The Adamic Woman
and the Redemption of the Twin-Shechinahs
Torah Wisdom, Feminine Fusion and God Consciousness
A Guide for the Kabbalah-Centered Woman in the Messianic Era
By S♀S - Sisters of Solomon
Inroduction to King Solomon's Song of Songs
King Solomon’s Song of Songs is a primary text for the Adamic Woman that also acts as a guide-book that leads her into the higher-dimensional Messianic Era. This book describes the unexpected dialogue and intensely psychosexual-spiritual exchange between King Solomon and his beloved partner named Shulamite. Among many other things they are also here to teach us the lost Jewish tradition of kosher spiritual eroticism. These teachings are part of the art and practice of “Feminine Fusion”. (Psychosexual-spiritual fusion-union between male and female as well as the fusion-union between the twin female energies that exist within every woman herself.) In addition, King Solomon has other important and intriguing women in his life, who are recorded within the chapters of the Book of Kings. These women, and their relationship to King Solomon, all represent different aspects of the ornate complexity of our female energies. The conscious Adamic woman needs to know what Solomon also knew about his bride-queen Bat Paro, his queen-mother Bat Sheva, and Malkat Sheva — the mysterious Queen of Sheba. For now, we will only briefly visit the narrative of the Shulamite woman in Shir HaShirim. S♀S (Song of Songs) is a woman’s manual of inspiration and direction into the Messianic Era — which has already begun.
The Song of Songs, composed by King Solomon almost 3,000 years ago, is one of the 24 canonized books of the Hebrew Bible, the Tanach. The number 24 is not arbitrary. 24 is the number of the “24 ornaments of the bride”. The bride is the Shechinah together with all her iterations, replications and manifestations. The sublime connection is that the personification of female energy (gevurot) — the Shechinah — is also the eternal bride of God and she is adorned with a set of 24 jewels and gems, necklaces and bracelets, earrings and nose rings. The 24 Books of the Torah are the self-same 24 ornaments of the Bride. Of all the divine ornaments of the Shechinah, from among all the 24 books of Tanach, the Scroll of the Song of Songs is the most sensual, exotic and even erotic — terms we will be defining in the light of Solomon’s teachings of the Twin-Shechinahs. The Shechinah has many names, surnames, and code names. In Solomon’s Song of Songs, the Shechinah is called Shulamite, a woman from a village called Shulam, from the same root as shalom. “Shalom” is not only a salutation and also meaning “peace”, but together with Shlomo — Solomon — both are Kabbalah codes for the zivug haKodesh, the ultimate union where all the pieces of the male and female energies in all the worlds come together to complete the peace of supernal union.
This is our thematic question: Can a religious experience or an act of sanctity be both sensual and sacred? Sexual and divine? Erotic and holy? Carnal and kadosh? Hint: In Hebrew the name Shlomo means “The One to Whom is Shalom”. As known, the word “Shalom”, in addition to its everyday usage, is also one of the many additional attributes or names of God. “Shalom” also refers to both male and female yesod energy and alludes to the higher source of the rectification and reunification of the completed masculine and feminine. This is the deeper meaning of the two names Shlomo and Shulamite that weave together the underlying fabric of Shir HaShirim. Together they are the personification and process of the holy zivug of the eternal male and female. And this is only an initial overview of SoS! Welcome to secrets of Solomon’s Song of Songs.
The eight chapters of Shir HaShirim, however, present a kind of spiritual or even religious challenge. The scroll of Shir HaShirim (in its original form it is a scroll of parchment like the Scroll of Esther) looks, feels, tastes, sounds and exudes the scent of deep, even painful sexual longing followed by loss, denial and exile only to race again towards the unrequited sexual longing of rapturous consumption. Yet, SoS is also profoundly holy. But there is holiness and there is holiness, and as the 2nd century Torah master of masters, Rabbi Akiva has declared, it is “Kodesh HaKedoshim” — the Holy of the Holies! The only other time this double expression is used by the sages is in reference to the Inner Sanctum of Solomon’s Temple — The Holy of Holies. Can there be a direct connection between the holy of holies of the psychosexual-spiritual love-drama of Solomon’s Song of Songs and the Holy of Holies of Solomon’s Temple where the Ark of the Covenant, with its twin male and female keruvim (cherubim) stood? But one is sensuous and even erotic while the other is sanctified and sacred. Are these not opposites — the erotic and the sacred!? Does Judaism, especially as viewed through the sensorium of the Kabbalah, allow for and even promote “sacred-erotism”? But what does “erotic” and “sacred” even mean? To begin to unfold this cosmic riddle, perhaps we should ask our teacher and mentor Solomon ben David, the “wisest of all beings”, for his wisdom exceeded even that of angels and demons and even the wisdom of the mysterious Queen of Sheba!
