The Feminine Mystery of Birth
by Josephine Wall and Anne Stokes
On Children
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.
--Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (Knopf, 1923)
A quick review of yin/yang theory
The Yin/Yang symbol is an ancient Taoist symbol describing the nature of duality. Life on earth, from the human perspective, is dualistic. Unlike all the other creatures on earth, humans think of ourselves as separate individuals from one another and compare one thing to another. This human capacity is an expression of duality and is represented in the beautiful simplicity of the Yin/Yang symbol. The symbol represents a universal concept that opposite and complementary forces together make the whole. The two halves are balanced, and each contains a tiny dot of the other within it. Neither is greater than the other. One cannot exist without the other, and they are never separate. This balance is the key to harmonious existence. Nature maintains this balance, well, naturally. It is humans that must consciously understand and attend to this universal truth or risk the consequences that arise out of imbalance.
Here are some examples of the complementary and opposing forces of Yin/Yang.
Introductory note:
This essay was inspired by the recent news that a white, male judge in Alabama ruled that a few cells in a dish are a “person” with the same rights as you and I. This is the latest outrageous example of the extreme ignorance and arrogance of the grotesque and distorted Masculine thinking that has infected our patriarchal era of recent millennia. In Yin/Yang terms, this is an example of dire imbalance in masculine, rational, linear, hierarchical thinking over feminine, intuitive, symbolic, relational knowing. In effect, this judge has determined that a woman, a mother, is not needed at all for a person to exist. The great Feminine mystery of birth has been excluded, disregarded and determined nonessential once more and technology alone can bring a person into being. This is to say that the Yang doesn’t need the Yin. This is simply impossible in terms of Natural Law.
Indeed, these are extraordinary times. It is impossible to find words to describe the arrogance and hubris with which humanity has separated ourselves from Nature, the Great Mother, and the Sacred Feminine. And we are now shocked by the consequences. Despite the knowledge of the Greenhouse Effect since Enice Newton Foote described the phenomena in 1856, we have clung to the idea/energy of Earth as a resource, something to be exploited for profit, rather than a living sacred being. (3) We are seeing the Great Mother struggling to restore balance. The imbalances have become so extreme that we will see increases in catastrophic weather and climate events that are needed to rebalance them. In the coming decades we will collectively, globally discover how the Great Mother will go about rebalancing humanity’s distorted thinking and lack of connection in infinite ways. Like anyone who has been abused and neglected, I’m sure she is sad, depressed, and angry. Rightfully so. The next 50-100 years are likely to be quite bumpy for humanity as we are forced to reckon with the consequences of our abuse and disregard of our Mother Earth, the Sacred Feminine.
Papatuanuku: The Earth Mother - Fusion of south Asian and Maori Cultures. AI Generated
The Feminine Mystery of birth
The miraculous emergence of new life every spring brings with it a mix of awe, relief, excitement, and celebration of Life reborn. It is the natural way of things for the human heart to resonate with the thrill and joy of birth and rebirth. There have been festivals and celebrations honoring the hope and promise of spring/fertility/birth since the beginning of human existence.
In some spiritual traditions it is taught that women alone have a certain spiritual substance that men do not have. It is this spiritual substance that enables the miracle of bringing a new human life into the world. The females of all species are endowed with this substance and so is the Great Mother, the Earth herself. It is this spiritual substance that is the mysterious force behind the rebirth in spring. A woman’s physical and spiritual physiology is capable of growing and giving birth to a physical baby, and most miraculously, her body is able to be a place where the light of a soul unites with human form. This process of a new human soul coming to inhabit a baby in utero is what we can all witness as the “glow” of a pregnancy for the light of the spirit is doubled within a pregnant woman. Only the females of any species can grow young in their wombs and give birth. Only women have the spiritual physiology that makes it possible for a soul to unite with a baby’s physical body. And, despite technological advances, it still cannot occur outside of a female body.
In East Asian medicine, the womb is considered to be an aspect of the Heart. This makes sense. Of course, we want to grow a baby in the warm protected center of Love in the body because we intuitively know that a baby needs lots of love. And Love is a mysterious substance. You can’t measure it or hold it in your hand. It is infinite. You can’t have a thimble full or a truckload, but it is absolutely necessary to healthy, thriving human life. Human beings are not unique in this. We are part of the great web of life, not separate from it. If we need love to thrive, then so does every other living thing. We have all seen what happens when children, adults even pets do not have healthy love in their lives. We are now seeing what happens when the Earth has gone too long without healthy love in Her life. She has too long suffered the abuse of humanity upon her. (1)
The Many Names of the Earth Goddess. Pachamama, on Beisalesk.live
If we were to put the capacity to grow a baby and give birth on the Yin/Yang symbol, it would be on the Yin/black side along with female, feminine, intuition, mystery, matter, body, Goddess, and so on.
