These are twenty-four theses for a new women's movement. In the I-Ching the number twenty-four symbolises "the return, the turning point". The principle of "the return" is one of a number of basic principles that characterises ancient matriarchal thinking. A new culture of peace will demand that matriarchal sources are to be honoured. These theses shall contribute to the growth of a quiet revolutionary power within women. They shall strengthen women's pride and revolutionary decisiveness to act politically and to act in a feminine way. With imperturbable engagement we shall take a stand for all life. Our main aim is to find a new relationship to our earthly way of existence and to contemplate anew on the origin of mater, the Magna Mater.

These theses have not been written solely for women but also for men. Throughout history we have invariably lived as men and as women. We are seeking to liberate feminine thinking and acting on this planet, seeking to reintegrate the female part in all of us. May men support us in doing so and recognise the consequences it will have for themselves. So much now depends on this right type of cooperation between men and women.

1. Overcoming patriarchy positively

Male supremacy has formed our history over the past 3000 years and in its trail constituted the principle way of "hard power". The power of maleorientated societies consists of breaking resistance by force. This shows itself in conquests, religious wars, educational methods, in technology and its interaction with nature. Through this method modern man has led himself into an inner deadend street out of which he will not find a way out without female help. We do not want to rebuild matriarchal structures nor do we want to dominate men. Woman power is neither directed against men nor against our love for them. We do however definitely leave behind us those male structures that have led to the worldwide destruction of both life and love. The present desolate state of the planet has only occurred because women have participated in it, i.e. tolerated it. We have employed our capacity of patience in the wrong place. Women's active support of patriarchy had to do and still has to do with her disengagement and permanent silence. Although much has been forced on them by the worst possible means, those of torture and persecution. To get out of the dead-end street, we now need for women to take a feminine public stand. It is now up to us to accept again the political and sexual responsibility which has been missing for so long. We invite all engaged men to cooperate with us in our work for peace.

2. Ending the struggle between the sexes

There can be no peace on earth as long as there is war in our love relationships. The emergence of peaceful non-violent cultures is only going to happen when the struggle between the sexes will come to an end for good. Women are to create places that invite the sexes to meet each other on a new and sensuous basis. This will allow men and women to discover and see each other anew. They will follow the principle of polarity and complementation, of erotic attraction and fulfilment. Sexuality will be an essential element of knowledge, recognition and solidarity. To do this, women will recall their own feminine matriarchal sources and powers and thus initiate the development of a culture of partnership.

3. Solidarity amongst women

Solidarity amongst women is the bases of a new women's movement for a non-violent culture. We are talking of a solidarity that will not falter if two women love the same man. Apart from actively building on our manifold loving relationships we take care of the contact and the community-life with other women. Rivalry amongst ourselves will cease because we no longer love privately and do not want to have a man all to ourselves. This thinking has always been part of female nature. Wows of fidelity and possessiveness are male notions that have been forced upon us throughout the course of history. We have accepted them and given up our natural thinking and acting. In the emerging new field of women those women will come together who are decided to build up a new feminine culture. We shall follow a politic of love and we shall see to it that it spreads. We shall take care of our friendships and our common interests through our participation in the issues of the world. If such solidarity were already known to women all over the world today, what power would we share! Winnie Mandela, Wangari Maathai, Dhyani Ywahoo..... Had Winnie Mandela know such friends, she would hardly have done the things she is accused of.

4. Communal living in the future

Community is the natural environment for man to live in. Communities are the organic ferment of future societies. Women will recall their function of tribal caretakers throughout history. They will shed their privateness and will accept again this universal task. They are to create social and ecological spheres that will serve for life to unfold freely and grow in a healthy way. These spheres are the communities and healing biotopes of the future.

5. The sexual nature of women

The woman will affirm their sexual nature and will take responsibility for it. She connects again with her sexual paradise of knowledge out of which she was driven by a patriarchal god. This patriarchal god was invented to oppress the woman and her sexuality. Through the conscious and creative handling of her sexual impulses and their social integration her real emancipation and her special dignity as a woman will begin. Truth and trust are needed for sexuality to unfold. Contempt has its roots in male impotence and this needs to be overcome. The woman is aware of this and in her gentle way she does things to free men from their secret impotence worries. An essential cause for the violence in society is to be found in unlived sexuality. Women will no longer leave the resolution of this problem up to the men.

