The Divine Feminine Tao Te Ching

In this book, Rosemarie Anderson shares her discoveries of the divine feminine Tao alongside her original translation of the Tao Te Ching. Working from ancient silk and bamboo slip manuscripts, the oldest known copies of the Tao Te Ching, the author slowly translated all 81 chapters over the course of two years, allowing each section to reveal its intimate poetic and spiritual nature. To her surprise, she discovered that the Tao was unmistakably feminine, consistently referred to as “mother”, “virgin”, and the “womb” of creation. 

Anderson explains how the Tao is a feminine force, the dark womb of creation, the immortal void renewing life again and again in ordinary times and in times of crisis. She offers commentary for each of the 81 chapters to help reveal their profound wisdom. The author also restores the chapters’ simplicity and musical undertones, explaining how, in the original Chinese manuscripts, the text is poetic and rhymed because the Tao Te Ching was often recited or sung – yet most English translations are written in scholarly prose with long sentences and complex syntax. She shows how the great Tao’s message of wei wu wei – “act without acting” and “do without doing” – offers a path of peace and well-being for ourselves and for our relationships with others and the earth, a path that arises from spontaneous action that seeks no gain for the self.