When the One becomes Two

In May of 2024 I published on this blog a short series of excerpts from Coleridge's Table Talk which is a collection of his conversations with friends round the dinner table recorded for posterity. One of them ran like this.

"Most women have no character at all," said Pope, and meant it for satire. Shakespeare, who knew man and woman much better,  saw that it, in fact, was the perfection of woman to be characterless. Everyone wishes a Desdemona or Ophelia for a wife, — creatures who, though they may not always understand you, do always feel you, and feel with you.

I added a brief commentary saying that if the highest state of matter is to reflect spirit perfectly you can see what he means here. This extended Coleridge's insight to the metaphysical plane but that is the only place the solution to the war between the sexes can be found because it is here that the division into two poles of being first takes place. This is where it works as it should.

The modern version of female rebellion against the male dates back to the early 19th century. It might be seen as a consequence of masculine leadership, backed by all order-based religion, tipping over into tyranny or else of man's prior rebellion against God. However, the reality is that it goes much further back to the Garden of Eden. It is nothing new, and though it may be provoked by male oppression that is not the cause of it. The basic cause is female ego which is not to say that male ego is not involved in the sex war for it surely is but that is not the primary reason for seeking to overturn an order ordained by God from the beginning. Men have certainly abused that order, though, ironically, less so in the culture in which the modern rebellion arose than practically all others, but that does not make the order itself invalid.

With that in mind let us consider the following.

Premise: The feminine can only blossom and flourish when it submits to the leadership of the masculine. Societies can only blossom and flourish spiritually when this is the case.

Proviso: This leadership must be a loving one or authority becomes authoritarian. 

Qualifier: This does not mean women must submit to men at all times for there are certainly areas in which women should take the lead and men should follow. Nonetheless, in overall terms the feminine should submit to the masculine if order is to be maintained just as in the broader sense a man's soul should submit to God, all souls being feminine to God - feminine soul, masculine spirit.

First Principles: In terms of absolute reality the masculine force relates to being and the feminine to becoming and change.

In terms of manifestation the masculine or active force acts and the feminine or passive reacts. The feminine principle is subordinate to the masculine principle though both are parts of one co-existing whole. You can say they are spiritually equal if you understand that in the context of their differing functions in a hierarchy of being. In the real world there will inevitably be permutations and variations depending on individuals and their circumstances but underlying these there must always be cognisance and acceptance of the basic form if society is to function as it should and men and women to realise their proper spiritual purpose.

Dion Fortune was told this by one of her Masters as related in The Cosmic Doctrine. "You will be given certain images (which) are not descriptive but symbolic, and are designed to train the mind not to inform it. Therefore, you may think of the Unmanifest as interstellar space*; and of the Logos as a Sun surrounded by its Solar System of Planets; and of the emanations of the Logos as rays. The Unmanifest is the only Unity. Manifestation begins when duality occurs." He goes on to say that the prime duality is space and movement. That is one way of putting it. There are others. For instance, movement is time. Space is darkness. Movement is, or is akin to, light. This is the root of male and female and it goes back to the beginning of things. Here you will see that the male acts on the female who is passive as is space. God moving on the face of the waters. The mystery of time and space is the mystery of masculine and feminine. Space is all potential but it waits to be fecundated. Time, which is movement, fecundates. Only when we understand metaphysics will we understand the mystery of the two sexes and to do this we must detach ourselves from an exclusive association of sex with its expression in human beings. That must be seen in the light of metaphysical principles which are the realities behind it.

* In fact, the Unmanifest is not interstellar space which only comes about when the Unmanifest manifests but this is the best image the human mind, based on forms, can grasp.

Sex in the Universe

 Sex is the basis of the universe. It is the foundation to everything as the One becomes two in order to manifest and know itself more fully. Call this spirit and matter, God and Creation, subject and object, it amounts to the same thing. The two are always trying to return to oneness and it is this that provides the creative tension necessary for anything first to be and then to develop and evolve. 

Sex means metaphysical sex of which the physical is a lower order reflection in matter. Sex is the most powerful thing in the world but it points to something much greater than itself which is why it can lead to the greatest elevation and, when despoiled or corrupted, the greatest degradation. But even then it is never evil, just the perversion of a supreme good.

In the human sphere sex appears as man and woman which is the expression in creatures, created beings, of spirit and matter. Each have both within them but there is a polarity to each which is different. This points to an important truth, one rejected in our time but understood though often misused in the past. These two are complementary but they are not equal and opposite. In any complementary pair one is ontologically prior, the other appearing as its reflection in duality. In this case, it is spirit which precedes matter and, by extension, the male precedes and therefore should lead the female. If that is not the case as now when feminism has denatured humanity then societal breakdown will ensue and end in chaos which is the degeneration of form to raw material. Male and female represent the vertical and horizontal axes of life, one pointing to transcendence and higher reality and the other to this world and material being, nature, earth, the body. Both are part of the whole but the masculine principle must dominate or spirit will be pulled down into matter where it will be lost in a psychic miasma (see much contemporary spirituality which is all to do with feelings and healing rather than proper self-transcendence).

Only the hero can become divine. That is to say only the fully developed self can transcend self. Popular (feminised?) Christianity ignores this truth thinking that because anyone who believes can be saved then all are equal in Christ. All may be one in Christ but that does not mean that all are equal. There is hierarchy in heaven, and salvation is not theosis. The idea that everyone is saved and when saved equal comes from prioritising the immanent at the expense of the transcendent. It collapses the vertical to the horizontal. The vertical needs the horizontal to express itself and to know itself as subject needs object, but it must always be the dominant principle. 

When the feminine asserts itself over the masculine which it will often seek to do in a fallen world of competing egos, then what is pleasing to emotions overrides what accords with truth. Nurturing virtues, essential in themselves and in their proper place, become over-emphasised and expressed where they don't belong and where they do active harm such as, for example, by undermining justice and responsibility. So-called compassion (which is not love) is weaponised to pull down higher truths, by definition beyond the mundane, to the point where they can be understood by all. But they are destroyed in the process. The tyranny of the masses becomes the arbiter of truth. This is the law of the horizontal applied to the vertical.

The moon transforms the light of the sun and makes of it something very different, mysterious and beautiful, but without that light it has nothing to transform. The Creator has given us signs in the heavens through which we can understand how the dynamics of human interaction should work. If we ignore them we are straying from the path of truth and that means we fall into darkness and illusion. This is our state today.