6. The question of birth control

Naturally the woman of the future will take on responsibility for the question of whether she wants to put children in this world or not. No pope will be allowed to hold moral jurisdiction over this issue. Through her direct connection to her own female nature and sexuality, women will know when they are able to conceive. Finally, they will be able to do away with measurement, pill and diaphragm. As long as it is necessary we shall, however, use them. Through education, sexual knowledge and selfrealisation abortions will not happen anymore in the societies of the future. Meanwhile we will have neither pope nor any other higher judges forbid it where it is still necessary for social reasons. Beloved and desired children shall populate the planet!

7. Children

It is part of woman's sexual nature that she likes to give birth to children. The future of humankind will lie in the hands of our children. With determination and gentle power we are to build up protected spaces for the children where they can encounter the world with curiosity and fearlessness. To do this children will also need a number of persons they can relate to and that will take responsibility for them. They need mothers and fathers that have ended the war amongst themselves, they need parents they can trust. Create a warm and dependable home for the children! This is an essential paradigm of feminine thinking.

8. Love and faithfulness

Love cannot be fenced in. Love is no private matter. Every new woman knows this. You will only be able to be faithful if you are allowed to love others. The inclusion rather than the exclusion of others gives prove of faithfulness. This is a natural principle of new feminine ethics. Jealousy does not belong to love but belongs to the sick system of fear of loss and mistrust. For the realisation of free love and continuing faithfulness we need communities in which truth, transparency and trust can develop. Trust will free love of fear, restriction, clinging and false wows of faithfulness. Faithfulness will be present where we ourselves decide to be faithful to that which we love and where we publicly acknowledge it. If a woman is in the state of loving she can never be left.

9. Partnership

Partnership is a high and hitherto seldom realised goal in human evolution. It constitutes the highest level in the development of free loving people. This is true for the partnership between the sexes in general and the partnership man and woman in particular. Partnership is based on the principle of complementation rather than that of supremacy and levelling. Partnership is based on the principle of freedom rather than limitation. Partnership is based on the selfresponsibility of both partners. Partnership can only develop and exist in an explicitly thoughtful field of love that is no longer attached to conditions. Partnership asks for the emancipation of both sexes.

10. Youth

A new women's movement will provide positive orientation for young people. Women adhering to the movement will not tolerate other revolutionary or ecological movements to ignore the issues of love. They will see to it that the chances for love will improve through political action. Their political work will protect human rights and love is one of these rights. They will also see to it that politics will again be appealing to young people and this because feminine politics have a lot to do with love and an interest in one another. A new concept of love shall be considered to be a worldwide political issue. Women will see to it that young people will find enough persons of trust who will answer their most intimate questions, listen to their sorrows and wishes. They will of course be prepared to show ways and give orientation concerning all their sexual questions.

11. Profession and purpose

Women will no longer leave the so-called male-dominated professions to men alone. They will introduce feminine qualities and ways of thinking to all fields of research. The qualities are above of those of gentle power, of dissolving resistance softly, of communication instead of disconnection and of integration instead of collision. Women will integrate these qualities not only in the social realm but also in the political, technological and scientific fields. Technology and science are in need of alternative ways of thinking in order to learn to approach resistances and contradictions in a new way. A non-violent culture begins with non-violent thinking.

12. Complementation instead of hierarchy

In their professions women will follow the principle of com-plementation rather than that of hierarchy. They will see to it that every kind of oppression finds an end. It is their task in community to see each person, to accompany her and to support her in her process of growth. In a community each person has her own public function and task, which she can discover and accept. Experienced women will of course support them in so doing. Through their interest and support women develop their natural authority and thus serve as orientation for others.

13. Network of peace

Engaged women's hearts live for the disappearance of all "isms" and dogmas. These have always served to oppress the truths of life and to suppress the sexuality. Women follow the principle of openness and the taking of interest. Through their creature-like sensuousness they help to overcome the limitations of fear and the resulting violence. They will actively participate in the development of an international network of peace: a network of the heart that stands above all religions, worldviews and political memberships. Womanpower: the peace-creating force of gentle power. Be this the end of the old power that destroys life, and the begin of a power that generates life, a power that protects life and takes care of it.

