We generally think of feminism and certainly of feminist theory, as given birth in the 19th and 20th centuries primarily within the circles of left wing politics and ideologies while ignoring its religious, traditional and right wing liberal roots. However, the roots of feminism are undoubtedly Esoteric and Gnostic in it's nature, not Marxist or socialist. Understanding the true origins of feminism us crucial as giving politically as well as culturally and socially the right response and stopping this hate movement from inflicting more damage in society. However, how the esoteric and Pagan roots of feminism have become such ones later through sublimation, I will be discussing and explaining below. Anyway, all of those aspects are part and parcel of the monotheistic traditions, especially the Judeo-Christian one, but it also includes large part of Islamic influence via the Indian - Sufi tradition while all of them are resting on older Pagan paths including Manichaeism, Celtic Paganism, the Druids, Zorotostrianism, Bogomolism, Catharism and many more Now, it was quiet established in the research that Cathars and the Troubadours are linked to the early feminist't ideology, thought, dynamics, perceptions and views. Yet, there is a deeper and a secret level to this reality, a phenomen that in itself can be observed even in modern feminism, namely a misleading facade that is presented outwordly and a one that inwardly represents the true nature. This is the new realm or aspect that I discivered through my research And here, at the most inner realm, the phenomenon of the troubadours as a part of the Cathar culture of Southern France in Languedoc and Aquitaine, and consequently feminism as a derivative of the Cathars and the Troubadours, especially under Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, incorporates a secrete and ancient cult of the Black Madonna, representing the old great Goddess and female wisdom. A cult that was combined with with Esoteric heresies like the Cathars and the more ancient Gnostic paths like Manicaeisn, Zorotostrianism and the Bogomils of the Balkan The Black Madonna cult was basically a secret, mystic love-cult behind the Troubadours, which consisted of the veneration of a Black Sophia goddess in Gnostic-Cathar cave sanctuaries. Begg discovers in Languedoc a mysterious love-cult which worshiped a feminine goddess; in fact, a “Black Sophia”. Intriguingly, as he points out, one of the most famous shrines dedicated to the “Black Madonna” is in this very region in the South of France. To Gnostics, there was one all-embracing feminine wisdom, including both the virgin and the whore, which they called Sophia or the Holy Spirit. They identified her with the vision to John on Patmos of ‘a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet, and upon her head, a crown of twelve stars’ (Revelation 12.1) and they invoked her as ‘Lady’. . . .For the simple people, on the other hand, the Black Virgin no doubt continued to be what she had been for some thirty millennia, the manifestation of the Great Goddess. Those concepts underwent a long and complex proccess of sublimation from the Pagan level into the monotheistic heresies in Europe mainly by using Jewish Talmudic mysticim as well as Kabbalah, the sublimation from the religious into the secular realm in the Troubadour and the Cathar culture that has become the modern pop culture phenomenon and then the sublimation from the more traditional religious spiritual right wing root of feminism into the secular political left realm. In fact, it's a threefold level sublimation over a course of a millenium. This is an article about those most inner dynamics: https://www.yoavlevin.com/post/the-cathar-manichean-ontology-of-gynocentric-supremacism-and-feminist-misandry This narrative and the above concepts are still mirrored today in the legends and the folklore of the Russian or Slavic people that grew out of the common and shared Slavic mythologies who are the roots of both monotheistic belief systems and Pagan concepts described here. In those Slavic tradition there is a mythical demonic figure that is used a lot as a metaphor and even the root for the combibation of the cult of the black Madonna, the female wisdom and the cult of the Goddess. This personality or character is called Baba Yaga. She is depicted as a supernatural being (or one of a trio of sisters of the same name in a very similar way that reminds us and resembles with the female Canaanite Goddess trio of Ashera, Ashtoret and Anat) who also appears as a deformed and/or ferocious-looking woman. In fact, Baba Yaga is described as a demonic witch who cooks people and babies. Baba Yaga flies around in a mortar, wields a pestle, and dwells deep in the forest in a hut usually described as standing on chicken legs and is in the thicket of a dense forest. Described as a terrifying creature she normally flies in the middle of the night sometimes on her broom too. The fence or gates of her hut are filled with human skulls and there is always a place for an additional one that she might put there. Her name, "Baba" means in most Slavic languages "grandmother" or an "old woman". Babki (many of Baba) in Russian slang can be synonymous to the term "Weiber" in German and Yiddish (a language that is a combination of German and Hebrew and was used by German Jews). This is something that translates and is equal to the English term Womenfolk. This is also the meaning of Baba in Russian for a single woman and not only in plural. Its associated name "Yaga" is sometimes translated as the small form of "Jadwiga", which is the Slavic version of the German name "Hedwig". This is an important factor or detail because in the Slavic languages it has a central meaning or role as an etymological and semantic derivative both from Greek and Turkish Slavic heritage. There are also etymologists who think that there is a more direct Slavic source for the name "yaga" which is the proto-Slavic word ęgа, whose meaning also seems to be related to Greek and Slavic heritage Baba Yaga sometimes appears while exhibiting an antagonistic role and sometimes as a source of guidance, wisdom, initiation and the cessation of suffering. In this sense, and in a non-dual way, it serves not only as an archetype of wisdom including the idea or concept of being an object of the archetype of fear but also in the role of courage and integrity that frees us from suffering as well as also simultaneously incorporating and being the prototype of those dark forces of our psyche that create the same suffering. On the basis of a deep and intimate knowledge of this human psyche and nature, this concept reflected a very scientific formation within the framework of pagan thought in which the nucleus or kernel of wisdom needed for us to be freed from suffering is to be find within suffering itself (in the same way as in a scientific theory the core of refutation