To say that the increasing domination of the feminine over the masculine leads to loss of connection to transcendent truth is not to condemn the feminine itself but the ego-driven feminine. Obviously, there is an ego-driven masculine too which seeks power for its own ends rather than power in the service of truth. However, there is a difference between corrupted truth and an outright lie. The masculine should rule but for the sake of the masculine and the feminine not for its own sake, and that way lies proper harmony. If the basis of the universe is sex then the expression of that is love. In a fallen world the two sexes become rivals, each drawn to the other but also seeking to dominate the other. It is not right to say the sexes should cooperate as that is far too feeble a word to express the creative harmony that should exist between them, but they should certainly not compete. Each sex must be true to its essential metaphysical Form in which the male represents the reality of being and truth, and the female that of change and becoming. Then they will find true creative fulfilment.

In the end master metaphysician James Brown summed it up thus.

This is a man's world
But it wouldn't be nothing
Nothing without a woman or a girl.

Feminism is not about Equality

This is a subject I return to now and again because it lies squarely at  the heart of the modern deviation. It's not the cause of the deviation. That is the rejection of God and the natural order of creation, but it is one of the major symptoms of it and a big contributory factor to the ongoing rupture from reality.

Feminism is not about equality. It may have seemed so at one time but actually, like many movements claiming to be for freedom and equality, what the impulse behind feminism sought was power. The desire for power is not in itself bad because the ability to exercise power is part of our divine right, but why do we seek power, to what end? That is the point, and the feminist desire was and still is to control men, to be the one in the driving seat. 

Now you could throw this accusation right back at men and say that they wish to control women and this is why they seek headship over them, but there is this difference. The male desire to lead the female, to be, archetypally speaking, the Lord to the Lady, is based on natural justification. This is because in spiritual terms the male represents the Creator and the female represents Creation as is illustrated in simple but profound terms in the book of Genesis. Creation came out of God just as Eve came out of Adam. The fallen female desire to dominate the male is the desire of a created being to usurp the role of the Creator which is why we can accurately call the inspiration behind it Satanic. 

These may seem hard words but they are necessary because they are so widely denied. They do not mean that the male is intrinsically superior to the female in individual or collective terms, but each sex has its role and should not seek to appropriate the role of the other. Nor do they mean that the power the male has over the female is for his own personal ends. That power is inseparable from responsibility, and should be exercised with love, just as it is with the Creator and the Creation which is his bride.

To be sure, there are different masculine and feminine types as is depicted in mythology with different types of gods and goddesses, and the relationship dynamic will not always be the same, but still the basic pattern remains and should be respected if a society is to function creatively and harmoniously.

The great spiritual deception of the 20th century was that progressive and liberal ideas were precursors of the spirit of the New Age or Age of Aquarius, and that the more advanced parts of humanity would adopt them with the spiritual laggards rejecting them. In fact, these ideas are not connected to a new age so much as they are symptoms of a decaying old age. Far from being spiritual advances, they are indicative of spiritual collapse, arising when material concerns take precedence over spiritual ones. The equality of the sexes, the very idea of equality itself, is an example of what comes about as the old age falls into decay. It arises from decomposing elements of the past not from glimmers on the horizon of the future.

That having been said, feminism has made the inroads it has because there is an element of truth to it.  Over the last few centuries human consciousness has been changing, becoming more aware of the self, of personal autonomy and freedom, and this has affected both sexes which both need to express the new awareness. In a sense, you can liken this to adolescence which would imply that what underlies feminism is at the same time a need to become fully individual and a form of adolescent rebellion. So, good and bad. The problem here is that the rebellion has gone unchecked and then been justified or rationalised as a good thing instead of understood as the negative aspect of a growth process which should be got through and grown out of. Thus, one could say that we are in a period of arrested development . We have rebelled against our divine parent and the natural order of being. Women responded to the need to become fully individual but did so from the perspective of the ego rather than the soul. In the latter case, the response would have been in the context of spiritual understanding and not entailed rebellion against God and man.

As with many ideas now firmly entrenched in the modern mind it's hard to see how we can get back to where we should be from where we are now without complete societal breakdown. Things have gone so far that only when we no longer have the luxury of a full stomach and a roof over our heads will we let go of our illusions and be prepared to fall in with how things are as opposed to trying to force them to be how we want them to be. This has been necessary in the past and will be so again. It is why we need to start preparing for a future when all our assumptions will be challenged at the deepest level. We will be stripped bare and we have only ourselves to blame because we have rebelled against reality.

Hierarchy and Complementarity

Complementarity is not equality. I have seen writings by self-styled traditionalists, and even some esotericists who should know better but who are clearly still influenced by Enlightenment ideas, which ostensibly decry feminism but say that men and women are different but equal because they complement each other, with each being superior in its own domain.

This is true up to a point but it falls short of the cosmic meaning behind sex differences, and the laws of the macrocosm should be reflected in the microcosm for order to prevail on that level. Men and women are certainly complementary to each other. That is obvious to all but the most hidebound of feminists but it does not mean they are equal other than in spiritual worth on the individual level. However, that is a separate issue. The truth is that there is a hierarchical as well as a complementary aspect to the male/female duality which is symbolised in the story that Eve came out of Adam's side not vice versa, and also revealed by the fact that to God all souls are feminine in respect of their relationship to him. He represents or, better put, is the positive pole. The nature of masculinity and femininity finds its first origins in this relationship. A Christian might see it reflected in the idea that the church is the bride of Christ. This is a relationship of love but not equality.

To say that men and women are complementary and equal but different with women better at being women and men better at being men is only a half-truth. The masculine pole is prior in the hierarchy of creation and in that sense men do have spiritual authority over women, an authority they must exercise if order and harmony are to reign. The feminine is an essential part of creation which is necessarily dualistic as in subject and object, but it is subordinate to the masculine as matter is to spirit. Without matter spirit cannot be expressed but spirit is the primordial reality. This foundation truth lies at the heart of the masculine/feminine polarity, and in a smooth running universe it should function with love and creativity. But in the human world female ego and male misuse of power has created a war between the sexes. And a lack of love on both sides.

 

This hierarchical relationship does not mean that women should just be submissive wives and mothers as in some traditionalist Christian schools of thought. Still less does it support the Islamic fear and suppression of women which has only produced a stunted and largely uncreative culture. The post-renaissance change in consciousness, entailing a greater focus on the self, that started in the West and then spread everywhere affected everyone, men and women. But the female expression of that should be within the context of womanhood not pseudo-masculinity, and it must still observe the priority of the masculine pole. There will be individual cases where that is not so but these are the exceptions that prove the rule. In general, the principle of masculine or solar rulership must hold if culture and civilisation are to function according to spiritual principles. When it does not, as in the modern quasi-matriarchy, everything will fall apart as indeed is happening in our day, whether admitted or not.

