The New Divinity – On the Changing Faces of Spirit
A – The Dynamics of the World–Divine Relationship
Over fifty years ago, the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber declared that there occurred a “divine eclipse.” According to him, the relationship between mankind and the Divine had shifted – not merely human conceptions about divinity, but the very way in which they stand in relation to one another. He was not alone. Nietzsche’s “death of God,” Heidegger’s talk of a “turning,” Heschel’s notion of “the hiding of the face,” among others – are all are different formulations of a deep metaphysical intuition shared by the thinkers of that generation: that something essential and profound in the heart of Being had changed for the worse. And of course, all of this was closely tied to the Holocaust. Such formulations rest on a surprising claim: that the Divine, and the relationship between the Divine and the world, is not static but rather subject to change. Profound shifts may occur – not only in the historical sphere but in the metaphysical and mythological realms of humanity (and Divinity) – and those sensitive and wise enough are able to perceive and articulate them. But what is happening now? How can we define our own zeitgeist – and beyond that, the nature and status of the Divine in this era? Are we still in a time of divine hiddenness? Are we still in a materialistic, God-denying, secular age?
B – The Nature of Our Era: A Spiritual “Supernova”
It is obvious to anyone who can see that our reality has changed. We are no longer in the materialistic and secular age of the 19th and 20th centuries. In fact, it is difficult today to speak of “religion,” “secularism,” and “spirituality” in their old configurations. Religion did not disappear, it has grown stronger -but it is changing on the way. To put it differently: both religion and secularism are in decline, while spirituality is on the rise. The diversity within religions, between religions and outside of religion altogether is immense and almost impossible to track. Within this transformation, God - and the spiritual worlds more broadly – are once again revealing themselves. I do not have precise data on the number of contemporary channelers, but it is far larger than commonly assumed, and far larger than the “secular” self-image of our generation, which for some reason still dominates public perception. To offer a sense of scale: on Facebook in Israel alone, dozens of groups with tens of thousands of participants collectively are made up of “lightworkers” who regularly receive messages from angels and higher beings. In the United States, about two-thirds of the population say they speak to God regularly, and about one-fifth say that God speaks back. In Evangelical Christianity—which constitutes up to a quarter of the U.S. population—the phenomenon of being “born again,” meaning an inner revelation of Jesus and an experience of personal transformation, stands at roughly 90%. In Scandinavia, ancient Norse gods are revealing themselves to people in dreams and waking visions, and pagan religion is being renewed. Healing methods like ThetaHealing, practiced by hundreds of thousands around the world, teach simple and accessible techniques for communicating with the Creator of All That Is. And this is to name just a few. The message that comes forth from this to each and every one of us is clear: we do not need intermediaries; we can – and should – cultivate a direct, personal relationship with our Divinity. This is not necessarily simple or self-evident, but today, more than we seek the Divine, the Divine is seeking us. It seems, then, that we can speak of a new, contemporary shift in the relationship between human beings and the Divine – one that is opposite in character to its previous. To borrow an image from the Talmud: the Holy One is “taking the sun out of its sheath.” Everything is available, ever-changing and ablaze. Not only in technology, economics, and social ideas – but also in religious and spiritual ideas—we are already standing in a different world entirely.
C – The Rise of the Divine Feminine
Beyond multiplicity, speed and diversity, Spirit is undergoing a feminization in the emerging new age – a shift toward the Divine Feminine. Our longing is for a close, loving presence, in which all the aspects of life receive legitimacy and empowerment. The previous age – religious, and later modern-secular – was marked by distance between mankind and Spirit. True, the religious age emphasized obedience, but this was obedience to a Divinity dwelling in the heavens above; Even more so – a divinity that had already withdrawn. This is evident in the Jewish context of exile and the sealing of prophecy, as well as Christianity (which emphasized a God who had dies) and in Islam (with Muhammad as the Seal of the Prophets). God no longer speaks; we try to live by the impression left behind. This distance was expressed as well in social structure – hierarchy, obedience, an ethos of that which is worthy versus the unworthy, a morality of restraint and repression, and the exclusion of those who do not belong to beyond the boundaries of the society. It is difficult to fully define what is changing now, but clearly something has changed. A world of tangible Divine presence is not a world of hierarchy. It is not a world in which we think about the Divine, pray to a distant God or attempt to guess His will across the abyss of the unknown. An immediate Divine presence means, on the one hand, igniting life with far more energy, and on the other, a much more inclusive orientation, which embraces everything within itself without setting strict boundaries or definitions. The Divine enlivens everything, relates to everything, and is everything; therefore, all worldly phenomena and all life-forces are relevant to it. I refer to this form of divinity as feminine, in accordance with the human image of the womb. The womb contains everything within it and allows all its diverse elements to grow and intensify, out of a loving and generative desire for the unfolding of the child. The maternal desire is typically closer and more loving compared to the paternal model of instruction, structure and distance. I am not claiming that the masculine aspect of divinity has disappeared or that it has become meaningless; rather, I am saying that the feminine dimension is rising and becoming dominant, and that the masculine dimension is now understood as part of it and within it.
