KABBALAH, TANTRA, AND SEXUAL GNOSIS

KABBALAH, TANTRA, AND SEXUAL GNOSIS

Prelude

Surely one of the most influential forces in the rise of modern

sexual magic was the complex body of texts and traditions

that make up Jewish Kabbalah. ... Erotic symbolism is

pervasive throughout Kabbalistic literature ...42

To many students of Kabbalah, it will come as something of a shock to realize that there is a Tantric thread running through the tapestry of Jewish mysticism. Yet modern Kabbalah scholars, from Moshe Idel to Elliot Wolfson to Rafael Patai, have all pointed out the Tantric element of Jewish mystical writings and practices. Patai in particular emphasizes the possible identity of the Shekinah—the feminine aspect of the Jewish deity—with none other than the Hindu goddess Kali. These are the conclusions of respected scholars, not the wild speculation of armchair anthropologists. What this means for any student of religion—or, indeed, any Kabbalist or Tantricist—is profound. Patai himself goes so far as to speculate that there was a historical connection between Kabbalah and Indian Tantra, perhaps to the extent that one influenced the development of the other.

This uniting of two separate esoteric strains—one from India, the other from Israel by way of Spain and North Africa—is evidence of a phenomenon that is already well-known to Western occultists—that the secret teachings of all places and times share a basic fundamental understanding of the created world. This concept has come under tremendous pressure and criticism from postmodern sources that insist on the uniqueness of every culture and deny the relevance and accuracy of what they term “universalism,” which they characterize as just another relic of the colonial era.

Far from denying the uniqueness of individual cultures or religions, the esoteric approach recognizes that there are basic elements of human biology and psychology that find unique forms of expression from culture to culture, but that nonetheless point to a deep commonality. Social organization differs from place to place and from time to time, and is dependent on a wide variety of environmental factors. Thus it is a mistake to draw too fine a parallel between the religion of the ancient Teutons (for instance) and that of ancient China or Mexico. The esoteric approach insists, however, that certain basic elements of human consciousness are identical across racial and culture boundaries. The most obvious of these elements is human sexuality.

Regardless of whether a culture views the sun as male or as female, for instance, the sexual polarity of sun and moon is recognized in many cultures that have had little or no contact with each other. The role of parents, the raising and initiation of children into society, the sex act itself—all of these are experienced everywhere, in every culture, and often have drawn about them a cloak of tabu and mysticism. The association of human fertility with the fertility of crops or the availability of game is another phenomenon worth mentioning, as is the mysticism associated with war, disease, and death.

Thus, although this is a study of the Tantric temples of Java, the author feels it is useful to provide a look at Western ideas of Tantra in order to promote greater communication between the two approaches. Many people in the West believe they know of what Tantra consists, especially those who have engaged in a study or practice of what is sometimes (disparagingly) called “neo-Tantra.” Just as many people in the East take it for granted that there is nothing worthwhile in Western ideas about Tantra, since they are formulated by those who have no direct knowledge of the Asian versions, do not speak any of the languages, and do not have a grounding in the culture or literature. Indeed, it seems to the most casual observer that what passes for Tantra in the West is a glorified excuse for sexual license. In other words, some of the same recriminations that are directed against Tantrikas by the Brahmins in India may find their parallel in those aimed at the Western “Tantrikas” by its genuine practitioners.

Without coming down on one side or the other, the author will try to describe various aspects of Western Tantra—in particular, those elements that are common to ceremonial magic and alchemy—in order to give a more solid platform for discussion and investigation. In the past thirty years or so, the field has become much more sophisticated, as a growing number of scholars have attempted to analyze Western Tantra within their own disciplines.

Among the names one encounters in any serious study of the subject are Paschal Beverly Randolph and Aleister Crowley, who are related via the teachings of an esoteric European society known as the Ordo Templi Orientis. However, the tradition of what we call Western Tantra goes back much farther than that, to at least the time of the Florentine Academy, if not to the Jewish mystical tradition that inspired some of its leading lights. It also includes the field of alchemy, long considered to be the ancestor of modern chemistry, but which, in fact, reflects a different worldview in which no element is static. Rather all are part of an ongoing process of evolution and transformation.

In this chapter, we'll consider how these Western forms of mysticism and magic relate to Tantra, and especially to their Javanese “tantroid” manifestations. The idea is not to prove that Javanese practices somehow influenced—or were influenced by—Middle Eastern and European forms, but rather to point out that the Javanese approach to Tantra is mirrored in the Western approach as a way of reducing the enormous cultural and religious structures of Indian Tantra to their basic, functional components. Hopefully, we will learn something about Western Tantra in the process, of course, but we will also gain a deeper understanding of Tantra itself.

The Bridal Chamber of God

The early history of the Jewish people and their religion includes references to an Asherah. Although this term appears forty times in the Tanakh, there is the usual academic controversy over what it means. To be sure, Asherah is not clearly identified in any of the books of the Bible, and perhaps with good reason. The inferences are startling—the Asherah can be nothing less than the consort of the Jewish god, Yahweh.

