Coincidance - Principia Discordia

60 COINCIDANCE
power, with an outcry of desire, to make the missing mother mysteriously
appear again and offer the all-providing breast. It is no accident, then, that so
many poems, from the Odyssey right up to Joyce's great prose-poem, Finnegans
Wake, contain magical "invocations" summoning the goddess to appear at once.
We can now see that there might have been more than a joke in the
famous exploit of Eleanor's father, Guillaume of Aquitaine, who built a
private brothel or harem on his land in the exact architectural style of
contemporary convents. The "convents" of the old matriarchal religions, of
course, had been devoted to what is alternately called hierogamy or sacred
prostitution or sex magic; perhaps Guillaume had been consciously trying to
revive that. And when Eleanor herself rode through Jerusalem with bared
breasts, she also may have been prompted by more than high spirits. It is
traditional in many schools of initiation to require some such public act,
which is thought to have magical significance and also separates one sharply
from the obedient servants of the existing establishment, parading those
emblems of matriarchal fertility-worship through the Holy Land of the
world's three strongest patriarchal religions—Judaism, Christianity and
Islam—may have been an act of fealty to the old mother goddess and an
invocation attempting to restore her worship.
If so, it has only been partially successful. . . thus far.
The taboo on showing the breast is certainly odd if one considers it in relation
to the attractive features of other animals. One does not read of peacocks who
are ashamed of their gorgeous tail-feathers, of goldfish hiding their lovely fieryyellow
markings, of lionesses having squeamish feelings about their brutal
beauty. Yet a woman of today (unless she is a professional topless dancer) might
still go through the processes which the psychologist Flugel described in 1930:
A woman may, for example, refrain from going to a dance in a very
decollete dress: (a) Because, although she thinks it becomes her and she
experiences a real gratification at the sight and feeling of her bare upper
body, she yet experiences a sense of shame and embarrassment at the mere
fact that she should do so. The modest impulse is here directed against
desire....(b) Because, although she experiences none of the scruples just
mentioned and freely enjoys the sight of herself in her mirror, she yet fears
that she may unduly stimulate sexual desire in per prospective partners; in
this case the modesty is still directed against desire, but now refers to
feelings in others rather than to feelings in the self, (c) Because, on putting
on the dress, she is immediately overcome by a feeling of revulsion at her
own image. .. . Modesty here works against disgust aroused in her own
mind. . . . (d) Because, although she may be pleased at the effect of the
low-cut dress, she thinks of the shock that her appearance in it will cause to
certain puritanically minded friends. ... In this case, modesty is directed
against disgust ... in others rather than feelings in herself.*
*].C. Flugel, The Psychology of Clothes (New York: International Universities Press, 1930)