"The Power of Three is considered the highest connection to the source...each faith or belief has a source of three that connects them to their power source and higher level." ~Rose Ann Schwab
“...the bonding ritual which Amazon novices perform at eight and twelve, when they formalize their trikonai, the notorious “bonds of three,”” ~Steven Pressfield
"I have three chairs in my house: one for solitude, two for company, three for society." ~Georg Simmel
As this concept is very experimental, please bear with me if this part seems to ramble a bit.
The organizational building block of The Temple, which we shall also use in The Sisterhood Trainings, is The Trikona, a cell of three bonded Sisters. It has been reported that The Trikona was the basis of Amazon social structure. Whether that is true or not, it shall be the basis of The Temple's social structure and therefor one day of the New Matriarchy itself.
[Note regarding our hypothetical lawyer Jennifer from Part Two; she was presented as an 'individual' so as not to introduce too many concepts at once, but as an Initiated Sister, she would certainly belong to at least a Peer Trikona]
There are a number of different types of Trikonai that will exist throughout The Temple and its various sub-groups, but the basic type will be The Peer Trikona, an affinity group of three Sisters who have mutually and voluntarily chosen each other. These will range in nature from the joining of three Sisters of like mind and personality, a 'super friendship' if you will, to the Committed Sexual Triad, what is essentially a family of three spouses.
This means that each Sister has an intimate and personal knowledge of her other bond mates, one that minimizes the 'bullshitting factor' that can pass in a larger group; the wearing of a masque of a 'false self' in order to 'be part of', which is a denial of Self.
I cannot stress strongly enough how much Self Awareness is critical in The Work of building a New Matriarchy. Each Sister needs true Self Awareness in order to properly function within The Temple and to effectively utilize The Pentavalent.
The Trikona is the basic building block of that Self Awareness. Think Trikona = Self + Self + Self = Trikona. The primary job of each Sister in her Trikona is to keep her bond mates honest. More on that below.
There will be three types of Trikonai (of course). As I said above, the most common will be The Peer Trikona, three equal Sisters who have chosen each other. A Blood Bonding Ritual will be part of their connection, but the individual nature of each Trikona will vary as much as the Sisters who form them.
The second and third types of Trikonai are variations on the Mentor/Student relation-ship. Most of these types will be a Mentor or Elder and two students or acolytes. There will also occasionally be the inverted version of that where two Mentors take on a particularly gifted student. But in either case, these are Mentoring Trikonai.
The utility of Mentoring Trikonai should be fairly obvious, but I suspect the rational for the Trikona in general might be less obvious even with what is said above.
In contemporary Western society The Individual has been raised to the status of a deity. Or so we have been told.
In truth, by focusing so intensely upon The Individual – by making that 'being' paramount in all things - the bonds of association with whatever group we are each born into - family, ethnicity, nation, - are undermined, albeit upon a subtle level, and any future groups bonds are either weakened or never formed at all. And with that, we drift aimlessly.
In this context, our organic need for Connection – and for Purpose – often drives us in the other direction and we fully immerse ourselves into 'something bigger', with the accompanying loss of Self, a loss that is usually partial, though is frequently total.
This most commonly manifests itself in some sort of Fandom, the identification with a particular celebrity, or with an entertainment meme, e.g. a particular TV show, movie, band, etc. In this model of the world, ones Self is almost always in thrall to some aspect of Modern Corporate Marketing Culture. This is a form of spiritual bankruptcy that is all too common and is especially soul killing.
But many, somewhere understanding the emptiness of the above path, instead become ideological fanatics, 'ideology' being defined here as political, cultural, and/or religious – and usually a mix of all three – with the not uncommon progression toward violence and terrorism that such immersion can engender, especially when the 'sense of self' ones ideological paradigm creates is itself threatened in any way, usually someone or something that reveals an essential flaw in said ideological paradigm.
As The Temple is obviously 'a group with an ideology', we clearly run the danger of of becoming fanatic and unreasoning, something that would utterly defeat our basic Purpose.
The Trikona is, first and foremost, a Fail Safe mechanism to prevent this kind of thing from taking hold when it invariably happens. The Trikona is meant to 'self correct' The Temple as well as the Self.
When an Individual is in a Group, one can still be effectively 'alone' within said Group and therefor vulnerable to Group Think. [Self + Group = Group]
But the dynamic of Self Awareness with each Trikona is meant to prevent that 'aloneness' and to interrupt Group Think. This is because the Purpose of each Trikona is to promote and advance the Authenticity and true Self Awareness of each of its members before it does anything else.
Much of the practice taught within The Temple will be directed at the process of generating true Self Awareness and the use of The Trikona as the core bastion of this Self Awareness will be a steady theme.
The overriding Goal is the establishment of the New Matriarchy. The Temple's one transcendent value is as a platform from which to build toward that Goal. Within that context, each Trikona must always regard each process and event as to their value toward the same Goal. That must be a Trikona's Default Position. And if any Coven, Grove, Array, or Cult is operating in a fashion that contravenes that Goal, no matter how innocently, it is the firm duty of any Trikona within said to call the larger group to task.