Shir HaShirim appears as a poem of rare beauty with metaphorical descriptions of the male-female relationship. A sacred erotic dance of the energies between the expanding, straight masculine light and the contracting, curved feminine light, both emanating from within the singular unifying Light of the Ain Sof. It talks openly of romantic love and heated passion. The images described stir the deepest layers of the soul. The partners describe each other in beautiful metaphors: landscapes and towns like Gilead, Lebanon, Carmel and Jerusalem; flowers like the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valley; animals like the gazelle, the young hart, and the dove; fragrances such as spikenard, blooming vineyards and the scent of apples.
The Song of Songs, through the personified voices of a man and woman, speaks simultaneously of sexual love and supernal romance through the explicit, yet discreet metaphoric descriptions of the human body and its various parts and attributes. The female form is painted with strokes of exquisite detail: her hair, eyes, forehead, lips, feet and ankles, even to the subtle rising curve of her tummy (clearly not “washboard abs”, but more Rubenesque). None the least of these human parts are a woman’s twin breasts. Within the entire book of the Song, the breasts — shadayim — are mentioned seven times. (Breasts are discussed more in the chapter on The Sacred Secret of a Woman’s Breasts). All through the Song, the constant craving of these lovers for each other’s body is virtually oozing from the pages yet, there is never any explicit physical contact. It is clear, however, that the male voice speaking knows firsthand of the firm curves and soft texture of a woman’s body. C. S. Lewis, British novelist, academic and Christian apologist wrote, “The beauty of the female is the root of joy to the female as well as to the male”.
These are the opening lines of the Song of Songs:
The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s.
May he kiss me with the kisses of his mouth!
for your love is better than wine.
Your oils have a pleasing fragrance.
Your name is like purified oil;
therefore, the maidens love you.
Draw me and we will run after you!
The king has brought me into his chambers.
The kisses of his mouth?! Isn’t she being a little abrupt? Shouldn’t it be, “May he love me with the love of his heart”? Or, at least begin with a friendly hug? But “Sometimes a kiss is not just a kiss, and a sigh is not just a sigh”. In fact, the Holy Zohar, rhetorically asks this very question:
What are kisses? Cleaving of spirit-soul (ruach) to spirit-soul. Therefore, kissing is by mouth, for the mouth is the outlet and source of breath (also ruach); so, kisses are kissed with the mouth in love and spirt-soul clings to spirit-soul, never departing one from the other.
Embodied in the sensuous Shulamite, the female essence speaking through her is the Shechinah. Here she is, unabashedly expressing her deep physical craving together with her spiritual craving for her beloved. In fact, all through SOS (Song of Songs) the boundaries between the physical and the spiritual, the erotic and the holy become blurred. Where does one begin and the other end? Yet, it is exactly this “blurring” that we are trying to understand. In fact, this “grey” area in-between is the key to Solomon’s wisdom and application. For the one who will understand, the new middle is far from grey, but rather it is refined and rarified gold, revealing a hidden light, as explained below.
Now, these greatly desired kisses are seven in number, with all of the Kabbalah connotations of the number seven (alluded to in the seven words of this verse). These kisses are reflecting the Shulamite’s initial bodily desires — the “arousal from below”, as known in Kabbalah (as well as in Chasidic teachings). The masters explain that these pulsations must be expressed first as the necessary prelude for what is to come — the zivug haKodesh — the holy union which then triggers the “arousal (radiation) from above”. In fact, the entire SoS is, from the beginning to the end, about the zivug haKodesh. Now, why should this be so? Some women are not concerned with this question, some women struggle with this question, but the Adamic woman entwines herself with the question, draws out the question, and absorbs it into her body and soul, as she aspires to live out and explore the answer.