In this scenario, the Yin is balanced by the Yang/white side that would include male, masculine, energy, spirit, God, etc. In this way we can see that the creation of a baby, indeed all of life, arises out of the perfect, balanced union of Yin/Yang.
Kahlil Gabran’s poem expresses the mysterious phenomenon of the spontaneous springing forth of new Life, “children,” as “sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.” He is expressing the great Feminine mystery that we get swept up in every year, evoking the delight that is spring. “Life’s longing for itself” can be seen in the microcosm of our human children or in the macrocosm of the great cacophony of every living thing in its own process of birth and rebirth that the Wood Phase gives rise to, especially in Spring. From crocuses to chickadees, to greening lawns, birth and rebirth are the work of the spring/Wood Phase.
“Children” here also includes any creative endeavor, such as a work of art, planting a garden, cooking a meal, or starting a business. It encompasses anything that takes ideas, dreams, and potential (Yin) into a form (Yang) we can all experience. All people, women and men, have the capacity for creativity as we all have a balance of Yin and Yang that makes up the whole person. The aspect of creativity that is unique to human females is the endowment of the spiritual substance that makes it possible for a soul to come into physical form through her body.
by Mare Cromwell
In modern times, we don’t stop to ponder, honor, or celebrate the reality that at the end of the day, the miracle of birth and rebirth belong to the Great Feminine Mystery. We understand some of the science that explains that seeds do sprout, trees do bud, or uniting egg and sperm makes babies, but we still don’t know why. The “why” remains in the mystery and as Kahlil Gibran explains, it is “Life’s longing for itself.” Mystery is itself an aspect of the Yin/feminine.
The rise of monotheistic religion, when viewed through the lens of Yin/Yang, separated the masculine God from the feminine Goddess. Separated Heaven (God) from Earth (Goddess). The spread of Christianity, for example, put a Yang, masculine God in heaven, and then taught that there was no Yin, earthly, feminine, Goddess counterpart. Of course, the Universal Law of Yin/Yang teaches us that this is impossible, but it is this unbalanced thinking that has given rise to the Colonial spread of patriarchy and the devaluing of the feminine/women/Yin/Earth around the globe. This separation of the Goddess from the God also separated our ancestors from their direct daily experience of the Goddess (Mother Nature), of “Life longing for itself,” that carried people with Earth-based (pagan) spirituality through their days.
Celtic Goddess Brigid- by Laura Tempest Zakroff
As Christian European society spread, The Church, in combination with state authorities was a powerful force. Intolerant of any who might “contaminate” Christians, thousands of Jews and Pagans were forcibly converted under threat of violence and or economic pressure during the Medieval period which spanned roughly 1000 years. (2) Those of us of European ancestry all have ancestors who managed to survive the trauma of those times which we carry as ancestral trauma.
The converted Pagans brought with them some of the rituals and symbols from their traditions. These were folded into Christianity to ease the transition as with Christmas trees and easter eggs, for example. Some of the Celtic Gods and Goddess were reassigned as Catholic Saints. In Ireland today, St Brigid’s Day is a beautiful example of this interweaving. Brigid (or Brigit) was the name of the Celtic goddess from pre-Christian Ireland. St Brigid of Kildare is one of the Patron Saints of Ireland. St Brigid’s day is the 1st of February, Imbolc on the Gaelic calendar, the day the Goddess was celebrated. Both figures are associated with poetry, healing, protection, smithcraft, and domestic animals.
Those who were forcibly converted experienced the fear and trauma of violence and persecution. Fear and trauma are potent deterrents and over generations they have led to a collective amnesia around the deep knowing that, just as with Yin/Yang, the Masculine God in Heaven (spirit/energy) is inseparably balanced and rooted by the Feminine Goddess that is the living Earth (matter/substance). The Yin/Yang pair is matter infused with spirit. Just as we hold the concept of the Creator/God in heaven as a spiritual being, we must also hold the concept of the Earth/Goddess as a spiritual being. Balanced Yin/Yang, feminine/masculine, Goddess/God, Earth/Sun make up the whole.
