The New Age Movement and Homosexuality
The New Age movement looks favourably on homosexuality. In fact, in
alchemy, the androgyne (meaning male and female in one body) was considered
to be "the image of human perfection and wholeness. By some ancient
traditions, the original and perfect form of the human being... A
fashionable look among some celebrities.'' "Bly, Nin, and Jung tell us that
each individual must achieve inner marriage of their masculine and feminine
natures to encounter true equipoise."
The assumption of yin/yang also leads to homosexuality. In one issue of the Whole Life Times was a letter from David Lang. He wrote:
"For example, macrobiotic theory explains homosexuality as a yin-yang imbalance caused (or at least aggravated) by excess consumption of yin foods (such as raw fruit) on the part of males and excessive ingestion of yang foods (such as animal flesh) on the part of females.''
Texe Marrs explains:
"Homosexuality and bi-sexuality are accepted, even encouraged by the New Age teacher. The unholy doctrine of reincarnation and the principle of yin/yang are perfect excuses and rationale for homosexuality and other forms of sexual immorality. If you are a homosexual or a lesbian in this lifetime, New Age teachers believe that it is probably because you were a person of the opposite sex in a previous incarnation or past life. The residue and influence of that past life is simply retained within your brain and consciousness.
"The yin/yang principle, also called unity, integration or polarity, holds that a person is born with both masculine and feminine traits. A man supposedly could have been a man 250 times and a woman 250 times in previous incarnations, and the memory of those past life experiences are said to remain as indelible traces of consciousness. Thus, we are each a combination of male and female, masculine and feminine. The New Age encourages children and adults to appreciate and practice the harmony of opposites, teaching the individual to merge the two selves, man and woman.''
Many of the gods and goddesses of paganism are shown to have dual sexual natures. Mercury, called the 'male-female' was an androgyne. Even much symbolism contains this dual nature. For instance:
"The serpent's head and neck is distinctly a masculine symbol, but the serpent is sometime symbolised with its tail in it mouth [oroboros], the body forming a circle which is feminine. Also, the mouth is feminine, while the tail, which is in the mouth, is masculine. Thus for two good reasons the serpent with its tail in its mouth represents both sexes. Sacred fire was often prepared on religious occasions by rotating a realistic wooden representation of the phallus in a wooden representation of the kteis, rotating being done by an apparatus resembling a bow. The cornucopia, or horn of plenty, was double sexed in symbolism. The horn was masculine and the inside was feminine. The fruit inside symbolised productiveness of the female."
"The four-limbed cross generally had a different meaning, and represented the male and the female in unison, in the act of creation. From time immemorial a perpendicular line or object has been used to symbolise the phallus, and a horizontal line the kteis or vulva. The surface of water, a female element in creation, was horizontal, and women were practically in the horizontal position in the act of creation. Prostitutes were spoken of as 'women who made their living horizontally,' and the term was applied to women who were kept in their own room by some wealthy man. Coitus has been called 'horizontal exercise.' Horizontales (horizontals) is one of the names which the French apply to women who sell love favours, women of easy virtue. The four-armed cross was an easy figure to make, being an intersection of two straight lines at right angels, and it became a symbol of man's most lofty and most holy activity, expressing the reverence for the act. Some of the Asherahs of the Bible represented Baal in union with Astoreth. The results of the union between the sexes resulted in a new life. Separately, man and woman were incomplete, important, and barren, but in their union they became a perfect soul, realising the immortality of life."
One particular group that knows the sexual implications of the yin/yang and intentionally uses it as their official symbol is The Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS). This group promotes extensive sex education in schools. SIECUS Position Statements reveal the following:
"It is the position of SIECUS that contraceptive services should be available to all--including minors who should enjoy the same rights of free and independent access to... contraceptive care as do others... It is the position of SIECUS that the use of explicit sexual materials (sometimes referred to as pornography) can serve a variety of important needs in the lives of countless individuals..."
Another group using the yin/yang (knowingly or
unknowing) is the Girls Scouts. On page 66 of the Girl Scout Badges
and Signs book, the yin/yang symbol is used to represent the World in
My Community proficiency badge. In the Junior Girl Scout
Handbook, yoga exercises are explained. The theme for their 1987
program was "The Year of Magic."
