Indian stream·Tao Te Ching·Chapter 6 — The Mysterious Female
The Valley Spirit never dies
The Tao as Mysterious Female — gate from which heaven and earth emerge. Gossamer-fine, used without exhaustion.
Source context
- Theme
- the valley spirit and the dark female as inexhaustible source of generation
- Soul-faculty
- Sentient Soul
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Vedanta / ShaktiThe inexhaustible generative ground (yoni) in Shakta Tantra presents a structural parallel to the valley spirit as the unceasing womb of manifestation, with the dark feminine as the matrix from which all phenomena arise.
- Kabbalah / BinahBinah, the supernal mother and the womb of becoming in Lurianic Kabbalah, mirrors the valley spirit's role as the concealed, inexhaustible source that produces without itself being depleted.
- Neoplatonism / PlotinusThe Plotinian concept of the One as perpetual self-giving without diminishment (Enneads V.1) exhibits cross-tradition congruence with the valley spirit's characterisation as undying and inexhaustibly generative.
Chapter 6
The valley spirit dies not, aye the same; The female mystery thus do we name. Its gate, from which at first they issued forth, Is called the root from which grew heaven and earth. Long and unbroken does its power remain, Used gently, and without the touch of pain.