the Sacred Feminine

[tar-ancalime]

I feel sorry for the guys who wrote the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail 15 odd years ago, who no doubt Dan Brown borrowed from to make millions!

Not to mention poor Umberto Eco--I thought quite a lot of D.V. Code was cribbed directly from Foucault's Pendulum.

Regarding the main topic of this thread (and cleverly keeping my post from being deleted), I think that Mithalwen and Formendacil have got the right idea. I do have deep reservations, though, about the whole idea of classifying sanctity by gender, regardless of the causal chain involved. It seems to me immaterial, for example, whether Yavanna or Varda exhibits a sanctity that is somehow feminine in its basic nature or whether their femininity causes them to "manifest [their] sanctity in specific ways."

Regardless of which side of that fence one sits on, the effect of the whole argument is to draw lines around each divine being, defining what aspects of sanctity are and are not appropriate for that divinity. Rather than directly describing sanctity or divine beings, it seems to me that that type of discussion is more about the kinds of stories people tell ourselves to help us understand the unknowable. I'm going out on a Legendarium limb here, not having read HoME, but could it be that the very classification of the Valar into genders (like referring to the Sun as "she", as Ka pointed out) can be thought of as a storytelling device employed by the Elves?

(I feel a massive Canon correction coming on...I'm sure I deserve it! )