MARTIN Feminie - God

The Feminine in the Making of God:
Highlighting the Sensible Topography of Divinity

What does it mean to talk of the power of God in relation to the human self? The
discourses generated by the Jewish and Christian tradition about the capacity for
divinity have been mainly promulgated by men, and have more often than not served
to exclude women cognitively, practically, and spiritually. As a result they have been
made powerless in the face of Gods presence. It is possible to look to ideas
developed in Hindu Tantra for comparative notions of power (akti) which can
redeem the place of God for women. The path of divine consciousness is effectively
illustrated by an imaginary and somatic awareness, by a devout attention to the play
of light in the soul. In this paper I propose to read the assignment of energy and force
within conceptions of divinity through the lens of a poststructuralist realization, using
the work of Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari, and Luce Irigaray.
Women take part in the divine becoming, in the engendering of God.
But that mediation is often forgotten.
Women serve the apparition of the god but do not appear themselves as divine.
As mothers of God, as servants of the Lord, yes.
1
As consorts of the god, as incarnations of the divinity, no.
Introduction
The religion of Hindu Tantra is a class of sophisticated beliefs and practices that arose around
the fifth or sixth centuries in northern India. 2 An early characteristic is that of sexualized
ritual practices designed to foment desire for worldly power and bodily immortality, and to
bring ecstatic joy through actualizing, and even controlling, feminized praeternatural forces
called yogins. 3 It involved moreover an antinomian and transgressive outlook, in the sense of
being against the prevailing religious milieu warranted by the Brahman priesthood, which
privileged notions of purity; by contrast, tantric practitioners privileged notions of power. 4
Over time, this unorthodox behaviour was moderated by (male) commentators in favour of
more anodyne and domesticated practices, with a consequent focus on metaphysical
explorations. 5 Generally, this philosophically oriented Tantra propounded a doctrine in which
there is a polarity functioning at the divine level, namely of iva and his power, akti (a
feminine noun), which he employs or exercises in order to bring about the Universe, and
which is none other than himself unfolded into manifestation. 6 The conjunction of iva and
his own wilful power, which is regularly hypostatized as aktias a capital relation
represents the locus of divinity, and is mirrored at the mundane level by the erotic
conjunction of the male tantric practitioner (sdhaka) and his female consort (dt). 7 In
effect, the male instantiates iva and the female instantiates akti. 8 There are a variety of
practices here, including external physical sexual activity and internal non-sexual techniques
of visualization, since each human being androgynously contains feminine and masculine
aspects. 9 In this tradition, it might be said that a woman embodies akti, but represents akti.
I mean to make a nominal distinction between the foundational energy or repetitive force of
the Godhead and its personification; for whereas the first is understood as an inherent quality
of iva, the second is a reificatory principle of iva as an imaginary projection by human
beings, in particular, men. The occupation of divine consciousness is pivotally achieved in
the body, as it is realized by the imaginary; and it is also a political body, which is only to say
that the understanding of God has political implications and ramifications. 10
The Feminine in the Making of God. Version 2, 20 July 2012
Paul C. Martin (cerulean@internode.on.net)
The constructive nature of God and the Godhead bears heavily on any understanding of
divinity, or divine consciousness (i.e., consciousness of the divine). In the religious literature
of the Upaniadsmainly composed around 800300 BCEthere is an overarching concept
of the Absolute, which is called brahman (a neuter noun), and which is elucidated in the
subsequent philosophical and theological works of the schools of Vednta. 11 Brahman has an
impersonal status, yet at the same time it can have a personal status, which is modelled as, for
example, Viu, iva, or Dev (akti). 12 In the philosophical writings of the aiva Tantras,
iva may be conflated with the infinite ground of being, anuttara (highest, or
unsurpassed), and hence he is Paramaiva, that is, Supreme iva. 13 It is the excellent light
of the power of God that freely supports all Reality. 14 In the kta Tantras the known or
perceptual side of Anuttara (Brahman), namely akti/akti, is preferentially or prominently
worshipped, and is called Parakti, that is, Supreme akti, or her many and varied
cognomens. 15 In the popular epic and devotional literature that is influenced by kta
thought, the feminine gains an almighty and autonomous nature, as Mah-Dev (Great
Dev). 16
Now the transcendent nature of Brahman may be compared, in a broad way, with Jewish
and Christian ideas about the transcendent nature of God. In this respect, God is a hidden and
incomprehensible vastness, which is only accessible to human ken through analogy and
metaphor, or symbolic naming. 17 In order to bridge the yawning gap between humanity and
God the rabbis of the talmudic era invented the term Shekhinah, which is derived from the
biblical verb root shakhan, meaning to dwell. 18 Although grammatically feminine,
Shekhinahor, the Shekhinah 19 did not indicate a sexed entity apart from God, but was
just his revelatory or visualizable aspect, his divine presence. In the late medieval mystical
literature of the Kabbalah, 20 the divine transcendence is posited as Ein Sof (lit., without
end), as the God beyond God. It is the infinite ground of being, which is only able to be
realized through ten aspects, or attributes, plurally known as sefirot. 21 Two of these
hypostatized forces are understood to be feminine, namely the one who is called Binah and
the one known as Malkhut. 22 As the final link in the chain of divine manifestation, Malkhut is
equated with Shekhinah, the Divine Presence. 23 She is the wife of the sixth sefirah, Tiferet,
who is the unpronounceable Divine Name, the Tetragrammaton, YHVH, and the god of
creation. 24 One of the notable features of the Kabbalah is that it highlights an erotic
imaginary, an intimate affinity within the Godhead and between God and humans (or more
specifically, Jewish men). This is no less the case for Tantra. 25 For their part, Christians
bridged the cosmic divide by virtue of having Jesus as the physical incarnation of God, but
they also had available the notion of the mediating Holy Spirit, who was portrayed as
feminine in Syriac Christianity.26 In a Hellenized environment, the understanding of Christ as
the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24, RSV) meant that he took on the
characteristics of the biblical Sophia, that is, Wisdom. 27 This then entails that Christ can be
realized in feminine ways. 28 If in the traditional and orthodox familial sense a man, as the
image of Christ, is a son of God, then a woman, as the image of Sophia, is a daughter of God.
There is clearly room for investigating and re-evaluating notions of the feminine in the
Godhead from a feminist standpoint. 29 I believe it is possible to argue for a correspondence,
at various levels, between akti, the Jewish concepts of (holy) spirit and Shekhinah, the
JewishChristian concept of Sophia (Wisdom), and the Christian concept of Holy Spirit. 30 As
the intelligent and sensational force of God it has a directed, indeed psychological, impact,
which allows the transcendent awareness of divinity to be translated into an immanent
consciousness of divinity. 31 The issue of correlation is too large a project to expatiate here,
and instead I shall merely hint at it. Overall in this essay I shall adopt a broadly kta Tantra
viewpoint, but one that is modified in feminist and scientific ways. 32 Besides this, my focus
will be on a positive consideration of power in the context of human desire to be with God,
which just means harbouring a divine consciousness.
The Land of Power

While the modernist understanding of power presupposes a subjective agent who wills to act,
operating from out of a more or less stable platform, namely the mind or soul, the postmodern
approach argues that the notion of a coherent, fixed and localized self is problematic. 33 The
impetus to action is a demonstration of power, but how to assess this power? The French
poststructuralist philosopher Michel Foucault (192684) has written searchingly on the
concept of power, although he admits that it is not power per se that is his general theme, but
rather how it generates the subject. 34 At any rate, he argues that power is not so much a thing
or property held by someone, but rather a contingent relationship of active forces vectored at
the social level by human beings. Disciplinary practices conditionally effectuate the subject
as self. The body in society is bounded by judicial and technological processes, and
internalized understanding of these themes produces the subject. In addition, resistance is
spread over a network, of time and space, transiting around and through society and
individuals. Power is local, omnipresent and mutable: Power is everywhere; not because it
embraces everything, but because it comes from everywhere. 35 This means that power is not
an institution, and nor is it a structure, or personal strength, but instead it is the name that
one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society. 36 It is a mode of
actions upon actions. 37 Power then is collateral, and concerns an immanent and infinite
yearning that informs spiritual, sexual, ethical or political relationships. 38 If power
moreover is situated in the corporeal realm, then it is a divine placement that is engendered.
As Charles Mopsik puts it, in the context of the body in the making of tradition, the
engendered and engendering body becomes the vector of the divine image. 39
At a general level, tantric practitioners are vitally interested in power as the fulcrum of
spiritual knowledge. This is evidently so in the case of the yogic Siddha traditions of
medieval India (twelfth to thirteenth centuries), which sought to develop superhuman powers,
or siddhis. 40 It is associated with a quest for perfection, which is to say, perfect consciousness
of God. 41 This is to be seen in the doctrinal ideas of the aivakta Tantra, where the aim
is functionally to identify as power. 42 Here, iva manifests himself as the universal reality
through his power, his akti; and in doing so he expresses his power of desire, or will (icchakti), his power of wisdom, or knowledge (jna-akti), and his power of action (kriyakti). He is reflexively grasping the Trident of energies (akti-trila). 43 There are
purported to be three means (upyas) by which recognition of God may be attained through
contemplative practices: the way of the limited soul (avopya), the way of the power
(ktopya), and the way of ambhu (mbhavopya). 44 In the aiva Tantras, the male
tantric is to realize his own nature as being a drop (bindu) of the expansive liquid light that is
ivas consciousness; and so, in issuing his power (akti), the worldwhich is taken here not
always merely in a phenomenological senseis recognized as being a reflection of himself. 45
However, from a kta standpoint, and conceiving akti as a divinized element, women can
reflect upon themselves as exhibiting their very own perspicacious power; for akti is
especially innate to themselves. Ideally, they would live in the garden of light, where the
irises bloom in welcome to the solar senses of the divine presence, aktiShekhinah. 46
For the most part, the tantric understanding of power can correspond to a Foucaultian
viewpoint, since akti is the present factor of iva that mightily appears in and as the
unfoldment of reality. From the imponderable realms of highest divinity universal reality
materializes in gradations of heavy light, until it reaches our physical world. We are ourselves
just an agglomeration or coagulation of the tenuous light of God. 47 This may be put
differently: if iva is a compact mass of light, 48 then his consciousness is distributed into the
loose nature of phenomenal reality. By being in divine consciousness we can see the dense
oneness of God, as though we are standing before a desert looking out over the packed dunes
of sand; but by being in mundane consciousness we are as if walking over the desert sand and
noticing the grainy diversity of God. We are a particle in the expanse of ivaakti. The
body is not in the thrall of external forces, but is itself a liberator of divine power; and as
akti is garnered through the microcosmic force of kualin she orders relationality in
spinning out a web of activity in the social world. 49 It is the silky net of love thrown over the
beauty of life. 50 Love may be defined as the energy of beauty, and beauty as the momentum
of divinity. In general, human beings are both the subject and object of power, and are
breathy forces moving wispily through the interactive field of aktiholy spirit. We are an
aspirational affect, a gossamer light. 51 The human spirit (tman) becomes aware of itself as a
living embodiment in the world, and similarly God becomes aware of itself as a living
embodiment in the Universe. 52 As an alphabetical realization, aktiShekhinah is the kinetic
enunciator of God, the one who articulates the nature of divine consciousness. 53 God speaks
to us in dulcet tones, and her saffron voice flavours our soul. Like Foucault, tantrics see
power as productive and positive, because it is the driving force for life systems; and by
ensuring their own intrinsic power of divinity, they are left to wander in the Sky of
Consciousness. 54 It is God who invites us into her azure domain, into the lavender presence
of her bedchamber, and there eloquently to kiss the sky. 55 We want you, here to savour your
breezy love, the ruby cloudshine of your beauty. 56
Existentially, while power as intentionality may be formulated as the power to do
something, or the power over someone, for the tantric there is power by being, and indeed
a power of becoming. 57 As a praxis of embodiment, the usual tantric view is that becoming
divine is a matter of possessing power, but we can rather think of it as becoming transparent
to power. It is to realize that one stands naked before God, and is open to being touched by
the sensual ardour of Parakti. 58 The self is laid bare, stroked by the suffused light of
divinity. 59 Sitting in the boat of divine awareness one is drifting upon the lake of light as it is
replenished by the ever-flowing aquifer of God. 60 Poetically, in this realm it is to see the
lakeland vestiges of evanescent splendour: profuse images wafting through nothingness. Here
the world is awash with power, asplash with diamonds. Now the allusion to diamond is
important in this regard because of its special physical properties, which make it an apt
metaphor for God and the sense of divinity. 61 These include: 62 (a) being the hardest known
substance; (b) having the highest thermal conductivity at room temperature; 63 (c) having a
high index of refraction; 64 (d) having a high coefficient of dispersion; 65 and, (e) having a
high incompressibility. By analogy, (a) to be in a state of divine consciousness is to be made
indomitable by the presence of God; (b) the soul endeared with numinal qualities will not
easily melt when resting in the burning love of God; (c) to be mystically aware is to be
lustrous and to evince a shining countenance; (d) the divine self brilliantly shows the
colourful glory of God; and, (e) a condition of holiness gives an ability to remain unbroken
by despair in an unlawful world. Chemically, diamond is a colourless crystalline form of pure
carbon, and one of its allotropes or crystal structures is graphite (as in pencil lead). 66 If we
should think of the mind as metaphorically like graphite, then the ego is the pencil with
which we write our lives. 67 Unlike diamond, graphite is a good electrical conductor; and so,
tantrically and technically, the graphitic mind carries the electric current of kualin, which
acts to power consciousness. 68 Since colours are produced in diamond owing to minute
defects or impurities, one can say metaphorically that God is like a colourless diamond
because flawless, while human beings are like a coloured diamond because flawed. 69 God
ceaselessly irradiates the soul, which thus becomes luminescent; yet human beings often do
not perceive this divine light. In the incomplete awareness of divine being there is a brief
perception of Gods presence, which brings a state of fluorescence, and so ordinary
consciousness will sparkle for a time. In the complete awareness of divine being there is a
continuing perception of Gods presence, which brings a state of phosphorescence, and the
mind will sparkle all the time. 70 In itself, God is strictly at some remove from us, and the
difference between a non-mystical (or non-spiritual) consciousness and a mystical (or
spiritual) consciousness, is the abiding perception of God in the power of divine presence. By
the indwelt awareness of divine being one is able to countenance a Christ-like state. 71 The
ultraviolet consciousness of the radiating influence of Gods presence induces a structural
change, a making becoming of black light. 72 It is to assume a dark cloak of divinity, a robe of
inky flames. The first step to becoming divine is to cleave to God. 73 In pronouncing a
spiritual consciousness, the mystical hermeneut is sharply known by the blade of Kl as she
splits apart the rough ego. It is a realization of the sublime power of life; for God, she is a
diamond cutter. The object of tantric meditation practice (sdhana) is to conform oneself to
the divine presence, to be ground and polished into glittering facets of divinity, and to
become a finely honed representation of God. The body is really a tremendous mansion that
is sculpted by the point of wisdom, aktiShekhinah. 74
If the core reality of Brahman is symbolized as a diamond in the imaginary of
consciousness, it follows, given the correspondence theories of Tantra, that a diamond-like
quality can be imputed to the Earth. In other words, since in kta thealogy God is conceived
or determined as feminine, that is, akti is supreme, so must be Earth, since they are one
together. 75 Diamond crystallizes from rock melts rich in magnesium and iron saturated in
carbon dioxide gas, which are under extreme pressures and temperatures in the Earths
mantle, and which are eventually driven to the surface in explosive magmatic activity. 76
God(dess Earth provides ecstasy for the adamantine tantric practitioner, which implies that
mundanely speaking a woman is a volcanic dispenser of beatitude and life. 77 In the fierce
anvil of mystical perception the graphite of ego is converted into the diamond of spirit, which
produces an unyielding recognition of ones own divinity. 78 According to the tantric
alchemical text, Rasrava (Ocean of Mercury), diamond (vajra) arose from drops of
amta that fell from the gods mouths to earth after they had churned the Ocean of Milk. 79
The Ocean of Milk symbolizes our galaxy, the Milky Way. It is a river of light that flows
into the estuary of the soul. 80 This mythical allusion can be applied thealogically, in that it is
akti who sustains the universe, as the one who creatively lactates the cosmos. The milky
glow of her fecund light richly nourishes the soul. By imbibing the knowledge that ones
place is to live infused with God in transcendental awareness, the whole world becomes filled
with the ambrosia, or nectar, of ones own essential, spiritual bliss. 81 It is the peach of divine
consciousness, the luscious light of God. 82
The world is a land of enchantment, which is laid out in ornamental splendour by the
powerful force of imagination. 83 Travelling in the car of delight, the soul rides with akti
Shekhinah over the rocky ground of human existence. This becomes a fabled excursion into
the frontiers of consciousness. Here the Sun of heaven shines upon the Earth of mind, which
allows the shoots of divine presence to grow into an understanding of God. The plant of
spiritual awareness is a creeping vine, which covers the western wall of the house of divinity,
and to see this is to become entangled in the viridian glory of aktiShekhinah. 84 To the
mystical eye, the City of God is built according to the exact plan of the Word, in the
octahedral shape of divinity. 85 The citizen body is powered by the energy grid of akti
shekhinah, and it is a spacious conurbation of light. 86 In this palatial residence the adept finds
a worthy home, and she has the power to execute the divine law, which is love and justice. It
is the becoming rule of beauty, the enduring paradigm of compassion. 87 Living here, she
cultivates the orchard of spiritual abundance, surrounded by the aroma of blossoming love
and the humming of bees. This is the cinnamon light of the music of wisdom for celebrating
divine consciousness. 88 Metaphorically, the imaginary is a diamond needle that plays the
record of life, and thus the power of God runs over the grooves of the body. Equally, the
imaginary is a laser beam that reads the disc of life, and thus the power of God scans the
place of the body. 89 In climbing the mountain on which God dwells, the tantric is drenched
by the downpour of Her sacred presence, which is never ending. 90 It is to stand under the
celestial rain of fire, the stunning cascade of diamonds, rubies and sapphires. 91 As a
polygonal light these crystals of divine consciousness are the snowflakes of wondrous joy
that fall upon the soul. 92 On earth and in heaven God is to be found as the laminar of light, as
the refulgent plates of love and beauty in the heart of the soul, which is the mother-lode of
jubilant consciousness. 93
The River of Power

