Clara’s Reviews > Gods of Love and Ecstasy: The Traditions of Shiva and Dionysus > Status Update

Thus, to create a world outside himself, the god divides himself, and the two poles diverge. The state of absolute bliss disappears and is only recreated by the union of opposites, by love. The divine hermaphrodite "divided his body into two halves, the one male, the other female; the male in this female procreated the universe". (Manu Smriti, I, 32.)