Chivalry and the Divine Feminine

"Chivalry is dead" is a frequently stated lament.  But can chivalry die and what role does the divine feminine play in it?

In the book Chivalry: Dizain des Reines, by James Branch Cabell, the following statement is made: "each age develops its code...it presents an ideal to be lived up to; it gives direction to the uncertain, stray impulses of life….  Its requirements are less of the intellect than of the heart."

Cabell's work states that chivalry is putting "God, honor, and mistress above all else, and stipulates that a knight shall serve these three without any reservation." 

Lest anyone think that sexism is the focus here, I will take this opportunity to remind us that the word "mistress" is from an Old French word indicating a female teacher--maistresse, a feminine form of maistre "master"-- itself from the Latin magister "chief, head, director, teacher"; it is derived from ancient words indicating "teacher, tutor, master; complete, whole, great, mighty; great, large, overall". 

So why did chivalry focus on the feminine?  History.  Chivalry “is brought forward to us from a dark time in history, from days when men fought one another, fought the harsh world that had broken Roman order, fought against the plagues visited upon Europe...." Out of this harsh environment "the idea of chivalry came...like a phoenix." 

It was during this time period that "men saw heroes as bringing them from the darkness, heroes like Charlemagne and Alexander."  Men struggling within their environment found such heros to be someone whom they could follow to extract themselves from their woes to improve their environment. Today is no different.  Look at the heroes offered by the modern culture.  Much like their historic counterparts the problem was that these warriors were a rowdy bunch.  There was "brawling and fighting amongst themselves as much as fighting for the peasants or their king.

The church sought to moderate and ultimately to attempt a change in the concept of the social warrior – “fighting in the name of the love of God”.  But around this same period, Elenaor of Aquitaine and her daughter Marie "created a new cult of adoration surrounding women....the central tenet in this school of thought was that through love, the knight or lover could be strengthened by the love of a woman.  Not completely different from the ideals of religious chivalry, where the knight was strengthened by devotion to God."

"Out of the courtly love movement came tales of romance...[that] provided symbolic life to the ideals of church and court, building new heroes, measuring the knight by a new ideal standard.  …King Arthur and the round table, Knights in shining armor, and not least, chivalry."  The chivalric knight became the “superhero” of their era.

Price notes that "in these tales of chivalry was the idealization of each age; Chivalric virtues were a crystal clear distillation of what it meant to be a fine human being, a person in search of justice and humility."  

The key to chivalry then, developed both by the "compassionate” Eleanor and by "the powerful” Church, is the same – "love". 

Regardless of how one chooses to perceive "love",  the components of love in all forms is "desire" and desire is from the phrase de sidere "from the stars," from sidus "heavenly body, star, constellation".  Desire is an impulse from the heavens stimulating one to the above mentioned principals of chivalry.

Chivalry is not dead.  Nor can it die as long as there is God; as long as there is desire to join with God; and as long as there are those who know, understand and are willing to teach chivalric principles to others.  

While God is perceived as a "strong and powerful ruler", God is also perceived as a "shining light of love." While the modern era sees such attributes as powerful strength and compassionate love as linear "extremes", the oriental mindset sees the circular yin and yang of things as such a blending of such extremes. 

Chivalry then, cannot die. But humans may become so forgetful of their original desire to join with God that chivalric roles are significantly weakened, sometimes to the point of pretentious politeness as a replacement for chivalry. We could term this as political correctness. 

Chivalry incorporates desire for the strength exhibited by the warrior with the love as best exemplified in woman. 

Holiness is the very nature of God.  The word is derived from ancient words meaning health, and whole. The chivalric desire WHOLENESS and desires the strength of power as moderated by the compassion of love. 

True chivalry is one as God is one – the divine masculine AND the divine feminine.