Goddess
- Nikita Ierisov
- 3 days ago
- 18 min read
The Feminine as the Missing Foundation of Wholeness
Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
I want to continue the previous article about non-duality and again refer to one of the main myths of the Western Christianity, which is the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Knowledge.
When I say myth - it is because the same story about this tree can be found in Hindu mythology and also Greek mythology, however in Christianity it plays the central role, which is why I think it is a main myth of the Western Civilisation and thus it reveals many of it’s biases.
And the main one is the biased attitude toward the Goddess and all the feminine, and thus our bodies and then the Earth itself.
In this story Eve seduced by the serpent, saying eating from it will make them “like gods, knowing good and evil.” Eve in turn tempted Adam to break God's prohibition and eat from the Tree of Knowledge. At the end they were expelled from the Garden of Eden - cherubim with flaming sword blocks the entrance to the paradise.
We tend to see this story in the negative context, let’s try to see why.
The Feminine
Since the emergence of this story and monotheistic religions as continuation of it - woman is seen as sinful and associated with devil. She is also associated with world of irrational, and thus can not be trusted. She also doesn’t like and disobeys the rules.
But let’s look carefully at each symbol in this story.
The serpent.
Who is the serpent ?
Who does he symbolises ?
We label him as the devil, but what does it truly means? What is the devil ?
Interestingly, in Hindu mythology serpent has very different meaning. In general serpent symbolises wisdom.
In the Hindu cosmogony there are seven worlds above the Earth, so called heavens - the words of the devas, and also seven lower worlds, but they are not hells. These are the world of the asuras. For example, the third one - Sutala, ruled by noble asura-king Bali is protected by Vishnu himself. The sixth world is called Mahatala - The realm of great serpents.
Maha means great, and tala - ground. So it can be translated as the “great depth” or “vast foundation” This is the realm of the massive life-force, coiled energy. Dangerous if forced, transformative if respected. This is the realm of nagas like Vasuki.
Patala - the seventh level, can be translated as the “deepest foundation”. Luminous, jewelled, hidden. Shesha supports the cosmos here.
And of course main symbol of the serpent is Kundalini Shakti - coiled primordial life-energy, life - force.
Vasuki is depicted around Shiva’s neck , symbolising control of this primal energy. And thus stillness amid power - the snake represents potent instinctual force held in perfect awareness.
Serpents shedding skin symbolize death and rebirth.
Shesha (Sanskrit: Śeṣa), also known as Sheshanaga or Adishesha, revered as the king of all Nāgas. Shesha is depicted as a massive, multi-headed serpent floating on the cosmic ocean. Vishnu reclines upon him during the intervals of cosmic dissolution. “Śeṣa” translates to “that which remains,” reflecting his role as the eternal remainder after cycles of cosmic creation and destruction. As Ananta (“endless”), he embodies infinite time and space, signifying the continuity underlying transient existence.
Coming back to our story of the Tree of Knowledge, we can interpret the symbolism of the serpent as the instinct and wisdom. We tend to always see instinct as something primitive, but in this context it will be interesting to know what meaning C.G. Jung attributed to the instinct.
Jung often emphasized that neurosis arises when we are cut off from our instinctual life.For Jung, instincts were not primitive forces to be suppressed but the living roots of the psyche. They connect us to the body, to nature, and to the archetypal patterns of life. When instincts flow freely, they provide orientation, vitality, and meaning - like an inner compass that aligns us with life’s rhythms.
Again it worth to note that women in general are more spontaneous, more connected to their bodies and thus instinct. So Eve listen to her instinct and trusted it.
And what happened next?
Our ego-consciousness was born. Tree of Knowledge produces the fruit of duality - knowing the good and evil, this how our ego consciousness operates dividing things, comparing things, judging things and so on. The Garden of Eden is the primordial unity with nature. Once in the Garden of Eden we had the unity, but didn't have the individuality. Hence we need the duality to establish this individuality - this is “I”, this is “You”, this is “the world” and so forth.
