It plays a prominent part in MAIER'S book _Atalanta Fugiens_, to which reference has already been made. MAIER'S hermaphrodite has two heads, one male, one female, but only one body, one pair of arms, and one pair of legs. The two sexual organs, which are placed side by side, are delineated in the illustrations with considerable care, showing the importance MAIER attached to the idea.
This concept seems to me not only crude, but unnatural and repellent.
But it may be said of both the opinions I have mentioned, that they confuse between union and identity. It is the old mistake, with respect to a lesser goal, of those who hope for absorption in the Divine Nature and consequent loss of personality.
It seems to be forgotten that a certain degree of distinction is necessary to the joy of union. "Distinction" and "separation," it should be remembered, have different connotations. If the supreme joy is that of self-sacrifice, then the self must be such that it can be continually sacrificed, else the joy is a purely transitory one, or rather, is destroyed at the moment of its consummation.
Hence, though sacrificed, the self must still remain itself.
The third view of perfection, to which these remarks naturally lead, is that which sees it typified in marriage. The mystic-philosopher SWEDENBORG has some exceedingly suggestive things to say on the matter in his extraordinary work on _Conjugial Love_, which, curiously enough, seem largely to have escaped the notice of students of these high mysteries.
SWEDENBORG'S heaven is a sexual heaven, because for him *** is primarily a spiritual fact, and only secondarily, and because of what it is primarily, a physical fact; and salvation is hardly possible, according to him, apart from a genuine marriage (whether achieved here or hereafter). Man and woman are considered as complementary beings, and it is only through the union of one man with one woman that the perfect angel results.
The altruistic tendency of such a theory as contrasted with the egotism of one in which perfection is regarded as obtainable by each personality of itself alone, is a point worth emphasising.
As to the nature of this union, it is, to use SWEDENBORG'S own terms, a conjunction of the will of the wife with the understanding of the man, and reciprocally of the understanding of the man with the will of the wife.
It is thus a manifestation of that fundamental marriage between the good and the true which is at the root of all existence;and it is because of this fundamental marriage that all men and women are born into the desire to complete themselves by conjunction.
The symbol of sexual intercourse is a legitimate one to use in speaking of this heavenly union; indeed, we may describe the highest bliss attainable by the soul, or conceivable by the mind, as a spiritual orgasm.
Into conjugal love "are collected," says SWEDENBORG, "all the blessednesses, blissfulnesses, delightsomenesses, pleasantnesses, and pleasures, which could possibly be conferred upon man by the Lord the Creator."[1] In another place he writes:
"Married partners [in heaven] enjoy similar intercourse with each other as in the world, but more delightful and blessed;yet without prolification, for which, or in place of which, they have spiritual prolification, which is that of love and wisdom.""The reason," he adds, "why the intercourse then is more delightful and blessed is, that when conjugial love becomes of the spirit, it becomes more interior and pure, and consequently more perceptible;and every delightsomeness grows according to the perception, and grows even until its blessedness is discernible in its delightsomeness."[1b]
Such love, however, he says, is rarely to be found on earth.
[1] EMANUEL SWEDENBORG: _The Delights of Wisdom relating to Conjugial Love_(trans. by A. H. SEARLE, 1891), SE 68.
[1b] EMANUEL SWEDENBORG: _Op. cit_., SE 51.
A learned Japanese speaks with approval of Idealism as a "dream where sensuousness and spirituality find themselves to be blood brothers or sisters."[2] It is a statement which involves either the grossest and most dangerous error, or the profoundest truth, according to the understanding of it.
Woman is a road whereby man travels either to God or the devil.
The problem of *** is a far deeper problem than appears at first sight, involving mysteries both the direst and most holy.
It is by no means a fantastic hypothesis that the inmost mystery of what a certain school of mystics calls "the Secret Tradition"was a sexual one. At any rate, the fact that some of those, at least, to whom alchemy connoted a mystical process, were alive to the profound spiritual significance of ***, renders of double interest what they have to intimate of the achievement of the _Magnum Opus_ in man.
[2] YONE NOGUCHI: _The Spirit of Japanese Art_ (1915), p. 37.
