The Sacred Feminine

[Bruce Michael]

Originally Posted by Thomas

Hi Limbo —


Just to point out this is Theosophic speculation, and would be soundly disputed and disproved by Christianity, who would regard it as nonsense hardly worthy of their attention.

Your comment is of the mark, Thomas. The quoted is the view of Christian Kabalists.
Binah (Kabbalah - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

The name of God associated with Binah is Jehovah Elohim,

Blessings,
Br.Bruce

[Thomas]

Originally Posted by Bruce Michael

Your comment is of the mark, Thomas. The quoted is the view of Christian Kabalists.
Binah (Kabbalah - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Not really ... Kaballa, Hermeticism generally ... all this is secondary and subsequent, a 'personal flavour' if you like, but should determined by the data of Christian revelation.

I think it is often the case that Kaballists, or Hermeticists, often make the mistake of interpreting Christianity according to their favourite system, whereas it should be the other way round.

It's here, in putting things in the wrong order, that confusion is introduced and the Absolute Simplicity is lost sight of ... first by looking for an explicit indication of what is implicit, and then necessarily inventing one when the reality eludes them.

In my experience Kabbalists, Hermeticists, etc., like things complex. I have come to prefer things simple, so I always wonder, why complicate matters?

Thomas

[Bruce Michael]

Originally Posted by Thomas

Not really ... Kaballa, Hermeticism generally ... all this is secondary and subsequent, a 'personal flavour' if you like, but should determined by the data of Christian revelation.

The Christian Hermeticists were the recipients of Christian revelation.

Originally Posted by Thomas

It's here, in putting things in the wrong order, that confusion is introduced and the Absolute Simplicity is lost sight of ... first by looking for an explicit indication of what is implicit, and then necessarily inventing one when the reality eludes them.

What part of life is simple? You are not simple, your computer is not simple and even the smallest weed in your garden is not simple.

As a wise man once said, Christianity can be comprehended by the simplest of minds, but is also a challenge to the greatest of minds.

Originally Posted by Thomas

In my experience Kabbalists, Hermeticists, etc., like things complex. I have come to prefer things simple, so I always wonder, why complicate matters?

Thomas

What you are speaking of is simple religious devotion of the soul. The seeker of knowledge/gnosis wants to find these things out in full consciousness and detail.

As the Good Book says, some stick to their milk and others are ready for meat.

Have a look at the night sky. Our Universe is undenyingly complicated.

Cheerio,
Br.Bruce

[Thomas]

Originally Posted by Bruce Michael

The Christian Hermeticists were the recipients of Christian revelation.

That is what I've said. One is not required to be a Hermeticist to be a Christian, that's the point.

Originally Posted by Bruce Michael

What part of life is simple? You are not simple, your computer is not simple and even the smallest weed in your garden is not simple. As a wise man once said, Christianity can be comprehended by the simplest of minds, but is also a challenge to the greatest of minds.

God is simple (in the traditional and metaphysical sense), God is One.

Originally Posted by Bruce Michael

What you are speaking of is simple religious devotion of the soul. The seeker of knowledge/gnosis wants to find these things out in full consciousness and detail.

Because of his devotion. The love of knowledge precedes the quest for knowledge.

Originally Posted by Bruce Michael

As the Good Book says, some stick to their milk and others are ready for meat.

The simple is the meat of the matter.

Originally Posted by Bruce Michael

Have a look at the night sky. Our Universe is undenyingly complicated.

Yet any scientist will tell you that the laws that govern it are fundamentally simple. E=mc2, for example. The trick is not to get caught up in the variety and diversity. No two people are the same, ever, and yet humanity is one.

