DEPTH INSIGHTS Seeing the World With Soul Fall 2012

“Virus”~ Artwork by Staci Poirier INSIDE THIS ISSUE On Becoming A Psychologist: An Archetypal Love Story Hijacked by a Dream The Shadow of Yoga: Reflections on the Soul/Spirit Distinction Jung’s Reception of Friedrich Nietzsche: A Roadmap for the Uninitiated A Jungian Interpretation of the Jewish Tale Miriam’s Tambourine More Depth Psychology Articles, Essays, and Poetry Table of From the Executive Editor Contents There’s a lot going on on the planet surface of everyday events. Paying atten- On Becoming A Psychologist: today, much of it disturbing if you follow tion to how the inner world mirrors the 3 An Archetypal Love Story By Robert D. Romanyshyn the evening news. With so much technol- outer—and vice versa—is such a powerful ogy around us providing instantaneous tool for insight and growth, both personal- 9 Hijacked by a Dream access to information and events around ly and collectively. By Paco Mitchell the world, it’s easy sometimes to feel It is in this spirit of opening to what The Shadow of Yoga: overwhelmed and lose a sense of center is hidden, forgotten, lost, abandoned or 13 Reflections on the Soul/Spirit and self. invisible in the self--even as we reel from Distinction According to recent conversations disquieting events in the outer world--that By Jason Butler I’ve had with others, I don’t think I’m the I hope you will enjoy the wisdom and only one who feels that time is speeding beauty of the works offered in this issue Jung’s Reception of Friedrich 17 Nietzsche: A Roadmap for the up and globally, things are spiraling out of of Depth Insights. Uninitiated control on many fronts. Huge thanks to the contributors, By Ritske Rensma However, this is why I continue to selection committee, and especially to believe so strongly that depth psychology editor Rebecca Livingston Pottenger for A Jungian Interpretation of the 23 Jewish Tale Miriam’s offers us the opportunity to maintain our coming together to make it happen. Tambourine reflective center and to look beyond the ~ By Natasha Morton Bonnie Bright The Soul of the Soldier: An 29 Archetypal Inquiry into the Rhetoric of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder About this Issue By Ipek S. Burnett Depth Insights, Issue 3 Editorial Selection Committee 33 Why the Men Went into the Bob Quinn Matthew Thomas Woods: Jungian Psychology Publisher Bridget Carlson Paco Mitchell and the Archetype Depth Insights, a Media Partner for Carol Rizzolo Siona van Dijk of the Wild Man Depth Psychology Alliance Carroll Strauss Stephanie Kavoulakos By Dennis Pottenger Dennis Pottenger Susanne Dutton Wael Al-Mahdi Poetry by Bonnie Scot, Susanne Executive Editor Maria Hess Dutton, Laurie Corzett, Ron Boyer, Bonnie Bright Silvio Machado, William Fraker, Depth Insights is published twice a year Judith Harte, Rick Belden Editor Rebecca Livingston Pottenger Online version of Depth Insights scholarly e- Art/Photo Art by Staci Poirier and zine can be found at Scott Potter Contact/Submissions/Subscription/ www.depthinsights.com/Depth-Insights- Advertising scholarly-ezine Cover Art by Staci Poirier, inspired by a poem from Rick Belden [email protected] Deadline for Issue 4 is December 15, 2012 Copyright 2012 by Depth Insights, Depth Psychology Alliance

On the cover: “virus” by Staci Poirier, 2012--Acrylic mixed media: branch from a tree, plastic worms and fish, worry dolls, mirrors, wire mesh, and a photo transfer, 20 x 26 inch- es. Inspired by the 2008 poem “virus” by Rick Belden