The French philosophers Gilles Deleuze (192595) and Flix Guattari (193092), in
collaboration, take a different tack from seeing the body as a discrete entity in relation to an
objective world, as they reference the earlier work of the Dutch Jewish philosopher Baruch
Spinoza (163277). Deleuze and Guattari appeal to geographical metaphors in perceiving the
body as a cartographic plane, as one that can be mapped by its affective becomings and
intensive flows. 94 Its sensual coordinates are plotted on the axes of joy and pleasure, and are
drawn into a curve of passion. The body is a material flux, composed of relations of
movements, which follow the harmonic oscillator of becoming. They elaborate this in terms
of the molecular, which is inchoation at the unconscious level, and the molar, which is
organization at the conscious level. 95 Instead of our being a formal and substantial entity, we
are a virtual composition; and this so-called body without organs (BwO) reveals itself as a
connection of desires, conjunction of flows, continuum of intensities. 96 Deleuze and
Guattari refer to this functionality as an abstract machine, and it gives a meaning that is
presented diagrammatically not semiotically. 97 Therefore, contra the theory of
psychoanalysis, we are not indexed to a static being (a territorialized sign), but rather we are
stratified, by the machinic phylum of materiality. As a fibrous linkage, we are like a rhizome,
or rhizomatic subject, which immanently delves into the layered strata of life. 98 The incessant
urge for becoming constitutes an assemblage of forces, which delineate an operational power.
As we move over plateaus of desire, through a nomadic space, a melodic landscape, we are
deterritorialized; that is, we are as if in a continual translating mode. Our line of flight is the
bell of a sonorous refrain, and our molecular key is a prism, a crystal of space-time. 99
Divine consciousness is heard as an untimely reverberation, a tintinnabulation of light. 100 We
are a flowing matter that can be worked, like a metal which is subject to reforming and
reshaping modalities. Metallurgy, write Deleuze and Guattari, is the consciousness or
thought of the matter-flow, and metal the correlate of this consciousness. 101
In response to these views, it is germane that tantric metaphysics sees the Universe as a
field of energy in which human beings fundamentally move and subsist. 102 Reality is an
electromagnetic realization of Brahman, a shining realm enjoined by iva and akti; 103
moreover, the soul, understood as an alloy of body and mind, is like an electric rotating
machine. 104 Metaphorically, the self works on the same principle as the motor and
generator: 105 for just as a freely rotating electrical conductor carrying a current and held
within a changing magnetic flux will experience a torque (that is, it will turn), so by analogy
a human self as a conductor that carries the electric current of kualin whilst immersed in
the changing flux of Gods magnetic field will turn (we shall live). 106 ChristBinah is the oil
that lubricates the motor of the soul as the metallized beselved body. 107 The power of
consciousness (cit-akti) moves around and through the imaginary body, the charged body
without organs (BwO). As the electromagnetic force that energizes this virtual self, akti
assembles the desire to be with God into a skilful consciousness of divine presence, so that
Holy Spirit becomes the cosmic field of immanence or plane of consistency. 108 In the
machinic pleasure of mystical being, the metal-self is dressed with a sheet of gold foil, and is
the conductor of all matter; 109 physical reality is thereby divinized, which is to say
electrified. So the machine of the self works by the touch of God, by the lightning power and
flashing energy, of kualin-akti, of holy spirit. 110 She is a shuddering light, and her
efficient activation realizes the potential of human involvement with God. The body is indeed
a gorgeous machine, and the sound it makes is like thunder. 111 It follows that the recognition
of God is designed through a somatic consciousness, which makes the body a yantra, an
engine of satisfaction. 112
Deleuze and Guattari maintain that our random, molecular, unconscious being is fixed or
stabilized at the socially organizational, or molar, level. An analogy suggests itself here:
human beings exist in a phase state, as gas, liquid or solid. At an abstract level the individual
is free to move about and think (at least in a democratic society) and so we are like a gas; but
in practice we are more like a liquid, because constrained by cultural and social requirements.
In being adherent to these conditions we are structured into a solid, into a crystal or glass
prism, through which reality is perceptually mounted. 113 This being so, the individual subject
(jva), as located within the polycrystalline world, relates and responds to any vibrations
generated by the activity of other selves. In that sense we are really a multiplicity, a nexus of
variable interconnections. 114 Spiritually, the movement towards liberation (salvation) is a
release into total freedom; and as one is heated up by the presence of God one moves from a
solid to liquid to gaseous state of being. We are then free to be who we really are. Men have
sought to territorialize women, through specularization, and have used language as a means
for doing so; but women can reterritorialize this image of themselves, by becoming the
timbre of the terrain of Sophia, and by being the soundscape of divinity. She is the
fountainhead of all there is, the cymbaline light who overflows the banks of understanding.115
As the interdimensional body-mind that is full of aktiholy spirit, the female subject who
sings with God can recoordinate (and indeed repaginate) herself into the world. 116 She can
invoke the presence of God by announcing her own power as the serene herald of akti
Shekhinah, the turquoise glimmer of life. 117 In this affair, she is the jewelled splinter of the
beauty of God. At a general level, akti is the interconnection between man and woman; yet
it is not a flat-line, but a depth-line, which plumbs their souls. Here we might say that the soul
is the line of becoming, which is in-between the planes of body and spirit, and which is
neither singular nor binary: it is the border or line of flight or descent running perpendicular
to both. 118 This line is a thread, a strand of the cloth of ShekhinahSophia who is the divine
garment, the motif of textural light. 119 aktiHoly Spirit is the warp and woof that connects
vertically between God and human being, and horizontally between human lovers. 120 In a
relationship of sexual concourse one is stitching oneself into the fabric of divinity as a
monogram of the Divine Name.
In tantric thought the body is actually the seat (ptha) of power, and is a vehicle for
realizing divine consciousness, achieved through homologizing, or mapping, the cosmic
conjunction of iva and akti. 121 The physical and sensual are not disparaged, and
accordingly renunciatory practices are disdained. 122 It is for sure, the senses offer a way for
the immediate union with divinity on Earth, and a corresponding identification with the
Godhead. 123 This being so, the outlook of the Tantras may be seen as representing an
embodied spirituality; and indeed, it is desirable that blissful consciousness should be
realized right now in this body, and not postponed to a supposed non-corporeal existence. 124
This viewpoint is especially evident in the medieval alchemical sects, in which the body is
ennobled, and sought to be made perfected and adamantine through haha yoga and tantric
sexual techniques. 125 By visualizing divinity as emplaced within the heart the devotee is
brought into rhythmic alignment with God as the pulsating centre of consciousness. 126 It is a
twinkling cadence of majestic light. From the recesses of the soul, the diamond-rays of
spiritual awareness diffuse into the world. 127 The body is a maala, or sacred diagram, on
which is engraved the symbolic patterning of God, and which becomes a focus for knowing
the divine. 128 We are left spell-bound by the fallingness of divine reality, as we spiral through
the unconditional time of space in a strategic encounter with the world. Here, divine
consciousness is felt as the superlative touch of grace. 129 In rvidy, Lalit Tripurasundar
(as a kind of akti) is recognized as the queen of the beautiful city, which shines as the lamp
of the world, on the Island of Gems. 130 Compare in Kabbalah, where Shekhinah is
symbolized as the heavenly Jerusalem and the celestial city; 131 and as a divine lamp she is
the one who illumines the Sabbath. 132
The maala is decorated with the letters of the alphabet, which specify the mantras of
divinity; and since the human female is identified with the goddess who is installed in the
sacred circle, a woman is definitively imbued with the divine creative word (vk). She is
become the incarnation of wisdom, the sagacious power of God. This is pertinent to Trika as
a linguistic or sonic theology, in which iva generates a chiming vibration (spanda), a
glistening light (sphuratt), and a pulsing radiance (sphuraa), which is just the pure energy
of consciousness. 133 In this subtle movement (kiciccalana) of becoming, God is to be heard
through the configuring incantation of the divine Word, by the murmuring whisper of
akti. 134 It is an initial silent resonance (nda) that gradually becomes audibly spent, and
finally appears as gross speech. 135 By harkening to the babbling brook of divinity that trickles
through the mind one becomes steeped in the ways of God and bathes in the river of
soundless sound. 136 The affective realization of God involves a becoming-imperceptible,
and is accomplished through the services of aktiholy spirit. 137 It is a labouring return to the
tantalizing moment of redemption, a prophetic recognition that can hardly be uttered. 138 In
terms of a kta hermeneutic, the energy of vibration (spanda-akti) is registered as the
divine heartbeat, which is the regular duration of a female God and which is called
abdabrahman, that is, Word-Brahman. 139 The power of absolutely all, which is to say
aktishekhinah, is that which sets the mind to vibrating in divine consciousness as an
overtone of the becoming of God. She is a tuning fork for harmonizing with divinity.
Spiritual meaning is conveyed by the energy of speech (vk-akti), and elaborated in the use
of mantras or prayers as liturgical or ritual formulas, which are eminently apportioned to
women. 140 In truth, they are the efficacious body of God. 141
It may be that the conceptualizing proposed by Deleuze and Guattari is unfavourable to
the idea of an essential and permanent soul, and tends towards a Buddhist understanding,
where the self is reckoned as a dynamic and temporary aggregate of psycho-physical
formations (skandhas), which is contrary to Hindu notions of a concrete self. 142
Metaphorically perhaps, if the soul is akin to wheat flour and the mind is akin to water, then
aktiholy spirit is the yeast that activates the becoming of the loaf of the body, which is able
to be sliced by sensations, and spread with the creamy light of the butter of love. 143 We are
consumed by the world, which is the face of God, and which is therefore the Divine Presence,
ChristShekhinah. This consuming activity corresponds to the absorbing idea of mystical
union. 144 So, to be in communion with the feast of life is to evoke a carnal light. 145
Alphonso Lingis suggests that rather than the classical philosophical understanding of
sensation as an intentional state that signifies an external objective referent, it can be
understood as a topographical extension over a surface, a Mbius strip. 146 Sensation is really
the coruscating presence of God, which is all-pervasive; more than this, the erotogenic
scintillation is the touch of Christakti, that star splendour of love which iridesces across
the body. 147 It is the power derived by Gods streaming over our alluvial being. In Deleuzian
terms, the selfbeselved bodyis a contour map on which are charted the exhilarating lines
of desire. Understanding the body as an excitational mode of being and as a place of
inscription is a productive theme in the consideration of the interplay between matter and
spirit; indeed, the body as an etchable surface is symptomatic of an embodied subjectivity,
or psychical corporeality. 148 Our lives are written into the pages of eternity by the creative
implement of aktiholy spirit; and the body, attired in its blazonry, as it encrypts the divine
Word, is the secret power of God. 149 It is the infallible code of the logosophia. Moreover, if
akti is the spirit of Wisdom, and if a woman explicitly abides with Shekhinah, then she is
naturally of power, and it is fitting to say that she is qualified to speak with authority about
God. 150
The Sea of Power

Luce Irigaray complains that women have only a subordinate, or indirect and secondary,
access to the divine. She argues 151 that the phallic symbolic order can be overturned through
the articulation of a discourse of jouissance, or feminine ecstatic pleasure. In critiquing the
psychoanalytic approach she considers that for man, woman is the normally speculative
representation of his own fantastic looking; moreover, he constructs woman as a discursive
object in order to conceptualize and validate his world. 152 She is the unconscious womb of
his language, and the glassy portal wherein obtains the place of his imagination. A woman
cannot speak her pleasure except through the language contrived by men. 153 The exploitation
of her matter as sexualized female constitutes mans sociocultural horizon, and is
symbolically mandated by the law of the Father, in the name of God. In his reflective,
contemplative gaze, man projects commodity value upon her polished, silvered form, and in
that mirror he finds the (idea of) God that demonstrates the worth of his being. According to
this divine economy, man struggles to reach for a transcendent realm, to identify himself
there with the putative real, by coming to stand under the Sun, which is metaphorically the
light of Truth. He tries to forget the shadowy images of the Platonic cave, of the womb of
Earth and Mother. Yet, as he surveys the world from upon a mirror-like sea of ice (une mre
de glace), will not the fiery Sun melt the frozen sheet of his solitary ratiocinated mind and
leave him to slip into the abyssal embrace of the imaginary? 154 It is in the arid perspective of
his grandiose noetic claims that man most forbears the storm clouds of the material world;
but there is no escaping the torrential knowledge of life, for it is a rain of diamonds, a shower
of roses, given by aktiShekhinah. 155 A woman can assent to be the cumulonimbus power,
the rainbow glory, of her ownmost desire for immanental transcendence. 156
It is in her important essays, La Mystrique and Divine Women that Irigaray most
poignantly argues the need for a feminine self-reflection rather than a masculine
speculationfor a blazing ecstasy and female divine of womans own. 157 Man positions
himself as a gendered being by using the ostensibly unbounded nature of God, which he
would make appear as his point of reference on the horizon of being. He is able to orient his
characteristically finite nature, his sexuate essence, by the pole of God, and as an identified
subject he can use his will to fulfil his potential. It is similarly necessary for woman to
conceive a feminine God who can be for her the ideal goal, the way to complete her
subjectivity. 158 She is able to orient herself to divinity through her labial touch, the two lips
by which she speaks as aktiSophia. At this stage, the divinity of women is hidden, veiled;
and when a woman sees into a flat mirror, she only sees by the reflective scrutiny of the
images placed upon her by men and society. 159 It is an exterior impression, rather than an
interior appreciation of self-contemplation, of her own unveiled beauty. Axiomatically,
Irigaray urges that women must be constituted of the divine if they are to form a relationship
with some horizon of accomplishment for [their] gender. 160 In Deleuzian terms, a woman
can break the mirror of mans projection upon her and escape by the line of flight of the bird
of aktiHoly Spirit. 161 Instead of being a glass reflector for his self, a woman can picture
herself as a liquid crystal display, powered by electric aktiholy spirit, and switched on by
divine awareness; in this way she creates and directs her own images to the world via her
controlling programmatic embodied self. 162
In reimagining the approach to God, Irigaray ventures that the divine can be found in the
wonder that is the difference of the other, mediated by angels, one of which is the daimon of
love, as it hovers on the edge of consciousness. 163 The lovers move through the passage of
becoming that unites them, to shine as the other who is the constellation of love and beauty.
Crossing the numinous threshold of each others being they are illuminated by desire, which
is the aquamarine radiance of divinity. It is to be enveloped by sheer wonderment and
stamped with sweet amazement: this is the sensible transcendental. 164 The articled realization
of God is sealed with the assurance of aktiHoly Spirit. In the same way that the
conjunction of iva and akti produces that light which is shining creation, so the
conjunction of man and woman in sexual union produces that light which is shining birth. 165
In the non-dual metaphysics of Tantra, the universe is envisioned as a tensile web of energies,
and the apparent dichotomy between matter and spirit is illusory, since matter is just
structured spirit, and spirit is just unstructured matter. 166 So there is a notion of Reality as
being transcendently immanental and immanently transcendental: the mundane and divine are
melded. 167 The divide between physical and non-physical is just a blind of light, a curtain of
energy. In sum, the infinitude of Godness is its transcendence, which is a galaxy of
emptiness, and the finitude of Godness is its immanence, which is a tellus of plenty. 168 The
imaginary enclosed by aktiShekhinah is the ineffable sphere of jouissance, the region of
exultation in which a woman can declare the Word of God. Earthed to the ground, this shall
be the lightning strike of her encounter with divinity. It is condign, since women embody
ChristSophia, and they can obviously be ministers of God. 169 The sensible crafting, and
intricate weaving, of aktiholy spirit is that which brings us before the visible world and
enables us to embroider the recognition of luminous being. 170 As the astonishing perception
of God, which is Nature beholden, it is a flood of delight, and it is realized through touch
(spara) and vision (darana). 171
In many, if not most, present-day theologies the Sun is portrayed in masculine terms, and
the Moon in feminine terms. This is clearly the case in Christian symbolism, where Christ as
the Sun, and Virgin Mary as the Moon, is a legacy of Graeco-Roman mythology. However,
there are a number of cultural myths where the Sun is symbolized as female and the Moon as
male. 172 According to zoharic symbolism, the two lights that shine in the heavenly
firmament, namely the Sun and Moon, connote respectively Tiferet and Shekhinah, the
white light and the black light. 173 For aiva theology, iva is the foundation of light, the
10
point source of consciousness, and hence he is allied with the Sun. 174 As the atomic
expression of this light-consciousness, akti is implicit to the Sun; but more than this for
kta theology: she is the one who powers that orb. 175 It might be said that the Sun is the
diamond-body of Mah-Dev (Brahman). 176 In a metaphorical spirit, the Sun can be
understood as the mother guardian of the Solar System, for in the beginning she was in the
centre of the circumstellar disc of gas and dust from which the planets gradually formed, and
now it is her massive presence and gravitational force that locks those planets in orbit around
her. 177 It is also basically the thermonuclear production of the Sun that enables generative
processes on Earth, while the unceasing outflow of the solar wind pervades interplanetary
space. 178 From the beginning She has given of her love, which has sustained especially her
children on Earth. It is a whole-hearted love, as she pours out her life to us.
A truly significant power on Earth is to give birth, since it represents a fusion of forces.
This can be understood either physically or metaphysically; that is, through birthing a child,
or birthing an idea. 179 So while kta Tantra understands that women and men both dwell in
aktiShekhinah and are thus quite equal as children of God, women can express additional
power since their bodies effect a point of coalescence for the incipient spiritual energy that
will eventually appear as a structured being on Earth. Besides the normal capacity for
intellectualizing and wisdom-making then, women have the potential to knit a soul (beselved
body) into being. This is openly acknowledged in alchemical Tantras, where womens
menstrual and sexual emissions are prized for their transformative powers, accentuating them
as embodiments of the Goddess, and bearers of life; 180 as such, women may naturally
exercise a greater power than men. 181 Menstruation is a mark of sanctity; and as the dewy
presence of God, it is the sanguine breath of aktiSophia. 182 It is really the flow of crimson
light, the selenium river that meanders through the hinterlands of the self and discharges into
the ocean of Life. 183 Given the work that women do in carrying and birthing children, it is an
auspicious demonstration of power; and in cohering and engendering this quintessential light,
they are realizing the capacity of kualin-akti, which is the power of divinity. Whether a
womans energy is guided to this end, or to the intellectual end, she can be the fount of
inspiration, for divinity is the blessing well from which we all draw sustenance. 184
From a tantric Deleuzian standpoint, Irigarays notions of finding the divine in sexual
difference, between the twoman and womancan be understood photonically, and hence
more diversely. 185 Within the incarnate spectrum of God, every human being can be
characterized as having a unique signature frequency and wavelength (and hence energy), of
the light that is aktiShekhinah. 186 Objects appear coloured because they absorb light
selectively; for example, a tomato appears red because it absorbs light complementary to it,
namely blue-green. 187 By analogy, we absorb the visible, imaginary light, of God in
different ways, according to our mental disposition, and so we appear as different colours
(energies); actually, we embody the divine power in variegated ways. Each of us is
illustrative of a shifting set of hues, and this is our sexuality at any given time. This is in
line with a broader conception of sexuality, as one that is not localized genitally, but is rather
traceable all over the body. 188 Sexuality, in short, is a colour-play, a commutation of
energies; or, so to say, it is a phase-spaceto borrow a term from Deleuze and Guattari. If
it is moreover an alternating force of becoming then it means that we are intrinsically variable
sexual beings. In the exhibition of the panorama of sexualities (colours) there is always to
be found a certain sexual difference between one and the other. Rather than a dichotomy of
two, as Irigaray would have it, there is a continuum of two. Be that as it may, whereas we
usually paint each other in unsaturated colours, we erotically paint each other in saturated
colours; and to be in love is to work with a vibrant palette. If wonder is indeed found in the
11
difference of the other, it is mediated by the angel of aktiholy spirit, as the ghostly shade of
love that pigments our nature. We would apply the brushstrokes of divinity in painterly ways
to our being with another, to an other being. 189
Conclusion
In this paper I have essayed a positive realization of power (akti) by highlighting its function
in tantric thought, where it sparks a working creativity in the sense of divine consciousness.
As the imaginary presentation of the invisible space of brahman, akti is similar in
appearance to the kabbalistic shekhinah as the effective manifestation of the unseen ground
of ein sof. In addition, the impelling figure of akti has some affinity with the notion of (holy)
spirit, as the driving current of becoming and as the electric animation of being.
Conceptualized poststructurally, aktishekhinah or aktiholy spirit is a bounty of flowing
light, a charge of kinetic love, and a sounding of immemorial beauty. When akti is reified
and personified she furthermore resonates with Wisdom (Sophia), Shekhinah, and the Holy
Spirit; in other words, akti is the sapiential presence of holiness, who can energize women
towards divine consciousness. If power is a contingent relationship of active social forces
(Foucault), if the body is an intensive assemblage of becoming that is founded on desire
(Deleuze and Guattari), and if perceiving an irreducible sexuate difference is the site of the
divine (Irigaray), then we can say that the emblems of aktiShekhinahSophiaHoly Spirit
can be the mainspring for stimulating the divine in women, acting as powerful subjects in the
world. At a phenomenal level, the body is an inflected collocation of forces spoken through
the mind, and if it is right to spiritualize the flesh then the dynamic displays of akti
ShekhinahSophiaHoly Spirit can serve as the crystalline archetype by which women can
acknowledge their divine nature. These monumental forces are the dazzling facets of God,
the sparkling renditions of divinity, and the outstanding matrices of life. By harnessing the
female voice, through the power of abdabrahman, the specularized patriarchal Godhead
can be shattered. Pictorially, in the monitor of divine consciousness, we shall become the
pixellated image of Gods presentative being. As to Irigarays lament that there is no divine
feminine enabler, we might argue that God as a concealed reality can be realized as whatever
edition we choose it to be, and women can choose to recognize it as female. After all, it is just
the Spirit of the Age.
1
Luce Irigaray, An Ethics of Sexual Difference, trans. Carolyn Burke and Gillian C. Gill (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1993), p. 106.
2
See David N. Lorenzon, Early Evidence for Tantric Religion, in The Roots of Tantra, ed. Katherine Anne
Harper and Robert L. Brown (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), pp. 2536. For an accessible
introduction to Hindu Tantra see Georg Feuerstein, Tantra: The Path of Ecstasy (Boston: Shambhala, 1998).
3
See the exhaustive analysis by David Gordon White, Kiss of the Yogin: Tantric Sex in its South Asian
Contexts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). The notion of Tantra as entirely to do with eroticism
and sexuality has been promoted by Westerners in the contemporary period (see Hugh B. Urban, Tantra: Sex,
Secrecy, and Politics in the Study of Religion [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003],
pp. 20362).
4
See Alexis Sanderson, Purity and Power among the Brahmans of Kashmir, in The Category of the Person:
Anthropology, Philosophy, History, ed. Michael Carrithers, Steven Collins and Steven Lukes (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 190216.
5
This philosophical development is evidenced in the period from the ninth to twelfth centuries in north-western
India, in Kashmir, and is predicated on a revealed literary corpus of the god iva, with a commentarial
exposition. The zenith of this outlook is found in the division or school known as Trika aivism. See Ernst
Frlinger, The Touch of akti: A Study in Non-dualistic Trika aivism of Kashmir (New Delhi: D.K.
Printworld, 2009), pp. 118.
6
Andr Padoux explains that typically there is a polarization of the godhead into a male pole (usually higher,
but inactive) and a female one (akti), which is active but theologically lower except in some kta traditions.

