Duality of the Divine and Gender Identity

[warypumpkin]

Hello! Blessed be, y’all!

So I’m learning about the Wiccan Values on the introduction/beginner course, and I was wondering about how people view and interpret the value of ‘Duality of the Divine’ and non-binary people?

For me, a duality usually implies a binary and I don’t want to follow a value that invalidates my nonbinary friends.

I know that the interpretation is different for everyone, so I was wondering if I could instead view it as a gender-less divine energy that exists on the outskirts of the circle of the feminine/masculine?

Thanks for your time, I hope everyone has a wonderful day!

[celineelise]

Merry Meet @warypumpkin!
My name is Celine. I am an eclectic witch from Portland Oregon. And I am actually non binary.
I interpret duality of the devine as being light and dark. There are two parts of a whole. Just as in being non binary I have both parts male and female in me and I do not have to chose which one i want to be because they are both in me.
I identify as being pan theists so working with many dieties. And I like to call on source or the universe as a devine energy that is genderless and just energy. Since we are all just energy
I hope this was helpful.
And please feel free to make yourself at home here. This is great forum and coven.
Let me know if you have any other questions.

[tracyS]

Hello and welcome I’m Tracy from England Loki is my patron deity and with Loki,
gender is something very fluid. Though I identify as female, Loki is gender free. He/she/they are female, male, genderless, non human and probably everything in-between so… The divine is limitless and not restricted by our human values, idealogies or limitations. Magic is life, life is magic and we are who we are, all beautiful and valid in our own right. Welcome to this beautiful coven, make yourself at home Lovely

[Devenne]

Welcome to the coven I’m Devenne a chaos witch from Indiana.

Blessed be

[Mystique]

Welcome @warypumpkin ! I’m an eclectic chaos witch from Minnesota. I don’t look at magick as male or female or dark or light or black or white. It just is. No gender, no bias. I personally don’t follow the Wiccan path as there are too many rules and guidelines for my taste. I draw my energy from the universe. Call in whatever deity or spirits I feel will help with whatever spell I’m doing.

Hopefully the information given by me and some of the other coven members helps you!

Make yourself at home and always feel free to ask questions!

Blessed Be

[crystal59]

Hi @warypumpkin welcome to the forum my names Crystal a Bruja from Va please feel free to make yourself at home and ask questions im so glad you found your way here. Blessed be

[Amethyst]

Hi, @warypumpkin! I’m Amethyst from Southern West Virginia. Welcome to the forum!

There are a number of gender neutral or non-binary Gods out there. Yeah, you might have to look hard, but they are there! Here’s some stuff about Aphrodite’s child Hermaphroditus:

Aphrodite and Hermes had one child together – Hermaphroditus.

Hermaphroditus was also considered one of the Erotic gods and sometimes called Atlantiades since Hermes was the great-grandchild of Atlas.

In Greek mythology, Hermaphroditus was the god of hermaphrodites and effeminates. He was said to have been united eternally with Salmacis, one of the nymphs, who deeply loved him. Consequently, his name and existence embody both male and female elements.

I got that from Aphrodite’s Children • Greek Gods & Goddesses. I hope this helps you out!

[CelestiaMoon]

Merry meet lovely

I’ve given this one a lot of thought, being a trans woman… I’ve noticed that there are a lot of dualities in magick: light/dark, mind/body, spirit/matter, fast/slow, visible/invisible, direct/indirect, the list goes on… all spectrums on their own, but there are different systems to conflate them, often involving gender either directly or indirectly. Like (divine) feminine / masculine, yin/yang and in tantra that I do, Shiva/Shakti. None of them overlap perfectly.

I like this quote from the book Urban Tantra by Barbara Carrellas…

TANTRA CAN BE PRACTICED BY ANY AND ALL GENDERS. The myth that Tantra is an exclusively heterosexual couples’ practice has kept more LGBTQ+ people out of Tantra than any other misrepresentation of Tantra. How did this myth start? How did Shiva, the essence of consciousness, and Shakti, the essence of energy and power, become reduced to male and female, heterosexual lovers? Perhaps it’s because Tantra is able to accept and contain “All That Is,” which means not only opposite poles but everything in between the poles of good/evil, sacred/profane, higher/lower, earthly/spiritual, yin/yang, light/shadow, and male/female. In our Western society where most everything is regarded as either/or, nothing is more polarized than gender. Therefore, the Western mind reasons, if Tantra unites opposites, it must require “opposite” genders (as if there were such a thing as opposite genders!). Gender is not two bins into one of which everyone must be dumped. As we are now seeing, gender is more of a rainbow spectrum along which everyone can find the particular shade of the color that looks the best on them.