2 On Becoming a Psychologist An Archetypal Love Story By Robert D. Romanyshyn

Eros and Psyche them as I fall in love again with the psy- shifts in tempo and pace marked by paus- hen I was a boy Sunday after- che. In the tale of Psyche and Eros we are es, acting as it were as a mark of punctu- Wnoon dinner was always a told that the union of love and the soul ation, a comma or perhaps, if one’s ears school day for me. Outside the official produces Joy and it is joy that I experi- were finely tuned, a semi-colon or even a classroom it was a day for education, a ence in starting out again to learn the colon, and to the slight alterations in word whose loveliness is so apt here ways of soul. Joy and also not a little emphasis and tone, signaling like an because it was the day when, unbe- trepidation! exclamation point that one should take notice. As the meanings of the words knownst to me, I was being introduced to Love and its Shadows and seduced into my life. This education being spoken were carried on the tides of was not about facts that had to be mem- The tale of Psyche and Eros is not breath, and even shaped by them, I orized and mastered. Nor was it about naïve. Psyche suffers in learning how to learned on those Sunday days that soul ideas or opinions about the events of the love and my love affair with psychology work was homework so that later, as I times. Rather its lessons unfolded has had its full measure of the shadows grew older, I imagined that psychology through stories told within the context of of love. I have been at times an impatient would be a way home. a ritual space and time. Seated between lover of soul, trying to discipline soul In all the roads taken since those my Irish mother and Ukrainian father, I within the forms of psychology. I have Sunday days, in all the books read, the was invited with my two sisters into a also been a disappointed lover, unsatis- classes taken, the lectures written and sacred space differentiated from the ordi- fied with the refusal of soul to be con- given, the conferences attended, the nary, quotidian world. Sitting back in his fined within the discipline and at other papers and books published, I have been chair, taking a slow, deep breath, my times deeply unsatisfied with the intransi- living in the gap between the discipline of father would light a cigarette and the gence of psychology to yield itself to the psychology and the epiphanies of psycho- drama would begin. seductive ways of soul. But perhaps most logical life, between the well formed The stories were always variations of all I have felt homeless and orphaned words of the discipline and the whispers on the central theme of exile and home- in this love affair, deluded by an expecta- of soul. The virtue of the backward glance coming. Of course, I did not know that tion that in psychology I would find a is that through it one might get a glimpse these stories belonging to my parents home for the longings stirred within my of the pattern that has been lived and in were archetypal. But the stories, with heart on those Sunday days of education. doing so might find the vocation to con- their images and moods dipped in the tinue by starting over. It is what I am flowing rhythms of the spoken voice, fas- attempting now in new work whose cinated me. My Sunday day education “The virtue of the intention is to take up again that pattern that has held together the arc of my life was one of enchantment, an education in backward glance is that the power of words well-spoken to create in psychology. It is a pattern woven of worlds. Seated between these story through it one might three connected and enduring questions: tellers, neither of whom had a high get a glimpse of the -Is psychology psychological? school education, I was being formed to -Is the discipline of psychology inimi- be who I have become and am still pattern that has been cal to soul? becoming. lived and in doing so -Can one be a psychologist and live a psychological life in service to soul? Those Sunday afternoons were a might find the vocation long time ago, some 60 years as meas- These questions span the arc of my ured by a calendar, where time as a mat- to continue by life in psychology. Already in the title of ter of mind stretches along a line without starting over” my first book Psychological Life: From depth from a past to a future until it Science to Metaphor, there was a dim snaps. But time measured by the heart is apprehension of these questions. The a spiral coiling back upon itself at differ- title suggests a shift not just in words but ent levels, gathering those Sundays into Indeed, the gnosis of the heart was a fruit of those Sunday lessons, a lived also and more pointedly in terms of the the present as I imagine and am drawn context of psychology. To move from sci- into a future. Now as I approach my though not articulated awareness that soul work is as much a matter of the ence to metaphor is to situate psychology eighth decade my love affair with psy- not within a discipline but within dis- chology and with being a psychologist is heart, of being moved and quickened, as it is a matter of the mind being awak- course and moreover within a style of starting over. In this new beginning I am discourse that is indirect and is a figure of taken back to those Sunday days of edu- ened. Those tales told at those Sunday dinners stirred the depths of soul before speech. While I could appreciate then cation, remembering my origins and that the indirect style of metaphorical being re-membered by them, re-collect- they touched the surface of mind. Telling tales and being touched by them also discourse alludes to a meaning that ing the lessons learned there, and pre- remains elusive, it would take me a while serving those lessons by transforming taught me how to listen and to appreci- ate those small and often unnoticed to catch up with the deeper implications

