What is the Matristic?
Many of my readings led me, accidentally, to topics related to matristics, also called matrifocal communities.
By reading authors who did a lot of research on these “civilizations”, I came to understand our potential as a society, a potential that I never thought could exist, but that has given me insight and understanding about other possible ways of living.
Matrifocal villages existed from 7000 to 3500 B.C. and were the most peaceful that existed on earth.
The matrifocal society is a form of social organization opposed to patriarchy, whose relationships are based on the human empathic system and the maternal principle. Anthropology and history call that time the Golden Age, where there was no need for domination and human life was self-regulated through affection and pleasure. There was no concept of domination of the earth, and therefore no domination of animals.
At the time of their existence there was no such thing as religion, no hierarchies or kings, no domination, not even geography as we know it today. They were simply highly evolved beings, who understood life for what it is, all that exists and all that we have.
The focus of their organization was the care of the web of life. Something that in our society today is at risk. Something that thousands of years ago with patriarchy has lost relevance to give it to the systems of production, power and domination, accumulation and reproduction as a way to perpetuate this model of capitalist reproduction.
There was no government, no patriarchy, no war, no poverty, no prostitution.
The first episodes of patriarchal civilization begin in 4000 BC and developed until 500 BC, where a civilization such as the contemporary one with laws and rules covering all aspects of human life began.
So what is it that makes these civilizations so peaceful? A little bit of the answer is revealed…
There is a theory that affirms the persistence of the veneration of the Creator Goddess.
Religion as we know it today has imposed on us a model of God as a man, but in this case “the existence” had a feminine nature, because they knew well that everything human is born from the woman’s body, so what would make them think that the existence would not come from this same origin but at a cosmic level?
Another theory, which goes hand in hand with the previous one, is the one presented by Casilda Rodrigañez in her writings, and it is that these societies were based on mutual care, on pleasure, on the giving-receiving-returning, on the sexual pulsion, maintaining from the beginning of life the primal sexuality, the mother-child contact, without any other priority than that.
What kind of society would it be like if it was not based on dominance, authority, castration and hierarchy?
It would be a matrifocal society: where there are no taboos, where life happens as it is, where it is allowed to be what it is, without resistance to the pulsion, without interrupting the flow, without resisting what is naturally born in each being. There is no necessity for domination, authority, because there is nothing to dominate, there is no perception of a good or evil.
This is definitely very different from what we see today in capitalist societies, where far from prioritizing mutual care, production and work are prioritized over other “non-productive” matters, crushing each other, competing to have more power and to gain a place in a consumer society. We live in a state of difficult and scarce relaxation in a competitive social fabric.
The taboo of Sexuality
The society in which we live today is also based on the taboo of sexuality.
Sexual castration has always been a technique of devitalization for the domestication of animals, including humans.
Casilda explains that the sexual pulsion, the libido, is within us to self-regulate us. Every time we have a sexual pulsion, the body is needing, asking, to regulate itself. However, since we were little we have been restricted in our sexual exploration, because sexuality is only seen as phallocentric, dirty, pornographic, when, in fact, the concept of sexuality is very far from that vision. With this castration we have not been allowed to flow towards our own path, which is our orgastic and self-regulating capacity:
“The sexual process has a regulatory function that goes beyond reproduction, as the very desire and our own daily experience are responsible for letting us know, despite the internal armoring and disconnections.
Sexuality produces the sensation of well-being that accompanies bodily self-regulation, the fullness of the harmony of bodily synergy (as when a cat purrs); it therefore invigorates and enlivens bodies, encourages initiatives and creativity ( the desire to do certain things, a passion for things), and feeds back by seducing, indulging and pleasing.”
That ability in its maximum expression is what makes us live in fullness. To be beings of love. Of pure consciousness. Where we help each other, we collaborate, where there are no differences, there is no need for domination or training.
The end of the Matrilineal as a society coincides with the emergence of the idea of dominating the earth and this starts in the times of Genesis, as well as childbirth with pain, the domination of men over women, and all that is typical of patriarchal society. From this moment on, and up to now, competition, power, illegitimacy and irresponsibility are preserved; we begin to live in distrust and seek certainties in the control of the natural world, of other human beings and of ourselves. By living in distrust, disagreements are not accepted as legitimate facts, and the divergent is only tolerated when it is believed that it will eventually be modified or eliminated.
Matristics as a possibility of a new reality
It is necessary to create new forms. We can already sense that this system cannot be sustained. Today it sustains itself at the cost of our health, of our freedom.
Now we must start looking for subjectivities. Create networks with the same foundations of mutual help, accepting divergences, embracing the uniqueness of each being and welcoming it as such.
Let’s start where we can, inside, by changing ourselves to inspire, to show that there are loving ways to live.
Let’s let go of dominance, let’s stop sustaining absurd hierarchies, inequalities that never existed as such, and start to live a life based on love, on trust, on giving and receiving, with the heart, connecting our mind, with our spirit and our body.
As human beings we are beings addicted to love and we depend, for the biological harmony of our living, on cooperation and sensuality, not on competition and struggle.
The change starts within.
Thank you.
Marina