The contemplation of God in women
is the most intense and the most perfect.
Ibn Arabî, Fusus al-Hikam.
The Sophia Perennis, as Frithjof Schuon has formulated it, does not exclude any positive manifestation of the Divine. Religious exoterism on the other hand, given its focus on the spiritual capacities of the majority of men, that are necessarily uneven, justifiably tends to consider anything dealing with femininity, sexuality and the human body from the exclusive standpoint of an opportunity for sin. In contrast to this limited and expedient perspective, the Sophia Perennis aims at restoring the deepest value of these aspects of human existence, while being aware of the ambiguity and danger that are inherent to its esoteric and primordial perspective.
The short quotations given below will allow the reader to reach an initial understanding of the ways in which an objective and existential contemplation of femininity in its various dimensions and modes (the archetypes and their sensible manifestations) satisfies one of the most profound needs of integral human nature, and how intellective discernment and the sanctifying assimilation that is brought about by the methodical use of sacred means of grace can transmute the love for woman and feminine beauty into a very profound and powerful support of spiritual realization.
Woman, synthesizing virgin nature, the sanctuary and spiritual company, is for man what is most lovable; in a certain respect she represents the projection of merciful Inwardness in barren outwardness, and in this regard she assumes a sacramental or quasi-Divine function.
Schuon, Logic and Transcendence, p. 194
Contents
Femininity
- Woman manifests beauty as such
- Woman is divine image like man
- Femininity evokes the “Spirit which giveth life”
The “Eternal-Feminine”
- Her nobility is for man like a revelation
- The “eternal-feminine” represents Goodness in itself
- The secrecy surrounding woman: an intention of consecration
Eve et Mary
- The beatific symbolism of woman
- The scission between the male and the female demiurge
- The key to the mystery of salvation through woman
- The sage is conquered by woman
Man and woman
- Every love is a search for the lost Paradise
- Woman vivifies man
- A compensatory phenomenon of the end of times
The feminine body
- The feminine body is perfect
- Message of verticality in gentle, immanent mode
- The feminine breast: radiation of generosity
- The feminine body: a remembrance of Nirvâna
Feminism
- Too often it is thought that woman is not capable of objectivity
- Feminism is the abolition of the “eternal-feminine”
Woman manifests beauty as such
Woman manifests beauty as such, so much so that there is no beauty superior to hers, when contingency has not separated her from her prototype; thus one may discern in beauty as such features of femininity, of passive perfection, of virginal purity, of maternal generosity; of goodness and love.
Schuon, The Play of Masks, p. 45, Note 2.
Woman is divine image like man
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.
Schuon, Esoterism as Principle and as Way, p.135-136.
Femininity evokes the “Spirit which giveth life”
[In Hindu shaktism] … femininity is what surpasses the formal, the finite, the outward; it is synonymous with indetermination, illimitation, mystery, and thus evokes the “Spirit which giveth life” in relation to the “letter which killeth.” That is to say that femininity in the superior sense comprises a liquefying, interiorizing, liberating power: it liberates from sterile hardnesses, from the dispersing outwardness of limiting and compressing forms. On the one hand, one can oppose feminine sentimentality to masculine rationality — on the whole and without forgetting the relativity of things — but on the other hand, one also opposes to the reasoning of men the intuition of women; now it is this gift of intuition, in superior women above all, that explains and justifies in large part the mystical promotion of the feminine element; it is consequently in this sense that Haqiqah, esoteric Knowledge, may appear as feminine.
Schuon, Roots of the Human Condition, p. 40-41.
Her nobility is for man like a revelation
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’.
Schuon, Castes and Races, p.34.
The “eternal-feminine” represents Goodness in itself
…”woman” is Beauty, or the attractive and liberating vision of God in forms that manifest Him or that manifest His radiant Goodness; the “eternal-feminine” also represents this Goodness in itself, inasmuch as it forgives, welcomes and unifies, by freeing us from formal and other hardenings…
Schuon, Esoterism as Principle and as Way, p. 43, note 33.
The secrecy surrounding woman: an intention of consecration
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. [1]
[1] It is always this we have in view, and not so-called “revivals” which monstrously combine a Moslem formalism with modernist ideologies and
Schuon, In the Face of the Absolute, p. 227-228.
The beatific symbolism of woman
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.
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.
Schuon, The Eye of the Heart, p. 95, note 1.
The scission between the male and the female demiurge
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.
