THE MYSTERIES OF SEX

 

Four things play a part in conception and birth: body, imagination, form, and influence. The "body" as ordained in the beginning must become a body and nothing else. For it is a law of Nature that the oak tree must arise from an oak; the same is true of the body of man. From the imagination, and its objects, the child receives its reason. And just as Heaven infuses the child with its motion—its good and evil qualities—sometimes strongly, sometimes weakly, so the imagination of man has a course and makes the child's reason turn to higher or lower things. The third thing, the/o/w, compels the child to look like the one from whom it descends. And finally, it is the influence that determines the health or sickness of the body. For in the same way as a strong architect erects good and solid buildings, and a weak one, weak buildings, so it is in the conception of a child.

It has been well said, "Man is most ignorant of those things which are most manifest." In some departments of nature this is true, and probably in no other "manifested" department of man's being is this truth more strikingly apparent than in his sexual nature. He is aware that animal nature is divided into two great classes, male and female, but he knows almost nothing of the spiritual principles which under lie this physical expression of sex.

Man is fully aware that the union of the two organisms is necessary for the purpose of procreation, but he is fearfully ignorant of those interior processes which produce the actual germs of life. He is acquainted with the fact that in the lower strata of animated existence bisexual organisms are the general rule and that occasionally this bisexual nature becomes manifested among men, as seen in the hermaphrodite.

But he is quite at a loss to account for such "monstrous" productions. Hence it may be truly said, "Man is most ignorant of those things which are most manifest." Therefore, in order to enable the reader to clearly grasp the various connecting links in the mystical ramifications of sex, to see their perfect harmony, and to understand their relation to each other, we will first speak of the origin of sex. Secondly, we will describe as clearly as possible its nature and functions. Thirdly, we will point out the relation of the sexes to each other. Lastly, we will present a brief application of the whole as it relates to man and the Universe.

The infinite ocean of formless spirit within its latent bosom contains all the elements of sex in their primal state. When the first pulsations of thought which evolved "the divine idea" became manifest, Nature arrayed herself under two modes of motion, action and reaction. The in-breathing and the out-breathing of this divine thought thus instituted the first spiritual attributes of sex in the earliest dawn of creation.

Each function which we may designate as the inspiration and respiration of the universal life current became differentiated for all eternity as the primary fundamental principle of Manifested Being. The Kabbalistical initiates of the past ages formulated this same biune spirit as Love and Wisdom.

Love, as the negative or feminine ray, is content and ever seeks to enfold. Wisdom as the positive, masculine ray is restless and always in pursuit. The feminine forces are ever striving to encircle the atom and the masculine forces to propel it forward in a straight line. From this dual action of spiritual potentialities is born the Spiral or the motion of life and the symbol of eternal progression.

We cannot attempt any explanation of how the first forms of sexual life became ultimated, nor of the why and wherefore of this celestial existence. It is enough for us that we are enabled by the laws of correspondence to trace the origin of sex to the shores of the great fountain of all existence and to proclaim the central Self from which all manifested selves derive their being. In order that we may com prehend somewhat the mysteries of sex as we see them manifested in humanity, we must descend from these inconceivable heights of celestial glory. We must seek for the links of this continuous chain within the highest states of life approachable by the embodied human Soul. Only in these states can we obtain any definite idea of the in terior significance of sex and its mighty importance as a factor in the immortality of human Soul. The first link of this celestial chain lies concealed within the bosom of the Unknown. What the succeed ing links may contain we cannot tell, but they will bear a correspondence to the former, making due allowance for the difference of the time element. Therefore, since we can only guess as to the origin of sex, we will consider its correlatives.

It must be self-evident that the Self contains within itself all the primary elements of sex, but in a latent condition. These attributes have not been subjected to the requisite conditions for their evolution. In this state, then, there is neither love nor wisdom manifested within the Self. It cannot know happiness when it is ignorant of the opposite. It cannot form any conception of rest when weariness is unknown. There can be no real love for the Self when it has never experienced the various contrary conditions by which love is known and distinguished. The wisdom of the Self in this state is equally latent, since it possesses no means of arriving at a true knowledge of its surroundings.

