the animus. One might offer the very simple idea that any writer in creating a
fictional character of the opposite sex does undergo some figurative but empathic
imaginative gender transformation in order to more properly convey that character’s
actions, emotions and motivations. There are ever-present, though subtle,
homosexual themes in the Keneally corpus, although Keneally has also written from
the point of view of a foetus (Passenger 1979), a pre-gender stage in the
development of the individual. David Malouf also has not obfuscated his personal
bisexual-homosexual perspective besides allowing it a significant thematic position
throughout his corpus. One must assume, of course, that the mythopoeic reader
also vicariously experiences these things. I t has been suggested that ritual and
symbolic transformation into a woman is derived from the ideology of the archaic
matriarchy (Eliade, 1964:258) but it does seem that there is a connection to be
made between shamanic androgyny and earth or place. I n his Cosmic Memory,
Steiner wrote:
The external formation of earth resulted in that the body assumed
a one-sided form. The male body has taken a form which is
conditioned by the element of will; the female body on the other
hand, bears the stamp of imagination. Thus it comes about that
the two sexed, male-female soul inhabits a single sexed, male or
female body. I n the course of development the body has taken a
form determined by the external terrestrial forces ......(Steiner,
1961:88).
Steiner’s vision of the androgynous human being is a variant of Plato’s
original beings of the Symposium and the androgynous Adam in the Hebrew
midrashim but the idea may be traced back to the early Upper Palaeolithic era in
Europe where figures of the Great Mother Goddess were carved on bones or rocks,
in phallic form. However, it is an icon that continues from the Palaeolithic through
the Neolithic right up to the proto-urban period in Mesopotamia. As the
archaeologist Marija Gimbutas has noted:
... concerning the Great Goddess of Life, Death and Regeneration
... throughout the Neolithic period her head is phallus-shaped,
suggesting her androgynous nature, and its derivation from
Palaeolithic times (Gimbutas, 1974:152).
I n all shamanic traditions the shaman undergoes some form of initiation into
the multi-layered world of spirits and learns the methods of trance and soul retrieval
and such developmental difference sets them apart from the rest of the community
or their peers. Eliade suggested that: