
The Metaphysics of Feminism: Pain, Revolt, Gnosticism, and Satanic Pride
How Gnosticism and Protestantism influenced the foundation of feminism in the 18th century
Feminists consider Mary Wollstonecraft the first feminist because she embodies all the elements of feminist metaphysics, as well as presenting an indication that refers to John Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost. For this reason, she was chosen as an emblematic figure by feminists.
This tradition, besides integrating elements of feminist metaphysics, is characterized by portraying the Christian God as evil, placing all who rebel against Him in the same position as Satan himself — the ultimate rebel.
This line of thought connects Gnosticism to Satanism, and according to this view, every feminist is Gnostic. Olympe de Gouges, pseudonym of Marie Gouze (Montauban, May 7, 1748 – Paris, November 3, 1793), was a playwright, political activist, and feminist who wrote a year before Mary Wollstonecraft. Her tradition is French, in contrast to Wollstonecraft’s English one. She wrote declarations of the rights of women, exhorting women to cease being petty, cunning, and manipulative, arguing that the new regime demanded maturity from them.
The woman, used as a bridge between female revolt and the movement that arose in England in the 18th century, is represented by the image of Ophelia, in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
She is seen as fragile, created to be fragile, but also because she needs the balance of things she cannot control and a mystique.
For example, Stuart Mill, even without using terms related to female mysticism, presupposes that a woman needs to receive certain conditions to exert a given effort, as she naturally does not possess it. For him, women can become something different.
Simone de Beauvoir strives to maintain, without affirming the existence of an essence of things, assumptions similar to those found in Stuart Mill. If women have no essence, according to Simone, how can there be something they may come to be? In this context, black women come into the scene.
The universal suffering of women is presented as something that needs to be revealed. The woman used as a reference for these theories had no strength at that time, has biblical origins, and underwent modifications according to the utilitarian language prevailing in each period.
There is a liberalism present in this theory, with Thomas Hobbes being one of the founders of feminism within this discourse. Judith Butler brings Gnosticism into feminist discourse. According to her, neither gender exists, nor any concrete reality. What exists is a performance, and the metaphor she uses is that of a play, where everything is language.
The feminine nature and modernity have a broader relationship.
The lack of distinction between concepts ends up placing everything under the label of "woman," forming an undefined concept that becomes the focus of attack.
The concept of society in modern liberalism, exemplified by contractualism, is seen as flawed and doomed to failure.
The satanic inversion is presupposed in feminist mysticism. Judith Butler’s proposal is to properly overcome being a woman. Without the mythological woman, there is no feminist movement. This was established since the beginning of the public knowledge of Butler’s thesis.
E. Michael Jones, in The Anti-Logos, by stating that Mary Wollstonecraft is as conservative as Edmund Burke, recognizes that both align with the Glorious Revolution. However, readers without this prior knowledge may mistakenly interpret them as traditionalist conservatives.
The term used is "moral conservative" to refer to Mary Wollstonecraft, which creates an interpretative problem. The "eternal feminine," used by feminists, comes from Goethe, in Faust: women will always be interior, poor things, and will have as vices trivial matters. This idea denounces the excessive interest of women in trivialities, portraying them as fragile and vain.
Feminists argue that this is not natural to women but rather coercion by patriarchy. However, the term "patriarchy" conceals the esoteric root of feminism: it refers to the demiurge, who would have imprisoned these women in invisible cages — mental cages — metaphysically enslaving them.
In fundamental feminist theories, three seals are spoken of. This imprisonment by the demiurge places women in a state of primordial innocence. This innocence needs to be broken and, at the same time, exempts women from any responsibility for their most violent acts, as if they lacked free will. Women are seen as fragile and addicted to futile matters.
Feminism seeks to eliminate this supposed innocence, using a straw man: the trivial woman, driven to atrocious acts by others, especially men. This straw man can be found in the image of Ophelia, in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
History shows, however, that women are capable of being manipulative.
Olympe de Gouges, a contemporary Frenchwoman of Mary Wollstonecraft, speaks of women witches, presenting a petition for women’s rights. She states that women were even able to take the queen of Versailles almost naked from the interior of the castle and then pretended not to be the same, attributing to themselves qualities solely of fragility and innocence. She denounced that women are capable of atrocious acts and that they should cease them.
For this reason, feminists did not consider her useful to their plans until later. Christine de Pizan was an Italian poet and philosopher who lived in France during the first half of the 15th century. She rebutted arguments that seemed to offer a theological and ontological bias in public discussions about the role of women at the time, denouncing that advancing in this direction would be heresy.
These texts, however, had no theological intent.
Later, in the 17th century, Calvinists used pamphlets from these public discussions to ground a notion of woman based on a distortion of the figure of Eve, who was incapable and should be controlled by Adam.
Thus, the pamphlets were re-signified for theological and political purposes, redefining Eve’s role.
For Calvinists, Eve is not proud, as Thomas Aquinas says, but innocent, being Satan’s initial target in serpent form.
There was never, among Catholics and early Protestants, a discussion about one being more guilty than the other in original sin.
However, for Calvinists, this idea has been present since their foundation. Therefore, feminism has never been about the rights or social importance of women, but about female revolt and satanic pride nurtured by them, using the straw man of the fragile and trivial woman to express what is fundamentally satanic.
The Theosophical Society, with Madame Blavatsky and her followers, already said the same as these early feminists, such as Mary Wollstonecraft, said: they are Gnostics.
Every change of topic in feminism is part of the eternal cycle of the revolutionary structure, of eternal rebellion and satanic pride: suffrage, undressing, abortion, among other themes.
They are always trying to overcome this contingency: the cross.
It is the eternal cycle of struggle against the structure of all things.
Women prior to Mary Wollstonecraft were connected to the University of Cambridge; they were Neoplatonists, studied the Kabbalah, and deviated from God.
Quaker women were the first to introduce these theological ideas into the political context.
Therefore, it is fair to say that Camille Paglia is a heretical feminist, since she does not agree with the view of woman as fragile and innocent by nature. She uses some aspects of Dionysus and Apollo, based on Nietzsche, to explore the masculine and feminine aspects. There is no universal female suffering.
Only in Gnosticism does this natural detriment of matter exist.
Postmodernism, which begins by attacking nature and substance, by affirming that everything is a construction, also attacks universal female suffering — which is not suffering from contingencies, but suffering from existing as matter.
Feminism has been dead since the burning of bras. There the final convulsion occurred. Judith Butler arrived after that.
Camille Paglia did not understand this feminist metaphysics and, herself, has as her object of interest another type of gnosis.
Source: compilation of lectures by Débora Luciano.