In this state we behold the spiritual atom in its primal condition. The various series of states through which this divine Self must penetrate in order to evolve its Sou! sphere are the means by which the internal potentialities of sex must be awakened. When this transpires the divine Self becomes pregnant with the dual forms of its own organic life and the twin Souls are bom (the male and female elements of its being).

These are represented in Genesis as Adam and Eve, knowing neither good nor evil. This book is a beautiful description of the embryonic human Souls. These twin souls are the absolute expression of the masculine and feminine rays of which absolute atomic Self is composed. The masculine ray contains a portion of Self forces and the feminine ray must likewise contain a portion of the positive qualities. These souls, therefore, contain a portion of each other. They constitute the Sun and Moon of the Self's creation. When they once become differentiated, they are as eternal and immortal as the Self which called them into existence. They can be neither absorbed nor annihilated by time or eternity. They constitute the divine idea of a deific parent, and as such they become the divine expression of love and wisdom upon earth.

There is a particular sense in which it is held that the union here below between husband and wife is the work of the Self, and here arises the sanctity and necessity of that act which is implied by the word union. Man is formed below on the model of that which is above. It follows he who, in Zoharic terminology, suffers his fount to fail and produces no fruits here, whether because he will not take a wife, whether his wife is barren, or whether he abides with her in a way that is against nature, commits an irreparable crime.

Man shall participate in the world to come because he has entered during his life into the joy of living honorably with his wife. The reason is that Soul as well as body shares in the Self by which children are engendered. This is the eroticism which characterizes the ZOHAR, according to some commentators.

This is the consequence respecting the fruit of marriages, but there is also a consequence within the measures of the union itself, so it is raised from the physical into a spiritual degree. The fulfillment, the raising of the heart and mind on the part of the Lover and Beloved, to the most Holy Shekinah, the glory which cohabits and indwells, during the external act.

This is true also on the reverse side of the process, so two spirits are melted together and are interchanged constantly between body and body. The sexes are then interchanged in a sense. In the indistin guishable state which arises, the male is with the female neither male nor female, they are both or either. So is man affirmed to be composed of the world above, which is male, and of the female world below.

Now according to the ZOHAR those words in the "Song of Solomon": "Thy breasts are better than wine," refer to wine which provokes joy and desire; and seeing all things are formed above according to a pattern which is reproduced faithfully below, it is held to follow when desire awakens beneath it awakens also on high.

We see, therefore, that the nature of sex is to give perfect expression to the two grand attributes love and wisdom. To attain this end, the divine Soul of the absolute Self becomes differentiated as the male and female consciousness of self. It is in perfect expression of the positive and negative forces of its being. Once this differentiation is completed they exist as the Divine Idea of the microcosm and constitute its universe. This being so, each portion of the dual Soul maintains forever the perfect symbol of its internal qualities and always gives expression, in its outward form, to the symbol of Nature.

The functions of the Soul are to awaken and round out those qualities and attributes which are latent within. As we have seen there are two sets of Soul qualities, one the necessary outcome of the other. Now we see the harmony and the philosophy of the twin forms of life. Both male and female possess the necessary positive qualities for the perfect subjugation of material forces.

Hence it is that, when the souls are projected on their journey into matter, they travel upon divergent lines. These lines form two sides of an equilateral triangle with matter as a base, while the apex indicates the central Self or point of projection. The return journey between the mineral and man forms another triangle. This marks off the objective and subjective arcs of the Soul's evolution. When both arcs are combined they represent the mystical seal of King Solomon, the double triangle or six pointed star. This completes two acts in the grand drama of life.

The closing tableau in the first represents the stationary forces of the crystal; in the second the external conditions of human life. The third and last act in the human arc briefly reviews the whole of the previous two. This evolves another six pointed star which represents the higher and lower planes of manifestation. But in its grand out lines, it is also a spiritual trine whose closing tableau represents the reunion of the twin Souls symbolized by the celestial marriage of the Lamb.