So all in all, this story is about the birth of consciousness. But if our consciousness was born because of the Eve, because of her trust to instinct, why do we blame her? Without this would be no consciousness, with out this would be no “I”, no self-realisation. So either we see consciousness as gift, or as a curse?
We can also look upon Adam and Eve as at the one human being, since psychologically we all androgynous, we all have our masculine part and feminine part. Where Adam can be seen as the consciousness itself, and the Eve as the instinctive, embodied part.
Then we associate Eve and thus women with evil, because they she broke the rule of God. But if there is already some rules exist in the Eden, that means that there is no freedom. There is unity, but no freedom. There is only a perfect will of God.
This idea is illustrated in the Quran, where it is indicated that humans are superior to the angels, because the humans have the free will.
God said to the angels:
“I am going to place a human being on Earth as a representative (a steward or caretaker).”
The angels replied:
“Will You put someone there who will cause harm and shed blood, while we constantly praise You and remain devoted to You?”
God answered:
“I know things that you do not know.”
Then God taught Adam the names of all things - meaning knowledge, language, and understanding of the world
After that, God showed these things to the angels and said:
“Tell Me their names, if you are truthful.”
The angels said:
“We only know what You have taught us. You are all-knowing and wise.”
Then God said:
“Adam, tell them their names.”
And Adam named them all.
This is not just a literal story - it’s symbolic and philosophical. Human beings are defined by knowledge. Adam’s ability to “name things” represents: language, awareness, conscious understanding, the ability to categorize and make meaning.
This is what makes humans unique - not just existence, but understanding existence.
Angels represents the order, purity and obedience. They don’t have free will in the same way humans do. So they see humans, as capable of violence and chaos and themselves purely devoted. “I know what you do not know” points to hidden potential. Human potential for wisdom, creativity and love. The possibility of growth, transformation, and self-awareness.
Not because humans are morally superior - but because angels are what they are.
Humans can become something. That capacity for transformation is the key.
In this story Adam is human consciousness. Naming is the act of bringing reality into awareness. Humans are not higher because they are pure. Humans are unique because they can know themselves.
Naming is also act of creation, of the manifestation of the reality ( in the beginning was logos (word) ) - so the humans have the capacity to create.
The angels sing in perfect harmony.
But Adam listens… and learns to compose.
The same symbolism we can find in the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 42.
The Dao gives birth to One.
One gives birth to Two.
Two gives birth to Three.
Three gives birth to ten thousand things.
Where, Dao (Tao) - the ineffable source, beyond description.
One - undivided unity / original wholeness
Two - polarity (Yin and Yang)
Three - dynamic interaction of opposites (often seen as harmony )
Ten thousand things - everything that exists (the manifested world)
So the three can be interpreted as yin/yang/chi or human/ heaven/ earth.
In the human being the Heaven (ideas, forms) and the Earth (energy and matter) are united, thus we have ability to create. We have consciousness and we have energy- two principles of creation masculine and the feminine once united - produce the manifested world. Nor angels, nor purely instinctive beings have this creative force, but only the humans who are at the intersection of this two worlds.
So who is the serpent ?
Our rudimental, childish psychology sees God, as the old-man who sets some rules and punishes his negligent children. Then we see that following the rules is “good” and violation them as “bad”, thus devil associated with breaking the rules. Let’s not forget that rules and laws are more liked by men, because this makes the reality structured and predictable. Masculine likes structure and order, and Feminine in general more fluid and spontaneous. Spontaneity is unpredictable and all of us have fear towards the unknown, hence it is attributed to the devil. Then from the same patriarchal worldview the concept of dogma was born, which is intellectual understanding of god. In the Eastern philosophy on the contrary, may it be Vedanta or Taoism, it would be considered the absurd, because the ultimate truth can not be described in words. Then the spiritual experience itself has nothing to do what is written in books or elsewhere, but it is a direct realisation or direct experience of unity, in other words - intellectual concept normally crush during such an experience of realisation.
To understand who is the serpent may be I would like to refer to another profound symbolism from Hinduism, particularly the Shiva temple or Shiva lingam.
