Storgic Love

One is naturally tempted to compare the stages of storgic spiritual life and the stages of the Path of Ascent of seraphic life.

Life à deux may be compared with one-stage personal inner life, although one should not forget that higher souls can become a lot more active in life à deux than in simple one -stage personal inner life.

In a way, two-stage seraphic life may be compared with self-induced storge. The third stage of the Path may be said to correspond to Co-Itinerancy.

The doctrine of storge is the doctrine of the principal Encounter of one’s life. People come into the world not only for engaging in Encounters but also for implementing the definitive storgic Encounter and its supreme realization –Co-Itinerancy.

Co-Itinerancy determines the female spiritual ascent just as the Path determines the male ascent.

One of the goals of Co-Itinerancy is to assist in the entry to the free and high paths of life.

The work of seraphic growth is slower on the ascent path of women and faster on the ascent path of men. The work of storgic growth is slower on the ascent path of men and faster on the ascent path of women. Neither men nor women have advantages in collectivespiritual life.

In contrast to male spiritual life, the situation of the spiritual life of women is dramatic. When a man cannot lead a seraphic life, he has a backup and a compensation in collective spiritual and storgic spiritual life. When a woman cannot live a storgic spiritual life or has not realized herself in it, she can very seldom find compensation in seraphic life. A woman must look for compensation in the collective spiritual life that offers itself to her in her life circumstances.

A man fails to lead a seraphic life on account of spiritual insufficiency. A woman often fails to lead a storgic spiritual life, because such was her fate. It is more important for a woman than for a man to have collective spiritual life to fall back upon. On account of her great potential for spiritual life, a woman often enters a monastery because she has not been able to realize herself in storgic spiritual life and not because she is carried away by collectivespiritual life.

Up to a certain point, the ascent of both man and woman goes from temptation to temptation, passing through inner traps. However, their ascent proceeds differently, and their goals are different. The man puts life to the test in order to find the ascending Path and enter onto it. The man falls into existential traps in order to learn to get out of them. He enters pseudo-paths in order to find the Path through negative experience. A woman may or may not be aware of the direction of her inner development, yet she does not look for it and is not familiar with the male torments of searching for the Path. In her ascent, there are quite a lot of places that she cannot pass on her own and through which someone must lead her.

The man must pass through traps – enter and leave them, get caught and escape – in order to discover the unknown and the unknowablein himself ahead of time, i.e., his own Path of personal spiritual life. The woman needs not to discover the unknowable but to overcome the knowable, i.e., the barriers erected by life in storge. The man’s task is to find what is proper in seraphic life, while the woman’s task is to overcome barriers to storgic spiritual life.

Seraphic life gives a man lessons ahead of time. Storgic spiritual life puts a woman to the test. The same tests and temptations serve for men as “itinerant tests” of their capacity to keep ascending or staying on the Path and for women as tests of their ability to overcome what co-itinerant fate has in store for her. The man looks for the path, goes astray, falls off and climbs back on. A scar remains and will make itself felt on the next stage of the Path ascent. The graph of the different stages of his Path is a polygonal chain. In contrast, the graph of a woman’s Path is a gradual curve or straight line. If she encounters a mountain on the way, she climbs it. If there is an obstruction on the way, she makes her way through it. If a burden is put on her, she carries it.

Where the man comes off the Path, the woman throws her burden off.

If a man gets stuck or caught in an inner trap, he takes it as a sign that he is going in the wrong direction: he must make his way “forward” towards a different and new path. If the same thing happens to a woman, she must also make her way out – yet “backwards”. However, life seldom gives the woman a chance to retake the tests of fate. The male task is to learn and to get unstuck, while the female task is to avoid getting caught or stuck, to withstand, and to endure. What she must endure and withstand is determined by her life encounters (which cannot be avoided) and her co-itinerant fate. It depends on this fate no less than on the woman herself whether she will succeed in storgic spiritual life or not.

The female labor of being the guardian of Co-Itinerancy requires endurance instead of exploits, patience instead of heroism, and reliability instead of sacrifice. A woman does not have to sacrifice her life, but it is essential for her not to betray or be unfaithful, no matter how much pressure life puts on her. Faithfulness, patience, endurance, tenacity, stability, firmness, and reliability in love and life are the main co-itinerant traits of a woman’s soul and are all based on her strong willpower for overcoming the hurdles of life. In a certain sense, a woman’s stability is more precious than her changeability.

In storgic spiritual life,a woman must bear and withstand the burdens that are placed on her. A woman values the strength, power and firmness of the man’s performing will so much, because, paradoxically enough, all of these qualities are her own female qualities, whose lack must be compensated by the man. The latter is her assistant that builds on her female traits and efforts. When a man’s woman does not want to bear her own burden and carry her own cross, the man must perish himself under her cross.

Every normal female soul strives for storgic union with a man. Women’s liberation contradicts the sense of joint storgic being in the family and the Collective Soul.

In addition to ascending the Path, a man has another pressing spiritual task that involves the implementation of storge. The drama of male spiritual life is augmented by his total incapacity of creating storge by himself and at his own desire. The male spirit strives to build a nest in the female soul yet cannot do this until her spirit acquiesces.

