Mystical love is a narcissistic apotheosis where God’s gaze mirrors the woman’s self-image

Evidence

The woman first seeks in divine love what the woman asks for in man’s love: the apotheosis of her narcissism; this sovereign gaze fixed on her attentively and lovingly is a miraculous chance for her. … One can understand the intoxication that permeates the heart of the narcissist when all of heaven becomes her mirror; her deified image is infinite like God himself, it will never disappear; and at the same time she feels in her burning, palpitating, and love-drowned breast her soul created, redeemed, and cherished by the adoring Father; it is her double, it is she herself she is embracing, infinitely magnified by God’s mediation. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1906

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the psychological mechanism behind women’s mysticism: divine love as narcissism’s apotheosis, not genuine union.
• XREF: Connects to Beauvoir’s earlier chapters on the woman in love and narcissism — this is her framework extended into religious territory. — connects to: The mystical exaltation of woman still subordinates her as man’s instrument of salvation — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 589; Narcissism, romantic love, and mysticism are doomed attempts to transcend through immanence — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1770; Narcissism attempts the impossible in-itself for-itself synthesis that defines divinity — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1793 (+4 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that religious ecstasy is structurally narcissistic — God as mirror magnifying the self infinitely — overturns the standard reading of devotional love as self-abnegation.

Broader Connections

• Female religiosity and eroticism both make the self an object for a transcendent being #corroborates (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 705
• Inauthentic love lets the beloved ratify one’s infantile fantasies instead of moving beyond them #exemplifies (0.82)
• Being loved gives a woman justification for self-cherishing through the lover’s witness #expands (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1851