Mythunderstanding Your Cosmic Mysteress

Male and female He created them.

One thing that characterizes postmodern gender theorists is their incredible shallowness. Not only do they deny the very real sexual differences between men and women, but they entirely overlook the deeper metaphysical implications of male and female -- as if these are simply cultural constructs instead of bi-cosmic categories woven into the very fabric of being.

Men and women - masculinity and femininity - exist, because they represent the distillation of cosmic essences. The dynamic interplay of Male and Female is everywhere and in every thing, as recognized by the Taoist "yin-yang" symbol. As Schuon writes, the basic message of this symbol is that

"transcendence necessarily comprises immanence, and immanence just as necessarily comprises transcendence. For the Transcendent, by virtue of its infinity, projects existence and thereby necessitates immanence; and the Immanent, by virtue of its absoluteness, necessarily remains transcendent in relation to existence."

You might say that transcendence is masculine, while immanence is feminine. But as implied in the yin-yang symbol, transcendence is necessarily immanent, while immanence implies its own kind of feminine transcendence.

Chapter 5 of Finnegans Wake begins with an ode to the eternal feminine:

"In the name of Annah the Allmaziful, the Everliving, the Bringer of Plurabilities, haloed be her eve, her singtime sung, her rill be run, unhemmed as it is uneven! Her untitled mamafesta memorialising the Mosthighest has gone by many names at disjointed times..."

Joseph Campbell writes that this prayer to "the Mother of the World" combines the traits of the Vedantic concept of Maya ("bringer of plurabilities"), the Christian figure of the Virgin (bearer of the Word that "memorialises the Mosthighest"), and the mother-heroine of Finnegans Wake, Anna Livia Plurabelle (who symbolizes all women). She is the eternal springtime of life, the melody of existence. There is even a takeoff on Islam ("Annah the Allmaziful" vs. "Allah the all-merciful"), hinting at the ability of maya to amaze and seduce -- or for us to get lost in the maze of maya.

The eternal feminine has "gone by many names," because she represents the many and the complex, whereas the One is the masculine principle, the simple. In many ways, existence is simply the lila, or play of 1 and 0, male and female. (Interestingly, Bion applied this principle to the mind, using the female symbol for the "container," the male symbol for the "contained"; for example, a word is a container of explosive meaning that will either shatter its container [in order to grow] or be "sMothered" by it. The poetic best combines the male and female properties of language.)

God, the Absolute, is one, while maya -- which is etymologically related to mother and matter -- is many. The light of God can only be conceived in the womb of darkness -- in a container that contains it. As Schuon writes, "The Blessed Virgin is both pure universal Substance (Prakriti), the matrix of the manifested divine Spirit and of all creatures in respect of their theomorphism, and the primordial substance of man, his original purity, his heart inasmuch as it is the support of the Word which delivers." Thus, the soul of man is always female in relation to God.

As Schuon writes, Mary is Virgin, Mother, and Spouse; or Beauty, Goodness, Love: "Mary is Virgin in relation to Joseph, Man; Mother in relation to Jesus, God-Man; Spouse in relation to the Holy Spirit, God. Joseph personifies humanity; Mary incarnates either the Spirit considered in its feminine aspect or the feminine complement of the Spirit." She is "the prototype of the perfect soul; she incarnates the universal soul in her purity, her receptivity towards God, her fecundity and her beauty, attributes which are at origin of all the angelic and human virtues."

The Absolute is masculine, the Infinite feminine: "The distinction between the Absolute and the Infinite expresses the two fundamental aspects of the Real, that of essentiality and that of potentiality; this is the highest principial prefiguration of the masculine and feminine poles. Universal Radiation, thus Maya both divine and cosmic, springs from the second aspect, the Infinite, which coincides with All-Possibility" (Schuon).

Knowledge is masculine while beauty is feminine. But only a fool severs the deep relationship between beauty and knowledge, for "beauty is the splendor of the true." Beauty "is like the sun: it acts without detours, without dialectical intermediaries, its ways are free, direct, incalculable; like love, to which it is closely connected, it can heal, unloose, appease, unite or deliver through its simple radiance." It is "a crystallization of some aspect of universal joy; it is something limitless expressed by means of a limit" (Schuon).

Doctrine is masculine while faith is feminine. But only an unreflective person fails to see that faith gives life to doctrine. Faith is the receptivity to knowledge that surpasses us, an anticipatory perception of that which is growing within the womb of the soul.

Rhythm is masculine while melody is feminine. Likewise, time is masculine, space feminine. Time deploys itself in space, "fertilizing" it and allowing it to "quicken" into forms and other middling relativities. Again, male is absolute, female infinite. When the absolute enters time, it creates infinite being: "be fruitful and multiply."

Male is vertical, female is horizontal. In Eden, Adam is pulled from his verticality by Eve, who is more receptive to the promises of the snake, symbol of horizontality. But woman is the very symbol of attractiveness, that which lures being from non-being, existence from being, time from eternity:

"In the domain of the spiritual life, the same term shakti signifies the celestial energy that allows man to enter into contact with the Divinity, by means of the appropriate rites and on the basis of a traditional system. Essentially, this divine Shakti aids and attracts: She aids as 'Mother,' and attracts as 'Virgin'.... In the Absolute, the Shakti is the aspect of Infinitude that coincides with All-Possibility and gives rise to Maya."

Male is objective, female subjective. But there is no object without a subject who paradoxically gives birth to it. The Atman is pure consciousness, pure subject, pure light. And yet, it is perpetually “objectified” by Maya, "the power of illusion consequent upon the infinity of the Self.... Maya exists only through its contents, which prolong Atma; this is to say that Atma is conceivable without Maya, whereas Maya is intelligible only through the notion of Atma." Maya-Mother is the magical veil that reveils the Absolute.

The Sun is masculine, the Moon feminine. The sun is how we see by day, the moon by night. So this lunatic post probably doesn't make much sense by the light of day. Ask your mother to help you read and reflect upon it in the dark.