God has given us the sun and the moon to demonstrate the truth of this relationship. The sun rules the day and the moon the night and, in that sense, they are complementary, one to the other. But the moon draws its light from the sun though it processes this light according to its own unique nature. Esoterically, there are lunar mysteries where the feminine rules and solar mysteries where it is the masculine force that dominates. But the solar mysteries relate to higher initiations and deeper truths, spirit rather than soul. Early man worshipped the Great Mother or Goddess because he only knew the natural and psychic worlds and could not yet relate to higher spiritual forces. Spiritual evolution in those days consisted of breaking free of the bond of the mother which was essential if man was to become a free agent. Many stories in early mythology relate to this battle. Now we live in an era in which the feminine is reasserting itself after a period of suppression but it is doing so in an unbalanced and ignorant way. The feminine must be expressed but it must be so in the context of wisdom not desire for power, and that means it must recognise the overall rulership of the masculine. Men and women complement each other, of course, but there is no such thing as equality anywhere in the universe. It is a doctrine spread by the fallen powers in order to put their agenda on an equal footing with that of God.

Added note: The ultimate goal of evolution is the complete infusion of matter by spirit with its subsequent transformation and glorification. This is the mystic marriage of cosmic masculine and cosmic feminine and foreshadows the union of God with his creation. Thus, we can see that the feminine which is matter, nature, all creation, and the masculine which is spirit are two halves of  one whole, in a horizontal sense equal because both need each other but in the vertical sense spirit has hierarchical pre-eminence. 

 

Adam and Eve are the Microcosmic Equivalents of Spirit and Matter

 Eve was born from Adam's side as he lay in deep sleep just as matter is born from unmanifest spirit. In the pre-creation state spirit and matter are one but this does not mean there was unexpressed spirit and unexpressed matter. All was spirit which then projected forth matter as its reflection, or that in which it may see itself, in the dualistic world. Duality means the bifurcation of subject and object and is necessary for creation to come about since pure oneness is being empty of form and therefore unknowable existence. God is conceived of as masculine because he is spirit, all spirit before manifestation and the spirit polarity once manifestation has occurred. In terms of creation, the masculine is the active and the feminine that which is acted upon, as the Logos imprints form on substance, but from their union arises the soul which is the evolving consciousness.

This whole universe and space itself is the body of the Mother. The life in the universe is from the Father and time is the movement that drives the process of growth. Here feminine space represents the field of being and masculine time that of becoming so again we have the active and passive poles operating together though we must remember that passive does not mean empty or without quality as it is the fecund ground of potentia. Who would have thought that the sexual act and its fruits contain the clue as to how the universe came into being? On the other hand, why would this not be so? The greater is reflected in the lesser and the same principles operate throughout creation. This is one way we can enter into the mind of God. By seeing how he acts in the world we can start to know him. It is said that God is unknowable. That is not true. He is in us and we are in him and he is very knowable but he is not fully knowable. His being is inexhaustible and there will always be more to discover but we can start on the journey of knowing him here and now.

Celibacy

 There was an interesting article on the Orthosphere recently on celibacy by Professor J.M. Smith with which I am in broad though not complete agreement, and I thought I would offer my take on the subject here. I feel I can comment from the position of someone who has lived both lives, that of the celibate in early manhood and the married with children later on. The celibate phase was intentional not through disinclination, bad luck, negligence or failure, and it was because I was leading a life dedicated to the spiritual path as described in my book Meeting the Masters. 

I understand Professor Smith's point about the quality of priests being improved by abandoning the requirement of celibacy. It might weed out some of the sexual oddities and encourage more full-blooded males to join a group which they might thereby render more masculine and less effete. It would certainly widen the pool of available talent. But then you have to look at some of the vicars in the Church of England and wonder, would it really? I don't know. I would say, though, that to judge an institution by its defects does give a one-sided view of the overall picture.

Professor Smith's article is about priestly and monastic celibacy but I would like to open up the discussion to celibacy as part of the spiritual path and whether it still has a place. First off, I must say that celibacy is and ought to be difficult. It is not natural and those for whom it poses no problem are, in my opinion, not properly developed. Fruitfulness and fertility are wholesome expressions in the physical world of joy and creativity. Desire is godly because it is the flame of love as manifested in the human mind and body.

Yes, desire is godly, pace Buddhism, but attachment to desire is, if not sinful in itself, conducive to sin. It also binds one to the material world and material things. Now, celibates can be as full of desire as the promiscuous and sometimes even more so if suppressed energy, given no natural outlet, festers away beneath the surface and becomes a constant focus of attention. But the ideal of celibacy is to detach oneself from the world and be focused entirely on God. The world of matter, the Creation, is certainly good, but it is not the Creator and it may be that to have a full relationship with God one must turn away from his things and face directly towards him. As far as we know, Jesus was celibate and he seemed to ask his disciples to devote themselves full time to their spiritual lives which is hard to do if you have a wife and children to support. This may be a requirement only for those who are seeking a deeper contact with God but we may all have to become celibate at some time if we would attain to that deeper contact.

There are two aspects to the celibate life. One I have just mentioned and that is the need to give proper attention to a wife and family. The married man cannot devote himself to God quite as much as the celibate. His attention is necessarily divided, at least until a certain later stage of married life. That doesn't mean celibacy in itself is positive but it may be a positive negative. The second aspect is sex itself. This mysterious energy is the most powerful we know of, excepting for some the love of God. While not being a need, it is more intense than any need and more fulfilling in its satisfaction. Some traditions speak of this energy requiring to be turned inwards and upwards rather than expressed outwardly and would say that outward expression mitigates against the reorientation inwardly just as a river cannot flow in two directions at the same time. We have to make water flow uphill, back to the source. A lot of spiritually interested people reject this idea nowadays but it has a notable pedigree and one wonders if the modern rejection comes from the fact that we simply want to have our cake and eat it too, and look for reasons to justify doing what we want to do or are unable not to do.

Energy follows thought. In all cases, it is the mind that matters more than the body. By this criterion actual celibacy is less important than the state of the mind. At the same time, a mind truly focused on God will naturally seek less external stimulation and result in a body requiring less external satisfaction.

