Duality - Love With Its Back Turned

This is my contribution to the Symbolic Meanings -driven Synchroblog on Duality.

Let me say right at the outset that I hold a deep conviction, damn near to a certainty, that the Universe (and that includes the multiverse, other dimensions, what have you) is very nondual. I don't know how you get degrees of nondual, let alone very nondual, but there's my feeling on it. The Universe is Very Nondual.

However, duality - black and white, male and female, sun and moon - does have a place in my spiritual practise. That's when I use magic, of course.

I was taught that duality is central to the application of European -and African, come to that -magical working, and it's been a bit of a struggle shucking that ingrained philosophy off in my broader spirituality. But I've done it, and come to see that while duality is not representative of the cosmos at large by any means, it is a useful, if limited, practical tool for causing change to happen in accordance with will.

Preparing for a magical working, I will always check the sun and moon signs. For example, this Samhain I will be celebrating (and working) with a sun Taurus, moon Taurus combination. Earthy, strong, long-lasting.
It strikes me in passing that our Southern Hemisphere Beltanes are always a little darker than those in the North as we invariably hold them with the sun in deep, watery Scorpio.

Anyway, as I was saying - the polarity of the symbolic emotional/intuitive moon and the structured/extrovert sun is quite important to this kind of work, to me. I have two reference points to work under, which represent different ends of a human-magical interface spectrum.

Likewise, sitting at the altar, I position two candles (dubbed superficially the Lord and Lady candles) on which to focus my attention-one silver, the other gold usually. I sit at the focal point of these two beams of light, as if drawing their differences and polarities into one place where I can use the energy thus created.

It is said that two polar opposites must be carefully handled to access the tension point between them, and I've found this to be largely true. The two opposite types of energy work together to make something entirely new.

On the other hand,it is also said that love, for example, is simply hate with its back turned. One coin, two different faces.
That strikes me as a good way to understand the use of duality in magic and occultism.

It is indeed all one - nondual,not-two - but the faces we access in order to create maximum force of will are the two which on the surface appear as distinct from one another as possible.

That's not to say I ever (or have ever) insisted upon male-femaleness as a prerequisite for coven workings. I believe that the soi disant female energies and the so-called male energies are not confined to the gender of the energy wielder. Rather they are the two ends of a human spectrum (again, at the place where it interfaces with the universe) which can be used by anyone, regardless of external (or internal) sex. It's a matter of mindset and opening to the wide, wild possibilities available to us all, here on earth.

The other moegoes taking part in this 1st-of-May synchroblog are:

Between Old and New Moons
Goddess in a Teapot
Jewish Myth, Magic and Mysticism
Full Circle
Mythprint
Stone Circle
Women and Spirituality
Frontiers of Wonder
Religion Think
Paleothea
Quaker Pagan
Heart of Flame
Pitch 313
Executive Pagan
Druid's Apprentice
Druid Journal
Manzanita, Redwoods and Laurel
Dream Builders
When Isis Rises