14. Animals

Feminine knowledge is aware of the relatedness of all creatures. Women reconnect with their instinct for protection, care and warmth for all that is alive. They remove all sentimentality from this capacity and so confront the reality of every slaughter-house, every fur-farm and every animal-laboratory. In this point there can be no tolerance visavis the existing killer-institutions of patriarchal society. We are not interested in personal accusations, instead we want to develop consequent perspectives that will lead us out of this dead-end street. Cannibals used to eat human beings, modern man eats animals and the children of animals. At some point one will realise how slight the difference is. Everything in evolution that has eyes will want to live, to see, to recognise and to partake in this marvel of creation. Eyes are there to satisfy curiosity. It is absurd to kill young beings who are still at the beginning of their search for knowledge in such contactless ways and then to eat them. A new women's movement strives to bid farewell to this madness. A definite "no more" is with certainty one of its characteristics.

What we do onto other creatures will reflect on us. This notion is deeply ingrained in new and old women's knowledge. There is only one being and what we impart onto co-creatures we are always imparting on ourselves. In a new women's movement we shall employ all our mental and spiritual powers to put an end to the massacre on ourselves and our co-creatures.

15. Ecology

Ecology is the teaching of common living, of the co-habitation of all creatures. Man has severely interfered in this co-habitation and now has to heal it. The pieces of life will have to be reconsidered and put together again in a meaningful way so that man can love life and care for it again. As long as there is no meaning in man's life he will not be able to heal nature. Healing nature is to heal man and vice versa. The environmental crises of nature and the inner crises of man are the two sides of the same dead-end street. They can only be looked at and resolved from this twofold viewpoint. Non-violent research is equal to research on communication. Feminine work with nature is communication with all beings. Feminine gardening is spiritual ecology in such an elementary and natural form that even the word "spiritual" seems somewhat peculiar.

16. Religion

Women identify themselves in a new way with the original impulse of creational religions and thus will not follow the dogmas of any beliefs, the catechism or the teachings of any church. But there is a basic religious impulse which they love because he is part of life. They accept no religion with a god at its head since their religion is life itself. They take care of the sacred character of the world by attending to the most simple things and the secrets that are inherent in them all. There are realms of perception of life that are beyond definition and discussion. Women will actively call forth new archetypal powers of creation which process healing power for the soul. They will offer a feminine alternative and new direction to the old male heaven of deities, which has created such havoc on earth.

17. Return and transformation

Women will make conscious the thought of the cyclical nature of all things. Part of this is the thought of eternal return. They will create an new relationship to death and re-birth and devote much attention to the research of this context. To be connected again to the question: where do we come from and where do we go to? Women bring a piece of eternity to earth by remaining in touch with the eternal rhythm and the principle of birth and rebirth despite all renewal. They express this in everyday activities by returning to the origins whenever they attempt to generate the new. Here we find the real source for true and non-violent radicalness: to go to the roots.

18. The art of dreaming

For the development and realisation of desired goals women will acquire certain methods of power. One of the methods is conscious dreaming. Dreaming is an active occupation of our awake mind, just as mathematics or computer science are. The only difference is that it takes place in another space of consciousness whose importance has long been forgotten by the intellectual male world. In schooled dreaming we experience ourselves as the source of creation, i.e. as the source and originator of things of which we later believe that they came into being all by them-selves and that their existence is a matter of objective occurrence. Those who learn how to dream consciously and to give the dreams a desired direction hold an essential key to shape or change their own reality and above all a key to overcome their own fear and violence.

19. The art of thinking

Thinking power brings forth new realities. The art of thinking is part of man's creative existence. The power of male intellectual thinking has created the reality we are confronted with today. The properties of this thinking are those of one-sidedness, linearity and violence. Women will take up intellectual thinking and will connect it in a new way. They enter into a new school of thinking that will create another reality. Thinking power has to be coupled with heart power. Women believe in mobile laws rather than linear and rigid ones. They no longer support a nomothetic picture of the world, but believe in an open and loving one in which as many beings as possible can find their home. They do not believe in one truth that exists per se, but in the best possibilities for the growth of all. They help to think for the generations of the future and do not deal in categorical imperatives, except the one that is: all life needs contact, attention and care.

