Ideal for what?
The protagonist Robin of Loxley roams exasperated through the dense forest in the 1984 TV series “Robin of Sherwood” (Season 2, Episode 2 “The Children of Israel”). He has quarreled with his companions and their current adventure does not seem to be progressing well. And because he is so preoccupied with his own thoughts and not paying attention to where his path is taking him, he suddenly encounters in a gloomy ravine a manifestation of his current spiritual advisor – the forest and hunting god Herne. Herne asks him why he has come – and the frustrated Robin admits that he has actually had quite enough and would almost like to break faith with him. After a short dialogue, however, the wise Herne dismisses Robin with the following words:
Herne: “Your arrows must be ready!”
Robin: “The target is to far – my aim is lost!”
Herne: “Then aim again.”
Robin: “To what purpose? To what end?”
Herne: “There is no end and no beginning. It is enough to aim.”
Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart, the godmother and originator of modern Polyamory, was an idealist. She drew her ideals from her belief in the socially transformative power of love – as perhaps only those who experienced her youth and young adult phase in California in the 1960s could have imagined –, from her neo-pagan, natural-religious world view – on which she orientated herself throughout her life – and from literature, especially the work of the American science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein.
Morning Glory, who at her beginning was still simply called Diana Moore, regarded love as the great changer and questioner of circumstances of which most other people assumed that they “simply had to be that way because they had always been that way”. And at the same time, love was also an incentive for her to always approach such circumstances with a measure of compassionate appropriateness and attention to the inherent dynamics of real life. For all the endeavours that Morning Glory later pursued on this basis, this was an important, both mindful as well as down-to-earth foundation, from which her new organic concept for ethical multiple relationships (yes, Polyamory!) benefited in particular in 1990.
However, Morning Glory originally encountered the topic of love as early as 1965, when she embarked on her own spiritual quest and thereby turned to neopaganism and the new witchcraft movement, both of which sought to emphasise the words “Perfect Love and Perfect Trust!” in their core beliefs and ritual circles. Nature-spiritual neopagan witchcraft of the late 1960s combined a view of the earth as a living, energetic organism with feminist ideas that propagated an independently feminine, emotional-psychic and creative-empowering spiritual existence – and with this as a background, celebrated a world-connecting holistic concept of creation with a strong emphasis on responsibility for one’s own actions. The witches’ covens of her time constituted themselves autonomously, without hierarchical super-organisations, and aimed to be internally free of class conceit, social status or gender boundaries. Concepts such as “community”, “integrity”, “consistency”, “responsibility” and the aforementioned “trust” among each other were of great importance to them – as the key to a targeted and personally effective transformation of the existing reality by means of one’s own will.
Those familiar with the subject will easily recognise some of the elements that were incorporated into the formulation of Polyamory 25 years later…
Finally, in 1973 – Morning Glory had already experimented with an open marriage herself – she met during a neopagan convention her later long-term partner Timothy “Otter”/”Oberon” Zell, a member of the group “Church of All Worlds” (CAW), who ultimately introduced her not only to the self-actualising ideas of “humanistic psychology” according to Abraham Maslow, but also to the progressive ideas of the above-mentioned US science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein. In particular, two works of the latter, “Stranger in a Strange Land“ and “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress“ (see also Entry 47, last third), outlined fictional but plausible alternative models of society, characterised by equality, diversity, interdependence, inclusion and liberal sexual morals – mostly practised in small, accessible social units.
As the CAW tried to align their own local groups with this literary model, the nucleus of “Polyamory” ultimately emerged from a participation of this kind (since 1984 there was a “throuple” relationship with Oberon Zell and another woman, Diane Darling), from which Morning Glory finally gained the experience for her breakthrough with an article published 1990 in the CAW members’ magazine.
Having written these last three paragraphs for you to read, Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart almost seems to have been a kind of “Holy Hippie Mother Mary” of multiple relationships: Spirited, self-contained, full of ideals, passionate, yet determinedly on the path of becoming-self-realised (the “self-actualization” according to A. Maslow).