Thomas

[bananabrain]

at the risk of getting involved in yet another handbag fight between our omniscient theosophists and the people who dare to doubt their superior insight, ww westcott was not in fact entirely what one might call a "learned" kabbalist. a talented amateur, certainly, but the way he writes about these esoteric subjects is not conducive to an understanding of their purpose - the english is simply too misleading. for a start, it is a simple and common mistake to attribute all mentions of the Tetragrammaton in the Torah simply to one sefirah. also, to describe binah as "passive" is quite a large misunderstanding of the purpose of the left pillar.

as for HPB's comment about a "moon god", it isn't what *we* understand by it. we have never associated G!D with the moon, let alone "going to the moon" - that's just nonsensical. the moon is merely a luminary and should never have divine qualities associated with it - that would be "worshipping the postman", or idolatry if you prefer. and her comments about the meaning of the Name allude to some of the concepts it embraces whilst missing other rather important ones, namely the concept of how many different ways the Tetragrammaton can be configured into different partzufim. the tenth sefirah is so much more that the tiny concept quoted. as for the further christian and hermetic correspondences, they are a matter for others - all i can say is that whatever interface floats your boat, you're welcome, but this is still a system that doesn't actually require christian doctrine (much less some pseudo-egyptian mumbo-jumbo) to function as an integral field of knowledge.

as for the "moon" calendar, we may have a lunar month calendar, but we also have a solar year. i don't think anyone should draw any far-reaching conclusions from that. in short:

Originally Posted by Thomas

I think Farhan's explanation of the feminine within Islam shows how orthodoxy can include the cosmic from a metacosmic perspective without distorting the picture or introducing spurious claims.

precisely.

b'shalom

bananabrain

[China Cat Sunflower]

Originally Posted by bananabrain

as for HPB's comment about a "moon god", it isn't what *we* understand by it. we have never associated G!D with the moon, let alone "going to the moon" - that's just nonsensical. the moon is merely a luminary and should never have divine qualities associated with it - that would be "worshipping the postman", or idolatry if you prefer. and her comments about the meaning of the Name allude to some of the concepts it embraces whilst missing other rather important ones, namely the concept of how many different ways the Tetragrammaton can be configured into different partzufim. the tenth sefirah is so much more that the tiny concept quoted. as for the further christian and hermetic correspondences, they are a matter for others - all i can say is that whatever interface floats your boat, you're welcome, but this is still a system that doesn't actually require christian doctrine (much less some pseudo-egyptian mumbo-jumbo) to function as an integral field of knowledge.

How many Partzufim are there? I had thought it was just five or six.

Chris

[Raksha]

I think it is often the case that Kaballists, or Hermeticists, often make the mistake of interpreting Christianity according to their favourite system, whereas it should be the other way round.

It's here, in putting things in the wrong order, that confusion is introduced and the Absolute Simplicity is lost sight of ... first by looking for an explicit indication of what is implicit, and then necessarily inventing one when the reality eludes them.

Thomas,

It sounds to me like you're the one who has it backwards. Hermeticism predates Christianity. There are two books in the Nag Hammadi Library (I'm too lazy to get up and check which ones at the moment) that exist in both a non-Christian and a Christian version, but otherwise are very similar.

As for Kabbalah, it's true that the "full" version, or what we call Kabbalah nowadays, developed in Spain in the Middle Ages, but there is no reason to believe it was influenced by Christianity. All of the great medieval masters like Isaac Luria and Moses de Leon were Jewish and lived there entire lives in a totally Jewish religious environment. Christian Kabbalah was a later development of Jewish Kabbalah. I believe it was first adopted (and adapted) by the alchemists of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The alchemists were already closet Hermeticists so it came naturally to them.

From there it spread underground via the fraternal orders like the Masons and the Rosicrucians to their successors like the Theosophists and the Golden Dawn in the late 19th-early 20th centuries. This seems to be the tradition Bruce Michael is referencing.

I truly hope you aren't the kind of person I call a "Gatekeeper," i.e. a self-appointed guardian of the mysteries, because we're going to have problems if you are. There is nothing I despise more than a Gatekeeper, no form of human life lower than a self-appointed spiritual nanny who takes it upon himself to determine who may enter the inner sanctum and who may not.

As you see, I entered the inner sanctum a long time ago. I didn't need your permission then and I don't now either!

--Linda

[Raksha]

What you are speaking of is simple religious devotion of the soul. The seeker of knowledge/gnosis wants to find these things out in full consciousness and detail.

Bruce Michael,

Absolutely true! I'm what the Hindus would call a jnani type myself, not a bhakti (devotional) type. What Thomas doesn't seem to realize (or doesn't want to admit) is that a seeker of gnosis is born that way, and the desire/need for complexity is also innate. The actual knowledge comes later, but the desire is there right from the beginning. No amount of "simple devotion" will ever satsify it.