The graph of the human Path of Life is, in actual fact, plotted not against physical or chronological time but along the time in which the flesh lives –corporal time. It would be incorrect to compare the corporal life of man and woman. Men and women of the same age cannot be compared corporally or spiritually. They are not contemporaries. Moreover, corporal time, in contrast to chronological time, does not flow uniformly. Tribulations of the flesh (such as disease) and, consequently, of corporal time are both necessary and inevitable on the Path both for men and for women. Nevertheless, for a man, they are one of the conditions of life that distort the timetable of his Path ascent. In contrast, they are normal for a woman. By itself, this clearly shows how difficult it is to speak about a regular schedule of Path ascent for a woman.

Abstractly speaking, corporal time flows faster (in comparison to physical time) for a woman than for a man. This puts the very possibility of female Path ascent in seraphic life in question.

A woman of the age of 20 has corporally lived more than a man of the same age. She is older than him. A woman has different corporal time than a man, and this time is connected with physical time differently for her than for a man. There are differences in the flow of corporal time between married and unmarried women, between a woman that has begotten and raised children and a woman that has never been pregnant, given birth or breastfed. For a woman, delivery, as a rule, marks a transition from one age to another – a transition for which she may be innerly prepared or not. Women that have given birth at different ages (say, 15, 20 or 30 years) also experience a different flow of corporal time over their entire life.

The male storgic period lasts for 10 years or so – roughly between the ages of 27-28 and 37-38. In contrast, the female storgic will may be realized at the age of 50, 55 or even 60. The storgic period in a woman’s life lasts for 35-40 years and may begin as early as the age of 16. Most women are ready for storge by the age of 20. This is seven years earlier than the age at which the storgic period of the man’s Path begins.

On account of her less energetic consciousness of personal spiritual life, the female soul is mostly incapable of the spurts of growth that the man uses to get out of different pits on the Path of Life. A woman that leads a masculine life in masculine temptations of false growth is virtually doomed in her Path ascent, all the possible merits of her soul notwithstanding. She is incapable of coming out of the self-induced motion towards an aim (not to speak of motion without an aim). This explains the futility of the spiritual ascent of a woman involved in the temptation of struggle (such as a female civil official, a businesswoman, a female public figure or a woman manager).

Of course, there are women that attain the state of consciousness of a three-stage man. These are singular cases, however, and each of them has a unique ascent trajectory. There is no normative Path of Ascent for the seraphic life of a woman.

The spiritual ascent of a man lies on the Path of seraphic life. The woman is a being that is coitinerant rather than itinerant. This primordial women’s state is not bondage but the itinerant singularity of the soul. The spiritual ascent of a woman lies in the Co-Itinerancy of storgic spiritual life. Just as we speak of an “itinerant (or non-itinerant) man” that traverses (or does not traverse) the Path of Ascent, we can also speak of a “co-itinerant (or non-co-itinerant) woman” that is (or is not) capable of CoItinerancy.

Co-Itinerancy is not a combination of the male and female Paths or a supplement to the male Path. Co-Itinerancy is just as valuable, perfect and worthy as the Path itself.

Co-Itinerancy requires, on the one hand, a man that has passed through itinerant personality birth and continued his active ascent of the Path and, on the other, a woman that is capable of CoItinerancy (a “co-itinerant woman”) and that has attained a certain level in storgic spiritual life.

The foundation of Co-Itinerancy is the intertwinement of a man’s own truth and a woman’s own conscience. He takes her as his conscience, making her conscience his own, while she takes him as her truth. Two types of seraphs are involved in Co-Itinerancy. On the male side, there is the seraph that implements the Path and emits rays of the spiritual consciousness of truth (the male seraph or the seraph of truth). On the female side, there is the seraph that is imbued with free moral spiritual consciousness (the female seraph or the seraph of conscience). Between them appears a cherub that increasingly combines (in cherubic growth) these seraphs into a single storgic union. It is cherubic growth that practically realizes Co-Itinerancy.

Co-Itinerancy or co-itinerant storge is the threefold spiritual ascent of the “itinerant man,” the “co-itinerant woman,” and the cherub (storgic being).

The storgic being acts broadly and unpredictably in human life. All types of human love contain something of the mystic origin of the storgic being, which bears the secret of storge. A human being never knows the will of the storgic being. This is the main secret of storge.

In the storge of revelation, a man and a woman receive the storgic being as a gift and must try to retain it. The storge of revelation promises Co-Itinerancy yet does not guarantee it. True threefold storge is realized in Co-Itinerancy.

In seraphic life, the main and leading agent is the man. In storgic spiritual life, it is the woman. The woman is in charge of introducing the storgic being into human life.

THIS FRAGMENT NOT TRANSLATED.

A woman gives birth, bringing a new person into the world. The co-itinerant woman summons her cherub into Co-Itinerancy, lets him in, and then organizes Co-Itinerancy. The woman is a vehicle of the storgic being. She bears the storgic being through human life. Among all her other guardian duties, she must guard Co-Itinerancy and preserve her cherub. In a certain (and not yet fully understood) sense, the woman is the organizer and guardian of the non-mortal life of her man.

The female Path of Ascent is the path towards the Co-Itinerancy of storgic spiritual life and, in this sense, the Path of Ascent of the co-itinerant woman. The woman’s co-itinerant ascent is the process and stages of attracting (conceiving) and engaging (engendering and developing) the cherub. The cherub is a direct participant of Co-Itinerancy, its driving force and its result.

We employ the term of Co-Itinerancy in two senses: Co-Itinerancy as the storgic spiritual life of a woman and Co-Itinerancy of an itinerant man and a co-itinerant woman. The latter is a continuation and realization of the former.