In 1929, an archaeological discovery in Syria of Ugaritic texts yielded some artifacts that offered the first non-biblical references to Asherah and enabled Biblical scholars to begin identifying her. The later excavation at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud in the eastern Sinai (1975–1976) gave scholars more clues to her identity. Citations in the books of the Old Testament were vague and ambiguous. In some cases, the Asherah was believed to represent a cult object of some sort rather than a deity. That assumption was in error for several reasons, not the least of which is the idea that a cult object can exist independently of the deity for which it was created or identified. The 1929 Ugaritic inscriptions gradually made it clear that Asherah was probably referred to as both a deity and a cult object. The object, in this case, is believed to be a wooden post or pillar that was placed near the altar in the sanctuary.

To understand this, it is necessary to realize that the early, pre-exilic (pre-sixth-century BCE) form of Judaism was not identical to the form of the religion we know today. There was a purely monotheistic, Yahweh, branch of the faith, as well as a more syncretistic form that incorporated elements of the Canaanite and Phoenician religions of the area. The Bible as we know it is largely the result of the Yahweh cult extirpating the syncretisic cult, both politically and in the books of the Bible (although references to these other practices are well-known to Biblical scholars, as well as to careful readers of the texts).

That Yahweh would have a consort, then, is understandable in light of the fact that the other gods of the region had consorts, much in the way we have already noticed in the Indian religions. Asherah may, in fact, have begun life as a consort of El, the local god with whom Yahweh was eventually identified or amalgamated.

Recently there has been considerable interest in the idea that Asherah may be linked to, or even identified with, the goddess Qudshu. Qudshu was known throughout the Middle East, from Egypt to Babylon, as a goddess of fertility. She was often depicted standing on a lion nude or partially nude—en face, fully facing the observer—holding lotus flowers in one hand and snakes in the other. This iconography is very similar to the bas-relief of Lilith or Ishtar that we saw in the chapter on Candi Sukuh, but the added presence of lotus flowers, lions, and serpents brings to mind a host of associations with the goddesses of India that eventually made it to the religion of Java, including Durga, who is often shown riding a lion and holding lotus flowers. In fact,

one of the epithets of Asherah is “Lady of the Sea,” which recalls Nyai Lara Kidul.43 Another is “Lion Lady,” which recalls Durga, who has been identified with the same Nyai Lara Kidul and, possibly, with Sekhmet in Egypt.44 Both Asherah and Nyai Lara Kidul are ladies of the sea, goddesses of fertility and eros who are associated with serpents, and the consorts of rulers. Scholars have pointed out that one of the epithets for Asherah may be “She who treads on the Sea Dragon,” which is eerily reminiscent of the Queen of the Southern Seas.45 This is not to insist that there is an identification between the two, but only that they reflect a similar concept and do so employing similar symbols.

Asherah/Qudshu was characterized as a goddess of extreme eroticism. In her Akkadian incarnation as Ashratum, she is described as the “bride of the king of heaven,” as well as “mistress of sexual vigor and rejoicing.”46 As Qudshu, her name is translated as “holiness” or “sanctuary,” a concept that will bring us closer to one of the most mysterious aspects of pre-exilic Judaism—the secret of the Holy of Holies in Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem.47 As Rafael Patai points out:

... the Biblical notion that the tabernacle was built in order to service as a dwelling place for Yahweh is transformed in Talmudic literature into the idea that both the desert sanctuary and the Solomonic Temple were the earthly abode of the Shekina.48

One of the Gnostic gospels found in the Nag Hammadi corpus in 1945 is the Gospel of Philip. This document, which has been dated to the third century CE, is concerned with ideas of androgyny and sexuality in a sacred context and makes repeated references to the “bridal chamber,” which is seen as a means of uniting the split between humans and God. The separation of woman from man in Genesis (with the creation of Eve) is a metaphor for the exile of humanity from the divine, an exile that can only be ended in “the bridal chamber.” In fact, it very specifically states, with reference to the Temple in Jerusalem:

The Holy of Holies is the bridal chamber. Baptism includes the resurrection [and the] redemption; the redemption (takes place) in the bridal chamber.49

The theme of the sacred water (baptism) and the image of the bridal chamber are repeated constantly in the Gospel of Philip. The identification of the Holy of Holies with a bridal chamber is arresting; it calls to mind the other temples of the region, those of Babylon and Sumer that had chambers built at the top where the king or the high priest met with the goddess once a year at the New Year festival. Similarly, the Jewish high priest was only allowed into the Holy of Holies on the Jewish New Year. If the God of the Jews had a consort, then the depiction of the Holy of Holies as a bridal chamber is perfectly consistent with other Middle Eastern

religions of the same era. We remember, in fact, the vision of Ezekiel (8:11–18), in which it is pointed out that women cry for Tammuz in front of the Temple. Tammuz is, of course, Dumuzi, the shepherd king whose consort was Inanna/Ishtar, who spent months in the Underworld every year, and whose ritual was accompanied by mourning. It is possible that, by the time of the post-exilic period, the idea of Asherah had been repressed to a certain extent and become less a concrete image of a goddess than an ambiguous wooden pole that was planted next to Yahweh's altar to represent the power Yahweh had to manifest in the created world—a pole that was decorated as a tree, as in the Tree of Life.

