The polarity of gender is a universal truth. It is one of the hermetic principles, and so it is of ancient origin. We think in modern times, that we have invented everything. But there really is little that is new or original.
Men and women have been dancing with polarity for tens of thousands of years, in an evolutionary dance, within which, our era is simply how it is now. Like the life of individuals, our collective state of being is fluid and changing a drift of culture that is moving as time moves through our human consciousness.
In the 22nd verse of the Gospel of Thomas, it is recorded:
“Jesus saw some babies nursing. He said to his disciples, "These nursing babies are like those who enter the (Father's) domain." They said to him, "Then shall we enter the (Father's) domain as babies?" Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the (Father's) domain]."
Not to be too focused on religion, but this quote reflects an esoteric understanding consistent with modern polarity work. Its source is ancient, and universal across all cultures. The basic polarity of male and female, the Hermetic principal of gender, found in a short book called the Kyballion which states,
“ Gender is in everything; everything has its masculine and feminine principles; gender manifests on all planes”
This is essentially how we find the active and receptive principles at work in physics, and in nature, and all of life is organized around it. The male pole in us is active and has penetrative awareness and emanates its presence from its core. The female pole is passive, and a receptive consciousness, and it radiates its presence from its essence. Man and woman are predominantly of the male and female polarity, and engage with each other in a play of energy around these polarities. This knowledge is as ancient as mankind and is found in all early human cultures. It is tradition, and it as also grounded in our science, but there is nothing modern about it.
There has been a lot of discussion about matriarchy and patriarchy in modern feminism. But this is also an appropriated conversation, take from an earlier anthropological literature. One need only look at the work of the archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, a modern feminist, in "The Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe", "The Living Goddess" and "The Language of the Goddess" to see the ancient origins of matriarchy in the neolithic world. Likewise, the work of Wilhelm Reich in “The Invasion of Compulsory Sexual Morality” and later, “The Sexual Revolution” which laid out the patriarchal impulse in history and its role in creating sexual repression that exists to this day within us. So, it is with good reason, we discover when we research, that later day feminists have raged against the patriarchy, but only to set themselves upon the same throne, to everyone's dismay. It took use thousands of years to get to where we are now, but fortunately, we do not need another 5000 years of that kind of culture to realize it, and learn from it. I am hopeful that we can learn our lessons in a few generations. In the last 100 years both men and women have learned so much, that it will transform in our future gestation and evolution with greater awareness.
One need only consider the wise words of Jesus, which were carefully omitted from the New Testament by the early church, only to be discovered at Nag Hammadhi Egypt in 1949 in the Gospel of Thomas quoted above. A transformation in gender consciousness was need, and it seems that this is what we have been going through together in recent generations. But it is for us living now, both young and old, to realize the fulfillment of the possibilities of it, in a new masculine and feminine possessing greater gender balance, and thus greater harmony between men and women.
This is a work in process, and we are experiencing it in the social conflicts and their ongoing resolution though the lives of men and woman that has the possibility of humanizing our polarized world. It is found in both the tantra teachings of the east and the reawakening to the Hermetic teachings of the west. The seven Principals of the Hermetic philosophy correspond to the east teaching as well. The principals of; mentalism, correspondence, vibration, polarity, rhythm, cause and effect, and gender. This blog cannot do more than just mention them today, but they at the heart of what we are coming to realize in the world through the awakening of penetrative awareness and radiant consciousness in men and woman.
The role of the masculine now, in the 21st century is to lead woman back to their feminine radiance through embodying a penetrative awareness and presence with a receptive sensitivity. It is the ability to hold space and listen to the voice of the feminine while being in service to it and the universal life-force. For the feminine, it is to rediscover the central role as the source of life through the gift of giving birth, metaphorically as well as literally, and to capture and integrate the generative abilities embodied in the masculine through the integration of her interior masculine. It seems we have taken a 100-year journey into Feminism, and looking back on it, we can see that it has made both men and woman explore their polar oppositions. But now, it is time to rotate the culture back toward the new masculine. Men have learned to balance their inner feminine and also woman have learned to balance their inner masculine so that an integration is now possible.
The point of this balance is engaging the other with more choices and ways of being and acting. Now, by the following analogy, it’s possible to be like musicians jamming with each other, playing the bodies, minds, and emotions as instruments together, producing the music of the soul. We know the major and minor scales, and chords, and so we can make more interesting music together. Neither male penetrative awareness nor female receptive consciousness needs to be exclusive, but the polarity of the emanations and radiates that arise, and the penetrative and receptive qualities must be played against each other. A man in his core and a woman in her essence can thus riff, and exchange polarities, but essentially return to their own true nature, that of penetrative awareness, and receptive consciousness, that has been given by Great Nature.
Of course, other combinations with gender are possible. This is not to exclude anyone. But we need to resonate to that basic pattern that nature has established by evolution to complete a harmony that is universal.
Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash Quotes from The Gospel of Thomas © 1992, 1994 by Polebridge Press and the Kybalion: A Study of the Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece @ 1936 by the Three Initiates.
© Copyright 2020 Robert Fertman, All Rights Reserved
Esa polaridad de genero -femenino, masculino-, está tanto en las personas, como en toda la naturaleza. Los vegetales, para ser, se han de unir la parte femenina con la masculina. Y todos los animales también.
Las personas, lo hemos complicado porque hemos inventado la igualdad. Pues, en la naturaleza no existe la igualdad -como nosotros la entendemos: decidir, optar, elegir-.