Thus we have the one divine Monad or Self to begin with, and in the course of its expression and its gradual evolution of its sexual attributes, we see it slowly transform into a trinity. This trinity, in the subcycles of its evolution, forms the three triangles, which constitute the symbol of its forces. These are three times expressed upon the three subcycles of its journey which are the subjective arc or the cycle of unconsciousness, the objective arc or the cycle of intelligence, and the ethereal arc or the cycle of Soul consciousness.

The results of our present studies show the origin of sex begins with the Self; the nature of sex is the manifestation of its spirit; and its functions are the spiral motion of its evolutionary forces which awaken and round out its latent possibilities.

Male and female exist in nature as the representative expressions of love and wisdom. Their functions correspond exactly with their sex, and in actual life, it may be truly said that woman is ever the center of love. Her thoughts and desires constitute the index of her mission on earth. In her we hold the gentle, yielding, loving nature which softens and harmonizes man's positive spirit of aggression.

In her delicate nature we see the lovely center of maternal care and affection. She is the weaker portion of the dual Soul upon the physical plane, but her physical weakness constitutes the great center of her spiritual strength. As the weaker sex, we should naturally think her true place was one of subjection to man. But on the contrary, her more delicate forces become her most potent weapon. Instead of being the subject, she ascends to the throne of the conqueror. Man becomes a pliable medium in her hands, and is led as a willing captive by her subtle power and resources.

The principle is that the male must be always attached to the female for the Self ever to be with him. All holiness might be practiced, the Secret Doctrine might be studied by night and by day, and the illuminations might overflow the intellectual part; but failing fulfillment of this counsel a man is not on the way which leads into true life. He is in that condition which is not good for man to be—alone—like Adam in the Garden.

But those who have the precept at heart and are therefore complete men, by their union with women on earth, remind us in one particular of many Sons of Israel and students of the Doctrine. They are travellers in search of wisdom; and they are also men of affairs, workers in the vineyard of this world as well as in the Astral Garden.

The general definition of love is a vivifying spirit which permeates all the world. It is a bond uniting the entire universe. But the proper definition of perfect love of man and woman is the concurrence of the loving with the beloved so the beloved shall be transformed into the lover. When such love is equal between the partakers it is described as the conversion of the one into the other being.

Below such human love in apotheosis there is not only that which subsists among mere animals, but in the hypothetical first matter, in the elements and in the heavenly bodies, which are drawn one to the other and move in regular order by the harmonious impulse and interaction of a reciprocal affection.

Hereof is the form and the spirit, and this Book of Love and its mysteries moves forward to deeper things, when the knowledge of Self is presented under a transcendentalized sexual aspect. The mind must be content to know according to the measure of its possibility and not excellence. This does not consist in the act which leads to love nor in the love which succeeds such knowledge, but in the copulation of the most interior and united divine knowledge. This is the sovereign perfection of the created intellect, the last act and happy end in which it finds itself rather divine than human. Such copulative felicity cannot be continuous, however, during our present life, because our intellect is here joined to the matter of our fragile body.

In man we behold the positive, aggressive law of Creation and that portion of the Soul which becomes the restless explorer of nature, seeking for wisdom, man's will is electric, penetrating and disruptive. The will of woman is magnetic, attractive, and formative. Hence they express the polar opposites of nature's creative forces.

MAN AND WOMAN

The twin Souls are related to each other primarily as brother and sister, and finally as man and wife. In this latter state, their true meeting place is the plane of embodied humanity. But during the present cycle very few of these spiritual unions take place. But whenever the two halves of the same divine Self do meet, love is the natural consequence. This is not the physical sensation produced by the animal magnetism of their sexual natures, but it is the deep silent emotions of the Soul. It is the responsive vibrations of their internal natures toward each other and the blissful silence of two Souls in perfect rapport wherein neither careth to speak.