The road of female co-itinerant ascent is not only difficult (it cannot be otherwise) but also shaky. The co-itinerant fate does not always give the woman whom she needs when she needs him. Even if it does, it does not shower her with gifts or spoil her but offers her will and faith special inner trials that are often at the limit of her possibilities. For each and every gift of co-itinerant fate, a woman must pay with self-sacrifice. A woman that manages to attain Co-Itinerancy in her maturity was born with such inner qualities that few women inherit and even fewer realize. She must be able to retain her inner purity and radiate the warmth of storgic love. Conscience, humility, meekness, striving for good, and self-sacrifice: all of these states and phenomena reflect the initial state of openness of a soul within itself and its primordial willingness to step out of itself, to lose its selfness, and to break through its isolation.

The man in personal spiritual life traverses the Path of Ascent and participates in Co-Itinerancy. The woman in storgic spiritual life paints the picture of Co-Itinerancy, although she is not barred, properly speaking, from the seraphic Path of Ascent.

The traversal (ascent) of Co-Itinerancy has its own tides, fluxes and refluxes. To a certain extent, co-itinerant tides are superimposed on itinerant tides or correspond to them. We can speak of itinerant and co-itinerant inner birth and of the itinerant and co-itinerant triggering of inner life. However, they are not the same at all, even if they take place in the same person and during the same period of life and mix so thoroughly that one has trouble telling them apart.

On the itinerant tide of personality birth, the man enters the storgic period of life. The women’s storgic period begins after her co-itinerant inner birth. The female co-itinerant tide of personality birth launches the process of Co-Itinerancy and begins to implement it in practice. The female personality birth in Co-Itinerancy does not exclude personality birth on the Path. Nevertheless, these are different events and take place in different areas of the inner world.

Both on the Path (for a man) and in Co-Itinerancy (for a woman), the first acclivity is the acclivity of triggering: the triggering of personal spiritual consciousness for a man and the triggering of storgic spiritual consciousness for a woman.

Everybody experiences first love. However, only innerly born people experience the love of inner birth. The ideally pure love of the inner birth of a boy or girl triggers the launch of spiritual and storgic spiritual life. Generally speaking, a boy may be triggered for the Path even without the love of inner birth. As to a girl, she is triggered for storgic spiritual intertwinement, and this triggering cannot occur without love. The love of inner birth is necessary for a girl not only for the ideal experience of love (as for a boy) but also for storgic spiritual triggering itself. Storgic spiritual triggering is also the goal of the subsequent series of girlish loves that she experiences from her inner birth to her personality birth.

During the period of ideals, a boy acquires the consciousness of the separatedness of his soul. He recognizes the separatedness of his soul in the consciousness of the phantom of “his own God” – in the consciousness of the Ideal. He expresses his separatedness and inner uniqueness by keeping his distance from other souls, the Collective Soul and everything that infringes upon his inner independence. After his inner birth, a boy begins to refute and rebel, trying to escape from all inner guardianship that had existed up until then.

During the same period, a girl experiences infringements on her soul differently. She closes herself off rather than keeping her distance. The more keenly a girl feels her inner separateness, the more she feels ashamed, embarrassed, hurt and afraid of the nakedness of her soul. For her, the consciousness of inner separateness takes the form of shame, in which her soul feels its separatedness and which acts as a screen.

At the summit of the first acclivity of Co-Itinerancy (at the age of 12-14), a girl is timid in her soul, embarrassed by everything, trembling from shame,and easily hurt. She is untouchable. She is constantly reproaching, accusing, defending herself and complaining. “You should be ashamed of yourself!” “Shame on you!” These words seem so biting to her, because they allude to a certain ideal or highest point that one can ascend to, lean upon or refer to.

The girl has a different experience of the ideal than the boy, although what is characteristic of her is naturally partly present in him, too, and vice-versa. The boy experiences the ideal of the incarnation of “his own God” and is sensitive to anything not being up to his idea of perfection. The girl experiences the ideal of conscience and the state of inner attraction and is sensitive to everything that violates her notion of ideal attraction. He has an ideal sensation of the proper, while she has an ideal sensation of the improper.

From the innerly born girl emanates the light of the ideal of attachedness. Where a boy feels desecration, a girl quivers from disattachedness and the rupture of threads of attraction. The girl’s sensation of the ideal is not in her but from her and towards her. It is simultaneously the product and means of expressing inner separatedness. She evaluates everything that occurs to her with the help of the storgic ideal of mutual inner relations.

The concrete experience of the ideal or ideal aspirations and notions is always preceded by a thirst for the ideal, which cannot be evoked from the outside. One can evoke recollections of this thirst if ideals had previously existed in the soul. They remind itinerant men of their souls in their youth. A woman remembers her young soul differently. She usually recalls bygone events, people and passions around herself, herself in them and, most importantly, what underlay all her inner experiences –her girlish yearning. Girlish yearning is the basic functioning mode of the soul of a co-itinerant girl and the state of readiness that her soul enters in anticipation of co-itinerant work and the inner birth of CoItinerancy. This yearning is quiet and melancholy.