What dominates the shrine is the linga-stone representing Shiva. Some scholars see it as the phallus, but that’s incomplete. While it can include generative symbolism, traditionally it represents the still center within you, the silent awareness behind thoughts, the point where duality dissolves. It’s closer to a cosmic generator than a biological one.
In many texts, the linga is described as a pillar of infinite light - a symbol of the axis connecting heaven, earth, and the inner world; the center of existence; the spine of reality;
There’s a famous story where even deities like Brahma and Vishnu could not find its beginning or end. In meditation, it’s like returning to the axis of your own being.
What keeps this linga in place in the yoni-trough below representing Gauri (another name of Uma) and what keeps it wet and dynamic is the perforated pot above representing Ganga (another wife of Shiva, junior to Gauri in some traditions). In this image we don’t see the pot, but there is an opening for the rain.
The shrine itself is called garbha-griha, the womb room. Whose womb? The Devi’s of course. Thus Shiva is housed inside a goddess and is between two goddesses.
So it is the feminine which provides the divinity of God.
In Hindu tradition Shiva as the highest masculine principle symbolises consciousness, and Devi or Shakti symbolises creative life-force, energy and at the end - matter.
So if we understand serpent as the symbol or the messenger of the Goddess - it means that Goddess ( or Nature or God himself) told Eve to eat that fruit. We divide Shiva and Shakti only to understand this concepts, this symbols. However, Hindu mythology and tantric tradition countless times emphasises that they are inseparable. Shiva without Shakti is just a corpse. We need the polarity, we divide things to be able separate and categorise them, this is how we process and understand the reality. Let’s not forget that the fruit itself brings the duality
But Shiva and Shakti - are One. If so that means the God himself or the Nature gave this fruit to Adam & Eve.
Rational and Irrational
C.G.Jung observed that primal mandala of the Western world reveals its imbalance.
This mandala is of course the symbol of the Christianity - the cross - by making one arm longer than another it’s shows this imbalance. Since we value spiritual dimension more - we have to overcompensate the earthy dimension, by making the bottom arm longer. From this stems our overindulgence in material possessions, consumerist culture, and materialist science. Paradoxically, whenever one side falls into imbalance, the scales seek to restore equilibrium through the emergence of its opposite.
The cross itself symbolises the double seesaw, where Jung saw the mandala of our psyche.
Every direction of this cross represents so called function. So there are four of them: thinking, feeling, intuition and sensation. Each person develops one main (dominant) function and the opposite becomes inferior (unconscious). If you have dominant thinking, than feeling is inferior. If you have dominant intuition, then you have inferior sensation. Mostly through your main function you generally earn your bread and butter in the world, but inferior function you get a sacred understanding of the world and the totality of the Self.
Another point is that from the general view only thinking is seemed to be rational. For Jung, however feeling is a rational function as well —just like thinking. It is a way of assigning a value to something or someone. It is structured, conscious, and can be articulated.
Example: “I like this music” ; “This person feels trustworthy.” If I love someone I assigning this person with the highest form of value. For Jung it is a form of judgement, not chaos.
Jung also distinguished emotions and feelings.
Emotion, for Jung, is something quite different - it is irrational and involuntary. It often takes over the body and mind. It includes physiological reactions (heart rate, tension, tears, etc.) and it is often linked to complexes. Jung believed that when feeling is not developed consciously, it returns as emotion. So if someone cannot clearly say what they value, cannot express likes/dislikes - their psyche compensates through emotional outbursts.
Taoists also link every organ with particular emotion, if there is an imbalance in organs and they don’t function well, we can experience such emotions as fear, anxiety, sadness, grief and so on. On other hand if balanced - organs produce what is called virtues. So we can work and reflect on our emotions not only with our mind, but also with our bodies.