D – All Is In God: The Union of the Masculine and the Feminine
On a deeper level, the central innovation in today’s divine revelation is the ascent of the immanent aspect of divinity—moving toward a renewed panentheistic equation. What does this mean? Pantheism means “everything is God”—that the world itself is Divinity, in whatever way we may understand that. This idea disturbed many thinkers because it seems to imply that there is no God beyond the finite, limited world, and therefore the term panentheism was coined - meaning “everything in God.” That is, the entire world is divine, yet God also transcends the world infinitely. The nuances of these ideas have been explored in many mystical traditions, including non-dual Eastern teachings, Muslim and Christian mystics and Jewish Hasidism. Panentheism holds together a paradox: God is fully present yet also transcendent and absent. The immanent face of the Divine –“immanent,” meaning “present within – establishes the sanctity, equality, and value of all things in the world, as well as God’s nearness and accessibility. It is also theologically important so that we do not set limits upon the Divine, saying: “Up to here You belong, but no further.” On the other hand, the transcendent face of the Divine – “transcendent” meaning “beyond” – establishes the aspiration beyond the everyday, the banal and the familiar. It asserts God’s freedom from all constraints of this world, and likewise the human need to continually transcend our own limits, to seek further horizons, to search for truth, and to step outward toward the Other - toward what is unfamiliar as well as toward the relationship with other human beings. Yet this division between the two dimensions exists only from a human and logical perspective. In truth, there is no difference between them. The very same God dwelling within all things is simultaneously beyond them, and vice versa. Indeed, the same philosophical principle – the absence of boundaries and definitions in the Divine – is what establishes both faces at once. The Divine is one, undivided; therefore the existence of the world neither blocks nor limits it; in other words, the Divine is present within it, while the world does not define or confine it either. In fact, only this combination – whose root is an absolute unity – can establish the sanctity of life and its non-triviality. Only such a combination can affirm a Divinity that is, on the one hand, exalted and supreme—for if it were not, why would we long for it?—and, on the other hand, possible and accessible. Immanence alone collapses into a total identity between Divinity and the finite world, leaving no room for transcendence – effectively, a kind of atheism. Absolute transcendence, in turn, produces a divinity with no relationship to the world, no definition and no path of approach – also a form of atheism. Faith and life exist in the paradox and the tension between these poles. I refer to the close, immanent face of divinity as feminine, and the distant, transcendent face as masculine – and I am not alone in doing so. This is not merely a metaphor but points to the deep roots of religious intuition and human religious cognition, and at a deeper level, to the Divine itself that shaped these modes of thought within us. Yet it is important to emphasize that this does not refer to Divinity itself, which is simple and free of all definitions, but only to the way it appears to us. It is also important to remember that “masculine” and “feminine” are complex and non-binary categories, both in human experience and in theology. Nearness and distance are only one dimension among many, and there is a dynamic, ever-changing interplay between them. In addition, there is a third dimension – the neutral, non-sexed aspect rooted in the simple unity beyond both categories – which appears between them and through which one may think and live without relying on either, or in other words without using gender to approach the Divine. The immanent aspect is associated with the feminine, just as the fetus develops within the mother’s womb as a literal part of her, and just as maternal upbringing in early childhood is closer and more immediate. The transcendent aspect is associated with the masculine, which in the biological sense is a more distant and hidden root, and in the educational sense sets the demands and horizons that open the child to the infinite and to his or her growth. Every child needs both a father and a mother. It is senseless to ask which aspect we can do without; such a debate is violent and divisive. Beyond both stands the “third partner,” in the language of the Talmud – the expression of unity beyond binary division, the core of indivisible “Selfhood.” It is noteworthy that cultures that present only the transcendent face of divinity – such as Islam, in which tawhid (“unity”) is not only the affirmation of a single God but also the assertion that nothing else resembles Him – generally tend also, in human practice, to marginalize the place of women. Conversely, cultures that elevate the Divine Feminine – such as Tantra – tend to be strongly pantheistic and highly permissive regarding the various manifestations of life. Perhaps then there is more to this distinction than a mere symbolic structure. Jewish tradition refers to God in the masculine form, due to the limitations of the Hebrew language. Yet those who delve deeper into the Bible know that it did not completely reject or erase the earlier, more polytheistic and multi-gendered conceptions of divinity, but rather integrated them into the figure of the one all-encompassing God. In historical Judaism, the fatherly-masculine face of God is primary, but It also contains womb-like, maternal qualities. The Hebrew mystical tradition emphasizes this duality and envisioned a time when the Feminine Facet would rise and attain an independent status. The Kabbalah had recognized that the Divine undergoes processes, and that the masculine God longs for His feminine aspect, which had been diminished and lost. Yet the kabbalistic structures are complex, and many misunderstand them. Moreover, it seems that the day anticipated by the mystics has already arrived and should not be postponed to a distant future. To me it seems that today we must speak about these matters more clearly and strive for a more explicit, well-articulated panentheistic vision.