Spiritual love is the outcome of their divine relationship, and should never be set aside nor crushed by any worldly considerations. On the contrary, wherever possible, these pure intuitions of the Soul should be obeyed. They cannot deceive nor lead one astray, because the Soul never makes a mistake when claiming its own. Should circumstances in life or any other material consideration prevent their rightful union, the fact they have actually met will constitute an invisible connection, a spiritual rapport. With this between them, no earthly power or device can break the bonds, and deep down within the secret chambers of the self the image of the loved one will be treasured. Its continual presence will poison and corrode everything which pertains toward an ephemeral affection for another.

If a female should marry under these circumstances, and become the mother of children, it will often transpire that the actual germs of spiritual life will be transmitted by this absent Soul. The external husband provides only the purely physical conditions for the manifestations of the offspring. The rejected soul mate, the spiritual bride groom is the real father, and very often the child born will resemble the image of its true Soul parent.

The spirit of a pregnant woman is so strong it can influence the seed and change the fruit in her womb in many directions. Her inner stars act powerfully and vigorously upon the fruit; its nature is thereby deeply and solidly shaped and forged, for the child in the mother's womb is exposed to the mother's influence. It is entrusted to the hand and will of its mother as the clay is entrusted to the hand of the potter, who creates and forms out of it what he wants and what he pleases.

God does not want man or woman to be like a tree which always grows the same fruit. He made each one different from the other. God left man free to propagate his kind; according to his will, he may beget a child, transmit his seed, or not. God planted the seed in all its reality and specificity deep in the imagination of man. If a man has the will, the desire arises in his imagination, and the desire generates the seed.

But man himself cannot kindle the desire, it must be fanned by an object. When a man sees a woman, she is the object; it depends only upon him whether he wants to fasten to it or not.

He himself must decide whether to let it act on him or not, whether to follow his intelligence or not. God has entrusted the seed to man's reflective reason because the reflective reason encompasses both his intelligence and the object that inflames his fantasy.

It is the same with woman. When she sees a man, he becomes her object, and her imagination begins to dwell on him. She does this by virtue of the ability bestowed upon her. It is in her power to feel desire or not. If she yield, she becomes rich in seeds; if not, she has neither seed nor urge. Thus the seed is left to the free decision of man, and the decision depends upon man's will. He can do as he wishes.

Since this free decision exists, it lies with both, with man and with woman. As they determine by their will, so will it happen.

Thus the most important of the relations of the sexes toward each other pertains to their sexual intercourse. Untold misery, suffering, and crime are born into the world through the sensual depravity of mankind. A man and wife should harmonize both in physical temperament and in magnetic polarity. No marriage should be thought of where these essential points are wanting. Neither wealth, fame, nor worldly position can compensate for their lack.

Discordant unions are the harbingers of sorrow, crime, and disease. Sexual union between inharmonious souls evolves the seeds of every species of wickedness and sexual disorder. It may not become readily apparent, but these seeds exist within the spaces of human life ready to spring into concrete form under the favorable conditions of discordance.

The purely martial man will prove a continual curse to the cold-natured saturnine woman, and vice versa. This may not be the fault of the man or woman. It is the discordant polarities of their astral constitutions. The same will hold good between natures of earthy triplicity and those born under the airy. Hence a true knowledge of the science of the stars is necessary for the production of conjugal harmony between the sexes.

Just as there is love between animals, female with male, so also among men love is often of the animal kind. This love has its use fulness, and its rewards; but it remains animal, it does not endure, and it reflects only the reason and aspiration of material man. It does not know higher goals.

It is because of this animal love that people can be friendly or hostile, well or ill disposed toward one another, exactly like animals are fierce and angry, envious and hostile toward one another. Just as dogs and cats hate each other, so nations fall into conflicts. All this is rooted in the animal nature.