Depth Insights, Issue 3, Fall 2012 3 On Becoming a Psychologist of that style, especially the implication Becoming a psychologist was not a place for this gap and for the ordinary that the discipline of psychology as it rational conscious decision. As I wrote in moments that do shape the making of a exists today is a perspective on psycho- a recently published essay, ‘I only ever psychologist. I feel an obligation to make logical life, an allusion to soul that slips wanted to be a bus driver.’ But through a place for the spirit of the depths in the the net of psychological discourse, a way dreams, symptoms, synchronicities, formation of psychology within the spirit of talking about soul that is and is not encounters with the numinous splendor of the times. true. It would take me some time to appreciate that as discourse soul work is of the natural world, fateful circum- I thought that my service to psychol- a continuing conversation among all the stances and meetings with others, I was ogy was finished. But as I wrote in the disciplined ways of saying soul, of telling drawn into becoming a psychologist. final sentence of my last book, The its stories, that psychology has developed Psychology was a vocation before it ever Wounded Researcher, the work is finished today. Moreover, it would take me an became a profession and in the gap but it is not done. So, I am following even longer time to fully understand between the two I was increasingly edu- again as I have followed before the foot- metaphor as a figure of speech alludes to cated into a difference that is at the root prints of Psyche imprinted in sand before the figurations of psyche that are the of my love affair with soul. That differ- they are washed away by the tides or guise of its appearances. ence, which is expressed in the three covered over by the wind. From my first book to my last one, questions cited above, could be reframed The Wounded Researcher: Research with here in terms of a distinction Jung has Fireflies in the Night: Elements of a Soul in Mind, my vocation to psychology Psychological Life has been a slow journey into opening a drawn between the spirit of the times dialogue among three grand narratives in and the spirit of the depths. Psychology Fireflies in the night! They bedazzle psychology: psychology as a human sci- as a profession is in service to the spirit of us. They come and go indifferent to our ence within the tradition of phenomenol- the times; as a vocation it is in service to summoning them. But in their brief elu- ogy, psychology as a hermeneutic science the spirit of the depths. sive appearance, they bring a light to the in depth psychology and psychology as a My love affair with psychology has darkness and call forth from us a natural science. The journey, however, response, even if it is only a gasp or the has been difficult and has been marked pointing of a finger that says, “Look, over more by failure than any success. It is dif- “Ordinary occasions in there. Do you see it?” ficult because each of the grand narra- Fireflies in the night is the image tives ignores and forgets that each story a life harbor seeds of that holds for me those epiphanies of reveals something of the soul’s mysteries what might become soul that shine from the depths. Those and conceals something. Discourse as dia- sparks of psyche are for me elemental logue is difficult because each story falls extraordinary” qualities of soul. Indeed, what if we imag- into a complex unconscious identification ine soul itself as elemental, as elemental of its tale with the truth. as air and water, fire and earth? As ele- unfolded within the tension of this dis- So I begin again along two new mental as flesh, which is Merleau-Ponty’s paths. One path is called Footprints in the tinction and the stories I tell in this vol- final understanding of the lived body, Sand: On Becoming a Psychologist. The ume are an account of this affair. They which he says has never before been other path is called Fireflies in the Night: are simple and quite ordinary tales, which thought of that way in philosophy?i What Elements of a Psychological Life. Both are suggest to me that the ordinary occasions is elemental is basic and essential, a stark experiments in love being conducted in a life harbor seeds of what might simplicity, the ‘thereness’ of a force of within the context of how the three become extraordinary. That, for example, nature itself. We have taken the ele- grand narratives in psychology have been ments apart, analyzed water and air into attempts to woo soul into being its lover I would spend the early morning hours of my summer vacation days watching in their chemical signatures, explained and while jealously guarding itself against her harnessed the combustible character of other suitors. The two paths are ejacula- fascination an army of ants marching across a brown patch of dirt to disappear fire, and made the matter of earth matter tions of a wild hope to liberate psycholo- as an inanimate resource for our use. We underground through a small hole, would gy from its complex attachment to soul, have done the same with soul. In the to free psychology from its jealous pos- seem inconsequential to my becoming a spirit of the times we have measured, cal- sessiveness of soul. They are exclama- psychologist. But, like so many other ordi- culated, explained and lost sight of soul in tions of a Dionysian joy trying to lead psy- nary moments, it has lingered and in its the process. The love song that psycholo- chology into awareness that soul has returns has revealed a miracle at the gy sings in this spirit has put soul to sleep many lovers, to educate psychology into heart of the ordinary. where it lives in dreams. becoming and being psychological. There are times when this new work Fireflies in the Night is a wake up Footprints in the Sand: On Becoming seems like a foolish quest, times when it call. Soul as elemental is as fundamental a Psychologist feels as if it matters only to me. Perhaps as air. Just as we breathe this elemental that is or will be the case. Nevertheless, I force and not its chemical signatures, We imagine that we chose the paths am starting again because the bus I am which are already one step removed from that mark the journeys of a life, but we driving across the gap between the pro- the living reality of air, we live within the do not, or at least we are as much agents fession of and the vocation to psychology elemental reality of soul, awash within its in service to something other that calls us has had its routes mapped out by some- magical epiphanies. The sparks of soul into a life, as we are authors of a life. I thing other than me. I am beginning again attended to in this volume are the many never chose to become a psychologist. because I feel an obligation to make a ways in which we are moved by soul.