Schuon, Survey of Metaphysics and Esoterism, p.53-54.
The key to the mystery of salvation through woman
… 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. Nevertheless the spiritual mission of woman will never be linked with a revolt against man…
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. [1]
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.
[1] 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.
Schuon, Esoterism as Principle and as Way, p. 142-143.
The sage is conquered by woman
… 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.
Schuon, Sufism, Veil and Quintessence, p. 69, note 19.
Every love is a search for the lost Paradise
Fundamentally, every love is a search for the Essence or the lost Paradise; the melancholy, gentle or violent, which often appears in poetic or musical eroticism bears witness to this nostalgia for a far-off Paradise and doubtless also to the evanescence of earthly dreams, of which the sweetness is, precisely, that of a Paradise which we no longer perceive, or which we do not yet perceive.
Schuon, Esoterism as Principle and as Way, page 138.
Woman vivifies man
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.
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.
Schuon, Esoterism as Principle and as Way, page 139.
A compensatory phenomenon of the end of times
It is only too evident that modern views on woman — originated in the general egalitarianism and also in a certain purely negative feminization of man as well as an artificial masculinization of woman — are null and void here. But one must take into account a compensatory phenomenon of the end of times, which is the fact that piety or spiritual gifts are to be found more often in women than in men.
Schuon, Form and Substance in the Religions.
The feminine body is perfect
… the feminine body is far too perfect and spiritually too eloquent to be no more than a kind of transitory accident…
Schuon, From the Divine to the Human, p. 91.
… like celestial music …
The human being is compounded of geometry and music, of spirit and soul, of virility and femininity: by geometry, he brings the chaos of existence back to order, that is, he brings blind substance back to its ontological meaning and thus constitutes a reference point between Earth and Heaven, a “sign-post” pointing towards God; by music he brings the segmentation of form back to unitive life, reducing form, which is death, to Essence — at least symbolically and virtually — so that it vibrates with a joy which is at the same time a nostalgia for the Infinite. As symbols, the masculine body indicates a victory of the Spirit over chaos, and the feminine body, a deliverance of form by Essence; the first is like a magic sign which would subjugate the blind forces of the Universe, and the second like celestial music which would give back to fallen matter its paradisiac transparency, or which, to use the language of Taoism, would make trees flower beneath the snow.
Schuon, Stations of Wisdom, p. 80.
Message of verticality in gentle, immanent mode
… the message of both human bodies, the masculine and the feminine: message of ascending and unitive verticality in both cases, certainly, but in rigorous, transcendent, objective, abstract, rational and mathematical mode in the first case, and in gentle, immanent, concrete, emotional and musical mode in the second.
Schuon, From the Divine to the Human, p. 100.
The feminine breast: radiation of generosity
One of the most salient characteristics of the human body is the breast, which is a solar symbol, with an accentuation differing according to sex: noble and glorious radiation in both cases, but manifesting power in the first case and generosity in the second; the power and generosity of pure Being. The heart is the center of man, and the breast is so to speak the face of the heart: and since the heart-intellect comprises both Knowledge and Love, it is plausible that in the human body this polarization manifests itself by the complementarity of the masculine and feminine breasts.
Schuon, From the Divine to the Human, p. 94-95.
The feminine body: a remembrance of Nirvâna
Femininity, inasmuch as it seduces and binds, has this aspect precisely because it offers, in itself and in the intention of the Creator, an image of liberating Bliss; now a reflection is always “something” of what it reflects, which amounts to saying that it “is” this reality in an indirect mode and on the plane of contingency. This is what the Buddhists grasped in the framework of Mahayanic esoterism — the Tibetans and the Mongols above all — and it is this that permitted them to introduce into their sanctuaries nude Târâs and Dakînîs in gilded bronze; the corporeal theophany of feminine type being intended to actualize in the faithful the remembrance of the merciful and beatific dimension of Bodhi and of Nirvâna.
Schuon, From the Divine to the Human, 1982,
“The Message of the Human Body”, pp. 99-100.
Too often it is thought that woman is not capable of objectivity
Too often it is thought that woman is capable of objectivity and thus of disinterested logic only at the expense of her femininity [1], 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 [2].
[1] 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.
[2] 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.
Schuon, To Have a Center, page 7.
Feminism is the abolition of the eternal-feminine
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.
Schuon, Gnosis, Divine Wisdom, page 54.
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