When dogs bark and snap at one another, it is because of envy or greed, because each of them wants to have everything for himself, wants to devour everything himself and begrudges everything to the other. This is the way of beasts. In this respect, man is the child of dogs. He, too, is burdened with envy and disloyalty, with a violent disposition, and each man grudges the other.

When a man and a woman who belong to each other and were destined for each other by the stars come together, no adultery will take place, because they form one being. But if these two do not

come together, there is no steadfast love; their love sways like a reed in the wind. When a man courts many women, he has not found the proper wife to complement him; similarly a woman who carries on amorous intrigues with other men has not found the proper husband.

It remains for us to apply the logical outcome of the principles of sex as they affect man, the universe, and the immortality of the Soul.

As we view the outward forms of man and woman we cannot fail to observe the perfect harmony between the external appearance and the internal cause. Their organisms are the concrete image of the principles concealed within. It would be the extreme height of absurdity for us to believe a materialized form bears no correspond ence to the forces which created it. The form cannot exist without an internal cause, and the internal cause is powerless to produce any external form except the reflected image of itself and its functions.

Under these circumstances it must be evident every male organism is the absolute outcome of masculine forces, and every female organism the product of the feminine qualities. Therefore, a male soul cannot be bom into the world under the cover of a female form. Neither can a female soul be ushered upon the planes of humanity imprisoned within the masculine body. These are nature's facts, which ought to be apparent to every thinking mind.

The human form applies to man as the material culmination of nature's sexual expression. Upon this plane she can go no further, for beyond this limit we step within the spaces of the ether. There nature continues her wonderful expression of sex in strict harmony with the laws of correspondence to the planes below. While dealing with the forms assumed by man we must notice those vital secretions which form the physical conditions for reproduction.

The seminal fluids are the most ethereal of all physical secretions and contain the very quintessence of human nature. The sexual organism exists as a factor in procreation; therefore, the sexual organs have their proper functions and use or they would not be present. To suddenly and completely suppress their natural functions would do a great deal of physical and spiritual harm. The reaction of them will create violent discord within the ethereal constitution.

To obey the laws of nature is the only safe and sure road to the spiritual evolution of the senses of the soul; and one of these laws is the rightful union of the sexes.

God ordained that marriage be sacred, but He did not prescribe the number of wives, neither a high nor a low one. He commanded: "Thou shalt be faithful to thy marriage vow and thou shalt not break it."

Why then issue laws about morality, virtues, chastity, and so forth ? No one but God can give commandments that are permanent and immutable. For human laws must be adapted to the needs of the times, and accordingly can be abrogated and replaced by others.

When we regard the mystical ramifications of sex as represented in the universal creation of suns, stars, moons and planets, we see the same principles at work, even to their shape and the form of their orbit. The suns are masculine and represent the cosmic male spirit. The planets are feminine and consequently become the fruitful wombs of progressive life. The moons are neither one nor the other, for they are the conflicting offsprings of the disturbing forces within the sun and its planets. They are the lowest organic expression of planetary life, and as such represent the state of the hermaphrodite. Both in man and in the universe the potentialities of sex swing the mighty pendulum of thought and motion.

The grand object which the divine Self seeks to realize in the evolution of the human soul is the complete differentiation of its latent attributes. The soul, therefore, must become the expression of both its qualities and must express the true nature of the spirit. Thus male and female evolution is the outcome.

Each soul rounds out and completes its own section of the self, and in doing this it becomes individualized as a complete expression of one ray of the divine idea. It has a perfect identity with its source. Both male and female complete the whole and are related to each other as Osiris and Isis. Their individuality, in the form of their spiritual identity, is forever preserved. There they are united as well, and their separate consciousness becomes an attribute of their glorious immortality. Without sex there cannot be eternal life. To absorb or destroy these principles in the human organism brings about a divorce between the man and his divinity. Thus it robs the conscious humanity of its deathless immortality of soul.

Written by Zolar (Bruce King) in "The Encyclopedia of Ancient & Forbidden Knowledge",Peerage Books, London 1990, excerpts pp.79-90. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.