from women, and maybe now and again they have been able to learn from me. We need each other. Adam and Eve may piss each other off in the Garden, but humans are here to Love and Learn, not Compete or "Win" over on one another. I hate that kind of speech.
True Love is beyond a partial victory. It involves lots of compromise and negotiation, lots of back and forth. It is all relational. All stuff I can be bad at, so I like to learn more :)
Thank you Ficino for your reflections and I echo your thoughts on "a religion where all life wins!"
Another great one, this is the familiar boring on the surface straight white guy who's such a big fan of y'alls work. Sylvia and Simone both, though I've been tracking Sylvia's work for many years, only just encountered Simone.
I advocate for the reality of a sacred pattern in nature, and I believe our sacred patterns of Masculine and Feminine still matter within that. Apparently in 2025 in the modern West even just saying such a thing can get you boxed in as a right-wing reactionary, and I know first and second hand that there are a number of pretty liberal and educated women who are no believers in an oppressive patriarchy, but who have now gone down a right wing political path (in America that means Trump) solely because they no longer like what the late stage sexual liberated society tastes like. It's wild and kind of disturbing to see- how are Trump and Vance going to defend women and the feminine?- but gals who were comfortably liberal a decade ago have drifted into arenas that will probably end up hurting them. I've talked to them, listened to them, and can tell there needs to be a Third Way. Something beyond OnlyFans libertinism and Vance-like reactionary politics. I believe in the Third Way for Sacred Sexuality and Regenerative Intimacy, two things that were never really taught to me in the two sex education classes I took by 10th grade.
That's the bigger picture though, I also just want to express my admiration for the bravery you two are taking in having these conversations. It's rare the depth and openness with which you guys are discussing such topics. I am kind of totally against whatever stage our "sex for sale" era is at- I'm not super comfortable with the high tech birth control, babies coming from frozen eggs, people in oppressive situations calling themselves "sex workers", and a kind of desecrated vision of sexuality that isn't so much about sexuality but about America as a shopping mall. Equally, I believe that our Sexuality can and should be the most beautiful and honored element of our human experience, both within the context of conceiving and raising children and then also for pure pleasure and affection between humans. So I also hate this new age misogyny and a kind of reversion to a made up 1950s where these Little Patriarchal households create a fake Paradise. Whatever happened to natural sexuality? To the natural joy of our bodies? Natural orgasms, natural female and male pleasure, natural moon cycles for natural bodies on a natural planet. Speaking as a man who loves sex and loves and appreciates women, I know that's what all of my good guy friends want. We don't like the modern options based on the cheap, the fast, and the shallow. We want to get back to deep. To get back to the "inconvenience" of the sacred patterns that all religions are pointing us to and how most of human society operated before the industrial revolution.
I hate an oppressive Patriarchy. And I don't like a flip version Matriarchy is the answer. How about Sacred Balance? How about natural pleasure? And yes, natural child conception and child raising is a wonderful thing that we know how to do as creatures. This leads me to my radical belief that there is a big majority coalition between more conservative religious people and liberated women and men who all want a Sacred path. We have so much more in common than we are told by the media. We don't want desecration with a shopping mall approach, and we also don't want to oppress women, oppress men, or create a new-Taliban vision of Paradise. The name "Eve" in Genesis means "Spirit of Life", so without the Feminine being honored, there is no lifeforce. Us men are merely the dust of the earth without the Feminine to shelter, protect, and love.
People just want to live and love naturally. Back to Balance. Back to our Bodies. Away from the robot and AI hellish vision of the future. Back to the Earth. Keep it up guys, this is precious work, and peace and blessings on your path ahead.
The man of long comments here I know, and I imagine nobody is paying attention to this thread at this point. But the darn spirit called once more....
It seems Sylvia a lot of what you are doing in your work is a seeking for a new "Cloistering", as in a new set of sacred temples and lodges that can return us back to a holy Masculine/Feminine balance, and for life itself to get into balance. Which in the 21st century it clearly is not.
This is so similar to what I've been attempting to do since middle school, which was in the middle of a forest, followed by my main high school that worked like a communal kibbutz replete with a dairy farm. I've spend my whole life from youth to now (40 comes quickly, let me tell you) seeking for an Eden that lives in my bones but even the best of my friend circles still seem to dismiss as a pipe dream, because we "can't go back again" and anybody desiring for anything traditional is a reactionary. Everybody is forcing themselves to be modern, which is a ruthless religion in its own right, and where technology seems to be the main sacrament.
Christians have Cloisters, Buddhists do, Muslims do, Pagans and Wiccans and indigenous societies do.... really about everyone until the Enlightenment showed up. The Enlightenment forces everything into the box of reason and being able to be explained. These days in intimacy culture things like love and sex have to be explained, justified, broken down, engineered. It feels brutal and inhuman this world that I am supposed to live in and appreciate all my "privileges".
I believe we need to return to our indigenous soul. And the bring the Divine Feminine back. The Regenerative Masculinity that I've tried to follow is nigh on forgotten.... I have a female friend who told me the other night that what our modern culture mostly lives on in the "light masculine" aka bro culture of these aging boys who don't know how to nourish or listen to anybody or anything. Lost boys feeding on the world like vampires, who don't have a home or roots or much of Peace. I feel this lack of peace in my own body and wonder about all the other lost boys wandering the earth, and I do feel sorry for them. Hegseth and Vance and all them too.
So yes, return to Cloisters. To the womb knowledge, the original cloister. Birthing and the magic of women's wisdom around birthing used to happen in darkness and mystery, and that was kind of the point. Did the Enlightenment lead to the eventual hell of hospital births and the "sterilization" of the natural beautiful and bloody mess that are human bodies? Nowhere is more lit up than a hospital, but they're just a part of the overlit and overstimulated insanity that is the modern world, the modern mind, and modern ideologies that have conquered most of the religious paths even if and when they say they are sticking to tradition.
Keep building your Cloisters, sisters Sylvia. I've never encountered anybody else like you is attempting to harken back to such an ancient path- but also has not ceded to a bitterness about the current state of things, and stayed forgiving and compassionate. God, is that a challenge for me right now. There are times when all I feel around me in 2020s America is a bunch of small little boys posing as Adams, a lot of broken Eves cowering under the tree, and the whole Garden is on fire.
Is there a way out of this mess? You are one important light in the world. But you can only light your candle in darkness and mystery. You embrace mystery, so rare. You embrace the unknowing. Ignorance can help us enter into Grace.
Stay Graceful. Some of this work you're doing may take hundreds or thousands of years, but it is worth it. That kind of timescale puts me at ease so I can just try to do my bit too.