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Last Updated on August 5, 2015

two sides ~For a considerable time the world has for the most part put aside worship of the Mother aspect of Creation. Patriarchal religions have played a significant part in our collective ignorance of the Mother for the past few thousand years. Considerable research suggests that Western European culture revered the Goddess and the Feminine as much or potentially more than the male God(s) and Masculine from around 30,000 years BCE ago up until a few thousand years BCE. Over the last few decades an increasing awareness and appreciation of the Mother aspect has been relatively quickly weaving its way back into the collective consciousness.

The Mother is the fabric of the universe, the substance, and energy of that substance. She is like the thread that is woven into a carpet. Father is the inspiration, the intent, the word. He is the design that is followed in the waving of the carpet. The weaver is hidden, invisible, formless, and yet ever present. The weaver follows the design set for by the word or intent of the Masculine principle, and works with the material (mater = mother) of the Feminine to bring the great carpet into form.

Space—the spacious quality of manifestation—is the meeting place of mother and father. The spaciousness is the womb, carefully held by and within the substance of the mother. Without form space has no definition, to variation, and without space there is no form. The two are completely interdependant.

The Father sends his seed, a package of intent, into that Yoni of the mother, and if it successfully combines with the ovum of receptivity and prior wisdom given forth by the Mother, the two co-joined will make their ascent into the spacious womb. That which is in alignment with Life, as determined by the Mother and the invisible intelligence of her spacious womb, is brought into being, and born forth like fruit into the worlds of form and formlessness.

When Man lives in alignment solely or predominantly to the Father principle, without equal alignment to the mother principle he runs the very real and perhaps inevitable risk of bringing into being that which is not in alignment with Life, as determined by ancestral and collective wisdom of the mother.

Fire Dance for Mother EarthOf course we can’t go infinitely astray, because the substance from which Man (human beings; male/female) creates his machinations is the substance of the Mother. However much we might might work out of alignment with the Mother, she will eventually and always triumph for nothing Man creates is without the substance and presence of the Mother.

Quietly, patiently, she will give her off-spring the room to play, to make mistakes, and to learn and grow and evolve. But like any Mother true to her role, she will eventually discipline the child that runs amok.

Within the Toltec tradition of which I am familiar, we speak of Masculine and Feminine awareness. In brief, the Masculine exists within the Known relative to the Feminine. The Feminine has one foot in the world of the Known and one foot in the Unknown. The Known is the manifest. The Unknown is the manifesting, or that which is yet to manifest. The Unknowable is beyond either and beyond the dualistic split of awareness into the Masculine and Feminine polarities. It is the Non-manifest.

Old map

Old map (Photo credit: Photoshop Roadmap)

One role of the Masculine is to map out the Known. The Unknown is constantly emerging through through the womb of the Feminine—the space which acts like a portal into the Unknown within her—into the Known. The Masculine maps this out and gives it place within the existing map of the Known. But this mapping is absolutely dependant on the Feminine if it is to be productive and fruitful. When we continue to map out the Known whilst simultaneously denying and ignoring the Unknown our understanding and appreciation of Life becomes stagnant and it decays. With only a limited access to Life—jointly the Form and Formless aspects of Life—due to our turning away from the Unknown, the Masculine starts to break down the Known into its parts in order to continue mapping. This is the birth of reductionistic thinking.

Deutsch: Yin Yang

Deutsch: Yin Yang (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Masculine can’t help but do what it does, namely to map out. But its only access to the Unknown is via the Feminine. Without access to the Unknown how do we continue to evolve our map of the World? We start pulling apart the existing Known in order to discover more and more about it. Yet eventually this path leads to such a high degree of reductionism and specialisation that humanity loses all appreciation for the holistic and integrated nature of Life. As a result our approach to Life becomes in increasingly destructive; disintegrative rather than integrative. Destruction rather than construction. We distort the in-form-ation of Life to such a degree than it become dis-in-form-ation, and in this way we lead ourselves astray with great gusto and zeal.

Now is the time to return to the ways of the mother. Only then will humanity come to appreciate the beauty and necessity of the Unknown. Rather than fear the Unknown we will embrace it for the mystery that it is, and for the life-giving fruits of wisdom it provides. The Masculine and Feminine principles can not function without one another.

They are completely interdependent, as depicted by the Chinese symbol for Yin and Yang.

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