In the ancient Indian way of spiritual development there were four stages of life known as Asramas. The first was that of the student known as Brahmacharya which lasted to about the age of 25 and in which celibacy was enjoined. Then came the stage of Grihastha which was that of the married householder wherein one raised a family and fulfilled and enjoyed all the material demands and satisfactions of life though always within a spiritual context meaning one of virtue and religious devotion. After the age of 50 came the retirement stage of Vanaprastha when one started to withdraw from the world and focus one's energies more on Moksha, liberation or salvation as we might call it in the West. If one wasn't celibate necessarily then sex was certainly something that should be receding from one's mind and attention. The fourth and final stage was that of Sannyasa which was the life of complete renunciation and here again celibacy was enjoined though as the normal age for entering on this stage was 75 that should not be too much of a problem. This all represented the natural path of the soul through the world and returning to spirit and I think still represents a good path for everyone though it should be noted that anyone could move into the Sannyasa stage straight from that of Brahmacharya if one felt particularly called to the spiritual life.  

This Indian system tells us that celibacy has its place in the spiritual life, particularly at the beginning and end, but so does married life in which the full enjoyment of sex is not only permitted but encouraged as a good and healthy thing. There is no rejection of the body here but its incorporation into a grander scheme of things that has the ultimate aim of union with God though for this to take place it is expected that the soul is able to move beyond the demands of the physical body, the energies of which must be purified and transmuted. This means desire must be directed towards God.

Some might think this Indian description of life stages has no relevance for the Christian but I believe it has a universal application. If we think of the spiritual path as consisting of salvation and deification with the former as the preparatory stage and the latter as the ultimate aim then we might say that celibacy has a role to play in the context of deification as an occasional discipline and necessary condition for progress to be made. Every soul seeking full union with God, which union renders the soul divine in itself, must develop an exclusive relationship with God and that means all other loves and attachments must be renounced. The creation must be renounced for full knowledge of the Creator. But this may just be a stage. If we say that God himself has a spouse which is the redeemed part of Creation so every soul, as a reflection of its Creator, does likewise, and having reached conscious union with the Creator the soul can then turn back and re-embrace creation, though in the full light of God.

 Jesus said there was no marrying in heaven but his first miracle was at a wedding and religion constantly speaks of spiritual completion in terms of a marriage. There might appear to be a contradiction here but perhaps Jesus was speaking in terms of earthly marriage. There is also spiritual marriage, ultimately that between God and Creation but also between every individual soul, on the vertical plane with God its Creator for whom every soul is female, and on the horizontal with its created other half. Celibacy relates to the union with God but the sanctified soul does not just exist in that union. It also has relationships with other souls and among these is the reflection of the Cosmic Marriage of Spirit and Matter on its own level.

Meeting the Female Equivalent of a Master

 This is an extract from my book Meeting the Masters which is relevant to the discussion of divine femininity and Satanic feminism. It refers to my contact with a spiritual being who was clearly female despite coming through a male medium. The essence of her message was that love disperses all darkness which is a statement that is almost trite but becomes profound when delivered by a being who, as in this case, embodied what she said. This encounter dates back to 1979 and I wrote the passage below in 2010.

"Earlier when discussing the Masters I wrote that I had no experience of their female equivalents. I had completely forgotten this talk! However, reading through my notes brings the whole episode back with absolute clarity. This companion in spirit (as she described herself) was obviously a very lofty soul. She emanated a loving gentleness that was profoundly affecting, and the balm of her presence had a consoling quality that caused me to feel an almost overwhelming sense of gratitude to her for taking the trouble to visit me. She had a feminine grace and purity that do not seem to be so highly prized nowadays but are just as much divine characteristics as will or intelligence. In addition to this, she transmitted a peace that made all troubles and fears just melt away. I remember the radiance of her peace very well. The Masters also brought peace but the peace she brought had a soothing quality all its own.

The question might be asked that, as this was coming through Michael, how did I know it was a female spirit? All I can say is that there could be no doubt. The soft voice, the gentle manner, the whole vibration of the person, all of these were clearly feminine. As always there was no trace of Michael and though this being spoke through a male body, the voice was feminine. The scent of lily of the valley she brought with her just confirmed all this. I never knew the Masters to be accompanied by such a heavenly perfume. Nowadays many people talk rather glibly about the goddess and the feminine aspect of divinity. Curiously, this is happening at precisely the time when a true grasp of femininity appears to be being lost, leading one to suspect that there is a political as much as a theological imperative behind it. However, there most definitely is a feminine aspect to divinity, most perfectly embodied by such figures of wisdom and merciful love as the goddess Isis and the Virgin Mary, and, in China, Kuan-Yin, and this is the closest I have ever come to experiencing it. It is probably not one many feminists would approve of though since one of its qualities is a perfect submission to divine will. I should add that it is the height of wisdom to submit to divine will since the only true freedom is freedom from self.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that certain aspects of modern feminism are actually antipathetic to true femininity because they seek to supplant the traditional feminine virtues, which are (largely, though by no means exclusively) to do with nurturing, intuitive wisdom and compassionate love, with those usually associated with the masculine. It is an old trick of the devil to sneak in falsehood under the coat-tails of truth, and he has successfully done so on this occasion by corrupting the idea of the feminine under the guise of the pursuit of an entirely legitimate and overdue fairness and equality, with which no-one could have the slightest argument.* All human beings lose by this but perhaps the biggest losers are women themselves who are denied contact with their true nature. I sometimes think that if the balance between the sexes were right then everything would be and we would finally know true harmony, but that time still seems to be a long way off. The sexes are meant to be complementary but, in the name of equality, they are increasingly being lured into a competitiveness which can only bring about disequilibrium. The root causes of this are egotism, both male and female, and metaphysical ignorance.

It is fine and good to refuse to be bound by stereotypes (cultural conditioning) but we should not forget that there exist archetypes too, independent of human will and imaginings, and that a properly functioning society can only be one in which these are acknowledged (I don’t mean slavishly enforced) rather than denied or ignored. For the individual as well, true fulfilment can only come from conforming to one’s divine pattern. This is not a plea to return to past modes of behaviour which were also unbalanced but for human beings to learn to be guided by what is real rather than what is desired to be real. The current state of affairs is too far advanced for deviation from that course to be likely at any time soon but I write these words for anyone, male or female, who might be open to them."

* The equality referred to here is one of spiritual worth as mentioned in the Divine Femininity essay.

