Feminine Principle

Knight, Gareth. The Rose Cross and the Goddess the quest for the eternal feminine principle. Inner Traditions, 1985. ISBN 0892811048... 

Or Solvent - One has also given the name of Menstrum, however improperly, to Vegetable and Metallic Waters, which are regarded as the feminine principle of these two reigns, and in which is placed the matter to be dissolved. Pemety, Diet. 

The Aurora, as it has come down to us, is the description of a life-shattering experience that could very well be Aquinas s revelations ofDecember 1273. Itis certainly possible that it was a transcription of Aquinas s final talk, as other of his works as we know them today were also transcribed by pupils. The work describes a vision of Sophia, the Wisdom of God. Aquinas realises he has neglected the Feminine Principle all his life, and she has revealed herself to him in all Her Glory. Perhaps this is what he meant when he said that everything he d done seemed worthless, like straw in comparison. Her wisdom is equated with the Philosopher s Stone, and links alchemy with the Feminine face of God. Had he lived, Aquinas may well have found himself in trouble for his views his work was denounced in the Paris Condemnations of 1277, which also attacked Bacon. 

If Chinese alchemy is unthinkable without Taoism, so Indian alchemy is unthinkable without Hinduism and, like its Chinese counterpart, it is concerned with the production of elixirs to prolong life. The idea of twin polarities governing things is borrowed from Hinduism Shakti, the feminine principle, is the active Mother/Destroyer, the endless change of the world, whereas Shiva is the constant, passive, male energy. Its origins are contemporaneous with Chinese alchemy, and the two traditions seem to have periodically borrowed from one another. 

In the alchemical worldview, Mercury refers to the mercurial quality of matter rather than to the element we now call mercury. The alchemists believed that metals differed from one another because they contained greater or lesser amounts of particular qualities. According to Paracelsus theory of tria prima, the three fundamental properties of matter were represented by mercury sulfur, and salt.22 Sulfur was associated with Sol, the sun, and thus with the Masculine Principle, while mercury was closely associated with silver, the Moon, and the Feminine Principle.23 Salt—the fixed, immutable, quality of matter—was associated with body and earth. 

In the operations of the Great Work, the union of masculine and feminine principles was associated with the process known as conjunction [coniunctio] .Sulphur was said to bestow, and mercury to receive, the form assumed by the material resulting from their conjunction— just as wax takes and retains the impression of a seal. There were innumerable synonyms for each of these principles, many of which were used also to denote the Philosopher s Stone. Sophie sulphur was called Sol, king, male, brother, Osiris, lion, toad, wingless dragon,..., etc. 

The queen stands upon a yellow substance or light, on which there appears the profile of a man s head. It might remind us of Plate TIO, where the golden head has been severed from the torso. The profile in the alembic, however, refers to an individual man whose mental faculties and skills are now at the service of the Feminine Principle of relatedness rather than an end-in-themselves or a source of power or dominance. 

In the cryptic expression and symbolic representation which characterised alchemy and found a later expression in the symbols and formulae of modern chemistry, sophic sulphur and sophic mercury assumed a bewildering variety of forms. For example, they were known as Osiris and Isis, sun and moon, Sol and Luna, brother and sister, masculine and feminine, active and passive, giver and receiver, seal and wax, fixed and volatile, wingless lion and winged lioness, lion and eagle, and so forth. The Stone, when conceived as the result of the union of masculine and feminine principles, was sometimes represented as an infant. 

The view of the sulphur-mercury theory as a union of masculine and feminine principles found an expression in various pictorial representations of the so-called Hermetic Androgyne, Rebis, or Two-Thing. These designs, like so many others in alchemy, were often delicately coloured for example, the masculine and feminine half-figures of the hermaphrodite standing beside the sun-trcc (yellow) and moon-trec (blue), signified multiplication and a dragon at the foot represented the liquid menstruum. 

V Ticn considered as masculine and feminine principles, sulphur and mercury were regarded as fixed and volatile, respectively, a connotation that seems at variance with this scheme. Here is another inconsistency but if alchemy had an extra principle it was certainly not consistency. >... 

Feminism of equality theory debates the essentialist natures of rights and opportunities for women. Gender is defined as a socially constructed phenomenon, an ambiguous and changeable concept which is not solely connected to biology (Brandth and Verstad, 1993 14-18). The gender perspective holds that women and men are both equal and different from each other, and that women are also different from each other. In other words, both men and women can embody the feminine principle, and some women potentially embody less of the feminine principle than some men do. By... 

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