This question gets answered in an amazing essay by the Ari (R. Isaac Luria) describing what he calls, “The Seven Stages of Feminine Development.”[1] In that text he describes a stepwise path of growth that moves from diminishment toward fullness of stature which he presents as the universal pattern of feminine development.[2] Each step does not proceed smoothly from the one before. Rather woman first develops a kind of false equality, collapses again quite suddenly, and starts a new push toward growth and full stature which she eventually attains at the end of her effort. These seven stages comprise a single moon cycle. They apply on all scales, from the span of an individual woman’s life to the history of creation (for the entire period of existence from the beginning of time to its end is but a single circuit of the kabbalistic “moon”).
The discussion must begin by defining terms: The conventions of gender in kabbala echo the physical differences between men and women. To bestow is masculine, to receive is feminine. And yet, our present universe is the eighth in a sequence that kabbala calls the Rectified World.[3] Its distinguishing feature is its holographic structure—which means that every piece contains aspects of every other piece inside itself.[4] Every good contains a trace of evil and every evil a trace of good. Every Jew contains aspects of non-Jews, and every non-Jew contains a spark of Jew. And, what is relevant here, every man contains a shadow woman inside himself and every woman a shadow man. This is called the Principle of Interinclusion and each individual reflects the combination of traits that is his or her soul’s unique truth.
Focusing on the gender scale, a whole continuum of possibilities exists for combining male and female elements. We find men and women who have all the stereotyped traits of their gender, and others who display many features that are more typical of the opposite sex. Wherever a person falls on this continuum, one fact remains: there is no man that does not include feminine elements inside himself, and vice versa for women.
This is also true, but to a much lesser degree with kabbalistic archetypes (called partzufim). In the kabbalistic model the interincluded aspects of the opposite sex get projected outward as a separate individual, and become a personality unto themselves. Then, in the kabbalistic odyssey, these two partzufim (that had originally been one) rediscover each other and unite in marital union.
The feminine archetype (as opposed to human being) will be indicated by the term, woman, in italics; the masculine archetype by the term, man.
It follows that when kabbala discusses the partzuf woman, its list of descriptors does not simply generalize to individual women, for the partzuf is a pure archetype and women are complex entities.[5] The kabbalistic portrait of woman refers equally to the feminine parts of real women and the feminine parts of men. This is an extremely important qualification, for many popular writings irresponsibly assert that women should think, feel, and behave in one way or another based on kabbalistic “proofs.” And since everything is masculine in relation to what is below and feminine in relation to what is above, the term woman also applies to the entirety of creation in relation to HaShem, its Creator.
Now the Ari’s writings are among the most complex and technical teachings in the entire Oral Tradition. There are universes of implication to each sentence. This present discussion will focus on four points that provide a meaningful introduction to his ideas about the feminine archetype.