The feeling of girlish yearning is, on the one hand, a feeling of loneliness, forsakenness and unsettledness and, on the other, a demanding expectation and harbinger of something. The innerly triggered girl is familiar with this vague thirst and impatient anticipation that soon turns into the desire to love and be loved. Girlish yearning may well be the general and primordial state of guilt that triggers the soul of a co-itinerant woman in her youth with the help of her conscience.

On the acclivity of inner birth, a man is launched into the labor of the free manifestation of consciousness, the torment of truth and the spiritual ascent of the Path. Similarly, a woman (not every woman, of course, but only a co-itinerant woman) is launched into the labor of amative spirituality, the torment of conscience and the good, and the storgic ascent into Co-Itinerancy.

In a pagan society, female meekness is a character trait that is pleasant and attractive for some and unattractive for others. For us, meekness is important as a style of female spirituality, an aspect of personality, and an inner image.

Meeknessis not weakness or the lack of certain traits but the power of the awareness of the spiritual grandeur of someone who is dear and beloved for you and before whom you cannot help but feel humble. Take a look at a girl that is being triggered into storgic spirituality, sense her spiritual shyness and feel her eternal self-abasement before a certain powerful and stern force that she bears within her and that keeps good track of her. Her inner meekness is based on the reverential awe of a bride for her groom. Meekness is the expression of the feeling of a girl with which she prepares for future Co-Itinerancy. The higher a man is on the Path of Ascent, the more he is overwhelmed by a woman’s meekness.

Meekness is a necessary condition for a woman’s inner birth and inner storgic birth. A girl does not need to be meek for itinerant inner birth in personal spiritual life, which is the same for her as for a boy. However, although it sets its sights on itinerant personality birth (which is rare for a woman, however), inner birth does not open the way to a woman’s co-itinerant personality birth.

The acclivity of inner birth of a co-itinerant woman is a school of meekness and contained selfishness, i.e., humility. Meekness and humility are the qualities that make her a woman spiritually (in the co-itinerant sense). Here begins the path of her storgic ascent.

Female inner birth takes place in the expectation of the co-itinerant storgic being –one’s own cherub – and prepare the woman’s higher soul to accommodate it. In meekness and humility, the inner birth summons and invokes the storgic being towards itself.

During the period of ideals, a boy sees the highest point before himself and strives to attain it. During the same period, a girl in the self-effacement of meekness sees the highest point over herself, strives to take part in it and desires to be worthy of it. He hears the appeal and ascends towards the voice, while she is judged, hands herself over, and does as the voice says.

One clearly sees that a co-itinerant woman has been launched into storgic spiritual life when her soul experiences the need of entering into a full-fledged relationship with another soul and is capable of doing so. In the first triggering of Co-Itinerancy,the girl acquires the potential for spiritual participation, whose degree is determined by the force with which her soul has been triggered. A woman’s inner birth is not a one-time event but a process of triggering storgic spiritual life that never ceases in her as long as she “lives” as a co-itinerant woman.

At the start of Co-Itinerancy, a girl is triggered to some extent between the hypothetically smallest and hypothetically greatest values with countless possibilities in between. What triggering level corresponds to her inner birth? It is difficult to say, because, even if a greatest triggering value exists, it is a potential that becomes visible only when the woman becomes involved in the seraphic life of a man.

Every co-itinerant woman has her own itinerant man. Abstractly speaking, for a woman to undergo the inner birth of Co-Itinerancy, she must be sufficiently triggered to be satisfied with storgic self-realization with the help of a man that underwent personality birth. In actual fact, she waits for him and seeks him. This is difficult, very difficult for her. She needs help.

The soul of a co-itinerant woman is born in tears as well as shame, inner pain, compassion, guilt, offence, pangs of conscience and pity. During this period, she must be subjected to inner pain: the more inner pain she feels, the better it will be for her storgic spiritual triggering.

Life puts the co-itinerant woman to the test. The entire storgic growth of female Co-Itinerancy lies in overcoming. To be triggered, a co-itinerant woman must pass through inner initiation. A coitinerant woman should be brought up not on lofty notions that protect the soul (they may also be used yet not in the first instance) but on pangs of conscience, pity towards friend and foe, and pain from injustice, humiliation, vileness and evil. One needs to broaden a girl’s soul as much as possible without fearing to tear it, just as people in Antiquity were not afraid to maim the flesh of youths by forcing them to undergo certain trials. One should not shield a girl’s soul from the inherent nightmares of reality. Let her absorb as much as she can in her early youth. Will she experience pain? Yes, of course, sad though it may be. Nevertheless, when she is all bruised and battered, her soul will be capable of triggering.

The soul of a woman that has not been triggered is unfamiliar with the work of overcoming Selfhood. On account of her life conditions, character or collective inner demands, a woman may be submissive and obedient. However, she may well be submissive without self-sacrifice and obedient without humility. Spiritual work, including storgic spiritual work, is free. Only the lowest level of the storgic good is accessible to a soul in captivity. At higher levels, storgic growth is exclusi vely the result of the free work of the soul.

At the age of 18 or 19, a girl is obstinate in her very consciousness of her own self. Girls that are not prone to independence and contrariness at this age are a rare exception. For a co-itinerant woman, too,the afflux of meekness usually gives way to the reflux of obstinacy.

During the afflux of meekness, she feels guilty; during the reflux of obstinacy, she is proud and self-righteous. She becomes conceited instead of humble. And she complains everywhere and about everything.