Gaia: The Goddess of the Earth, playground.com
At the level of the spirit, this separation and forgetting is the basis of our climate crisis. Just as when we bake a cake, we must first have the idea/energy/spirit/love of cake and with a little time and focus, we produce a physical cake. Collectively, we have had the idea/energy (without love) that the Earth is first and foremost an endless resource that serves humanity’s interests alone, that she can be exploited and mistreated and continue to endlessly give birth to Life. Imagine having the expectation that a human woman could be abused and mistreated and still be able to give birth to a healthy baby. We must shift our collective ideas and focus to the deep knowing that the Earth is a Living, Spiritual, Energetic being that needs our love, protection, and care in order to give birth to Thriving Life ecosystems, restoring balance of Yin/Yang in the form of Earth/Heaven or Feminine/Masculine as our ancestors did when they included the Goddesses in their devotions.
This practice of abuse and exploitation of the Earth, and therefore the Feminine in general, spread along with Colonialism to be the dominant culture today. In human terms, we can see these principles at work in the systemic ways women are disregarded, excluded, mistreated, devalued, and discriminated against. Human women carry and share a great deal of sorrow, anger, and resentment about this mistreatment for we have all experienced discrimination in the least, or worse, outright abuse. This sorrow, anger, and resentment is ours individually and collectively as women alive on the planet currently and as the insidious echoes of inherited ancestral trauma. If we human women feel this way, imagine the magnitude of the sorrow, anger, and resentment the Earth must feel as a living spiritual being? Indeed, we feel Her sorrow when we let ourselves feel the grief of climate and ecosystem destruction, and it is deep.
The Earth, the Great Mother, can no longer generate Life in the face of the total disregard and mistreatment of the last several centuries. We see this in the loss of ecosystems, plant and animal species, and more generally in our climate instability. We are living at the end of an era. This cannot continue. The Earth, a wise, ancient, sacred being, carries within her body/mind/spirit the capacity to heal and generate “Life longing for itself,” but she needs help. She carries within her the capacity to infuse Life with the mysterious spiritual substance that is the “why” of seeds sprouting, trees budding, and uniting egg and sperm making babies. Women have a particular role to play in healing the Earth because of our connection via the capacity to give birth to human children infused with spirit and Her capacity to give birth to everything else and infuse all of Life with spirit. We are a microcosm to Her macrocosm. When we do our own individual healing work, as in transforming the anger and grief that all women share, the Earth is healed as well, because we are an extension of Her. This is some of the most important work of our time and one of the greatest gifts we can give our Mother.
Mother Earth/Mama Africa - VKMOKELLOARTS
Just as only female bodies/minds/spirits carry the innate “knowing” of how to create a complete individual human, only women carry the deep knowing of how to heal and grow the energy of rebirth for the Great Mother Earth. Only women know how to heal her body and spirit, that she will be able to give birth to abundant, spirit-infused Life again. Men can be helpers and protectors in their role as the Sacred Masculine, but women must lead, for the mystery of birth is ours alone. The Masculine hierarchy, technology, and science on the Yang side of our Yin/Yang symbol, are unbalanced without the feminine Yin pairing of relational, mystery, and intuition. Indeed, we are living with the result of centuries of imbalance. Clearly, this cannot continue if humanity wants to be part of a thriving, generative, abundant, living future.
The technologies and culture of the Industrial Age, while in many ways a marvel, have risen out of the imbalance of patriarchal thinking that has been in place for the last several millennia. The white, Yang area of the Yin/Yang symbol representing human culture today, is grotesquely large, misshapen and dominating in comparison to the Yin. This is unsustainable, as the Law of Yin/Yang teaches us. We can see this because the vast majority of the people in leadership, science, technology, and decision-making roles have been primarily male who, by their nature, only have half the story at best. Women and men must work as equal partners, equal halves of Yin/Yang to begin to restore this balance. As Yin/Yang teaches us, until half the seats at every table of leaders and decision makers are occupied by women, this will not be corrected. This is not to blame men; they have been subjected to and oppressed by the patriarchy and toxic masculinity as well. But we are needing a rebirth here. Birth and rebirth as part of the feminine mystery are women’s work, sacred women’s work.
Pachamama, Inca Goddess, Mother Earth by Gisella Stapelton
Resources:
1. The Return of the Feminine and the World Soul, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee - Golden Sufi Center – 2009
2. A History of Christian Conversion, David W. Kling -Oxford University Press
3. Eunice Newton Foote: The Woman Who Discovered the Greenhouse Effect, https://www.newscientist.com/article/2382758-eunice-newton-foote-the-woman-who-discovered-the-greenhouse-effect/#:~:text=Eunice%20Newton%20Foote%2C%20who%20discovered,at%20how%20heat%20affected%20air.
Please feel free to share with a friend. If you are new here, you can sign up for your own occasional newsletter Here: