This is a portion of an ongoing series which seeks to chronicle the occult, magickal and mystical alchemy roots of the transgender and postgender movements from secret societies and mystery religion sources. I have chronicled these in the Postgender Androgyny, Hermaphroditism & Beyond section.
The following is noted within chap. 11 “The Pre-Adamites. Profound Cabalistic or Rosicrucian Speculations” of Hargrave Jennings’ The Rosicrucians – Their Rites and Mysteries (1870 AD):
The ‘Sexes’ were ‘Two’. But ‘Beauty’ was ‘One’. Beards have naught of beauty, apart from strength. Beards are barbarous—hence their name. Hair is of the beasts, ‘excrementa‘; ‘tentacula‘. The Greek artists exercised their talents in the production of a kind of beauty mixed of that of the ‘Two Sexes’, merging and blending the softness and enchanting shapeliness of the one with the aggressive picturesque roundness and boldness of the other.
Each (separate) was the acmé of picturelike propriety and grace. But the third ‘Thing’ was a ‘New Thing’—otherwise a miracle—a new sensation. Hence Paris, hence Adonis, hence Ganymede, hence the loves of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus, hence the ‘feminine’ Bacchus, hence Hylas—hence these deities, in tresses, of neither sex, and yet of both. Greek art in this respect presents a phenomenon. As a phenomenon we must recognize and regard it.
The flower is supra-natural, treasonous, and abhorrent. It is ‘a flower of Hell’. Nevertheless, it is a ‘flower’. And thus the idea dominates the alternate ‘shaded’ and ‘shining’ halves of the whole world; of all art; of all philosophy; of all RELIGION…
The most difficult problem of the Greek artists was to exercise their talent in the production of a kind of beauty mixed with that of the Two Sexes, and time has spared some of the masterpieces. Such is the figure known under the name of the Hermaphrodite (Hermes-Aprodite; Venus-Mercury). In the classic times, both amongst the Greeks and Romans, as also in Oriental countries, a cruel and flagitious violation of nature (not supposed-so; even accepted as sacred) produced this beauty by enforcing sacrifice of a peculiar kind on young male victims.
In the case of true Hermaphroditism, that which art could only effect by dispossession, nature brings about by super-addition, or rather by concurrent transformation or mutual ‘coincidence’. The idea even lies ‘perdue‘ (like a silver snake) in the supposed origin of ‘Mankind. The most extraordinary ideas as to the origin of the human race have been entertained by speculative thinkers, and by theologians. The celebrated William Law believed that the First Human Being was a creature combining the characteristics of both sexes in his own individual person.
‘God created man in His own Image. In the Image of God created He him.’ Some controversionists consider that there is a LONG space due (but not allowed) between the foregoing and the succeeding: ‘Male and Female created He THEM’…
We are now into territory that I covered in Manly P. Hall “man was primarily androgynous” so please see that article for details.
Hargrave Jennings further comments thusly along these lines:
The idea that Adam and Eve were both originally Hermaphrodites was revived in the thirteenth century by Amaury de Chartres. He held—among other fanciful notions—that at the end of the world—both sexes should be re-united in the same person.
Some learned Rabbis asserted that Adam was created double; that is, with two bodies, one male and the other female, joined together by the shoulders; their heads (like those of Janus) looking in opposite directions. And that, when God created Eve, He only divided such body in Two. Others maintained that Adam and Eve were each of them, separately, an Hermaphrodite.
Other Jewish authorities, among whom are Samuel Manasseh and Ben-Israel, are of opinion that our Great Progenitor was created with Two Bodies, and that ‘HE’ separated them afterwards during Adam’s sleep; an opinion founded by these writers upon the second chapter of Genesis, verse 21: ‘the literal translation of the Hebrew being: ‘He (God) separated the Woman from his side, and substituted Flesh in her place.’
Note that Manoel Dias Soeiro aka Menasseh ben Israel aka Menasheh ben Yossef ben Yisrael lived 1604-1657 AD. Other Jewish authorities who also engaged in such fanciful and mystical reinterpretations are also late dated in relation to when Genesis was written such as Samuel ben/bar Nahman/Nahmani who lived early 3rd c. early 4th c. AD and Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon aka Maimonides and aka RaMBaM lived 1135-1204 AD.
Jennings also notes:
This idea resembles that of Plato. Origen, St. Chrysostom, and St. Thomas believed that the Woman was not created till the Seventh Day. But the most generally received opinion is, that Adam and Eve were created on the Sixth. These particular notions—extravagant as they must be admitted to be—as to the original ‘single-dual, dual-single’ characteristics of Adam and Eve are eminently Platonic—nay, cabalistic [Kabbalistic].
Jennings also notes:
Shakspeare has several covert allusions to the dignity of the myth of the ‘Horns’. There is much more, probably, in these spoils of the chase—the branching horns or the antlers—than is usually supposed. They indicate infinitely greater things than when they are only seen placed aloft as sylvan trophies. The crest of his late Royal Highness Prince Albert displays the Runic horns, or the horns of the Northern mythic hero. They were always a mark of princely and of conquering eminence, and they are frequently observable in the crests and blazon of the soldier-chiefs, the Princes of Germany. They come from the original Taut, Tat, Thoth, Teat, whence ‘Teuton’ and ‘Teutonic’. These names derive from the mystic Mercurius Trismegistus, ‘Thrice-Master; Thrice Mistress’—for this personage is double-sexed: ‘Phoebe above, Diana on earth, Hecate below.’
Hargrave Jennings under the pseudonym Sha Rocco wrote the following in The Masculine Cross and Ancient Sex Worship (1874 AD), III, Unity:
MANY are the efforts made to set forth to the eye the conception of Deity in one person. The idea has evidently been one of growth from the crude to the more acceptable; and the result attained denotes composite labor.
Fig. 12 is a figure of this kind.
It is a copy of an original drawing made by a learned Hindu pundit, for Win. Simpson, Esq., of London. It represents Brahma Supreme, who, in the act of creation, made himself double, i.e., male and female, as indicated by the crux ansata in the central part of the figure, which occupies the place of the conjoined triad and yoni of the original; the original being far too grossly shown for the public eye.
The reader will notice the triad formed by the thumb and two fingers and serpent in the male hand, while in the female hand is to be seen a germinating seed, indicative of reproduction of father and mother. The whole stands upon a lotus flower, the symbol of androgenity.
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