The New Tribe: Embracing the Exile
by Cordula Frei
by Cordula Frei, for Parallax Media
In every age, tribes have formed as vital nexuses of survival, identity, and belonging. The old tribes were forged in the fires of necessity—territory to defend, food to secure or enemies to outwit. Their rhythms followed the cycles of the land, and the elders held sacred the rites that bound soul to soil, woman to man, story to star.
But what does it mean to found a tribe today? What does it mean for women to step back into the role of keepers of the tribe—when survival is no longer about raw survival of body, but survival of spirit, of psyche, of our planetary future or perhaps, even more or of our mental integrity? What foundations must a new tribe rest upon, beyond the myths of old, beyond the violence that once seemed inseparable from tribal belonging?
Before we can answer this, we must acknowledge the shadows that still cling to the ancient tribal fires—there is a still collective sense of shame, exile, and fear in most of every women who is in touch with her archaic self. Throughout history, women who dared to hold the sacred space, who moved too freely in their creativity or power, were often cast out or shamed. Today this can be a woman writing a text on facebook and being shamed for it, it can be a producer or a musician, a songwriter or a mother sitting at the edge of a playground or parents meeting at school hearing the comparising force of the other women, making her feel at loss. The red goddess they served—the fierce, fertile, and fragile creative impulse—became a source of both awe and terror.
The creative fire is tender, vulnerable to the harsh winds of criticism—both internal and external. The inner critic, sharper than any tribal elder’s rebuke, can silence the muse before her song has formed. And without the protection of a ritualized clan—without the circle that honors, nurtures, and shields—this creative spark risks being snuffed out, its power lost to the harsh judgment of the outside world.
This ancient dynamic echoes still today in women’s circles, in artistic communities, and beyond—where the fear of exclusion and shame lurks beneath the surface. The path forward is not to hide or shrink, but to build a new kind of tribe, one where the red goddess- or equally, creative force, is honored not as a threat but as the wellspring of life itself.
“In every woman lies a memory older than any written story. It is not found in books, but inscribed in the body—in the pelvis, the breasts, the heart-space. It is the knowledge of cycles, of growth and decay, of the nourishing principle that not only births life but carries worlds.”
This memory has been buried beneath centuries of adaptation to systems never meant to sustain it. Women have learned to endure and function but often forgot how to listen—to themselves and to the world.
Yet in that listening lies the turning point: a refusal to meet external demands that no longer serve, a turning inward toward the essence of the feminine—not as a cliché, but as the profound capacity to hold space, to receive, to nurture, not as weakness, but the greatest form of strength.
Here, the masculine finds its echo—not in domination or negation, but in complementarity. When woman’s presence is magnetic rather than loud, the man no longer feels provoked but invited, not accused, but hopefully seen.
Together, they form a new relation—one born not from history’s wounds but from remembrance beyond history. The modern West may have demystified the woman, but the time has come to reclaim that sacred mystery, for without it, society is incomplete—ill, fragmented.
In Andrew Sweeny’s 108 Songs for the Red Goddess, the divine feminine breaks all molds:
“People think God is just like Dad / Offering a stern word / A machine gun and a flag...
But what if God is a lascivious woman, with curves?
What if God is a toothless old bitch?
What if God is a post-menopausal lesbian?
What if God is a horny old she-goat?”
These provocative images dismantle patriarchal conceptions and invite us to embrace the wild, unruly, erotic, and sacred feminine fully—without shame, without censorship. The Red Goddess calls for honesty, for “sweet lies” as Trojan Horses to enter the domain of mystery, where creation and destruction dance as lovers.
Sweeny’s poems invite us to choose “the useless path of poetry”—to be holy fools of love, not to measure loss and gain, but to fight for goodness, truth, and beauty with reckless tenderness.
“Let us drink your dark wine / In this rare moment / It’s not coming back again / And the world is fading from our eyes.”
