| Author Quoted | Marco Pallis |
| Title Quoted | Peaks and Lamas |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1959/05/14 |
| Imprint | [S.l.] : [s.n.]. 1939I |
| Quotation | The first thing to be said, of course, is that Hagia Sophia is God Himself. God is not only a Father but a Mother. He is both at the same time, and it is the "feminine aspect" or "feminine principl" in the divinity that is the Hagia Sophia. But of course as soon as you say this the whole thing becomes misleading: a division of an "abstract" divinity into two abstract principles. Nevertheless, to ignore this distinction is to lose touch with the fullness of God. This is a very ancient intuition of reality which goes back to the oldest Oriental thought. (There is something about it in Carolyn's wonderful book Peaks and Lamas [written by Marco Pallis], incidentally.) For the "masculine-feminin" relationship is basic in all reality"”simply because all reality mirrors the reality of God. |
| Quotation Source | Witness to Freedom: The Letters of Thomas Merton in Times of Crisis.; Selected and edited by William H. Shannon. / New York : Farrar Straus Giroux. 1994, p. 4 |
| Letter to | Victor Hammer |
| Notes | see also: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Victor and Carolyn Hammer. Farrar Straus Giroux. New York 1994 |
| Link to Merton's Copy |
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