Women and Men, Their Roles in Magic Options

Greetings! (PS the title may be too limiting...go nuts!)
This was a bud starting to form in the Abramelin thread.
It was stated that women should be excluded from the Abramelin working.
It was remarked upon about that this was a prevalent attitude in Western esoteric traditions.
I maintain (whether right or wrong) that this practice takes place all around the world and that Magic can be dictated by the sex of the user. Women and Men handle/channel energy differently....
So, what are your thoughts?
Is this merely an attitude foisted off on us by the patriarchal church? Or does it stem from something alittle more basic?
Do tell us your opinions, theories or thoughts about this! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

much of this debate is caused by one side thinking of "women" as defining "women in general", and the other side defining "women" as "every single female on earth".
I am in the later category.

The fact is, that "women in general" do exhibit differences from "men in general". If we clip off the narrow tips of the bell curve, then yes, there are some very valid gender stereotypes to be drawn. And if we're speaking to that 90% majority in the middle of the bell curve, then gender based stereotyping 'can' be a fairly valid viewpoint. (hopefully this concession will show that I am not a rabid feminist or anything of that ilk).

Bym mentioned the newage mentality throwing everything into a homogenized loaf... I think this very much helps to outline some problems in the communication in this thread. I'm not "new age" myself, and I don't really think that most of the others who share my view in this thread are newage in mentality either (I could be wrong in some cases). Also, I'm not really throwing everything into a homogenized loaf. The paragraph above (i hope) illustrates that I don't hold to a 'zero difference' sort of paradigm at all.

My 'point of contention' with strict black & white rigidness applied to 'restrictions' in magical training, is that such an attitude, which brings absolutist thinking to the table, completely ignores those long sharp tips at the edge of the bell curve we mentioned earlier.

Stereotypes don't *always* fit. I'm a woman and I've never dated anyone taller than me (mostly because 95% of humans aren't taller than me). I'm also infertile, so by any 'reproductive' based definition of gender, I'm a nonentity, which is a little bit insulting. I also do not ovulate, and I don't produce menstrual blood. In a word, I've had some hormonal anomalies growing up. I'm not exactly the only human out there who has. As a result I don't fit into a tidy little black&white label box. There are, whether you choose to believe it or not, human beings who are simply 'neither' gender (as in they are 'both'). It's not common, but they do exist. And there are people who are genetically one gender, who for endocrinological reasons grow up to be almost entirely the other gender. The idea that male & female are absolute categories is simply flatly categorically scientifically *incorrect*. And yes, that does twist a thorn in the side of some peoples' happily simplistic sexual orientation, and/or dislike or disgust for alternative orientations, and/or one's tendency to project sex objectification onto other humans. But being uncomfortable to one's paradigm doesn't change the reality.

Also, speaking in terms of energy itself, I follow a vedantik tantrik path, and I have personally seen and interacted with people, energetically, who were one gender physically, but clearly and obviously had the energy flows, resonances, and structures of the other gender. Usually they were physically normal in terms of their physical gender. This cross-gender energy trait was pretty much always echoed by their being psychologically very much like the other gender though. In some cases they were acutely aware of this and very discomforted by it. In other cases they seemed more oblivious, but realized that for whatever reason they didn't 'fit in' socially or energetically speaking. Much more common than these completely 'crossover' cases of energy flow/type, are "hybrids" which contain an odd mix of energy types & flows.

This isn't "second hand", this is personally observed energy in other people. Both in a tantrik setting, as well as less formal settings. I am afraid that I have a bit of a habit of connecting to and examining people energetically, it's not even a conscious intent, it's more like that's my default mode and I have to use intent in order to *not* connect to others. This is related to my psi vamp energy body nature. I don't suck the energy out of people anymore though, as I have realized access to literally limitless energy resources, and I maintain a very high energy level almost all of the time. As a result I end up going around, still reflexively connecting to others, but I end up energizing them instead of the more typical psi vamp result. Which is nice, because connecting to others' energy structures seems very much built-in to my nature, and it always felt awkward and uncomfortable having to avoid such connections in order to control my innate energy appetites. Fortunately it's no longer problematic, and I can connect away, without concern of harming people. Granted, it could be viewed as an invasion of privacy, but considering my ultimate spiritual goals, 'privacy' is sort of obsolete as a concept.

It is also interesting to me, that within the text itself it describes leprosy as an inherited disease. It's not. So right there you see that the text is not infallible. If someone contracted leprosy, went to a doctor, got some modern medicine, and was completely cured... should they be banned from engaging in the practice? if so, why exactly?

There is a reason I dislike dogmatic thinking. it creates blinders, it traps one's will in the chains of a single and often simplistic obstinate paradigm, it deforms the mind's otherwise brilliant capacity to engage the senses and reason. And it's unfortunately very common in western esoteria prior to crowley. Personally I'd veiw crowley as a transitional figure between dogmatism and innovation. It's not really the fault of western esoteria, it stems from the fact that 'most' of western esoteria is rooted in judeo-christian monotheism, which is itself very dogmatic (among other things...)

Given the otherwise mostly insightful and fascinating outlooks which many on this forum have shared (regarding dualism, dogma, absolutism, etc.), some of the ideas put forth in this thread seem surprising to me, even confusing. Let me ask all of you this:

Do you, personally, feel that the restrictions outlines in the Abramelin magical text are valid, necessary, or serve any significant purpose considering the paradigm growth which has occurred since the time it was written? Do you really and sincerely feel, deep down, that it is a 'difference in energy' which inspired the text to group elderly, cripples, lepers, and women together? or some other mentality perhaps?

This post has been edited by Kath: Nov 20 2009, 02:50 PM