It is a call to witness the burning of Rome and the overflowing Red Sea as eternal cycles, urging us to stand, dance, and create amidst the flood.
In his latest #what is war Podcast Series, Tom Amarque explores the war of the soul—how external conflicts echo inner battles over identity, meaning, and belonging. The old warrior’s role was survival through battle, but the modern warrior must master the battlefield within: the landscapes of fear, shame, pride, and denial.
What comes after war is not peace, but a deeper question.
Tom Amarque challenges us to think beyond the shallow closure that often accompanies the end of conflict. His writing resists the temptation to view peace as a passive aftermath or a moral reward. Instead, Amarque reframes the post-war landscape as a space of radical openness — not defined by the absence of violence, but by the presence of ambiguity, responsibility, and the potential for new meaning. In his view, the true work begins only once the weapons fall silent: the work of reimagining human identity, narrative coherence, and cultural foundations.
Rather than offering redemption or reconciliation, Amarque proposes resonance — a philosophical stance that listens into the silence after war, not to fill it, but to allow something more subtle to emerge. The task is not to restore what was lost, but to acknowledge what was revealed. War, in Amarque’s framework, is not merely a geopolitical event but an epistemic rupture. It disrupts inherited worldviews and forces a confrontation with the narratives that once held society together. In that rupture lies not only trauma, but also the raw material for philosophical renewal.
The deeper question, then, is not “how do we return to peace?” but “how do we return to ourselves — or become something we have never yet been?” Amarque’s thinking pushes us into this fertile uncertainty, where the future is not inherited but invented. It is here that post-war narratives must live — not as sweet conclusions, but as living inquiries.
As Tom shows through his conversations and writings, the war inside is the seedbed of all external violence. Only by integrating the “nomadology” of the psyche—by embracing multiplicity and fluidity—can the warrior become a guardian, not a destroyer.
The tribe of the future will honor this path. It will offer sanctuary for those who seek to reconcile their fragmented selves, to become whole in the messy tension of shadow and light. Rules will protect the creative impulse, setting boundaries against harm but fostering the diversity of voices and experiences. This tribe is neither hierarchical nor rigid but alive—a dynamic dance of respect, challenge, and grace.
Ecopoiesis and the New Campfire of Consciousness
As Jeremy Lent suggests in his book The Patterning Instinct and his reflections on ecopoiesis, the future demands that we expand our sense of kinship beyond the human, to include all sentient beings, plants, and animals in a council of care and justice. The planetary tribe arises from this understanding—a new community forged not by exclusion or war, but by recognition and reciprocity with all life. This call for new narratives finds a deep echo in the work of Jeremy Lent, who explores how meaning has been shaped over centuries by the metaphors and patterns embedded in culture. Lent argues that the dominant Western worldview — rooted in separation, control, and linear progress — is itself a narrative architecture that has led not only to ecological breakdown but to spiritual dislocation. In The Web of Meaning, he writes that “if we want to build a society that is truly life-affirming, we need to start by changing the underlying stories we tell ourselves.” Lent, like Amarque, sees crisis as a threshold moment — not a fall into chaos, but an opening into coherence.
Both thinkers reject the idea that humanity can simply step into a better future by solving problems on the surface. They insist that our foundational metaphors — of self, of nature, of history — must be re-patterned from the ground up. This is why the end of war, for them, is not a goal but a gateway. It is the beginning of a reckoning: not “how do we return to peace?” but “how do we return to ourselves — or become something we have never yet been?”
In this way, Amarque and Lent both invite us into a post-conflict space that is neither nostalgic nor utopian. It is uncertain, fertile, and alive with philosophical possibility. What comes after war is not peace, but a deeper question. It is a question that cannot be answered quickly, but must be lived — through culture, through imagination, and through a radically honest encounter with what it means to be human in a fractured world.
Lent writes:
“True healing will arise not from domination or exploitation, but from recognition of the deep interdependence of all beings.”
