The Sacred Embrace of Jesus and Mary by Jean-Yves Leloup

Author:Jean-Yves Leloup
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inner Traditions / Bear & Company
Published: 2011-11-17T16:00:00+00:00

In his book on “the secret of how Bathsheba was destined for David since the six days of the beginning,” Le Secret du mariage de David et Bethsabée, Rabbi Joseph Gikatila writes:

And know and believe that at the beginning of the creation of man from a drop of semen, the latter comprises three aspects: his father, his mother, and the Holy Blessed-Be-It. His father and mother shape the form of the body, and the Holy Blessed-Be-It shapes the form of the soul. And when a male is created, his feminine partner is necessarily also created at the same time, because no half-form—only a whole form—is ever created from above.7

Rabbi Todros ben Joseph HaLevi Abulafia (1222–98) also said:

Know that we have in our hands a tradition which says that the first man had two faces (partsufim), as Reb Jere-miah said . . . and know clearly that all the parts of the true tradition (kabbalah), taken as a whole and in their details, are all built on this foundation. They revolve around this point, for it is a profound secret on which mountains depend . . .; according to the initiates of the truth, of which the tradition is truth and of which the Teaching (Torah) is truth, the two verses in question do not contradict each other: Male and female were created by Him; and in the image of God he created them (both from Genesis 1:27). The two verses are one. He who knows the secret of the image, of which it is said “in our image in our likeness” (Genesis 1:26) will understand. . . . I cannot explain it, for it is not permitted to put this thing in writing, even indirectly, and it is to be transmitted only by word of mouth to upright men, from the faithful to the faithful, and only chapter titles and generalities are to be transmitted, “for the details will tell themselves.” These last words are borrowed from the formula of Haguira Ilb on the rules for transmission of the secrets of the Maaseh Merkaba (the Workings of the Chariot), and they are of great interest to us, inasmuch as they clearly show that the masculine/feminine duality is the foundation of the kabbalists’ concept of the divine chariot. Moreover, the Kabbalah as a whole is considered to be founded on the secret of this dyad. Thus sexual difference characterizes the human soul, the “image” in which it was created, and the divine realm which is its model.8

Thus in both the Jewish tradition and in the Gospel of Philip, the love relationship is not to be used for our own fulfillment, for the relationship itself is our own fulfillment and is the revelation of a third term of love, between lover and beloved. This third term is the source of differentiation as well as union. The biblical tradition calls it God and the evangelical tradition calls it Pneuma, or the Holy Spirit, the breath that unites two beings.

This theme of the union of two breaths turns out to be especially important in the Gospel of Philip.

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