There exists in many traditions a similar sacred union or archetypal male-female relationship. The sacred marriage, both physically and spiritually, is variously referred to as hieros gamos (Greek for "holy marriage") in the Western occult tradition, maithuna in the Hindu tradition, yab-yum in Tibetan Buddhism and the alchemical marriage in alchemy and Jungian psychology. This holy union may be performed in actual sexual relations or performed only symbolically, e.g., alchemy and Jungian individuation. The Kabbalah based zivug haKadosh shares elements from all these traditions. A fundamental distinction, however, is that during the zivug haKodesh, not only are the woman and the man a merkavah-chariot for the Shechinah and Her Holy One, but all their shared energy, pleasure and kavanah-intent are directed back to the original supernal couple, the higher-dimensional Adam and Chavah. Together this is part of developing Messianic consciousness and preparing for the Messianic Era.
The kavanah-intent of the zivug haKodesh is explicit in a theurgic meditation/prayer in the Kabbalah and Chasidic traditions (and occasionally in the Ashkenazi tradition) that is recited before the performance of mitzvot, before learning Torah, before prayers and even before the actual zivug haKodesh when performed between a woman and a man. This is the well-known formula “[I am now performing this blessing, prayer, or act …] with the intent to unite together the Hoy One (masculine) and His Shechinah (feminine).
Both King Solomon and the Shulamite woman together are a ratio, a relationship of parts that are eternal, forever replicating themselves over time and space. Their dance begins with the initial tzimtzum-contraction of the Ain Sof and continues all the way to “On that day HaShem (the aspect of Solomon) will be One and His Name (the aspect of the Shulamite) will be One”. Their names and outer garments change endlessly, yet in each case they are the exact same original energies from whence the entire creation comes from. They are the dance of the masculine straight, expanding light of the hasadim and the feminine curved, contracting light of the gevurot. Solomon is representing the Kadosh Baruch Hu and his Shulamite is the Shechinah. In the graph below, we see a few examples of the recurring pattern, the dual iterations of the Light of God’s Own consciousness. We glimpse the common thread that runs through Shir HaShirim — and throughout the entirety of Torah centered Kabbalah.
For many women — particularly if we have been influenced by Christianity and especially by Catholicism — sex in the city of the sacred is a virtual oxymoron. The very thought of saying “sex” and “holy” in the same breath can feel awkward, shameful and even blasphemous. Yet for some of us, consciously or not, the search for the alchemical union of the flesh of sex with the heart of the sacred has been part of our deepest womanly desire. For the one in a thousand, we must ask why this is? Our answer is that in the laboratory of our flesh, working with the tools of our mind, deep within the pulsations of our heart, we are apprenticed to the Shechinah. Our desire, consciously or not, is to alchemically meld together our bodies with our souls, our immanent eroticism with our transcendent spirituality. The product? In the womb of gestating consciousness, we can give birth to a new creation, a new middle. Our default of raw sexuality is not simply carnal, nor is our attempt at the “spiritualization” of sex, simply heavenly. It is both Godly and earthly at the same time. It contains elements of both carnal sex and supernal transcendence, but it is more than both. It is literally a new middle.
But what can we call this new creation, this convergence of heaven and earth that is taking place within our very bodies and skin? “Jewish erotic-spiritual consciousness”, “divine eroticism”, “sacred sex”? Alas, there is no proper translation. For lack of a word in English we have coined a new term — “feminine fusion” — that is explained more in the chapter on the Twin-Shechinahs. But whatever we call it in English the question before us ladies is, “Are we woman enough to handle it?” Do we even know where to find the handles to grab hold of it? Did we know that there were even kosher handles available to begin with? Perhaps normally not, but it is now possible in the pure and rarefied air within the truth of Kushta.
Sexual pleasure. Erotic arousal. Stimulating romance. Some of us, consciously or not, have been searching for an explanation to this enigmatic phenomenon. Why does orgasmic ecstasy feel so good? What is it that is so stimulating? What is stimulating what? What is stimulation itself? What does the word “erotic” mean, as opposed to simply being “sexual”? Are the terms and experience of sex and erotic synonyms for the same thing? Do you think Freud’s libido (Latin for desire or lust) is the same as the erotica of Eros (the Greek god of sexual desire)? On a medical campus, within the Department of Human Sexuality, does the more carnal libido and the potentially loftier Eros share the same therapeutic office space? Can they coexist in the same temple? In the same bed? “Behold Solomon’s bed; sixty mighty men of the mighty ones of Israel are round about it” (SoS 3:7).
