In the card-based oracle known as the Tarot, there is a trump card called Death. If this card appears in a Tarot reading, it is symbolic of change. To change from one state to another is what birth and death are. Yet death has taken on a sinister connotation in western society. To many in the modern world, death means the end. For those who believe in an afterlife, death usually means going to the afterlife and never returning. For those who don't believe in an afterlife, death simply means cessation of all biological functions and the end of consciousness. These beliefs arise from the linear perspective of the western mindset. It says, “What has a beginning must have an end.” The cyclical perspective sees everything moving according to a rhythm. It is a holistic perspective, as opposed to the reductionist linear perspective.
Linearity is natural, it is an easily observable phenomenon in our world, but look at the science of astronomy. Our moon orbits around our planet, which orbits around our sun, which moves with the rest of our galaxy around its center. Astronomy is largely about cycles, cycles, and more cycles. Cycles are difficult for the linear mind to grasp. Perhaps the most prominent linear perspective we have is of time. Most people will unanimously agree that time is linear, yet this is not what we experience. Time dilation, missing time, and déjà vu are all commonly reported experiences. How are we to reconcile this dichotomy of linearity and cycles? Let us turn to the ancient Chinese symbol, the Yin Yang.
Light and dark swirling together, constantly cycling, and each polarity contains at least a small amount of the opposite. In this symbol, one side is understood to be masculine, piercing, active, while the other side is feminine, incubating, passive. Here we have the piercing, reductionist linear mindset of the masculine energy that dominates our mindset and culture. The feminine, incubating, cyclical energy has been suppressed for who knows how many thousands of years. Yet even the masculine and feminine perspectives cycle in the Yin Yang. So if we currently have a masculine, patriarchal, linear mindset, at some time in the distant past we must have had the opposite. So too in the future will we have it again.
Then comes the problem of evil. Yes, evil. Whatever you call it, however you quantify it, there are destructive forces that frequently tear part of our world to tiny pieces. If you had to pick an essence, masculine or feminine, which would you say evil projects more? I would say masculine. The piercing, thrusting, reductionist energy can be used for evil. Women can, of course, be evil. But the energy that they are projecting is masculine. The Chinese equate the light side of the Yin Yang as masculine, Yang, the shining sun piercing and blinding the day. Yin is equated with the cyclical moon, passive, reflective, incubating in the dark womb. The dark is not synonymous with the evil energy in the Yin Yang, in fact it is the opposite.
If one wishes to do evil things in our world, one must masquerade as the light. This is an ancient practice, that which appears good is deceptive and evil underneath. The way in which the feminine has been suppressed for aeons could be understood by looking at Yin, the dark half of the symbol. Yang currently has control of us, but sooner or later, Yin will cycle back around and everything we know will change.