lust for life

My family I was born into was not my choice.

I appeared, though with what I know, it was my choice.

That was Eros making that choice.

Do you think Eros then becomes Dion?

As this incredible mystery reveals itself, I'd speculate the answer is yes.

The impetus for the attraction between two people who are destined to mate is Eros.

That I am aware of.

You have never thought about where does Eros go?

Well, he or she is the baby.

Yes.

The baby is Eros plus one.

You mean the new record of Eros.

Yes.

The life force that comes forth from the master record.

You're getting warm.

The master record is Eros.

Yes, so apply this to your ancient Egyptian knowledge.

Eros is what they considered the soul called the Ba, and the coming forth of a new life form from the Ba is the Ka.

There are an infinite number of Kas from the one Ba.

Are there unique Bas?

That's where lineages are from.

Everything would be traced to a master Ba, however I think where it gets mixed is the combination of the Ba with the feminine principle of the reverse of the Ba which is the Ab.

The Ab is the heart, and the Goddess supplies those.

So, you are saying the Ba is masculine and the Ab is feminine.

That's what I'm telling you.

That would mean my idea of Eros as Cupid is masculine desire.

That's how it would look.

Feminine desire is love.

Yeah, but what kind of love?

Erotic desire.

Is that romantic love?

No, it's wanting.

So, lust then?

Yes.

Is lust, love?

Yes.

Then it's the highest form of love because lust creates life.

I'm not going to argue this point with you.

Okay, but lust is destructive.

No doubt, but it also is the creative force in the universe.

It's balance, which falls in line with your teachings.

Eros is rose.

Yeah.

That's why rose gold always appears in your life.

You can see it now.

Given a simple idea, I can create quite the story from it.

Yeah, where were we?

We were trying to get to the origin of Dion.

You mean who is he?

Yes.

He's Eros, all grown up.

Fuck, you're right.

Eros becomes a writer.

You can now see the connection in regard to lineage.

For a man, his sons have the same Eros to Dion within in combination with a unique heart supplied by the Goddess.

Okay, how about a woman?

The lineage is the heart.

Who is that?

Call her Mary.

There's something about Mary, right?

There sure is.

Dion is dormant within a female and Mary is dormant within a male.

Each carries them with them.

The dormant Mary within a man would awaken the sleeping Mary within their mate.

The power is undeniable when you meet your soulmate.

You are going to meet them, the pull is too strong.

Dion will always recognize the Goddess.

Okay, so this helps explain the ancient Egyptian concept of cyclical kingship called Kamutef where the pharaoh incarnated within his son at death.

Yes, because it's him.

It's Dion.

They just needed to remember that the divine mind within them is in their heir and at death they would enter into the new king.

Doesn't that sound like wishful thinking and hocus pocus?

It sure does.

What do you know about the Egyptians?

They were very skilled in magic.

What do you know about humans?

They are practical.

Do you think people were superstitious and this is all nonsense?

Some of it is.

People can be irrational as well.

I also know there are reasons for rituals which involve more than just pretending the magic spell is going to work.

Don't you think a priest would tell the pharaoh this story in order to keep his standing?

He tells him that when he dies, he will incarnate in his son.

The priest is then exalted in the court because he has that knowledge.

It's possible.

Wouldn't the new king recognize the magic power of the priest?

Yes.

If he was a charlatan, he'd be executed.

Instead, he was given more power.

So, you can see both sides of this knowledge that we have received from the ancient Egyptians.

Our rational and rigorous scientific minds will see deceit in the priest who tells this fantastical tale to the pharaoh.

The human mind who has been exposed to magic in this world will be intrigued by what they discover in the past.

Which side is correct?

You can take the side of the rational and say it's not believable, or you can believe it.

You're old and you have been to a lot of places.

You have travelled around the world and been to ancient ruins, places of power as told by historians and wisdom carriers, and you have sat with witch doctors and drank their potions in the dark night of the Amazon jungle.

What says you?

It's magic.

Can you quantify it?

No.

Then what's your rationale behind saying magic exists?

I've seen it.

I've lived it.

I can tell stories about it, but I can't explain it.

It's best to leave it at that.

If you're interested, I can give you some names and places to help you on your journey.

So, Eros and Dion are really the same.

Yes.