1.Perception (How you take in reality):
Sensation → perceives what is (facts, body, present)
Intuition → perceives what could be (patterns, potential, unseen)
2.Judgment (How you decide about reality)
Thinking → evaluates through logic, truth, structure
Feeling → evaluates through value, meaning, harmony
Reality requires both perception and evaluation, and each of those splits into two opposite modes. You cannot perceive only one way, you need Sensation + Intuition; You cannot evaluate only one way, you need Thinking + Feeling. This creates a quaternary structure (4-fold). Number four was the symbol of wholeness for Jung. Psychological growth and Individuation for Jung means, not just being good at one thing, but integrating all four functions into a balanced whole.
Our culture is dominated by rational thinking. But suppressing other three, we suppress and limit 3/4 of our own nature. We can not express our feelings, thus “lost of intimacy” is bemoan in our culture.
Dionysus
The idea of the primal female deity, first adored, then brutally side-lined by male deity is a consistent theme in mythologies around the world.
About what it can tell us? Transition from emotional to intellectual and rational world?
Gaia is the earth-mother in Greek mythology, was abused by Uranus (sky). Only way for her son Kronos to escape, was to castrate his father. Then Zeus his son, kills Kronos and declares himself father of gods of men. Gaia remains as earth-mother, respected by distant.
Tantrik tradition speaks of the primal one - Adya, who took the form of a bird and laid three unfertilised eggs from which were born Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.
In mythological stories around the world, the male deities compete for the female prize. This can be traced by nature, where all wombs are precious but not all sperms. Animals have alpha-males, who keep females for himslef. Bird-female selects the best one with the best feathers.
This selection of only the best males creates anxiety amongst the not-so-good males and translates into fear of invalidation in the human species. To cope with this fear of invalidation, social structures such as marriage laws and inheritance rights come into being, often at the cost of the female.
In Bronze age we can see that man have to fight for women, or simply submit for women’s choice, we can see the many stoires in Hindu-Puranas. In such-female dominated cultures, the male could not refuse the woman: in the Mahabharata when Arjuna refuses her advances, Urvashi curses him to turn into a eunuch. Any man who forces himself upon a women was killed. To ensure the dominant males did not have exclusive rights for a women, the ritual of killing the chosen males at regular intervals emerged. So the women could chose her lover, but her choice was fatal. The only way to escape this - to become a eunuch.
The close association of women with sexual pleasure and childbirth on one hand and death on the other is made explicit in the stories of Yama and Yami, the first living creatures in the Rig Veda. Yami, the sister, approaches Yama, the brother. He rejects her advances on moral grounds and eventually dies and finds himself trapped in the land of the dead as he has left no offspring behind in the land of the living. Thus rejection of sex turns him into the god of death. Yami mourns for him, turning into the goddess of the night, Yamini, as well as the mournful dark river, Yamuna.
The connection of death with sex ( Interesting that in Jyotish astrology sex and death are connected in 8th house as well) , sex with pleasure and pleasure with women resulting in men associating women with immorality, misery and vulnerability.
And becuase of this great anxiety men invented many things to overcome it and control women - starting from celibacy or religious and culture codes.
This ideas led to the rise of monastic and mystical cults that sought to either control nature or escape from it.
This anxiety births aggression and desire to control every detail and the so-called patriarchal world we live in.
Before those who looked at the earth saw it as the Goddess - Ishtar, the fertile and Ereshkigal, the barren, in Sumerian mythology. Kali and Gauri in Hindu. Hathor and the lioness Sekhmet of Egyptian mythology. World was seen in feminine terms. But gradually gaze was turned upwards to the sky. Gravity became a fetter, and earth the trap and women bondage. Escape was sought. The serpent, messenger of the goddess, was rejected in favour of winged beings or angels who take humanity to “higher” realms above the earth.
In biblical mythology, the serpent becomes the symbol of the Devil, he who disobeys and tempts others to disobey. God, who makes all the rules, becomes male and resides in the sky.
Prophets who carry his words to earth are mostly male: Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammad.
They overshadow female prophets: Miriam, Deborah, Anah
In Islam there is a folk tradition how the Devil tries unsuccessfully to include in the Koran through Muhammad a verse that makes the three goddesses of Mecca - Urs, Mannat, Lat - mediums to Alah. These were the infamous Satanic verses. Still feminine finds the presence as the hand of prophet daughter - Fatma.