Divine Femininity

Someone has objected to my recent post Satanic Feminism. I'm not sure on exactly what grounds but it may be the juxtaposition of the word Satanic with that of Feminism. I should say that this phrase was not of my making but the name of a book published by the Oxford University Press, the premise of which I was discussing. I should also say that I was approaching the subject, as everything on this blog, from a metaphysical point of view and considering what the spiritual origin of this radical revolution was.

For feminism was a radical revolution, overturning thousands of years of a cultural norm that existed more or less everywhere in the world. I don't think people today really appreciate that. We in the secular West are so used to it and take it so much for granted that we never question it but perhaps we should. A spiritually aware person, and especially a Christian, cannot fail to see that feminism arose concurrently with the rejection of God. It goes against traditional teaching of all religions which may be a bad thing or a good thing but surely gives us valid grounds to examine its origins more deeply than we normally do.

My contention would be that a change in consciousness that was of divine inspiration and had an evolutionary purpose was hijacked by a counter-evolutionary force. Around 250 years ago developments that had been gathering pace started to come to full expression. A new form of consciousness, one that had appeared here and there for hundreds of years in pioneers of humanity, began to spread much more widely and impact the whole of society and culture. This was when the 'I' became fully aware of itself and of its ability to think and to act. No longer part of a tribe or group, it was now a full individual as a consequence of which it was spiritually cut off from the rest of the universe. A famous precursor of this form of consciousness would be the figure of Hamlet, often called the first modern person, but now it spread throughout all human beings, especially, to begin with, those in the West, and it led to the questioning of religion and the assertion of self. It had many benefits as people began to act independently, the development of science for one, but it also increased the sense of alienation. It was an advance because moving from group consciousness to self-consciousness is a necessary step to full and active participation in divine life but it also brought trouble in its wake as the separation from God became absolute. You cannot know yourself properly and be fully conscious of yourself if you retain the greater connection to universal life but when you lose the connection to universal life you may well be plunged into isolation and existential loneliness.

This change in consciousness lies behind everything of the last few centuries, good and bad. It lies behind feminism because it was experienced by both men and women equally who now had to negotiate life and being and relationships from a new perspective. Feminism from this perspective is an inevitable consequence of evolutionary development. As women become more aware of themselves as full individuals in a similar way to men so their inner life changes and that means their outer life must change too.

So feminism in its raw essence and origin was not Satanic. But what if that change was captured and re-routed? There are two forces in the universe, not two equal forces because ultimately everything comes from God, but still two forces that are in opposition. There is the divine force that seeks to bring human beings to spiritual completion and there is a counter force that we call evil because it opposes good. It is principally spiritual evil which means it seeks to do spiritual harm and if we do not understand what spiritual good is we may have a problem understanding how spiritual evil works. One way it works is by consolidating the material and worldly so some things that appear good in material and worldly terms actually work against the true and ultimate good. The aim of this evil force is to separate from God, not temporarily as in the sense of being a self-centred individual but permanently. This tells us that the current stage of full individual consciousness carries risks because if that sense of self is over-stimulated and encouraged it can lead to a much wider and deeper separation from God and the true good. Self-centred individuality is like adolescence, a temporary phase that should act as a springboard to a deeper adult engagement with God, but unfortunately the whole process has been derailed and we have got stuck and embedded in that phase. This has been due to interference from demonic sources but also, it has to be said, our own spiritual weakness.

This is the sense in which feminism can be described as Satanic as in the book cited earlier. A natural and healthy and spiritually positive change was hijacked and its material elements pushed and promoted while its spiritual ones were largely ignored, suppressed or denied. This means that the worldly ego was appealed to and its weaknesses exploited, while the redirecting of the ego to spiritual awakening, proper spiritual awakening I should stress because there are many forms which are to do with the ego self-medicating, failed to take place. Sunshine and rain cause both nourishing fruits and poisonous weeds to grow, depending on the receiving soil and the seeds that lie therein. A downpouring of spiritual energy can be reacted to by the soul or the ego depending on which one the subject is more attuned to. It can also be mis-channeled by the counter-evolutionary forces which can be identified under the traditional name of Satan, and this was what occurred.

What should have happened was what I mentioned in the earlier essay which was the development of a deeper understanding of both masculinity and femininity in their spiritual and creative aspects. If men and women had responded to spiritual energy spiritually they would have opened themselves up to their true spiritual archetypal qualities as man and woman, and this would have built on the Law and the Prophets rather than doing away with them which is the correct path of spiritual development. Feminism as we now know it is a perversion of a good. That is, its origins do lie in a certain truth but that truth has been corrupted.

For what it's worth, my understanding of man and woman and the relationship between them is based on the traditional Christian one qualified by an awareness of the recent development of consciousness, but this should have had an evolutionary impact rather than the revolutionary one it did have. Man and Woman are the two fundamental pillars of creation, equal in spiritual worth, different in spiritual function. The Satanic element of feminism is the confusion of worth and function.

You see, it is a metaphysical matter not a political or social or even a human, in the sense we now think of human, one. That is why people whose worldview is based on the ethos of modernity and secularism will not understand it. To such people a position such as the one I have outlined here will seem bad because it conflicts with their idea of good. But if you lack metaphysical understanding you cannot even know what the real good is. To learn about the true feminine mysteries discarded and rejected by feminism I would recommend a book written from the Catholic perspective by Alice von Hildebrand called Man and Woman: A Divine Invention. There is a divine femininity but it is not to be found in feminism.

Table Talk by Coleridge

The excerpts below are quotes from Table Talk by Samuel Taylor Coleridge which consists of recollections of his conversations published after his death by his nephew Henry Nelson Coleridge. I came across the first one recently and thought it very pertinent to our present time, particularly with relevance to the reaction during the recent health scare. So I looked through an online version of the book and found it full of similar pithy observations, a few of which I reproduce here with an occasional comment in italics

 

 There is the love of the good for the good’s sake, and the love of the truth for the truth’s sake. I have known many, especially women, love the good for the good’s sake; but very few, indeed, and scarcely one woman, love the truth for the truth’s sake. Yet without the latter, the former may become, as it has a thousand times been, the source of persecution of the truth – the pretext and motive of inquisitorial cruelty and party zealotry.

One should add that the real good is the same as the real true so it is the apparent or even the false good that people, especially women, prefer to the real good, and this is because it makes greater appeal to their feelings or to their desire for comfort, safety and general 'niceness'.

The true key to the declension of the Roman empire — which is  not to be found in all Gibbon's immense work — may be stated in  two words : — the imperial character overlaying, and finally destroying, the national character. Rome under Trajan was an empire without a nation. 

This is not exactly two words but one can see what he means, and it could be said to be what is happening to the West now.