A woman cannot fail to think about the near and remote future, even if she believes that she lives in the present. Every girl, even the most obstinate, beseeches, “Organize my life and give me a destiny!” The main temptation at this time is the temptation to control one’s own destiny. This temptation stems from the impatience of finally determining one’s destiny rather than from the fear of the future. People frighten a girl with the terror of solitude, yet she herself, frightened or not, trembles with impatience. Her soul is hungry, she sits before a table full of food, and she wants to eat. However, in contrast to the purgatory of the male Path, the desires in the purgatory of female Co-Itinerancy should not be consummated.

On the reflux of the first tide of the Path, a man encounters swamps into which he can fall, traps in which he can get stuck, and lures that can make him stray forever. However, all of these screens and barriers do not hide the Path. They are not temptations that must be “defeated” –in contrast, he should become familiar with them and even get stuck in them so as to learn to escape from them and survive.

Here his capacity of Path ascent rather than his tenacity is put to the test. A woman on the reflux of the first tide of Co-Itinerancy must be patient, perseverant, and enduring. Here, on the reflux of obstinacy, one of the main character traits of the ascending woman is put to the test: the strength of her inner will that she will subsequently use to guard Co-Itinerancy.

Everyday life practice is not at all suited for the co-itinerant woman, who resists in her youth her own inner penchant for succumbing to the enticement of happiness. She does so,not because she is waiting for fate to offer her something better but because she hears in her soul a quiet co-itinerant voice whispering to her, “Wait! The time has not arrived! It’s too early!”.

Blessed are the poor – yet not those who were not able to become rich. Blessed is the woman who managed to pass through the reflux of obstinacy without succumbing to temptation –yet not because the temptation had not been strong enough but because she did not allow herself to succumb and because she held out, knowing that the only way to find and enter her own door is to have the willpower and courage to walk past many open doors, to restrain herself and not to give up in her soul or body.

On top of everything, she must have a strong designating and implementing will for resisting the pressure of different natural forces acting from within and without. These forces lie not only in the passions and desires of her flesh but also in her striving to arrange her own fate and in her fear of the future. The natural force also appears where one extols the heavenly delights of love and, generally speaking, entices a girl in ways that are virtually impossible to identify. She must resist even without identifying them –a superhuman task, to be sure.

Just as a man before personality birth cannot distinguish between his own and foreign elements in his soul, so a woman before the personality birth of Co-Itinerancy does not know which door is hers and which is not. Her task is to pass the test of endurance, be patient in her soul and wait for her coitinerant personality birth. A woman who does not withstand this inner test either keeps trying different doors, irresponsibly coming in and out of them, or chooses a door that is not hers, enters it and tries to room in as best she can. In both cases, she loses the good of Co-Itinerancy. The soul of the co-itinerant woman must learn to be patient in its own self. Such inner willpower is unknown to the man until the fourth stage of the Path of Ascent.

Whereas the male soul passes in purgatory the itinerant tests for endurance on the Path, the female soul during the corresponding period of life takes a test for patience. The man is destined to haul the burden of the Path, while the woman must consolidate Co-Itinerancy. Thus the endurance of the male soul that is necessary for spiritual growth corresponds to the tenacity and patience of the female soul that is needed for storgic growth. Endurance in life is, generally speaking, a trait of the male soul, the main character and the male body. Patience is a quality inherent to women –a trait of the female soul, the female character and the female body. It is the same thing for a man to cave in under hard work, tribulations, dangers, difficulties, praise and other temptations as for a woman to lose patience – not to hold out, to give in to the pressure of the flesh, to explode, to grow tired of female duties, to cede to temptation, and so on. To tell the truth, people have always understood this, and, despite the similarity between endurance and patience, they have expected the former primarily from men and the latter primarily from women.

The reflux of obstinacy must not become too protracted. This would be dangerous, because the female soul becomes atrophied without active storgic work. The reflux of obstinacy continues until the female soul finally gives up, because it has found what it searched for or because it is too tired to wait any longer.

A woman’s personality birth stems not from her seraph of conscience but from her cherub. The woman brings the cherub out into human navigation as soon as her female fate allows her to do so.

The acclivity of female Co-Itinerancy arouses the cherub and prepares him for new storgic ties.

The inner birth of the female Path prepares the storgic being for navigation. Personality birth marks the total readiness of the storgic being to take its place in threefold storge.

Female personality birth takes place in storgic spiritual rather than personal spiritual life –in the regime of love rather than reason. In personality birth, a man knows “his truth” in the depths of his soul and can already follow it to a certain degree. In personality birth, a woman learns the correct direction of her personal storgic attraction (“her love”) and tries to realize it.

The storge of revelation is also miraculous insofar as it can arise before the co-itinerant personality birth of a woman and before the itinerant personality birth of a man. In the storge of revelation, it is not the woman that brings the cherub into navigation, but he himself chooses whom to enter, goes by himself into the person, transmutes by himself infatuation into storge, and realizes himself by himself.

Just as a man in itinerant personality birth, a woman who undergoes co-itinerant personality birth must know (or discover) her true self. A woman finds her love and her authentic self, i.e., her readiness for Co-Itinerancy, at the same time as she finds her storgic being. In the male itinerant personality birth, the seraph comes to the man. In the female co-itinerant personality birth, the woman manifests the storgic being and, in this sense, finds it.

