If you understand this image, you understand the workings of the entire universe. Whether we are looking at the waxing and waning sun during the seasons, the daylight making way to night, the death of plants and hibernation of animals in the winter with their reawakening in the spring; the process of creation is the same.
The catch is this: to reintegrate into this eternal cycle, humankind must accept death (powerlessness, vulnerability) right along with life--something thousands of years of patriarchy have taught us to fear and reject above all else.
In ancient myths across the world, the Goddess was associated with death (Fate) as well as birth (Mother) (Baring and Cashford, 1993). In the bodies of women, our ancestors saw the entire process of life. A man born of the womb head first also returned to the womb head first (penis). As an ancient wives' saying illustrates, "men spend the first nine months of their lives trying to get out of the womb and the rest of it trying to get back in."
So, what does this have to do with death? Men don't die when they make love with their most beloved. Or do they? How many men have lost all sense of themselves during the ecstasy of union and have come out of it feeling renewed, or dare we say reborn. Now this doesn't mean that women don't have these feelings of surrender and renewal through ecstatic unity. Nor does it neglect same sex coupling. Indeed, a woman may use her finger or tongue to please her lover while a man may utilize his mouth or anus to please his.
Within all of our sexual relationships this death and rebirth motif is a physical manifestation of a spiritual process. Indeed, it may be that to evolve humanity needs to surrender the false distinction between physical and spiritual. A man's surrender of semen to a woman's vagina, culminating in the mystery of new life, is of one kind with Psyche's surrender to Eros, culminating in the mystery of the human becoming divine.
Thus, it could be concluded that the birth and fate function of the feminine are one. It is interesting that the Mystic Christians see Christ as being the evolutionary potential of humanity. Thus, the Virgin Birth and the Crucifixion/Resurrection motifs entail an evolution into a higher state of being. In mystic terms, the Virgin Birth is simply the Soul in a state of emptiness while the crucifixion is a giving up of a current way of living to enable the resurrection into a more evolved state of being.
Seen from this viewpoint, the Virgin Birth and the Crucifixion are one.
As Jesus said, humanity must take up the cross as he did. Yet, most Christians believe Christ was an externalized scapegoat who died for "their sins." The basic premise then is that "we don't have to do it because He did it for us."
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