Where are the Men?
Stalking the Sacred Masculine
Has anyone seen the boy who used to come here?
Round-faced troublemaker, quick to find a joke, slow
to be serious. Red shirt,
perfect coordination, sly,
strong muscles, with things always in his pocket.
Reed flute, ivory pick, polished
and ready for his talent.
You know that one.
Have you heard stories about him?
Pharoah and the whole Egyptian world
collapsed for such a Joseph.
I would gladly spend years getting word
of him, even third or fourth-hand.
~Rumi, translated by Robert Bly
Rumi seems to know something about what I call the sacred masculine — that quality which appears early in life when conditions support it, when the long journey of the soul allows this kind of embodiment. I’ve known boys who feel like this one, whose being rings clear and bright like a bell.
These days, the conditions we live in are anything but supportive of this kind of effulgent maturity. Over the last while, I’ve been drawn into an exploration — researching, excavating, holding conversations — trying to enter into a deeper understanding of what is happening on our planet in relation to the masculine and feminine energies. There’s a lot going on, and a great deal of it feels tragic: Jeffrey Epstein, Giselle Pellicot, Inside the Manosphere, Andrew Tate.
“A virulent form of misogyny has become the single most important force holding together the American right.” (Helen Lewis, in a prominent cover story for The Atlantic, May 2026, “The Men Who Want Women To Be Quiet.”)
I want to begin by telling a story.
One of the most powerful ceremonies I have ever been a part of was facilitated by a man named Clinton Callahan, in the forest just north of Seattle, Washington. The intention for this ritual was to co-create a space where the women, as holders of the feminine energy, could actually express whatever they wanted to, directly and passionately, to the masculine dimension of life, embodied by the men who were ready to receive them.
Both men and women spent many hours preparing for this meeting. We women were strongly encouraged to dive deep into our bodies, into our hearts, into our guts, to find out what voices in us, what energies, were longing for full expression. The men were guided to ground themselves in the core of their being, and to find the masculine strength to really show up for the women, to remain available and present no matter what, to fully receive what the women were offering them, to “really listen and not die.”(Clinton’s words)
This preparation is a crucial part of every ritual—I’m very grateful to Clinton that both men and women were so well prepared. As I recall, space was also offered for anyone who did not identify as a man or a woman to simply stand as witness and hold the energy for those inside the ritual process.
We entered slowly into a large room and placed ourselves in front of a line facing about fifteen men who were already there. We were standing about eight feet away from each other. Slowly, the women began to speak, shout, sob, wail and scream at the line of men facing them. I was standing beside one of my oldest friends, a woman in her fifties from England. The energy moving through all of the women got stronger and stronger with each passing minute, until it started to feel hot. The depth of rage and grief that we were expressing to the men, to the masculine collective, to the archetype of the masculine, was very intense. It felt almost nuclear.
At one point, my friend began to scream from some place very deep inside her being. I could feel her opening and surrendering to a level of fury I had rarely seen anyone express so freely. She was simply screaming, over and over, “Where are the men? Where are the men? Where have you gone? Where are you?” It was utterly clear to me that she was calling out for the true masculine, the divine presence of the authentic man. I was amazed at what was happening to her. She was dancing a mad, ferocious dance, seized by a paroxysm of wrath that was clearly pouring through her from the collective field. It was a burning, wild, transpersonal energy, and I was filled with awe as I witnessed it moving through her. I knew in that moment the kind of healing that would be necessary in order to release the depths of rage and fury that most women carry toward the masculine. Some of this is pure, sacred and essential. And a lot of it is ancient and charred, a heavy burden that has been lying deep in our bodies from time beyond memory.
For a full hour, the energy of our pain, sorrow, despair, heartbreak and rage rose and fell in huge waves. Sometimes we could see the men flinching, almost staggering, under the weight of what we were throwing in their direction. They stayed with their commitment to stand undefended and unarmoured in front of us, open, present, and silent. And then it was over.
The women walked slowly into the centre of the next room, sat down in a group together, and held each other, cared for each other. The men were invited to follow their inner impulse and see what they wanted to do. What they did has stayed with me ever since that day. They spontaneously joined arms and formed a circle around us, facing outward into the world. It was a very strong, fierce energy of protection. Their open hearts were raised toward the world in a profound gesture of caring. I could hardly believe what it felt like, as a woman, to be held in that way by the masculine. It was such a natural, instinctive movement on their part, as a response to the depth of what we had expressed. As I sat with my sisters on the floor of that room, exhausted and tear stained, I understood this, deep in my body, to be a profoundly natural configuration. The masculine is multi-dimensional and complex, and to relegate it to a particular function is to miss the point. And this ceremony called forth one facet of the the masculine: its devotion to holding and protecting the feminine. This natural capacity had emerged without any prior intention, as an expression of what had been healed and reorganized in our whole field. My body knew this; my soul knew it, and I understood how far we had strayed from the simple elegant truth of our inner divine blueprint.