E – Spirituality and the Old Religion
The feminine Divinity opens the door to an era of love, inclusion, and gentleness. The firm, distant, commanding tone of the old, masculine and often castrating Divinity is transformed into knowledge of unconditional love, into the sense that God is with me wherever I go. It becomes a strengthening and cultivation of all of life's forces in their positive expression, and a mode of spiritual work stemming from the positive desire to be a good human being and a partner in the journey of Light – to resemble the Divine and to belong to it – rather than from bowed submission and blind obedience. It opens a religious worldview and way of life that are non-binary—not shallow or confined to the rigid dichotomies of the religious and secular eras, but inclusive of diversity and layering, complexity and multidimensionality. And this flexibility itself makes deeper dimensions possible, along with greater ease and freedom. It is clear that all this has far-reaching practical and political implications. Religions, which until now have built themselves upon centralized structures of power, authority and coercion (not to mention intimidation), continue trying to do so. They attempt to control the deepest and most intimate relationship of we have – the personal relationship between a person and their God – by controlling the meaning-making process. But this relationship has already been liberated. We thus find ourselves in something like a struggle of light against the powers of darkness, for many who maintain the old religious structures through control and fear stand in opposition to the very meaning of the sanctity of Life and of Being. One who finds their Divinity within cannot hand over their power to “stronger” or “authorized” leaders – nor to the coercive power of the state. Even the more subtle authorities – the internalized voices of parents, society, and the “big Other” of social norms – must gradually be cleansed away in the name of the one true and authentic authority to which we are bound: the inner Divinity, expressing Itself through our conscience. Conscience is a quiet inner voice belonging to the depths of a person and to that alone. The panentheism of the Divine establishes that the source of authority, morality, and goodness exists at the seed level in everything – and therefore also within each person’s self. This is where it ought to be sought after. This freedom from the expectations of society, religion, and state is not meant to lead to detachment but – again through the panentheistic view – to connection with society, and with all of existence, and to desire to do good and to take responsibility in regards to everything. As noted, the two faces of divinity balance one another. Alongside the inner dimension associated with immanence, one must also consider in moral reflection the transcendent dimension, with its attention to the other, to context, to family, community, people, humanity and the Universe. These expanding circles create a model in which everything is, on the one hand, autonomous and self-defining in rights and authority, and on the other hand bound in constant relation to everything else sharing the same context. Practical decisions emerge from these interrelations and from the whole they form. I believe this direction is the foundation for a sustainable society, for peace between nations, and for right relationship with nature – as I will elaborate, God willing, in a future essay. None of this means abandoning the traditions, commandments, or sacred texts of existing religion. On the contrary, the idea is to unify the transcendent and the immanent – and in doing so, to unify the old and the new, the inner and the communal, the essential and the literal and so on. Walking only with the “new,” without the context, wisdom, and rootedness of society and tradition can lead to chaos and to the justification of all evil, as we will discuss soon. The Torah was given through Divine revelation, just as the New Age also comes out of revelation; there is no need to reject one in favor of the other, but to discover the unity that exists between them. The Divine is one, and therefore even if it sheds one form and dons another, this does not mean that the message has changed. Yet understanding what to adopt from tradition and what to relinquish, or how to live commitment together with freedom, is a personal journey with no given formula, one that each person must walk for themselves – sometimes anew every day.