4 Depth Insights, Issue 3, Fall 2012 Robert D. Romanyshyn Fireflies in the night is the image that Fireflies in the Night is a the filament of the invisible hides and invites me to let go of the ways in which shows itself through the visible, through A Portrait in Dreams—we are such stuff the spirit of the times has shaped psy- those moments like sunlight filtered as dreams are made on, made between through a green leaf that open us to the chology as a profession, an image that is waking and dreaming, on that edge, a subtle, elusive seduction to remember splendor of the world and its seductive pivot, threshold, our waking lives and its enchantments. what is forgotten in the day light con- events stitched together through and sciousness of psychology as a profession. with the threads of dreams— Closing time Look! There it is and then it is gone. A of In these two volumes I am trying to brief shining in the night that asks me to An Unfinished Life—where the Orphan is be receptive and responsive to those con- give up psychology for a moment for the that archetypal figure who remembers ditions and circumstances that have sake of being psychological, a summons for us in times when we forget that soul molded the ‘I’ who is telling these tales. Is to fall again madly in love and begin again work is homework and who lingers and this attempt a memoir? If it is then it is the love affair with Psyche in the dark- waits for us to recollect what has been— an inverse memoir. As such it is not ness of night made bright for a moment Left by the Side of the Road—where the unlike Jung’s Memories Dreams by an elusive light. companions who hold the unfinished Reflections, a memoir not only of the As an elemental psychology, Fireflies business of our lives also wait and outer events of my life but also of the in the Night is perhaps even a new intro- linger— patterns of which I have not been the duction to psychology, a different way of during our maker, patterns woven by soul in the chi- imagining an introductory text into psy- Inner Journeys in the Outer World— asm of outer events and inner experi- chology, which re-balances the spirit of ences. In this inverse way, this work is a the times in psychology with the spirit of soul history of one becoming a psycholo- the depths. Or, perhaps, it is a farewell “Perhaps the most signif- gist in the gap between the spirit of the for me to the spirit of the times in psy- icant discovery at the times and the spirit of the depths. chology and my way of un-becoming a origins of the spirit of But if the ‘I’ who tells the tale is the psychologist. ‘I’ who has been made by the tale, the What it is or will become, however, the depths arising with inverse character of the telling plays on is not for me to decide. All I can say at depth psychology out of the edge, in the gap, at the threshold of this point is that this volume is an the spirit of the times is the chiasm of activity and passivity. attempt to describe how in these past 40 Indeed, perhaps the most significant dis- years or so I have responded to psycholo- the recognition that at gy as a vocation, to the spirit of the the heart of our activity depths that companions the spirit of the times in psychology as a profession. As is passivity” such it is the continuation to volume one, to those footprints in the sand which led me to psychology as a profession and to the point now where the spirit of the where the work of soul making is done times in psychology might be renewed by before being re-collected, where the the spirit of the depths, as it was once world is the vale of soul making— more than a hundred years ago at the taken origins of depth psychology. In the Company of the Dead—who hold Each of the eight parts that com- the threads of an unfinished life that ties pose Fireflies in the Night is another way our lives to theirs, and who as compan- of responding to the elemental epipha- ions feed us and demand of us a ritual nies of soul, a way of wooing soul to tarry sense of living— just a bit longer before it slips away. and Taken as a whole they are a chorus sung In the Shadows of the City—where the in praise to those sightings of soul that, byways, detours, alleyways bend and like fireflies in the night, have for a twist the straight lines of the ego mind—- moment shed some light on the depths while that have given a pattern to my life, Leaning toward the Poet –who cultivates those elusive, elemental and epiphanic in us the qualities of a poetic basis of moments that re-collected now have mind to counterbalance calculative ways transformed the outer skin of events into of thinking and who opens the heart as the bones of experiences. What I offer another way of knowing— below is a description of the flow of these And drawn to the songs and a brief description of the ele- Epiphanies in Dark Light –to that aesthet- mental quality each of them addresses. ic presence of the world as image, where

