Human Development
Androgyny
Description:
Understood in its broadest sense, androgyny signifies the One which contains the Two, namely both the male and the female. It is an archetype inherent in the human psyche. Androgyny continually represents itself in myths and symbols, which have the capacity (if recognized and invoked) to energize the creative potency of men and women in ways that are not usually imagined. As possibly the oldest archetype of which individuals have any experience, it appears to individuals as an innate sense of a primordial cosmic unity, having existed in oneness or wholeness before any separation was made. The concept of a divine androgyny is a consequence of the concept that divine being consists of a unity-totality within which are seen to exist all the conjoined pairs of opposites at all levels of potentiality. Androgyny refers to a specific way of joining the "masculine" and "feminine" aspects of a single human being. As a state of consciousness, androgyny is far from ordinary and threatens an individual's state of equilibrium as identified with a particular gender. Through this state there is recognition a dynamic inner oscillation of forces between masculine and feminine poles of being. Conscious awareness of these forces within, of their continuing separation and reunion, is an essential part of the inner development of the androgyne. The quality of androgyny is experienced as much in the body as in consciousness. The bodily experience can find its ultimate expression through sexual intercourse, when this is experienced in the spirit of evolutionary consciousness as a mystical marriage and a blending of gender identity. Androgyny is the experience of the flow between opposites.Broader:
Archetype Related:
Sexual experience