Sacred Marriage
Male and female Elohim created them (Genesis 1:27)
Elohim created the human being in the image and likeness of Elohim. While this assumes an image of a man separate from a woman, a closer reading of Genesis 2 contradicts this separation. The spelling and meaning in Hebrew of the noun “Adam” literally means “Spirit- in-the-Blood” and is synonymous with “human.” The source of this spirit is YHVH Elohim, who breathed neshamah—the genderless, holy soul—into the human. Male and female were one shared body of light. But when YHVH Elohim made a helpmate for the human, Adam was drawn from Eve as much as Eve from Adam. Originally in union with one another and with the Holy One, their union was unconscious. From a gnostic perspective, to become conscious required drawing out male and female. Awakening and self- realization can only happen through individuation. So this play of separation set in motion our desire for the union of the masculine and feminine within us. This conscious union of the masculine and feminine within us is another way of speaking of our self-realization— our image united with our likeness—in the Holy One.
Giving and Receiving
Regardless of our cisgender, within us are male and female, masculine and feminine aspects. However we’re outwardly attracted to another, we are all spiritually seeking a union of male and female within us. In Kabbalah, this balance is personified by the Holy One manifest in masculine and feminine principles of giving and receiving. YHVH—“the LORD"—is often transcendent, giving, and conceiving; Elohim—“God”—is often immanent, receiving, and birthing. Kabbalists site in scripture the name “the LORD God”—YHVH Elohim—as the Complete Name, for in this name is the circuit of giving and receiving. The Tree of Life glyph reflects this divine dynamism of YHVH Elohim with three pillars. The “right” pillar gives and the “left” pillar receives, generating a circuitous, middle pillar: the reality of our existence. Between these three pillars are ten divine attributes—the sefirot— of the Tree of Life which further reflect this movement of giving and receiving. Sefirot give and receive between each other. As one sefirah receives, it gives to the next sefirah, showing how the principles of giving and receiving, masculine and feminine dimensionality, are fluid in the Holy One. It is this same alignment within the Holy One of male and female that manifests our image and likeness. Our process of self-realization is balancing our desire to receive with our desire to give. Who we must truly are is male and female within our soul. As these aspects of our soul harmonize, we reflect in greater degrees the reciprocity and fluidity of the Holy One.
Wedding Feast
As we are inwardly male and female in one spiritual body, so is the reciprocity of Messiah. We celebrate this union of giving and receiving with a Wedding Feast of bread and wine. When we take and eat, take and drink, we receive this remembrance inwardly of all that Messiah gives. We’re empowered to participate in this circuit of giving and receiving in community. Our coequality depends on this empowerment to find our fulfillment in giving and receiving. This is our anointing in Messiah: Yeshua and Magdalene within each of us in one body of light. Only when members of a community each respect and cultivate feminine and masculine qualities within themselves can they come to actualize their full power in the Holy One. To disparage either is to descend from our image and likeness in Elohim to our animal past. Gender imbalances that erupt outside are rooted to gender imbalances inside. Healing, wholeness, growth, and movement in an anointed community in Messiah depends upon aligning the masculine and feminine within ourselves and with each other in reciprocity with the Spirit of God. This reciprocity to God is our capacity to transmit this Spirit to others: When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter the kingdom (Thomas 22).
Learn More
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEsy6iwTVIc&t=1000s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJUuNBmfwl0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpBhCTQ3WGc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94M06n6fa3I&t=86s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRI4jo8a9vU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXD8DE3Hztw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGtxFlRtYj4&t=2257s