One of the problems with Asherah and identifying her definitively as the consort of the Jewish god lies in understanding the role of the consort in Middle Eastern religion. Is Asherah a goddess in the sense that El, Baal or Yahweh are gods? If not, then how to define her?

We find a clue in an article by B. A. Mastin, in which the author gives us an intriguing possibility in a passing reference.50 In citing the work of P. K. McCarter, Mastin says that the “asherah of Yahweh” may refer to “the Effective/Active Presence of Yahweh,” which then became personified in the wooden pole and identified as Yahweh's consort.51 This raises the possibility that the goddess represents the power, or shakti, of the Jewish god. If so, this would solve the problem of Yahweh and “his Asherah” quite neatly, for there would be no reason to justify or defend the notion that early Jewish religion was polytheist if we see Asherah as an “emanation” of the “active presence” of God.

This idea has been put forward by Simo Parpola of Helsinki University, who published translations of some of the Assyrian oracles in 1997. For Parpola, the Assyrian goddess Ishtar—with whom Asherah has sometimes been identified—is best understood as the “breath” of the god Asshur:

Ištar, who in the oracles addresses the king as her child, is Aššur revealed in his mother aspect. In speaking through the prophet, she, however, is at the same time also an entity distinct from Aššur: a divine power working in man and thus bridging the gulf between man and god. ... Accordingly, Ištar can be viewed as the “spirit” or “breath” of Aššur (= God)—a concept well-attested in Neo-Assyrian texts.52 [[[Wikipedia:emphasis|emphasis]] in original]

This concept of the masculine divine manifesting as a female quality is one we encounter in Kabbalah and most specifically in the personality of the Shekinah, of whom the Zohar speaks as the Matronita.

The Matronita—Kabbalah and the Shakti

Undeniably, one of the great contributions of Kabbalists to the history of Judaism is the explicit utilization of gender images to depict the nature of God and the consequent application of erotic symbolism to characterize the divine-human relationship.53 The most famous—if not the earliest—text of Jewish mysticism is the Sepher ha-Zohar, the Book of Splendor. Composed as a commentary on the books of the Torah and in the frame of a dialogue between famous rabbis, it made its first appearance about the 13th century CE in Spain, in a region near Barcelona where there was an active and influential community of Jewish mystics. The Spanish environment

of the author(s) of the Zohar can explain the use of the Spanish word Matronita to refer to the Shekinah, although the word is rendered in Aramaic. Matronita is the diminutive form of the word matron, which means “matron” or “wife.” Applying a diminutive—essentially saying “little matron”—implies that the person being described is young or inexperienced, even virginal. Although the root of matron is the same as for “mother”—mater in Latin, or madre in Spanish—the idea of motherhood is not necessarily implied. Instead, it may mean a young woman with elevated status.

The idea of the Shekinah as a young bride is a constant theme in Jewish mysticism. The respected scholar of Kabbalah Moshe Idel has gone so far as to identify two “consorts” of God in Kabbalistic texts: the Shekinah, and a divine concubine or mistress.54 That there is a feminine aspect or power to the Jewish God is taken for granted in the Kabbalah. Shekinah is perceived as representing the people of Israel in exile from God; she is also considered to be a personification of Malkuth, the last, or lowest, sefirah on

the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. As such, she also represents the created world and the first stage in a process of spiritual illumination. Without putting too fine a point on it, we can say that there is a rough analogy between Shekinah as Malkuth and Kundalini at the muladhara chakra at the base of the spine. Both are spiritual feminines representing the first step in the

attainment of cosmic consciousness. The goal of both is to unite with the spiritual masculine in the bridal chamber. Shekinah seeks union with God in Kether, the very first sefirah at the top of the Tree of Life. For Kundalini, it is union with Shiva at the level of the sixth chakra, usually identified with the thalamus or hypothalamus in the human brain—thalamus being a Greek word that means “chamber.” Both of these ascents are templates for an individual's quest for union with the divine.

According to other Kabbalists, at the moment of sexual union, the mind of the husband is in fact elevated to the supernal realm and draws down the divine light and the Shekinah herself. These spiritual forces descend into the drop of semen, infusing spirit into the seed.55

The Zohar frequently uses marriage and sexual metaphors to describe the relationship between God and his Creation, a fact that has not escaped the attention of a new generation of Kabbalah scholars like Moshe Idel, Elliot Wolfson, Melila Hellner-Eshed, and many others.56 A complete discussion of this topic requires a book in itself, so, for the moment, we will have to be content with a few examples that help frame the argument for a Tantric interpretation of Kabbalah.

One of the most important prayers in Judaism is the Shema. It derives from a verse in Deuteronomy (6:4) and reads “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is One” (Shema Yisra'el YHVH Eloheinu YHVH Ehad). The prayer is an affirmation of monotheism and, as such, is used in liturgical observances in the synagogue and also by pious Jews upon going to bed and in many other situations.