20. Science and research

From what has been said before, a leading woman's role is emerging that will influence new paradigms in all the sciences. Women will set new standards and provide new orientation. An example will be the addition of spiritual archaeology to men's research and interpretation of prehistorical times. In early days women took part in the knowledge that was present when stone circles were erected, sick people healed and the dead buried. The woman has at her disposal the matriarchal knowledge which formed the basis of those times, she carries it in her as cellular information, in the same way as the information is present in mater itself - the matrix - and can be called upon at any point. The word mathematics stems from "mother wisdom". We have the possibility to call upon an encompassing knowledge that is stored in us. We have further the possibility to build up new forms of perception that include a holistic view and the use of a vital memory while all is still connected by way of a linear logic. Women will remember the functioning of technological systems that did not function by breaking the resistances of nature in a violent way. Women will be relevant to the transformation of the reigning principle of hard power and the breaking of resistance to the gentle principle of resonance technology.

21. Integration of rage

If we look back on male culture over thousands of years we see that the ensuing madness still prevails today - madness in love, madness in technology, madness in the dealings with children -and animals, madness in war - and we see the urgent necessity for inner change. We cannot remain silent any longer. It is too much. Too much blood has been shed and is still being shed. There is much rage we experience about this which however cannot be express anywhere and at random. It would only lead to even more blood to be shed. We must - and this is our second categorical imperative - we must transform our anger into an energy that will not stop in the face of resistance and that cannot be intimidated by anything in the world. It amounts to a quiet, big and very determined energy. Out of every revolution has so far grown new oppression. This may not happen again and will not happen if we use our anger differently: namely, for the ending of sexual violence and for the ending of all suffering that man has inflicted for so long and so painfully on all creatures. This goes for men who have been the principle perpetrators and for the women who had consented to it. Not to be against but for something! We need the power of the anger but not as a force directed against men, not anymore as a force for an anti-male feminism, but as a force to unconditionally protect all life. Men who think otherwise, also our lovers, will have to change around radically.

22. Departing from the role of the victim

More and more women will definitely leave the belief in their own role of victims behind them. Women are by nature not born as victims, they are the creators of their own reality. Every women that has got to know her power over men has come in touch with the possibility to misuse this power or to utilise it to create another reality. Women have a biological and natural authority that no man will ever dispute unless women omit to it. Had we been reduced to pure victims we would not have been able to remember the power we own. However, this is still no the prevailing reality. Everywhere in today’s world we do encounter actual perpetrators and actual victims. Having experienced that it is possible to get out of the role of victim we shall use this knowledge to create a similar space for change for as many others as possible. We will use this knowledge to undertake something for the people that live in a situation of real violence. These theses will provide strength and orientation to those women who will responsibly participate in the development of new social structures. So, let us begin to regain this ancient feminine power that had raised the old cultures. I as a women am no victim, not object. We are no longer here to endure the existing structures but here to change them. The notion of gentle power shall be taken up and spread all over the planet.

23. Gentle power

Gentle power is the kind of power that will overcome resistance with the power of the heart and that will overcome difficulties with easiness. To do this we will either need a thousand years of training in Zen-Buddhism, or, we begin to utilise the powers that we women gain from nature. Gentle power is an order giving principle to that even the hardest men eventually will succumb, even more so, when they realise that this power does not involve revenge, punishment or hidden thoughts. Hard men have become that way for the lack of gentle power in their life. It is the power of the mothers that are determined to provide protection for their children. It is the sexual power of women who will no more sit in judgement over the potency or impotence of their lovers and who are nevertheless ready to use their gentle means to reawaken the joy of life. Gentle power is that principle of evolution that comes into effect as soon as the beings do not offer a surface of attack for their own malice anymore. Finally, gentle power is the same power that enables a germ of gras to penetrate a layer of two inches of asphalt. Gentle power is the organising principle and the principle of power within nature, as well as the inherent ideal being of all her creatures.

24. Affirmation

Affirmation is the art of saying yes, the art of recognising, of welcoming and realising new ideas. By beginning to see the ideas, the will to actualise them is being mobilised. To avoid that such processes whither away in the turmoil of our everyday problems, we use the art of affirmation. More and more groups of women meet in this context. The affirmation is strengthened by declaring them publicly and through spiritually identifying with the desired goals. Affirmation is the prayer to ourselves. We speak it as feminine beings and will not go beyond that which we affirm. An affirmation is always a definite departure from our old role. It is a true revolution that is taking place inside ourselves with the strongest power. In this vein we are looking forward to the new men, a new Eros and a new relationship between the sexes. We need neither weak "sensitive guys" nor chauvanists, we need agreement and the taking of a mutual stand for life. We need a culture in which the love between the sexes becomes a concrete possibility, so that we can again "see" each other, at long last.

Tamera, Spring 1996

ZEGG