 

Kant assigns three great races of mankind. If two individuals  of distinct races cross, a third, or tertium aliquid is invariably produced, different from either, as a white and a negro produce a mulatto. But when different varieties of the same race cross, the offspring is according to what we call chance ; it is now like one,  now like the other parent. Note this, when you see the children of any couple of distinct European complexions, — as English and Spanish, German and Italian, Russian and Portuguese, and so on. 

I have noticed this in people of my acquaintance.

 

There are two principles in every European and Christian state: Permanency and Progression. In the civil wars of the seventeenth century in England, which are as new and fresh now as they were a hundred and sixty years ago, and will be so for ever to us, these two principles came to a struggle. It was natural that the great and the good of the nation should be found in the ranks of either side. 

Many of the present problems are caused by the abandonment of what Coleridge calls the sense of Permanency.

 

Either we have an immortal soul, or we have not. If we have not, we are beasts; the first and wisest of beasts, it may be; but still true beasts. We shall only differ in degree, and not in kind;  just as the elephant differs from the slug. But by the concession of all the materialists of all the schools, or almost all, we are not of the same kind as beasts — and this also we say from our own consciousness. Therefore, methinks, it must be the possession of a soul within us that makes the difference. 

Bring back the use of the word 'methinks'.

 

This is not a logical age. A friend lately gave me some political pamphlets of the times of Charles I and the Cromwellate. In them the premises are frequently wrong, but the deductions are almost always legitimate; whereas, in the writings of the present day, the premises are commonly sound, but the conclusions false. I think a great deal of commendation is due to the University of Oxford for preserving the study of logic in the schools. It is a great mistake to suppose geometry any substitute for it. 

You could apply this to our age in the sense that reasoned discourse stripped of ideology is becoming rarer, but I suspect that could have been said of many other times too.

 

St. John's logic is Oriental, and consists chiefly in position and parallel; whilst St. Paul displays all the intricacies of the Greek system.

The mystic and the philosopher.

 

The first three Gospels show the history, that is, the fulfilment of  the prophecies in the facts. St. John declares explicitly the doctrine, oracularly, and without comment, because, being pure reason, it can only be proved by itself. For Christianity proves itself, as the sun is seen by its own light. Its evidence is involved in its existence. St Paul writes more particularly for the dialectic understanding; and proves those doctrines, which were capable of such proof, by common logic. 

A proof of Christianity lies in the fact that it offers us more than we could have ever hoped for or imagined.

 

St. John used the term Logos technically. Philo-Judaeus had so used it several years before the probable date of the composition of this Gospel; and it was commonly understood amongst the Jewish Rabbis at that time, and afterwards, of the manifested God. The Jewish Church understood the Messiah to be a divine person. Philo expressly cautions against anyone's supposing the Logos to be a mere personification, or symbol. He says the Logos is a substantial, self-existent Being. The Gnostics, as they were afterwards called, were a kind of Arians; and thought the Logos was an after-birth. They placed the Abyss and Silence before him. Therefore it was that St. John said, with emphasis, “ln the beginning was the Word." He was begotten in the first simultaneous burst of Godhead, if such an expression may be pardoned, in speaking of eternal existence. 

To assert that God is a Person is not a childish projection but the most advanced religious doctrine.

 

The national debt has, in fact, made more men rich than have a right to be so.

It certainly has and even more so today.

 

Pantheism and idolatry naturally end in each other; for all extremes meet.

As now when completely incompatible ideologies unite to contest the real.

Plato's works are logical exercises for the mind. Little that is positive is advanced in them. Socrates may be fairly represented by Plato in the more moral parts; but in all the metaphysical disquisitions it is Pythagoras.

It's a pity we know Plato by his nickname or we could talk of Aristocles (his real name) and Aristotle. Apparently he was given this nickname, which means broad as in broad-chested, by his wrestling coach. All philosophers should have a wrestling coach.

 

In fact, there are the popular, the sacerdotal, and the mysterious religions of Greece, represented roughly by Homer, Pindar, and Aeschylus. The ancients had no notion of the fall of man, though they had of his gradual degeneracy. Prometheus, in the old mythus, and for the most part in Aeschylus, is the Redeemer and the Devil jumbled together. 

An interesting insight.

"Most women have no character at all," said Pope, and meant it for satire. Shakespeare, who knew man and woman much better,  saw that it, in fact, was the perfection of woman to be characterless. Everyone wishes a Desdemona or Ophelia for a wife, — creatures who, though they may not always understand you, do always feel you, and feel with you.

If the highest state of matter is to reflect spirit perfectly you can see what he means here.

The man's desire is for the woman ; but the woman's desire is  rarely other than for the desire of the man. 

A generalisation but not without substance.

 

I cannot say I expect much from mere Egyptian antiquities. Everything really that is intellectually great in that country seems to me of Grecian origin.

Sometimes he gets it wrong. On the other hand (and see below), the Greeks did make rational what the Egyptians seemed only to understand intuitively.

 

There was, I conceive, one great Japetic original of language, under which Greek, Latin, and other European dialects, and, perhaps, Sanskrit, range as species. The Japetic race separated 

into two branches; one, with a tendency to migrate south-west, — Greeks, Italians, &c. ; and the other northwest, — Goths, Germans, Swedes, &c. The Hebrew is Semitic. 

Japetic means descending from Noah's son Japheth and seems to refer here to Indo-Europeans.

 

I more clearly see that the doctrine of Trinal Unity (that is to say, the Trinity) is an absolute truth transcending my human means of understanding it.

 

The result of my system will be to show that, so far from the world being a goddess in petticoats, it is rather the Devil in a strait waistcoat. 

More true than ever today.

 

The controversy of the Nominalists and Realists was one of the greatest and most important that ever occupied the human mind. They were both right and both wrong. They each maintained 

opposite poles of the same truth; which truth neither of them saw, for want of a higher premise. 

I see what he means but I would still place the Realists above the Nominalists. The latter could be said to be the origin of modern materialism.

A Fall  of some sort or other — the creation, as it were, of the non- absolute — is the fundamental postulate of the moral history of man. Without this hypothesis, man is unintelligible; with it, every phenomenon is explicable. The mystery itself is too profound for human insight.

The doctrine of the Fall makes sense of so much.

A woman's head is usually over ears in her heart Man seems to have been designed for the superior being of the two; but as things are, I think women are generally better creatures than men. They have, 

taken universally, weaker appetites and weaker intellects, but they have much stronger affections. A man with a bad heart has been sometimes saved by a strong head; but a corrupt woman is lost for ever. 