This question takes us to a fundamental theme animating the Adamic woman and the tikkun of the Twin-Shechinahs. Once we have a definition of “erotic” then we can begin to ask the real question — is there such a thing as divine erotica or “sacred sex”? Putting it in more direct terms, does the divine realm, including the Holy One and His Shechinah, engage in higher-dimensional “sexuality”, including foreplay, union and afterplay? This is the most important question in the life of a woman whos’ soul yearns for intimacy with God, a literal zivug with her higher soul, her supernal consciousness, her God, her Adamic Man, “For your Maker is your husband; Havayah (45 = Adam) is his name” (Isaiah 54:5). For some of us — and it may only be the one in a thousand — this has been, consciously or not, a perennial mystery in our lives. It has sometimes been a thorn in our side and sometimes a crown upon our heads. But why has no Torah based or Kabbalah centered teacher — male or female — ever explained this to us? As the women of the generation of the emerging Adamic woman, it is now time to decode our own codes.
The zivug HaKodesh is also the union of both our femaleness and our maleness within ourselves. We are Her merkavah-chariot. Whether applied within ourselves or to the man in our life (or to both!), the Song of Songs unfolds and comes to life through our desire and through our oneness with the secret of our form and flesh. When we are secure in our Makom-Womb, then the love story of the Shechinah can effortlessly dwell though us, literally through our flesh. This is the simple meaning (p’shat) of the sod-secret, “From my flesh I will behold You” (Job). We are both being held and are beholding in the eye of the higher-dimensional consciousness of the Holy One in the holiest of all places — our flesh. Yet, even then, “No eye has seen it, except You God… “.
The romance novel of the higher future of the Messianic Era is also about love and sexuality among the sefirot and partzufim — the realm of pure transcendent Divinity. It is only because of “As above, then also so below”. A Kushta truth question is: Can a woman’s fleshy sexual sensations actually be transformed into divinity? Could this be the beginning of a definition of Feminine Fusion — a new Kabbalah centered term for “sacred erotica”? The fusion of the physical and the sacred? Can we even begin to see the direction of where we are going? The investigation into this question, however, is compounded by the fact that one woman’s sensuality can be another woman’s sexuality, which can be another woman’s erotism, and that woman’s erotism can be another woman’s pornography.
Can we construct a working definition of “erotic”? Or, is it something that you just can’t put your finger on (even though you can often touch it) to spell it out? Yet, our eyes know when they see it or when our ears hear it. Read the entire Song of Songs — it is a virtual Rorschach test for how one sees and feels about one’s own female sexuality versus one’s “spirituality”. Do you have a sense of where you are on the spectrum? Are you caught in the duality on the spectrum between two polarities – the carnality of flesh in opposition to the divinity of God? Can you peer through the inner lattices of the skin and mucous membranes of your own consciousness to see beneath the skin of sexuality? Can you use the lens of one to see through to the other and vice-versa, and then to compress them together into one “super-lens”, the secret of divine-flesh, the secret of sacred holy-dread? On an energetic level, what is it that we are doing with “Our Bodies, Our Selves” — along with millions of girls and women to whatever degree, in whichever way, young or old, consciously or not?
If these observations and questions do not engage us, do not challenge us, or do not touch somewhere deep in the flesh of our souls and in the soul of our flesh, then we need not enter. However, if one can begin to glimpse the Messianic light at the end of Solomon’s tunnel of sacred love — the Song of Songs — then we are prepared to enter the Kodesh HaKedoshim, the Inner Sanctum of the Holiest of the Holy. Here in the SoS, also echoing the radiating light of the Divine Mother, while in zivug haKodesh with the Divine Father, waits for us.