In the early days of Buddhism - Buddha refused to include women to his monastic order, until his mother cried upon death of his step-father, thus he realized that women also suffrer. Early Buddhist saw wisdom in intellectual terms only, but later made room also for emotional.
Compassion was seen to be as important as knowledge. And the compassion took form of the Buddhist goddess called Tara.
The worshippers of the Dionysus were the last worshippers of the Great Goddess.
The original worshippers of Dionysus, where Maenads. They took their god, Dionysus, off into the woods to do their night revelry , the women mysteries into which Rhea initiated them, and they were so secret that nobody really knows what actually was going on. Here one can see the parallel with Krishna and his ritual Rasa-Leela. When Krishna plays his flute at night, the sound reaches to the village like a call from the deepest layer of the soul - the gopis (milkmaids) leave everything - homes, duties, even social rules - and follow the music into the forest. There, in a moonlit clearing, Krishna dances with them in the Rasa-Leela, the “dance of divine play.”
Dionysus represents ecstatic realm of the irrational. We tend to think about irrational as of something offbeat and insane, but initially the term “irrational” meant simply information gathered through senses. Now in the industrial society and with accomplishment of the scientific revolution - we value only everything rational and dismiss everything what is called irrational - which is our sensations and feelings. But this is the language of our soul. Greek had a better sense of balance and they value Apollo (rational thinking ) and Dionysus ( irrational) equally in Delphi.
Later on Romans elevated Apollo and degraded Dionysus into Bacchus - god of drunkenness. This shows the pivotal point, where Western culture dismissed the ecstatic experience and instead of sacred revelation chose the numbness by drunkenness and thus neurosis.
Point is not what is better rational or sensuous - but we that we equally need both. We need to explore and express our inner dimension - and this the realm of Dionysus. He is usually shown on the swing, so as being able to exist in both worlds.
We also need the channel for ritual. Every culture with deep spiritual knowledge has vast ritual tradition. Dismissing the ritual was the biggest mistake in the Western history. Because the need the container, where we can channel the ecstatic energy.
Transformative power of ecstasy once considered a gift of gods, and now is associated with x-rated movies. Ecstatic experience is a transcendental experience which can lift us into the realm of gods beyond the ordinary concerns. “I am filled with emotion so powerful, which I can not contain” - so I am beside myself - I transcend myself. We afraid of such experience because we afraid to loose the control, and for this reason we need a safe container to express it, like dance ritual for example.
Without the container it erupts - in violence, rage, aggression, rape, racism, extremist attacks, terrorism, wars and so on.
We trying to repress this ecstatic qualities in us, as it shown in the myth of Dionysus, who had been disliked by mortal politicians and thus they attempted to kill him. But you can not kill god, who by definition immortal. Neither you can kill an archetype, for an archetype is a base human drive.
This happened not only on the individual level, but on the level of the collective unconsciousness, the psyche of whole society. We can see this on the example of WWII - Jung argued that beneath modern, “civilized” German society there lay an unlived archetype - the ancient god Wotan (Odin): a figure of storm, frenzy, wandering, war, poetry, possession, and ecstatic rage. For Jung, Wotan was not just a mythological character. He was a living psychic force in the collective unconscious of the German people. Christianity and rational modernity had pushed this archetype underground. It was not integrated, ritualized, or consciously worked with. It remained unlived.
When an archetype is repressed for centuries, Jung said, it does not disappear - it returns in distorted and dangerous forms.
Instead of appearing as sacred ecstasy, trance, poetry, or initiatory rituals (as in older cultures), Wotan erupted politically and collectively: as mass rallies, hypnotic charisma, collective possession and as warlike intoxication.
So we can not longer afford to repress the Dionysian in us - we need the sacred containers to express this energy, if we want our civilisation to survive. And we can rediscover a profound wisdom in the ancient culture - the transformative power of the ritual.