The tragedy of feminism which poses as a liberator but actually corrupts.

The Trinity is the Will; 2. the Reason, or Word; 3. the Love, or Life. As we distinguish these three, so we must unite them in one God. The union must be as transcendent as the distinction. 

If a man's conduct cannot be ascribed to the angelic, nor to the bestial within him, what is there left for us to refer it to, but the fiendish ? Passion without any appetite is fiendish. 

Demons exist.

The best way to bring a clever young man who has become sceptical and unsettled to reason, is to make him feel something. Love, if sincere and unworldly, will, in nine instances out of ten, bring him to a sense and assurance of something real and actual ; and that sense alone will make him think to a sound purpose, instead of dreaming that he is thinking. 

We must distinguish between feeling and feelings.

 

Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason and imagination, rarely or never.

 

I, for one, do not call the sod under my feet my country. But language, religion, laws, government, blood, — identity in these makes men of one country. 

Immigration without proper integration is a disaster. This is why it should be kept to reasonable limits, limits which it has far exceeded in Western nations in recent years.

 

The Pilgrim's Progress is composed in the lowest style of English, without slang or false grammar. If you were to polish it, you would at once destroy the reality of the vision. For works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain. 

 

Party men always hate a slightly differing friend more than a downright enemy. I quite calculate on my being one day or other holden in worse repute by many Christians than the Unitarians and open infidels. It must be undergone by everyone who loves the truth for its own sake beyond all other things. 

It's more important to be on the right side than to believe exactly the same things.

People may say what they please about the gradual improvement of the Arts. It is not true of the substance. The Arts and the Muses both spring forth in the youth of nations, like Minerva from the front of

 Jupiter, all armed: manual dexterity may, indeed, be improved by practice. 

The difference between inspiring impulse and execution.

I hold all claims set up for Egypt having given birth to the Greek philosophy to be groundless. It sprang up in Greece itself, and began with physics only. Then it took in the idea of a living cause and made Pantheism out of the two. Socrates introduced ethics, and taught duties; and then, finally, Plato asserted or reasserted the idea of a God the maker of the world. The measure of human philosophy was thus full, when Christianity came to add what before was wanting - assurance. After this again, the Neo-Platonists joined Theurgy with philosophy, which ultimately degenerated into magic and mere mysticism. 

Egypt probably did not have an intellectualised philosophy as such but it did have a highly developed knowledge of mysticism and magic. Otherwise this is not a bad history of religion in the West.

 

This is just a small selection from the first half of the book. I may do another post on the remainder but it serves to remind us that Coleridge was much more than just a romantic poet.

 

Satanic Feminism

 This is the title of what looks an interesting book but I haven't read it and I'm not going to because it is an academic treatise and I am more concerned with the basic thesis than a trawl through history to make a point. The sub-title is Lucifer as the Liberator of Women in Nineteenth-Century Culture, and the book appears to be about the link between feminism and Satan which goes right back to Eve. As far as I can tell, the book is not written from a Christian point of view and no moral conclusions are drawn. If anything, I would imagine this particular Lucifer is cast as the Promethean hero who awakens consciousness as he is regarded in certain schools of occultism, but it more likely that it is simply a scholarly look at an obscure subject.

Obscure it may be in the overall context of 19th century history but it has had a massive impact on the modern world. Feminism according to the official narrative is a natural result of Enlightenment concern with egalitarianism and reason, and a consequence of the changes in consciousness that accentuated individuality and the sense of agency. But what if it is also part of an attack on the human race and attempt to unmake the natural order of creation by something that we may as well call by the traditional name of Satan? For Christians this is an evil force that acts against the will of God and seeks to increase disorder, chaos and, ultimately, bring about spiritual dissolution, but for some people it is a liberating force that brings freedom from oppression. There are reasonable grounds for thinking it likes to present itself in this way and make an appeal thereby to human egotism even if those who succumb to the temptation offered would cast the appeal as one to strength and individuality.

Is the devil the evil being he is depicted as in Christianity or is he a misunderstood champion of universal life who seeks to bring about evolutionary advancement in those who are bold enough to accept his challenges? Does he liberate us from servitude or does he lure us to destruction? (Sidenote: You can see how this could also be applied to feminism.) The answer to a proper spiritual sensibility should be obvious. The Christian view is the correct one and those who fall for his blandishments do so because of their own egotism. They are greedy for power and he offers it to them but the old stories tell us that, while he may give something in the short term, it is of worldly benefit only and he always claims something in return, and that something is the soul.

The devil always prefers a half-truth to a lie. It is much more persuasive, much more seductive. The truth that really is in it can blind us to the lie that is smuggled in and contaminates the whole idea like a worm in an apple. Where feminism is concerned, the time had come for certain changes in line with the changes in consciousness, but they should still have been in the overall context of the eternal nature of things. That may evolve but it does not change fundamentally. Just as feminists are wrong in their pursuit of equality (which anyway is often just a front for seeking to dominate men) so dyed-in-the-wool traditionalists are mistaken in thinking that the situation should revert to a time when women were regarded as purely passive and completely subordinate to men - if there ever really was such a time which I doubt. What was required was a deeper understanding of both masculinity and femininity in their spiritual and creative aspects which can be gained by meditation on the relationship between spirit and matter or life and form which relationship contains both a hierarchical element and a complementary one, and is above all the source of creativity. Modern feminism is like an attempt to make two suns from a sun and a moon or even, in its more demented aspects, an attempt by the moon to swap places with the sun. It turns what should be a loving relationship of two complementary halves making a whole greater than the sum of its parts into a competitive rivalry which is spiritually destructive to them both.

If Satan really is the inspiration behind feminism there are only two options to which I have already referred. By being an attack on the human form, it is an attack on the human soul. An attempt to separate us from the reality of our being and thereby separate us from God. This would be the Christian view. Or else Satan is the great liberator who comes to free us from oppression, first women from men and then all humanity from a capricious and tyrannical deity. That is how he would depict himself but this freedom is an illusion because it makes us slaves to our ego and worldly desires. The feminist is betraying her higher, spiritual self to further the ends of her earthly ego. She is reverting to Eve or even Lilith when she should be following Mary.

Who is Sophia? What is She?