According to the Zohar, when the Shema is uttered “with perfect intention,” a spark flies down from the heavens and illuminates the Tree of Life:

Then that Tree wafts fragrances and aromas, and all the trees of the Garden of Eden waft fragrances and praise their Lord, for then Matronita is adorned to enter the canopy with her Husband. All those supernal limbs unite in one desire, in one aspiration, to be one with no separation. Then Her Husband is arrayed for Her, to bring Her to the canopy in single union, to unite with Matronita. ... At that moment, Matronita prepares and adorns Herself, and Her attendants escort Her to Her Husband in hushed whisper, saying “Blessed be the name of His glorious kingdom forever and ever!” (Zohar 2:133b)57

This is clearly a hieros gamos, a sacred marriage, and is only one of many such references in the Zohar. There is a husband and a wife, the trees in the Garden of Eden, a canopy, and a “single union.” Here, the sacred marriage of Inanna with Dumuzi has been re-imagined to reflect, not only the relationship of the people with their national God, but that of an individual with the divine. By

saying the words of the Shema—with perfect intention—the individual assists in the act of bringing the people of Israel closer to God and, at the same time, increases his or her own state of grace. Through a process of internalization, the individual becomes an active participant in the sacred marriage and not merely an observer. The reference to the Garden of Eden implies that the husband and wife represent Adam and Eve, and that the sacred marriage performed in the Garden is a way of redeeming the Fall.

There is evidence that this internalization process began about the time of the administration of King Herod in the first few years CE (although it could have begun much earlier, as the Book of Ezekiel suggests). At that time, there were conflicts between various religious and political factions in Jerusalem over the conduct of the high priests at the Temple and the way in which Jewish law should be interpreted. The famous account of Jesus throwing the money lenders out of the Temple is one example of how some Jews saw

their sacred spaces being polluted. The records left behind by the Qumran sect offer further evidence of the tensions that existed between Jews who were supporters of the Maccabean dynasty in Jerusalem and those who considered themselves purists in a kind of self-imposed exile on the shores of the Dead Sea. The Song of the Sabbath Sacrifice is one example of how the outsiders at Qumran “spiritualized” the Temple of Solomon, creating a “virtual” temple to replace the one that would soon be destroyed by the Romans.

When the rituals and sacrifices normally associated with the Temple of Solomon could no longer be performed due to its destruction, a process of re-interpretation of these rites took place in an effort to retain their spiritual power. This was seen in the texts of the Jewish mystics who relied on the Vision of Ezekiel as a template for how one could “visit” the “virtual” temple. This method is known to us as the “Descent to the Chariot,” and as Merkavah mysticism. It is a process of visualization of various levels of

spiritual understanding until one arrives at the Throne of Heaven. We remember that the high priest was allowed into the Holy of Holies at the Temple of Solomon only once a year, on New Year's Day. This tradition was kept alive by some mystics, who used New Year's Day as the occasion to “descend to the Chariot,” thus reinforcing the idea that there is a link between the Temple of Solomon and Jewish mystical practices.58

This concept also extended to the sacred marriage. As we can see through a close reading of the relevant mystical texts like the Zohar, the idea of sacred marriage was expanded to involve individuals, not only kings or high priests. Once the physical Temple had been destroyed, its spiritual counterpart became accessible to everyone—and that included the rituals associated with it, properly internalized through the methods of mystical trance and intense visualization. However, not all of these methods were purely mystical.

Sexual relations between a husband and wife were seen to replicate the union betweeen Shekinah and God. In referring to one of the oldest Kabbalistic texts, the Sepher ha-Bahir, Elliot Kiba Ginsburg writes:

In terse, allusive fashion, the Bahir has created the basis for imagining the Sabbath as the time of hieros gamos, the union of the divine king and bride.59

Indeed, the Sabbath was considered an ideal time for a husband and wife to engage in sexual intercourse, for it was the time when God and Shekinah were in union; thus, intercourse between a husband and wife shared in that divine intimacy. In other words, we see once again that sexuality is not a metaphor, but was meant to be taken literally as a practice and a process. The external elements

of temple, god, goddess, and sacred marriage were internalized through mental and biological processes, in much the same way that Tantra internalized the cosmic creative process and made it accessible to individuals of all castes or genders. Indeed, noted historian of Jewish religion Rafael Patai has even insisted that there exist direct historical links between Indian Tantra and Jewish mysticism, going as far as to suggest that Kali and Shekinah are cognates.60

This type of thinking was castigated in the postmodern era as representing universalism, a theory of anthropology and comparative religion related to the doctrine of diffusionism. Briefly, diffusionists believe that many of the world's cultures influenced each other in remote antiquity. As an example, this is considered to be the reason why Mayan ruins resemble Egyptian pyramids or the Javanese temples on Mount Lawu. This same point of view is used to argue that the Native American culture had links to ancient Phoenicia, for instance, or to Welshmen from the time of the Round Table, or to Chinese Buddhist monks—to name just a few of the more popular theses.

Many commentators regard diffusionism as inherently racist— such as the implication that the Native American population could not have built the famous “burial” mounds of the North American continent or the Mayan or Aztec temples on their own without outside help. Opponents of diffusionism are called “independent inventionists,” because they believe that individual cultures grew and

evolved on their own without influence from the outside, especially in any discussion of Native American cultures. This is, of course, the postmodern view that has superseded the universalist theory that all cultures have elements in common and may come from a common source or sources—an “Ur-kultur.”

