Unveiling The Secrets of the Feminine Principle

Jackson (The Role of Consciousness in Governance, 2008, etc.) aims to illustrate the importance of recognizing and understanding the presence of women in a patriarchal society.

To explain humankind and woman and man’s places in the universe, Jackson investigates the connection between femininity and masculinity in relation to historical, biological, religious, and mathematical contexts. Among the eight chapters, questions relating to where man/woman has come from and where he/she is going are answered by lifting the curtain of stigma that has traditionally veiled feminine philosophy. Jackson focuses on addressing the interdependent relationship between masculine and feminine and the duality of the two that runs the entirety of the universe. While the issues addressed are enticing, the argument-building concepts might only appeal to a specific, knowledgeable audience. Casual readers—potentially unfamiliar with finer points of the Bible, certain details of astrology, astronomy, Hermeticism, and a wide range of other occult and religious themes—may find themselves unable to follow many of the arguments being championed. For instance, when discussing the “etheric web”—“composed of etheric matter specific to the physical plane [and] a network that is penetrated and animated with fire or golden light”—Jackson introduces such terms as “Builders of Form,” then positions the web as “a counterpart to the nervous system and its ganglia of the human body” without any clear explanation of the juxtaposition. Multiple references are made to other books and theories, and while Jackson usually succeeds in explaining others’ ideas, attempts to combine them with her own views are often erratic and mystifying. The book is most lucid when Jackson explicitly lays out the seven aspects of the feminine, with each aspect listed out and clearly defined, then backed up with coherent historical justifications.

While the core concepts are provocative, labyrinthine explanations for connecting them keep the book from appealing to a wider audience.