 Modernity was largely born out of the Reformation. This was the manifestation in the religious domain, which up to that point had always been the primary domain, of the new consciousness, one with a greater focus on self, the rational mind and the merely human. It was a step forward because it increased our powers of agency and self-determination. It moved us from a largely passive to an increasingly active mode of participation in the world. This brought many advantages but also many problems because human beings, first in the vanguard and then more or less everyone, were no longer directed by an external authority rooted in the real (cf. the instinctive nature of the animal kingdom) but by their own selves, and those selves were, and still are, limited by and to the phenomenal world of sensory experience, though for some journeys into the realm of abstract thought were possible. But even these were largely restricted by the nature of thought centred on itself. Greater freedom and creativity became open to us but the price was the loss of connection to everything that is summed up in the word 'God'. Our horizons became extended but our vision contracted. You might say we saw further along the East/West axis but as a consequence the North/South axis collapsed. And yet this was absolutely necessary if we were to advance from the state of a being embedded in creation to one able to move out of that and manipulate creation ourselves. This was once again eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and it meant we could become gods, if we did this with full recognition of the will of God and in line with his natural and spiritual order, or, failing that and acting according to our own will and its own ends and glorification, devils.

With the Reformation and its rejection of authority the seeds were sown for every man to become his own pope. Eventually every man should be his own pope but the pope is subject to God and if every man becomes not his own pope but his own god then you have crossed the line from saint to demon. That line can be thin sometimes and unfortunately it does seem that humanity as a whole has not succeeded in avoiding it at the present time. We are called to be individual but not individualistic. We are called to be gods in creation, able in the fullness of time to create worlds ourselves, but never to be our own gods. A god must serve the will of God or he becomes a devil.

The Protestant Reformation created the modern world which is why the main drivers of modernity, until its corruption, were those countries in which that ethos was most fully embedded. The spirit of the times was everywhere and that spirit created outcomes in most places but still the Protestant countries were at the centre of it all. One of the defining characteristics of Protestantism was its rejection, either overtly or in effect, of the supernatural. While this meant it could focus its energies more fully on the material plane as was intended by the powers that be, in the short term anyway, it also meant it became spiritually dry and unfulfilling. Religion without the supernatural becomes legalistic and limited to morality. It has no real life or colour or flavour or joy or mystery or power to uplift and inspire. It's an arranged marriage rather than one founded on love. Protestantism also demoted the Mother of God to just a mother. It lost touch with the Divine Feminine.

When the Romantic movement arose at the end of the 18th century, as a reaction against the rationalistic spirit of the Enlightenment and the reassertion of imagination, poets, artists, writers and philosophers rediscovered the Divine Feminine. This might be identified as the soul of things as God the Father is the spirit. It is associated with beauty, mystery and love as opposed to will, life and being. It is also associated with wisdom and in this aspect the Divine Feminine is identified as Sophia.

Sophia is the Divine Feminine in her most elevated mode of being. According to some she actually incarnated in the Virgin Mary. A debate has long been whether she is created or uncreated with some theorists equating her with the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity. This might seem logical were it not for the fact that it contradicts scripture which describes her as a created feminine image of God. The very first created being but still a created being. In beautiful language chapter 8 of Proverbs extols her thus: 

"The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works before his deeds of old; 

I was formed long ages ago, at the very beginning, when the world came to be.

When there were no watery depths, I was given birth, when there were no springs overflowing with water;

before the mountains were settled in place, before the hills, I was given birth,

before he made the world or its fields or any of the dust of the earth.

I was there when he set the heavens in place, when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep,

when he established the clouds above and fixed securely the fountains of the deep,

when he gave the sea its boundary so the waters would not overstep his command,
 and when he marked out the foundations of the earth.

Then I was constantly at his side.
 I was filled with delight day after day, 
rejoicing always in his presence,

rejoicing in his whole world
 and delighting in mankind."

The apocryphal Book of Wisdom in chapter 7 supports this when it says of Sophia that: "She is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her. For she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness."

These Old Testament quotes can be taken as authoritative or not. They certainly have a poetic truth. However, part of the modern mindset when applied to the spiritual quest is that nothing can be taken as unquestionable just on say so. We must always use our own intelligence and intuition though making sure it is intuition and not wishful thinking. But associating the Divine Feminine with the third person of the Trinity goes against the fundamental Christian teaching that Mary, who is the embodiment of Sophia and the Divine Feminine, conceived Jesus by power of the Holy Spirit.

One can see why the Protestant suppression of the Divine Feminine might cause her to come back in unbalanced or exaggerated forms, action and reaction etc, but still one should know that there is a feminine dimension to divine reality without going to the extreme of feminising God as making the Holy Spirit feminine does do. Seeing Sophia as the first of the Lord's works gives us a clue as to where the Divine Feminine might arise but she is not just the first created being. She is the actual foundation principle of creation. As substance and even space she is the Universal Mother and World Soul who receives the image of God and who ultimately becomes the Heavenly Bride or Divine Spouse. She must arise before anything can be created because everything is created out of her body.

Going back to her source, she could be said to derive from the receptive nature of God which arises when the positive principle of pure act takes expression as its complementary opposite, creation necessarily being founded on duality since a world of subject alone cannot be known. You cannot say she comes after the male principle since the two must arise together as one suggests the other, but she is a reflection of God (as Wisdom says) once God moves into creative/dualistic mode from his original uncreated form, the Ain Soph or hidden God that is at the back of and beyond everything. This is why she is, as Mary, her incarnation in human form, says, submissive to God. Her will is to do his will not the other way around for although the two arise together in time, they arise out of his pre-temporal being. 

I think this insight would resolve the difficulty with feminism which is right to see the feminine as integral to divine reality, there from the very beginning as in "let us make man in our image" i.e. male and female, but fails to see there is still a hierarchical distinction. Sophia is the very first of everything but she still comes from God, created as his Divine Consort.

From God the Creator comes before anything else Sophia who is the light and glory of God and who comes into being when He expresses Himself in creation. She is the mirror in which He sees himself. She becomes His Bride and could even be said to the primary reason for creation because in herself she sums up and includes the whole of creation as it is in relation to God. At the end of days when all is accomplished, she will sit in glory alongside Him on His heavenly throne, created by God out of Himself but now by His great love made equal to Him.

I have used this image before on this blog because it contains so much. It comes from Robert Fludd's History of the Two Worlds (Macrocosm and Microcosm) and can be interpreted in various ways. In the context of this post it shows Sophia as Queen of Creation. She presides over all the created worlds, outer and inner, shown by the concentric circles but is linked by the chain attached to her right hand to the hand of God who is hidden in the cloud above the circle of angels. The image shows the relationship of God to Sophia and Sophia to the universe. He is the Creator, she the Creation.