Love and Power are the principal components of the Godhead (En Sof). They are still united in En Sof and in Kether—they split apart in the great symmetry-breaking (bifurcation) into feminine (Binah) and masculine (Hokhma) as the Emanation into Parzufs begins. Then the vessels break in the primordial catastrophe, but the feminine and masculine lines continue. We have Hesed and Gevurah as the second divine Love (the feminine principle) is the Goddess, the great mother. Power (the masculine principle) is God, the stern father. Hokhma the father represents Wisdom, Binah the mother is Active Intelligence. One can say, along with Kant, pure or intellectual reason (Verstand) and practical or moral reason (Vernunft). This is somewhat like rationality and reasonableness; the latter appears in the legal concept of “what a reasonable person would have done”, while the former figures in the economic or game theory concept of “rational decision-maker”, assumed to maximize personal utility. `

In the second stage, the Loving Mother Hesed tempers with Mercy the Stern Judgment of Father Gevurah. This is why Christians pray to the Virgin Mary to intercede for them with God. Hesed understands the. power of forgiveness and reconciliation. She would approve of Bishop Tutu’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, while Gevurah would prefer the trials of war criminals at international tribunals. But even he might shrink from revenge executions of genocide perpetrators in Rwanda. .

The mystical union of the two pairs produced Tiferet, the Flower that is worshipped by many as encompassing again the renewed combination of Love and Power, the saviour of the world.

The male-female pair recurs once more, in Hod, the male Majesty, as in a king, and the female Nezah or long-term sustainability, as in biological fertility. These two then together produce Fruitfulness and the Kingdom (the kingdoms of life on earth). Their descendant Shekinah then accompanies humanity to its self-inflicted exile from nature, becoming the Holy Ghost, again gender less as En Sof in the beginning. The symmetry~split is healed in the divine realm, but continues as sexual reproduction in most of the Five Kingdoms.

Summarizing: The Goddess has active intelligence, mercy and sustainability, and represents the Love principle that draws together elementary particles, atoms, cells, and organisms together in cooperation and symbiosis. God has wisdom (near-omniscience, somewhat tempered by allowing scope for human free will), stern judgment (e.g. of fitness by natural selection), and majesty as ruler of the Universe; He represents the Power principle that provides order and stability. It does indeed require both Mother and Father to bring up the unruly children that humans are.