Analogue 40: Spiritual Marriage & Sexual Union

 Analogue 40: Spiritual Marriage & Sexual Union

This is the way one lives into the mysteries. There is magnificence to the mystery of marital union, for the world is a complex system based upon humankind, and human society itself is grounded in marriage. So contemplate, then, instead the union of pure spiritual embrace, for it has great power. Its image, however, is found in physical sexual union.

SYNOPSIS

• With this analog we enter the fractal center of this Gospel. 
• Here Yeshua describes living into (or the praxis of) the temple mysteries. 
• At the center of this text is the mystery of marital union, hieros gamos, Sacred Marriage. 
• Human society is based on the marital union: everything is built around or emerges from it. 
• The horizontal axis of space-time and the vertical axis of the Divine come together at the center of both. One form of their union is physical and the other is “pure spiritual embrace.”
• The image of spiritual embrace is mirrored in the experience of physical sexual union. 
• It is the perfect analogue: by analogy we can know the one by the other. 

COMMENTARY

The Holy Place

If you can imagine it, you are entering the fractal center of this Gospel—the hidden chamber of its secrets; the most holy space of the first Temple as well as this text, the central point of all of its many mysteries.  

The ancient center of Jewish worship was the Temple in Jerusalem. For thousands of years, the peoples of this region and the nation of Israel had come to worship at the place they saw as the dwelling place of God on earth. This sacred site had a complex topography and the temple architecture held many levels and chambers, but its most important feature was the Most Holy Place. Behind the veil dividing the sanctuary was the Mercy Seat (called the Bema ) which was throne room of the divine Presence. In that inner chamber, which the high priest visited only once a year, the articles and instruments of history of Israel’s long pilgrimage were kept as signs and symbols and by way of remembrance. From there (that most Holy Place), the divine Presence radiated through the Temple itself. It was there that the ultimate offerings of worship were made to God. One could not imagine going there oneself, on one’s own accord. It could only be approached through a representative, and then only rarely and tentatively. This was the ancient image and the religious demeanor with which it was seen. 

In the Gospel of Philip so many normal religious perceptions and behaviors are challenged. Instead of the dread of the Transcendence, being warned to stay away from the awesome Presence, one is invited into the Bridal Chamber, the place of deepest immanence, to participate in its most sacred mysteries. The Bridal Chamber where the love of the Lover and Beloved (or Bride and Bridegroom) is consummated is opened to us. How is one supposed to think about and imagine all of this? In this wisdom teaching, Yeshua shares an inmost secret that he has experienced and known: union and intimacy with God in that inner chamber of deepest communion. It was perhaps almost unimaginable to the Jewish disciples to think of the Holy of Holies in this way, but not impossible. One was being invited into a secret—a sacred invitation into deep union and communion, beginning with a feast and ending in sexual embrace. If it were not said so clearly here, one would be hard-pressed to express it, and yet here it is, at the center of this text: the most secret, sacred mystery, the epitome of mystical experience with God. It is possible to think of this as a form of tantric Judaism where the experience of mystical union takes on aspects of sexual ecstasy. In this Gospel it is called pure spiritual embrace and explicitly expressed as an analogue to human sexual union. 

Hieros Gamos

This way of deeply experiencing the divine has, of course, been hinted at throughout the ancient writings of the Hebrew wisdom tradition. It was made metaphorically explicit in the Song of Songs and now it appears at the center of Yeshua’s own secret teachings, shared with his students as a part of the sacred mysteries that he dared to teach to the few who were ready to hear and receive it. This spiritual metaphor, known in other sacred traditions as hieros gamos (spiritual marriage), was expressed within early Jewish mystical tradition and is being used to explicate Yeshua’s understanding of the deepest human intimacy that one can experience with the Source. 

Yes, God is transcendent; this was known and stated in all the ancient texts, clarified over and over again throughout the Psalms and the Prophets, but Yeshua’s journey took him in an almost opposite direction, into a sacred, secret chamber of mysteries where the divine Beloved was immanent and immediate. Inside the Bridal Chamber cohabitation with God was possible; in that sacred space love was experienced as Lover and Beloved became one. The union of two reached completion in oneness. This was a core teaching of Jewish mystical tradition, and was true for Yeshua (in first century Judaism) and for those who might dare to follow him along this sacred way. 

Yeshua’s journey took him  … into a sacred, 

secret chamber of mysteries where cohabitation with the divine Beloved inside the Bridal Chamber in immanence and intimacy was possible.

The Way into Intimacy

All of this, of course, is not easy teaching. This Gospel takes great care to establish the necessary steps before one enters into the experience of this sacred precinct. In the same way this Gospel is constructed, it does not come directly to this chamber of intimacy by the fastest route. It takes a longer, winding, spiraling and circuitous route. From this point forward it will lead us even deeper, into a patterning where images of this teaching and its metaphors will be  reflected (and refracted) over and over again. I call it fractal patterning because its many themes will be repeated in new and interesting ways with ever deeper elaborations and implications. Many of these metaphors may surprise and shock us. The sacraments mentioned earlier will be taken inside this Temple chamber and introduced as interior rites and rituals, feeding the soul and nourishing the heart through the experience of oneness of being with the divine Beloved. 

