May 5, 2010

Reflections: The Blame & Shame Game

Reflections by: Olivia Robertson
Beltaine 2010 - Isian News 136

"The Blame & Shame Game"
“Blame others and you expose your own secret failings."

When I was young – about seventy years ago – the prevailing fashion was to blame everything on MOTHERS. The original sin of our ancestress Eve, who brought about the downfall of Adam, was transferred to The Mother. This was ordained by a present Prophet of the Unconscious, Professor Freud. As he was a scientist and had a beard he was regarded as infallible as the Pope. Mother was the Spider lurking in a mine-field of complexes derived when we were helpless children.

My sister Barbara was a born leader, and enthusiastically joined in this entertaining Blame & Shame Game, as guide to myself and our two younger brothers. And what a Mother we had! She became a legend in her time – thanks to us.

My mother, Nora Parsons, was the only child of a British General. He adored hunting, so when his wife presented him with a mere girl, he had to face a choice – not a hard one. Another baby – hopefully a boy – or a horse. Naturally he chose the horse.

To adjust matters, he brought his daughter Nora up as a boy. From an early age in India she did not have an Ayah but a soldier servant to empty her potty. She had a little military uniform. I have a photo of her as a tiny soldier. She worshipped her father, who when she was five put her hands round a pole with a beefsteak bait wedged on the end, to tempt a shark. The cream of her successes came when she was seventeen and shot a crocodile.

Barbara would achieve a Freudian success with student boy friends by showing the crocodile’s head on a wall, with his bared teeth, and explain “my mother shot that!”

My grandmother, despised by her daughter as feminine, was determined to get her married. So Nora was forced to dress well. She was beautiful, with a strong tanned skin. She had an eighteen-inch waist for her wedding gown for her marriage to my father, aged 21 and 4 years younger. My father, a strong character with scientific bent, had been spiritually guided to propose. He told me that they struggled for power throughout the honeymoon. He hadn’t a chance, so he decided to give in. So the Freudian view suited our family. One of my mother’s cousins, Marie Comerford, had roamed the Wicklow hills shooting British soldiers with a sawn-off shotgun. Another, the Hon Florence Gibson, had shot off a bit of Mussolini’s nose. And the rest of our neighbours followed the same pattern. Dominant women. Hen-pecked men. My brother, a clergyman and I were enthusiastic for the Cause of the Goddess. We were pioneers.

Late in the twentieth century, came a startling change against Patriarchy. It began with the words “Satanic Abuse”, and soon changed to “Clerical Abuse”. Most of us women were totally nonplussed. Apparently we were victims, and had been victims for millennia without realising it! The old Irish rhyme, “Women are evil: men are dumb: they torment them just for fun,” had to be changed. It was “Men are evil, women are dumb: men torment them just for fun.” We had to rescue fellow women in the Near and Far East – even with local wars.

So the Blame & Shame Game shifted dramatically, ably assisted by the Media. Patriarchy was to blame for all our misfortunes. To take an instance: Some Doctors had blamed mothers for killing their babies in “cot deaths.” Now it transpired it was the Doctors’ fault for recommending babies to sleep on their tummies – where they naturally tended to suffocate.

When the Blame & Shame Game gets going, the innocent and the guilty are both targeted. Paranoid fear led to the Inquisition, Witch burnings, and the Holocaust. Now the fearful minded dread “disguised alien reptilians disguised as human celebrities!” Making no exceptions, we blame Men for mistreating women, children – and animals with vivisection – inventing and using weapons of mass destruction, torture, and for creating global warming. Men are blamed for traumatising the rising generation, so that children dare not play in the streets, for fear of abusive men. The motto of the 3 Wise Monkeys has become its opposite: “think evil: see evil: hear evil.” Suicides are increasing.

There is good news! With my psychic capabilities, I have found that our parents, friends, and teachers exist in the next world and know what we say of them, and suffer accordingly. Finding this out, I hastily changed my Blame & Shame Game to the Appreciation Game. I remembered the rich treasures given to me by my mother and father and teachers. Wise were the Ancient Chinese to revere their ancestors! Friendly Spirits bestrew our paths with good fortune. Instead of blaming other cultures, other faiths for short-comings, I now appreciated the earth’s glorious history.

Marvellous are the ways of the Goddess! Our Temple of Isis, in this new century, began to change, helped by my brother and other Spirit friends. I have found myself inspired to paint Isis and Osiris as twins on our interior windows. The glorious Company of the Goddesses are beginning to acquire new friends. The Sea God Manannan has joined Brighid at our Well. Poseidon, The God of Atlantis, has joined the Goddess Derceto in our Pisces shrine.

Above all, the Great Winged Isis in the painting in our Healing Chapel, has a newcomer. Behind the brilliant Winged Isis of the Stars now appears Osiris in spiritual blue-green form, with outspread wings. And below, the bust of Tutankhamen, instead of portraying a gold mummy’s clay head is reborn as a mischievous boy, ruddy-faced, amused by our ways. The Deities laugh with joy as we humans awaken.





Archival link: Beltaine Reflections Article


(our thanks to the Most Rev. Minette Quick for forwarding this article and photo.)