macrocosmos no relation Hinduism
Yoni (IAST: yoni; sometimes also IAST: yonī), sometimes called pindika, is an abstract or aniconic representation of the Hindu goddess Shakti. It is usually shown with linga – its masculine counterpart. Together, they symbolize the merging of microcosmos and macrocosmos, the divine eternal process of creation and regeneration, and the union of the feminine and the masculine that recreates all of existence. The yoni is conceptualized as nature's gateway of all births, particularly in the esoteric Kaula and Tantra practices, as well as the Shaktism and Shaivism traditions of Hinduism.Yoni is a Sanskrit word that has been interpreted to literally mean the "womb", the "source", and the female organs of generation. It also connotes the female sexual organs such as "vagina", "vulva", and "uterus", or alternatively to "origin, abode, or source" of anything in other contexts. For example, the Vedanta text Brahma Sutras metaphorically refers to the metaphysical concept Brahman as the "yoni of the universe". The yoni with linga iconography is found in Shiva temples and archaeological sites of the Indian subcontinent and southeast Asia, as well in sculptures such as the Lajja Gauri.Etymology and significance
Yoni (Sanskrit: योनि),  appears in the Rigveda and other Vedic literature in the sense of feminine life-creating regenerative and reproductive organs, as well as in the sense of "source, origin, fountain, place of birth, womb, nest, abode, fire pit of incubation". Other contextual meanings of the term include "race, caste, family, fertility symbol, grain or seed". It is a spiritual metaphor and icon in Hinduism for the origin and the feminine regenerative powers in the nature of existence. The Brahma Sutras metaphorically calls the metaphysical concept Brahman as the "yoni of the universe", which Adi Shankara states in his commentaries means the material cause and "source of the universe".According to Indologists Constance Jones and James D. Ryan, the yoni symbolizes the female principle in all life forms as well as the "earth's seasonal and vegetative cycles", thus is an emblem of cosmological significance. The yoni is a metaphor for nature's gateway of all births, particularly in the Shaktism and Shaivism traditions of Hinduism, as well as the esoteric Kaula and Tantra sects. Yoni together with the lingam is a symbol for prakriti, its cyclic creation and dissolution. According to Corinne Dempsey – a professor of Religious Studies, yoni is an "aniconic form of the goddess" in Hinduism, the feminine principle Shakti.The yoni is sometimes referred to as pindika. The base on which the linga-yoni sit is called the pitha, but in some texts such as the Nisvasa tattva samhita and Mohacudottara, the term pitha generically refers to the base and the yoni.Orientalist literature
The colonial era Orientalists and Christian missionaries, raised in the Victorian mold where sex and sexual imagery were a taboo subject, were shocked by and were hostile to the yoni iconography and reverence they witnessed. The 19th and early 20th-century colonial and missionary literature described yoni, lingam-yoni, and related theology as obscene, corrupt, licentious, hyper-sexualized, puerile, impure, demonic and a culture that had become too feminine and dissolute. To the Hindus, particularly the Shaivites, these icons and ideas were the abstract, a symbol of the entirety of creation and spirituality. The colonial disparagement in part triggered the opposite reaction from Bengali nationalists, who more explicitly valorised the feminine. Vivekananda called for the revival of the Mother Goddess as a feminine force, inviting his countrymen to "proclaim her to all the world with the voice of peace and benediction".According to Wendy Doniger, the terms lingam and yoni became explicitly associated with human sexual organs in the western imagination after the widely popular first Kama Sutra translation by Sir Richard Burton in 1883. In his translation, even though the original Sanskrit text does not use the words lingam or yoni for sexual organs, Burton adroitly sidestepped being viewed as obscene to the Victorian mindset by using them throughout in place of words such as penis, vulva, and vagina to discuss sex, sexual relationships and human sexual positions. This conscious and incorrect word substitution, states Doniger, thus served as an Orientalist means to "anthropologize sex, distance it, make it safe for English readers by assuring them, or pretending to assure them, that the text was not about real sexual organs, their sexual organs, but merely about the appendages of weird, dark people far away." Similar Orientalist literature of the Christian missionaries and the British era, states Doniger, stripped all spiritual meanings and insisted on the Victorian vulgar interpretation only, which had "a negative effect on the self-perception that Hindus had of their own bodies" and they became "ashamed of the more sensual aspects of their own religious literature". Some contemporary Hindus, states Doniger, in their passion to spiritualize Hinduism and for their Hindutva campaign have sought to sanitize the historic earthly sexual meanings, and insist on the abstract spiritual meaning only.Iconography and temples
Within Shaivism, the sect dedicated to the god Shiva, the Shakti is his consort and both have aniconic representations: lingam for Shiva, yoni for Shakti. The yoni iconography is typically represented in the form of a horizontally placed round or square base with a lipped edge and an opening in the center usually with a cylindrical lingam. Often, one side of this base extends laterally, and this projection is called the yoni-mukha. An alternate symbol for yoni that is commonly found in Indic arts is the lotus, an icon found in temples.The yoni is one of the sacred icons of the Hindu Shaktism tradition, with historic arts and temples dedicated to it. Some significant artworks related to yoni include the Lajja Gauri found in many parts of India and the Kamakhya Temple in Assam. Both of these have been dated to the late 1st millennium CE, with the major expansion of the Kamakhya temple that added a new sanctum above the natural rock yoni attached to an older temple being dated to the 16th-century Koch dynasty period.
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