The amount of epigraphic and other evidence in North America (particularly) that suggests the presence of European and North African missions in North America long before Columbus is problematic for independent inventionists, however. Be that as it may, the opprobrium with which any hint of diffusionism is greeted means that some evidence will have to wait until new theories emerge that allow us to accept that these two perspectives are not mutually exclusive.

Until then, we can draw interesting and educational parallels between Indian Tantra and Jewish mysticism, and between these and European alchemy, that bridge the gap between the two and demonstrate that there is an underlying methodology understood by disparate cultures that permits individuals to attain union with the divine and to take part in the ongoing act of Creation.

The Chemical Wedding

The rituals and religions of other cultures, other places, and other times are a kind of Rorschach test. They provide outlines, colors, and even drama, but often the real core of the system evades us because we project onto it what we already know from our own culture. Thus our analysis of these cultures tells more about who we are than about who they were. In a nutshell, this is the argument that postmodern anthropologists have with the universalist approach to comparative religion of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

There have been stories of lights in the sky and gods coming from the heavens for thousands of years, at least since the beginning of written language. In the 20th century, this was interpreted as aliens from other planets. What in ancient India they saw as flying chariots we, in this period, call flying saucers. In another 100 years, we can expect that there will be another technology and another paradigm, and we will interpret those lights in the sky as something completely different.

But the lights will not go away. They will continue to demand an interpretation.

Somehow, the authors of Western alchemical texts understood the value of this kind of approach. They realized that there was more than one way of looking at a phenomenon. Explanations that were too specific robbed the phenomenon of its meaning and of its relationship to other phenomena, cutting it off from the rest of creation and making it something singular and isolated.

While alchemy has a long and fascinating pedigree, there is no space here to go into historical detail. What the author proposes is to take one particular and famous example of the alchemical literature as a starting point—the enigmatic Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz. While there may be doubt that the Chymical Wedding is a true representative of alchemical texts, popularly

understood—since there seem to be no formulas or recipes for preparing metals for transformation, etc.—it has had tremendous influence on the growth of Western secret societies, who have adopted its hero, Christian Rosenkreutz, as a symbol of a person on a spiritual quest of personal transformation.

Briefly, the story is that of Christian Rosenkreutz, a Christian knight who receives an invitation to a wedding at a castle. He receives this invitation on the eve of Easter Sunday—i.e., Holy Saturday, which represents for Christians the time that Jesus was in the tomb before the Resurrection. It is also, according to some Christian traditions, the day that Jesus descended to the Underworld to free the souls that had been trapped there since the time of Adam's sin. (It is worthwhile to remember that one of the earliest recorded deities, Dumuzi, also spent time in the Underworld. The mourning for the death of Tammuz/Dumuzi recorded in Ezekiel is paralleled in the mourning for the death of Jesus on Good Friday.)

Christian receives this letter while he is in the midst of meditation. As he is sitting in silent prayer in his home, a great storm rages outside. He ignores the storm, as he is used to this phenomenon while he is meditating. At this time, a beautiful woman appears who hands him an invitation to the wedding.

We can see that this single image resonates with our Javanese hero, Senapati, meditating on the beach. A great storm rose up then, the ocean churned, and out of the storm appeared Nyai Lara Kidul, a “beautiful woman.” Both experiences bring the meditator to an other-worldly kingdom—Senapati to Nyai Lara Kidul's palace beneath the waves, and Christian Rosenkreutz to the castle of the king and queen. In the former, it is Senapati himself who marries the Queen of the Southern Ocean; in Christian's case, he will witness a strange wedding in the castle.

The author has covered this text in some detail elsewhere, so will not dwell too much on its convoluted plot.61 Instead, we will focus on a few elements that reflect our theme. The hieros gamos takes place on the fourth day of a seven-day event. In this wedding, however, the bride and bridegroom are slain—in fact, two other Kings and two other Queens are slain as well, along with the executioner, who is identified only as “the Moor.” This brings the total number of dead to seven. The constant reappearance of

the number seven throughout this text is remarkable, indicating some of the same concerns as those of the Qumran sect in the document known as the Song of the Sabbath Sacrifice, which invokes a “virtual” temple through the repeated use of the number seven, as well as of the Book of Revelation—The Apocalypse—with its repeated “seven” imagery. The author has identified this preoccupation with “seven” as an indication of deeper significance than the seven planets or days of the week, etc. He argues, rather, that it represents the idea that the constellation of seven fixed stars known as the Big Dipper or the Chariot (Ursa Major) was the subject.62

It is interesting that a Moor is singled out as the executioner. Moors in European literature meant Muslims and North Africans, members of the Arab armies that had invaded Europe in the eighth century CE and who remained in power in Spain until 1492. That a Moor would execute members of a Christian royal household may be a gloss on European history. In alchemical terms, however, a Moor

has other associations, so the juxtaposition of Moor and King and execution in the Chymical Wedding is perfectly tuned.63 To be sure, it was the arrival of the Moors (Muslims) in Central Java in the 15th century that signaled the end of the Majapahit Empire and the beginning of Mataram II, at about the same time as the period in which the Chymical Wedding is set.64

The sacred wedding and massacre take place on the fourth day; on the morning of the fifth day, Christian Rosenkreutz comes upon a tomb beneath the castle where “Lady Venus” is kept. She lies, naked and beautiful, on a bed draped around with curtains. This is another reference to Ishtar/Inanna (Venus) in the Underworld (the tomb). She is motionless—not dead, but dreaming in her underground crypt.

