Anima & Animus

The Goddess

What is a goddess, but that which inspires men to be better men? How can it be that a mere woman can produce inspiration within me?

A goddess deserves divine treatment and worship. What better way to worship than by attempting to join her among the gods through self-sacrifice? What better gift to give than the life of a man for the birth of a god? I seek to transform myself for her.

In my past, I saw that I was only a man whose only power seemed to be the causing of pain. It was a Priestess who showed me the ways of the gods, by her judgments and her trials, for how could I start a transformation if I were blind to my corruption? She showed me what to fix.

But she was merely a woman, unaware of the source of her divine judgments. From the Priestess's harsh experiences with me, I learned that the source was within us. The Priestess communes with the Divine within men; Her judgments come from their own Souls.

A Priestess is a woman who can commune with the Divine, but the communication is only one way. She interprets, and as such, directs the Will of the Gods into the matter of the physical realm. To a vulnerable man, such as I was, her judgments come as prophecy. She recognizes the power which flows through all, yet she believes it to be only accessible to a few like her.

But an Empress is one who embodies the Divine. She becomes the Will of the Gods and manifests according to their direction in the mental realm. She rises above the Priestess because she communes with the Divine within women, and her judgments come from the Souls of women.

And so I sought to be an Emperor and learned how to teach others to be Kings and Queens as well.

But we are neither Emperors nor Empresses, Priests, and Priestesses, Artists nor Magicians. Our soul is a fragment of the Divine, and thus, we too are also Gods and Goddesses.

Though we may be gods on the inside, we are still human on the outside, and so long as we always strive to reflect our inward truths, our humanity shall also be redeemed.

An Artist is a woman who, through her ability to commune with the Divine in men, realizes she is communing with herself. She intuitively directs the Will of the Gods flowing from the emotional plane. She sees that the Divine within us all is the same. Her responsibility no longer lies in distributing and exercising power via influence, as it does the Empress.  Instead, her responsibility now lies in the spreading and sharing of love via compassion and empathy.

Through the judgments of a Priestess, I learn to purify myself. Through the influence of an Empress, I learned to direct myself. But through the compassion of an Artist, I learn to transform myself. And that requires self-sacrifice.

The Artist knows this because she knows the secret: All Gods and Goddesses are born from the death of the men and women they used to be. All Gods and Goddesses are the products of sacrifice. But to whom shall they make their sacrifices, and what are the contents of their sacrifice?

An Artist inspires a man to Manifest; He manifests using all the contents of his mind. A Magician inspires a woman to create—she creates using all the materials of her heart. But they who are so limited to the contents and materials of their hearts and minds can only be blinded by the light of their divinity within.

So, to manifest and create, they seek each other to collaborate. She with the flowing of her love, and he with the guidance of his power. They learn to navigate the waters of chaos, and dive into the other side, that other side of us called 'corruption.'

Corruption is that which causes errors. To the spiritual, it is called sin. To the biological, it is called cancer. To the just, it is called crime. To the Lovers, it is called betrayal.

To the Priestess, it is called Ignorance.

To the Empress, it is called Arrogance.

To the Artist, it is called Ugliness.

To the Goddesses, it is called Beauty, the Origin of All Creation.

And to the Divine, it is called Nature.

The Artist and Magician reflect each other, and in doing so, embrace the chaos within. And what they see is not ignorance nor arrogance, nor ugliness, or corruption. What they see when they look at themselves through the heart and mind of the other is merely and significantly beautiful. The intense light of divinity no longer blinds them, but instead, they can make out contrast and definition by the colors of their imperfections.

The Artist and her counterpart, the Magician, commune with the Divine, and the communication goes both ways, for they realize who they commune with is each other in themselves. Their will becomes one will which they set forth from the spiritual dimension.

When one or the other has seen this truth, that it takes a black, dark mirror to understand oneself truly, they have learned the secret to the Great Transformation.

It takes two to be able to know one. It takes love to be able to know truth.

The truth is that we are all wonderfully flawed. Indeed, it is the source of our individuality and uniqueness. We are all guilty of having horrible and angry fantasies, emotional outbursts, sexual deviancies, neurotic tendencies, and a long list of failures, insecurities, mistakes, regrets, and relationship troubles or family problems. We are, after all, a human being. Literally, everyone is one.

But Human is synonymous with Divine.

The Artist and Magician do not and cannot expect nor pressure the other to continually be a traditional mirror to reflect the intense light of the Divine. They require the shadow of a black mirror to create and manifest their most beautiful works. The negative judgment of the worst in one merely reflects the degree to which the other accepts themself!

For what is the practice of love, if not that she reveals to me more of that corrupted side of her so I may continue to learn to accept the same within myself? Thus we redeem the humanity of the world by the loving self-acceptance of the ideal God and Goddess within us.

For, what is a goddess, but that which inspires men to be better men? And how can it be that a mere woman can produce inspiration within me?

A Goddess is a woman peering at the blinding light of a man's divinity; Through the darkened lenses of his humanity, she depicts the colors of his soul. She inspires me to use my colors to paint her experience with beauty.

Trust is a swapping of their glasses, and friendship is a mixing of their colors. But love is the immense beauty they feel when admiring a collaborative work of art.