Since then, in my own work, I have seen, again and again, what happens when a woman feels a man show up in that way for her. And what happens to a man when he is able to embody his divine masculine energy. The woman falls naturally into the soft, dark, golden energy of the feminine, and the man fills up with the deep strength and fulfillment that comes when he aligns with his core being.
That ceremony happened over 12 years ago; we live in a different world now. I understand that we have entered an era of extraordinary sexual fluidity, and I want to respect and honour this dimension of our emergent culture, and acknowledge its shadows. And yet it seems to me that the masculine and feminine energies, the yin and the yang, the active and the receptive, are so much more fundamental to life than a human sexual or gender label. They are dancing in the universe, as sun and moon, mountain and lake, the in-breath and the out-breath, stillness and movement, hard and soft, structure and flow. And there has been an immense imbalance between them, a gaping wound, playing itself out on our planet for a very long time.
On a human level, we carry these ancient wounds with us; they impact every relationship we have. I don’t believe it is healthy to try and eradicate or transcend such polarities-- they participate in the underlying rhythms of life. We don’t even need to fix the tension between them—a healthy tension is a beautiful part of the dance. Masculine and feminine are profoundly different--and they are endlessly drawn to come together, drink from each other, dance with each other, without ever coming to an end of the exploration.
I wonder, what would life be like right now if enough of our men were devoted to protecting the earth? If they could hear the voices of the whales, the trees, the rivers, of Gaia herself? In many indigenous cultures before colonization, warriors were men who knew how to sing, to dance, to write poetry. Some of the warriors learned how to stand in a forest so quietly that a deer would come close enough to touch them. This is an exquisite integration of the deep tenderness of the feminine with the grounded strength of the masculine. Without the knowledge and wisdom of what processes, initiations and social contexts are necessary to let our young people become divinely adult, we have a global culture dominated by the immature masculine and feminine. Both polarities thwarted, cut off from the fullness and depth and beauty of their own unfolding.
A culture in which the vast majority of our men have no real idea of how to offer a woman deep pleasure and fulfillment while having sex/making love. And the fragility inside the immature masculine does not make it easy for them to learn. Women have learned to fake their deep pleasure for ages; we are consummate performers. How many men have been blessed by the sound of an authentic ecstatic yowl? I am speaking from my own personal experience with my partners, and from many years as a couples coach and therapist. The female body is a vastly intelligent mystery, and most men have not spent enough time studying it with devotion, discovering how to relate to it as a thou, a living subject, instead of an object.
I had an experience in a training with The Body Electric, working with a man who was passionately engaged in learning about the female body in this way. It changed me; I had never seen or even imagined such a thing before. “The female body was not designed for a 60-second climactic sneeze. It was designed for waves of pleasure for at least 30 minutes that saturate the tissues of the female pelvis. Most women have never been given the conditions to experience what their biology built.” (The Female Edge, Substack.)
At this stage in our cultural evolution, despite massive progress in certain dimensions, the signs of patriarchy and its power are still playing like background music that sometimes moves thunderously into the foreground. From the conversations I have been having with all kinds of men lately, I am not sure that the emergence of the mature masculine can happen through men’s groups, initiations of men by men, etc., however potent and skillful they may be. These are necessary and beautiful pieces of what could make a difference; and I sense there is a critical part that women need to play right now. Because we are deeply embedded in this whole catastrophe. We have been terrorized and victimized for a very long time, and we are also playing our part in an escalating systemic nightmare. Deeply and tightly woven from the threads of ignorance, denial, multigenerational trauma, ancient splits that live deep in our bodies and minds. We are being called to transform at such a deep, foundational level--we will not know ourselves if we can allow ourselves to be undone in this way.
A medicine journey is not going to do it. Not a weekend immersion, or a meditation retreat. Not a new teacher or a brilliant revelation. Or a new enterprise, a new philosophy. All of these things feel so old. We need to claim sanctuary from the weight of what keeps on repeating itself. We don’t know, nobody knows, what is going to become the deep, potent medicine we need. So I’m starting slowly, with vulnerable, emergent, embodied dialogues, that carry us past what we know, into spaces of grief, wonder, curiosity and deep humility. Conversations in which I find myself trembling, deeply troubled, and surprised by the aliveness. By what I cannot even name, as we allow ourselves to stay in these deep waters.