The storgic being becomes the active foundation of human life when it produces in the upper person what the seraph produces in itinerant personality birth, i.e., forms the seraphic personality of the Structure. The storgic being realizes the higher person in the Structure and establishes the storgic personality of a woman. The latter, in turn, brings the storgic being into human life, giving it the possibility of realizing itself. As a result of personality birth, the storgic being and the co-itinerant woman directed themselves at one another – for mutual attraction and mutual realization.

After undergoing personality birth, a woman is ready for Co-Itinerancy. To this end, she must also find “her own” man that has undergone personality birth and implement storge with him.

A woman must forge the storgic image of her own man from youth on – from her co-itinerant inner birth when the storgic being only begins to emerge in her life. The emergence of the image of her own man for storge is one of the clearest indicators of a woman’s co-itinerant inner birth.

In co-itinerant personality birth, a woman becomes ready for storge,and, making the storgic choice of her own free will, she now confirms the merit and rightness of her storgic image of her man.

For both men and women, storgic love acquires vision after the personality birth.

For both men and women, the love of personality birth is an attempt to implement CoItinerancy. For men, this love is situated on one of the summits of purity of the ascent graph. There is no co-itinerant ascent graph, just as there are no fixed age summits of purity for a woman. The love of personality birth and the implementation of Co-Itinerancy may be deferred for a woman, though not for decades. The reason is not just that it is difficult to avoid squandering the energy of co-itinerant personality birth over decades. To enter Co-Itinerancy, the love of female personality birth must bind a woman with a man that has undergone personality birth yet (preferably) not entered the third stage of the Path. This limits the age of female co-itinerant realization somewhat.

A woman that undergoes personality birth and begins to implement Co-Itinerancy changes her attitude towards the man. He goes from being the main condition of realizing her dream of future happiness (and hence an object of play, struggle, care, temptation and infatuation) to someone whom she bears within herself –someone who is with her yet not for her own sake.

Before co-itinerant personality birth, a woman lacks the seriousness of the fiery male intellect. She is present alongside him (perhaps even esteeming and admiring him) yet does not accompany him in the sense of Co-Itinerancy. Sometimes, a woman wants to be guided by the intellect of one man yet prefers another. Such dualism is impossible for a woman that has undergone personality birth and is implementing Co-Itinerancy. She loves the man from whom she has conceived by the spirit of truth. Her love for him is not just an inner attraction but also a kind of spiritual well-being, in which she finds herself in the “normal state of the spiritual being,” to cite Tolstoy. Before him, she was (as she knows for sure!) in a false inner state. Now, thanks to him, she has found her true spiritual state, and even the slightest hint of the possibility of losing it causes her spiritual anguish. The reason for her serious and profound attitude towards the man that has fertilized her with his intellect is that, for her, he is her own light source, for which she recognizes her spiritual responsibility from a sense of love elevated to the level of spiritual gratitude.

Over the years, every woman acquires experience and “knowledge of life” and, from this position, takes an indulgent look at her past. The woman who has passed through personality birth into Co-Itinerancy rejects her former self not because she had not been familiar with life at the time but because she herself had been different at the time. Such a woman considers her inner state before coitinerant personality birth to have been dark and unenlightened. If such an awareness of the resurrection, enlightenment and salvation of one’s own soul is sustained and if the horror of one’s former self only grows instead of abating, then it is a sure sign that co-itinerant personality birth has taken place. For a man, personality birth is the exchange of the foreign for his own and the discovery of himself among the foreign. For a woman, the personality birth of Co-Itinerancy is literally a “birth” or the entry into a new and distinct world that differs from her rejected earlier world as light differs from darkness and the lack of light. She enters a door that leads out of the reign of blindness, stupidity, selfabuse, self-deceit, evil and non-life. It turns out that life, good, vision and intelligence begin only after passing through this door.

A woman’s storgic partnermay or may not be a man of the highest virtues. Even the highest qualities of the male soul may not satisfy the potentially co-itinerant woman. However, according to the Plan, she needs for storge an itinerant man for whom Co-Itinerancy is essential.

In contrast to personal spiritual good, storgic spiritual good does not depend on a single person. A person’s storgic growth requires growing into another soul that must accommodate him within it and, moreover, give him space and nourishment for his own work.

In contrast to the man in personal spiritual life, the woman in storgic spiritual life cannot ascend alone. The woman’s solitary path leads to co-itinerant personality birth. At the stage of “her own life” and beyond, her co-itinerant ascent depends on the man and his Path. The necessity of high levels of female storgic spiritual life also stems from the fact that Co-Itinerancy is connected to the Path rather than the Path to Co-Itinerancy. The more itinerant a man, the brighter the woman’s co-itinerant fate and the heavier her labor in Co-Itinerancy.

A woman depends not only on her storgic fate (which is primarily offered to her by the man) but also on the free will of her co-itinerant storgic being, which may refuse to participate in the proposed storge, set up limits, drag its heels, or move in its own direction. The independent storgic being has its own aims that we know very little about.

The co-itinerant woman needs an itinerant man. She looks for him yet so often does not find him. As for him, he needs a co-itinerant woman. One needs a special blessing to open the entrance to Co-Itinerancy. In itself, Co-Itinerancy is a supreme boon granted from above. It is difficult to enter into Co-Itinerancy.Nor is it easy, after entering into it, to preserve it in one’s life. The former takes place by God’s mercy, while the latter is the affair of two intertwined human souls.