Just like Mary and the Goddess.

If you think of Eros as dual sexed, as in Eros and Mary, it will maintain your idea of 3.

Within Eros is the Goddess and Dion.

You can call them by different names if you wish.

What is important to see is Eros is the one, the androgyne who contains within the potential for all.

This is taught by the ancient Egyptians, if you have the capacity to understand it.

I can point you towards some blog posts I wrote which will try to explain this to you but be aware you need a background in Egyptian thought to try and understand it.

Yes, thanks, I wrote it for you.

Yeah, you did, though I don't think you quite understood at the time what you were writing.

I didn't because I hadn't lived it.

I do now.

I was aware that within Eros are the 3 and they are the monad you look for when you try and figure out the origin of creation.

Lust for life.

There are always reminders about the miracle of life and how to cherish it.

What is it?

The mind in a body.

Energy coalesces into form.

Plato's world of forms?

Plato was talking about another reality where forms are eternal.

Well, that's the mind.

There are no forms.

Plato posited that we are the shadows of perfect form.

He claimed there are perfect models of what we experience such as beauty, justice, and goodness.

It seems like he was on drugs and deluded.

Yes, of course.

He clung to a notion of a reality where everything was perfect and good.

He was describing the Goddess' utopia.

Exactly.

It's Heaven.

To maintain a perfect world of forms would require rules for everything.

There is no freedom in a perfect world.

What if that's what you want?

Then someone needs to explain to you that you will have no freedom in the perfect world you envision and are striving to get to.

In the perfect world that is envisioned, there would be no death.

Hades would be permanently banished.

This sounds like New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation.

Well, that's the Goddess and her utopia.

Imagine a world without death?

Life would be created because it's good and then in utopia there is no death.

Soon you would be crowded out and the bugs would get so bad you couldn't stand it.

It's perfect though.

Utopia is Hell.

Clearly.

What's Hell?

Hell.

Thanks.

Why is Hell, Hell?

It's imperfect, there is ugliness and injustice.

Everybody's free to do what they want.

This sounds like Earth.

No, on Earth we have rules.

We surveil everyone, we tag all humans, give them all an identity, and require a passport to travel.

Earth is full of rules.

Without these rules, Earth would become the wild west which devolves quickly into Hell because everyone does what they want and if you give humans that ability, it does not end well.

A rules based order is describing Heaven.

Isn't that a form of totalitarianism like Communism?

Yes, you could describe Heaven as Communist.

Why are Bible believing Americans so against Jesus' socialist paradise?

Mind control.

They have the freedom to believe what they want through the ideals America was founded upon, however these ideals are at odds with what they believe.

I see that.

So, you'd compare Hell to unfettered Capitalism.

There are many parallels.

Regulation interferes with the freedom to exploit others and make large sums of money.

On Earth we try to maintain a balance between letting companies prosper and applying the brakes to their rapacious behaviour.

Drug companies will make you chronically ill if that means they can hook you on a cure for your condition.

They will suck out as much money from your animated corpse until you are no longer useful to them.

You'd think at least they could pay for your funeral, but they leave that to your estate.

You have a dim view of humanity.

I'm a realist.

I call it as I see it.

Do you think you can find good in the world?

Yes, there is lots of it.

Those in power are psychopaths.

There's a psychopath within all of us.

How is psychopathology activated?

When they start to acquire power, they become psychotic.

It's easy to see.

Is there a solution or hope?

Checks and balances.

Rules, laws, and deterrents.

What about rules for thee, but not for me?

That's how a psychopath operates.

The examples in the world are plentiful, I feel no need to point them out.

within the one is found the two

The spiritual chorus preaches the one. Everything is derivative of the one and all of creation can be folded back into the one. To express this one, us humans have come up with a bunch of terms, including the polarizing concept of god which we in turn fetishize and transform into an object of worship and sometimes assign to an ideal that is used for human pursuits of power and monetary gain. The understanding of your place in all of this is your connection to all, in that not only are you a product of the universe but you are indeed the universe and from your perspective you are a point of that universal consciousness that is looking out upon itself. It is not only an empowering vision of creation but it also lowers anxiety about what happens to you when the body dies. If you like adventure then I wouldn’t worry about what happens next. You can go even further with this concept and discard the one. Grasping at the one is still objectifying and truthfully there are no objects. We delineate what just is, conjure duality, and selectively take subjective forms of energy and solidify them into objects.