Sexual Symbols of the Occult
Palmistry,
the occult practice of foretelling the future by reading the hand, is based
on the theories of yin and yang and the Five Elements. In another
occult book, The Chinese Art of Healing, written by a Buddhist monk, the
author explains how the ancients relate massage, which includes Reflexology,
to the Five Elements and to palmistry. He states:
"The thumb, for example, was associated with the spleen, which belonged to the earth element, the index finger with the large intestine (metal element)...and so on....The form of massage known as 'from the water element to the earth element,' reminds us of occult concepts of this kind."
"According to Oriental magicians, the palm of the hand contains the secrets of life. There was also an ancient Chinese school of thought which maintained that the palm of the hand was a replica of Yin and Yang and could provide information about illness and good health and one's entire fate."
Masonry also uses the concept of yin and yang in their symbolism but it is in a disguised form. Albert Pike states that the black and white pavement symbolises "the Good and Evil Principles of the Egyptian and Persian creed. It is the warfare of Michael and Satan, of the Gods and Titans, of Balder and Lok; between light and shadow, which is darkness; Day and Night; Freedom and Despotism ...."
Masons also use the two triangles to represent this idea of opposites. In the Short Talk Bulletin, a pamphlet which is to be read in the Lodges, we are told that the triangles "are symbolic of good and evil, day and night, the Chinese yang and yin, etc.''
The two triangles joined together to form a hexagram indicate sexual union. This same viewpoint is also associated with the yin/yang. In Our Phallic Heritage we are told:
"But since union of the sexes is necessary to produce offspring, both sexes were represented in most religions. In the crudest forms of worship, representations of the genitalia of both sexes, or of the sex organs in union, were worshiped. Such was the worship of the phallus-kteis in Greece and Egypt, the lingam-yoni in India, the massebasher of Syria, the yoseki-inseki in Japan, the yang-yin in China, and the baal-peor of the Canaanites in the Bible.''
Masonic author, George Oliver, states:
"Thus the monad and duad were the phallus and kteis of the Greeks, the lingam and yoni of the Hindoos (sic), the woden and friga of the Goths, and yang and yin of the Chinese, and indeed, of the creative and destructive powers of every country under Heaven."
This thought is reiterated in Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilisation:
"Lingam and yoni, Shiva and his goddess, symbolise the antagonistic yet co-operating forces of the sexes. Their Sacred Marriage (Greek: hieros-gamos) is multifariously figured in the various traditions of world mythology. They are the archetypal parents, Father and Mother of the World, themselves the first-born of the pairs of opposites, first bifurcation of the primal, cosmogonic reality, now reunited in productive harmony. Under the form of Father Heaven and Mother Earth they were known to the Greeks as Zeus and Hera, Uranos and Gaia, to the Chinese as T'ien and Ti, yang and yin.''
One catalogue that sells statues of gods and goddesses as well as many other occultic items states:
"At once the most sacred and the most mysterious path to higher consciousness, Tantra refers to the Divine Union of Opposites. Taoists refer to these energies as yin (from yoni, the active principle) and yang (the recumbent principle)."
Since there is some yin (female) in the yang (male), which is represented by the little dot, and some yang in the yin, the concept of bisexuality is also symbolised. Charles Berger remarks:
"Sometimes efforts were made to make gods bisexual. Hermaphrodite is the best example of this. He was the son of Hermes and Aphrodite and embraced Salmaco, a nymph, who called upon the gods to make them inseparable. The gods heard the plea, and formed of the two a perfect being who possessed the characteristics of both sexes. From this mythical being comes the term hermaphrodite. Omphale was a queen of Lydia and the task-mistress of Hercules. She is represented with a lion's skin and a club, male symbols, while Hercules wears her gown and spins for her. Omphale is thus represented as double-sexed, as is Hercules by his dress and his work. The name Omphale is a bisexual name, coming from 'Om,' the Universal Mother, and from phallus, the male organ. Likewise, Janus of the Greeks not only had opposite faces but was double-sexed, or hermaphroditic.''