The storgic being is given to a woman only once and for a single time. At any given moment, she has either already mortgaged her storgic being or not and implemented it or not. If she has once given her storgic being to a man unsuccessfully, she subsequently lives with other men, as a rule, without a storgic being, as if she had not undergone personality birth. A man may become dear to her over the years without becoming her storgic beloved.

At the First Critical Point, a man’s itinerant maturity is put to the test. There are no Critical Points in a woman’s ascent. However, she passes a co-itinerant test: a test of faith, inner fidelity, and staunchness in Co-Itinerancy. It is the woman that primarily implements the latter: this is why her soul takes the co-itinerant test of faith. It must either pass it or abandon Co-Itinerancy.

Storgic spiritual life has its own religious feeling –the storgic religious feeling –with its own faith and its own ideal. The co-itinerant ideal indicates the direction of storgic growth. Faith is the driving force of the storgic spiritual feeling.

An ideal (just as reason-wisdom in a way) is an anticipating generalization of vision and a special kind of inner knowledge determining the directedness of the soul, i.e., the vector of its aspirations. Faith is the force behind the action of inner willpower that gives the soul a sense of its power. The faith of storgic spiritual life, just as the Faith of collectivespiritual life, is experienced as something that is absolutely powerful and capable of overcoming everything.

The more powerfully the soul of a co-itinerant woman is triggered and the more staunchly she withstands the trial of inner will on the reflux of obstinacy, the easier the co-itinerant trial of faith (that she undergoes after the entrance to Co-Itinerancy) will be for her.

Most often, people fail to withstand life’s trials at the critical moment when their endurance and patience should bear fruit. This occurs, because the soul has not taken the firm decision (act of faith) to withstand at all costs, no matter what it takes and come what may. The reason is not that the will to withstand is not strong enough but that it begins to seem at the peak of trial that it is futile to keep resisting. The sense of futility is the hardest trial of faith. Only a woman that has withstood to the end is introduced (by the storgic being!) into the co-itinerant phase per se of a woman’s life.

The co-itinerant personality birth of a woman launches the storgic religious sense of her soul and establishes her faith. This faith triumphs through self-sacrifice. The latter is the apotheosis of storgic spiritual faith. The origins of this perfect faith lie in co-itinerant personality birth.

Faith, humility and self-sacrifice are all connected in the co-itinerant female soul. Just as one can say that self-sacrifice in love comes from faith, so one can also say that faith in humility comes from selfsacrifice and that humility comes from faith and self-sacrifice.

Can the loss of faith be amended? Both the female and the male souls possess a faculty of selfresurrection that often corrects errors on the Path and in Co-Itinerancy. This faculty is called repentance. Repentance is just as intrinsic to the religious sense as faith and ideal. Repentance, faith and ideal are three aspects of the religious sense both in personal spiritual life and in storgic spiritual life. The storgic being manifests itself just as vividly in repentance as in faith and ideal.

Faith sustains and moves the higher soul. Repentance sustains and revives the latter. The will to repentance not only purifies, elevates and revives the soul but also storgically connects it with the soul towards which it is turned. An abundance of repentance contains an abundance of humility, an abundance of faith, an abundance of self-sacrifice, and thus an abundance of co-itinerant grace.

There is no love without giving, yet some women love the men for whom they sacrifice something, becoming heroes; others love men to whom they yield and for whom they renounce themselves. Love of the first kind is full of female selfishness: in it, the woman believes herself to be higher and more important than her partner. In love of the second kind, the woman does not belong to herself but submits to the man’s guidance. Only a woman that has become co-itinerant can withstand the trial by faith and pass the test of overcoming love’s pride, inner selfishness and self-interest in the storgic relationship.

Storgic growth can be accelerated by the love of the co-itinerant woman, who is prone to selfrenouncement out of faith rather than self-sacrifice out of passion. She renounces herself not for the man’s sake. Without self-renouncement, the woman cannot preserve and nourish their co-itinerant storgic being. A woman’s self-renouncement in Co-Itinerancy is a sign of her successful co-itinerant development.

The relation of a co-itinerant woman to her itinerant man is always religious. With the help of this storgic religious sense that guides her storgic will, a woman develops her worldview, discovers herself, her own man and her own world, acquires storgic good and implements Co-Itinerancy.

The co-itinerant woman gives herself up; she does not calculate, assess or try to change her fate or course of life. She simply follows the call of faith-fidelity and faith-trust and goes where they direct her. The stronger the faith, the more durable the Co-Itinerancy and the more ample the room for the further growth of storge and the co-itinerant good.

In male personal spiritual life,“one’s own truth” comes into the soul in a vague form that has not been clarified by reason: it is a divination of truth and one’s mystical predestination, about which it is easy to get the wrong idea. A truth that has still not been understood takes root in the mind thanks to the faith of male personal spiritual life –the faith in what is emerging and entering the higher soul. If I know that my life has a meaning that I cannot understand yet that there exists Someone for whom my life has profound meaning, I know it not from self-knowledge but from faith. The former is usually acquired by reason, while the latter stems from the religious sense. Many years may pass before my reason grasps what I once took into my soul thanks to the sound of its “voice” that I perceived with the religious sense of personal spiritual life. Reason strives either to confirm what was acquired by the religious sense or to liquidate the results of the latter’s work. The confrontation of reason and faith inevitably occurs in male personal spiritual life, gives it content, and plays an important role in spiritual growth. The work of reason destroys superstitions, debunks authorities, and dispels illusions. They reappear in the work of the religious sense yet on a new and higher spiritual level and from a greater plenitude of life consciousness.

