Bending the Binary: Polarity Magic in a Nonbinary World - A Review
I would like to start by saying that I really enjoyed this book. Deborah Lipp (the author) did a fair job, I feel, in explaining what polarity (in the magical sense) is, where our ideas for it come from, and how it can be done differently.
The gender essentialism that is so prevalent in Western Occultism has long rubbed me the wrong way. Gender is not even a cut and dry thing with people, let alone the divine (who is way beyond our understanding of gender) so why do we make like it is during ritual?
This book does an excellent job of not only providing a basic understanding of the societal/phycological/biological basis for gender but how gender has been historically viewed in the Western world. It also explains the origins of magical polarity. Spoiler: humans love categorizing things, but we are really bad at it!
Through this book I got a crash course in the history of alchemy and Kabbalah, both of which had huge influences on Western Occultism. It also touched on Greek Philosophy which is where the ball really got rolling with the classification of everything into opposites. Deborah even provides some examples from outside the Western Magical traditions on classification to really hammer home that this style of classifying everything as male or female is not universal and is largely based on culture (with different cultures associating different things to masculinity and femininity).
The book offers some guided meditations and different rituals on different polar energies, and while these offer some interesting ideas, I felt they were a bit lacking. This book also has discussion/journaling questions and prompts which I found to be much more useful! I could see this being a great book for an occult book club, or a Coven, Grove, or Circle to read together and even work on some of the rituals or meditations.
Deborah is a Gardnerian Wiccan, and that does shine through in her writing, however I feel that people outside of Wicca will find good use and information in it as well. Speaking of Wicca though, this book helped shed new light (for me as an uninitiated dedicant) on the role of the Hight Priest in Wiccan ritual.
Deborah highlights what she feels are the most important polarities when working magic (Force/Form, Self/Other, Active/Passive, Dominance/Submission, and Night/Day) and while I don't necessarily agree with her list, it did really get me thinking about different polarities and how they could be harnessed in ritual. She also gives ideas on new ways of working with gender polarity besides the tired male+female=magic.
Overall, I recommend this book. I think it's an important read for anyone who is looking to lead more inclusive rituals, find new ways of engaging with polarity outside of gender essentialism, or is just curious about this whole polarity magic thing.