Today most people recognize that Tantra can be practiced by anyone with anyone. I’m proud to say that Urban Tantra is one of the earliest Western schools of Tantra to embrace the full range of LGBTQ+ identities. Some Tantric asanas (positions) and mudras (gestures) are designed to weave together the male and female aspects of partners in a Tantric ritual. This can be done between any two (or more) partners. Everyone has some male/masculine/yang qualities, and everyone has some female/feminine/yin qualities—and these proportions can and often do change daily. Bringing our male and female qualities together and balancing them before making love is not an exercise about gender but rather an act of inner balancing and centering that helps us open ourselves to deeper intimacy.

It helps me that the “gender” there is the quality of the energy, and there can definitely be both present at the same time. But it’s still a binary and based on stereotypes. I can work within that binary whenever it’s helpful to me, and disregard it when it breaks apart, but I don’t want to assume everyone can or wants to.

I’m still within the gender binary myself, even if trans, so I can’t offer a personal nonbinary perspective on it… I’m definitely fascinated to hear of those who can

[peter3]

I enjoyed the book “Bending the Binary, Polarity Magic in a Nonbinary World” by Deborah Lipp and found it to be a helpful read.

LlewellynCon 2023: Deborah Lipp Presents What is Polarity? An Inclusive Exploration

[BryWisteria]

Hello @warypumpkin,

Welcome!

@warypumpkin

I was wondering if I could instead view it as a gender-less divine energy that exists on the outskirts of the circle of the feminine/masculine?

Yes, absolutely! I do something along these lines in my practice - while I believe that each of the gods, goddesses, and spirits do exist, in my eyes I see Them as individual aspects of a greater overarching collective: the universe.

The universe is every gender and no gender at all, it is complete existence and the absence of existence within the same breath. Everything and Nothing, All and None.

Now I’m certainly not saying this is the “right” path (all paths that lead to the divine are “right” in my eyes!) or that it will work for everyone, just adding in my support and agreement. It’s very possible to practice around or beyond the binary if you wish to

Make yourself at home here, @warypumpkin - blessed be!

[starborn]

Welcome, @warypumpkin! I’m Katerina.

@warypumpkin

I don’t want to follow a value that invalidates my nonbinary friends.

I agree. To go even further, I personally wouldn’t want to follow a value that assumes gender is a binary system.

But the duality of the divine doesn’t necessarily mean that. I think we, as in humanity, tend to just explain things in a language that comes natural to us. So, one might say there’s this duality of the divine feminine and divine masculine, but that doesn’t mean that everything can only exist at one of those points on the map.

I think the divine existed before genders and, therefore, that spirits aren’t gendered. If I become a spirit, I won’t be a woman anymore. But I also won’t be a man. Not that I feel like either already, but you know what I mean.

@warypumpkin

so I was wondering if I could instead view it as a gender-less divine energy that exists on the outskirts of the circle of the feminine/masculine?

That was my long way of saying yes.

These are just my personal beliefs, though. But I’m sharing them to give an idea of the wide range of beliefs we have in this coven and how we are very open and not strict in this regard.

Everyone here has their own personal belief system, to the point that many systems clash completely, and everyone is respected, which makes this place a wonderful mixing pot of beliefs.

@Amethyst

Aphrodite and Hermes had one child together – Hermaphroditus.

Hermaphroditus is such a beautiful deity, too.

@CelestiaMoon

light/dark, mind/body, spirit/matter, fast/slow, visible/invisible, direct/indirect, the list goes on… all spectrums on their own

And to some, not even necessarily spectrums, but the same thing.

@BryWisteria

The universe is every gender and no gender at all, it is complete existence and the absence of existence within the same breath. Everything and Nothing, All and None.

Ah! Bry already seems to have put it much better than I. I like this way of explaining it simply.

[Sivonnah]

You’ve already gotten good answers and I will try to explain my thoughts in way that is understandable but I’m not promising anything

I don’t consider devine feminine/masculine being about gender. They are an aspect of all of us. Feminine provides us with certain qualities so to speak. Such as nurturing, creativity, intuition. Masculine can represent strength, logic, action. So it’s not about specific genders, but characteristics. This is just my interpretation. Hope it makes some sort of sense.

[CelestiaMoon]

@starborn

@CelestiaMoon

light/dark, mind/body, spirit/matter, fast/slow, visible/invisible, direct/indirect, the list goes on… all spectrums on their own

And to some, not even necessarily spectrums, but the same thing.

@BryWisteria

The universe is every gender and no gender at all, it is complete existence and the absence of existence within the same breath. Everything and Nothing, All and None.

Ah! Bry already seems to have put it much better than I. I like this way of explaining it simply.

