To say Beauty is to say Love; and it is known how important this idea of Love is in all religions and all spiritual alchemies. The reason for this is that Love is the tendency towards Union: this tendency can be a movement, either towards the Immutable, the Absolute, or towards the Limitless, the Infinite; on the plane of human relations, a particular love is the support for Love as such; and the love of man for woman can be compared to the liberating tendency towards the Divine Infinitude — woman personifying All-Possibility — whereas the love of woman for man is comparable to the stabilizing tendency towards the Divine Center, which offers all certitude and all security; however, each partner participates in the other’s position, given that each is a human being and that in this respect the sexual scission is secondary. As regards sexuality in itself, the Sufi Ibn Arabi   deems sexual union to be, in the natural order, the most adequate image of Supreme Knowledge: of Extinction in Allâh of the "Knower through Allâh." Essays Norms and Paradoxes in Spiritual Alchemy  

The majority of moderns who claim to understand art are convinced that Byzantine or Romanesque art is in no way superior to modern art, and that a Byzantine or Romanesque Virgin resembles Mary no more than do her naturalistic images, in fact rather the contrary. The answer is, however, quite simple: the Byzantine Virgin - which traditionally goes back to Saint Luke and the Angels - is infinitely closer to the ’truth’ of Mary than a naturalistic image, which of necessity is always that of another woman. Only one of two things is possible: either the artist presents an absolutely correct portrait of the Virgin from a physical point of view, in which case it will be necessary for the artist to have seen the Virgin, a condition which obviously cannot be fulfilled - setting aside the fact that all naturalistic painting is an abuse - or else the artist will present a perfectly adequate symbol of the Virgin, but in this case physical resemblance, without being absolutely excluded, is no longer at all in question. It is this second solution - the only one that makes sense - which is realized in icons; what they do not express by means of a physical resemblance, they express by the abstract but immediate language of symbolism, a language which is built up of precision and imponderables both together. Thus the icon, in addition to the beatific power which is inherent in it by reason of its sacramental character, transmits the holiness or inner reality of the Virgin and hence the universal reality of which the Virgin herself is an expression; in contributing both to a state of contemplation and to a metaphysical reality, the icon becomes a support of intellection, whereas a naturalistic image transmits only the fact - apart from its obvious and inevitable lie - that Mary was a woman. It is true that in the case of a particular icon it may happen that the proportions and features are those of the living Virgin, but such a likeness, if it really came to pass, would be independent of the symbolism of the image and could only be the result of a special inspiration, no doubt an unconscious one on the part of the artist himself. Naturalistic art could moreover be legitimate up to a certain point if it was used exclusively to set on record the features of the saints, since the contemplation of saints (the Hindu darshan) can be a very precious help in the spiritual way, owing to the fact that their outward appearance conveys, as it were, the perfume of their spirituality; but the use in this limited manner of a partial and ’disciplined’ naturalism corresponds only to a very remote possibility. sophiaperennis: CONCERNING FORMS IN ART

When the arts are enumerated the art of dress is too often forgotten though it none the less has an importance as great, or almost as great, as architecture. Doubtless no civilization has ever produced summits in every field. Thus the Arab genius, made up of virility and resignation, has produced a masculine dress of unsurpassed nobility and sobriety, whereas it has neglected feminine dress, which is destined in Islam, not to express the ’eternal feminine’ as does Hindu dress, but to hide woman’s seductive charms. The Hindu genius, which in a certain sense divinizes the ’wife-mother’, has on the other hand created a feminine dress unsurpassable in its beauty, its dignity and its femininity. One of the most expressive and one of the least-known forms of dress is that of the Red Indians, with its rippling fringes and its ornaments of a wholly primordial symbolism; here man appears in all the solar glory of the hero, and woman in the proud modesty of her impersonal function. sophiaperennis: AESTHETICS AND SYMBOLISM IN ART AND NATURE

With all deference to certain ancient moralists who had difficulty reconciling femininity with deiformity, it is nonetheless quite clear that the latter essentially implies the former, and this for simply logical as well as metaphysical reasons. Even without knowing that femininity derives from an "Eternal Feminine" of transcendent order, one is obliged to take note of the fact that woman, being situated like the male in the human state, is deiform because this state is deiform. Thus it is not astonishing that a tradition as "misogynist" as Buddhism finally consented - within the Mahayâna at least - to make use of the symbolism of the feminine body, which would be meaningless and even harmful if this body, or if femininity in itself, did not comprise a spiritual message of the first order; the Buddhas (and Bodhisattvas) do not save solely through doctrine, but also through their suprahuman beauty, according to the Tradition; now who says beauty, says implicitly femininity; the beauty of the Buddha is necessarily that of Mâyâ or of Tara. sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body

