the word LOVE
pros and cons of having the one word, an epoch of the corruption of love, the universal truth of love.
OCT 08, 2024
Let’s preface to say that the word is powerful. It frightens people, makes us cry, makes us do things, things we can’t ever explain why. It’s the essence of the divine and the thing that moves us through life. Because without love, is there any life?
In English, we are essentially speaking Hebrew, just upside down and backwards. And in the matter that words are spells, well, one can only assume what the intentions were behind that. In many ways, we curse ourselves by saying things we don’t mean or things we don’t understand. It’s important to be very literal and specific, to speak that of which only you know to be true within you. And as we all have our own variations of truth and what is true to the individual, there are universal truths that tend to stick out of every language and culture and virtually every human.
In many other places around the world, cultures and languages included, there are many different types of love. There is love for the love of a friend, love for the love of a mother, love for the love of a lover, etc. And in between all of that, there are different levels. Let’s consider the Arabic language for example, there are many different levels of love to describe all the different feelings that occur when one falls in love:
1- الحُب (‘Al Hob): This stage of love holds no negative signs, or red flags. The emotions are overflowing for your loved one.
2- الصَّبابةُ: (‘A’ssibaba): This love is a longing or deep faithfulness that spills from one’s heart for the one they love.
3- الهَوَى: (‘Al Hawa): When you’re attracted to someone in the initial stage of falling in love. It’s when you are crushing on someone and your attraction is high or quickly growing for someone.
4- العَلاقَة: (‘Al “Alaaqa) Being attached or clinging to someone you love, essentially being in relationship with them. This love feels like it’s inseparable from your heart.
5- الجَوَى: (‘Al Jawa”) Love that pains the heart with grief and distress that cause the lover to give up on love.
6- الخُلَّة: (‘Al “Khulla) Derived from “Khaleel, this is a love that means unification or soulmates. This love feels like you found the one - a perfect match.
7- الكِْف: (‘Al Kilf): The heart can get overwhelmed and distracted by this love.
8- العِشْق: (‘Al “Ishq): At this stage, often called adulation, love is blind and a faint yet strong desire prevents the lover from seeing any flaws in their relationship.
9- الشَّغَف: (‘Ashaghaf) The heart is overtaken by passion at this stage of love. It’s like a burning love for your lover.
10- الشَّعَف: (‘Asha”af): Love that consumes the heart that can kill it emotionally.
11- التَّيْم: (‘Attaym): A love that has you chained to your lover and you’re too entangled to see it. It is a love that has you under a spell.
12- البَتَل: (‘Al Batal): A love that pushes the lover to defeat.
13- الوَلَه: (‘Al Walah): Love that feels like you’re losing something or losing your mind.
14- الهِيام: (‘Al Hiyam): A strong love that makes one lose all sense of reason. This love cannot live without the lover.
And you see, I have not changed my language from the word love. And in english we go from liking someone to loving someone, but you might understand all of these stages of love entirely, you may have even felt them at times. And I could use all these fancy adjectives to try and describe them in ways of english, but it is not of our culture or customs. These are sacred feelings, we are only beginning to understand them.
The essence of this is simply that, we all feel all the feelings, but to describe them is futile, you can only know, you can only feel, and it is often unspoken. Our culture has inhibited all of us since its dawn, and it is our duty to take that power back, to reclaim these natural rights as human beings of the earth.
I have been a lover for quite some time now. That might be a byproduct of my poetic nature and my fleeting romanticism that floods my brain every now and again, but it is nothing to be ashamed of.
In movies and media, and many books of love, we are often taught that love is powerful and it can encourage people to do strange things. We see this in romance novels or movies that carry the rose tinted glasses and parade sex and objectivity of one’s desire around like an award for showing the most skin, and this reward is often only reserved for the beautiful creatures, the physical body that is “deserving” of the attention. Something that is not often revealed, but is at times when you have the eyes to see and the ears to hear, is that love is sacred! Yes! That’s right, love is sacred. And this you know because it is a universal truth. BUT our culture has done this thing, the parade thing that I just explained to you. And you might remember learning about it in grade school when women were starting to show more skin in the 60s and Hollywood was becoming its own thing. Herein lies the demise of this wretched disease. . .
First let me say this, there have been many powerful women throughout history and all of which are heavy on my mind, all forces to be reckoned with, for there is always a powerful woman behind every strong man. However, women have still been villainized since the dawn of time for being enchanting creatures. We see that in ancient stories like that of Medusa, any story with a siren, that one story with Persephone and Hades, who forced her into the underworld because she was just so damn pretty! And we still see it today, women being forced to wear clothes that cover the entirety of their body. Sometimes it’s a personal preference and I get that! I am a modest dresser myself, I don’t like to have all my skin on display, but that’s just me and mine! Other women today love to show all their skin off to the world and that’s okay, sometimes I am feeling myself too! I understand! It’s only when it becomes this object of desire, attention whore kind of thing that inflates that idea of sex. When narcissism takes over and there is no love, it is simply that inversion of love that becomes itself. A curse of the word, I suppose. And we all chant out that we love these creatures just because they have dressed up and put on a mask to show the world, but deep down inside there is a blackened heart and a fading soul. I tend to think of reality TV shows and red carpet blah blah bullshit when I think of an inversion of love. This is the object of desire, the unhealthy beauty standards and the ignorance of truth that is a corruption of mankind and is desperate to be healed, an after-thought of what used to be our empire, running away from kings and queens to corrupt the sacred land we ran to. This is simply something that should not continue to go on as it is.
Now, let’s talk about men. Because I am a woman, I do not have a perfect perspective on the matter, but I am an intelligent observer and I understand some things about the feelings behind every man. It is obvious that our culture has also done them dirty as well. We have this misrepresentation in media and books and movies of a perfect prince, a handsome and strong fella who can only live to support a woman of honor, and then we have this emasculated creature huffing and puffing around these massive muscles looking for anything it can to stick its dick into. Neither of these are a solid representation of what it means to be a masculine human. And just as there are sacred representations of women, there are that of men. One must simply have the eyes to see and the ears to hear. As within this human vessel, to be a balanced creature one must understand the balance between the sacred feminine and the sacred masculine energies, intertwined within us all. Literally, encoded into our DNA.
None of this sacred juju will be found in anything mainstream. I hope that you would have caught onto that by now. And if not that’s okay, I will say it all plainly for you now. In America, our mainstream media, this includes, anything that is pumped into advertisements, most of the music on the radio and popular music, essentially most of the people that have amassed to levels of fame and fortune whom parade it around as would a cougar with its prey, even the politics, especially now with the presidential campaign, it is all a corruption of our society. And it is sad, it is desperate and it is fleeting. Some people may be physically distraught to find out that all these people and their evil creations were never anything “good.” But what is good? Something that is void of love can’t be good. So these people with their fancy lives, they are the empty souls. And they might think that they know something about love, or they are told to say that they do, but really, they know nothing.
And I too, know nothing.
There are things I desire and things I would wish to have, sure. And sometimes I can be a naughty girl, but I will always do right by my truth. I will always stand in the light of this sacred love.
There might be many corrupted places in the world, and there might be many people who impose their ignorant delights onto the word of love, and we all might be foolish to even try to touch the divinity that carries true love, but it is all simply apart of the story. And it is all simply made from love, and to love we will return.
Source for the stages of love in Arabic: https://www.alfusaic.net/blog/antiquity/stages-of-love-in-arabic