An enigmatic poem on a tablet next to the bed reads:

When the fruit of my tree has completely melted, I shall awake and be the mother of a King.65

Again we note the association with royalty and fertility. We will return to the tree motif shortly. Adam McLean, in his commentary to the Wedding and specifically to the Venus episode, notes that Lady Venus represents “the powerful passions of the feminine side of human nature,” while the masculine side represents “lofty abstractions” such as the “Arts and Sciences.”66 The meeting between the two forces “must result in inner struggle and death. Thus the wedding of the King and Queen can only be achieved in this castle through a death process.”67 The Queen is thus identified with Lady Venus or, at least, with the forces that Lady Venus represents.

However, what if death, in this case, was not meant literally, but rather metaphorically? What if the death of the King and Queen at the time of the sacred wedding, or hieros gamos, is a reference to le petit mort of the human orgasm? After all, the death of the two royals was required in order for the elixir vitae and the Philosopher's Stone—the amrita of the Tantras—to be produced. The bizarre juxtaposition of marriage and massacre may be a reference to this basic biological fact in an appropriately “hermetic” context, with the added instruction that both partners are slain—i.e., both attain orgasm. If we remember that we are dealing with twilight language—just as we were with the Tantric texts—we can begin to read the Chymical Wedding with different eyes.

This is not to insist that the entire allegory can be understood sexually in all of its detail; but the sexual allegory is one level of the tale, which represents, after all, transformation and transmutation through the union of opposites. That is why it is entitled a “Wedding” and not a “Massacre” or an “Execution.” The Wedding is filled with allusions to male-female polarity; they are inescapable and take place on each of the seven days and often multiple times on each day. When we add to that the set piece on the

sixth day of the ascent up a tower of seven levels that is accomplished by means of ladders, ropes, or wings, we have before us a hermetic representation of the ascent of Kundalini, which is understood here, not in its purely Indian aspect of a psycho-biological process, but in terms of a spiritual-chemical process, referencing the seven steps in the alchemical transmutation of base metals into gold. Keep in mind, however, that these processes are manifestations of the same basic process as it appears in different realms. Acknowledging this, we can use the one to interpret the other.

The metaphor of the tree is constant in alchemical literature as well. We find illustrations of trees in many alchemical texts, from the Splendor Solis of Trismosin (1582) to The Pleasure Garden of Chymistry (1624) by Daniel Stolcius, the appearance of which, eight years after the publication of the Chymical Wedding, presents us with material that helps to illuminate, somewhat, the narrative of the Wedding. Often, the tree is referred to as “the Tree of the Philosophers,” and the allusion to the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden is sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit.68

Eve was tempted in the Garden by a serpent who bade her eat of the fruit of the Tree (Genesis 3:1-7). In the Wedding, Venus lies in the tomb beneath the castle, waiting for the fruit of the tree to melt so that she can be freed. There are two Trees in Eden: the Tree of Knowledge is the one from which Eve took the infamous apple (or, possibly, pomegranate) and the Tree of Life—i.e., immortality. We are accustomed to interpreting these episodes in a moral or ethical framework: humanity sinned against God and was denied immortality and hence has been suffering ever since. The language of Genesis makes that clear.

In other cultures, however, this is interpreted differently and, indeed, Eve is called by Adam the Mother of All Life (Genesis 3:20). Her name comes from the Hebrew root hawwa meaning “life.” If we stand back from the Biblical account a little, however, and look at Eve as a Mother Goddess—at least, as representative of the Shekinah or the shakti of God—we can see this story in another way. We know, for instance, that Eve was created by being split from Adam's body. Thus, Adam and Eve were originally one person,

one being. This androgyny is reminiscent of how the primordial Shiva is often represented in India. Uma is Shiva's feminine nature, his shakti and creative power. In this way, we can see Eve as Adam's shakti. Their “marriage” takes place after they have eaten of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, when they first realize they are naked in the Garden. Yet, according to Genesis, they have forfeited immortality, for they have not eaten of the Tree of Life.

The story of humanity then becomes a quest for the Tree of Life, hidden behind the walls of the Garden. In India, as in Java, this is the quest for amrita, the elixir vitae that is produced by the churning of the cosmic ocean, snatched from the possession of the Nagas, the serpents. The Tree of Life itself—the etz chaim—becomes a potent symbol of spiritual progress in Kabbalistic circles. It can be considered the Tree of Eve, an etz hawwa. Both refer to the word “life” and they are both linked with the serpent.

Indeed, the symbol of Asherah, the consort of Yahweh, was a wooden pole or tree. Groves of trees were also sacred to Asherah. This identification of a primordial or divine female figure with a tree in ancient Jewish religion may give us a way to comprehend the story in Genesis a bit better.

