In Liber XV, The Gnostic Mass, Aleister Crowley wrote:
“For of the Father and the Son
The Holy Spirit is the norm;
Male-female, quintessential, one,
Man-being veiled in woman-form.”
So one would assume that he recognized and supported concept of gender fluidity (and diaries of his time at Cefalu would more than bear that out!) One would imagine that this current exhibit at the Japan Society in Manhattan dealing with the wakashu, adolescent males who were available to both males and females for sexual liasons. And that’s just scratching the surface! The exhibit is open till June 11. The Japan Society is located at 333 East 47th Street.
In part the article states:
“She said that like other societies in the past and present — the hijra in India; the ‘two-spirit people‘ in some American indigenous cultures — the diversity in gender definitions and sexual practices in Edo Japan challenges modern notions that male and female are clear either-or identities.
“The art on display shows how many permutations were acceptable in Edo society: men or women in liaisons with the adolescent wakashu; female geisha dressing like wakashu and engaging in rough sex; male prostitutes cross-dressing as women; men impersonating women on the Kabuki stage, a tradition that lasts to this day; and even a male Kabuki actor impersonating a woman who pretends at one point to be a man.”
Read the entire article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/arts/design/when-japan-had-a-third-gender.html.