Okay, I think the above is a pretty good explanation of what heady spiritual people preach, if I do say so myself. In our culture, science is king and therefore in modern spiritual pursuits we try and reconcile the two. Using core concepts of Eastern philosophy allows us to bridge the gap and transform the woo into nuanced metaphysical speculations that allow consensus and eschews wishful thinking. This is all well and good however I like to push the envelope past the chains of what others think. I want experience and subsequently I want to put the experience through my filter and come up with my own concepts.

I have walked the desert sands of Egypt and explored their pyramids and majestic temples. I’ve sweated in the jungles of the Amazon basin. I’ve climbed mountains in the Andes and visited valley temples. I’ve spent a night out in the arid and unforgiving wilderness of the American southwest. I’ve ingested multiple plants that have altered my consciousness enough that I know there are many dimensions to this magical mystery tour we call life. I’ve tried to figure it all out. I’ve tried to grasp this elusive enlightenment. I’ve wondered where do I get my certificate telling me I’ve made it?

I understand the philosophy and I feel the universal connection. It’s undeniable. My experiential journey suggests instead of the one, all truth lives at the door of two. We are a reductionist culture and because of this, one is the holy grail. For me, it’s two and everything is derivative of the two. I’m talking about the divine feminine and divine masculine and their coming together creates the one which then reflects back out as a multiple duality of many twos. Envision this construct that comes from the mind of a human, if you will. It is a centre-point that contains two polarities. As a flow chart, the two as the divine feminine and masculine come together into the one which brings you to the unified centre-point. From the centre-point flows out all of creation into multiple instances of this duality into creation. The two must become one before they become the many.

I see this in ancient Egypt as the great mother and her son, who is also the father; this peculiarity known as kamutef, the bull of his mother. In their literature and on temple walls, I see it also expressed in the concept of creation emanating from an androgyne source that contains the sacred two. In the Ennead of Heliopolis, of which this dual-sexed god Atum is at the head, it is said that the masculine light source Shu and the feminine water source Tefenet are always with and are Atum. The androgyne is the combination of the two and there is no getting around it. Even in the word hermaphrodite is presented in clear view the union of two great deities in the Greek wisdom god Hermes and Aphrodite, the goddess of love. These two go back into the hazy scrolls of history to the beginnings of Egyptian thought and the primordial beginnings of the Ogdoad at Hermopolis where the Egyptian counterparts of these two, Thoth and Hathor, stand at the head of all creation that comes forth from the primordial swamp of 8-town. The concept of union and attempts at artistic expression is depicted on temple walls such as this painted relief masterpiece inside the Khonsu Temple at Karnak temple.

The dual-sexed Kamutef

I see this concept in the sacred mesa of the Andes where the reconciliation of the two gendered polarities brings everything back together into the centre at the axis mundi. The great stone idol of the Chavin temple, the lanzon, brings together the feminine and masculine in this depiction of the sacred world centre.

Lanzon in the temple of the jaguar at Chavin

The temple grounds are made up of dualistic constructs such as the set of black and white limestone stairs leading to the temple as well as finding dualistic principles in the raised and lowered opposite hands of the idol in which the masculine points to the upper world and the feminine to the lower world. The temple grounds rest at the meeting point of the coastal and jungle civilizations in a valley where two great rivers merge into one. This reconciliation of all was called tinkuy. Achieved is balance and from this position the healing can be empowered and love for all can flow. In the jungle are the symbols of the feminine serpent and the masculine jaguar. There are exoteric and esoteric understandings of the two.

Those that live off the land and in primitive dwellings we culturally denigrate as simple. Simple people paradoxically have the most profound symbolism. The modern symbolism from our culture of excess is bereft of ideas and suffering from malnutrition. Hidden in the jungle is the most profound teaching accessed by the brave and the courageous. I’ve searched high and low but never have I come across such a direct communication of what it is all about. Obviously, the serpent is feminine and the jaguar is masculine and they are ubiquitous symbols of the jungle. It’s a pretty simple exoteric depiction of life, creation, destruction, and renewal.