Ready for more Kushta truth? What does the Kabbalah — the Science of Truth, i.e., how to understand truth — teach us about our female desires? What is the ultimate source of the pleasures of our flesh, especially the orgasmic waves that ripple through our bodies, climaxing in paroxysms of absolute ineffable Godly delight? The source is nothing less than the original Ohr HaGanuz. The essence of our Ohrganuzic spiritual ecstasy and fleshed-out bliss is a microcosm, a miniature fractured fraction (a fractal) of the Light of God’s Own consciousness that was hidden away following the primordial “days” of Genesis. Now, where was the primordial light primarily hidden? In one of the last places we would think to look — but know only all too well. How misinformed and silly we have been to think that our other-worldly sensations were coming only from us, from our bodily sensorium of the five senses! Rather, we are the vehicles for the Ohrganuzic light, and it cannot reveal itself in the world without us. Moreover, the gift of this pulsating light was here before we were born, before we knew what sex was, and even now as we still try to figure out what sex even is! For the Adamic woman, it is time to return our nitzotzot fractal-sparks to the Adamic man, the Adamic Messiah. Yet, there is also another place where the Ohr HaGanuz is hidden away — in the holiest place on earth, on the holiest day of the year, through the holiest man of the moment, the Kohen Gadol, the highest of the priests.
When the Sages describe the placement of the Ark of the Covenant within the Holy of Holies in Solomon’s Temple, they refer to a tradition that, “The poles of the Ark (of the Covenant) pushed, stuck out and protruded into the curtain (from the inside) and they appeared (from the outside, in the antechamber leading up to the Holy of Holies, known simply as the “Holy”) as a woman’s twin nipples (whose protruding outlines are visible beneath her clothing). It is precisely between the pole-breasts of the Ark of the Covenant that the Kohen Gadol offered up the Temple incense with its 11 sacred ingredients within the Inner Sanctum on Yom Kippur. Upon entering with his pan of charcoal, he ignited the sacred incense, placed it down at the foot of the Ark of the Covenant, and witnessed as the thick plume of spicy-pungent aroma was released. The smoke ascended to the ceiling, some fifty feet high, and then the plume split into two columns of smoke spreading along the walls of the large chamber, circling down and around back to the Ark and the keruvim. This was intentionally arranged so that the union between the twin male and female golden creatures would be completely covered by the smoke. This holy orchestration, however, was also a holy “smoke screen” to conceal and to protect the interdimensional zivug haKodesh — the holy union between the male and female keruvim that was now occurring in real time. “As above, so below” and “As below, so above”. It is upon this majestic tapestry that the Adamic woman, echoing the Shechinah, personified by the Shulamite woman, proclaims in eternal real time — right here now — within the Kushta truth of our own Holy of Holies, securely held within the embrace of the sacred keruvim, “May he kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your love is better than wine”. And this, for the Adamic woman, is only the beginning.
Exercise
Infinity Eyes and Cosmic Connections
1. Standing barefoot in a relaxed position, place both hands, right over left, over Tiferet/Heart Center. Take 3 deep breaths. Focus on the feet grounding themselves to the earth, feeling the floor or ground below. Visualize pulling the energy of the Earth, up and through the body, through the heart and to the crown of the head.
2. Now that we have grounded to the Earth, we will now connect to Heaven. Inhale deeply. Open your arms wide, extending them overhead. Imagine divine radiance entering your hands and head, capturing this energy, allowing it to run through your head, hands and fingers. Now take your hands and bring them into the Tiferet/Heart center with both hands in a “prayer pose.” You have now taken the electro-magnetic earth energy and drawn it up to the heart center, and you have drawn down the heavenly cosmic energy. Now you are uniting these two energies at the heart center, creating a union between heaven and earth. (The prayer pose, is also a way of making a union. It is taking the right hand and left hand and by bringing them together it balances the polarities in the body. Now at the heart center, allow yourself to use the infinity loop visual, to write a figure 8 on your body, drawing it with your mind’s eye, starting at the base of your body and moving vertical up with the top loop encompassing the head. Do this several times. Release hands and take a deep breath. This can be done 3 times.
3. Holding this position with hands in a “prayer pose” position at the heart center. We will now use the visual of the infinity loop. This next union will be to connect ABBA (Divine Father) — represented by the Hebrew letter Yud — and IMMA (Divine Mother) — represented by the Hebrew letter Hey. Both the Yud and the Hey are the energies of the first two letters of the Holy Tetragrammaton (Divine Name of God). Now place your right hand on the right-side of your head and your left hand at the left side of your head. Visualize making a figure eight, uniting the right and left brain with each other. In your mind’s eye, allow yourself to flow back and forth following the pattern of the infinity loop. Hold for one minute. Release position and take a deep breath. Now bring hands again to the heart center. Hold for one minute. Release position and take a deep breath. This can be done 3 times.
