Weaving Spirit into Form

Contrasting Expressions of the Sacred in God and Goddess

A Magical Essay by Gwalchdistow Cambria

1. Introduction to the Living Tapestry of immanent Manifestation

How should I describe this attempt to appreciate the shape and flow of the divine? This personal description of the Sacred pours out from a passionate heart, dedicated to immanent apprehension of the God within the body of the Goddess and to the Goddess in her immanence in matter. As all men are born of woman, the vital force of man streams out of the sacred vessel of the blessed Mother of All. As she provides form, divinity orders the world, empowering it with a driving desire for survival. Without the active expression of the God, the sacred vessel would be empty and silent. Without the Goddess, the ungrounded energy of the God would lash out with uncertain recklessness and inconsistent direction. The relationship of gods and masculine angelic forces brings individual focus to the divine, while the sacred feminine and goddess energy gathers together in shifting alliances and interrelationships among goddesses and their angelic forces. Within the sacred vessel life shapes its forces, growth and decay, increase and decline, reaching upward and inward, rushing toward heights and depths. Spirit transforms the qualities of life, yielding eternity to the children of her passion.

2. Masculine as Spiritual Focus of Action

Rising from the Mother, man goes forth into his world, returning with bounty won by virtue of a journey through the land. Through blood and pain, success and painful defeat, man gathers up his needs and returns home to share the abundance with his people. Millennia of millennia ago, man began to hunt. These early ancestors hunted according to opportunity, but eventually rose beyond their brutal nature to see some measure of wisdom in preparation for a hunt. Survival rewarded them for these early efforts. They learned the ways of the land and explored the high and low places.

Slowly time began to come into the awareness of the people. Suns, moons, and cycles marked the days and seasons of the hunt and the necessities of women held secret the mysteries of creation. These too marked the passage of days and moons. Marking time opened the mind to symbol, and from symbol sacred rites required images to mark the sacred places within the Earth. These early masterpieces in caverns and on rock faces set man and woman on their journeys through the sacred land, consecrating their environment with a natural recognition of divinity. In all ages, men find fulfillment in recognition of the sacred vessel, in form, fashioned by the Great Mother. His actions direct the sacred fires that light the worlds. The sharp focus of the sacred masculine forms divine expression as God and angel.

3. Feminine as Immanence of Divinity in Matter

Devotion to Life marks the nature of the sacred feminine. She holds the mysteries of death and life, creation and destruction, birth and dissolution. Her balanced aspects unite to shape the world. Life is her gift, coming forth from her womb and returning to her embrace when it leaves the body to the Earth. All form contains an element of a great vessel fashioned by the Goddess. When we walk about the land, some places focus our awareness of the Sacred, and we are drawn to recognize the presence of Spirit in the natural world that gave birth to the human form.

In many traditional societies, women learned to work together to raise their children, gather food, and create home in the land. Likewise, when they recognized the Goddess, she took form in many ways and expressed her nature according to the principles of community. While the sacred masculine focuses energy and life into discrete elements, the sacred feminine, be it as goddesses or in nature, forms cooperative patterns of multiple elements. These shift and reform, transforming all life through dynamic interrelationships among her forms. Man may point to a master, a teacher, champion, or hero. Women combine forces to express divinity, serving to form the vessel through the quality of their lives. Goddesses also bring multiple focus into being and provide opportunities for individual figures to emerge, only to reveal a hidden collective presence that fashions the forces of creation, destruction, and renewal. Men perceive dynamic patterns that form as a passive vessel. For women, the fury of forces that fashion, nurture, and maintain the vessel redefine their understanding of action and form.

4. Within the Sacred Vessel

The Great Lady shapes the Vessel, her forms flowing one into another, casting patterns of manifestation of thought, feeling, and matter across the Sacred Land. Within her gaze the sacred feminine gathers her community into common consciousness and births it as a new incarnation of her presence. The Lady's work is not yet complete. The consciousness of community guides and shapes conditions for manifesting her wisdom and love, granting freedom to Soul in the great journey of life.

Within the Vessel action shapes its potential and bursts forward. Man flourishes within the place of the Lady, but cannot himself complete the conditions for entering the great mystery of consolidation. The Beloved, raises man and lady into the chamber of transformation--the holy bridal chamber. Here the Beloved and the Lover join, embracing their union, loosing sight of all but the singularity of love. Other mysteries may present themselves within the Sacred Vessel. The eternal moment exclaims infinite potential and emanates its natural reality.

5. Quality of Form Gathers Issuing Action of the Vessel

The Lady and the Lord, as Lover and Beloved, offer themselves in eternal sacrifice to the holy fire of transformation. Within the Sacred Vessel, the worlds and Spirit shape and form the fabric of life. The individual focus of the Lord and of man fills the vessel with power and order. The common nature of the forms of the Lady work not by separation, but flow one into another, blending, joining, separating, and reforming her community of being. Her mystery confounds the sacred masculine, as his focus offers only limitation to her life. Yet, together they form an even greater expression of the Whole, a singular reality within the heart of the Divine.

Passion denies a simple value to their union. I cannot say, do this, add this, subtract this. I cannot offer certainty or consistent progress, a single list of ingredients that answer the challenges of literal values. The mystery of their love flees profane materialism, fades before emotion and thought, yet lives within the eternal moment of the Sacred Heart. What each of us does, depends on personal assimilation and recognition of Spirit. Personal practice may encourage a larger common expression. And common expression may encourage personal freedom and being. Each responds to the challenge according to his or her calling, each according to his or her nature.