12
Such polarization is not stressed equally everywhere. The role of akti is limited not only in Vaiava
Sahits, but in Siddhnta aivgamas. There are, furthermore, aiva pantheons that are either entirely male
or entirely female (What do We Mean by Tantrism?, in Roots of Tantra, op. cit. [note 2], pp. 1724 at 21).
See also his further observations in Vc, the Concept of the Word in Selected Hindu Tantras (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1990), pp. 4146.
7
See John R. Dupuche, Abhinavagupta. The Kula Ritual as Elaborated in Chapter 29 of the Tantrloka (Delhi:
Motilal Banarsidass, 2003). The Tantrloka (Light on the Tantras) is a synthetic worka comprehensive
compendium and a glossorial [sic] treatisewritten by the renowned KaulaTrika sage Abhinavagupta (fl.
9751025). See Navjivan Rastogi, Introduction to the Tantrloka: A Study in Structure (Delhi: Motilal
Banarsidass, 1987). I have cited his remark from p. 64.
8
iva and akti are symbolized by the liga and bhaga, or phallus and vulva. According to the Liga and Dev
Bhgavata Puras, [t]hose who have the male emblem are the manifestations of iva; and those having the
female emblem are the manifestations of Dev. (Dev is another name for akti.) See Lalit-Sahasranman.
With Bhskararyas Commentary Translated into English, 2nd ed., trans. R. Ananthakrishna Sastry (1951;
repr., Adyar, Madras: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1970), name 277, p. 149; see also name 319, p. 165.
The Lalitsahasranma is an encomium of one thousand names of Lalit (lit., Lovely), also known as
Tripurasundar (Beautiful Goddess of the Three Cities [or, Worlds]), who is the tutelary deity of the still extant
tantric sect of rvidy in South India (see Douglas Renfrew Brooks, The Secret of the Three Cities: An
Introduction to Hindu kta Tantrism [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990]), and idem, Auspicious
Wisdom: The Texts and Traditions of rvidy kta Tantrism (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1992). Bhskararya (fl. 16751751) was a foremost commentator on kta Tantra.
9
In Trika, the mode of transformative consciousness is facilitated by the internalized worship of deities (see
Alexis Sanderson, Swami Lakshman Joo and His Place in the Kashmirian aiva Tradition, in Samvidullsah,
ed. Bettina Bumer and Sarla Kumar [New Delhi: D.K. Printworld, 2007], pp. 93126). It is a moot question
however: is any tantric activity non-sexual, if one thinks of sexuality all-embracingly, as a dynamic function of
the imaginary that mediates reality itself? Abhinavagupta hymns the following eulogy: After taking as a
support the earth which is forever cleansed by a sprinkling with the essence of amazement, [I worship you] with
the flowers which arise spontaneously from the mind, which pour forth their own fragrance; [I worship you]
according as the priceless vessel of my heart brims with the nectar of bliss; I worship you, O god, together with
the goddess, in the temple of the body, night and day (Tantrloka 29.176; in Dupuche, Abhinavagupta, op. cit.
[note 7], p. 297).
10
Moira Gatens critiques the idea of the political body as mapping the male body, derivative of an idea put
forward by the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (15881679), who averred: For by Art is created that great
Leviathan called a Common-Wealth, or State, (in Latine Civitas) which is but an Artificiall Man; though of
greater stature and strength than the Naturall, for whose protection and defence it was intended; [etc.]
(Leviathan, ed. C.B. Macpherson [Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968], p. 81; see her book Imaginary Bodies:
Ethics, Power and Corporeality [London: Routledge, 1996], ch. 2; she cites the full quote at pp. 2122).
11
See The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1998) and The Encyclopedia of Religion,
2nd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 2005), s.vv. Brahman.
12
Abhinavagupta promises in his summary treatise, the Paramrthasra (Essence of Ultimate Reality): To
him who meditates on this transcendental brahman, as concisely expounded by Abhinavagupta, ivahood
comes without delay, once it has pervaded his own heart (An Introduction to Tantric Philosophy: The
Paramrthasra of Abhinavagupta with the Commentary of Yogarja, trans. Lyne Bansat-Boudon and
Kamaleshadatta Tripathi; introduction, notes, critically revised Sanskrit text, appendix, indices by Lyne BansatBoudon [Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2011], krik, or verse, 104; p. 313).
13
Abhinavagupta expounds on anuttara in his commentary on the Partrik (see following note). Frlinger
states, apropos Trika aivism:
At the core of this Tntric Advaita tradition is the conviction or the experience of the interconnectedness of reality as a
whole (not simply the unity of reality as a whole). The Divine (iva), [and] its dynamism (akti) pervade the world (nara),
and at the same time transcend it. akti, the power of the Highest (anuttara), is the vibrating and shining dynamic heart
of reality, of everything. Every thought, sense experience, acting, movement, the life and life-force of every human being is
essentially a form of the one brilliantly pulsating Power of the Absolute Reality itself, called akti, the Heart, citi, the
primordial Word. (Touch of akti, op. cit. [note 5], p. 254)
14
Abhinavagupta writes that anuttara expands its eminent light into the realm of diversity through the delight
of power issuing from its own unsurpassed Freedom (Abhinavagupta, A Trident of Wisdom. Translation of
Partrik-vivaraa, Jaideva Singh [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989], p. 34).
15
See, for example, David Kinsley, Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine: The Ten Mahvidys (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1997); and Tracy Pintchman, ed., Seeking Mahdev: Constructing the Identities
of the Hindu Great Goddess (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001). N.N. Bhattacharyya provides
13
an overview of kta Tantra in his History of the Skta Religion, 2nd rev. ed. (New Delhi: Munshiram
Manoharlal, 1996).
16
See C. Mackenzie Brown, The Triumph of the Goddess: The Canonical Models and Theological Visions of
the Dev-Bhgavata Pura (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990). Bhattacharyya states that
tantric goddesses are unlike Puric goddesses in not having a mythology, for [t]hey are all mind-born,
intended solely for the purpose of contemplation and meditation (History of the Skta Religion, op. cit. [note
15], p. 190).
17
On this classical JewishChristian theological standpoint see Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is: The
Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse, tenth anniv. ed. (New York: Crossroad, 2002), pp. 10420.
18
The Talmud is the repository of wisdom that derives from the oral law initiated by Moses and subsequently
written down in Babylonian and Palestinian versions in the period 200500 CE (see Shmuel Safrai, ed., The
Literature of the Sages, Part One [Assen/Maastricht: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987], pp. 303
19, 32350). On the rabbinic notions of Shekhinah see the dated but still useful analysis by Joseph Abelson, The
Immanence of God in Rabbinical Literature (London: Macmillan, 1912), esp. pp. 77149; and Raphael Patai,
The Hebrew Goddess, 3rd enl. ed. (Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press, 1990), pp. 96111.
19
The use of the definite pronoun, the, may have the effect of determining her in a biased way. Does the
notion of a female God ever really achieve parity with a male God, given that her nameGoddessis generally
taken as a diminutive of this normative God? I note that Padoux asks whether one can speak of the Goddess (or
even of Goddess as one says God)? (Vc, op. cit. [note 6], p. 44, n. 33). See further below, note 158.
20
The Kabbalah historically emerged in southern France during the twelfth-century, when the Sefer ha-Bahir
(The Book of Brilliance) was redacted; and it came to attention in Castile and Gerona in the late thirteenth
century with the appearance of the Sefer ha-Zohar (The Book of Radiance). In the succeeding centuries
kabbalistic ideas spread out of Spain into North Africa, Italy, Palestine and Yemen, and especially into Eastern
Europe (see Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah, in Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed. [Detroit: Macmillan Reference
USA; Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 2007], pp. 585677 at 60222). Byron L. Sherwin employs the literal
meaning of Kabbalahthat which has been receivedto refer to the entire scope of the Jewish mystical
tradition, as examined in his book, Kabbalah: An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism (Lanham: Rowman and
Littlefield, 2006). In this paper I am most interested in the Zohar. For an introduction to this remarkable book
see Arthur Green, A Guide to the Zohar (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004). The Zohar is replete with
imagery that is both arresting and profound, which is aimed at transforming the consciousess of the diligent and
mindful reader (see Ellen Haskell, Metaphor, Transformation, and Transcendence: Toward an Understanding of
Kabbalistic Imagery in Sefer hazohar, Prooftexts 28 [2008]: 33562). It has been subject to numerous
commentaries over the centuries, and it remains a mine of discovery. As Mellila Hellner-Eshed observes: Over
the generations, the Zohar has attracted many researchers who have gazed and expounded, explored and
weighed, and who have illuminated many facets of this diamond (A River Flows from Eden: The Language of
Mystical Experience in the Zohar, trans. Nathan Wolski [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009], p. 23). The
Zohar is currently being critically translated from its Aramaic and Hebrew manuscripts into English by Daniel
C. Matt, who includes his own extensive commentary. See The Zohar: Pritzker Edition (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2004 ). As of July 2012, six volumes have been published.
21
In the kabbalistic conception the divine realm is upheld by ten powers (koot), which emanate from God
(Absolute), i.e., Ein Sof. The sefirot are visualized as an upside-down tree which has its roots planted in heaven
and its branches spreading out into the Universe. These ten branches are called Keter (Crown), okmah
(Wisdom), Binah (Understanding), esed (Love), Gevurah (Power), Tiferet (Beauty), Netsa (Endurance),
Hod (Splendour), Yesod (Foundation), and Malkhut (Kingdom). As a whole, they also comprise the so-called
Divine Man, Adam Kadmon. Interestingly, in Hindu thought, the divine being, Purua, is likened to a tree:
This whole world is filled by that Person, beyond whom there is nothing; beneath whom there is nothing;
smaller than whom there is nothing; larger than whom there is nothing; and who stands like a tree planted firmly
in heaven (vetvatara Upaniad 3.9; in Upaniads: A New Translation by Patrick Olivelle [Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1996], p. 257).
22
Binah is the holy, hidden palace, in which all rungs are gathered and concealed (Zohar 1:6b), where rungs
refers to the divine ladder of the sefirot. She is, as Matt glosses, the Divine Mother, who contains within
Herselfand then gives birth toall the lower sefirot (Vol. 1, p. 39, n. 266; cf. below, note 161). Elsewhere, it
is said that Binah is a concealed and colourless expanse that lies above and illumines the seven expanses of
esed through to Shekhinah; as such, Binah has no revealed place to be contemplated, though it [she] is
susceptible to discernment (2:164b; Vol. 5, p. 452, and see Matts gloss there at note 740). Shekhinah is the
divine Daughter; but as well, she and Binah are called Sisters, sharing sisterly love and a bond of delight
(2:126b; Vol. 5, p. 187).

