Sometimes I feel as though I were the bastard child of an accidental mating of Sasquatch and Lilith because I never assimilated many of the basic basics of our culture. A disreputable child of nature I was, run wild, always running away from home in search of ... the unknown? ... God knows wot? ... but away from conformity, being told to do what was proper.
Surprisingly, I made it through the educational system with relative honors as a student, science and mathematics and some basic skills in art and music saved me, as well as a relatively sophisticated understanding of the structures of communication. But, I am ashamed to say I have read little of Charles Dickens and other cultural icons, certainly I made it through the Christmas Carol because it was made familiar through radio and television, and in reading it I was enormously enthralled by the images Dickens created of ignorance and want. Though I wanted nothing, I was total ignorance personified. Perhaps it was because everything presented to me as meaningful was by men and about men and these things I was expected to know did not represent me, a female.
I began, once, to read Hard Times and was moved by Dickens use of the metaphor of squareness -- and possibly emptiness -- in Mr. Thomas Gradgrind -- but then I was obliged to go beyond that to more complex understandings -- and I balked.
Even so, I read extensively, compulsively, about other cultures, and absorbed like a sponge all sorts of useless information about Mesopatians, Phoenicians, Viking gods, damn, I loved that wild woman Freya and had a great deal of respect for Thor, the god of the common man, but the sophistication and cunning of Odin and Loki left me cold. And poor unhappy Frigg, so similar to the equally unhappy Hera.
There it was, that invisible and mighty Phallus, the personification of God, gods almost everywhere, of humanity itself, and I was expected to bow down before it. Frankly, I would not have been comfortable bowing down the invisible cultural norm if it had been a Yoni either. The frightening prospect of an engulfing Sheila-na-gig! I've no desire to return to the womb.
The eastern concept of Yin and Yang would not have served either, consider the imagery:
Yin: female, passive, negative principle in nature
Yang: positive, active, male principle in nature
Pooh! Unacceptable. Finally, though, there is the intertwined Lord and Lady of paganism, also the Norse Sunna, sun goddess, who daily drives the chariot of the Sun across the sky every day, pulled by the horses Allsvinn ("Very Fast") and Arvak ("Early Rising"), pursued by the wolf Skoll. And, I'll bet that Skoll wears a priest's collar and a crucifix.