F – The Challenges of Contemporary Spirituality
The New Age is not free of challenges. This new revelation arrives with difficulties of its own, no less – perhaps even more – demanding in certain respects. We described the current zeitgeist as “the sun emerging from its sheath”—a kind of supernova of knowledge, stimuli, revelation and content. This knowledge, unrestrained and unregulated, spreads in every direction, including destructive and negative ones. The first and most obvious difficulty is the struggle to contain the excess and intensifying chaos of our time. The pace of information and change has surpassed our ability to keep up with it (which is why, in a certain sense, we are in a post-historical era). One may argue that what is required of us is to open ourselves to the “new,” to loosen our grasp, to surrender the illusion of control, and to move on with Spirit toward what is uncontainable. And indeed there is truth in this. However, in order to conduct proper and stable human lives, we also need anchors, boundaries, and certainty. These are also necessary in order to serve God, to cultivate positive qualities, and to contribute to our environment in a generous and sustainable manner. Another difficulty is that the multiplicity of information and “light” does not necessarily produce greater knowledge or depth; more commonly, it produces the opposite. Attention spans shorten, and thus the capacity to absorb complex or reasoned statements diminishes. Sources of information are not examined, and therefore it is not facts that set the tone but popular influence, which floods the emotions. The consequences of this –ignorance and a thinning of human experience – include heightened aggression and actual violence. The atmosphere of boundarylessness – “anything goes” – created by new media and reinforced by the progressive currents that the New Age is a part of make it extremely difficult to form orientation, inner boundaries and a healthy sense of identity (all of which are essential for psychological wellbeing and meaning). In this climate, depression and anxiety surge to the level of a real epidemic, because they are life-threatening conditions. Political polarization intensifies, often driven by ignorance rather than by responsibility. Worse still, the progressive ethos is not merely permissive of multiplicity - it actively resists attempts to restrain it. It strengthens “repressed” or marginalized forces in society at the expense of the dominant narrative, yet does so out of a destructive impulse rather than from responsibility and long-term building. All of this relates to another aspect of feminine spirituality: it is not only loving, compassionate, and receptive – it is also chaotic, angry and destructive. This appears in the ancient myths of goddesses and feminine beings (for example, the many faces of the Divine Feminine in Kabbalah, Tantra, and Wicca), and it is logically consistent with our analysis. The Feminine Divinity is the immanent aspect – identifying with the world and tolerating all. As all-encompassing, it also tolerates even the forces of darkness. It lacks the structure and direction needed to distinguish between good and evil, to create stability and meaning; indeed, in its more militant version, it opposes these very distinctions. It rejects hierarchies and value-gradations between good and evil, the exalted and the everyday, matter and spirit, and so on. But in doing so, it does not bring the transcendent into the everyday to create a connection between them - rather, it breaks down the very meaning of transcendence. The low and profane are granted sanctity, while the exalted takes on distorted forms and qualities; and the very possibility of distinguishing between them disappears.
G – Conclusion – And Setting Out Anew
In the New Age, the possibility – the opening – for redemption has emerged. Yet it is only a possibility, for much else has opened as well. The ancient hopes of humanity - such as world peace, a loving relationship with the One, infinite abundance and knowledge filling the earth – are more attainable now than ever before. And at the same time, the world drifts further away from them. To truly receive the face of the new Divinity – and along with it, the many dimensions of the present and future eras – we must in my view integrate the dual facet of panentheism: to know that the Divine is here, present in the countless manifestations of life, and at the same time to elevate and purify it from and beyond all of these. Otherwise, Divine Presence on earth will not be a maternal and salvatory aspect relating to things from above, but immersed within them – and may become sullied by their corruption. Above all, what is required is our positive response to the service of God – the willingness to contribute to the world, and to the divinity revealed within it, and not merely to passively “seek” it or delight in it. For this, in my view, we must integrate the new and the old – the New Age and religious traditions. To walk only with the “new” may lead to disorientation and to embracing any nonsense that may arise in someone’s mind, without scientific or moral discernment—as is common in the New Age milieu. Yet tradition too contains heavy residues of darkness – conceptions of authority, distance, and estrangement between God and the world, which also manifest in the human spheres of actual life. But the path is not to reject either of these entirely; rather, it is to purify them, combine them and strive toward the original expression of the Divine, which lies beyond both. In the end, the aspiration of the New Age of Feminine Divinity is the Messianic era – a world-order that realizes the most delicate and elevated yearnings of humanity, in a panentheistic horizon and perhaps beyond it. It is possible; yet it may remain only a possibility. Where will the world actually go? How will it arrive there, and in what form and manner? In my view, the answers to these questions remain open – and are largely dependent on us.