There were big teachings this last time through Peru earlier this year in the jungle that carried on into the Andes mountains. It included the direct experiencing of and understanding of the life force common to all, that connects us all, that originates from a common feminine and masculine vibration symbolized as the serpent and the jaguar. The serpent creates the vibrational body that undulates from on to off and the jaguar traverses this path. The jaguar moves freely. As visualized and communicated by Hindu adepts of yesteryear, when you raise your consciousness and enlighten all the subtle body chakras, energetic touch points you break free of, you meet the jaguar who roams the chakras as an expression of the power of the kundalini serpent which in the pre-Columbian South American religious thought are the three shamanic worlds. And finally you become the jaguar.

Everything comes from this one vibration with vibrations within each vibration. It pulses from off to on. Creation is the pulse with two extreme states and everything in between. From a holistic point of view it is one vibration. Within the one is found the two. The one can’t be without the two. The two always have their opposite. Try it; try to cut off the bottom end of a piece of string. What do you end up with? For the feminine and masculine there is no one. There is always the pull to rejoin your opposite, like a magnetic pull that creates the constant oscillation that creates life. How’s that for the esoteric? I’m so humbled by this knowledge that gives me the power to transcend any thoughts of annihilation and head straight into the gale force of life, full of courage and resolve. As the hero, I set out to rescue the princess; my feminine polarity. They seek each other and afterwards separate once again to keep this all going. It’s universal and timeless.

It's as close to the truth as I can get. There is a serpent and a jaguar and that’s it. The serpent’s body represents the pulsing form while the jaguar is the energy rushing forth along this serpentine highway. It also dawned on me the ancient Egyptians had something close to this idea in their great mother goddess Hathor and her son Ihy. The serpent lady would give birth to the wild bull Ihy, who would also be described as the perfumed effluence coming forth from her body. The rattling of a sistrum, an energetic vibration, much like the shacapa of the shaman in the Amazon, brought forth the Goddess and the power scent she gave off is the naked child come forth in wild abandon.

The clever adept proclaims non-duality. It all just is. It’s true. Within all, the is-ness is consciousness and once the pond is disturbed, duality becomes king through objectification. Trying to define non-duality is trying to define a state of existence; like taking a snapshot in time. Whatever it is we are living in, one thing for sure is it is constantly on the move and in motion therefore beyond definition. From the perspective of the realization of the one, being at the centre, where you become the axis mundi you see it all splinter into shards of duality made up of the feminine and masculine polarities. When I stand at my mesa, I envision I am the lanzon, the centre, the chaupi. I am everything. I look to my left and I see the feminine. I look right and it’s the masculine. I see everything. Lower world, upper world, and then back to self. My mesa represents the self, my self, and the totality of everything that comes from me. It’s all me. I am non-dual and I see it all break down into duality. All aspects and qualities of existence, psychologically and biologically, contained within it all. Which is the correct perspective? Is it from the standpoint of non-duality or does it originate from duality? What are your prejudices?

I look up at the sky, see the clouds, and I am stunned by the vastness of it all. I come to the realization it is the image of mind I am looking at. This vastness is consciousness. I am privileged and privy to having the ability to image mind and see how creation is the representation of the twinning pattern of consciousness and energy, yin and yang, feminine and masculine, serpent and jaguar.

The game is fascinating and I have a fascination with the game. It’s like being at the beach and grasping a handful of hot, white sand. It just slips through your fingers.

finding balance

The jaguar is the ultimate representative of the life force power. The visual expression of the energy is stunning. The beauty, strength, and savageness are on full display. The manifestation of the pure power is realized in the wild state. The domestication and cultivation of the power allows for nuance, growth, and feats of incredible achievements. Deep down, the power wants to be free to express itself and in controlled societies that results in periodic outbreaks of uncontrollable wild abandon. Sometimes we say one has gone crazy.

Balance comes to mind. One can stay cultured and acceptable for only so long before the dam breaks and the jaguar within wants out. There becomes a need to recognize and befriend this state. There is a pull within all to become free and let loose. It is awesome and is what you seek. I can feel it within and how it animates all. This is it; it is what you wanted to discover. It’s the Great Spirit. It comes forth as the jaguar, powered by the serpent. It’s the harmony of feminine and masculine to produce conscious power capable of constant transformational magic.

