The Daughter of God

Last week I presented a prologue for a concept essential to lodge Salome, the Daughter of God. In that fragment from Magna Mater, I gave the basis for the idea of complementary opposites forming two duads of Mother and Father and Son and his Bride as the quaternary point of the demonology of the Star of Azazel, and one of its basic instruments, the Hieroglyphic Key.

“Father” was explained to be the archetype of the center point’s focus, while “Mother” is the archetype of the circumference’s integration that keeps any individual and/or gestalt being from disintegrating. Between these two ultimate polarities – which yet are also an inseparable unity – is formed the jiva or chord of being for seemingly individuated and separated creatures. Such creatures, for example, human beings, embody the “dynamic intelligence” which has its counterpart, the “action of intelligence,” which projects one’s vision of reality outwards. This act of thinking is creativity in all the meanings of the word, from art to reproduction, from philosophy to simply defying one’s being by becoming part of the world in its individual interpretation.

The archetype for this process of self-defining creativity is “the Daughter of God.” It is quite strange to note the apparent lack of such a key concept in the occult symbolism of old; unless one considers the cultural background upon which these symbolic explanations were projected. While the world of occultism is unchangeable in itself, how it is interpreted to human language changes accordingly to how these symbolistic concepts are culturally understood.
For a true occultist, the surficial side of cultural concepts holds only secondary interest. Yet, the changes in these concepts make better and nuanced explanations possible about the utmost spiritual philosophy of magic.

It is a common misunderstanding among the profanes that the symbolism of gender polarities can either be altogether made to disappear or that it can be used with equal results with almost trivial modifications. For example, one might envision a “Son of God” concept referring to Jesus, and thus see in the archetype of “Daughter of God” just a female Jesus: a crucified prophet with breasts instead of a beard. While such carnivalistic changes can be used as a part of the play of Iocator, the trickster principle, they are only good to point a finger at some cultural problem or challenge. Yet, they are themselves not nearly enough to realize the revealing new concepts as they are.

The occult idea behind the archetype of the Bride, the Daughter of God, is much deeper and more nuanced, and with it dawns much more important ideas concerning not only cultural humanity but the modes of being itself. We stand very close to the great changes of human culture, as everyone can see from the upheavals that have already happened in the outward life, both technical (originally great implementations) and natural (the catastrophic results of the careless application of the former).

The concept of the Daughter of God changes the whole focus of human interest. From the narcissistic fascination of solely the center point of self, the cultural gaze is now trembling. After some moments of scared blinking, it will be shifted: to behold equally the seeming
not-self, or more accurately, one’s other side of being. The sign of the Bride, or anima.

I have already spoken of this tremendous change in Fosforos. In the last two decades after its writing, such cultural change of seeing – as for the first time – the actual otherness of one’s being, the “dark side,” the “left side,” which is the feminine side, bloomed quickly and intensely. But with this cultural upheaval, a new challenge is now faced, for it is fascinating to such a degree that people would naturally first like to see it in the old, surficial way, just an extension of the already doomed focus of the old world. Rather than understanding the massiveness of the inner change, it would then be projected as something which changes only our outward reactions. In that case, the center point would once again triumph over the equal importance of the circumference, the Right would devour the Left, and the idea of a power struggle between polarities would remain. That would be the victory of old pseudo-monotheism, the Judeo-Christian concept of being where masculine Son stands dominant, and feminine Daughter as dominated.¹ This is a real danger, and it will come to pass if we human beings remain in the thrall of outward sociological games, choosing some flags to worship and others to burn.

At the end of my Gospel of Saturn, I claimed that the last point of every ripened ideology is to deny not only the flag of one’s apparent enemies but the very concept of the flag itself. That is, one must become able to see behind the form side of the concept to reach the idea of the concept. And when this threshold is passed successfully, it immediately becomes clear what is good also in the concepts of one’s enemies. The good from everything is then accepted, the bad in everything is declined. This is the new idea of the “brotherhood of man,” i.e., a brotherhood of humanity beyond childish ideological warfares, which was tried for the first time more than a hundred years ago, but which received horrible wounds in the World Wars. Only now is this old idea of true brotherhood, with no enemies, once again rising from its bed of suffering.

And the form in which it rises is the archetype of the Daughter of God: the divine feminine that is something other than just the old Great Mother, Magna Mater, Kâlî, the threefold celestial virgin, terrestrial birth-giver, and infernal devourer. For along with this important archetype, another one stands in equal importance: the one of Bride, the Daughter, “the action of intelligence.” This “action” is something extremely natural, but it is not instinctual, and thus it brooks no reactional responses. Neither is it coldly calculated: both of these problems, the dead ends of hot emotionality and cold rationality, are the parent archetypes (or rather, shadows of these parents), but the fourth concept surpasses these easy basic concepts.

This action of intelligence is, for an occultist, familiar due to many secret concepts of tantric and magical parables. It is Fohat when he “runs in circular errands;” it is Mary the disciple-spouse of Jesus, facing her formerly possessing demons and renouncing them; it is the scabbard that is ten times worth the sword it holds;² it is Salome, who dances apparently to remove, but actually to preserve the head of the wilderness prophet. And it is so much more, only never anything that prolongs the ancient feud of the polar opposites, but as the saviour, who unites them in a new kind of fruitful accomplishment.

1. For even if their names would be reversed, the idea itself would remain untouched. The very idea of the Daughter is to create balance.
2. This is how Merlin taught king Arthur of his newly acquired Excalibur.