Charles Mopsik

picture by Marc Attali.

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Today’s sharing from the Blue House of Via-HYGEIA was prompted by the viewing of a movie released in 2020, ‘Hereafter’-also called ‘Faraway eyes’, starring Nora Arnezeder, Christina Ricci and Andy Karl, in which Michael, the character played by Andy Karl, dies and finds himself in an inter-zone where here receives counseling about his recent death and instruction about what to do next; he then learns that for his soul to reach the next plane, he needs to find a soulmate. I kept thinking, while watching, of Charles Mopsik’s final work, ‘Le Sexe des Ames, aléas de la différence sexuelle dans la cabale‘ (Editions de l’Eclat, Paris, 2003 & 2021 for the second edition). Here, in this excerpt, he explains in what context the soul exists, what the soulmate concept is and how it works in the grand scheme of personal & collective evolution. The movie is nice, easy to watch and the impression it leaves after watching is strong enough to bring up many questions and food for thoughts. So, for now, we let Charles Mopsik skillfully guide us in the discovery of the ‘soulmate’ concept, as conceived in Jewish Qabbalah. From page 61 to 65.

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‘…Therefore, an important text from Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla (1248-1325), a castellan qabbalist and commentator of the works of Maimonides, taken from his little booklet, ‘The Secret of the Marriage of David and Bathsheba’, will show us how the ‘one flesh‘ of the verse from Genesis (2:24, ‘That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh‘) is connected first to the nature of the soul. The restitution-through-marriage-and-carnal-union of the soul of Man, as it was before its descent down earth and its subsequent split into two parts is, according to the exegesis of this qabbalist, hinted in the verse of Genesis 2: 24; the divine ‘one‘ (Deuteronomy 6:4, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one’) is equivalent to the ‘one‘ of the couple. Because the righteous man (Tzadik (Hebrew: צַדִּיק ṣaddīq) unifies by his valorous actions the two aspects of divinity, masculine and feminine, the sephirot Yesod (Foundation) and Malkuth (Kingdom), the ninth and tenth emanations, he is worthy of marrying the woman he was promised before his coming into this world, and he can restore for himself the original unity of his soul: to the divine ‘one’ therefore corresponds the ‘one’ of the flesh, as actioned by the ‘marriage’, the physical intercourse.

Gikatilla’s text describes the dynamic of the souls and their encounter after they came in the realm of the Earth. The verses of the second chapter of Genesis describing the creation of man and woman-who was pulled out of the side of man then brought to him-are re-read as narration of the stations of the journey of the soul: from its descent here-under, of its division in two parts-a masculine and a feminine-and of the restitution of its broken unity thanks to the ideal marriage. These biblical verses therefore do not describe the material creation of man and woman in the casual sense, and are not connected to the common and general situation of all men, but it treats of the process of formation, scission and restitution of the unity of the soul of the rightful ones. The ‘creation’ of man means for the qabbalist the making of the ideal Man as rightfully perfect, graced by a soul whose masculine and feminine part have been re-united:

‘And if a man who has been created, tidy up his business and fulfil the commandments in such a manner that he conjoin Yesod (Foundation) to Malkuth (Kingdom)-which constitute the perfect unity-then thanks to this merit, this man is worthy to find his feminine partner-who is the female in which the feminine part of the soul was thrown into and who was the feminine part of the original androgyn and to whom he is now re-united. And this is the secret of the verse: ‘Twins were born and with the attributes‘. (Bereshit Rabba 82:8, 84:21), it is truly a great secret! And this is what this verse describes: ‘ The Lord God has modeled as a woman the side He took from man and brought her to him. (Genesis 2:22) and this couple will thrive, which is the meaning of: ‘He will bond with his wife and they will be a one flesh’. (Genesis 2:24), ‘one’ (ehad), obviously!

Man was an androgyn and had a unique form, that was then split and these parts faced each other and mated, and hence he found a feminine partner, which is what is described here: ‘This time, it is the bone of my bones, the flesh of my flesh‘. (Genesis 2:23). Therefore, any one who conjoin Yesod and Malkuth is deemed worthy to find his feminine partner who was intended for him; it is written here: ‘YHVH is one‘. (Deuteronomy 6:64) and here also: ‘He will bond with his wife and they will be one flesh’. (Genesis 2:24) and this is indeed the perfect and good intercourse that does not carry any sort of baseness. A man who is truly rightful conjoins Yesod and Malkuth is such a good way that they are called ‘one’, therefore he is thus worthy of his feminine partner in such a way that he and her are called ‘one flesh’. There is a symbol referring to it in this verse: ‘One touches the other and not a single breath interferes between them‘. (Job 41:8), because there is between them neither obstacles nor impediments for them to not come intimate. The first type of marriage is about the rightful person who is worthy to find his feminine partner according to the secret contained in these verses: ‘The Lord is one’ (Deuteronomy 6:4) and: ‘They will be one flesh‘. (Genesis 2:24). To which another verse concur: ‘God installs those who are one in the house‘. (Psalm 68:7)… All the ‘ones‘, of course !’ (From Rabbi Joseph Gikatilla’s ‘The Secret of the Marriage of David and Bathsheba’, Editions l’éclat-2015).

Divine unity and human unity, of which a formula is proposed in Genesis 2:24, have an identical structure. The former alike the later implies the re-union of the masculine and feminine principles; in Man’s case, it is about the carnal union of man and woman; in the case of the divinity, it is about the union of the sephirot or masculine and feminine emanations, Yesod and Malkuth. This conception, which is also aligned with the Zohar, became the common good of the theosophical Qabbalah. A human soul thus is substantially masculine and feminine at the same time. That it is split into a male and a female entity is a necessary incident of the descent into the inferior world. The restitution of its bisexual unity, of its ‘androgyn form’ according to Gikatilla’s expression, is the main issue of the successful marriage, which being the voucher of an afterworld re-union and is already representing here on earth the reflection or the imitation-bearing the conditions and the limitations of the terrestrial world. This type of speech, which owes obviously a lot to the Aristophanes’ myth in Plato’s ‘Symposium’, without being reduced completely by it, offers the seeds of an un-settling of the clear cut split between a male sex and a female sex. There is no soul and consequently no human being who is not male and female at the same time. Sex is a separator that sets a devastating dissociation between two halves destined to be re-united. Sexuality as-desire-for-an-amorous-union is the attempt to overcome the damage caused by this primary dissociation. Therefore, the individual is not the carrier of a sex (masculine or feminine)-in clear of a split that marks and assign him to a man’s or a woman’s fate-the split-his/her sex- is his/her momentary and accidental existence expected to be exceeded. The common idea of the existence of a sexual identity substantially attached to each of us is put aside to the benefit of the notion of an identity as the face, the manifestation of a lack. To be a man or a woman it is to be what is missing to the other man or woman. Anatomic differences do not establish sexual identity; it is the inscription in the body of the organs that are missing to the other to be him/herself thank to me. The psychological or characterizable difference is connected to the same logic: we only differ by what we complete.’

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Source

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Trailer of the movie

‘Hereafter’

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