Gender is a power concept in most cultures. Historically, many aspects of life are defined by gender: styles of dress, respectable occupations, family relationships, societal rights, and so on. Certain behaviors are considered more masculine or feminine, and may be considered inappropriate when shown by the opposite gender as a breaking of the natural order.
With gender being so central to our understanding of ourselves, it shouldn't be surprising that we commonly also use it to understand the world around us. While this article focuses upon Western occult applications of gender understandings, many of these associations come from wider mainstream Western culture.
Male Forces and Influences
Male forces are the more active and positive forces. They add more than take away and put out rather than absorb.Things commonly considered a male energy or influence include light, fire and air, the sun, gold, summer, day, activity, rationality, creation, dryness, life, and order.
Female Forces and Influences
Female forces are the opposite of male forces, and are generally passive, receptive and negative. Positive and negative here are frequently not judgments; they do not equate to good and bad. But feminine forces are often the absence of something, such as cold, rather than the presence of something, like heat.Things commonly considered a male energy or influence include darkness, water and earth, the moon, silver, winter, night, passivity, emotion, destruction, moistness, death, and chaos.
Activity and Passivity/Receptiveness - Western Concepts of Conception
Historical understandings of conception – one of the most fundamental differences between biological genders – strongly influence the concept of gender qualities. Aristotle suggested that babies came entirely from the father, and that the mother was simply a vessel in which to grow the man's seed into a child.While not everyone agreed with his conclusion, it was a common view of human generation. Thus, man was the active and life-giving principle, producing the living seed, while woman had only a passive role, receiving the embryonic baby and nurturing it just as soil nurtures a plant seed.
Social Concepts of Men and Women
Of course, there are social concepts at work here too. Until very recently, the natural order of humans in the West was considered to involve the men in charge and the women to be submissive. Men enacted law and order both in the community and in the household. Women were seen as naturally weaker, less rational and more emotional, leaving them in a naturally more chaotic state. Even respected female leaders, such as Elizabeth I of England, often openly admitted they were the weaker and frailer sex (although she didn't feel that should stop her from being queen).
Sun and Moon
The sun and moon are extremely common symbols for masculine and feminine qualities. The sun is central in most cultures, as humans understand that it is necessary for life. It also embodies lots of other masculine qualities, such as light and heat, which in turn imply things like summer and daytime, the brightest, warmest and more life-giving times.The moon is the inferior of the two great bodies in the sky. Renaissance occultists knew the moon did not produce it's own light but instead reflected the light of the sun, and thus it is more receptive and submissive. But the moon was also acknowledged to have a powerful influence on the earth in the form of tides (and water is a feminine element), unlike the other planets, which have no measurable effect on the physical world.
The moon is of the night, and the night is cold and dark. Likewise, the womb and the earth (which is so much like a womb for seeds) are dark as well.
