One of the tantric living principles is the “Intermarriage”. The intermarriage of the opposites that bring possibility for unity and infinity. These opposites in the inner marriage represent our dualistic human nature and is helping us evolve to get us to this reality of where we are today. We are at a place where men and women are breaking traditional gender norms more than they ever have in human history in order to find more balance in our inner (and therefore outer) marriages. We can see these opposites at work all the time in our lives. The light and the dark, the yin and the yang, the poles of a magnet – electricity and the earth, masculine and feminine energies, and the qualities of the line and the circle, are only just a few examples.
Let’s just say for the sake of this writing that the new vision of enlightenment is “Hieros Gamos” (1), the intermarriage. And the intermarriage is where I can awaken to the integration of these polar forces that represent the unique inner marriage configuration inside of me as they live as me. Bringing balance between the energies of the qualities of lines and circles is the awakening that is happening in our culture in every situation, every moment in time, every dynamic there’s actually a play of line and circle always happening.
Now it is important to remember what the lines and circles are – the circle is the sexual expression, or the erotic expression, of the feminine. The line is the sexual, or the erotic, expression of the masculine. From there flow the principles. The point I’m making, as the Hermetics taught, “as above, so below.” That it’s not a coincidence that actually the erect line phallus exists in the world or in the round circle of the great mother.
And we begin to identify the line and circle qualities in ourselves and how we can play with these energies. Where are those qualities relevant in your life? How strong or weak is my deployment of a particular quality in its light aspect? How much or little do I have of the shadow of that dimension? Where can I find it in its light aspect in my life? Where can I find it in its shadow of that dimension?
Friedrich Nietzsche said, “How could something arise out of its opposite? For example, truth out of error? Or the will to truth out of the will to deception? Or selfless action out of self-seeking? Or the pure sunny look of the wise man out of greed? Origins like these are impossible. Anyone who dreams about them is a fool, in fact, something worse. Things of the highest value must have another origin peculiar to them. They cannot be derived from this ephemeral, seductive, deceptive, trivial world, from this confusion of madness and desire! Their basis must lie, by contrast, in the womb of being, in the immortal, in hidden gods, in ‘the thing in itself’— their basis must lie there, and nowhere else!”
To the extent that there’s a lack of integration, there’s also an imbalance between my line and circle qualities, that I’m very weak on a bunch of line or circle qualities or they don’t balance properly – where my lines and circles aren’t penetrating or receiving each other is that precise extent where I am imbalanced, playing in shadow, un-integrated. I’m not going to be fully in my Eros…I will be de-eroticized… I will be alienated, imbalanced. All of that is going to produce all sorts of shadow results in my life which actually appear fully, powerfully, potently in the world. I need to appear as my best undivided self, which means that I’ve realized the intermarriage in the unique configuration of lines and circles as they appear in me. This realization causes the emergence of some larger mystical understanding and merging of the properties of lines and circles in our reality. And that intermarriage in me participates in the evolution of love.
“Our greatest moment comes when we find the courage to rechristen our evil as the best within us.” Nietzsche
1. This teaching on lines, circles, unique self and hieros gamos is sourced from Marc Gafni’s presentation at Shalom Mountain Wisdom School. Spring 2014