The "misogyny" of Buddhism is explained by the fact that its method, at its origin and in general at least, essentially appeals to the characteristics of masculine psychology, which is to say that it operates basically with intellection, abstraction, negation, strength and with what Amidism calls "power of oneself’; the same observation applies, if not to Hinduism as such, at least to certain of its schools and doubtless to its general perspective, which perspective culminates, as in Buddhism, in the excessive, and at the very least schematic, idea that woman as such cannot attain Deliverance, that she must first be reborn in a masculine body and follow the methods of men. Ancient discussions on the question of knowing whether or not woman possesses a "soul," have an analogous meaning: it is a question not of the immortal soul, but of the intellect in its most specifically masculine aspect. However that may be, what is decisive is not that woman be capable concretely of given methods, it is simply that, being human, she is clearly capable of sanctity. sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body

There is yet another reason for the antifeminine ostracism of certain traditional perspectives, apart from the question of qualification for a given yoga deemed unique, namely the idea that the male alone is the whole man. There are two ways in fact of situating the sexes, either in a horizontal or in a vertical sense: according to the first perspective, man would be to the right and woman to the left; according to the second, man would be above and woman below. On the one hand, man reflects Atmâ according to Absoluteness, and woman reflects it according to Infinitude; on the other hand, man alone is Atmâ and woman is Mâyâ; [NA: In the various Scriptures there are passages which would allow one to believe that this is so, but which have to be understood in the light of other passages which remove their exclusive quality. As is known, sacred Books proceed, not by nuanced formulations, but by antinomic affirmations; as it is impossible to accuse them of contradiction, it is necess ary to draw the consequences that their antinomianism imposes.] but the second conception is relatively true only on condition that one also accepts the first; now the first conception takes precedence over the second, for the fact that woman is human clearly takes precedence over the fact that she is not a male. [NA: The Shâstras teach that women who serve their husbands seeing in them their God, attain a masculine rebirth and then attain Deliverance, which evidently relates to the maximal mode of the minimal possibility for woman.] The observation that specifically virile spiritual methods are scarcely suited to the feminine psychism becomes dogmatic in virtue of the second perspective which we have just mentioned; and one could perhaps also make the point that social conventions, in the traditional surroundings in question here, tend to create - at least on the surface - the feminine type that fits them ideologically and practically; humanity is so made that a social anthropology is never a perfect good, that it is on the contrary always a "lesser evil," or in any case an approximation. [NA: As for Hinduism, it is appropriate to take into account the fact that, in this ambience, the concern for purity and the protection of things sacred is extreme, sacerdotal pedantism accomplishing the rest and this in respect of woman as well as human categories deemed impure. However, and this proves the prodigious "pluralism" of the Hindu spirit: "A mother is more venerable than a thousand fathers" (Mânava Dharma Shâstra, II, 145); and similarly, in Tantrism: "Whosoever sees the sole of a woman’s foot, let him consider it as that of the spiritual master" (guru) (Kubjika-Tantra).] sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body

It is one of the paradoxes of Buddhism that even the Amidist way, although founded on Mercy and the "power of the Other" - not upon metaphysical meditation and the "power of oneself"- accepted, through pure conventionalism and without insisting thereon, this idea of woman having to be reborn as man; this is all the more contradictory in that the Mahayâna - in Lamaism above all - has peopled its pantheon with feminine Divinities. The same paradox exists in Hinduism, mutatis mutandis, wherein one of the greatest personalities of Shivaism is a woman, Laila Yògishwari; it is unthinkable that a "masculine body" would add anything whatever to her from the point of view of spiritual wholeness. [NA: Let us also mention Maitreyi, wife of the rishi Yajnavalkya, who, according to the Brihadaranyaka-Upanishad  , "knew how to speak of Brahma," whereas the second wi fe of the sage " had scarcely more than the spirit of a woman"; and similarly the feminine rishis Apalâ and Visvavâra, both of whom revealed Vedic hymns; or the queen Chudala, wife and guru of the king Shikhidhwaja, who according to the Yoga-Vasishtha had " realized Atmâ."] sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body