--Linda

[Raksha]

...it is a simple and common mistake to attribute all mentions of the Tetragrammaton in the Torah simply to one sefirah. also, to describe binah as "passive" is quite a large misunderstanding of the purpose of the left pillar.

bananabrain,

"Receptive" is a much better descriptive word for Binah than "passive." I've written quite a bit on this subject recently, both in e-mails and in some long posts on a topic I started on another forum called "Creativity." I may posts some excepts here later on. I have a feeling this forum is a much better one for my kind of writing than where I was posting before. The "Creativity" topic was going fine for a while, and I actually had hopes of reviving the Religion & Spirituality board on that forum, but then I ran into some problems with the resident "prophetess" and her sidekick. About the time she pulled anti-Semitism out of her posterior (and NOT for the first time) I got pretty fed up with the whole thing. Chris has been trying to drag me over to Comparative Religions anyway, and it looks like he was right! I've known him for a while now, and he tends to be right about most things.

I think you're being a little too hard on Westcott and the rest of the Golden Dawn types. I first got interested in Kabbalah in the mid-1960s when there was very little material available in English, and virtually NOTHING from Jewish sources. And you can blame that entirely on the despicable and shortsighted Gatekeepers within our own tradition! Can you really imagine them allowing a "shiksa" Reform Jewish female like me into the inner sanctum? To get anywhere near it, I had to go through a Christian Gnostic and Golden Dawn gate, and to this day, I don't apologize for that to ANYONE!

--Linda

[Pathless]

Originally Posted by China Cat Sunflower

The bold part is sweet Thomas! God releases that which he wishes to make known- love that!

I see the Divine Feminine as a truly scary thing. She suffers no fools, and she absolutely obliterates all useless and inefficient forms. She is not to be messed with. We come to the Father because he is the friendly and generous one.

Chris

This is very interesting and odd to me, Chris. For me, the Father is the stern one, the patriarch who is intolerant and is bent on destroying, in one way or another, those beings who fail to conform to His traditions.

In my personal cosmology, the Goddess or Divine Feminine is much more generous, patient, and loving. She is the nurturer and the embodiment of unconditional love. The Divine Feminine is where I go especially when I am feeling unloved or depressed, although I more or less worship in her house all of the time. Her house, by the way, is full of great spaces: beautifully decorated rooms with lots of pillows and endless intriguing artifacts, a corner room with lovely diamond-paned windows and a big, warm bed by a generous fire on a frozen day.

That said, I want to be clear that she's not an uber-femme doll clinging to the arm of the Father. She's independent, strong, and confident. She doesn't need a man and doesn't particularly like them much, in general, either, unless they have a good amount of feminism in themselves. Perhaps she's proud.

That's the Divine Feminine from my particular post-Abrahamic pagan Buddhist perspective.

[China Cat Sunflower]

Q:What always ruins summer vaction?

A: Mom.

I'm gonna find a real man: One who likes girls and hates women.

Al Bundy

God may be the law giver, but Mrs. God is the enforcer.

Chris

[Bruce Michael]

Originally Posted by bananabrain

as for HPB's comment about a "moon god", it isn't what *we* understand by it. we have never associated G!D with the moon, let alone "going to the moon" - that's just nonsensical. the moon is merely a luminary and should never have divine qualities associated with it - that would be "worshipping the postman", or idolatry if you prefer. and her comments about the meaning of the Name allude to some of the concepts it embraces whilst missing other rather important ones, namely the concept of how many different ways the Tetragrammaton can be configured into different partzufim. the tenth sefirah is so much more that the tiny concept quoted. as for the further christian and hermetic correspondences, they are a matter for others - all i can say is that whatever interface floats your boat, you're welcome, but this is still a system that doesn't actually require christian doctrine (much less some pseudo-egyptian mumbo-jumbo) to function as an integral field of knowledge.

as for the "moon" calendar, we may have a lunar month calendar, but we also have a solar year. i don't think anyone should draw any far-reaching conclusions from that. in short:

Hello bananabrain
The designation "moon" does not refer to the physical luminary but to a spiritual sphere.