14
23
On the idea of the sefirot as a chain-like emanation of divine being see Nathan Wolski, A Journey into the
Zohar: An Introduction to the Book of Radiance (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010), pp. 161
84.
24
See David Ariel, Kabbalah: The Mystic Quest in Judaism (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), pp. 95
111.
25
See for example Moshe Idel, Sexual Metaphors and Praxis in the Kabbalah, in The Jewish Family:
Metaphor and Memory, ed. David Kraemer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 197224. He writes
that while practitioners in both Kabbalah and Tantra exploit the act of intercourse for spiritual purposes, or
mystical consciousness, to the kabbalist it rather serves the ends of conception, whereas to the tantric the aim is
to divert the semen virile to the head: The sexual act is regarded by the kabbalists as a life-giving act; with the
tantric masters, the ejaculation is viewed as death. The kabbalists put mystical union in the service of
procreation; tantra put [sic] fruitless intercourse into the service of mystical consciousness (2056; cf. 221, n.
81).
26
See Sebastian Brock, The Holy Spirit as Feminine in Early Syriac Literature, in After Eve, ed. J. Martin
Soskice (London: Marshall Pickering, 1990), pp. 7388; and Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Feminine Imagery for
the Divine: The Holy Spirit, the Odes of Solomon, and Early Syriac Tradition, St Vladimirs Theological
Quarterly 37, nos. 23 (1993), pp. 11139. The Holy Spirit vivifies creation, and thus her creative activity
involves a continuous energizing, an ongoing sustaining of the world throughout the broad sweep of history. She
is the giver of life and lover of life, pervading the cosmos and all of its inter-related creatures with life. If she
were to withdraw her divine presence everything would go back to nothing (Johnson, She Who Is, op. cit. [note
17], p. 134). Exactly the same could be said about akti.
27
In the Septuagint (the third- to second-century BC Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible), wisdom is sopha,
and she takes on a particular importance in the so-called wisdom literature, including the books of Job,
Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, as well as in the Apocryphal books of Ben Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon.
Anthony J. Thiselton provides a brief survey of usage in Wisdom in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures: The
Hebrew Bible and Judaism, Theology 114, no. 3 (2011): 16372.
28
See the great analysis by Elisabeth Schssler Fiorenza, Jesus: Miriams Child, Sophias Prophet: Critical
Issues in Feminist Christology (New York: Continuum, 1994), esp. pp. 13962. According to the Cappadocian
notion of divinity, Christ as the power and wisdom of God partakes of the nature of the Father who is himself
essentially the productive divine power (see Michel Ren Barnes, The Power of God: in Gregory of
Nyssas Trinitarian Theology [Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001], pp. 220
307). This innateness is similar to the way in which akti is inseparably united with iva, which suggests that
akti may be correlated with the dynamic Christ, or divine Word. Just as the Holy Spirit is in connatural unity
with God the Father (see St. Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit [Crestwood, NY: St Vladimirs Seminary Press,
2001]), so akti is in energetic identity with iva. This correspondence may therefore be written as Christ
akti and Holy Spiritakti.
29
See for example Alf Hiltebeitel and Kathleen M. Erndl, eds., Is the Goddess a Feminist? The Politics of South
Asian Goddesses (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000); and Alix Pirani, ed., The Absent Mother:
Restoring the Goddess to Judaism and Christianity (London: Mandala, 1991). The role of goddess figures is a
recurring theme and significant undercurrent in human history, and there is a wealth of literature on this subject.
See, e.g., Barbara Newman, God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), and Rosemary Radford Ruether, Goddesses and the
Divine Feminine: A Western Religious History (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
2005). See also the explicative pictorial record of an exhibition on Hindu and Buddhist goddesses curated by
Jackie Menzies, Goddess: Divine Energy (Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2006).
30
For a close study of the role of the spirit in Judaism and early Christianity see John R. Levison The Spirit in
First-Century Judaism (Boston: Brill, 2002). He notes (p. 105) that the expression holy spirit (rua ha-qodesh,
lit., spirit of the holiness) occurs only twice in the Hebrew Bible, namely at Psalms 51:13 and Isaiah 63:1011.
31
Elsewhere I have sought to distinguish awareness and consciousness in the context of a Kantian
assessment of Western Christian mysticism. In brief, the encounter with God is realized by an artful awareness,
and this intuitive state of mind is passed into an aesthetic consciousness, which makes the momentary event into
a lasting experience where divinity can be recognized (The Art of Mysticism: An Inquiry into the Notion of
Ineffability in (Cataphatic) Mystical Experience [PhD diss., University of Queensland, 2007]).
32
Erndl has pointed out that a number of Indian scholars, such as Kartikeya Patel and Madhu Khanna, have
argued that the ritual and theology of kta Tantra, which places a high valuation on female embodiment, is in
fact essentially feminist (Is Shakti Empowering for Women? Reflections on Feminism and the Hindu
Goddess, in Is the Goddess a Feminist?, op. cit. [note 29], pp. 91103 at 94).
33
See Paul S. McDonald, History of the Concept of Mind: Speculations about Soul, Mind and Spirit from
Homer to Hume (Aldershot, Hants.: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 279361; and Elizabeth Grosz, Contemporary
15
Theories of Power and Subjectivity, in Feminist Knowledge: Critique and Construct, ed. Sneja Gunew
(London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 59120.
34
See Michel Foucault, Afterword: The Subject and Power, in Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and
Hermeneutics, ed. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1982), pp. 20826. For a
succinct analysis of Foucaults genealogy of power see Amy Allen, The Power of Feminist Theory: Domination,
Resistance, Solidarity (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1999), pp. 3163. It has been argued that although Foucaults
work has been criticised as being androcentric it is not without value for a feminist recovery of the self. See the
fine studies by Margaret McLaren, Feminism, Foucault and Embodied Subjectivity (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 2002), and Lois McNay, Foucault and Feminism: Power, Gender and Self (Cambridge: Polity,
1992). Mariam Fraser explains that Foucaults work has allowed feminist theorists both to maintain an antiessentialist position as well as some working notion of identity and selfhood. Foucault substitutes the self as
the object of study for a study of the techiques by which the self comes to be constituted, through discourse, as
such (Visceral Futures: Bodies of Feminist Criticism, Social Epistemology 15, no. 2 [2001]: 91111 at 92
93).
35
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1978), p. 93.
36
Ibid.
37
See Foucault, Afterword, op. cit. (note 34), pp. 22022.
38
Pamela Sue Anderson, Gender and the Infinite: On the Aspiration to Be All There Is, International Journal
for Philosophy of Religion 50 (2001): 191212 at 2045.
39
The Body of Engenderment in the Hebrew Bible, the Rabbinic Tradition and the Kabbalah, in Fragments for
a History of the Human Body, Part One, ed. Michel Feher with Ramona Naddaff and Nadia Tazi (New York:
Zone Books, 1989), pp. 4873 at 55.
40
See Ronald M. Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2002), pp. 169335; and David Gordon White, The Alchemical Body: Siddha
Traditions in Medieval India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); also Kamil V. Zvelebil, The Poets
of the Powers: Magic, Freedom, and Renewal (Lower Lake, CA: Integral, 1993).
41
This quest for full or perfect consciousness in (the presence of) God is a hallmark of the worlds religions. On
the notion of perfectibility across religious cultures see Howard Coward, The Perfectibility of Human Nature in
Eastern and Western Thought (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008). To be sure, mystics from
the various religious traditions appear to express some commonality of perspective as they struggle towards this
goal. For a representative sampling of these views, framed by a series of didactic personal reflections on the
value of a mystical outlook, see R.D. Krumpos, The Greatest Achievement in Life; Five Traditions of Mysticism;
Mystical Approaches to Life (Los Angeles: R.D. Krumpos, 2012). Ebook available online at
http://www.suprarational.org.
42
David Peter Lawrence reaffirms that the various tantras are characterized by the pursuit of power, as tantric
practitioners endeavor to identify with the Goddess, to be ecstatically possessed by her, or to become her
possessor (aktiman) in identifying with her consort (The Teachings of the Odd-Eyed One: A Study and
Translation of the Virpkapacik with the Commentary of Vidycakravartin [Albany: State University of
New York Press, 2008], p. 6). See also the reference above, in note 4.
43
The Trika comprises a triad of goddesses, Par, Parpar, and Apar, who represent the prongs of the trident
(trila) (see Alexis Sanderson, aivism and the Tantric Traditions, in The Worlds Religions, ed. Stewart
Sutherland et al. [London: Routledge, 1988], pp. 67277). Abhinavagupta explains in his expository text
Partrikvivaraa that iva abides with perfect fusion of the three subtle [aktis] (viz. icch, jna and
kriy) in Himself (Trident of Wisdom, op. cit. [note 14], p. 169). Elsewhere, he writes that as iva embraces
himself in this manner, everything is resolved into Brahman (see verse 45 of his summary text Paramrthasra;
in Paramrthasra of Abhinavagupta. With the Commentary of Yogarja. The Essence of the Supreme Truth,
trans. Deba Brata SenSharma [New Delhi: Muktabodha Indological Research Institute, 2007], p. 100). In the
kta tradition, this triune aspect of divinity is said to be the form of Lalit Tripurasundar (see LalitSahasranma: A Comprehensive Study of One Thousand Names of Lalit Mah-Tripurasundar, trans. L.M.
Joshi [New Delhi: D.K. Printworld, 1998], name 658, p. 226).
44
Frlinger, Touch of akti, op. cit. (note 5), p. 118. abhu is a name of iva. For more detail on these paths
to liberation see Mark S.G. Dyczkowski, The Doctrine of Vibration: An Analysis of the Doctrines and Practices
of Kashmir Shaivism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987), pp. 163218. He calls them
respectively the Individual Means, the Empowered Means, and the Divine Means, and also outlines a
fourth way, anupya, No-means, which is the direct penetration into supreme consciousness without
meditation.
45
In the non-dual theology advanced by Abhinavagupta, the universal reality is a manifestation of light, and
nothing can be inferred outside the scope of that ontological illumination by the conscious mind. Thus, [f]or
16
Abhinava being is becoming; to be is to appear, where the term appear means to shine forth, be
manifested, pulsate, or effervesce (see Harvey P. Alper, iva and the Ubiquity of Consciousness: The
Spaciousness of an Artful Yogi, Journal of Indian Philosophy 7 [1979]: 345407 at 368). Frlinger points out
that while Trika is sometimes said to be a monistic system it is more accurately a non-dual system, given that
Reality is purchased by a coincidence of opposites (Lat. Coincidentia oppositorum) (Touch of akti, op. cit.
[note 5], p. 250).
46
The iris plant is named after the Greek goddess of the rainbow, Iris, grand-daughter of Gaia (Raymond L. Lee,
Jr., and Alistair B. Fraser, The Rainbow Bridge: Rainbows in Art, Myth, and Science [University Park: The
Pennsylvania State University Press; Bellingham, WA: SPIE Press, 2001], pp. 1822). For the Trika, the highest
road to God is svtantryavda, the way of freedom, where the goal is the complete breaking through of all
contractions and the blossoming up or the unfolding (unmea) of ones identity with the Power of Freedom
(svtantryaakti) (Frlinger, Touch of akti, op. cit. [note 5], p. 253). Kabbalistically, Shekhinah is depicted as
a rainbow spectrum, as she reflectively arrays the Godhead (cf. below, note 156).
47
On the idea that the lower levels of reality are a reflective manifestation and coagulation of the higher levels
see Gavin D. Flood, Body and Cosmology in Kashmir aivism (San Francisco: Mellen Research University
Press, 1993), chap. 2.
48
According to the varapratyabhijkrik (Verses on the Recognition of the Lord), the defining
characteristic of iva is that he is light and only light (prakaghanasya) (see varapratyabhijkrik of
Utpaladeva with the Authors Vtti. Critical edition and annotated translation, Raffaele Torella [Roma: Istituto
Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1994], 2.1.7; p. 155). Torella notes that prakaghanasya literally
means a compact mass of light (ibid., n. 9).
49
The kualin is the serpentine storehouse of energy that is located at the base of the spine in the subtle body
matrix (see Ajit Mookerjee, Kundalini: The Arousal of the Inner Energy [New York: Destiny Books, 1983]). It
is said in the Tantrloka that kualin is the mistress who stands at the centre of the circle of life, circulating
and irradiating everywhere (see Dupuche, Abhinavagupta, op. cit. [note 7], pp. 22425).
50
Although there is a natural tendency to solidify kualin-akti into a structural property belonging to the
self, it is really a stormy wind that blows strongly with the powerful forces of love and beauty.
51
The energy of breath is a primary idea in tantric speculation, where the arising of kualin is facilitated by
the recitative power of the Hasamantra, ha sa, I [am] He, or so ha, the inward and outward breath
(see The Kubjik Upaniad, edited with a translation, introduction, notes and appendices by Teun Goudriaan
and Jan A. Schoterman [Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1994], 7.29 and 7.32, p. 97; and see p. 9 of the
Introduction). This action is portrayed as a goose or swan (Padoux, Vc, op. cit. [note 6], pp. 1401). I
compound the term aktiholy spirit here to indicate the parallelness between akti as the force of life and holy
spirit as the breath of life. Since Shekhinah can be corresponded with holy spirit, it is equivalent to writing
aktishekhinah. According to Rabbi Shimon (the central narrative figure in the Zohar), God delights in the one
who intensively studies Torah, for such activity draws down the Holy Spirit, and refines oneself as a haven for
Shekhinah: When we see that this person desires, in joyous aspiration of the heart, to pursue and strive for Him
with heart, soul, and will, surely there, we know, dwells Shekhinah (Zohar 2:128b; Vol. 5, p. 200). He further
explains that Shekhinah comes to abide in the Dwelling, or Tabernacle, as her body: She is Holy Spirit,
continuously entering and drawn into the mystery of the body (Zohar 2:140b; Vol. 5, p. 293). As an avian
messenger, the spirit is hypostatized by Christians as the Holy Spirit.
52
See Flood, Body and Cosmology, op. cit. (note 47), ch. 3. In the Indian tradition there is a clear tendency
towards an embodied, inclusive view of divine being and the world, which is panentheistic in orientation, and
which is echoed in the idea of the human being as microcosm of God likewise embodying the world (see, e.g.,
Purushottama Bilimoria and Ellen Stansell, Suturing the Body Corporate (Divine and Human) in the Brahmanic
Traditions, Sophia 49 [2010]: 23759).
53
The tantric way to God is contained in the alphabet, where the consonants represent iva and the vowels
represent akti (see Padoux, Vc, op. cit. [note 6], pp. 223329). This makes the utterance of words and
sentences a compelling flow of light-consciousness. A leitmotiv of the Kabbalah is its acknowledgement of the
power of language for enabling entry onto the plane of the Godhead, along with the concomitant forces of breath
and sound as modes of immanent consciousness of divinity; this approach finds a correspondence in tantric
ideas (see Jonathan Garb, Powers of Language in Kabbalah: Comparative Reflections, in The Poetics of
Grammar and the Metaphysics of Sound and Sign, ed. S. La Porta and D. Shulman [Leiden: Brill, 2007], pp.
23369).
54
According to aiva scripture the recognition of ones own divine state is a gesture of god-consciousness:
When the knowledge innately inherent in ones own nature arises, (that is) ivas state(the gesture of) the
one who wanders in the Sky of Consciousness [khecarmudr] (The Aphorisms of iva: The ivaStra with
Bhskaras Commentary, the Vrtikka. Translated with exposition and notes, Mark S.G. Dyczkowski [Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1992], aph. 2.5, p. 76 [my brackets]).
17
55
I use the word lavender in respect to its coloura pale blue with a trace of redand to the scenting qualities
of the plant itself. The Oxford English Dictionary records the sense of lavender flowers and stalks being used to
perfume baths or being laid amongst freshly washed linen (s.v. lavender, n.2 and adj.). Shekhinah is
symbolized as a bed upon which her lover Tiferet reclines (Matt, Zohar, Vol. 5, p. 236, n. 130; and he adds that
[a]ccording to the eleventh-century Catholic reformer Peter Damian, Mary is the golden couch upon which
God, tired out by the actions of humanity and the angels, lies down to rest). The opening line of the biblical
book Song of Songs (1:2), Oh, give me of the kisses of your mouth, is interpreted by the rabbis as the cleaving
of rua, spirit, to spirit, and as a divine yearning by the Assembly of Israel for God. The zoharic author
understands it as an allegory of the love of Shekhinah for Tiferet. By extension, to live ecstatically in the
spiritual life is to be kissed by God, even then to die for that love (see Zohar 2:124b; Vol. 5, pp. 16768, and
Matts notes thereto, 8081). See Michael Fishbanes background study, The Kiss of God: Spiritual and
Mystical Death in Judaism (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1994). The biblical citation is
from the Jewish Publication Societys TANAKH translation, in The Jewish Study Bible, ed. Adele Berlin and
Marc Zvi Brettler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
56
I am inspired here by the songs of the band Spiritualized, I want you and Run, on their album Lazer
Guided Melodies (UK: Dedicated, 1992). It is said that the brilliance of Dev is as red as a ruby (LalitSahasranma, op. cit. [note 43], name 248; p. 139). Cloudshine is a descriptive term for the diffuse emission
that occurs in dark molecular clouds in space as starlight is reflected by dust grains (see Jonathan B. Foster and
Alyssa A. Goodman, Cloudshine: New Light on Dark Clouds, in The Astrophysical Journal 636 [2006]:
L105108). An important mystical ritual found in the Zohar is that of nocturnal study of the Torah, from
midnight till dawn, which motivates the arousal of the divine pair, Shekhinah and Tiferet, into sexual union (see
Wolski, Journey into the Zohar, op. cit. [note 23], pp. 13960). As he writes in summary:
Throughout the night, the Companions words of Torah below emit an aphrodisiacal quality, arousing the male and female
grades of divinity, who, after a night of playful courtship, finally unite in the intermingling of the day and night immediately
preceding the dawn. In this special praxis the Companions are simultaneously present below in their bodies, as well as above
in the Garden of Eden in their spiritual or astral garb. The ritual climaxes at dawn with the first rays of light, which the
assembled mystics experience as the outpouring of the divine, the erotic fluids flowing from the sexual union of the male and
female aspects of divinity, the stream that flows from the world that is coming. (ibid., 14445)
57
Judith Butler in her book, The Psychic Life of Power (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997) argues,
following Althusser and Foucault, that power produces its subject at the same time that the subject takes in the
power by which it is inaugurated. The subject is reflexively constituted through the operation of power turning
back on itself, and this is a requirement for the subject to persist. As she says, [p]ower not only acts on a
subject but, in a transitive sense, enacts the subject into being (13). There is, in that regard, no conceptual
transition to be made between power as external to the subject, acting on, and power as constitutive of the
subject, acted by (15). This pregnant statement is certainly amenable to a tantric analysis, and one can
straightforwardly substitute the word akti for the word power here.
58
Tantra basically authorizes sensual experience as a means to self-realization, and the body is not to be
ascetically subjugated (Frlinger, Touch of akti, op. cit. [note 5], p. 143). The Vijnabhairava makes this
clear: When one experiences the expansion of joy of savour arising from the pleasure of eating and drinking,
one should meditate on the perfect condition of this joy, then there will be supreme delight (v. 72); and, When
the yog mentally becomes one with the incomparable joy of song and other objects, then of such a yog, there is,
because of the expansion of his mind, identity with that (i.e. with the incomparable joy) because he becomes one
with it (v. 73) (The Yoga of Delight, Wonder, and Astonishment. A Translation of the Vijna-bhairava with an
Introduction and Notes, Jaideva Singh [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991], pp. 68 and 69).
59
Sex naturally relies on sensualness, but according to Abhinavagupta (as Singh explains), sex is only a
microcosmic aspect of a macrocosmic divine creative energy. The thrill of sex is only a pale reproduction of the
thrill of this divine creative energy. [which] radiates from the union of iva and akti (in Trident of Wisdom,
op. cit. [note 14], p. 51). Cf. the statement of the author of the Kulrava Tantra (5.112): One who experiences
the bliss of union in sexual relationship as being between the Supreme Power (Parakti) and the Selfsuch a
person knows the meaning of sexual relations; others are inferior, indulging only to pursue women (Douglas
Renfrew Brooks, The Ocean of the Heart: Selections from the Kulrava Tantra, in Tantra in Practice, ed.
David Gordon White [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000], pp. 34760 at 355). A similar sentiment
about the joyful power of loving God is expressed in the Sefer Hasidim, in the tradition of the twelfth century
Hasidei Ashkenaz in Germany (See Moshe Idel, Taanug: Erotic Delights From Kabbalah to Hasidism, in
Hidden Intercourse: Eros and Sexuality in the History of Western Esotericism, ed. Wouter J. Hanegraaff and
Jeffrey J. Kripal [New York: Fordham University Press, 2011], pp. 11151 at 144; he cites furthermore, Sefer
ha-Malakim: And at the time that a young man engages in intercourse and shoots like an arrow [i.e.,
ejaculates], that selfsame pleasure is as nought compared with the slightest pleasure of the World to Come
[144, n. 125]).

18
60
The union of iva and akti is the Great Lake of consciousness, and the yog is immersed in this fluidic
Mantra as he testifies to divine awareness (see ivastra 1.23, and commentaries, in Aphorisms of iva, op. cit.
[note 54], pp. 5963; cf. the equivalent aphorism 1.22 in iva Stras: The Yoga of Supreme Identity. Text of the
Stras and the Commentary Vimarin of Kemarja. Translated into English with Introduction, Notes,
Running Exposition, Glossary and Index, Jaideva Singh [Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1979], and commentaries,
at pp. 7780). Moreover, the yog is ever mindful of parakti as the supreme consciousness, parsavit, to
whom he devotes his full attention and upon whom he sits as he sinks effortlessly into the lake of samdhi (see
ivastra 3.16 and 3.17, in Aphorisms of iva, pp. 12225; cf. the equivalent aphorisms 3.15 and 3.16 and
commentaries in iva Stras, pp. 16165).
61
In using such an analogy I would adduce Carol Christ, who remarks that [i]n Goddess thealogy, neither
humanity nor divinity is radically distinguished from nature. Thus it is common in the Goddess movement to
refer to the Goddess with non-anthropomorphic imagery: as rain, wind, mountain, cave, light, dark, lion, hawk,
bee, sea, sun, moon, pine tree, hyacinth, seed, grain, river (Feminist Theology as Post-Traditional Thealogy,
in Cambridge Companion to Feminist Theology, ed. Susan Frank Parsons [Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2002], pp. 7996 at 89). In a similar vein, Luce Irigaray opines that the dialogue with divinity ought to be
linked to natural rhythms and configurations, and indeed such language may be forever close to a vegetal
blossoming (Ethics of Sexual Difference, op. cit. [note 1], p. 139; cf. her remarks in Between East and West:
From Singularity to Community, trans. Stephen Pluhek [New York: Columbia University Press, 2002], p. 35).
62
For the following properties of diamond see George E. Harlow, What is Diamond?, in The Nature of
Diamonds, ed. George E. Harlow (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 522.
63
Diamond has a rigid atomic structure, which effectively transmits vibrational energy, and since heat is
fundamentally the agitation, or vibration, of atoms, it means that diamond does not easily heat up. (Its melting
point is 3550 Celsius.)
64
Refraction is a measure of how light-rays are bent as they pass from one medium to another, e.g., from air to
water or solid (indicating a change in velocity). This behaviour of materials in air is referred to as lustre, and
diamond is said to have an adamantine lustre. It also has a high level of transparency, to a wide range of
electromagnetic frequencies.
65
Dispersion refers to the way in which light-rays are refracted differently depending on their frequency; hence
the colour blue (~666 THz) is more acutely bent than yellow (~517 THz) or red (~462 THz). Light is evidently
separated into its component colours, and for diamond this high level of dispersion gives rise to its glittering,
brilliant qualities, where light plays off it in infinite ways.
66
While the carbon atoms in diamond are arranged in a regular tetrahedral network, the carbon atoms in
graphite are arranged as a hexagonal latticea honeycomb patternin layered sheets. In contrast to diamond,
graphite is one of the softest known materials. Interestingly, a single two-dimensional sheet of graphite is known
as graphene, and presents extraordinary properties, such as being the thinnest known material yet at the same
time the strongest ever measured; and it promises a multitude of technological applications (see A. K. Geim,
Graphene: Status and Prospects, Science 324 [19 June 2009]: 153034; see also Herb Brody, supp. ed.,
Nature Outlook: Graphene, Nature 483 [15 March 2012]: S2944). Geim suggestively remarks: Graphene is
an ultimate incarnation of the surface. It has two faces with no bulk in between (op. cit., 1532). It has also been
said that graphene is the ultimate example of expanded aromatic carbon (Andreas Hirsch, The Era of Carbon
Allotropes, Nature Materials 9 [November 2010]: 86871 at 869; see further below, note 124).
67
Plato argued that the impressions derived from sense perception, which can be recalled later by the memory,
are like words inscribed in the soul. Moreover, in viewing ones own mental images, and forming judgements of
what is true or false on that basis, one is like a painter who provides illustrations of the words in ones soul
(Philebus 39ac; Plato. The Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997], p. 428). I have
previously adverted to this association in my PhD thesis, op. cit. (note 31), p. 91. Cf. below, note 149.
68
In symbolic terms, the divinely infused mind is the province of aktiShekhinah, because thin flakes of
graphite are deep blue in transmitted light (McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology, 10th ed., s.v.
Graphite), and because she is coloured blue (see below, note 117).
69
On coloration in diamonds see Emmanuel Fritsch, The Nature of Color in Diamonds, in Nature of
Diamonds, op. cit. (note 62), pp. 2347. An impurity of nitrogen will produce a yellow colour, while an
impurity of boron will produce a blue colour; but it is not known for sure what produces the colour of orange,
pink, red, and purple diamonds (see further the table in ibid., 35). I note that according to the Torah, God is said
to be without colour (Gershom Scholem, Colors and their Symbolism in Jewish Tradition and Mysticism, in
Color Symbolism: The Eranos Lectures, ed. Klaus Ottmann [Putnam, CT: Spring Publications, 2005], pp. 344
at 10).
70
Luminescence refers to the emission of visible light by materials subjected to some kind of excitation. When
the material ceases to emit light with the removal of the excitation source it is called fluorescence, but when the
material continues to emit light upon the removal, it is called phosphorescence (Fritsch, Nature of Color, op.
19
cit. [note 69], p. 31). So when there is contact with God the divine presence excites the soul, but as ignorance
returns, memory of her fades; if however ignorance does not return, then memory of her at least remains.
71
Jesus is said to have taken on a luminous appearance as he aligned himself with his divine nature (e.g., Matt.
28:3; Luke 9:29). In zoharic understanding, when one sees the righteous or virtuous of the generation and meets
them, they are surely the face of Shekhinah, for while [s]he is in concealment . . . they are revealed, for those
close to Shekhinah are called Her face (2:163b; with Matts gloss at Vol 5, p. 443, n. 715).
72
Fritsch points out that [t]he term black light is used for the lowest-energy form of ultraviolet light,
produced by inexpensive electric lamps (Nature of Color, op. cit. [note 69], p. 47). It is just beyond human
perception. Mark S.G. Dyczkowski writes that Kl (a form of akti) whose name means Black Lady, is in an
apparently paradoxical manner described as radiant light (bhs) (Kubjik, Kl, Tripur and Trika, Nepal
Research Centre Publication No. 22 [Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart, 2000], p. 51). By comparison,
Shekhinah is a black light that darkly shines (Zohar 2:140a; Vol. 5, pp. 28990). Shekhinah otherwise has some
affinity with Kl, where she takes on menacing attributes, fighting the human and infernal powers of evil with
bloodthirsty habit (Patai, Hebrew Goddess, op. cit. [note 18], p. 150). Kl makes a first appearance as the
rampaging offsider to the all mighty Goddess Durg battling the demon Asuras in the sixth-century Pura text
Dev-Mhtmya (see Thomas B. Coburn, Encountering the Goddess: A Translation of the Dev-Mhtmya and
a Study of Its Interpretation [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991], p. 61).
73
The fashioning of diamonds follows a four stage process: cleaving, cutting, bruting, and grinding and
polishing (see George E. Harlow, From the Earth to Fashioned Objects: Processing Diamond, in Nature of
Diamonds, op. cit. [note 62], pp. 21439 at 23133). These days the cutting can be done by laser beams rather
than manually. In its raw state a diamond is called a rough.
74
The Zohar adduces Jeremiah 17:1: The sin of Judah is engraved with a stylus of iron, ( betsipporen shamir), with the point of a diamond (1:223b). Matt glosses that ( Shamir), means diamond,
but is also the name of the legendary worm that could cut through hardest stone. According to rabbinic tradition,
Solomon employed the shamir in building the Temple (Vol. 3, p. 343, n. 229). In the Kulrava Tantra it is
said that the body is a temple, and the soul (jva) is God Sadiva (cited by Teun Goudriaan, Imagery of the
Self from Veda to Tantra, in Roots of Tantra, op. cit. [note 2], pp. 17192 at 178).
75
In the Lalitsahasranma, Lalit is Paradevat, the supreme deity (name 369), and Dhar, of the form of
earth (name 953) (Lalit-Sahasranma, op. cit. [note 43], pp. 168 and 304). Carol Christ explains that [t]he
word thealogy comes from the Greek words thea or Goddess and logos or meaning. It describes the activity of
reflection on the meaning of Goddess, in contrast to theology, from theos and logos, which is reflection on the
meaning of God (Feminist Theology, op. cit. [note 61], p. 79). A wider definition has recently been proposed:
thealogy is concerned with the beliefs, wisdom, embodied practices, questions, and values as they relate to any
religious or spiritual practice, indigenous or contemporary, that upholds the principle of an ontological Sacred
Feminine (Patricia Iolana and Angela Hope, Thealogy: Mapping a Fluid and Expanding Field, Goddess
Thealogy: An International Journal for the Study of the Divine Feminine 1, no. 1 [December 2011]: 12).
76
See Melissa B. Kirkley, The Origin of Diamonds: Earth Processes, in Nature of Diamonds, op. cit. [note 62],
pp. 4865. In the twentieth century it became possible to emulate these conditions in the laboratory so as to
produce artificial diamonds (see Robert M. Hazen, The Diamond Makers [Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999]).
77
The body is like a diamond, and appropriately so, since the human being is a carbon-based life-form. Harlow
writes: Diamond is carbon, the same carbon that is one of the elements that you and I and all lifeforms are
made from; some diamonds are, in fact, recrystallized organic substance recycled life (Harlow,
Introduction, in Nature of Diamonds, op. cit. [note 62], p. 2).
78
In one method of producing synthetic diamonds graphite is dissolved in a solvent-catalyst, such as cobalt,
iron and nickel, and subjected to enormous pressure by an arrangement of anvils, in addition to very high
temperatures (Alan T. Collins, Diamonds in Modern Technology: Synthesis and Applications, in Nature of
Diamonds, op. cit. [note 62], pp. 25572 at 25859).
79
6.6566; quoted by White, Alchemical Body, op. cit. (note 40), p. 190. This metaphor of the milky ocean is
also employed in the Lakm Tantra, a scripture of the Vaiava sect with kta influence; see 3.34 and 6.33
(Lakm Tantra: A Pcartra Text. Translation and notes with introduction, Sanjukta Gupta [Netherlands,
1972; repr., Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2000], respectively pp. 18 and 37). See also 10.1, which states:
akra:I salute thee, brought into being through the mighty efforts of the gods to churn the milky ocean, sister
of the moon of immortal origin (ibid., 54).
80
In the Zohar a connection is established between the biblical verses, A river flows from Eden to water the
garden (Genesis 2:10), and The enlightened will shine like the radiance of the sky; and those who lead many to
righteousness, like the stars forever and forever (Daniel 12:3) (Hellner-Eshed, River Flows from Eden, op. cit.
[note 20], p. 237). She writes:

20
The significance of this appearance of the verse is that it defines a level of reading attuned to the awe-filled experience of
gazing at the night sky. This experience is wonderfully expressed in biblical poetry, in particular in Psalm 19, which
describes the perfection and beauty of creation, the handiwork of God, who can be known through contemplating the
heavens. The heroes of the Zohar view the night sky as a book in which they themselves are inscribed. They are the ones
who shine like the radiance of the sky and the stars described in the verse the enlightened will shine like the radiance of the
sky. They view the entire sky as a kind of river (perhaps because of the ever-changing position of the stars); and within this
sky they identify a river of light (nahar di-nur), the Milky Way, a river that flows from the depths of the sky and pours forth
its plenty on the world. (ibid., 238)
81
According to Vijnabhairava (v. 65): The yog should contemplate the entire universe or his own body
simultaneously in its totality as filled with his (essential, spiritual) bliss. Then through his own ambrosia-like
bliss, he will become identified with the supreme bliss (Yoga of Delight, op. cit. [note 58], p. 62). See also iva
Stra 3.39, and Singhs commentary, in iva Stras, op. cit. (note 60), pp. 21516.
82
The Syrian saint Ephrem (30373) describes paradise, which is the abode of the resurrected body, in vivid
sensual imagery; e.g., he gushes: For the colors of Paradise are full of joy, its scents most wonderful, its
beauties most desirable, and its delicacies glorious (Hymn IV, stanza 7; in St. Ephrem the Syrian, Hymns on
Paradise, commentary and translation by Sebastian Brock [Crestwood, NY: St Vladimirs Seminary Press,
1990], p. 100; see also Hymn IX, stanza 8: There all fruit is holy, all raiment luminous [ibid., p. 178]). On the
role of smell in the sensory awareness of paradise see Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Scenting Salvation: Ancient
Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).
83
On the various philosophical and psychological conceptions of the role of human imagination in Western
history see the comprehensive work by Eva T.H. Brann, The World of the Imagination: Sum and Substance
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1991). She concludes that we imaginatively project our drawn out selves
upon the world and bring to colourful life that which ordinarily (in a neutral sense) comes before our vision:
[b]ut most of us, certainly all the people I know well, cast imaginative transparencies on the colorless, finegrained, screen of existence (p. 776).
84
Symbolically in the Zohar, Shekhinah is the vine [which] receives all and brings forth fruit for the world,
and these grapes produce wine, which is the first blessing of the bride (2:169b; Vol. 5, p. 485, with Matts
gloss at note 837). In directional terms Shekhinah is allocated to the West (see Zohar 1:34b, and Matts relevant
notes at Vol. 1, pp. 21517). Shekhinah is the house that stands, or is established, upon the seven sefirotic
pillars, esed through to Yesod (including the hidden sefirah Daat [Knowledge]), while Binah is the Master
of the house (Zohar 2:164a; Vol. 5, p. 447, with Matts gloss at note 724). In the kabbalistic diagram, Daat
appears on the central line that joins Keter and Tiferet, and it mediates between okhmah (Father) and Binah
(Mother). When the lips of the Father and Mother are joined in the radiance of Daat, it is called mouth of
YHVH [i.e., Tiferet], and words are articulated in truth, in okhmah (Wisdom), Tevunah (Understanding),
and Daat (Knowledge). The divine realm is thereby called into existence. See Zohar 2:123a, Vol. 5, p. 155,
and Matts gloss at note 43; and cf. ibid., pp. 55455, n. 18. See also below, note 165.
85
Diamond is most often associated with an octahedral shape (Harlow, What is Diamond, op. cit. [note 62], p.
8), and the number eight is generally regarded as auspicious in religious traditions (see Annemarie Schimmel,
The Mystery of Numbers [New York: Oxford University Press, 1993], pp. 15663). Christ is numbered as eight,
and is the infinite Logos, the geometrized Word of God (in mathematical terms he might be designated ).
From a theological standpoint, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (140164) used a telling metaphor to illustrate how
the infinite is linked to the finite. He pointed out that a polygon inscribed in a circle may be increased infinitely
yet it will not resolve into the circle without a limit-concept, which is Christ, who is the maximum polygon
(see Elizabeth Brient, How can the Infinite be the Measure of the Finite?, in Cusanus: The Legacy of Learned
Ignorance, ed. Peter J. Casarella [Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2006], pp. 210
25 at 22024). Shekhinah is depicted as the precinct of divine being (Zohar 1:128b; Vol. 2, p. 224).
86
In the Spanda Kriks the soul is said to be bound by the City of Eight, a designation for the subtle body
(puryaaka), which moves along the transmigratory wheel, and which is composed of eight categories, namely
the five tanmtras of abda (sound), parsa (touch), rpa (sight), rasa (taste), gandha (smell), plus manas
(mind), buddhi (intellect or understanding), and ahamkra (ego or I-maker). See Stanzas 49 and 50 and the brief
explanation by Kallaabhaa and extended explanation by Rjnaka Rma, in The Stanzas on Vibration: The
Spandakrik with Four Commentaries. Translated with an Introduction and Exposition, Mark S.G.
Dyczkowski (Varanasi, India: Dilip Kumar Publishers, 1994), pp. 13233; and see Dyczkowskis exposition at
pp. 26365. By comparison, in the kabbalistic divine body, Shekhinah is known as the City of Four, since she
completes the sefirotic tetrad of esed, Gevurah, and Tiferet, who symbolize respectively love, power, and
beauty (Matt, Zohar, Vol. 2, p. 214, n. 88). This is the diamond of the Godhead.
87
I would say that the exemplification of beauty by human beings is shown primarily by the level of integrality
with God, and by ones resoluteness in obeying the commandments of God.
88
In the symbolism of the Zohar, Shekhinah is depicted as a [f]ield of apple trees, desired and cultivated by
supernal patriarchs (1:142b; and Matt glosses that the apple trees that fill the orchard of Shekhinah correspond
21
to the sefirotic triad of esed, Gevurah, and Tiferet, who are symbolized by the three patriarchs and whose
respective colors all appear in the apple: the white pulp, the red skin, and the green stem [Vol. 2, p. 294, n.
262]). The three patriarchs referred to are Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Babylonian Talmud relates that
[t]here was a harp suspended above [King] Davids bed. As soon as midnight arrived, a north wind came and
blew upon it, and it played by itself. He immediately arose and engaged in Torah until the break of dawn
(Berakhot 3b; cited by Matt, Zohar, Vol. 2, pp. 23, n. 13). The kabbalists turn this legendary custom into a
ritual as they are expected to rise at midnight and adorn Shekhinah with words of Torah and song in preparation
for Her union with Tiferet (see the quote above in note 56); and Matt adds that [t]his parallels the midnight
vigil that was common among Christian monks from early medieval times (ibid.). Cinnamon is one of the
spices associated with the Garden of Eden (2:210a; Vol. 6, p. 196), which is to say the divine presence,
Shekhinah. According to the Lakm Tantra (50.3742), Lakm as the mother of (all) sounds is immanent
in all beings and hum[s] like the female bumble bee (op. cit. [note 79], p. 338). Overall, Lakm is the
goddess of prosperity, of auspiciousness and harmony, and the source of all wisdom (see Constantina Rhodes,
Invoking Lakshmi: The Goddess of Wealth in Song and Ceremony [Albany: State University of New York Press,
2010], esp. pp. 127202).
89
I am alluding here to the compact disc, where light from a semiconductor laser scans the microscopic
indentations (pits) that are etched into the polycarbonate plastic. This light is then converted by a photo-diode
into a binary electrical signal (McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology, 10th ed., s.v. Compact
Disk). A CD encodes information in digital form, and this suggests a digital relationship between iva and
akti (besides the usual analogue relationship). Mathematically, if iva is nothing (no-thing), zero, 0, and akti
is something, one, 1, then their computational mutuality in the imaginary functions as a binary code for the
operation of consciousness.
90
According to the Kulacmai Tantra (7.28):
Oh Mother! Let that stream of yours which arises in the heavy rains of pleasurable devotion to you and which is capable of
assuaging the extreme anguish of the mind of the many gods, ever flow in this womb of the world which alas! lacks the
experience of the delightful shower of the joy of the brahman and which is shot through with the mockery of this endless
ocean of delusion.
See The Kulacmai Tantra and The Vmakevara Tantra with the Jayaratha Commentary, introduced,
translated and annotated by Louise M. Finn (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1986), pp. 13839. Likewise,
according to the Lalitsahasranma, the Goddess is [s]he who is the rain of nectar to the forest fire of worldly
existence (name 742, Lalit-Sahasranma, op. cit. [note 43], p. 245). The delusiveness may be regarded as an
unrecognition of Gods presence.
91
Interestingly, microscopic diamonds exist in interstellar space, and it it is conjectured that they are nucleated
in the aftermath of supernovae, being present therefore in the nebular cloud that was the beginning of the Solar
System; consequently, the early Earth may have been bathed in these presolar diamonds (Stephen E. Haggerty,
A Diamond Trilogy: Superplumes, Supercontinents, and Supernovae, Science 285 [6 August 1999]: 85160 at
857858). Even today, so-called nanodiamonds, embedded in ancient carbonaceous meteorites, are falling to
Earth. See A. Kouchi, et al., Novel Routes for Diamond Formation in Interstellar Ices and Meteoritic Parent
Bodies, The Astrophysical Journal 626 (June 20, 2005): L129132; Roy S. Lewis, et al., Interstellar Diamonds
in Meteorites, Nature 326 (12 March 1987): 16062; William C. Saslaw and John E. Gaustad, Interstellar Dust
and Diamonds, Nature 221 (January 11, 1969): 16062. I note by the by that the fall of molten chondrules, i.e.,
millimetre-sized spheroids with well-defined edges, upon the Earth at the dawn of the Solar System has been
called fiery rain showers (Alan P. Boss, Shock Fronts in Hawaii, Nature 432 [23/30 December 2004]: 957
58 at 957). In a similar way, microscopic grains of aluminium dioxide (Al2O3), have been found in meteorites
see L.R. Nittler et al., Stellar Sapphires: The Properties and Origins of Presolar Aluminium Dioxide in
Meteorites, The Astrophysical Journal 483 (1997): 47595. Mystically, rubies and sapphires can be treated as
equivalent, for both are forms of corundum, which is a crystallization of the aluminium oxide alumina, and
which in its pure state is colourless; it is only a chromium impurity that gives it the red color of ruby, and iron
and titanium impurities that give it the blue colour of sapphire (Kurt Nassau, The Physics and Chemistry of
Color: The Fifteen Causes of Color [New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1983], pp. 7981, 14043). (I have
previously noted this in a published paper, Love and Beauty in the Presence of God: Pathways through Beguine
and Tantric Mysticisms, Magistra: A Journal of Womens Spirituality in History 7, no. 2 [Winter 2001]: 2363
at 3233; also available at http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:172747.) The question of how life originated
on Earth has been much debated, and some have conjectured that the actual origin may be extraterrestrial. A
recent study has found that a type of carbonaceous chondrite (a meterotic fragment of primitive asteroids)
released abundant free ammonia (NH3) when treated with water at conditions of high temperature and pressure;
and when these meterorites were deposited in the similar environmental conditions of the early Earth this sort of
chemical activity might have been significant in aiding the molecular evolution towards prebiotic syntheses,
since nitrogen is an important component of amino acids in proteins, DNA, and RNA (Sandra Pizzarello, et. al.,
22
Abundant Ammonia in Primitive Asteroids and the Case for a Possible Exobiology, in Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences 108, no. 11 [March 15, 2011]: 43036).
92
According to the Bible, God showers down snow, white as wool (Ps. 147:16). It is said elsewhere that the
womb of God gave birth to the ice and frost that congeals the surface of the deep (Job 38:2930). (I am
referencing from the Revised English Bible.) The Kabbalah interprets this womb of God as Binah, and the
frozen sea as Shekhinah, who is, one might say, the icy presence of divinity (see Zohar, 1:29b; Vol. 1, p. 174).
Diamonds have a high thermal conductivity and so absorb heat; and because they feel cold when touched to the
lips diamonds are colloquially called ice (Harlow, What is Diamond, op. cit. [note 62], p. 18). In physical
terms, snow is formed by water vapour in the atmosphere that condenses directly into solid ice. Snow crystals
can appear in a myriad of variations, based around a six-fold symmetry and columns or needles. Most simply,
there is the hexagonal prism, but there also occur much more complex arrangements, including irregular and
asymmetrical shapes. See Kenneth Libbrecht and Patricia Rasmussen, The Snowflake: Winters Secret Beauty
(Stillwater, MN: Voyageur Press, 2003). Libbrecht writes that snow crystals are magnificent ice flowers (32),
and that they often display numerous reflecting facets, similar to those on a cut diamond (39).
93
According to the Zohar God fashioned seven heavens and seven earths, where the latter are strata, one upon
another (2:30b; and Matt glosses that the seven heavens may be interpreted as the seven sefirot from esed
through Shekhinah, or seven aspects of Tiferet, while the seven earths apparently refers to the palaces of
Shekhinah, who is known as earth. He goes on to say that [s]trata is a conjectural rendering of
(sufta), perhaps based on ( sifta), lip, edge, border, hem, or ( sifta), box [Vol. 4, pp. 12425, n.
204]). By recognizing the divine Word one is set totally free, and is sealed by eternal love in the world that is
coming (see Zohar 2:114a; vol. 5, pp. 13538; where Eternal Love refers to Shekhinah and the World that is
Coming refers to Binah). Binah is said to be enclosed by the fifty gates of Jubilee, on which were engraved
the holy letters, the compassionate Name of God, and by which heaven and earth were created (Zohar 2:175b;
Vol. 5, pp. 52425, with Matts gloss at nn. 952 and 953).
94
See Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, translation and
foreword by Brian Massumi (London: Continuum, 1987). For a helpful and penetrating analysis of this obscure
work see Rosi Braidotti, Toward a New Nomadism: Feminist Deleuzian Tracks; or, Metaphysics and
Metabolism, in Deleuze and the Theater of Philosophy, ed. Constantin V. Boundas and Dorothea Olkowski
(New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 15986. I should say that my aim here is not to offer a critique of Deleuze
and Guattaris book, which has been subject to much critical appraisal by feminists, but rather that I want to
make use of their prolific imagery.
95
The terms molecular and molar are used in chemistry to designate respectively a stable, electrically neutral
arrangement of two or more atoms and a comparative measurement of the particles in a specific volume of a gas
or liquid.
96
Deleuze and Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, op. cit. (note 94), p. 161. The body is defined by a longitude and
latitude, which is its relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness, and the intensive affects it is
capable of at a given power or degree of potential. It concerns a mode of differentiation very different from
that of a person, subject, thing, or substance: it is a haecceity, a thisness, the singularity of becoming-other
(ibid., 261). Haec is the Latin demonstrative pronoun this. Cf. below, note 141.
97
They write: An abstract machine in itself is not physical or corporeal, any more than it is semiotic; it is
diagrammatic (it knows nothing of the distinction between the artificial and the natural either). It operates by
matter, not by substance; by function, not by form (Thousand Plateaus, op. cit. [note 94], p. 141).
98
Deleuze and Guattari maintain that strata are phenomena of thickening on the Body of the earth,
simultaneously molecular and molar: accumulations, coagulations, sedimentations, foldings; and they
distinguish three major strata: physiochemical, organic, and anthropomorphic (or alloplastic). Futhermore,
these strata are extremely mobile and can exist as substrata to another, subject to rhythmic movement and
intermixings (Thousand Plateaus, op cit. [note 94], p. 502). On this point see Fraser, Visceral Futures, op. cit.
(note 34), p. 168.
99
Deleuze & Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, op. cit. (note 94), p. 348. It is in this context that they refer to a
melodic landscape (p. 349). We might say that to love God and each other is a nomadic desire, which
translates us to another realm, a divine space. This agapaic or charitable love functions as an abstract machine.
Gregory the Great (ca. 540604), in his commentary on the Book of Job, spoke of the force of love in terms of
the machina, or machine: Loves power is the minds machine, drawing it away from the world while it lifts it
on high (quoted by Bernard McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism: Gregory the Great through the 12th Century
[New York: Crossroad, 1994], p. 59). It is also diagrammed as an erotic love. The unknown author of the Kaula
text, Nityoaikrava elaborates the knowledge that divinity is activated by the progress of kualin in the
practice of the kmarja bja (chap. 4; Kulacmai Tantra, op. cit. [note 90], pp. 31876). As verse 34
states: When, oh great lady, (she is) in the form of kmakal in the sphere of the sprouting desire; resplendent
as the rays of the crimson disc of the morning sun (p. 339). This sprout, which resembles a little bell, refers
23
to the clitoris (p. 341 and note 108). In the Buddhist Hevajra Tantra the testicles are referred to as bells (see
Mark S.G. Dyczkowski, A Journey in the World of the Tantras [Varanasi: Indica Books, 2004], p. 184, n. 15).
On a non-sexual note, in the Zohar Rabbi Shimon welcomes the wise words of Rabbi Yose by saying: I know
for sure that supernal Holy Spirit pulsates [mekhashkesha] within you (2:147a; and in his gloss Matt cites
midrashic and talmudic expressions on the effect of the presentation before Samson of the Holy Spirit or
Shekhinah as being like the ringing or tingling of a bell [Vol. 5, p. 336, n. 410]).
100
Deleuze and Guattari refer to the untimely as being another name for haecceity, becoming, the innocence
of becoming (in other words, forgetting as opposed to memory, geography as opposed to history, the map as
opposed to the tracing, the rhizome as opposed to arborescence (Thousand Plateaus, op. cit. [note 94], p. 296).
More conventionally, in Trika, the timeless level of reality is reached by a recognition of the threefold power of
iva. Abhinavagupta writes in his Mlinlokavrttika:
For this reason it is said (iti) that past and future are immersed in the consciousness that is called present. If one brings about
a state of rest in this only, and if the whole circle of rays of conceptualization stand still for one moment without becoming
manifest in this [present consciousness], then one has annihilated ones individual (nija) existence and relishes (carva
labhate) only the vibrant experience [of the nectar] of ones own immortality [i.e. the transcendence of time], [in which]
flows an abundance (sadoha) of ambrosia that is the highest bliss.
See Abhinavaguptas Philosophy of Revelation: An Edition and Annotated Translation of Mlinlokavrttika

