I first heard the phrase reading psychiatrist Karl Stern who wrote, "All being is nuptial." It was in his book "The Flight from Woman", 1965.
Today, these references. First by Nicolai Berdyaev:
“The freedom implicit in the exercise of knowledge receives its illumination from the Logos. But it is also related to Eros. To pursue knowledge without any consciousness of love, merely to seek power, is a form of demonism. It may therefore be affirmed that knowledge is essentially cosmogonic. It should consider reality carefully and examine it conscientiously; for moral pathos is the true inspiration and urge for our quest for truth. The subjective freedom thus generated by the Logos transfigures reality. The nature of knowledge is conjugal; it is both male and female, it is the conjunction of these two principles, the impregnation of the feminine element by virile meaning.” ~ Solitude and Society
“The theological doctrine that God created man for His own glory and praise is degrading to man, and degrading to God also…. God as personality does not desire a man over whom He can rule, and who ought to praise Him, but man as personality who answers His call and with whom communion of love is possible.” ~ Slavery and Freedom
“Consciousness which exteriorizes and alienates is always slavish consciousness. God the Master, man the slave; the church the master, man the slave; the family the master, man the slave; Nature the master, man the slave; object the master, man-subject the slave. The source of slavery is always objectification, that is to say exteriorization, alienation.” ~ Slavery and Freedom
“Man can be a slave to public opinion, a slave to custom, to morals, to judgments and opinions which are imposed by society. It is difficult to overestimate the violence which is perpetrated by the press in our time. The average man of our day holds the opinions and forms the judgments of the newspaper which he reads every morning: it exercises psychological compulsion upon him. And in view of the falsehood and venality of the press, the effects are very terrible as seen in the enslavement of man and his deprivation of freedom of conscience and judgment.” ~ Slavery and Freedom
“Men not only need the state and cannot do without the services it renders, but they are seduced by it, they are taken captive by the state, they connect their dreams of sovereignty with it. And there lies the chief evil and a source of human slavery.” ~ Slavery and Freedom
Then by Marguerite Porete:
Marguerite Porete, though she wrote around 700 years ago, has a completely different way of looking at the nuptial metaphor. In The Mirror of Simple Souls she draws a picture of a love relationship between the Soul and God that is completely mutual in both self-giving and satisfaction. In this work Porete creates a dialogue between the soul and a host of characters such as Lady Love, Reason, The Supreme Lady of Peace, and The Spouse of the Soul. In the middle of this dialogue, the Soul comes to Lady Love in utter despondency. She has thought that the love between herself and the Divine was without “Lordship” but has found that she has nothing and the Divine has all. This creates an imbalance in the relationship and the Soul is heartbroken to think that she has nothing to offer to the one she loves.
Lady Love immediately reassures her that she herself is enough and that her lover is wholly satisfied with exactly what she has to give. In fact, the Divine is happy to give all of Godself in return for the soul’s gift of self. This is a totally different relationship from that which we see in the theology of recent popes and other theologians. In this relationship there are no set roles of “giver” or “receiver,” rather both have their turn in giving and receiving. This is a relationship that allows Marguerite to write of the soul,
“She swims and flows in joy, without feeling any joy, for she dwells in Joy and Joy dwells in her. She is Joy itself…”
https://www.womensordination.org/blog/2020/03/07/a-mutual-nuptial/
We wonder about the soul.
We try to suss what union or unity means in our everyday meander through both solitude and communality. What are the borders? Are we separate? What intercourse or spontaneous generation emerges into itself-reality, what the rational intellect can only interpret as a dualistic cause and effect.
Active in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE, early Greek philosophers, called physiologoi in antiquity (Greek: φυσιολόγοι; in English, physical or natural philosophers), attempted to give natural explanations of phenomena that had previously been ascribed to the agency of the gods.[8] The physiologoi sought the material principle or arche (Greek: ἀρχή) of things, emphasizing the rational unity of the external world and rejecting theological or mythological explanations.[9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_generation
Are we, as some suggest, mired in illusion fabricated by an anachronistic archaic consciousness that thrives on notions of division and separation? Or as a man in prison conversation said on Monday "We're addicted to divisiveness."
Can we imagine (like Berdyaev) a seeming interspersion, an advaitic non-twoness emerging as itself, not measurable as distinct or divided, but a fluidic swirling appearance of hardly recognizable reality?
In other words (my mother's favorite phrase) the appearance of non-appearance in its true nature, one and the same, within-itself/without-itself, of a piece, might we say, as peace?
Can we say we will never be at peace with the mind that drags us behind it?
Rather, to dwell within mind-itself is to abandon leading or following, resolving to dwell in what leather-worker philosopher from Ellsworth expressed as the true meaning of "anarchist?"
I wonder if he'd have agreed (annoyingly dying a few years ago) with the AI description:
Being an anarchist means believing in a society without rulers, hierarchies, or coercive authority, advocating instead for voluntary cooperation, mutual aid, and individual freedom, often through dismantling the state, capitalism, and other oppressive structures, though specific methods and focus (individual vs. collective) vary. It's a political philosophy opposing all forms of domination, envisioning a self-organized society based on free association and consensus.
(--search, anarchist)
Nuptiality. Essentially and existentially -- two-become-one. Or, perhaps, one-not-become-two.
Of course wording wears its awkwardness.
Men and women, men and men, women and women, God and humanity, creation and creator, this and that, you and me.
What is there to see? And if wholeness is the sole reality, is there any seeing at all?
Perhaps that's the terror of death for many of us.
No seeing.
Nothing other to see.
Just Being-Within.
As Itself.
Whole and impartial.
