With so many women angry at men, with so many women who have been harmed by men and patriarchy, and with so many women lumping together “masculine” with “patriarchy,” I felt it time to address this.
I am going to use my own vocabulary to explain this, so please first allow me to define the terms I’m using.
Patriarchy: System of oppression that hijacked feminine energy (including the life force of indigenous people and people of color) and utilized that stolen energy for its own gain. It is a system of destruction, which I say without emotion. I’m simply stating the energetics. Patriarchy is a taker system.
Lower masculine: This is the primarily unconscious and default masculinity in a patriarchy that lives for power, greed, consumption, and its sense of provision and protection are absent or collapsed. Imagine it’s like the opposite of a Kingly masculine like King Arthur embodied. The lower masculine is present in men – for example men that want to feed off of a woman’s life force energy, men that want to have the power and control, or men that don’t have a sense of provisional capacity to care for women and children and they spend a lot of time feeling like a victim to women. But lower masculine can also be present in women, in organizations, in everyone, because everyone (and every organization, every system) has both feminine and masculine energetics.
Destroyer: This is my term for the dark energy that wants to take from the feminine, from women, from Earth, and from holistic systems. This energy wants to prevent the evolution of consciousness that would include true community values and equal distribution of resources. This energy, in my opinion, fueled patriarchy and we wouldn’t have patriarchy as it stands without it. Patriarchy was successful because of the taker energy, but resulting in massive separation and a depletion of the feminine energetic.
Can lower masculine also include the destroyer energetic? It can, but it is not always true – which is nuanced and the point of this article.
When a woman has been hurt by systems of oppression in her life, for example at work, and she looks around and sees men in suits, and women in pantsuits emulating the men, and she feels targeted by this, she may think to herself and draw the conclusion that, “Men perpetuate destroyer energetics.” But then she can look at the systems, at the fact that women also participate in these destroyer systems, and she can find examples of men who seem to want to help rather than hurt, and she’d have to admit that these two are not one and the same. Equating men with destroyer is actually irresponsible and limiting on the part of women. It limits men’s capacity and is unkind.
Lower masculine can be a destroyer. It can be out for itself and be maliciously willing to take another’s energy (or Earth energy). But it can also be more innocent. It’s still unconscious, so I’m not making excuses or letting it completely off the hook, but unconscious lower masculine behaviors look different. A man can want too much of a woman’s attention, he can put a woman above fulfilling his purpose in the world and find himself lost, or he can avoid his own quest for consciousness in favor of the emotional reinforcement he gets from women in his life, but while this is unconscious and “lower masculine,” it doesn’t make him a destroyer. It can also deplete women’s energy, which feels destructive, but it’s not malicious. Dealing with unconscious lower masculine energetics as a woman is different than a strategy to deal with destroyer energetics. This is nuanced and women may reach out to me privately with their individual situations and questions, which I can answer in private mentorships or in my membership.
A man operating in lower masculine is operating in taker energetics – yes, somewhat, but more because he hasn’t resolved the Mother Wound than anything else. This man is not overtaken by the dark of the Destroyer.
What it looks like when the Destroyer overtakes a man is when a man is in an ego-identification (unconscious) and something within his unresolved ego personality gets triggered. He gets angry about it, maybe has a defensive tendency. Maybe someone in his life asked him to take accountability for something he’s not ready to look at. And instead of allowing himself to see this as an opportunity for his own integration and advancement, he actually attacks the person or system that is trying to get him to look at himself. It’s like a little devil destroyer energy close by says, “Look, he’s susceptible to taking on our energy. Let’s infiltrate.” Or, the man is overtaken by greed, the quest for power, the willingness to destroy the feminine, to dominate to preserve the ego, and the like. A primary doorway for the Destroyer to get into men is also through their avoidant addictions. This leaves his energy body open and susceptible to dark attack.
Can the Destroyer also enter into women or any human? Yes.
Is the Destroyer the equivalent of man or even lower masculinity? No. But it is the equivalent of patriarchy, by definition of patriarchy being a system that perpetually attempts to establish dominion.
Just because a man is unconscious does not make him a destroyer. Women would do well to distinguish this, because you do not need to have so much fear. When we understand these nuances, we can not fear the blanket “masculine” and discern where to draw boundaries, where to support, where to stay in our lane. There are plenty of ways for women to relate to both lower masculine and the destroyer energetic that set them free instead of lock them into these energetics as truth. These do not have to be energetics that you even associate with, except to know your sovereign stance in reference to it.
Lastly, let’s define, for consideration, two more terms:
Conscious Masculinity: The decision to turn the inherited patterns from patriarchy and unconscious/lower masculine into conscious masculine behaviors. This requires much inner excavation and soul reclamation. It requires commitment on the part of men to look at where they sink down low into destroyer or lower masculine tendencies for attention, love, to secure resources, etc. It requires leadership to forge a new paradigm of masculinity that can be trusted and emulated into the future. And, yes, all humans are responsible for their own inner aspect of conscious masculinity. As a cis-gendered woman, I too am responsible for excavating my own inner masculine and continually bringing forth conscious masculine patterns through my actions as well.
Sacred Masculine: This is a very misused term, in my opinion, because many want to apply this to men themselves. The Sacred Masculine is the perfection of the Holy Masculine – the Yang, the Shiva, the Holy Father of Creation. These are pristine energetics that we can reference through archetypes. No doubt, these archetypal templates are activating guides on our path as humans. And, while humans are of course sacred, humans are not archetypes of the sacred. To me, the Archetype of the Holy Father (I’m not referencing religion, but rather the Father of Creation) is pure perfection, and I wouldn’t expect any one person or man to embody it fully. Not as modern day humans with so much confusion and distortion – it’s impossible to be a perfected archetype. And, that’s not the point. The point is to reference the supreme Sacred Masculine archetype as guidance, to invite this template to be an activation in the psyche, and to quest toward integrating the shadow and ego personality toward the sacred expression of masculinity.
I don’t expect men to be perfect emanations of the sacred masculine. I do expect men to become conscious of lower masculine, integrate and heal their Mother Wounding, be as conscious as possible, and not only do I expect men to not perpetuate the Destroyer energetic, I expect men to help set it straight as they embody their warrior nature in preservation and protection of all that is innocent, and that which has been oppressed.
And I expect men to disarm the Destroyer alongside conscious women, if not more so. When men recognize the destroyer for what it is and rise into conscious masculinity, the destroyer will be far less powerful and systems of oppression will lose quite a bit of power.
There is sacred, holy power in masculinity. It should not be cut down, diminished, or lumped with the destroyer.