I suppose she was all of these things in a certain way. And at the same time, she wasn’t, because she was also simply “one of us”, which is always cheerfully recognisable in the interviews and stories by and with her.
Curious? Here are two better-known examples:
When she was about to become a member of a Dianic (i.e. dedicated to the goddess Diana) and therefore all-female witches’ coven at the age of 20, she rebelled against the requirement to practise celibacy – i.e. chastity – for the duration of her affiliation with the group. She expressed her protest as a sexually active and self-determined woman by choosing the name “Morning Glory” for herself – which indeed is also the term for the plant of the same name (and botanically derived witch names are not uncommon…) – but also the somewhat bawdy description for a well-known masculine phenomenon… She nonetheless proudly identified with this name from then on and kept it until her death in 2014.
In 1985, when she had already been married to Oberon Zell-Ravenheart for 10 years, they jointly developed a process for transforming goat kids into unicorns (yes, you read that right) – a technique that was successfully carried out several times on various kids thanks to the interweaving of the initially still very malleable keratin strands of the budding horns. Although the approach was even patented, Morning Glory eventually turned away from this form of “growth manipulation” after a few attempts, as she was ultimately unable to reconcile it with her nature-based religious values.
So Morning Glory was definitely someone with ideals, but she was certainly not a “saint” – if this is to be understood as a metaphor for a person who is “above all things”. How could she be, since from 1984 until her death she shared in a highly dynamic multiple relationship that fluctuated between at least three and a maximum of six participating loving partners over a period of 30 years.
Will one always be true to one’s ideals during such a long time? Never argue? Never feel inferior or neglected at some point? Never succumb to the temptation to dress up the truth in a more colourful cloak for one’s own benefit (to quote Walter Moers¹ at this point)?
I think that would be superhuman – and in my opinion especially and most of all Morning Glory’s “gift of Polyamory” proclaims to the world how much in particular profound humanity must have shaped a significant part of her values and ideals.
After all, the text “A Bouquet of Lovers” ², in which she used the word “polyamorous” for the first time in 1990 in the magazine “Green Egg“, is not intended as a manifesto of principles and rules – and it doesn’t read like one at all. It is rather a…, I would say, a written “enabling” of how a multiple relationship could be practised in an ethical way for all those involved.
For as I wrote already in Entry 49, Morning Glory was first and foremost a practitioner who was acutely quite aware of her own weaknesses and those of her fellow human beings. From her own observation and experience, as well as from Abraham Maslow’s humanistic psychology, she knew that people were perfectly capable of acting altruistically, consciously and intentionally (purposefully); but that they were also capable of exactly the opposite in terms of selfishness, thoughtlessness and impulsiveness – the latter in particular, the less pronounced their own degree of self-actualization would be, whereas the pressure of their own perceived neediness would be intense.
This is precisely why her polyamorous legacy contains no “Thou shalt…!” but all the more “Golden Rule” – which in itself is actually more of a golden “It would be best…” : “Treat others as you would like others to treat you.”
This is why e.g. jealousy and self-doubt also have a place in Polyamory. And that is why insincerity, lack of confidentiality and disloyalty can also occur in Polyamory – because those who want to pursue ethical multiple relationships are (only) human beings themselves.
Otherwise, Polyamory would also be a dogmatic and rather tyrannical relationship philosophy if its ideals were imposed in such a rigorous way that its sympathizers would regularly despair at the uncompromising and inflexible nature of its demands…
Ideals however, according to the US psychologist and psychotherapy researcher Stephen Hayes, who has already been quoted several times on this bLog, are rooted in our personal values. Values that are aligned with social standards, for example, or we hope that they will improve our quality of life, promote inner enrichment or even mature our personality.
Thus, in order for values to become ideals, we must take precisely that step in which we separate mere personal utilitarian thinking from an inner striving for meaning.
