The Divine Androgyne

I received the following interesting question in a comment on the Same Sex Marriage post. (See here.) It strikes me as worth exploring in rather more detail than a comment at the end of a thread allows so I include my response with the question that prompted it here.

Q. Rabbinical literature contains a belief that Adam was first an androgyne made in God's image. Only later when God realised that Adam was lonely, did he split Adam in two; the 'rib' was in fact the female half of the androgyne Adam.

The phrase used to describe woman’s creation from man’s rib – mi-tzalotav – actually means an entire side of his body because the word “tsela`” in it is used in the book of Exodus to refer to one side of the holy Tabernacle.

Young's Literal Translation of Genesis 5:2 reads,

"a male and a female He hath prepared them, and He blesseth them, and calleth their name Man [or Adam - the word for the forename, and human being are the same] in the day of their being prepared."

If the first human was originally androgyne, and made in God's image, then God contains both male and female. That which was created first, is surely a higher expression of creation, nearer to God the creator, and something human beings are attempting to regain. Part of that might be the loss of separate maleness and femaleness in the post-mortal state - a return to the divine androgyne spiritually.

Young's Literal Translation of Matthew 22:30 says,

"for in the rising again they do not marry, nor are they given in marriage, but are as messengers of God in heaven."

There seems to be no need for sex in heaven.

Might it not be that homosexuals contain both male and female qualities within the one body, and that they may be spiritually advanced? This is not to say that therefore gay marriage is correct. It may be possible that gay people are ignoring their advanced spiritual natures when they turn to other gay people for sexual expression, and that their true role is to use their combined male/female soul (or even spirit) to teach others the way back to God.

In native American culture, there is the concept of the two-spirits people. These are individuals who we would recognise as gay. The two spirits refers to the belief that these people have a male and a female spirit within, and they often have a special spiritual role within the tribe, that we would call priest.

Perhaps the native American people are recognising what rabbinical literature recognises, and that I have outlined?

A. I have heard this theory before and can see the attraction of it.  There’s a similar story in Plato, though it’s not meant to be taken literally there. However it has several problems for me. If homosexuality reflected some state of divine perfection, as in the archetypal androgynous being, we would expect the majority of gay people to be strongly spiritual, and, though certainly some homosexuals are drawn to spirituality, that isn't the case for most.  We would also expect the divine ideal as manifested in Jesus to be like that, and there is no indication that he was. He may have had certain traditionally feminine characteristics, gentleness, compassion and such like, but these were spiritually expressed not physically or emotionally, and they were within the overall context of strong masculinity.  It's the same with all highly advanced spiritual people, saints and mystics.  They are not androgynous, which if this theory were correct they would be. They are definitely male or female.

To me homosexuality is best explained by the theory of reincarnation, though there may be psychological reasons in many cases as well. But I believe all souls are male or female, created in pairs, and if a feminine soul is born in a male body for whatever reason, karma, lessons to be learned etc, homosexuality may be the result. But this does not make them prototypes of androgyny nor does it legitimise the physical expression of homosexuality. The lesson might be to turn away from sexuality not embrace or explore it, just the opposite to what is happening nowadays. You suggest that yourself.

I see the divine androgyne theory as relating to uncreated spirit but not to the world of creation. It is a symbol expressing an inner spiritual truth in an outer materialised form. God created the two sexes so that love, one being fulfilled by the other, could be known and expressed. He contains everything within himself, of course, though as Creator He is masculine with the whole of creation as His Bride. That may even be a reason for him creating. Outwardly projecting a feminine, receptive side in order to get a wife!

So the two sexes can complete each other in love. That could not possibly be the case with two androgynous beings who would not need this completion and so could not know this love. It’s clear that marriage and sex only make sense in the context of two sexes. A true androgyne, by definition, would have no need of either. They would be meaningless, and so the love and creativity they provide could not be experienced.

So basically androgyny relates to inner consciousness not the expression of a being in form. Spirit not soul. It’s a confusion of levels to think it applies to created beings in their outer expression. We are spirit, soul and body. Spirit, which is our being, may well be androgynous. Soul and body which is our individuality and its outer expression have sexual qualities being either male or female, not both except when things have gone amiss which in a fallen world is always possible.

I believe that some people are born homosexual to push them into spirituality. That is why you find quite a few homosexuals at early and intermediate stages of developing spiritual awareness, but not so many at the latter stages in which all aspects of one's inner being have been brought into balance.

And from personal experience I can confirm that the beings I spoke to were all male except on one memorable occasion when the person who spoke was definitely female, even though this was through a male medium. These beings were fully developed spiritually but they were still men and women or the spiritual equivalents thereof.

So I have to say that I believe homosexuality to be the result of living in a fallen world and not an indicator of future evolutionary attainment. That is why it plays out primarily on a sexual level. If it indicated an advanced spiritual state, homosexuals would be completely self-sufficient sexually and not require any outer completion. But that is clearly not the case.

If you are born homosexual by all means seek a companion but know that love should be pure which means, hard as it may sound, its physical expression should be limited to male and female and the creation of a family. It should, at least, have this potential to be in line with spiritual truth and God’s will for humanity.

To sum up, my feeling is that you should not project spiritual realities pertaining to the uncreated world onto the material plane of creation, which is one of the interaction between polarities. And even on the inner spiritual planes the same rules apply as long as you are talking about conditions in which any kind of expressed duality exists. 

A final point. You say human beings are attempting to regain the androgynous state, but surely the reason for creation was to introduce multiplicity into oneness so that love and beauty and goodness could all be positively expressed? To go back to a pre-creation state of oneness on all levels (though there could be no levels in such a state, of course) takes away the whole point and purpose of creation. We have to see the androgyne as a symbol of undifferentiated spiritual being and not an actually real thing once creation has occurred. Nor is it a suitable symbol for the end point. For the end is like the beginning in some respects, in that oneness is realized, but not like it in others in that differentiation is preserved. That’s why creation and evolution make things better than they were in the uncreated or pre-creation state. We are not aiming to go back to what we were but to advance to something new and higher. There is a purpose to creation, and that is to bring difference into undifferentiated being. Yes, we return to  inner oneness but a oneness which is expressed in multiple ways, through countless individual beings who manifest either masculinity or femininity (as even the Sun and the Moon do) which, in a universe based on polarity, they must. The androgynous state only exists in terms of unmanifested being, but in that state no actual qualities are expressed at all.