The Womb as Creatio Ex Profundis: The Daoist Primacy of the Eternal Feminine without Counterpart

This paper explores the Daodejing’s cosmogony, where the Dao is metaphorically identified as the “Great Mother” and the “Enigmatic Female” whose “portal” serves as the root of heaven and earth. I argue that Daoist creationrepresents a creatio ex profundis—creation from the primordial, chaotic “womb” of nothingness (wu)—rather than the traditional Judeo-Christian creatio ex nihilo. Unlike Western models that posit a transcendent masculine deity imposing order from a void, the Daoist “womb cosmology” is autopoietic (ziran). It describes a world that self-unfolds naturally without external “assistant managers” or teleological blueprints. By prioritizing this primordial womb as the generative source of being (you), this model dismantles the “man-standard” of a sovereign creator. Drawing on cross-cultural dialogues with contemporary theopoetics, I demonstrate how this feminine paradigm offers a subversive alternative to the logic of domination inherent in masculine models of creation.