Determining such a thing will be simple: ”How do the actions and thoughts of the larger group resolve when they are measured against The Precepts of The Pentavalent?” And it is here that the practices of Self Awareness and the structure of The Trikona will strongly come into play.
Each Trikona, especially the Peer Trikona, is to be a Sacred Space for its three Sisters, on the same level as the Confessional is in the Catholic Church. Using all the tools of Self Awareness we shall provide, Sisters can examine anything with absolute safety and with the honesty that comes from such safety.
And all actions and decisions can be reviewed upon the above stated question; “Does it move you [and us] toward or away from our Greater Goal?”
If the answer is "It moves us toward the Greater Goal," then the action or decision is a proper one.
If the answer is "It moves us away from the Greater Goal," then the action or decision is an improper one.
If the answer is "No significant effect perceived one way or another," double check just to make sure.
If that answer remains the same, then simply ask "Is pleasurable?"
If the answer is “Yes,” then proceed freely.
Of course, as simple as the above process may be in theory, one must truly understand one's own Self, the wider world, and The Greater Goal, in essentially that order, to be able to effectively and accurately engage in said process.
It is this process and this mechanism is what will keep The Temple on track toward the creation of that New Matriarchy. It is the interlocking dynamic of The Trikona that will provide all three with their long term stability and power.
In the quote at the top, Simmel talks of one, two, and three as Solitude, Company, and Society. He is the pioneer in the study of Triads, their function and their social value.
His contention is that the Triad is where human grouping moves beyond the Personal to the Social. A Binary is always one step away from the Individual as all that is required is for one person to step away. But a third person gives the group a life of its own, one that puts its existence beyond the choice of any single member.
However, The Trikona is something more than Simmel's Triad. To the best of my knowledge, Simmel's Triads were essentially casual social groupings formed spontaneously. As such, the primary flaw in them was that they usually formed from the addition of a third party to a preexisting Binary, which made them 'unstable' for obvious reasons.
Simmel determined that unless one of the three could assume the role of leader within this grouping, the thing would come apart because of the stress of interpersonal games.
The Trikona will avoid this by, of course, a combination of three things:
First of all, The Trikona will almost always be formed by three previously separate individuals, thereby skipping the first step of the Binary and the dangers inherent therein.
Second, each Trikona has the Greater Purpose of The Temple and its goals to guide and cement its own internal relationships.
And third, that one of its members will be its leader will be acknowledged up front.
In a Mentoring Trikona, the Mentor will usually be the obvious leadership choice.
In the Peer Trikona, that will require some negotiation and self examination, but there is a simple paradigm to work with. Like all of us, each Sister will have her own strengths and weaknesses. The Sister best suited to address 'the matter at hand' will be the one to assume leadership at that moment.
This rotating leadership model will provide each Trikona with tremendous flexibility and prevent any of its members from having to be 'all things and at all times', an exercise that always fails and which is just plain exhausting anyway.
Sorting out these various strengths and weaknesses will be an excellent exercise in Self Awareness in and of itself, most likely the very first one in which new members engage, thereby reinforcing the bonding mechanism of The Trikona as well.
I suspect the greatest challenge for The Trikona will be Sisters in committed lesbian relationships, especially as a hard won legal status. [and, yes, I see the irony in that] The Trikona could be seen as an attack upon that preexisting Binary, which, in some ways, it is.
In this case two quite differing paths would be offered.
As polyamory is an important tool for The Temple, we would ask how these Sisters felt about entering into a Sexual Triad. That would certainly integrate any Third Party into The Trikona in a profound way. Of course, this is not for everyone.
The other path literally goes in the opposite direction.
We would recommend that each of them join with two other Sisters to form two separate Peer Trikonai. This way there is no issue of a third party entering into a Binary. And one could see how this could be an issue for the Binary that is seemingly being separated.
As I said, this will most likely be The Trikona's greatest challenge.
It should be noted that the first option is only suggested for full members of The Temple. Women in committed lesbian relationships who are only taking one of The Sisterhood Training's workshops would be instructed to go upon the second path.
At this point, E had something to say, “The Power of Three is legendary and for good reason. With two poles, Energy merely bounces back and forth. With three it can flow with ever increasing power and velocity.
Her Prophet was going to finish this section with a statement about The Trikona being 'experimental' and with some equivocating noise about how 'we'll see'. I forbade that.
The Trikona, guided by The Precepts of The Pentavalent, and fueled by The Sisterhood's Quest for Self Knowledge, will be the dynamo that drives The Temple past all resistance and onto the bright uplands of the promised New Matriarchy.”
And I certainly was not going to argue with that.
What I realized when I came back to edit this chapter was that my incipient 'equivocating noise' was my feeling that while it was complete, it was not yet 'finished' and it came to me that such would not be possible until we had had some real life experience with the actual practice of Sisters living and working within the paradigm of The Trikona. I expect that shall prove to be most interesting indeed.
Now, let us explore one vision of how those 'bright uplands' might possible look...
Her Prophet Explains: Part Six “One Possible Future” [Intro/Near Future]
