ManWomanAlchemy

In the last few days I have come up to a lot of references about inner alchemy, the union of our male and female halves inside of us.  I've written about this before: skeleton woman , but let's talk about if from a different angel today. 

In the indigenous ways a woman is revered as a vessel of life.  The hesitancy to use birth control means large families, and the whole community looks after the children.  Many of my younger female friends speak of their hesitancy to have children in this system, and I totally agree.  The need for prams, carseats, paid babysitters, enrichment activities, etc. confines us.  Reliance on the nuclear family model can be damaging to the highest growth for all, and is also the least positive way we could be configuring the raising of our children.  I believe that a return to community is what is necessary for us to have children and feel truly wonderful about the life environment we are gifting them.  It used to be, in times past, that the people bonded together to share different perspectives with the kids, to teach them different skills, to collectively aid their growth into gentle and powerful human beings.  Well, we can do it again.  And when we do, the feminine will be freed to embody both her essential nature and her lion power.  

I realise there are many debates across the phases of feminism that cry out against essentialism, however, many of my friends and collaborators/dancers feel that our hearts have been left out of feminism, that a better balance can be found.  When I contemplate feminism personally I think of Luce Irigaray  some of her works and her powerful "essentialised" argument for the passion of womans' expression.

painting by Marlynn Longston

There is a poem by Lisa Citore which appears every so often on the internet.  It is a powerful poem, if not slightly traditional, however I take several perspectives when viewing it. "If You Want to Love a Woman" First, I see the woman we must first love as the woman inside of ourselves, gender aside.  We all have the essential, the lion, side by side, and in schools of alchemy the marriage of the inner male and female is the highest order. Second, I realise the woman we must love as the earth herself.  We currently have a global culture of masculine action, and to balance that, to return to the female body of the earth, we must necessarily embrace a polar balance. Finally, I contemplate the tantric traditions and the potent symbolism for both physical unions between two persons, and for the individual as completed union themselves.  In personal alchemical union we are able to approach union with another as two wholes, birthing entire universes of light together.  

Krishna and Radha 

There is something about acceptance here, of all our aspects, dark and light, deviant and pure, holy and human, not as opposites, but as fields of charge seeking a bond, a union and a purification.  The song below was created in response to the Hindu teaching of Ardhanarishwara. Shiva - Lord and Lady 

I bow before you

You who are both

Male and Female

Two gods in one

You whose female half has the vivid colour

Of a Champak flower

And whose make half has the pallid colour

Of the camphor flower

The female half jingles

With golden arm bracelets

The male half is adorned

With bracelets of serpents

The female half has love-eyes

The male half meditation-eyes

The female half has

A garland of almond flowers

The masculine half has

A garland of skulls

Dressed in dazzling clothes

is the female half

Nude, the male half

The female half is capable

Of all creation

The male half is capable

Of all destruction

I turn to you

Linked to the God Shiva

Your wife

I turn to you

Linked to the Goddess Shiva

Your husband

*Sanjukta Panigrahi*

One of my favourite movies, which touches me deeply concerning the union of male and female, is Farewell My Concubine. OV Guide It expands questions of inner alchemy beyond the biology of male and female and heightens the entire discourse surrounding it to a new level.  I feel that as we reconfigure our life ways on the planet we will come to accept (in time) our biology as a starting point, our children as all of our children, whole persons married to themselves - free in love.  

light bodies in the world tree

For some resources on tantra check out Phil Hines reflections, David Deida the enlightened sex manual, or Osho sex matters. Happiness,