The Scapegoat
If we study closely myth of Dionysus and the story of Jesus, we can find that they have a lot in common, so much in common that we can arrive to the conclusion that the same deity speaks to us.
They both were born from mortal mother and heavenly father, both were killed and reborn, both were hailed as king of kings and seated on the right side of their father, and of course transforming water into wine - something they both enjoyed doing on the daily basis.
Dionysus was god of Joy, and Jesus was god of Love, paradoxically however Christianity became the main enemy of Dionysus.
Dionysus Melangius, "Dionysus of the Black Goatskin" - was an ancient scapegoat-satyr form of the god, whose appearance greatly influenced the medieval Christian notion of what the devil should look like. Goat is essentially the symbol of Dionysus - the capricious and spontaneous ecstatic energy. Of course church which favours dogma can not accept any spontaneity and attributed it to the devil.
However, spontaneity is the essence of all life, it is springing life-energy of the nature and universe. The spontaneous flow of Tao is called ziran Taoism. We need laws and rules to sustain our civilisation, for predictability, security, but then we impede the nature flow of life, our impulses, instincts - we block our expression, the flow of our life-energy and here comes the split - the neurosis.
Christ was god of love, but we took only suffering from his story, and think that if we suffer as much as he - we would be as good as him was. Church used this story for centuries to induce guilt, which is very powerful instrument of control. Christ was the figure who unites Heaven and Earth, but we see only Heaven in this story.
Psychological wholeness requires a marriage of Heaven and Earth. Christ symbolizes not the rejection of Earth, but the union of spirit and matter - bringing divine consciousness into ordinary human life.
“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”
If matter were evil or unimportant, God would not enter it. The Incarnation is perhaps the strongest possible affirmation of Earth: the divine chooses embodiment.
Christ’s first miracle occurs at a wedding feast - wedding at Cana.
Instead of preaching ascetic withdrawal, he transforms water into wine. Symbolically: water - ordinary life; wine - transformed life, joy, celebration.
A wedding is one of the most earthly events imaginable: relationship, family, community, food, music, and celebration.
Christ is constantly sharing meals. He eats with fishermen, tax collectors, sinners, and friends. Many spiritual traditions emphasize separation from the world. Christ repeatedly enters the world through fellowship and shared food. The Kingdom appears not only in temples but around tables.
Much of Christ’s ministry concerns physical healing: blindness, paralysis, disease, disability. If only the higher realms were important, bodily healing would be secondary. Yet Christ repeatedly restores people to embodied life. The body is treated as worthy of divine attention.
Heaven - consciousness, meaning, transcendence.
Earth - body, emotions, sexuality, work, relationship, nature.
Christ’s life continually moves between the two. He prays on mountains (Heaven), then returns to villages and marketplaces (Earth).
The goal is not to abandon Earth for Heaven, nor to lose oneself in Earth alone, but to unite them.
The scapegoat or the Dionysus, whom we choose to be a devil represents this exactly earthy qualities, we choose to repress: eros, sensuality, sexuality, intimacy, beauty, aesthetics, joy, ecstasy.
In the myth of Dionysus, he brings both divine ecstasy and madness. To those who worship him, he grants divine transcendence; to those who reject him, he brings madness.
Psychologically again, either we accept this qualities within and become whole or we repress them and live separated.
Even our clothes separates head from the body with ties. And our cities have special areas designated for sex. Even though our culture is saturated with flashy ads of naked bodies - in fact, we afraid of the real connection and intimacy.
For over thousand of years our culture was built upon this so called moralistic principles of repression of our bodies and feminine, and all the violence is the eruption of this ecstatic energy uncontrolled: women were burned by inquisition, wars, racism, nationalism, fascism, genocides. This is the madness we desire to choose when repressing ecstatic element within us. But it is an Archetype and it will find its way for expression.
The question is only, since we have the gift of consciousness:
Can we afford to repress it any longer ?
Or
We bring it into consciousness and integrate it through awareness and embodiment.
— Nikita Ierisov
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