Veiled in Maya

Women; a mystery to men, to themselves, and in short to the entire universe.  Who can deny that women are confusing?  How many times has it happened that a woman gives off a false impression, only to surprise those around her when her veil of Maya, the Hindu term for illusion, is uncovered?  And even then, one cannot claim that he, or she, has fully grasped the essence of the subject.  It has occurred numerous times and yet, women still surprise us.  In Time and the Other by Emmanuel Levinas, the renowned Lithuanian twentieth century philosopher, stated that women are by definition “the Other” to themselves as well as to man.  “The Other” according to Levinas, is associated with the future- it is always becoming, always surprising, associated with shadow and hiding, and never expected.  To related the latter definition to women, he basically means that women are never in the light, no matter what the circumstances are.  They are just never fully understood!  While conducting a research on Edvard Munch, the Norwegian painter who happens to be one of my favorite “insane” and “depressed” artists, I came across a quote that shocked me.  Not because of its absurdity, but because of its incredible closeness to Levinas’s philosophic theory.  Accompanying his painting the “Madonna” he said “woman in her many sidedness is a mystery to man.  Woman at the same time is a saint, a whore and an unhappy person abandoned.”  And digging back into time, the “Hymn to Isis” which dates back to the third of fourth century B.C., discovered in Naga Hammad goes as follows:

For I am the first and the last

I am the venerated and the despised

I am the prostitute and the saint

I am the wife and the virgin

I am the mother and the daughter

I am the arms of my mother

I am barren and my children are many

I am the married woman and the spinster

I am the woman who gives birth and she

who never procreated

I am the consolation for the pain of birth

I am the wife and the husband

And it was my man who created me

I am the mother of my father

I am the sister of my husband

And he is my rejected son

Always respect me

For I am the shameful and the magnificent one

Because of the amazing potpourri of adjectives, characteristics and figures in a woman, she has become an object of admiration, confusion and even sometimes envy and scorn.  Her intensity shines forth at different times, highlighting certain aspects of this mélange called “woman” depending on the circumstance.  She’s too much to comprehend and is thus clothed in Maya.  For even though she possessed all these qualities, she feels overwhelmed and thus confused, alone and abandoned, depending on the degree of comprehensiveness and awareness she has of her innermost being- and fate.  Linking back to Munch, a woman is a combination of all the contradicting traits in one instant, a “saint” and a “whore” at the same time; strengthened in the “Hymn to Isis” where she is “shameful” and “magnificent” simultaneously.  The pressures women have to endure are tremendous!

This fervent closeness struck me to the point that an overwhelming force led me to my desk and compelled me to comment about it. It is just amazing and so true how women, misunderstood and hidden in the shadows, are sometimes the most pained and hopeless of us all.