There is not only the beauty of the adult, there is also that of the child as our mention of the Child Jesus suggests. First of all, it must be said that the child, being human, participates in the same symbolism and in the same aesthetic expressivity as do his parents - we are speaking always of man as such and not of particular individuals - and then, that childhood is nevertheless a provisional state and does not in general have the definitive and representative value of maturity. [NA: But it can when the individual value of the child visibly over rides his state of immaturity; notwithstanding the fact that childhood is in itself an incomplete state which points towards its own completion.] In metaphysical symbolism, this provisional character expresses relativity: the child is what "comes after" his parents, he is the reflection of Atmâ in Mâyâ, to some degree and according to the ontological or cosmological level in view; or it is even Mâyâ itself if the adult is Atmâ. [NA: Polarized into "Necessary Being" and "All-Possibility."] But from an altogether different point of view, and according to inverse analogy, the key to which is given by the seal of Solomon, [NA: When a tree is mirrored in a lake, its top is at the bottom, but the image is always that of a tree; the analogy is inverse in the first relationship and parallel in the second. Analogies between the divine order and the cosmic order always comprise one or the other of these relationships.] the child represents on the contrary what "was before," namely what is simple, pure, innocent, primordial and close to the Essence, and this is what its beauty expresses; [NA: We do not say that every human individual is beautiful when he is a child, but we start from the idea that man, child or not, is beautiful to the extent that he is physically what he ought to be.] this beauty has all the charm of promise, of hope and of blossoming, at the same time as that of a Paradise not yet lost; it combines the proximity of the Origin with the tension towards the Goal. And it is for that reason that childhood constitutes a necessary aspect of the integral man, therefore in conformity with the divine Intention: the man who is fully mature always keeps, in equilibrium with wisdom, the qualities of simplicity and freshness, of gratitude and trust, that he possessed in the springtime of his life. [NA: "Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." (Matthew   18:3)] Since we have just mentioned the principle of inverse analogy, we may here connect it with its application to femininity: even though a priori femininity is subordinate to virility, it also comprises an aspect which makes it superior to a given aspect of the masculine pole; for the divine Principle has an aspect of unlimitedness, virginal mystery and maternal mercy which takes precedence over a certain more relative aspect of determination, logical precision and implacable justice. [NA: According to Tacitus, the Germans discerned something sacred and visionary in women. The fact that in German the sun (die Sonne) is feminine whereas the moon (der Mond) is masculine, bears witness to the same perspective.] Seen thus, feminine beauty appears as an initiatic wine in the face of the rationality represented in certain respects by the masculine body. [NA: Mahâyanic art represents Prajnâpâramitâ, the "Perfection of Gnosis," in feminine form; likewise, Prajnâ, liberating Knowledge, appears as a woman in the face of Upâya, the doctrinal system or the art of convincing, which is represented as masculine. The Buddhists readily point out that the Bodhisattvas, in themselves asexual, have the power to take a feminine form as they do any other form; now one would like to know for what reason they do so, for if the feminine form can produce such a great good, it is because it is intrinsically good; otherwise there would be no reason for a Bodhisattva to assume it.] sophiaperennis: The Message of the Human Body

It happens frequently that anglicized Hindus, as also other Asiatics, mention in the same breath names like Jesus and Gandhi, Shankara   and Kierkegaard  , Buddha and Goethe  , the Holy Virgin and Mrs. X, or affirm that such and such a German musician was a yogi or that the French Revolution was a mystical movement, etc. This fact reveals a total ignorance of certain differences of category which are none the less of capital importance — we would readily say differences of ’reality’ — as well as a strange lack of sensibility; it also shows a tendency to simplification, due doubtless to the more or less unconscious idea that only ’realization’ counts and not ’theory’, whence a completely misplaced and profitless contempt for the objective discerning of phenomena... A typical example of neo-Hindu deviation is the Swami Yogananda, founder in the United States of a "Self-Realisation Fellowship’(SRF!), the president (!) of which is — or was — an American woman. On the other hand we find the ’discerning of spirits’ present to an eminent degree in a man like [Ananda] Coomaraswamy, and we are not alone in hoping that his influence will grow in his own country. (Gnosis Divine Wisdom, p. 57-58, note 1). sophiaperennis: The Sophia Perennis and Neo-spiritualism

Christian theology, by concerning itself with sin and seeing a seductress in Eve in particular and in woman in general, has been led to evaluate the feminine sex with a maximum of pessimism. According to some, it is man alone and not woman who was made in the image of God, whereas the Bible   affirms, not only that God created man in His image, but also that "male and female created He them", which has been misinterpreted with much ingenuity.... A first proof — if proof be needed — that woman is divine image like man, is that in fact she is a human being like him; she is not vir or anër, but like him she is homo or anthropos; her form is human and consequently divine. Another proof — but a glance ought to suffice — resides in the fact that, in relation to man and on the erotic plane, woman assumes an almost divine function — similar to the one which man assumes in relation to woman — which would be impossible if she did not incarnate, not the quality of absoluteness, to be sure, but the complementary quality of infinitude; the Infinite being in a certain fashion the shakti of the Absolute.[Esoterism as Principle and as Way, p.135-136]. sophiaperennis: Femininity