 

We are all expressions of the power; every single living thing. Everything has spirit. Life could be thought of as an experiment where free will is observed in the situational embodiment of conscious energy and the wonder is in how it is used. The masculine wants to push forward, achieve, accomplish, and win. This involves building and destroying, amidst a show of strength and ferocity. The feminine wants to create community, unity, and family structures. She wishes to express the power through creativity and the arts. Her potency is a check on her masculine counterpart through love and inclusiveness as opposed to individuality and competition. The two as one makes for harmony while balancing each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Left alone, each polarity refines into a greater expression of its dominant traits. In the case of the male, it is the warrior intent upon world domination at the expense of all. This darkness is within us all. Look within and you will see it and you will see the need for harmony and balance. A reconciliation involves finding your soul mate. We are agents of destruction, both outwardly and the self. When we are shown love, the power flowers.

 

There is a need to first reconcile within and afterwards the recognition and mitigation of the duality of each lighthouse of power. Subsequently, one is ready to harmonize with the outward expression of this power. Why do most relationships fail? Look within for the reason. We are not whole beings as of yet though we go in search of a partner who will make us whole. That only works once we have dealt with our own shit.

 

There is a need for deep soul work and a need for the reconciliation of opposites in order to live within the centre/heart space but to get to that place involves a balance within of the contending polarities. Before the coming together of the feminine and the masculine, each side has to get its act together. It's mythicized in ancient Egypt as the constant fighting between Horus and Set and within that story are homosexual elements that symbolize a union of masculine traits that mitigate the destructive tendencies and weaknesses found within masculine archetypes. It’s a tough sell to discuss in our culture as we view this behaviour as deviant as opposed to being symbolic. In western culture, a real man ain’t no sissy; he’s alpha and definitely no cuck or soy boy, has no feelings, and never backs down. In a culture that ritually celebrated this behaviour, the answer becomes obvious and so empowering.

 

I have written about this before and these concepts were realized and practiced by the great quariwarmi shamans of the Andes. I write about it again because of constant insights into its nature and seeing this process unfold within. In pre-Colombian Andean cosmology, each polarity would be first mediated towards the centre starting with the reconciliation of the same gendered complementary opposites found within. Disharmony between these worlds leads to confusion. Sacred performances involving cross dressing males, called ipas, were ritually performed in order to mitigate the male tendency towards judgment and destruction. The masculine force, sufficiently tamed, would be prepared to be symbolically united with the opposing feminine force that has been similarly tamed in a holistic process called tinkuy. The successful reconstruction of the respective gendered poles leads to the mediation of the feminine and the masculine polarities, a process called yanantin, with the result a perfect harmony called the conocimiento. This balancing act and subsequent joining together of the opposing forces ritually recreate the original androgyne along a central axis, bisecting the feminine and masculine polarities, which in turn unlocks and radiates unconditional cosmic love and demonstrates this union is the origin of all there is and is represented in ritual and symbol as the mediated third gendered hermaphrodite. It is the union of the feminine and masculine powers which reconstitutes the all. It’s the cultivation of the human to reclaim a cosmic destiny. It’s taking the wild grape within nature and creating a dual sexed and self-pollinating plant that I have discussed before which is the essence of the mystery of the great Dionysos. I directly experience this voyage of the harmonization of the energy. I am not even sure where I am on the path but I sure do feel this power. It courses through me and at times it is magical. I’m engaged in slowing down, calming the mind, and becoming conscious of this power. Eliminating distractions, whether that be forced through the aging process or mindfulness, brings you into communion with this power. It’s magical and can transform into many expressions.

 

The power of the Huachuma mesa involves this balance and reconciliation. Lighting it all up, getting quiet, and just listening. Being present. Feeling the power of the serpent ripple through my body in waves and admiring the jaguar and its wild and ferocious display of coursing natural power. If nature was going to design the ultimate expression of the force that animates all in the universe then the jaguar is it.

 

I smiled knowingly as the knowledge slowly caressed me and allowed me to understand what it was I was feeling. I pictured the undulating serpentine nature of the Goddess come forth as a serpent and profoundly realized that our existence is a vibration and the path of the serpent’s body represents the pulsation that defines the reality of that vibration. This path is travelled by the jaguar, whose wild energy and abandon lights up the track and allows for the experience of what it is the vibration has created.

