The Heavenly Mother

The heavenly Mother rules beside the male-stereotyped deity. The Zohar declares: &ldquoThe King without the Matrona is no King, nor He great nor highly praised.&rdquo The Shekhinah is regarded as the &lsquocelestial Donna&rsquo (ha-isha ha – &lsquoelyonah&rsquo cf. 11, 54b) or the &ldquoWoman of Light in whose mystery are rooted all the females in the earthly world.&rdquo In brief, she is the eternal feminine. The feminine quality of the Shekhinah is understood, first and foremost, and emphatically, in her role as female partner in the sacred union, zivuga kaddisha, whereby the unity of the divine potencies is realised through the union of male and female.

The Zohar&rsquos image of the Shekhinah contains dark and destructive traits as well, even though, compared with other female figures in the history of religions, these are relatively pale and tend to be ascribed to an aspect of the G-dhead that allows them to be presented in a relatively harmless manner. Within the G-dhead, there are sefirot of both love and judgement, both of which emanate their energy into the Shekhinah depending upon which potency dominates, the lower Shekhinah appears either as a loving or as a punishing and chastising mother.

Two passages in the Zohar, passages 1, 223 a to b and 111, 60 b – shows how far the author&rsquos mythical imagination can go in uniting these two figures. The first passage describes the Shekhinah in its appearance as a power of harsh judgment, manifesting destructive traits – but at the same time as the mother of Metatron, the highest potency in the angelic world, who &ldquoemerged from between her legs&rdquo. The second passage is closely related to the first, developing variations of the same theme in new directions in a manner typical of the Zohar.

Abigail Sarah Bagraim, Email info@abigailsarah.co.za

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