... woman assumes, face to face with man, an aspect of Divinity: her nobility, compounded of beauty and virtue, is for man like a revelation of his own infinite essence and so of what he ’would wish to be’ because that is what he ’is’. [Castes and Races, p.34.] sophiaperennis: Femininity

Every religion necessarily integrates the feminine element — the "eternal feminine"(das Ewig Weibliche) if one will — into its system, either directly or indirectly; Christianity in practice deifies the Mother of Christ, despite exoteric reservations, namely the distinction between latria and hyperdulia. Islam for its part, and beginning with the Prophet, has consecrated femininity, on the basis of a metaphysics of deiformity; the secrecy surrounding woman, symbolized in the veil, basically signifies an intention of consecration. In Moslem eyes, woman, beyond her purely biological and social role, incarnate two poles, unitive "extinction" and "generosity", and these constitute from the spiritual point of view two means of overcoming the profane mentality, made as it is of outwardness, dispersion, egoism, hardness and boredom. The nobleness of soul that is or can be gained by this interpretation or utilization of the feminine element, far from being an abstract ideal, is perfectly recognizable in representative Moslems, those still rooted in authentic Islam. [NA: It is always this we have in view, and not so-called "revivals" which monstrously combine a Moslem formalism with modernist ideologies and tendencies.] [In the Face of the Absolute, p. 227-228]. sophiaperennis: Femininity

It is important... to note that woman, regarded by Christianity as the preeminent vehicle of temptation and sin, is spiritualized in the person of the Holy Virgin, mother of the life-giving Word; if Eve, issued from Adam, symbolizes the fall, the Holy Virgin, from whom Christ issued, symbolizes victory over the serpent. sophiaperennis: Femininity

In Islam, woman is not regarded under her malefic aspect, since she is not involved in the fall of Adam; it is Iblis alone who causes the fall of the first couple and their exile from the earthly Paradise. In the conception of Jannah, "Garden" or Paradise, woman is spiritualized, not by virtue of an exceptional function analogous to that of "Co-Redemptress", but simply as the instrument of love, in the form of the Huris, "the gazelle-eyed"; besides, traditional Christian iconography nearly always represents angels with feminine features. It would be easy to give other and quite varied examples of the beatific symbolism of woman, for instance: Sita and Radha; the goddess Kali in the bhakti of Shri Ramakrishna; the wives of David  , Solomon, Muhammad  ; the knights’ ladies, such as Beatrice in the life and work of Dante  . [The Eye of the Heart, p. 95, note 1.] sophiaperennis: Femininity

The profound explanation of the myths of the "sinful" woman, "prisoner" of chthonic powers, "ravished" by a demon, "swallowed" by the earth, or even become infernal — Eve, Eurydice, Sita, Izanami, according to case — this explanation doubtless is to be fond in the scission between the male demiurge and the female demiurge, or between the center and the periphery of the cosmos; this periphery being envisaged then, not as the cosmic substance as such, which remains virgin in relation to its production, but as the totality of these productions; for it is the accidents, and not the substance, which comprise "evil" in all its forms. But, aside from the fact that the substance remains virgin even while being mother, it is redeemed at the very level of its exteriorization through its positive contents, which are in principle sacramental and saving; symbolically speaking, if "woman" was lost through choosing "matter" or the "world", she was redeemed — and is redeemed — through giving birth to the Avatara. And besides, "everything is Atma"; and "it is not for the love of the husband (or of the wife or the son) that the husband (or the wife or the son) is dear, but for the love of Atma which in him". That is, the feminine element — the Substance — is by definition a mirror of the Essence, despite its exteriorizing and alienating function; moreover, a mirror is necessarily separated from what it reflects, and therein lies its ambiguity. [Survey of Metaphysics and Esoterism, p.53-54]. sophiaperennis: Femininity

... one can make as much use as one likes of the fact that Eve’s sin was to call Adam to the adventure of outwardness, but one cannot forget that the function of Mary was the opposite and that this function also enters into the possibility of the feminine spirit. Nethertheless the spiritual mission of woman will never be linked with a revolt against man... [Esoterism as Principle and as Way, p.142]. sophiaperennis: Femininity