The work of reason is weakerin the female soul, and so the woman entrusts her reason to a man, which is possible only through an act of storgic religious sense or trust. When she finds her vehicle of reason, the woman takes his reason into herself through an act of faith and, in so doing, establishes the harmony of faith and reason in her higher soul. In contrast to the itinerant man, the co-itinerant woman experiences no contradiction between faith and reason. The female soul grows differently –first and foremost, through storgic growth that requires the knowledge of the good that is based on the needs of the female soul and is an object of her faith rather than the knowledge of truth that is acquired by reason-wisdom. The co-itinerant woman triggered by personality birth knows “her own good” and believes in it, just as a man knows and believes in “his own truth”. It is this storgic good that the soul of the co-itinerant woman truly desires and the power of whose faith is tested.

The faith of female storgic spiritual life has its work cut out for it no less than collectivespiritual Faith and more than the faith of male personal spiritual life. The staunchness of one aspect of a woman’s storgic religious sense –the staunchness of her ideals –is tested by the strength of the other aspect of her religious sense –the strength of her faith. The soul of a co-itinerant woman is, first and foremost, a believing soul. It believes, it is faithful, and it willingly entrusts itself.

For a man, the tragedy of life lies in the lack of meaning and the bankruptcy of ideals. A woman may be aware of the tragic nature of life yet experiences it with her storgic religious sense rather than with her reason. For her, tragedy lies in the collapse of her faith. Her existential suffering is the suffering of faith: she can feel betrayed in her faith, attachment, love, hope and fidelity. A man disillusioned in life believes that all is vanity and lacks meaning. A disillusioned woman believes that everything is transient and ephemeral and there is nothing to believe in.

All (and not just co-itinerant) women strive to believe yet suffer from faith. The striving to believe leads to female gullibility that is often pernicious and that gets the upper hand of women’s inherent cautiousness. If a woman believes in nothing and no one, she has fallen as deeply as she can.

A woman ascends the acclivities of female Co-Itinerancy through faith. Faith as a component of the ascending storgic spiritual force elevates the female soul to Co-Itinerancy. As the foundation of a woman’s storgic will, faith raises her to the level of Co-Itinerancy where she must fully entrust herself. Regardless of the binding force of pre-storgic amorous passion, if the ensuing inner relationship is based on anything except faith and the storgic religious sense, it will never be strong and durable but will break up or degenerate over time.

Co-Itinerancy is marked by the storgic triad of two seraphs and a cherub.

The seraphs and cherub cannot allow the dissolution of Co-Itinerancy, which would be a life catastrophe for them, too. A storgic catastrophe cannot occur in a realized Co-Itinerancy. If it begins to loom, then one of the partners is taken off the life path to avoid such a turn of events.

Co-Itinerancy cannot arise before a man enters the period of his own life. The female path of ascent properly speaking leads up to the moment when a woman becomes ready for the love of a man’s personality birth. It is a stroke of luck when a man enters Co-Itinerancy before the First Critical Point; this greatly increases his chances of embarking upon the third stage of the male Path. Simply being in a storgic relationship helps a lot at this time. Co-Itinerancy mostly forms during the third stage of the male Path, where it is essential.

Passing the Second Critical Point does not depend on human activities and feelings. Whereas the successful passage of the Second Critical Point is decided from above, Co-Itinerancy makes itmore probable for an itinerant man to enter the high path. Though not a necessary condition for entering the high path, Co-Itinerancy gives an advantage when passing the Second Critical Point.

The male path is the Path of the ascent of the seraph of truth in man. The seraph is also the main agent in the preamble to the ascent of the female path before co-itinerant personality birth. Before Co-Itinerancy, the cherub is not the prime figure of storgic ascent. He implements storge and waits for the moment when he himself can enter the life of storgically intertwined people.

After the emergence of Co-Itinerancy, the cherub takes charge of storgic ascent. Shaping and consolidating storge up to this time, the cherub now begins his own (cherubic) ascent. Storgic ( cherubic) ascent is the ascent of the cherub and of man together with the cherub. Co-Itinerancy is the stage of the cherub’s rule over storgic intertwinement.

Co-Itinerancy has a value of its own and not just insofar as it helps a man to traverse the male Path of Ascent and to replenish the energy spent there. Co-Itinerancy gives the cherub a special metaphysical dignity in the post-human world in which he lives. A cherub that has participated in CoItinerancy changes. Co-Itinerancy is the act of the mystical revitalization of the cherub to a new fullness of life.

On the free path, the cherub ascending into Co-Itinerancy transforms the male seraph’s “own theme,” creating both the theme of the co-itinerant life of a man and a woman and the theme of the two seraphs and the cherub in their metaphysical world. “One’s own theme” in Co-Itinerancy is the work of both the seraphs and the cherub.

What is the role of the cherub in one’s own sacrifice at the entrance to the high path and on the high path itself? How can one understand the storgic spiritual ascent of a man and a woman in its entirety, up to its highest levels? Why does God and man need storge and Co-Itinerancy? What is the purpose of the mystical work performed in Co-Itinerancy?

To clarify these and otherissues related to the ascent of the seraphs and the cherub, we are still lacking many notions that are introduced in the vast expanses of the second and third volumes of The Emergence and Transfiguration of Man.