Jean Gebser’s theory of cultural evolution gives us the framework to understand this new consciousness. His integral structure calls us to embrace the archaic, magical, mythical, and mental-rational layers within ourselves—not as fragmented relics, but as a harmonious whole.
“The integral consciousness is the overcoming of the previous structures’ separations, a wholeness that embraces the archaic and the magical, the mythical and the mental, within a new dimension of time and space.”
The new campfire, around which this planetary tribe gathers, is a sacred space where war ends—not because enemies vanish, but because the war inside ceases. Here, the creative fire is protected with wisdom and warrior grace, held without destruction.
The tribe is no longer enforced by survival fear but nurtured by inner sanity—a peace born of ritual, ceremony, and the transparent embrace of all parts of self and world.
War is not only the clash of armies, the sound of guns, the breaking of bodies and homes. War is first and foremost an inner condition—an unresolved turmoil in the depths of consciousness. It is the shadow of disconnection, fear, shame, and unintegrated power.
The new tribe—the sacred circle that honors the red goddess within each, as well as the warrior spirit within each, and beyond, the creative impulse within all—offers a path beyond this war. It is a tribe where silence is honored as much as speech, where the sacred fire is tended with care and ritual, and where every soul can find home.
As Andrew Sweeny reminds us:
“Let us choose the useless path of poetry... Not measuring loss and gain... Ready to go into battle for goodness, truth, and beauty.”
This tribe will rise not from the ashes of old conflict but from the fertile soil of inner integration and radical inclusion—a tribe that embodies the planetary becoming, a living emblem of a world where poets meet and the art return to the homeground.
In Songs for the Red Goddess, Sweeny sings from the threshold — where myth, eros, and apocalypse intermingle. His verses speak not to solutions, but to surrender — to the need for poetry when logic fails, and for the sacred feminine where the masculine order has exhausted itself in war. The “Red Goddess” is not a fantasy figure but a psychic archetype: she embodies the mystery, the passion, and the dismembered aspects of ourselves that war disowns.
The feminine, in this sense, is not gendered but symbolic: it is the lost capacity to listen, to feel, to hold contradiction without needing to resolve it. Where war separates and defines, this soul-work weaves and reimagines.
Thus, the deeper question that comes after war may not be answered by strategy, politics, or even philosophy alone. It may require a return to something older, more embodied — something sung, remembered, and dreamed.
What comes after war is not peace, but a deeper question.
And in that question, the voice of the Goddess may rise — not to dominate, but to dance.
Not to explain, but to initiate.
Join us in the upcoming podcast with Andrew Sweeny, Tom Amarque, and myself as we dive deeper into the feminine principle in the modern world—beyond roles, beyond history—into the heart of creation itself.
About the author: CORDULA FREI
is a distinguished author, editor, and curator with a profound dedication to integrative practices, deep ecology, and transformative narratives. As head of media for Integral Perspectives magazine, she has been instrumental in shaping content that explores holistic viewpoints. She co-created Achronon magazine, a platform challenging conventional timelines and narratives, and served as editor for Info 3 magazine, bridging spirituality, culture, and contemporary issues. At Germany’s first regenerative society, Hofgut Leo in Gresgen, she curated cultural initiatives and oversees organizational aspects, promoting sustainable and regenerative practices.
Her longstanding collaboration with Tom Amarque is rooted in a vibrant friendship and a shared passion for critical thinking, questioning societal mainstreams, and shaping transformative narratives. As the author of Soulskin, she explores the initiation journey of the feminine psyche as a deep psychological pilgrimage into personal transformation.
Her life is deeply connected to deep ecology, living among horses and dogs, traveling through vast wilderness to engage in regenerative dialogue with nature. Through her work, Cordula Frei holds the Podcast Serie: “Roots of Enlivenment“ at Parallax Media with a invitation to inspire and lead in the realms of integrative thought, ecological awareness, and cultural transformation.
Write her at cordula@parallax-media.eu