To allege that the woman who is holy has become a man by the fact of her sanctity, amounts to presenting her as a denatured being: in reality, a holy woman can only be such on the basis of her perfect femininity, failing which God would have been mistaken in creating woman - quod absit — whereas according to Genesis she was, in the intention of God, "a helpmeet for man"; and so firstly a "help" and not an obstacle, and secondly "like unto him", and not a sub-human; to be accepted by God, she does not have to stop being what she is. [NA: Ave gratia plena, said the angel to Mary. "Full of grace": this settles the question given that Mary is a woman. The angel did not say Ave Maria, because to him gratia plena is the name that he gives to the Virgin, this amounts to saying that Maria is synonymous with gratia plena.] [Esoterism as Principle and as Way, p.143]. sophiaperennis: Femininity

The key to the mystery of salvation through woman, or through femininity, if one prefers, lies in the very nature of Maya: If Maya can attract towards the outward, she can also attract towards the inward. Eve is life, and this is manifesting Maya; Mary is Grace, and this is reintegrating Maya. Eve personifies the demiurge under its aspect of femininity; Mary is the personification of the Shekhinah, of the Presence that is both virginal and maternal. Life, being amoral, can be immoral; Grace, being pure substance, is capable of absorbing all accidents. [Esoterism as Principle and as Way, p.143]. sophiaperennis: Femininity

... Rûmi considers, with finesse and profundity and not without humor, that the sage is conquered by woman whereas the fool conquers her: for the latter is brutalized by his passion, and does not know the barakah of love and delicate sentiments, whereas the sage sees in the lovable woman a ray from God, and in the feminine body an image of creative Power. [Sufism, Veil and Quintessence, p. 69, note 19]. sophiaperennis: Femininity

Man stabilizes woman, woman vivifies man; furthermore, and quite obviously, man contains woman within himself, and vice versa, given that both are homo sapiens, man as such; and if we define the human being as pontifex, it goes without saying that this function includes woman, although she adds to it the mercurial character proper to her sex. [NA: If woman is "of one flesh" with man, — if she is "flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone", — this shows, in relation to the Spirit, which man represents, an aspect of continuity or prolongation, not of separation.[Esoterism as Principle and as Way, page 139, note 135].] [Esoterism as Principle and as Way, page 139]. sophiaperennis: Femininity

Man, in his lunar and receptive aspect, "withers away" without the woman-sun that infuses into the virile genius what it needs in order to blossom; inversely, man-sun confers on woman the light that permits her to realize her identity by prolonging the function of the sun. [Esoterism as Principle and as Way, page 139]. sophiaperennis: Femininity

Too often it is thought that woman is capable of objectivity and thus of disinterested logic only at the expense of her femininity, [NA: The feminists themselves — of both sexes — are convinced of this, at least implicitly and in practice, otherwise they would not aspire to the virilization of woman.] which is radically false; woman has to realize, not specifically masculine traits of course, but the normatively and primordially human qualities, which are obligatory for every human being; and this is independent of feminine psychology as such [NA: Legitimate feminine psychology results from the principal prototype of woman — from the universal Substance — as well as from the biological, moral and social functions which she personifies; and this implies the right to limitations, to weaknesses, if ones wishes, but not to faults. The human being is one thing, and the male is another; and it is a great pity that the two things have often been confused even in languages which — like Greek, Latin and German — make this distinction...]. [To Have a Center, page 7]. sophiaperennis: Femininity

Feminism, far from being able to confer on woman ’rights’ that are non-existent because contrary to the nature of things, can only remove from her her specific dignity; it is the abolition of the eternal-feminine, of the glory that woman derives from her celestial prototype. After all, the revolt of one sex against the other, like the cult of youth or the contempt of intelligence, is indirectly a revolt against God. [Gnosis, Divine Wisdom, page 54]. sophiaperennis: Femininity

It came about in this way: I was a Sheridan in the State of Wyoming, with my travelling companion, during the All Indian Days. One morning while walking across an open space where the tents or tips, of many Red Indians of different tribes were pitched we heard a voice which seemed to be calling us; we sent in that direction and approached one of the tents, asking if somebody had called us and were told that they had. An old man was there, and a younger woman with some children also were present. The old man wanted to know where we came from and who we were, and we told him everything and began to talk about spiritual matters and about the ancient American Indian religion. The old man explained that they were Cheyenna Indians; he spoke about the Sun Dance and said. "Our religion is the same as what is in the Holy Scriptures; God-the Great Spirit cannot be seen, He is pure Spirit." sophiaperennis: His Holiness and the Red Indian