This analogue points out that normal human society itself mirrors and reflects this mystery and its experience. Culture and our social matrixes are built around marriage as the primary means of  intimate commitment made between humans as a loving expression of the self. Marriage, however, is also meant for the stabilization of societies and nations and the eventual procreation of children, and so it is placed within a sacred context where certain laws apply. This analogue, then, takes the first step toward the chamber where one lives into these same mysteries, only now not between humans on earth, but between human beings and the divine Beloved. Ultimately this pathway leads forward into a new form of society which lives along the vertical axis. There, the human and the divine are joined and made one as the basis for a new social order. What that means will be spelled out in greater detail later in this Gospel, but its opposite (what it does not and cannot mean), is clarified in the analogue that follows this one. 

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. You have been brought to the central theme of this text, into its deepest mystery—the secret of the Bridal Chamber. It is the most Holy Place where union with the divine Presence awaits the human soul. A deep understanding of it is being offered by this text. How do you respond to knowing now that this metaphor is an explicitly sexual one?
2. Oneness, union, and unity with the divine is described as the ultimate state of human being. This is a possibility that the mystics have talked about through the ages. Is an invitation into this relationship with the Divine of interest to you? Do you take it seriously, or does it seem like something that might be dangerous, or some unattainable dream or fantasy? Journal your thoughts and feelings about this.  
3. The Unitive state (union with God) is considered to be the third step or state on the mystical path, preceded by purification and illumination. You might wish to consult Evelyn Underhill’s classic text Mysticism to understand how these are described in later Christian tradition. Summaries of her work may be found online along with the full text.
4. The Gospel of Philip uses the metaphor of sexual union to describe this intimate and immanent relationship with the Transcendent. This is metaphor is, of course, very intense. It exists to some extent in many other traditions. How does it strike you in the Christian and Jewish context? The world of Sufism has used it freely as well, for example in the poetry of Jalaluddin Rumi. A book of modern poetry using inspiration from across the sacred traditions called Love Poems from God (by Daniel Ladinsky) expands this vocabulary. You might wish to read poems from this volume to help you see how this image has been used by various other sacred traditions. 
5. Prepare yourself for a deeper and deeper exploration of this theme and its context in the imagery of the sacred Temple, and how the mysteries of sacred marriage were taught in the first century inspired by Yeshua’s own wisdom and teaching. Read the Song of Songs in the Hebrew Scriptures to see the antecedent to this powerful theme.  

NOTES FOR FURTHER STUDY 

AND REFERENCE

1. The possibility of Mystical Union with the Divine, as an explicit experience within human being and consciousness, is ancient and at the center of all mystical texts in many faith traditions detailing a state of elevated consciousness. Though it is described in elaborate symbolic languages and motifs, perhaps its greatest expression comes poetically in love poems. In the Hebrew tradition, the ancient Song of Songs attributed to Solomon uses explicit love language, which the tradition of Jewish interpreters has agreed refers not to the purely human but to the relationship of human beings with the divine Reality. Human beings are meant to know and experience union with the divine Presence in a way that is analogous to the deepest experience of union and relationship with another person on earth in the most intimate way. So the language of mystical union is always analogical, expressed in metaphors pointing to another level of experience both in and beyond this world. Mystical union as a form of ecstasy is said to be a state of human consciousness when one comes into relationship with divine Consciousness not in the abstract but through deep personal knowledge—the way we come to know and love another person on earth through constant contact, deep conversation, touch and full embrace. 
2. Sacred Marriage refers to mystical union as a permanent state of unbroken relationship between beings in love. On the human level, when two human beings want bonded in a permanent relationship, they marry each other. It is a sacred contract made between the two, and it typically has social and legal ramifications, but the contract is not the point of the relationship. What is being acknowledged is the desire for a long-lasting bond of deep intimacy that (at least theoretically) cannot be broken. To imagine that human beings were made to be in such a relationship with God goes far beyond the theme of humankind being in an obedient relationship to God, similar to a child and a parent. The analogy of marriage implies full human maturation and a level of equality with the Divine that many theologies do not imagine. In the wisdom tradition, however, it is imagined and this marital bond becomes the ultimate goal of having a relationship with God. Known in the Greek language as hieros gamos, this concept (expressed clearly in the teachings of Yeshua), came to influence the writings of later Christian mystics like Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, Henry Suso, Gregory the Great and, perhaps most importantly, Bernard of Clairvaux. This point of view was also widely held and taught in Kabbalistic and Sufi circles. 
3. The Bridal Chamber could perhaps also be called the “honeymoon suite,” though that cultural reference may in some sense significantly cheapen our understanding of the mystery of this sacred teaching. Nevertheless, we are referring to the secret and hidden chamber where sexual union is consummated. If the relationship between human beings and the divine “Being” (Lover and Beloved) is to be experienced at this level of intimacy, then there must be a place of rendezvous. In this Gospel text two chambers exist and are set into juxtaposition for just such a purpose—externally, the physical inner chamber of the Temple, its most holy place, and inwardly, in one’s own Temple of being, the secret chamber of the heart. From the vantage point of this text they are analogous to one another. They co-existent and are perhaps entangled. 

Notes for the Translation

• The focus upon the term “world” is not about the physical reality of the planet, but the world systems created by humans, which we call the “human order.” This is the significance of the term kosmos. 
• The phrase “the union of pure spiritual embrace” (borrowed in part from Jean-Yves Leloup’s translation) is a positive way of translating the original “undefiled koinonia” in the Coptic text. The attempt here is to translate the direct meaning without recourse to the negativity of the word (defile and defilement) used in the Coptic. That word perhaps implies that there is a moral or spiritual pollution or defilement through sexual union, which is actually being contradicted in the opening statements. “Coming together without conjugal relations” might be another but more complicated way of describing the same meaning.
• “Physical sexual union” in the final sentence is used to translate the same word usually translated as “defilement”.