Symbols - What does heaven look like
Androgyny
Androgyny is the symbol used to express the idea that you have achieved balance. That the Conscious and Subconscious are in balance, that the female principle is in balance with the male principle [see also Brain split].
Yab yum is a common symbol in the Buddhist art of India, Bhutan, Nepal, and Tibet representing the male principle ‘in union’ with the female principle. It is to be found for example in Tantric Buddhism. When the two principles merge you obtain a balancing of the two sides of the personality or soul.
Note that this does not represent the meeting or merging with the Higher spirit – an altogether different thing, but it is an essential prerequisite.
Interestingly enough, many cultures around the world celebrate – whether consciously or unconsciously – this balancing and merging of the two principles by dress.
Many male shamans dress and dressed in women’s clothes and started to do feminine things. Siberian shamans, for example, became very feminised giving up all aggressive pursuits, all killing and instead looked after children, ‘took to the needle’, didn’t fight, grew their hair and even braided it and became ‘soft men’.
Shamans who had achieved this balancing act were considered to be ‘the most potent of all wizards’.
There are numerous examples in Greek myth and Norse myth of legendary shamans (gods and goddesses) wearing the apparel of the opposite sex. For example in Norse myth Thor dressed as Freyja to get Mjölnir back in Þrymskviða. Odin dressed as a female healer as part of his efforts to seduce Rindr. Frotho I dressed as a shieldmaiden in one of his eastern campaigns. Hervor from the Hervarar saga dressed as a man, calling herself Hjörvard. In Indian mythology: The Mahabharata describes how Arjuna crossdressed as Brihannala and became a dance teacher. And we have numerous other examples
- the Pope
- Priests of the krishna cult in India
- Arab dress – the djallaba gets its name from the word ‘tjalabai’ meaning imitation woman
Mircea Eliade – Shamanism Archaic techniques of ecstasy
Transvestisism and ritual change of sex are found, for example, in Indonesia (the manang bali) of the Sea Dayak), in South America (Patagonians and Araucanians) and among certain North American tribes (Arapaho, Cheyenne, Ute etc). …Ritual tranformation into a woman also occurs among the Kamchadel, the Asiatic Eskimo and the Koryak of northeast asia.........
The bisexuality and impotence of the basir, arises from the fact that these priest/shamans are regarded as the intermediaries between the two cosmological planes – earth and sky – and also from the fact that they combine in their own person the feminine element and the masculine element. We have here a ritual androgyny, a well known archaic formula for the divine biunity and the coincidentia oppositorum.
Women who have got in touch with their male side are not so demonstrative in dress, but we should perhaps remember that the Greek goddess Diana was a woman who appears to have got in touch with her male principle.
It is also worth mentionning that many ancient societies regard the Supreme Being – what in Judaic religions is called God – is androgynous – both male and female. In essence God is not a He, God is a He and She combined and thus any intermediary needs to be the same.
The following picture comes from the Nuremberg chronicles [1493].
Observations
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- Beverly Brodsky is comforted by a Spirit helper
- Black and White
- Blue Whirlwind and Iron Shell - Native American Indians - Winkte and Androgyny
- Bowie, David - Black Star
- Buch der heiligen Dreifaltigkeit 15th century
- Caravaggio - Amor victorious
- Caravaggio - Musicians
- CICOM Museum - Mayan - The 'Sumo Wrestler'
- Copan - Mayan - Stela H
- Crowley - 01 The Magician [or Magus]
- Crowley - 12 The Hanged Man
- Da Vinci, Leonardo - Beautiful men - Head of Christ
- Da Vinci, Leonardo - Beautiful men - Salvator Mundi
- Da Vinci, Leonardo - Beautiful men - St John the Baptist
- Da Vinci, Leonardo - Beautiful women - Mona Lisa
- David Livingstone - The Dying God
- Delville, Jean - Plato’s disciples
- Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion - David Hume – The Intelligent hierarchy is both male and female, as is God
- Dionysos - Rides a leopard
- Duchamp, Marcel - Mona Lisa
- Eusevgny Faygdish – Mystic Cosmos - Nganasan shamans and the Clear tent ritual’.
- Freddie Mercury - The Great Pretender
- Gnostic Gospels - Sophia of Jesus Christ
- Hodler, Ferdinand - Spring 1901
- Homo ecce
- Indus valley - Mohenjo-Daro - 07 The Pashupati Seal
- Jesus - The Sophia of Jesus Christ - He meditated with his bride Sophia
- Jochelson - Siberian androgyny
- Karnataka and South India - 07 Gangaikonda Cholapuram temple
- Khnopff, Fernand - Sleeping Medusa
- Khnopff, Fernand - Des Caresses
- Khnopff, Fernand - Mask with a Black Curtain
- Khnopff, Fernand - Maske
- Khnopff, Fernand - Memories
- Khnopff, Fernand - Silence
- Khunrath, Heinrich - Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeterna 1602
- Led Zeppelin - Stairway to heaven - live
- Masters and Houston - 3 Psychedelics and sex
- Mellery, Xavier - Immortality
- Michelangelo - 1504 David
- Michelangelo - 1508 Sistine Chapel - 03 Creation of Adam
- Moreau - Apollo and the nine muses 1856
- Moreau - Dead poet born by Centaur and Victim
- Moreau - Jason 1865
- Moreau - The Sphinx 1864
- Nerval, Gerard de - 02 La Reve et Vie
- Nuremberg Chronicle - The Androgyne
- Ogotommeli - Kinndou-kinndou, soul soul
- Palenque - Mayan - Lady Zak Kuk
- Parrish, Maxfield - Dinkey Bird
- Poussin - Midas and Bacchus
- Reichel-Dolmatoff – Amazonian Cosmos - Desana Creation Myth
- Rider-Waite - 14 - Temperance
- Rider-Waite - 17 The Star
- Rops, Felicien - The Social Revolution
- Rosary of the Philosophers - 05 Conjunctio
- Rosary of the Philosophers - 06 The Conception
- Rosary of the Philosophers - 08 The Washing
- Rosary of the Philosophers - 09 The Rejoicing
- Rosary of the Philosophers - 10 The Union
- Rosary of the Philosophers - 14 The Fixation
- Rosary of the Philosophers - 15 The Multiplication
- Rosary of the Philosophers - 17 Demonstration of Perfection
- Saadi - The Gulistan of Sa‘di – 14 from The Morals of Dervishes
- Saint-Yves d’Alveydre – The Archeometer – Revelation 02
- Sefer ha-bahir – Para 61 – Tzadi
- Shaivism - Concepts and symbols - Androgyny and Ardhanarishvara
- Shaivism - Concepts and symbols - The Dance
- Stolz von Stolzenberg, Daniel - Viridarium chemicum 1624
- Symbolism - Korean mystic shamanism - Androgyny and Grey
- The Twelve Keys of Basil Valentine - Key 10
- Thomas Faulkner - Patagonian shamans
- Von Stuck, Franz - 1889 Angel with the Flaming Sword
- Waterhouse, John William - Saint Eulalia
- Waterhouse, John William - St Joan
- Wikipedia - The Fon creation myth