Female Principle Once the unmanifest One becomes the Duad, duality pervades the kosmos, often represented as male and female, or as active and passive, spirit and matter, mind and body, positive and negative.



These latter expressions are much to be preferred because of their lack of personal attributes. Synonyms for the female principle are root-matter, mulaprakriti, the eternal cosmic Virgin, Great Mother, womb of nature, cosmic ark, etc. The physical distinction which furnishes this symbol to human minds is that of duality; and if we reason from below to above, we may easily fall into the error of assigning attributes of physical human nature to the celestial beings and formative powers of the kosmos, resulting in phallicism and the degradation of sacred symbols.



The male and female principles are not entities in themselves but aspects of a unity; and since every element is compound, the words male and female as applied to any element signify merely a temporary predominance of the one or the other quality. Again, the distinction is not one of fundamental nature but of relationship, so that what is female in relation to one thing may be male in relation to another.

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Note added at 1 day2 hrs (2010-07-24 19:26:42 GMT)
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Хм, започва да става интересно. :-) Съгласен съм с Радост, но в приведените от нея примери прилагателното female е използвано със съществителното energy: "The right hand represents the male, active, yang ENERGY, while the left hand represents the female".

Струва ми се, че членуваната употреба на прилагателното female по аналогия с често привежданите в граматиките примери, като напр. the poor, the rich и т.н. е доста по-рядко срещана. :-)

Ето и още примери, подкрепящи моето твърдение:
"This paper is an attempt to place the development of modern art and technology into a female-principle-vs-male-principle and feminist perspective. It is based on my own study on the influence of Chinese-Japanese aesthetics on the Modernist Revolution in the West (between the 1860s and the 1920s), and on the work of Shulamith Firestone and Lawrence Taub."
http://www.paardenfotos.nl/olive.press/utapaper.htm

"The purpose of this paper is to cause a shift in perspective towards the female principle as the human norm. This change in perspective would create - and require - a very different view of some basic tenets of many branches of study, from economics to linguistics, anthropology to philosophy."
http://www.gift-economy.com/articlesAndEssays/principleVsPat...

И редица още... :-)