 

When you pass the challenges of life, embrace the undulations of the serpent, and rise up in strength, the jaguar comes. Balance is at your doorstep. Welcome to the Order of the Jaguar.

tinkuy

I wish to initially touch on "The Contendings of Horus and Set" story from ancient Egypt concerning the homosexual acts perpetrated upon each combatant and from this position end up journeying intellectually into the Andes mountains. Horus and Set are the personification of the dualistic masculine mind that can be thought of as reverse images of each other. Another way to envision this is when the sun rises it is as Horus; when it sets it is invoking the power of Set, and this solar behaviour was combined into a deity called Harakhty by the ancient Egyptians. When Horus sees his reflection, he should see Set and when Set looks in the mirror he would see Horus.

Set and Horus combined as Hrwyfy

They are of the same principle but perform the opposite action. Another example would be the interplay between the light and the dark. Without the other there is no distinction between the two; these opposites are what make up the created world and they operate as complementary waves, each with their own peak. Set's attempt at sodomizing Horus is an attempt to prove dominance as it seems this behaviour was also used to depict the subjugation of other nations in that era. By foiling Set's attempt at penetrating him, and then using trickery with the help of Isis to get Set to ingest his semen, Horus is able to eventually prove to his elders that he is the dominant one able to conquer Set and lay claim to the white crown of his father Osiris and thus assume the dual kingship of Egypt.

Horus at Kom Ombo with the double crown

This might seem unrelated but bear with me. I have been smoking jungle tobacco, called mapacho, regularly since August and one of the things it has helped me with is dreaming. My dreaming for quite a while had been sporadic to the point of non-existence and if I did dream, I couldn't remember them. It seems mapacho provides a light into the visionary dreamtime and I now dream vivid story lines which I remember clearly almost every night. A couple of nights ago I had this kind of disturbing dream, well I have noticed that my dreams run the gamut of behaviour and emotions so having this type of dream isn't necessarily uncommon, anyway this male figure appeared and eventually tried to sodomize me which was an uncomfortable situation to say the least. I resisted the attempt and then awoke confused. The next day I was trying to make sense of what this was symbolizing when it occurred to me the metaphor concerned my other half, the dark side if you will, and it was trying to reassert its dominance over the light side. By resisting, it was a sign of where I am on my journey and is suggestive that the tables can be turned now, and the light can dominate the dark if I so choose. However, that leads to another line of thinking.

I had been reading of Pre-Hispanic Mesa rituals in the Andes over the past month with most of the data cited coming from the Spanish conquistadors' observation and interviewing of the former ruling Inca class and the various nations they ruled over. The author of one book called "Decolonizing the Sodomite" was able to bring to light and reconstruct some of the rituals by extracting meaning from the indigenous words used and by critically examining the pandering to the Inquisitors concerning the explosive issue of sodomy which the Spanish had witnessed as being practiced by the Andean people along with rituals where men would crossdress. My take on this is the Andean specialists, shamans called quariwarmi, who were dual gendered shamans that mediated between the symmetrically dualistic spheres of Andean cosmology and daily life, were tasked with reconciling this very thing I have been discussing in which they ritually were bringing balance back into the complementary pair of the masculine through ritual sodomy and then going further to establish a centre balance between the feminine and masculine through the symbolic act of crossdressing which invokes the idea of the third gender recognized as an androgyne. This is the idea of a hermaphrodite being present in their conception of what constitutes the all-encompassing monad, the deity called Viracocha, and of which I have written extensively about in my critical examination of ancient Egyptian mythology.

the dual gendered Viracocha

It would be proper at this point to explain the indigenous idea of tinkuy as this is what the quariwarmi shamans were trying to achieve. Tinkuy is the joining together of complementary opposites through ritual mediation. It's all about bringing everything into the centre, the in between space, to find balance. This place was called the chaupi and the central axis in this common territory was called the chhimi which means the heart. It's interesting that what I can intuit as being the answer to the vexing problem of duality - love and the heart - was ritually mediated by a culture very in tune with this necessity and this was driven underground and destroyed by the conquistadors over 500 years ago.

