Natalia А. Vaganova

The article deals with a number of texts by Vyacheslav Ivanov, where he addresses to the role of woman in religious and artistic creation. According to the philosopher, the essence of religion is associated with the ecstatic states in which the systemically ineffable mystical primary element of the religious is revealed as such. The bearer of them is ontologically the feminine part of the human being. The energy of creative femininity, which determined the essence of the Dionysian religion, was then suppressed and historically superseded from the spheres of religious and social activity. Ivanov considers this deletion of a woman a relapse of pagan consciousness in Christianity, which has fatal consequences for both religion and culture in general. Meanwhile, the energy of femininity is ontologically unavoidable and requires its return to religious and artistic creation. Modern feminism only actualizes the bad infinity of the struggle of the sexes, meanwhile the restoration of «female dignity» should occur not so much in the social and legal as in the metaphysical and cosmic plans. According to the philosopher's plan, the renewal of the female creative principle must occur in the artistic religion of the near future, as in the catholic liturgical myth-creation. A special role in this process was to be played by the «feminine» spirit of the Slavdom and the Russian people as its bearer.