I, 1399, Jrgen Hanneder (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1998), lokas 14244, p. 83; and Hanneders
commentary at p. 188.
101
Thousand Plateaus, op. cit. (note 94), p. 411. Exponents of so-called linguistic mysticisms, such as those
found in Kabbalah and Tantra, are in effect acting as metallurgists, since they work the letters and words of
languagethe matter-flowto forge the presence of Godthe metal of divine consciousness. This is just to
say that Shekhinahakti is metallic, and indeed, that she is a cobalt light. Chemically, cobalt is a so-called
transition metal, which occurs naturally in several mineral ores. It was the colouring agent in the medieval
pigment smalt, a kind of blue glass. In the nineteenth century the French chemist Louis-Jacques Thnard
synthesized a blue solid by mixing cobalt salts with alumina, which had a purer tint than azurite, Prussian
blue, or indigo and was taken up immediately as a pigment (Philip Ball, Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of
Color [New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001], p. 159). See also below, note 117.
102
Abhinavagupta advises the yog: I am not, neither does another exist; I am only energies. He should, in
every circumstance, as a result simply of recollection, maintain that attitude of mind (Tantrloka 29.64; in
Dupuche, Abhinavagupta, op. cit. [note 7], p. 221).
103
It is said that as iva revolves the cosmic wheel of akti the Universe is brought into being, and in the same
way, as the yog revolves the sensory wheels, reality is brought into appearance. Abhinavagupta writes: In this
way, setting in motion, thanks to the discipline of his play, the machine that is the Wheel of energies, the god [,
now the yogin, says] It is I, whose form has been purified, who am situated in the role of the hero [setting in
motion] the great Wheel of energies (Paramrthasra, v. 47; in Introduction to Tantric Philosophy, op. cit.
[note 12], p. 210). Abhinavagupta takes from the idea of the water-wheel (araghaa) and this easily leads to the
image of the macrocosmic and microsmic wheels as being driven by hydroelectric power.
104
Spinoza aptly referred to the mind as the idea of the body (Gatens, Imaginary Bodies, op. cit [note 10], p.
130), while for the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (190861) the mind is the other side of the
body (The Visible and the Invisible: Followed by Working Notes, ed. Claude Lefort; trans. Alphonso Lingis
[Evanston, IL.: Northwestern University Press, 1968], p. 259cited by Cathryn Vasselau, Textures of Light:
Vision and Touch in Irigaray, Levinas and Merleau-Ponty [London: Routledge, 1998], p. 27).
105
Paul E. Muller-Ortega writes: The perpetual effervescence, ebullition, and incandescence at the center of
ivas being provides the motor, as it were, that drives the entire process of manifestation (The Triadic Heart of
iva: Kaula Tantricism of Abhinavagupta in the Non-Dual Shaivism of Kashmir [Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1989], p. 83).
106
The idea of God as magnetically positioned is employed by the Beguine mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg (ca.
1208ca. 1282) when she writes of being attracted to God: Our Lord said: If that should happen, I shall draw
you into my breath, so that you will follow me like you would a magnet (see Mechthild of Magdeburg, The
Flowing Light of the Godhead, trans. Frank Tobin [New York: Paulist Press, 1998], p. 214). I have previously
adverted to this idea in my masters thesis, The Dynamic of Sexuality in the Mystic Way: A Comparative
Investigation into the Divine Imagery in the Texts The Flowing Light of the Godhead and Saundaryalahar
[University
of
South
Australia,
2000],
p.
78).
The
full
text
is
available
at
http://independent.academia.edu/PaulMartin/Papers.
107
Brian Massumi employs the felicitous term beselved body in A Users Guide to Capitalism and
Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), p. 74. Following
ancient ideas on the consecrating power of oils and its role in anointing kings and priests, the Christian tradition
considers Christ as the anointed one of God (Heb. 1:9). The perfume of baptismal oil marks the divine presence,
24
the Holy Spirit (Ashbrook Harvey, Scenting Salvation, op. cit. [note 82], pp. 68, 7273, 74). The salvific power
of oil is apparent in mystical imagery. For the righteous soul of the kabbalist who has passed away and abides in
the supernal Garden of Shekhinah, he is able to gaze higher towards Binah, and so to revel in the sublime joy
called Delightfulness of YHVH, there to be filled by all the desirable rivers of pure balsam (Zohar 2:127a;
Vol. 5, p. 192, with Matts gloss at note 20). Matt explains that [t]he phrase ( noam YHVH),
delightfulness (or beauty, loveliness, pleasantness, kindness) of YHVH, appears in Ps. 27:4. In the Zohar,
noam designates Binah. In addition, [a]ccording to rabbinic sources, thirteen rivers of balsam await the
righteous in the world that is coming [ibid., 193, n. 20]). (Recall that symbolically Binah is the World that is
Coming.) See also Hellner-Eshed, River Flows from Eden, op. cit. (note 20), pp. 27990. Psalms 27:4 is: One
thing I ask of the LORD, / only that do I seek: / to live in the house of the LORD / all the days of my life, / to gaze
upon the beauty of the LORD, / to frequent His temple (TANAKH translation; p. 1311).
108
I borrow this phrase from Deleuze and Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, op. cit. (note 94), p. 157.
109
Again, I take this phrase from Deleuze and Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, op. cit. (note 94), p. 411. For them,
metal is a vital element, and coextensive to the whole of matter; moreover, [m]etal is neither a thing nor an
organism, but a body without organs (ibid.). It is composed of organic energy, the force of a sensible
movement; and movement is tantamount to life. According to the iva Stras (1.11): The one who enjoys in
the oneness of awareness all of the three stateswaking, dreaming, and deep sleepbecomes the master of all
organic energies (in iva Stras: The Supreme Awakening; with the commentary of Kshemaraja, revealed by
Swami Lakshmanjoo; ed. John Hughes [New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 2007], p. 42). Kemarja
comments that such a yog is a hero (vra) and is dedicated to digesting the sense of difference in the universe
(ibid., 43; cf. below, note 144). Lakshmanjoo notes the distinction between organic organs (indriya vittis) and
organic energies (indriya aktis): Organic organs are organs found everywhere in every individual being.
Organic energy, on the other hand, is found only in yogs because yogs are always aware. They are aware when
they see, when they touch, when they smell, when they hear, when they taste, when they produce sounds, and
when they talk (ibid., 42, n. 32).
110
Abhinavagupta writes in his Partrikavivaraa (as translated interpretatively by Singh) that the vibrational
surge of kualin-akti is characterized by the electro-magnetism of akti-spara (Trident of Wisdom, op.
cit. [note 14], p. 263).
111
I have adapted this phrasing from a song lyric by The Church, in The Dead Mans Dream, on the album
Sometime Anywhere (New York: Arista Records, 1994). The allusion to the lightning flash of divine
consciousness is attested in Tantra, as well as in Jewish and Christian mysticisms. For example, in Tantra see
Lilian Silburn, Kualin: The Energy of the Depths, trans. Jacques Gontier; ed. Harvey P. Alper (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1988), pp. 17, 47 n. 11, 68, 97 (see also 172, where she cites Abhinavagupta: To
live in the undifferentiated [which is the pure consciousness of iva] even while the differentiated is unfolding
[which is the manifoldness of akti], such is the sudden clap of thunder, the roaring of a yogin [my
interpolations]; in other words, the yogin, or male practitioner, can experience bliss consciousness all the while
engaging with the world). In Kabbalah, commentators have referred to the action of the sefirot, that is, the ten
powers or attributive forces of God manifest in the human soul, as being like lightning (see Elliot R. Wolfson,
Through a Speculum that Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism [Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1994], pp. 140, 143, 27172, 289, 290). In Christianity, the Philadelphian prophetess
Jane Leade (16241704) wrote of receiving the paradisiacal laws of Wisdom as in a flaming shower (Arthur
Versluis, Wisdoms Book: The Sophia Anthology [St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2000], p. 145).
112
The yantra is a geometrical form understood as a dwelling or receptacle of the chosen deity (ita-devata).
See Madhu Khanna, Yantra: The Tantric Symbol of Cosmic Unity (London: Thames and Hudson, 1981). She
notes that the word yantra derives from the root yam, meaning to sustain, hold or support the energy inherent
in a particular element, object or concept; this being so, it can refer to any instrument or machine used in
architecture, astronomy, alchemy, chemistry, warfare or recreation (ibid., pp. 1112). I have previously noted
this in my masters thesis, op. cit. (note 106), p. 76.
113
So the world will appear as faceted, in a productive artistic vision. As the art historian Heinrich Wlfflin
observes, the visible world is crystallised for the eye in certain forms. In each new crystal form, however, a new
facet of the content of the world will come to light (Principles of Art History: The Problem of the Development
of Style in Later Art, trans. M.D. Hottinger [New York: Dover, 1950], p. 231). By definition, a crystal has longrange periodic order in the arrangement of its atoms or molecules. Ionic crystals (e.g., as in salt crystals
sodium chloride, NaCl) are compounds of negatively and positively charged atoms bonded by an attractive
force. Molecular crystals are compounds of molecules, either non-polar such as dry ice (solid carbon dioxide,
CO2), or polar such as ordinary ice (solid water, H2O). See Ernest R. Toon and George L. Ellis, Foundations of
Chemistry, 2nd ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973), pp. 3007. Glass is a molten material that
upon cooling does not crystallize, but rather remains in an amorphous state, and so it is without a periodic
atomic structure; it is, in effect, a frozen liquid (see J.E. Shelby, Introduction to Glass Science and Technology,
25
2nd ed. [Cambridge, UK: The Royal Society of Chemistry, 2005], pp. 36). I have elsewhere explored the idea
of a prismatic recognition of God in a working paper, On Discerning the Realm of God in the Thought of
Kabbalah and Tantra (available at http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:218277).
114
Moira Gatens uses this phase in the context of explaining Spinozas inter-relational view of the body
(Feminism as Password: Rethinking the Possible with Spinoza and Deleuze, Hypatia 15, no. 2 [Spring
2000]: 5975 at 61).
115
See here especially Ecclesiasticus or The Wisdom of Jesus Son of Sirach 24: 2334 (Revised English Bible).
116
For Merleau-Ponty the body is inside and outside, and is doubled up through its sensible perceptions. As he
suggests, the world is inserted between the two leaves of my body, which itself is inserted between the [two]
leaves of each thing and of the world (Visible and the Invisible, op. cit. [note 104], p. 264). At this point, it
would be useful to acknowledge the distinction between self and subject, as formulated by Tamsin Lorraine:
I use the term subject to refer to a grammatical position the I can take up with respect to conventional
meaning and self to refer to the reference point or image by which a human being can orient the developing
narrative of her life (Irigaray and Deleuze: Experiments in Visceral Philosophy [Ithaca and London: Cornell
University Press, 1999], pp. 56).
117
Both akti and Shekhinah are rendered, or renderable, as blue. For example, the goddess Kubjik (who is a
crooked or hump-backed form of aktiin other words, kualin-akti) is said to be like a blue flower
(Dyczkowski, Journey in the World, op. cit. [note 99], p. 181, n. 13, and p. 243, n. 82), while Shekhinah (Divine
Presence) is represented by the blue tassel of the ritual fringes of the prayer shawl, which serves as a reminder of
the throne of God, and which itself is envisioned as a blue sapphire (Scholem, Colors and their Symbolism, op.
cit. [note 69], pp. 910). It is worth noting that the colour blue only achieved prominence in European cultural
thought from the twelfth century, and it was at this stage that the Virgin Mary began to be routinely depicted in
blue tones (see Michel Pastoureau, Blue: The History of a Color, trans. Markus I. Cruse [Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2001], pp. 5055, 80, 123). Scholars have noted that the extolling of Shekhinah in
the early Kabbalah is historically linked to the popular Marian devotion of the twelfth century (Arthur Green,
Shekhinah, the Virgin Mary, and the Song of Songs: Reflections on a Kabbalistic Symbol in Its Historical
Context, AJS Review 26, no. 1 [2002]: 152).
118
I borrow this phrase from Deleuze and Guattari, Thousand Plateaus, op. cit. (note 94), p. 293.
119
It is said that Wisdom is fashioned, or literally woven by God (Prov. 8:23) (on this image see Peter
Schfer, Mirror of His Beauty: Feminine Images of God from the Bible to the Early Kabbalah [Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2002], p. 25). When the infinite God is named, and becomes cognizable, it is as if
God dons a garment, which is called Shekhinah, and which is equivalent to the Torah (Gershom Scholem, On
the Kabbalah and its Symbolism, trans. Ralph Manheim [New York: Schocken Books, 1996], pp. 6667). By
engaging with the Torah at night God is emanating a thread of grace upon the kabbalist. Hellner-Eshed writes
in this respect:
In the Zohar, this thread of grace is transformed into a luminescent quality and is the sign or imprint of the upper worlds that
remains with the soul upon its return from the nocturnal delight. The thread of grace is the residual radiance of the joyous
harmony between the King and Matronita [i.e., Shekhinah] in which the Companions participated, and it stays with them
throughout the entire day and even protects them from the forces of judgment. During the day, the thread of grace of the
nocturnal delight becomes an agent of blessing for the mystic and indeed for all reality. (River Flows from Eden, op. cit.
[note 20], p. 141; cf. above quote in note 56)
120
The word tantra actually means extension or warp on a loom (Sanjukta Gupta, Dirk Jan Hoens, and
Teun Goudriaan, Hindu Tantrism, Handbuch der Orientalistik, 2.4.2 [Leiden: Brill, 1979], p. 5).
121
On the regnant position of the body in tantric thought see Gavin Flood, The Tantric Body: The Secret
Tradition of Hindu Religion (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006). On the kta Pithas see Dyczkowski, Journey in the
World, op. cit. (note 99), pp. 93174. It involves an interiorization of the yogs own sacred geography, an
exchange of inner and outer geographies.
122
Indeed, as Muller-Ortega points out: Tantric practitioners strive to reconcile the ascent to moka or
liberation with the experience of joyful enjoyment of the world, bhoga (Triadic Heart of iva, op. cit. [note
105], p. 50; cf. p. 60). The body in fact is the house of God, a veritable temple of worship, in which the windows
of the senses allow the spactacular light of the Self to shine out onto the external world (see Paramrthasra, v.
74 and comm.; in Introduction to Tantric Philosophy, op. cit. [note 12], pp. 25255). Cf. above, note 74.
123
According to scripture, the senses of the accomplished yog stand witness to his aesthetic rapture, as his free
and unobscured consciousness dances on the stage of life. This makes the senses spectators to a cosmic drama
contemplatively played out by the Self. See iva Stras 3.11, and comm., in Aphorisms of iva, op. cit. (note
54), pp. 11517; cf. iva Stras, op. cit. (note 60), pp. 15657. To put it another way, the ordinary senses are
transfigured by awakening with akti, who enlivens the world with her bliss-filled energies (see above, notes
58 and 81 and text). Against the conventional idea that one masters the senses, it would be better to say that
one coordinates the senses for divine purposes.