The link I posted before was incomplete:
Binah (Kabbalah - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Lecture: Foundations of Esotericism: Lecture VII

The name Jehovah does not designate a single being, but a rank in the order of the hierarchies. Many beings can take on the Jehovah rank, or assume it for a purpose. Eliphas Levi repeatedly emphasised that with the designations Jehovah, Archangeloi, Angeloi, we have to do with ordered ranks of beings.

Yahweh is one of the Seven Elohim of Creation ( the Seven Spirits of the Presence).
I Am

Yahweh-Eloha was the only one who descended to, and took up abode in, the Moon sphere (the other six staying in the Sun sphere); thus he was the hierarchical being charged with the entirety of Earth evolution. ....

Inasmuch as the Elohim (Exusiai) are the “Spirits of Form” (I-6), it is they who take over at the point where everything but “Form” had been accomplished, as indicated in Gen 1,1 and 2,4b-5. It is at this point that the Yahweh-Eloha comes into the picture at Gen 2,4b to stay.

Toodleoo,
Br.Bruce

[Pathless]

Originally Posted by China Cat Sunflower

Q:What always ruins summer vaction?

A: Mom.

I'm gonna find a real man: One who likes girls and hates women.

Al Bundy

God may be the law giver, but Mrs. God is the enforcer.

Chris

Al Bundy?? What a horrible quote.

I don't associate "Mrs. God" with the horrors of the apocalypse. That's all YHWH's territory--the jealous god smiting enemies with fire. In my pantheon, there isn't a "Mrs. God." There is an independent female divinity who is an anarchist and quite possibly a lesbian. She has better things to do than trifle in politics and self-hate and war. A natural disaster or two, maybe, but she doesn't traffic in Biblical retribution at all. She views the Bible and similar systemized religious works with humor that masks a real distaste for such thought and spirit control. She might open up a can of whoop-ass on you if you assualt her or break into her house with ill intent, but she doesn't take holy vengeance on the road in a proselytizing inquisition, as the patriarchal Lords are inclined to do.

[Raksha]

I see the Divine Feminine as a truly scary thing. She suffers no fools, and she absolutely obliterates all useless and inefficient forms. She is not to be messed with. We come to the Father because he is the friendly and generous one.

Chris,

Somehow I missed this one until Pathless quoted it. So for you Sword Mama verges on Mother Kali? How is it I didn't pick up on that before? It's been staring me right in the face, but I didn't see it until now. Here are a few lines I connect with that image, from that great contemporary Hebrew prophet Bob Dylan:

The motorcycle Black Madonna two-wheeled gypsy queen
And her silver-studded phantom cause the grey flannel dwarf to scream
As he weeps to wicked birds of prey who pick up on his breadcrumb sins,
But there are no sins inside the Gates of Eden.

--Linda

[China Cat Sunflower]

Originally Posted by Raksha

Chris,

Somehow I missed this one until Pathless quoted it. So for you Sword Mama verges on Mother Kali? How is it I didn't pick up on that before? It's been staring me right in the face, but I didn't see it until now. Here are a few lines I connect with that image, from that great contemporary Hebrew prophet Bob Dylan:

The motorcycle Black Madonna two-wheeled gypsy queen
And her silver-studded phantom cause the grey flannel dwarf to scream
As he weeps to wicked birds of prey who pick up on his breadcrumb sins,
But there are no sins inside the Gates of Eden.

--Linda

Man, I love Dylan!

I've been working my way slowly into Lurianic Kabbalah. I was just reading up on the Partzufim, and, coincidentally or not, stumbled on BB's note. I had forgotten about this thread.

I don't think the Universe is patriarically arranged. We humans came up with that arrangement. My own imagery of male and female meta-Gods is primarily astrological. All the Big Mamma's, to me, are Saturn. All the Papa's are Jupiter. Now, which would you rather have popping up in your chart?

The Partzufim are Arik Anpin, Ze'ir Anpin, Abba, Imma, and Nukvah. Arik Anpin is the Prime Mover, Creator God, Abba and Imma, Father and Mother are the sexualized versions of Arik Anpin, and Ze'ir Anpin is their son. Nukvah is, according to this Leonora Leet book I'm reading, the sister-bride figure now separated from the previously androgynous Ze'ir. This seems to sync nicely with the two creation of man stories in Genesis where in the first account "male and female created he them", but in the second story woman is taken from man's "rib".

Chris