Something that I feel too, that all the divisions are products of our reasoning and intellect, that works by telling things apart, and giving them names and stories as to how they connect to each other. That’s how languages work too. And we have so many different languages… we could even say that we all have our own, pieced together from what we’ve seen and heard, that resonates with us. Then there’s a commonly agreed language, for each group really. We’re likely to not agree with all of it, we can try to challenge the ideas or we can agree to disagree. We’re more likely to feel at home in groups that at least mostly speak the same language as we do.

Whether we believe if the underlying reality is the same for us all or subjective… there are literally different religions and philosophies that disagree on it I like to think that it’s the same shining diamond for all of us, but we’re all seeing different facets of it.

[starborn]

@CelestiaMoon

We’re more likely to feel at home in groups that at least mostly speak the same language as we do.

Same. It becomes very obvious when we have to speak to people who have vastly different beliefs from us. We might both be speaking English, but the way they see the world comes through the things they say, and it can sound very strange and alien.

That being said, I like that this space is open-minded, but not so much that people here aren’t critical or cautious. We don’t just go along with everything that comes up and assume things are fine. There’s a sense of responsibility and care here that isn’t as commonplace as it should be.

[georgia]

@starborn

the way they see the world comes through the things they say

And the way they see the world is affected or even created by their experiences.

TW death, abuse

For example (not looking for pity, here, just defining), my father died when I was 3 and Mom was abusive, so I don’t have role models to create the binary definitions everyone else lives by.

It can be confusing if you don’t know the history upon which the words are based. I’m glad this topic came up, to help with defining in my own life. Thank you all.

[CelestiaMoon]

@starborn

That being said, I like that this space is open-minded, but not so much that people here aren’t critical or cautious. We don’t just go along with everything that comes up and assume things are fine. There’s a sense of responsibility and care here that isn’t as commonplace as it should be.

This
We stand by and are proud of our beliefs and practices, love sharing them, and love listening to others sharing theirs. Some of us may have more fixed belief systems while others are more flexible to adopt things that resonate, and it’s all okay. The underlying love and respect for each other makes it possible to have fruitful disagreements too.

@georgia

For example (not looking for pity, here, just defining), my father died when I was 3 and Mom was abusive, so I don’t have role models to create the binary definitions everyone else lives by.

Sorry to hear that

I rather have role models based on virtues that speak to me, than gender anyway… and I prefer them to not be living human beings, as it’s a road to seeing them as archetypes instead of the people they are, and being inevitably disappointed. “Never meet your idols” and all that.

[starborn]

@georgia

so I don’t have role models to create the binary definitions everyone else lives by.

Neither, so I understand. My situation at home was a mess growing up. A lot of what I learnt from those I lived with was a lesson in what kind of person I don’t want to be.

@CelestiaMoon

I rather have role models based on virtues that speak to me

That’s when you choose your role models. But we may subconsciously take them on without realising, especially when we are young, but also when we are adults and simply meet someone who inspires us a lot.

Regardless, it’s a huge process to decouple behaviour learned from others when growing up from our own belief systems.

It’s great that you’re an adult now who can choose, but sometimes, we need to pull The Moon to remind us of the illusions we’ve been watching dance along the wall.

@CelestiaMoon

I prefer them to not be living human beings, as it’s a road to seeing them as archetypes instead of the people they are, and being inevitably disappointed.

It can be easy to feel disappointed or even betrayed by those in positions “above” us that might make them role models. But sometimes we go 0-100kmph a bit too fast in placing people on these pedestals, don’t we? Why do they have to be perfect in our eyes in every aspect of their lives? Why are we so harsh on them, with expectations that we could never meet ourselves?

A role model is simply a model of a role. It’s compartmentalised from the onset. If I did something that inspired someone and made them look up to me, even for a moment, and admire the achievement, they could still use that to motivate themselves and give themselves something to strive towards, even if they don’t agree with the rest of my life. If finding out that I’ve made mistakes as recently as yesterday makes them feel disappointed and lose hope, I think that might be a sign that they have a lot of shadow work to do, because they’ve either forgotten or can’t accept that the human experiences of others are often flawed and chaotic.

[tracyS]

@starborn

they’ve either forgotten or can’t accept that the human experiences of others are often flawed and chaotic.

And this is why I love the pagan gods, perfection is not important.

Thankyou for this heartfelt discussion.

[MeganB]

Just popping in to remind myself to respond here later There’s a great passage in a book I read recently about the binary of masculine and feminine in Traditional Witchcraft.

[Artemisia]

Merry meet @warypumpkin !

I’m Kat and I found the practice over 30 years ago but lost my way for a while. I came home a few years ago and found this amazing group of people!! I practice eclectic green magick and am interested in tarot, runes, ogham, herbalism, and moon magic.

We’re glad to have you here. Make yourself comfortable, explore, and feel free to ask questions!