26
124
In the aiva Tantras there is a certain ambivalence about the material level of reality, for while it is accepted
that the body has instrumental value for realizing iva-consciousness, there is also a tendency to devalue it as
merely a confinement device for the spiritual self. While there is an attempt to acknowledge the somatic nature
of liberation (jvanmukti) there is at the same time an attempt to surpass the effects of embodiment. As
Abhinavagupta writes in his Paramrthasra (vv. 87 and 88):
A gem, made flawless by the most skilled artisan, though appearing flawed by its contingent association with the jewel-box,
is revealed as limpid by nature, as soon as this contingency is removed. (Introduction to Tantric Philosophy, op. cit. [note
12], p. 282)
Likewise, consciousness, whose [true] conditionthanks to the instruction of a true teacheris flawless, freed as it is from
its contingent association with a body, is freed as well from all other contingencies, and appears as iva. (ibid.)
Be that as it may, and taking a sympathetic kta tantric standpoint, if jvanmukti indicates a recognition of
ones identity with akti, then it necessarily includes and valorizes the body, as an ionic crystallization of the
soul, because God, as the functional akti, is in continuous relation with the world. In sum though, a human
being is a molecular crystallization of divinity, and indeed is an aromatic compound of God, soul and body. By
the term aromatic I have in mind its use in organic chemistry, where aromatic compounds are molecular
structures with delocalized electrons and conjugated bonds, showing a characteristic ring structure. They appear
in four of the twenty amino acids (histidine, phenylalanine, tryptophan, and tyrosine) that are the vital building
blocks of proteins (Jonathan Crowe and Tony Bradshaw, Chemistry for the Biosciences: The Essential
Concepts, 2nd ed. [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010], pp. 6669, 18590).
125
See White, Alchemical Body, op. cit. (note 40), pp. 70, 72, 202, 271, 303; cf. 102. The image of the diamond
as signifying the adamantine nature of enlightened realization is utilized in the Buddhist Prajpramit stras,
or Perfection of the Wisdom Way. In the Tibetan Vajrayna tradition, the way of the bodhisattva is brought to
full measure in the form of the ontologized vajrasattva, who embodies perfect knowledge and wisdom. The male
practitioner seeks to reflect this nature in his being, and this is then reduced to sexual symbolism. For example,
the goddess Vajrayogin speaks of the male practitioner placing his diamond sceptre in her lotus, that is, vulva
(see Miranda Shaw, Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism [Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1994], pp. 15758). This phallic view of diamond is based on its being a hard substance.
However, it need not be used in this narrow and parochial sense; and I should rather understand it as referring to
the whole body as a symbolic crystallization of the carbon essence that is the human soul (jvtman). Cf. above,
note 77.
126
The kabbalist recognizes the realm of the Godhead as a great melody, a rhythmic unity of blissful union
(Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism [New York: Schocken Books, 1995], pp. 2301).
Reading the Zohar fosters a percussive awareness. On that score, Hellner-Eshed remarks that the Zohar is
characterized by a poetic and musical imagination, as well as by an intricate symbolic network and a unique
religious spirit (River Flows from Eden, op. cit. [note 20], p. 18). Moreover, as a work of midrashic exegesis it
demonstrates an improvisatory genius, like jazz musicians (ibid., 2023).
127
akti proclaims: As the brilliance of a diamond shines forth in all directions, so does my pure course (of
creative activity) diffuse its rays in every direction (Lakm Tantra 4.6, op. cit. [note 79]; p. 19).
128
See Brooks, Auspicious Wisdom, op. cit. (note 8), pp. 11546.
129
Abhinavaguptas interpretation of the Kaula tradition has generally been explicated in cognitive terms by
scholars, but Kerry Martin Skora has refreshingly argued that it is an embodied phenomenology of divine
consciousness. Indeed, the nature of tantric ritual and transformational understanding involves a lived
experience of bodily and tactile awareness. See his paper, The Pulsating Heart and Its Divine Energies: Body
and Touch in Abhinavaguptas Trika aivism, Numen 54 (2007): 42058.
130
See name 56 of Lalitsahasranma (in Lalit-Sahasranma, op. cit. [note 43], p. 86). Lalit is the imperial
power of divinity who sits on the jewelled throne and rules with her husband Kmevara (see Chapter 14 of
The Brahma Pura, Pt IV, translated and annotated by Ganesh Vasudeo Tagare; Vol. 25 of Ancient
Indian Tradition & Mythology, translated by a Board of Scholars and edited by J.L. Shastri [Delhi: Motilal
Banarsidass, 1984], pp. 108891).
131
See Zohar 1:231a, and Matts gloss at Vol. 3, p. 395, n. 465; also see 2:51, and Matts gloss at Vol. 4, p. 253,
n. 201.
132
Zohar 1:20b21a; Vol. 1, pp. 15859. In an earlier age John portrayed Christ as sovereign of the New
Jerusalem, the crystalline City of God, which is lit by the shining lamp of his presence (Rev. 21:923).
133
The words sphuratt and sphuraa derive from the root sphur-, meaning to tremble, throb, quiver, palpitate,
twitch, to flash, glitter, gleam, glisten, twinkle, sparkle, to shine, be brilliant or distinguished, or to break
forth, burst out plainly or visibly, start into view, be evident or manifest, become displayed or expanded
(Monier Monier-Williams, Sanskrit-English Dictionary, new edition [1899; repr., Oxford: Clarendon Press,

27
1956], p. 1270). See Furlinger, Touch of akti, op. cit. (note 5), pp. 1046, and Dyczkowski, Stanzas on
Vibration, op. cit. (note 86), p. 15.
134
The prayerful meditation of the spiritual adept involves the alternating energy of breath, pra-akti, as the
mantra of the deity is whispered with the rotation of a rosary, and by the rising turn of a garland of beads in a
state of divine awareness. Abhinavagupta writes: When he rotates in his inner awareness the entire sequence of
universes, the [thirty-six] principles arranged sequentially, as well as the group of sense-organs, then this is
termed his silent recitation (Paramrthasra, v. 78; Introduction to Tantric Philosophy, op. cit. [note 12], p.
261, with comm. at 261, 26264; see also the translation by SenSharma, in Paramrthasra, op. cit. [note 43],
pp. 16062). In zoharic symbolism Shekhinah is ( qol), voice, the inaudiblewhisperedsound of prayer,
which is heard by the blessed Holy One, i.e., Tiferet, and which becomes the audible voice ( qol) of divinity
(see Zohar 1:209b210a, Vol. 3, p. 28788; the letter ( vav) indicates the full spelling). In this exegetical
homily, Rabbi Elazar alternatively suggests that the silent voice is the sublime voice, from which all voices
issue (1:210a, ibid., p. 289; and Matt glosses that the rabbi is refer[ring] not to Shekhinah but to a higher,
secret realm: Binah, the silent source of all voices, namely of all seven lower sefirot [ibid., n. 168]). This may
usefully be compared with Paravc, the Goddess as Supreme Word.
135
See Padoux, Vc, op. cit. (note 6), pp. 86222.
136
According to the Vijnabhairava (v. 38): One who is deeply versed and deeply bathed or steeped in Nda
which is Brahman in the form of sound (abdabrahmai nita), which is vibrating inside without any
impact (anhate), which can be heard only by the ear that becomes competent by yoga (ptrakare), which
goes on sounding uninterruptedly (abhagnaabde) and which is rushing headlong like a river (sariddrute)
attains to Brahman (brahmdhigacchati) (Vijnabhairava or Divine Consciousness: A Treasury of 112 Types
of Yoga. Sanskrit text with English translation, expository notes, introduction and glossary of technical terms,
Jaideva Singh [1979; repr., Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2006], p. 36).
137
Deleuze and Guattari otherwise use the term becoming-imperceptible to refer to the way in which
movement, or becomings, as pure relations of speed and slowness, pure affects, are below and above the
threshold of perception (Thousand Plateaus, op. cit. [note 94], p. 281).
138
In his homily on Israels redemption as requiring teshuvah, or returning, turning back to God, Rabbi
Shimon refers to the six paths of prophecy that are conveyed to prophets: in vision, in appearance, in sight, in
revelation, in word, in utterance. The first five of these modes resemble looking from behind a wall at a radiant
light, or seeing the light of the sun through glass, but the last arrives through great effort, troubling him,
unrevealable (Zohar 2:130b, Vol. 5, p. 218; and Matt glosses: The first five terms for prophecy describe a
revelation that is partially hidden (like looking from behind a wall) or filtered (like seeing through [thick or
colored] glass), but massa, a burdensome utterance, implies great effort on the part of the prophet and a
message that remains, in some sense, unrevealable [ibid., 21819, n. 83]).
139
In the Maitri Upaniad 6.22 it is said that abdabrahman is the supreme, and is identified with om
(Padoux, Vc, op. cit. [note 6], p. 123, n. 103). The grammarianphilosopher Bharthari (ca. 450510)
expounded on the central role of language in realizing the essence of reality; indeed, knowledge of grammar is
the means to attain Brahman, which is revealed as the divine word, abdabrahman (K.A. Subramania Iyer,
Bharthari on Vykaraa as a Means of Attaining Moka, Adyar Library Bulletin 28 [1964]: 11231). In
Kashmirian nondualistic aivism this concept was not as fundamental, and abdabrahman was related instead
to the level of Sadiva, the first inkling of cosmic differentiation.
140
Mantras are syllabic formulas meant to reify divinity (see Harvey P. Alper, The Cosmos as ivas
Language-Game: Mantra According to Kemarjas ivastravimarin, in Understanding Mantras, ed.
Harvey P. Alper [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989], pp. 24994; and Andr Padoux,
MantrasWhat Are They?, in ibid., pp. 295318). On the application of the practice of mantra to Christian
prayer see John Dupuche, Jesus, the Mantra of God: An Exploration of Mantra Meditation (Ringwood, Vic.:
David Lovell Publishing, 2005). He opines that each word of the gospels is a mantra (ibid., 28).
141
For Deleuze, the ontology of body is not confined to human corporeality, and is defined not according to
what it is (which suggests that it is something for all time), but on the basis of what it can do, of what affects it
is capable (Fraser, Visceral Futures, op. cit. [note 34], p. 105; and she cites Deleuze: A body can, therefore,
be an animal, a body of sounds, a mind or an idea; ibid.). Cf. above, note 109.
142
The establishment of identity and hence agency would seem to be dependent on a centre. For poststructuralist
thought the subject is understood as a discursive effect (McNay, Agency, Anticipation and Indeterminancy in
Feminist Theory, Feminist Theory 4, no. 2 [2003], pp. 13948 at 139; see above, note 116). According to the
Doctrine of Recognition (Pratyabhij), the limited knower, i.e., the existent human being, is in fact the same as
the unlimited knower, i.e. Mahevara (Great Lord), but this knowledge is usually veiled. It would seem that
realization of identity with this God involves centring on the self, and yet, in this recognitive process, where
there is a movement out of the limits of self to the all-knowing self, what is required is actually a decentring of

28
the self (see Bruno M.J. Nagel, Unity and Contradiction: Some Arguments in Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta
for the Evidence of the Self as iva, Philosophy East and West 45, no. 4 [1995]: 50125 at 51718).
143
It is a venerable tradition that divine consciousness is associated with bread, as the stuff of life. Jesus
significantly employed the analogy of bread and divinity when he compared the kingdom of God to a woman
mixing yeast with flour until it was leavened (Luke 13:2021). He reportedly took himself to be the bread of life
(John 6:35). In classical rabbinic literature bread or wheat is a symbol for the Torah, while in thirteenth-century
kabbalistic sources it is identified with Shekhinah (Elliot R. Wolfson, Beautiful Maiden without Eyes: Pesha
and Sod in Zoharic Hermeneutics, in Luminal Darkness: Imaginal Gleanings from Zoharic Literature [Oxford:
Oneworld, 2007], pp. 56110 at 75, and 105, nn. 108, 109).
144
If, according to Rabbi Eleazar of Worms (ca. 1165ca. 1230), the Torah is tantamount to the face of the
Shekhinah, then the one who conscientiously studies by the light of wisdom is being consumed by, absorbed
into, the glory of God (see Moshe Idel, Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation [New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2002], pp. 17677). For Christians, needless to say, to participate in the sacrament of the
Eucharist is to be assimilated into the beauty of God (see Ann W. Astell, Eating Beauty: The Eucharist and the
Spiritual Arts of the Middle Ages [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006]). According to the aiva
scriptures the body as it is bound by karma should be burnt up [i]n the blazing fire of consciousness, and
transmogrified into a divine body, a Body of Consciousness (jnakya), which is fed by the knowledge of
the perfect plenitude (pariprat) of [supreme] consciousness (see ivastras 2.8 and 2.9, with
commentaries; in Aphorisms of iva, op. cit. [note 54], pp. 8688).
145
Merleau-Ponty suggests the power of a fleshly illumination, a sensible light, as a counterpoint to the usual
philosophical privileging of an intellectual light (see Vasselau, Textures of Light, op. cit. [note 104], pp. 2672).
146
See his Excesses: Eros and Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983), pp. 1946. The
Mbius Strip or Band is named after August Ferdinand Mbius, a nineteenth century German mathematician
and astronomer, who was a pioneer in the field of topology. Lawrence appeals to the image of the Mbius Strip
in essaying the monistic aiva understanding of the recursive nature of divine/human comprehension
(Teachings of the Odd-Eyed One, op. cit. [note 42], p. 36).
147
Kerry Martin Skora nicely explores the intertwining of consciousness and sexuality in his paper
Abhinavaguptas Erotic Mysticism: The Reconciliation of Spirit and Flesh, International Journal of Hindu
Studies 11, no. 1 (2007): 6388.
148
See Elizabeth E. Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Towards A Corporeal Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1994), pp. 16083. Grosz provides a distinctly readable account of the various psychoanalytic,
phenomenological and poststructuralist ideas on the body and self, from a feminist perspective.
149
Rudolf Otto refers to the notion of spiritual principles as being inscribed upon the heart by the pencil of the
Holy Spirit (The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its
Relation to the Rational, 2nd ed., trans. John W. Harvey [London: Oxford University Press, 1958], p. 175). This
is not unlike the way in which the completely righteous are said to be inscribed in Binah, who is known as the
supernal book, from whom emerges writing. Her words constitute the linguistic stream of emanation
manifesting in all of divine and mundane reality (see Zohar 1:37ab, and Matts gloss in Vol. 1, p. 236, n.
1031). Shekhinah is also described as a book, in whom all things and events (both past and future) are
inscribed. From Her, all divine powers issue (Matt, Zohar, Vol. 4, p. 292, n. 333).
150
According to the Kubjik Tantras, the Goddess is the supreme authority, and it is by her Command (jn)
that all beings are able to exert authority in their jurisdiction (Dyczkowski, Journey in the World, op. cit. [note
99], p. 252, n. 102). In a Deleuzian analogy, if Christ is the divine Word that declaims through the world, which
is the body of God, then sacred awareness as an intensive flow of realization is a transcendental sensibility. As
such, a woman is capable of managing Christ, simply by virtue of her embodied place on Earth. According to
Lorraine, this term of Deleuzes, viz., transcendental sensibility, has some affinity with Irigarays term
sensible transcendental (Irigaray and Deleuze, op. cit. [note 116], p. 132; and see further below).
151
See her analysis on Platos Hystera, in her groundbreaking work Speculum of the Other Woman, trans.
Gillian C. Gill (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 243364.
152
I have elsewhere considered at some length the role of speculative seeing in relation to the place of
Shekhinah and akti in divine thought (The Place of Speculation in Kabbalah and Tantra, working paper
available at http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:218279).
153
Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter with Carolyn Burke (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1985), pp. 68105; idem, Je, Tu, Nous: Toward a Culture of Difference, trans. Alison Martin
(New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 1920, 2936, 6774. On the differing ways in which women and men
deploy language, the former in a relational way, and the latter in an objective way, see Irigarays work I Love to
You: Sketch of a Possible Felicity in History, trans. Alison Martin (New York: Routledge, 1996). For a recent
treatment of the contentious issue of sexism see Sara Mills, Language and Sexism (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008). That there is a defining masculine bias in the English language is typified by the
29
provenance of the masculine and feminine nominative pronouns he and she. These derive from the base hi-,
which gives the Old English masculine he and feminine ho, ho, he (hence already the masculine takes the
basic, simple form, while the feminine is an extension). Since in some dialects in Middle English he became
indistinguishable in pronunciation from ho it has been posited that a differentiation was sought. One theory is
that she developed through arather complicated and arguably implausible (according to Roger Lass)
morphological and phonological transformation process from ho. Alternatively, she may be an altered form,
through syllabicity shift and palatalization, of the Old English nominative feminine deictic (demonstrative)
pronoun so, so, which otherwise, along with its masculine counterpart se, was at some time abandoned in
favour of the neuter singular form, surviving as the modern ungendered pronoun that, and its weakened form
as definite article, the. See The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., he, and she; also Roger Lass,
Phonology and Morphology, in The Cambridge History of the English Language, Vol. II, 10661476, ed.
Norman Blake (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 11214, 116119; T.L. Markey, West
Germanic He/Er Hiu/Siu and English She, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 71 (1972): 390
405; and Julia P. Stanley and Susan W. Robbins, Going Through the Changes: The Pronoun She in Middle
English, Papers in Linguistics 11 (1978): 7188. According to Lass, [t]he origin of she is one of the great
unsolved puzzles of the history of English (ibid., p. 118). It is noteworthy that if the word she did develop out
of the demonstrative pronoun so it would suggest that it was an objectifying and silencing action, one in which
he was pointing at and naming her.
154
Irigarays chapter, Une Mre de Glace, in Speculum of the Other Woman, pp. 16879, is composed of
extracts from the Enneads of the philosopher Plotinus (20470 CE) which derogate Matter as unreal in
comparison with the Ideal-Form. She ruminates on the theme of the sea as the great deep of the feminine
imaginary in her book Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. Gillian C. Gill (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1991), esp. pp. 373. In tantric terms, mans world is consumed by the submarine fire of
divine consciousness, the ascent of kualin. The tenth-century commentator Bhagavadutpala quotes,
unattributively, the following passage: The Submarine Fire (vava) of consciousness, burning brightly,
speedily consumes the oceans of objectivity by its own power. Whoever possesses this Submarine Fire
neither thirsts for the waters (of objectivity) if he does not get them, nor thirsts for them again if he does.
(Indeed he has) achieved (his) goal (in Stanzas on Vibration, op. cit. [note 86], p. 172; Dyczkowski explains
that it was believed that a fire burn[s] at the bottom of the sea which slowly consumes it thus generating the
clouds from which comes rain, in ibid., p. 378, n. 196). According to the ca. twelth-century text ashasra
Sahit the submarine fire is identified with the mldhra cakra, which its commentator locates in the upper
part of the yoni (White, Alchemical Body, op. cit. [note 40], p. 234). (The yoni corresponds to the vulva.) This
is the root of kualin-akti.
155
In describing the marriage of Lalit and Kmevara, the Lalit Mhtmya states that the clouds made
showers of flowers (see Brahma Pura, op. cit. [note 130], 15.13, p. 1093; cf. 39.5860, in ibid., Part V,
p. 1305). The Zohar describes Shekhinah as the supernal rose on which God wishes to fashion Israel (2:189b).
Matt notes that in the biblical text referred to hereLike a rose among thorns, so is my beloved among the
maidens (Song of Songs 2:2)the word ( shoshanah) probably means lily or lotus, but here it
connotes rose (Vol. 6, p. 66, n. 33).
156
The sign of Gods covenant to Noah at the end of the Flood is the rainbow (qeshet) that appears in the clouds
(Gen. 9:1217). The Zohar interprets this colourful display as the appearance of the sefirotic spectrum in the
cloud of glory that is Shekhinah (see Zohar 1:71b, and Matts gloss at Vol. 1, p. 421, n. 608).
157
See respectively, Speculum of the Other Woman, op. cit. (note 151), pp. 191202, and Sexes and
Genealogies, trans. Gillian C. Gill (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 5572. On the issue of
Irigaray and the divine see Victoria Barker, God, Woman, Other, Feminist Theology 18, no. 3 (2010): 30931;
Penelope Deutscher, The Only Diabolical thing about Women: Luce Irigaray on Divinity, Hypatia 9, no.
4 (1994): 88111; Elizabeth Grosz, Irigaray and the Divine, in Transfigurations: Theology and the French
Feminists, ed. C.W. Maggie Kim, Susan M. St. Ville and Susan M. Simonatis (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
1993), pp. 199214; Amy Hollywood, Sensible Ecstasy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference, and the Demands of
History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 187235; Gillian Howie and Jannine Jobling,
Women and the Divine: Touching Transcendence (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Morny Joy, Divine
Love: Luce Irigaray, Women, Gender and Religion (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006); Alison
Martin, Luce Irigaray and the Question of the Divine (Leeds, UK: Maney Publishing for the Modern
Humanities Research Association, 2000); and Ann-Marie Priest, Woman as God, God as Woman: Mysticism,
Negative Theology, and Luce Irigaray, Journal of Religion 83, no. 1 (2003): 123.
158
Alison Martin points out that Irigaray deliberately chooses not to use the term Goddess to indicate a female
divine because in the Western tradition it is usually used in the plural, and so fails to exemplify an absolute and
universal ground for sexual difference (Luce Irigaray, op. cit. [note 157], pp. 4344). On the basis of the
classical argument that God is ultimately beyond human comprehension, gendered pronouns are an artifact. It is
30
clear enough that the gender of God has often been patriarchally developed; and using the marked, because
suffixed, term Goddess, allows malestream theology to dissemble on the issue of its tendency covertly and
overtly to assign a particular and male gender to God. I note the astute observation by Gail Ramshaw: One
wonders whether the ordination of women in this [twentieth] century is responsible for or merely reflects the
change from conceiving of the clergy as, like God, authorities, to, like God, caregivers. It may be that as God
becomes devalued in an androcentric culture, there is less resistance to ascribing to God supposed feminine
activity, since the activity of God is not deemed significant anyway (God Beyond Gender: Feminist Christian
God-Language [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995], p. 126; my interpolation).
159
Irigaray argues that human perception need not be one-sidedly specular, for if we are made of fluid matter
then we may encounter each other as living mirrors (see Speculum of the Other Woman, op. cit. [note 151], pp.
19697). (It will be recalled that glass is a so-called frozen liquid.) In commenting, Lorraine observes that this
invokes [a] participatory creation, where two transmuting subjects mutually engender each other in living
contact with a world in which they are immersed (Irigaray and Deleuze, op. cit. [note 116], p. 75). Another
way to consider this is to think of aiming to be living gems, which suggests that instead of being in a state of
glassiness we shall be in a state of crystallinity.
160
Sexes and Genealogies, op. cit. (note 157), p. 62. The noted scholar of Kabbalah, Elliot R. Wolfson,
asseverates that [t]he engendering of God in terms of current needs and cultural assumptions regarding the
status of women and men is an ethical task of the highest priority (Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic
Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination [New York: Fordham University Press, 2005], p. 86).
161
In the Zohar the Shekhinah is depicted as a bird who nestles with her brethren, the six lower sefirot, beneath
the wings of her mother, Binah, and she is attracted to the people of Israel by the subdued tones of their
prayers (Isaiah Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar: An Anthology of Texts, trans. David Goldstein [Oxford:
Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1989], p. 961). In zoharic symbolism, both Binah and Shekhinah are
mother figures, one above and one below (Zohar 1:247b; with Matts gloss: a higher Mother and a lower
Mother [Vol. 3, p. 519, n. 946]). Shekhinah is the one who stands over Israel like a mother over her children
(Zohar 2:12b, Vol. 4, p. 59; cf. 1:203a, Vol. 3, p. 244). For more on this general motif see Rabbi Lah Novick,
On the Wings of Shekhinah: Rediscovering Judaisms Divine Feminine (Wheaton, IL: Quest
Books/Theosophical Publishing House, 2008). Luce Irigaray refers to the bird as the messenger of a new kind of
alliance: Strangely the spirit, in the Christian tradition, is figured by an animal, a sort of totemthe bird. The
bird is present in many traditions as assisting in a spiritual work or journey (Beyond Totem and Idol, the
Sexuate Other, Continental Philosophy Review 40 [2007]: 35364 at 363). On Sakti as a bird see above, note
51. Lorraine helpfully explains that [a] line of flight is a flow of movement that breaks with conventional social
codes in the creation of new forms of life (Irigaray and Deleuze, op. cit. [note 116], p. 116).
162
By way of explanation, a liquid crystal is a state of matter in between that of a regular solid and an isotropic
fluid, which demonstrates some order of alignment while also having a degree of translational freedom. The
liquid-crystalline state is also known as the mesophase (McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology,
10th ed., s.v. Liquid Crystals; Vol. 10, p. 98). In a liquid crystal display (LCD)as used for example in
computer monitors and flat-screen televisionsan organic compound of liquid crystals is sandwiched between
conducting glass plates, with two crossed light-polarizing sheets either side of this cell. As vertically polarized
light propagates through the liquid crystals it is rotated and so allowed to pass through a horizontal polarizer
placed on the exit side of the cell. When a low voltage is applied, the liquid crystal does not change the
orientation of the vertically polarized light as it passes through the cell and hence it is blocked from transmission
by the horizontal polarizing sheet. In effect then, the cell appears light or dark depending on the presence of an
electric field. A colour display is made by controlling the brightness of the light that is transmitted through a
masked array of red, green, and blue filters (Frank L. Pedrotti, S.J., Leno S. Pedrotti, and Leno M. Pedrotti,
Introduction to Optics, 3rd ed. [San Francisco: Pearson Addison Wesley, 2007], pp. 39294).
163
The following remarks are inspired by a reading of Irigarays discourse in Ethics of Sexual Difference, op.
cit. (note 1).
164
On this term, introduced by Irigaray, see ibid., pp. 32, 115, 129; cf. 53, 82. As Joy puts it: God is no longer a
disembodied principle of ethical ultimatums or an artificial hypothesis of humanitys pretences to perfection but
a dynamic presence incarnated in an ethical relationship of love (Divine Love, op. cit. [note 157], p. 49).
Lorraine opines that this notion of the sensible transcendental may be compared with Deleuzes idea that the
virtual is a transcendental field that nevertheless must be understood immanently. The realm of the infinite,
she writes, is never at a remove from us, but is always with us here-right-now in our every earthbound
experience of the ordinary world (Irigaray and Deleuze, op. cit. [note 116], pp. 11617). The tantric adept
would agree with this sentiment. In her advocacy of living spiritually in the body, Irigaray acknowledges the
role that yoga and the tantric tradition have played in her thinking on this topic (see Between East and West, op.
cit. [note 61], pp. 6164). For a lucid examination of Irigarays use of yoga and Tantra see Jean Marie Byrne,