Again, while smoking mapacho the other evening this idea came to me as my mind faded away and I became the observer that while the masculine mind manifests the middle world and the feminine gives it form, the state the world currently finds itself in is due to the stubbornness of the masculine polarity. The mind has the capacity to know all and refuses to accept the need for the feminine's freely given love and wisdom in order to enact the perfect creation. The situation feels like the feminine is used to birth creation and the masculine is confident from then on it can bring about utopia. The endemic stubbornness of rejecting love as the overarching principle for this most perfect world has sunk us into the abyss we currently are submerged in. The inherent duality that lies within the masculine mind is constantly in battle, symbolized by the light and the dark, and will never be at peace until surrender to love is viewed as a show of strength and not weakness. Love is always available to rectify this pathological condition if we choose.

Here's another way to look at this: the two polarities of the omnipresent energetic force are the opposite attractors of feminine and masculine. Within each node of polarity (think of an alternating current) are the same sex pair described above which can be described as symmetrical though opposing - the Horus and Set never ending conflict that bedevils the masculine node. The idea of looking into a mirror and seeing a reflection of oneself describes this symmetry. Each polarity must balance its contending duality before becoming fit to mediate and reconcile its relationship to its opposite. Examples of this would be the dominate feminine traits of love, nurturing, healing, and sexuality harmonizing with warfare, destruction, pestilence, and chasteness. The resulting feminine iconography of the mediation of these characteristics produces ritual and symbolic displays of warrior goddesses with ithyphallic traits. Drawing on my knowledge of ancient Egypt this is iconographic in the goddess figures of the raging bringer of pestilence and healing lioness Sekhemet and in the primeval combative and creatrix goddess Neith.

the ancient Egyptian goddess Neith with erect phallus

In ancient Greece, this confluence of gender traits manifests in the warlike Athena who so attired can appear as what could be described as a female crossdressed.

Athena adorning a column in Athens

This need for balance extends to the masculine traits such as aggressiveness, single mindedness, dominance, and righteousness being reconciled with compromise, inclusion, trust, and free association. This act of restoring individual harmony in our society is a difficult path to follow as the male's gender role is society is rigidly defined and deviation from that is considered effeminate and queer. However, it is a recurring archetype and especially prevalent in the arts. The artist David Bowie is a perfect example of the Dionysian impulse that lays bare the societal exaltation of the alpha male figure.

David Bowie

In my study of pre-Colombian Andean cosmology it is revealed how in tune the various cultures were of the need to achieve this balance. Sacred performances involving crossdressing males, called ipas, were performed ritually to mediate the male tendency towards judgment and destruction. The masculine force, sufficiently tamed, would be prepared to be symbolically united with the opposing feminine force in a process called tinkuy. This balancing act and subsequent joining together of the opposing forces ritually recreates the original androgyne along a central axis bisecting the feminine and masculine polarities which in turn unlocks and radiates unconditional cosmic love and demonstrates this union is the origin of all there is and is represented in ritual and symbol as the mediated third gendered hermaphrodite.

Mountains can be considered these peaks of masculine power, the feminine would be the valley and rivers running through the landscape, and the indigenous people of the Andes referred to these landscape formations as Huacas - idols invested with elemental powers. The Huacas are representative of these contending powers. The masculine will to assert dominance would anthropomorphically have one polarity declaring that they are the most high. Picture in your head two sine waves, each wave successively creates a mountain and a valley and when one aspect is at its peak and is dominant its complementary wave must be moved out of phase in order to keep it in check.

Sine waves out of phase

Combining these two waves in a harmonious relationship creates a figure 8; rotate the 8 ninety degrees and it's an infinite expression of all there is and all there will ever be.

Infinity

Each power rises and falls, has its complementary power symmetrically opposing it, is mediated by its relationship to its opposite counterpart, and is checked and harmonized when the all-encompassing powers cross in the centre. Indigenous wisdom that came before our marauding western civilization and now lost to intolerance and time, created this congruence through symbol and ritual and they strove to lead lives imbued with this idea of balance and reciprocity referred to as tinkuy.

So dark has our situation become that in order to change it a return to the archaic world of symbolism and ritual is much needed. The two estranged waves of masculine polarity, in order to be corralled, must be mediated to the centre where the wise and fully realized feminine power alone in her castle remains in wait for her lover to arrive.