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Female woman: completing gnosis for a male man
Ibn ‘Arabî discusses a delicate issue, something he does perhaps only once, in the last chapter of
his Fusus al-Hikam. The matter is summarised in the fact that God (haqq) can never be witnessed
divested of matter. And since witnessing cannot take place except in matter, a man’s witnessing of
God in woman is the grandest and most complete witnessing. In this sense, female woman is one
who completes male man in gnosis.
How did Ibn ‘Arabî present this idea?
It springs from contemplating the prophetic saying: “I was made to love three things of your
world, women, perfume, and the freshness of the eyes [that was brought to me] in prayer.” It may
be deduced that the basis is man’s yearning for his Lord, who is his origin, and that is why God
made him love woman - for as God, the Most High, loves him who is in His image, He makes
loveable to man the woman whom He extracted for him from him and who appeared in his image.
When man loves woman, he desires to conjoin and unite with her, and when the act is
consummated pleasure overtakes all parts of the body, and it is as if he were annihilated in her.
Thus, as God is jealous for his servant, He orders him to perform a full ablution in order that he be
cleansed of “other”, and return to observing Him in the one in whom he has been annihilated, i.e.
in woman.
God has cleansed man by complete ablution because he has to witness God in woman, and that is
the grandest and the most complete contemplation, because it is a witnessing of God as actor and
acted-upon simultaneously. Al-Qashani insists that this witnessing is in the act of copulation,
whereas the actual passage signifies that it follows it and is a consequence to it.
Femaleness as cosmic degree
Ibn ‘Arabî shows a great deal of ingenuity when he makes femaleness a cosmic principle
permeating through every creature and product, sharing with maleness the act of creation in every
plane. Femaleness and maleness are equal in their ontological amplitude, but they are separate in
their roles and degrees of being.
Femaleness is a degree of receptivity, of acted-upon-ness, and of being effected by maleness,
which is the possessor of the degree of actor and acted-upon. It is also for maleness the place for
depositing, seeding, growing, bringing into being, creating and manifestation. Each receptive and
acted-upon and being effected is in the degree of female even if it be male; and everything which
is a place for depositing, seeding, growing and creating, is in the degree of female even if it be
male. Therefore, every creature in the universe is “female” on both the ontological and the gnostic
levels. Ibn ‘Arabî says:
We are females for what He impregnates in us Praise be to God, there is not in this universe a
male Those men whom custom designates They are really females: they are my soul, my avail.
He says: “The degree of every acted-upon is that of a female, and there is nothing that is not actedupon.
Action is in reality divided between the actor and the acted-upon: from the side of the actor
comes the power or ability, and from the side of being acted upon comes the receptivity to being
empowered.”
According to Ibn ‘Arabî, femaleness and maleness permeate through the articulations of being,
each one of them bringing about the other. For there is no “male” actor, with its propensity
towards depositing, seeding and creating, except through the existence of a “female” who is
receptive to the action, a receptacle for that depositing, seeding, and creation. Femaleness and
maleness are two conjoined, simultaneous, mutually corresponding principles, sharing one act. In
spite of this, the degree of femaleness is one degree behind that of maleness. So how does Ibn
‘Arabî interpret the degree that man has over woman?
Ibn ‘Arabî transmutes “the degree” from its social and life context to one of Being. He regards
man as being in God’s mentation before woman, as he was prior to her in existence. Since the
Divine order is never repeated, the witnessing which happened to the former can in no way repeat
itself to the latter, because He does not manifest in the same image twice, just as He does not