31
Enlightenment between Two: Luce Irigaray, Sexual Difference and Nonduality (PhD diss., University of
Queensland, 2008).
165
See the remarks by Muller-Ortega, Triadic Heart of iva, op. cit. (note 105), pp. 53, 10911. In a similar
way, the Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria (ca. 20 BCE50 CE), sees God as the Father of creation,
Sophia as the Mother, and creation itself as the birth of the visible world (Peter Borgen, The Gospel of John
and Philo of Alexandria, in Light in a Spotless Mirror: Reflections on Wisdom Traditions in Judaism and Early
Christianity, ed. James H. Charlesworth and Michael A. Daise [Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2003],
pp. 4576 at 49). As for the Kabbalah, okhmah and Binah are the Father (Abba) and Mother (Imma) who
produce the divine forces of emanation, including Tiferet and Malkhut (Shekhinah), who in turn are father and
mother to the forces of creation, since from their union souls are born (Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar, op. cit
[note 161], p. 299).
166
A comparison here would be Einsteins formulation of the equivalence of mass and energy, expressed in his
famous equation E=mc2. In this respect, it has been explained that Einstein visualized mass as concentrated
energy and energy as deconcentrated mass (Toon and Ellis, Foundations of Chemistry, op. cit. [note 113], p.
692). I appealed to this analogy in another paper, Love and Beauty, op. cit. (note 91), 31.
167
The movement across these levels is clear in a Deleuzian sense, as Brian Massumi observes:
[t]ranscendence, despite its best efforts, is a mode of becoming immanent (Users Guide, op. cit. [note 107], p.
112). For Abhinavagupta manifested phenomena are indeed real, yet ultimately they are not, in the sense that
they are but an attenuation of ivas (compact) consciousness, who and which is the final unit of existence
(Muller-Ortega, Triadic Heart of iva, op. cit. [note 105], pp. 9798). A thealogical kta view would reject the
idea that there is any derogation from a spiritual real to a material real.
168
I take my inspiration here from a song by Beth Orton, Galaxy of Emptiness, on her album Trailer Park
(London: Heavenly Recordings, 1996). The Vijna Bhairava counsels that awareness of the universal
consciousness as revealed through the sensory organs is the essence of plenitude (v. 117; Yoga of Delight, op.
cit. [note 58], p. 104; and Singhs commentary at p. 105).
169
Mary Magdalene, as one who espoused akti, and as one who had the power of Spirit, is clearly
knowledgeable about divine things. See Ann Graham Brock, Mary Magdalene, The First Apostle: The Struggle
for Authority (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Theological Studies, 2003), esp. chap. 5. Brock outlines the fraught
treatment of Mary in the history of the early Christian movement and the purported apostolic and leadership role
that she played, according to some traditions. It is tempting to conclude that Mary Magdalene was the
amanuensis of Jesus, and that this close relationship has been suppressed by male commentators and writers.
170
A remark by the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty is apposite here, as he writes that the body is the seat
or rather the very actuality of the phenomenon of expression (Ausdruck). [and] is the fabric into which all
objects are woven (Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith [London: Routledge, 2002], p. 272). I am
grateful to Fiona Johnston for helpfully suggesting the word intricate here in text.
171
On the lucent aesthetic of the senses in Tantra see Dyczkowski, Doctrine of Vibration, op. cit. (note 44), pp.
13962. On the relationship of vision and touch in philosophical thought see the superb analysis by Vasselau,
Textures of Light, op. cit. (note 104). In regard to Merleau-Pontys discussion of the intertwining of the visible
and tangible, Vaselau writes that emphasis falls on touch and vision as senses functioning organically in
common; both vision and touch, and indeed all the senses are a flesh of organic mirrors (ibid., 57).
172
See Janet McCrickard, Eclipse of the Sun: An Investigation into Sun and Moon Myths (Glastonbury,
Somerset: Gothic Image, 1990). She seeks to recover the mythological connections between the feminine and
the Sun, which have been forgotten or suppressed. As an aside, even if it is the case that the feminine and female
is generally associated with the Moon, it is tantamount to acknowledging a feminized Sun, because the
moonlight arises from reflecting sunlight, and so to look at the bright Moon is only to look at the Sun by proxy.
173
Zohar 1:12a; Vol. 1, p. 84. According to the Bibles account, on the fourth day of creation God placed two
lights in the expanse of the sky to separate day from night, these being the Sun and Moon, where the former is
the greater light and the latter is the lesser light (see Gen. 1:1419). By comparison with the Sun (Tiferet),
the Moon (Shekhinah), is diminished (Zohar, ibid., n. 636), and she has no gaze of her own at all, except when
the sun is perfected and shines; from the gaze of the sun and its perfection, the moon is perfected and shines
(Zohar 2:145b; Vol. 5, p. 328). In this jaundiced view, the female is dependent on the male for her lighting,
which is equivalent to saying, for her manifest appearance.
174
The tenth-century commentator Rjnaka Rma makes this clear in his exposition on the principal Spanda
scripture, when he states that the yog sees, that is, realizes, his authentic identity (tmansvabhva) . . . by the
enlightened awareness generated (in him) by the rays of energy emitted by iva, the Sun (of consciousness), that
fall (upon him) (see Stanzas on Vibration, op. cit. [note 86], p. 108).
175
In the Lalitsahasranma the Goddess is glossed as She by whom the Sun is luminous (see LalitSahasranma, op. cit. [note 43], p. 250). This is to say that she is the power by which the male gods operate in
the Sun.
32
176
The Suns nuclear store is gradually being exhausted, as hydrogen is fused into helium; eventually, in the
distant future, the helium will fuse into carbon and oxygen. The Sun will end its life as a so-called white dwarf
star, and it has been conjectured that the solid crystalline interior of such a star in its final carbon phase makes it
in effect a giant diamond. See T.S. Metcalfe, M.H. Montgomery and A. Kanaan, Testing White Dwarf
Crystallization Theory with Asteroseismology of the Massive Pulsating DA Star BPM 37093, The
Astrophysical Journal 605 (April 20, 2004): L133136. This particular finding by Metcalfe et al. of a mass
fraction of over 90% for the crystallized core of the star BPM 37093 was subsequently challenged by P.
Brassard and G. Fontaine, Asteroseismology of the Crystallized ZZ Ceti Star BPM 37093: A Different View,
The Astophysical Journal 622 (March 20, 2005): 57276.
177
For astronomical details see Jean Audouze and Guy Isral, eds., The Cambridge Atlas of Astronomy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Middlesex, England: Newnes Books, 1985), pp. 5659; and John E.
Chambers, Planetary Accretion in the Inner Solar System, Earth and Planetary Science Letters 223 (2004), pp.
24152.
178
This so-called wind is actually a plasma, i.e., an ionized and magnetized gas which flows out from the Sun at
supersonic speeds; and as it interacts with the Earths magnetic field it generates powerful electrical forces in the
ionosphere that lead to the occurrence of polar aurorae and geomagnetic storms (Leon Golub and Jay M.
Pasachoff, Nearest Star: The Surprising Science of our Sun [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001],
pp. 21835). If auroras are basically the ionizing impact of energetic flows of electrical current through the
upper atmosphere, which in appearance are like a moving curtain of light (commonly of greenish-white
colour), then it mystically connotes the golden movement of aktishekhinah within the Godhead. According to
the Zohar, when the cherubim gaze face-to-face, all colors are enhanced and the color blue turns into another
color, turning white-green like the color gold (2:152b; and Matt glosses that When the cherubim in the Holy of
Holies turn to face one another, Shekhinah turns from the blue of Judgment into a compassionate blend of whitegreenish gold. White symbolizes esed; green signifies Tiferet, also known as Raamim (Compassion). Gold
can symbolize Binah, source of both esed and Tiferet [Vol. 5, p. 390, n. 571]).
179
As Irigaray writes: [W]e are always mothers just by being women. We bring many things into the world
apart from children: love, desire, language, art, social things, political things, religious things (Sexes and
Genealogies, op. cit. [note 157], p. 18).
180
See White, Alchemical Body, op. cit. (note 40), p. 200. On the place of women as positively embodying the
power and presence of the Goddess see Madhu Khanna, The GoddessWomen Equation in kta Tantras, in
Faces of the Feminine in Ancient, Medieval, and Modern India, ed. Mandakranta Bose (New Delhi: Oxford
University Press), 109123. Unfortunately, this exalting does not necessarily mean that the social position of
women has been improved as a result (see Tracy Pintchmans essay, Is the Hindu Goddess Tradition a Good
Resource for Western Feminism, in Is the Goddess a Feminist? op. cit. [note 29], pp. 187202). Similarly,
Wolfson similarly strikes a note of caution with respect to the apparently divine feminine sefirot of Binah and
Shekhinah: The place accorded the feminine in the mythic representation of God on the part of kabbalists in no
way secured the release of women from rigidly prescribed roles in society (Language, Eros, Being, op. cit.
[note 160], p. 58). He is sceptical then about the apparently positive evaluations in the Kabbalah. I have
explored this standpoint in relation to Tantra in a working paper, The Erotic Imaginary of Divine Realization in
Kabbalistic and Tantric Metaphysics, available at http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:179374.
181
In a recent welcome study on the view of women as it is presented in eight tantric texts of north-eastern India
from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, Loriliai Biernacki finds an affirmative understanding, which is
evidenced in the Kl Practice (Kl sdhana) or Great Mantra Practice (mahmantrasdhana)see her
book Renowned Goddess of Desire: Women, Sex, and Speech in Tantra (New York: Oxford University Press,
2007). Here, women can practise as gurus and practitioners, and are equally capable as men of acquiring
religious merit. They are on a par with the gods, and are not just assimilated to traditional goddess figures;
consequently, they are not regarded as internalized forces, but rather as embodied human beings; and
furthermore, women are to be accorded respect as subjects in their own right and are not to be mistreated (see
ibid., pp. 2960). Instead of being dismissed by men, and objectified for their gain, the veneration of women
may lead to magical eloquence in speech (ibid., 11147).
182
On Sakti as breath see above, note 51. In the Bible, dew is a gift from God, on a par with rain (1 Kings 17:1),
and reveals the manna to the Israelites in the wilderness, which serves their needs for bread (Exod. 16:1315; cf.
Num. 11:9). This manna may refer to the sweet, edible honeydew (still called manna in Arabic) found in
parts of the Sinai in June and July. Scale insects and plant lice ingest the sap of tamarisk trees and excrete it onto
the branches, from which it crystallizes and falls to the ground as sticky solids. Bedouin use it as a sweetener
(Jewish Study Bible, op. cit. [note 55], editorial annotation, p. 140). In the apocryphal biblical text, Wisdom of
Solomon, Sophia is called the breath of the power of God (7:25, KJV)and power here can transferrably
denote akti. According to the Bhannla Tantra (Great Blue Tantra), women are Gods; women are the lifebreath (cited in Biernacki, Renowned Goddess of Desire, op. cit. [note 181], pp. 40, 57, and 213).
33
183
In the Saundaryalahar (v. 16), Dev is called Arua, the Crimson-coloured Goddess, who is lovely as the
morning sun which opens the lotus flowers of the minds of gifted poets (Saundarya-lahari of Sri Sankaracarya.
With text, and transliteration, translation and notes based on Lakmdharas commentary, Swami
Tapasyananda [Mylapore, Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math], p. 60). Selenium is a non-metal which is chemically
similar to sulphur. In the alchemical Tantras sulphur (along with mica and red arsenic) symbolizes the menstrual
blood and sexual emission of the Goddess (White, Alchemical Body, op. cit. [note 40], p. 189). When selenium
burns in air it emits a blue flame as it changes into selenium dioxide (SeO2). The English word selenium is
adopted from the Greek - moon with ium suffix (Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. selenium). In the
Zohar Binah and Shekhinah are known as hills of the world, and are blessings of the breast and womb (see
2:22a, and Matts gloss at Vol. 4, p. 71, n. 6; and see Gen. 49:2526 [TANAKH translation, p. 98]). Furthermore,
Binah is symbolized as the cavernous expanse that channels the streaming flow of emanation and culminates in
the supernal sea of Shekhinah (Zohar 1:85b86a; Vol. 2, pp. 4849). The Goddess is the ocean of all blessings
(see Lakm Tantra 13.1718, op. cit. [note 79]; p. 70).
184
In zoharic symbolism, Binah is called depth of the well, and it is from her and her spouse, okhmah
whence springs issue and flowthat all blessings come (Zohar 2:63b; Vol. 4, p. 343). The Vijnabhairava
advises that entry into god-consciousness may be achieved by contemplating the depth of a well: By standing
above a deep well or any abyss and fixing ones eyes (on the bottom of the well or abyss), one becomes
completely free from thoughts, and immediately the mind will certainly be dissolved (in Vijna Bhairava: The
Practice of Centring Awareness. Commentary by Swami Lakshman Joo, trans. Bettina Bumer [Varanasi: Indica
Books, 2002], v. 115 and comm., pp. 13637).
185
For a perspicuous analysis of the comparative views of Irigaray and Deleuze see Tamsin Lorraines book,
Irigaray and Deleuze, op. cit. (note 116). She states that both Deleuze and Guattari and Irigaray present risky
and yet enticing possibilities for an alternative economy of subjectivity that could break out of the logic of the
same governing the oedipalized (masculine) subject. Both posit a different kind of desire and pleasure that
entails a new way of thinking, speaking, and being in the world (ibid., p. 116). On a note of difference, she
observes that while Deleuze and Guattari employ scientific language, and deliberately avoid reference to the
divine, Irigaray rather employs more affective and intuitive language, and makes use of myth and religious
language in order to evoke a sense of experience that is always reaching toward something not yet perceived
(ibid., p. 227). See also Rosi Braidotti, Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming
(Cambridge: Polity, 2002), chap. 1. She writes inter alia that while Deleuzes project assumes a symmetrical
power relationship between the sexes, Irigaray is more concerned to see it as an asymmetrical one; moreover,
Deleuzes deconstruction of subjectivity fails to acknowledge that women have ever been able fully to gain
control of their agency. I note in passing a recent comment by Christopher Cohoon: The wonder that sparks
eros is evoked not by the otherness of the other sex per se (as Irigaray seems to assume), but rather by an other
who is sexed, that is, an other who could be of the same sex as oneself. Indeed, no sex or sexuality is precluded
(Coming Together: The Six Modes of Irigarayan Eros, Hypatia 26, no. 3 [Summer 2011]: 47896 at 485).
186
Both frequency, v, and wavelength, , are mathematically related to energy, by the formulae E = hv and E =
hc/, where h is Plancks constant and c is the speed of light.
187
Kurt Nassau, Physics and Chemistry of Color, op. cit. (note 91), pp. 1214.
188
See Irigaray, This Sex, op. cit. (note 153), p. 28. She writes: But woman has sex organs more or less
everywhere. She finds pleasure almost anywhere. [T]he geography of her pleasure is far more diversified,
more multiple in its differences, more complex, more subtle, than is commonly imaginedin an imaginary
rather too narrowly focused on sameness (ibid.; emphasis in original).
189
Irigaray explores the association of colour with somatic perception in her psychoanalytic essay Flesh
Colors, in Sexes and Genealogies, op. cit. (note 157), pp. 15165.

34

MARTIN Feminie - God

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The Feminine in the Making of God:

Highlighting the Sensible Topography of Divinity

The Land of Power

The River of Power

The Sea of Power

The Feminine in the Making of God. Version 2, 20 July 2012

The Feminine in the Making of God. Version 2, 20 July 2012

The Feminine in the Making of God. Version 2, 20 July 2012

The Feminine in the Making of God. Version 2, 20 July 2012

See Abhinavaguptas Philosophy of Revelation: An Edition and Annotated Translation of Mlinlokavrttika

The Feminine in the Making of God. Version 2, 20 July 2012

The Feminine in the Making of God. Version 2, 20 July 2012

The Feminine in the Making of God. Version 2, 20 July 2012

The Feminine in the Making of God. Version 2, 20 July 2012

The Feminine in the Making of God. Version 2, 20 July 2012

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