To those who object that this turns Adam into some kind of god—if Eve is the Mother Goddess—one only has to point to the Kabbalistic tradition of Adam Kadmon, the “Primordial Adam.” Adam is here identified as the Perfect Human, representing the source of all human souls. Far from the view we have of Adam as the man who docilely followed Eve's example and ate of the forbidden fruit, to the rabbis and later the Kabbalists, Adam represented something far more powerful and sublime. Kabbalists, comparing the

two seemingly contradictory statements in Genesis concerning the Creation, understand that Adam was first created both “male and female”—that is, androgynous—and then was split from his female nature to produce Eve. Until that moment, Adam was the perfect “image and likeness” of God, the closest we can come to experiencing the Divine directly. It is this bringing back together of Eve and Adam to re-create the Androgyne that is the meaning of teshuva, or redemption, a word that also means “return.”

In alchemy, the androgyne is represented by another constant symbol, shown in the two images at the top of page 302. The two woodcuts are both taken from different versions of the famous alchemical treatise Rosarium Philosophorum. In both, we find the symbol of the androgyne in the center and a Tree of Life to the left. Both androgynes are winged, holding serpents in their left hands.

In the second woodcut, we see the figure standing on serpents in a way that is reminiscent of the Garuda figures from Candi Sukuh (shown again at bottom right on page 302). It bears an uncanny resemblance to the alchemical woodcuts above.69

The figures in the two woodcuts at the top of page 302 are holding a cup with three more serpents in their right hands. This image of the elixir vitae being secured from serpents by a creature that is a winged human is so specific that it is striking to find such a parallel between a 16th-century European text and a 15thcentury Javanese sculpture. We can only suspect that the connective tissue, in this case, must be India.

The first woodcut represents the perfection of Luna, and the second that of Sol. In alchemical terms, Luna, or the moon, represents silver and Sol, or the sun, represents gold. Of course, there are also layers of associations, correspondences, and meanings attached to these two concepts, foremost among them that of Luna as feminine attributes and Sol as masculine. The androgyne or hermaphrodite is a symbol of the hieros gamos perfected, shown at bottom left of page 302. The two halves of the human personality—

the Shiva and the Shakti, the male and the female—have been united, returned to a pre-lapsarian state in which Adam had not yet been split from Eve and was still in direct communication with God. The return to this state is the goal of the alchemical mystics as well as of the Indian and Javanese Tantrikas. In both cases, this state is attained through a “refined”—in the sense of metals—version of sexuality, of the hieros gamos, the sacred marriage that is nonetheless enacted with real elements, real flesh-and-blood elements.

In the Catholic Church, the term “elements” is used to indicate the bread and wine that are transformed into the body and blood of Christ and consumed by the faithful during the Mass. The technical term for this transformation is transubstantiation, a term that only came into general use in the Church in the 12th century. The concept involves recognizing that the substance of the bread and wine has changed into the body and blood of Christ, but that the appearance —what are called the “accidents”—have not changed.

In alchemy, there is transmutation rather than transubstantiation. Elements are changed both in substance and in accident, or appearance. Lead becomes gold, truly. However, in a more Tantric approach, the idea of transubstantiation has merit, for the body is not outwardly changed. We can still recognize the Tantrikas as the same human beings who started the Tantric process, but they have been changed inwardly and attained a degree of spiritual transformation. The alchemical transmutation of the elements is considered a physical sign of the inner transformation—or transubstantiation—of the alchemist.

The physicality of the Catholic Mass —the elevation of body and blood into sacraments and the consumption of them as a requirement for every Catholic—has lent itself to occult manipulations. Several grimoires, notably that of Pope Honorious, require some contact with these elements to enhance the magical operations. Others recommend stealing them from a church or having a priest consecrate them especially for the rituals. That there is occult power invested in the transubstantiated bread and wine has been a common

belief for centuries. Without trying to make too sharp a point about it, the vaguely cannibalistic or theophagic nature of the Mass has similarities with some Tantric rituals involving the flesh of corpses and the consumption of forbidden foods. The very idea of the Mass is horrifying to a pious Jew or Muslim—the idea that God can be, and should be, eaten verges on the savage and surely can have little to do with monotheism. Thus, the Protestants of the Reformation insisted that the Mass was more of a memorial service commemorating the Last Supper of Jesus, rather than a magical rite involving changing the substance of bread and wine into the spiritual body and blood of God.

The actual transubstantiation is carried out through the grace of the Holy Spirit, the third member of the Holy Trinity that also includes God the Father and God the Son. The Holy Spirit is usually depicted as a dove, and is also identified with water via the sacrament of baptism.70 It was the Holy Spirit that was responsible for the Virgin Birth, i.e., the impregnation of Mary with the divine essence of God. This combination of ideas is remarkably similar to those of the elixir vitae and the action of Garuda, the winged deity, in securing the water of life. It is Garuda who is depicted many times at the temples on Mount Lawu, where amrita was collected and dispensed to the faithful.

The author mentions this to demonstrate that Tantric or tantroid elements—ideas and rituals involving the elevation of spirituality through the manipulation of matter—can be found everywhere, even in the West and even in the most sacrosanct of Western religious thought and practice. Magic is the Western form of Tantra, as Francis King has pointed out, and the Catholic Mass is considered by many to be a form of the highest magic.71

42 Hugh B. Urban, Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), p. 42.

43 John Day, “Asherah in the Hebrew Bible and Northwest Semitic Literature,” Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 105, No. 3 (September 1986), pp. 385–408.

