androgyne) involved ritual intercourse between mother
and son, with the subsequent sacrifice of the son. At
one time both a son and a daughter were sacrificed, but
as the daughter became a mother-surrogate, the son
was sacrificed alone. This sacralized set, Mother/God-
dess-Son/Lover, and the rituals associated with it, are
postandrogyne developments: that is, men and women
experienced separateness (not duality) and attempted
to recreate symbolically the androgynous state of mind
and body through what we now call incest. If it is true
that the implications of the androgyny myths in terms
of behavior run counter to every Judeo-Christian, or
more generally sexist, notion of morality, it would follow that incest is the primary taboo of this and similar cultures because it has its roots in the sexually dynamic
androgynous mentality. Indeed, it is not surprising
to discover that early versions of the Oedipus story do
not end with Oedipus putting his eyes out. Sophocles
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leaves Oedipus overcome with fear, guilt, and remorse,
blinded and ruined. In the earlier Homeric version,
Oedipus becomes king and reigns happily ever after.
Freud chose the wrong version o f the right story.
Even Jewish mythology provides a primal androgyne. Here is the substance o f a cultural underground most directly related to us. According to the Zohar,
the first created woman was not Eve but Lilith. She was
created coterminous with Adam, that is, they were
created in one body, androgynous. T hey were o f one
substance, one corporality. God, so the legend goes,
split them apart so that Lilith could be dressed as a bride
and married to Adam properly, but Lilith rebelled at
the whole concept o f marriage,, that is, o f being defined as Adam ’s inferior, and fled. Lilith was in fact the first woman and the first feminist both. T h e Jewish
patriarchs, with shrewd vengeance, called her a witch.
They said that the witch Lilith haunted the night (her
name is etymologically associated with the Hebrew
word for night) and killed infants. She became symbolic
o f the dark, evil side o f all women. O f course, Lilith,
we know now, made the correct analysis and went to the
core o f the problem: she rejected the nuclear family.
God, however, saw it differently — he had created Lilith
from dust, just as he had created Adam. He had created her free and equal. Not making the same mistake twice, Eve was created from Adam's rib, clearly giving
her no claim to either freedom or equality. It took the
Christians to assert that since the rib is bent, woman’s
nature is contrary to man’s.
How then can we understand the biblical statement
that God created man in his own image —male and fe
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Woman Haling
male created he them? The Midrash gives the definitive answer: When the Holy One, Blessed Be He, created the first man, he created him androgynous. 10 There is also
a corresponding Jewish androgynous godhead. The
very word for the godhead, Elohim, is composed of a
feminine noun and a masculine plural ending. God
is multiple and androgynous. The tradition of the
androgynous godhead is most clearly articulated in the
Kabbalah, a text which in written form goes back to the
Middle Ages. The oral Kabbalah, which is more extensive than the written Kabbalah, originates in the most obscure reaches of Jewish history, before the
Bible, and has been preserved with, according to occultists, more care than the written Bible —that is, the Bible has been rewritten, edited, modified, translated;
oral Kabbalah has retained its purity.
The Kabbalistic scheme of the godhead is complex.
Suffice it here to say that god is male and female interwoven. Certain parts are associated with the female, other parts with the male. For instance, primal understanding is female; wisdom is male; severity is female; mercy is male. Special prominence is given to the final
emanation of the godhead, Malkuth the Queen, the
physical manifestation of the godhead in the universe.
Malkuth the Queen is roughly equivalent to Shakti. For
the Kabbalists, as for the Tantrics, the ultimate sacrament is sexual intercourse which recreates androgyny.
Just as the Tantrics are/were ostracized by the rest of
the Hindu and Buddhist communities, so do the main
body of Jews ostracize the Kabbalists. Now they are
considered to be freaks —they have been viewed as
heretics. And heretics they are, for in recognizing the
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173
androgynous nature o f the godhead they undermine
the authority o f God the Father and threaten the power
o f patriarchy.
It remains only to point out that Christ also had
some notion o f androgyny. In Gospel to the Egyptians,
Christ and a disciple named Salome have this conversation:
When Salome asked how long Death should prevail,
the Lord said: So long as ye women bear children; for
I have come to destroy the work o f the Female. And
Salome said to Him: Did I therefore well in having
no children? T h e Lord answered and said: Eat every
Herb, but eat not that which hath bitterness. When
Salome asked when these things about which she questioned would be made known, the Lord said: When ye trample upon the garment o f shame; when the Tw o
become One, and Male with Female neither male nor
fem ale. 11
In the next chapter I am going to pursue the implications o f androgyny myths in the areas o f sexual identity and sexual behavior, and it would be in keeping
with the spirit o f this book to take Christ as my guide
and say with him: “When ye trample upon the garment
o f shame; when the Tw o become One, and Male with
Female neither male nor female. ”
C H A P T E R 9
Androgyny: Androgyny, Fucking,
and Community
Nothing short o f everything will really do.
Aldous Huxley, Island
The discovery is, of course, that “man” and “woman”
are fictions, caricatures, cultural constructs. As models
they are reductive, totalitarian, inappropriate to human
becoming. As roles they are static, demeaning to the
female, dead-ended for male and female both. Culture
as we know it legislates those fictive roles as normalcy.
Deviations from sanctioned, sacred behavior are “gender disorders, ” “criminality, ” as well as “sick, ” “disgusting, ” and “immoral. ” Heterosexuality, which is properly defined as the ritualized behavior built on