must be included or embedded in the theory itself for it to become scientific). Baba Yaga symbolizes perhaps the difficult (and frightening) way and in another sense the necessary instrument, but also simultaneously the ideal and the practical outcome of the cessation of suffering. Why and how is its origin gynocentric I explained in the article linked below. While those older depictions created a more balanced form of gynocentrism, in Judaism, Christianity and Islam who became more gynocentric religions than the preceding ones, this prototype was exaggerated and converted, for example in Judaism and Christianity, to the archetype of the Shechina (the indwelling creative force of the abstract divine element that create and sustains life or actually world/reality) and the Virgin Mary, which in fact creates as I said the world, dominates reality and in the end revives everything Anyway, acknowledging this reality, we again should bear in mind that as aforesaid Baba Yaga was identified with the goddess Tabiti in the early Gynocentric societies and in the same way both in the Semitic one (through the unification with the respective Semitic Goddesses of Ashera, Ashtoret and Anat) as well as the Shamanic societies. She was not the one who held formal power, but rather because she represents and embodies the female qualities of the androgynous Ein Sof (infinity) as defined in Kabbalah or the ultimate abstract aspect of absolute reality that creates and dominates the world through the informal dimensio. The one that is the source of formal authority and that also approves and supervises it, and without whom the authority cannot be exercised. Thus, she was ruling through the dimension of informal power. As I explained in the article below, Tabiti is also the equivalent of the Jewish Shekhina and the Christian Virgin Mary, the mother goddess and mother of God, as well as the Asherah, Ashtoret and Anat from the Canaanite Semitic mythologies, the direct concept from which the ideas of the Shekhina were nurtured in Judaism and Virgin Mary in Christianity both of whom themselves were descendants of Tabiti. And as we know, Mary was an essential part to the Troubadour whereas we close here the link to that I was mentioning at the beginning namely the secrete cult of love of the black Madonna abd female wisdom as well as the worship of the great Goddess. The basic belief behind the troubadours that is perfectly reflected in Ulrich's "in the servitude of Women" is the idea that in order to end suffering, the knight must submit to his lady and the simple man to his woman, he must serve her and be her slave, because she's morally superior, she's a better human and incorporates all the ideals described above. It is these and her love that will end all suffering. And thia included also female infidelity that was now excused whereas many of the knights' songs were addresing a married lady. In this article you will find an indepth elaboration of those roots:
https://www.yoavlevin.com/post/the-transition-of-gynocentric-concepts-from-turko-slavic-and-canaanite-mythology-to-monotheism Now, among other influences, those ideas are represented and sublimated in the Judeo-Christian tradition as the concept of the mother of God (Mary in Christianity) and God the mother (Schechina) in Judaism. In both sister religions this is the same concept thightly linked to the ancient cult of the Goddess, the black Sophia, or the female wisom of the Gnostics. Here https://www.yoavlevin.com/post/christian-mother-of-god-and-jewish-god-the-mother Next, is an article about Bogomilism, Manichaeism, Cathars and Jewish Mysticism (Kaballah) that were crucial elements in moulding the feminist phenomenon. In fact, the Cathar Kabbalistic cross-pollination went far beyond feminism as the Kabbalah is based on many Cathar concepts and help it survived through Judaism after the crucade against them https://www.yoavlevin.com/post/medieval-europe-in-the-light-of-bogomil-misandry-and-the-manichean-cathar-proto-feminism Bogomolism and the Cathars are also the source of many feminists myths, concelts and misandry which partly echo more ancient Gnostic traditions. The arose respectively out of the creation myth that are typical to misansrist heresy. Here is an article describing this phenomenon https://www.yoavlevin.com/post/the-demonization-of-male-sexuality-in-the-bogomil-and-the-italian-cathar-creation-myth Moreover, the 16th century 's Renaissance which the article below addreses gave us a huge and a vast fracture of its literature prioritizing women abd dealing with the interest of the "women question" (Querelle des femmes) over that of men, although the absolute majority of men were equally or even more oppressed than women. This in return gave rise not only to a flood of female focused literature but in fact to the creation of the feminist narrative, the basic foundations of modern feminism and especially its misandrist basis. Such writers as Vives, Castiglione, Erasmus, Cornelius Agrippa and Guillaume Postel hypothesized not only in theoretical terms the place of women in culture, religion and society but laid out modern misansry, female supremascism as well as the dynamics even of the most man hating stage of feminism, namely the third one. Thus, most of feminist misandry including the majority of third wave feminism that is also the most misandrist one can be traced back especially to two key figures in the proto-feminist era around the 16th century. Those are Heinrich Cornellius Agrippa and Guillaume Postem. Two main contributors to modern feminist misandry who can also be considred to be the first male feminists. Especially Agrippa was influenced by by Ulrich the Knight and his "in servitude of women" (they both were Germans), while Agrippa based on Ulrich's "In servitude of women" wrote the "The Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex" and Guillaume Postel as adopting Agrippa's herritage wrote his own work that was given the title "The very Marvelous Victories of the Women of the New World". Here's the article about tgis legacy: https://www.yoavlevin.com/post/the-heart-of-the-heartless-world It is important to mention that this herritage formed and shaped the Nordic narrative that was the basis not only of the racist proto type of the elevated status of the blond and blue eyed people but also the feminist narrative of the US suffragettes which came via England. It is from there that many feminist concepts were adopted by Nazi Germany and again came back to the US into the democratic feminist cycles. And it was only in the second wave that this narrative came back to Europe this time while being transformed and having undergone a sublimation ib which the superior and upper race turned into the supperior and upper class gender and class. Here is an article describing those dynamics: https://www.yoavlevin.com/post/the-feminist-roots-of-the-nazi-race-ideology