Because – in very practical terms in terms of Polyamory – I could otherwise lie to my partners in complete agreement with myself because I would be able to gain an advantage or quickly satisfy a need – whereby I agree to accept collateral damage, e.g. potentially causing suffering to other people involved.
However, Polyamory is also idealistic. It is – thanks to Morning Glory! – about a deeper meaning, an inherent ethic: How do we maintain a loving relationship with several people without inflicting involuntary or even arbitrary suffering – in which all participants are instead granted an extended relationship framework where they can benefit from jointly provided resources and shared joy?
Therefore, if we still keep bumping our heads against the ideals of Polyamory, there may be two reasons for this.
• On the one hand, it could be that our own values at the moment are honestly not in line with those of Polyamory. For example, we may place less emphasis on truthfullness, personal integrity and accountability in our path of need fulfillment than is desirable and necessary in a more complex, ethical multiple relationship philosophy.
At this point, we would have to put our current personal values to the test and adjust them if necessary – or admit to ourselves that we (for whatever good reason) have so far given our utilitarian thinking a more important priority over the above-mentioned gain in meaning. This is not necessarily a fault of Polyamory or of us – but perhaps we are simply not suited to each other at this particular moment.
• On the other hand, it may be possible that – without actually realising it – we have elevated our ideals so far above the values of our self-image that we regularly experience ourselves as failing to live up to them. And this is neither good for us, because we increasingly experience our own actions as deficient and/or inadequate (and this is considerably detrimental to our self-assessment in terms of relationship management) – nor for Polyamory, which at some point must seem to us to be such an ambitious and far-fetched endeavour that it leads to the familiar admission : “I tried, but it was too difficult…”.
Yet both of the above points unite in a much friendlier synthesis in which we and Polyamory can perfectly coexist, I would even say thrive:
Because it is allowed to fail! A bit like in the proverb falsely attributed to Albert Einstein: “It is allowed to fail. Only those who have never tried have really failed.” But it is actually meant to be even more gentle, much more human: not being able to manage everything properly (straight away) is an indispensable part of the experience of ethical multiple relationships.
At the same time, a certain amount of selflessness is expected at any rate. Remaining on the ground after the fall and either blaming “the others” and/or instead indulging in self-pity are not exactly ethical options. Instead, the visionary words of the Austrian writer Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (who has also been featured on this bLog on various occasions) – which can currently be found a thousand times as a meme on the social networks – apply: “Stand up, straighten your crown, move on!” Because no matter how they turn out, experiences require our courage to want to make more of them based on the surplus insight we have just gained.
Which brings me full circle (oh, how fitting!) to Robin Hood in my opening scene. Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart conceptualised her Polyamory in such a way that it is not (only) about hitting and achieving a particular goal, but above all about our intentions and the path we take in doing so.
In particular, the tiny word “ethical” in “ethical multiple relationships” emphasises that the process and the effort behind our actions are, strictly speaking, almost more important than the desired or hoped-for result.
To always want to exist in an ideal state, on the other hand, is simply unrealistic – it was also Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach who once reassuringly said “Ideals are guiding stars; they light our way and give us the strength to achieve our goals.”
The Oligo- and Polyamory would be – to stay with this image – orientation aids, signposts or maps for such a way, in other words, practical enablement.
But of course we still have to decide, choose the route and walk it all by ourselves.
In the words of Erich Kästner: Let it be love! ³
¹ Walter Moers “The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear“ (Volume 1 + 2), The Overlook Press 2006
² The text of “Bouquet of Lovers” is available HERE.
³ The quote “Let it be love” derives from the novel “The Flying Classroom“ (1933) by the German writer and publicist Erich Kästner and is spoken by one of the main characters, “Martin Thaler”.
Thanks to Sam from DGSstudios on Pixabay for the AI-generated image!
And thanks again to Oberon Zell-Ravenheart for personally providing the private photos of him and Morning Glory. All rights reserved by Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, CAW.