We need all the help we can get.
So I’m singing, for no reason really, and praying, going on poetry walks, talking to the trees, swimming through deep pools of delight and sorrow, joining with people in practices to awaken our imaginal intelligence. Listening to our source wisdom, when it bubbles up. Sometimes stumbling, sometimes flying.
Pale sunlight,
pale the wall.
Love moves away.
The light changes.
I need more grace
than I thought.
~Rumi
Dear Shayla, for healing the divide between women and men we need what you offered: poetry, powerful images in stories, calling out the harm, prayers for conversations not just weekend effort, and more. I was struck with your experience of the ritual between women and men. It has been in my visions for a few years and now you said it happens!
In my vision it is in Nelson as it is my community. First, the women circles would start collaborating. The women would organize a few gatherings where each circle take on a part of the hosting, such as setting up the space, welcoming, leading songs, bringing food, designing ritual, ensuring safety. Connection practices as described by Jon Young and others. Besides sharing the best fun from each circle and building resilience from sisterhood and nervous system co-regulation, there would also be ways to digest sexism, patriarchy, grief and rage.
Meanwhile, the men circles would also connect and get to know each other, honouring with curiosity the differences in approaches. Let me add that there must be space for queer and diverse forms of gender expressions and they can decide what is right form for them, another circle perhaps? Weaving in between like pollinators?
When there is enough capacity built, there would be a joint circle day. For some reason I envision it on summer solstice. Spring equinox and Beltane seems to be for the young lovers and I am calling in more maturity but still a lot of fire, the gorgeous force of eros, as expressed at Tamera ecovillage for example.
In the morning, women still gather with women. Men with men. Preparing for the joint ceremony. There will be support from local ritualists in holding space, from beloved Elders, councellors and healers to ground the event, to prepare and hold a container that can receive and let pass through so much of the stagnant ancestral and collective gender based and sexual traumas.
In my mind's eye, I see beautiful glowing women dance into the North Shore hall, or maybe it is outside in the forest. They form a circle, and then the men join. Or maybe the men are there first. The Elders hold the gate. There are flowers and fires. We always start with gratitude, with centering, syncing heart beats with song-dance-drum beats. With clear rules.
Then, just like in your telling Shayla, there is the truth telling. The release that is witnessed in community. Perhaps first in pairs, each woman speaking to a man, of the burdens of cat-calling, inappropriate touch, lower wages, fears, dismissal, hours in domestic work and mistreating our bodies in order to look good for the male gaze, and maybe even being victims of violence.
The men are not turning away. They say: We hear you.
But the women also apologize. Sorry for the nagging, for not prioritizing our erotic glory. We are not madonnas who will save you. We are not sluts. We are humans. We are enacting 10 000 year old patterns but we know that our species normal design is for egalitarian, nurturing earth based relationships (https://substack.com/@darcianarvaez).
The men will share too. They will be encouraged to share vulnerability, of being circumcised, denied touch and care as infants, missing healthy male role models, rites of passage, ways to express feelings and grief, or skills how to repair and ask for help. The pressure to perform and not loose it. The loneliness. The lure of prn. The shame from hurting women.
The women witness, without fixing, without taking it all on. Thank you they say, thank you for feeling and expressing, for gathering with your brothers.
Maybe the 2 Spirit and gender non confirming speak too. There will be dancing, shaking, art making and invitations to letting go to air, water, fire and earth. Giving back past harms to ancestor victims - this is yours! And calling in what could be possible. Family constellation facilitators could call in the whole and well ancestors.
After, I imagine aftercare, integration support, smaller pods that check in on each other, wander in nature, keep telling stories and using all tools of healing. We now that next summer solstice this ritual for keeping the balance will happen again. Or maybe every fullmoon. Perhaps local traumatizing events could be digested. Or past harm, like white settlers raping the Indigenous sisters. Or ongoing harms of the poverty of single moms, the lack of nurturing of children that leads to violent societies (Dr Prescott https://loripetro.substack.com/p/they-had-the-answer-to-violence-they?r=q7ssi&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web).
I love to hear what images come up in your inner eye, what sensations arise, what resistance? What healing want to happen through us...
Dear Shayla - Here I sit, a man, reading your post. I feel the hairs on my arms rise, my belly tightens. I feel the blood throbbing in my skull. What have you touched in me to elicit such a physical response?
This turned out to be sort of a long reply, so I put it in a note.
https://substack.com/profile/141078586-joe-snowdon/note/c-271438819?utm_source=substack&utm_content=first-note-modal