MONDO EXTRAS

The second is Helen, as in Helen of Troy. In this phase, women are viewed as capable of worldly success and of being self-reliant, intelligent and insightful, even if not altogether virtuous. This second phase is meant to show a strong (untempered) schism in external talents but still lacking internal qualities (inability for virtue, lacking faith or imagination). You want the key to boys? This is it. Halfway through the rubric, and they're still not convinced women have an internal sense of ethics. Welcome to being the Other, if you hadn't noticed yet.

So at the time that he was most broken and befuddled by the loss of his one mama-duck in all of creation, the Maiden/Mother who carried him from violent childhood to manhood, and he was totally bereft, he found himself a new girl. And oh, she loved him; and oh, he didn't care. That'll show them. And he spent a year traveling with her, with his ass totally covered -- that's an American expression, the ass-cover -- because he thought he could lie in the bed with her, and never touch her. He'd learn to be a God, a Master, and without Rose that was the only thing that made sense.

The third phase is Mary, named so because of duh. At this level, females can now seem to possess virtue by the perceiving male (even if in an esoteric and dogmatic way), in so much as certain activities deemed consciously unvirtuous cannot be applied to her. It's not all about sex, or Evil Mommy syndrome, or puppy-eyed romance with Mary. She's just a lady. Maybe you marry her. Maybe she thinks she's just a temp, and you've stepped back enough from the magic that you don't understand why that's a problem. Maybe enough so that when she says she's nothing, it pisses you off. Maybe you try to tell her, over and over, that she's already wonderful. That you can't play the part in the four-part animus development drama that is her lot, because you see her the way she really is. Which is beautiful.