44 William G. Dever, “Asherah, Consort of Yahweh? New Evidence from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 255, Summer 1984, pp. 21–37.

45 Day, “Asherah in the Hebrew Bible,” pp. 388, 396.

46 Day, “Asherah in the Hebrew Bible,” p. 386.

47 Day, “Asherah in the Hebrew Bible,” p. 388. The Hebrew word qadosh (“holy”) comes from this root, as well as the name of the Masonic degree “Knight of Kadosh,” which is based on the Hebrew. The term “holy spirit”—which appears in Isaiah 63:10–11—is ruach qadosh, with the word ruach rendered variously as spirit, wind, breath, etc. In Gnosic texts, the Holy Spirit is considered feminine and the power that “quickened” the womb of Mary. It is thus a fertilizing power, which is in line with ideas concerning the goddess Qudshu.

48 Rafael Patai, The Hebrew Goddess (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990), p. 100. This is also true of the Kabbalistic literature. For instance, we read in the Sepher ha-Zohar: “Moses fashioned the Dwelling in the desert to bring Shekinah down to earth....” (2:143a) See Daniel Matt, The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, Volume 5 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), p. 309.

49 The Gospel of Philip (II, 3) in James M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library in English (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), p. 142.

50 B. A. Mastin, “Yahweh's Asherah, Inclusive Monotheism, and the Question of Dating,” in John Day, ed., In Search of Pre-Exilic Israel (New York: Continuum, 2006), pp. 326–351.

51 Day, In Search of Pre-Exilic Israel, p. 338.

52 Simo Parpola, Assyrian Prophecies (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1997), p. xxvi.

53 Elliot R. Wolfson, “Shekinah” in Margaret Schaus, ed., Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia (New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 758.

54 His Kabbalah and Eros is a classic in this regard. See especially chapter 3, “God's Wife and Concubine: Paths of a National Myth,” in Kabbalah and Eros (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).

55 Urban, Magia Sexualis, p. 43.

56 Elliot R. Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); Melila Hellner-Eshed, A River Flows from Eden: the Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009).

57 Matt, The Zohar, pp. 237–238.

58 The founder of Hasidism, Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, was known to do this on several occasions, according to letters he wrote to his brother-in-law. See Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), p. 94, where these letters are quoted.

59 Elliot Kiba Ginsburg, The Sabbath in the Classical Kabbalah (Albany: State University of New York, 1989), p. 108. Ginsburg devotes an entire chapter to this concept.

60 Patai, The Hebrew Goddess, p. 150; see also his The Jewish Mind (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996).

61 Peter Levenda, Stairway to Heaven: Chinese Alchemists, Jewish Kabbalists, and the Art of Spiritual Transformation (New York: Continuum, 2008), pp. 191–208.

62 Levenda, Stairway to Heaven. Briefly, the seven stars of the Dipper revolve around the Pole Star and thereby represent seven levels in the approach to immortality (the seven stages in alchemical operations; the seven palaces in merkavah mysticism, etc.). Since the Pole Star represents north, and the Dipper is circumpolar and never rises or sets, the association of this constellation with ideas of immortality and centrality—the axis mundi—is certain.

63 A common instrument in the alchemist's laboratory was a cold still, called a “Moor's Head.” But there are also references to a “man, black as a Moor” (Schwarz wie ein Maure) in the “Fourth Parable” of the Splendor Solis of Solomon Trismosin, dated 1582 (British Museum, Harley MS 3469). This figure represents one of the phases of the alchemical process. The accompanying plate shows a man whose torso is black, whose head and right arm are red, and whose left arm is white. Ascending out of a muddy pit is a beautiful woman, white, who stands waiting for him with a red cloak. She wears a crown and has wings, and a star hovers over her head. Like all alchemical illustrations, this one seems to be designed to elucidate the obscure prose, but succeeds rather in tempting us with a range of possibilities.

64 On the sixth day, according to the text, Christian Rosenkreutz finds an urn on which the date 1459 is inscribed, which refers to the year the Wedding takes place. The meaning is uncertain. We know from other sources, including a code within the Wedding, that Christian was born in the year 1378, so while 1459 may have other esoteric associations, it is within reason (barely, perhaps) that Christian would be alive and 81 years old at the time of the Wedding. In 1459, the Islamic Sultanate at Granada in Spain—site of the famous Alhambra—was still in existence and thus there were still Moors in Europe.

65 Joscelyn Godwin and Adam McLean, The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz (Grand Rapids: Phanes Press, 1991), p. 74

66 Godwin, The Chemical Wedding, p. 129.

67 Godwin, The Chemical Wedding. As we will see in the next chapter, this theme of sex and death is echoed in the 20th-century work of French author Georges Bataille.

68 As in the Philosophia Reformata (1622) by Johan Daniel Mylius, a colleague of Stolcius mentioned above.

69 From De Alchimia opuscula complura veterum philosophorum, Frankfurt, 1550.

70 1 Corinthians 12:13, which states that the Holy Spirit is present at baptism and that the believers are “made to drink of one Spirit,” and Matthew 3:16, which describes the Holy Spirit descending over Jesus at the moment of his baptism.

71 Francis King, Tantra: the Way of Action (Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 1990).