Depth Insights, Issue 3, Fall 2012 5 On Becoming a Psychologist covery at the origins of the spirit of the Along the way it has occurred to me that tyranny of the ‘I.’ It inverts ‘Cogito ergo depths arising with depth psychology out the place of the eavesdropper is neither sum’ into ‘Cogitor ergo sum,’ an inversion of the spirit of the times is the recogni- inside nor outside. The eavesdropper from the ‘I think therefore I am’ as the tion that at the heart of our activity is occupies a threshold place and from that active author of thinking into ‘I am passivity. It is, however, a passivity that is place the telling of what is overheard has thought therefore I am’ as the recipient not the opposite of activity, or its nega- a special mood to it. It is the mood of of a thinking thinking itself through the reverie, which, as Gaston Bachelard ‘I.’ In the mood of reverie between activi- tion. On the contrary, it is a passivity that reminds us, is a mood that for a moment ty and receptivity, the ‘I’ who thinks and in its receptivity is itself active. It is the the ‘I’ who is thought impregnate each receptivity of the soul embodied, the other with their presence. In the mood of receptivity of our human embodiment, of “Psychology reverie the memoir is made in that place the body one is, as the foundation for the fashioned in the spirit between the ‘I’ who thinks and tells the body one has; an embodiment in which tale and the ‘I’ who is and has been one is simultaneously the one who touch- of the times thought and told the tale. es and is touched, the subject who sees privileges the active Two other significant features of this inverse memoir need to be men- because he/she is seeable. This under- voice of the ‘I’ standing of embodiment is itself a thread tioned both of which flow from the mood that early on led me into phenomenology who thinks and speaks of reverie. One is the obvious implication of the deconstruction of memoir as an and to the forty year dialogue between when it translates account of a singular life, a deconstruc- depth psychology and phenomenology in language from the tion of the tale told from the point of which I have been an eavesdropper, pick- spirit of the depths” view of the logical, literate and linear ‘I’ ing up bits and pieces from that conversa- of mind who overlooks the events and tion. circumstances of that life from some dis- Footprints in the Sand and Fireflies tant place above it. In this respect this in the Night are tales of an eavesdropper, liberates one from the burden of his/her inverse memoir is a series of memoirs, bits of gossip, if you will, about the con- name, frees one from the burden of an tales of plurality made and told between versation between a psychology informed identity.ii Reverie is therefore the appro- the one who has lived the life and the by the spirit of the times and the whis- priate mood of this inverse memoir ones who have stitched the threads and pers of soul from the spirit of the depths. because reverie uncouples one from the woven the patterns of that life.

6 Depth Insights, Issue 3, Fall 2012 Collective Unconscious

Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012 7 virus art by Staci Poirier poem by Rick Belden a liquid black cloud spreads its fingers across the family sky like ink from a squid filling an aquarium tank blotting out the sun turning everyone and everything the color of a funeral shadow blue. a virus infects the family tree twisting the future obscuring the past spreading from generation to generation feeding on the children turning the adults into monsters or rendering them mute. a parasite enters the family bloodstream “virus” by Staci Poirier --acrylic mixed media, 20x26 inches burrowing into hearts and minds anchoring in tender bodies protecting and propagating itself with a trance Special thanks to Staci Poirier for the cover art, “virus” - forget acrylic mixed media which incorporates a branch from a forget tree, plastic worms and fish, worry dolls, mirrors, wire mesh, forget. and a photo transfer. The piece is 20 x 26 inches and was inspired by the 2008 poem “virus” by Rick Belden I will not forget (also featured on this page at right). and I will not pass these nightmares on to anyone else. According to Staci, the artwork is about ending the cycle of I'll pull those black fingers down out of my sky child abuse and preventing it from becoming a generational I'll dig this virus out of my roots issue. If you read the painting from left to right, it goes from I'll burn this parasite out of my blood. death, shame, destruction,shattered self to a story filled with potential hope and wholeness which reflects the move- I'll hunt down every last trace of this psychic infection ment of the poem. Staci completed the piece in June 2012. this evil rot that was injected into me when I was a child Fragments of “virus” appear next to the titles for each essay and I'll haul it out into the daylight in this issue where it can't survive. I'll scream it out ∞ I'll vomit it out I'll drag it out of me About the Artist/Poet any way I can tooth and claw Staci Poirier was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and is root and branch a self-taught artist. Proud of her rich, Métis heritage which blood and bone informs much of her art work, she has focused primarily on until I've purged it from my life acrylic painting and working with mixed media since 2002. and cleansed myself completely. Recently, she has begun incorporating her dreams, and giv- ing them conscious expression. Stacl holds a B.A. from the I reject the conspiracy of amnesia and silence University of Alberta in History of Art, Design, and Visual that allows this systemic scourge Culture. Staci's art works can be viewed at to thrive unchallenged www.facebook.com/stacipoirier71 in secret in dark and helpless places Rick Belden is the author of Iron Man Family Outing: Poems I reject the family commandments about Transition into a More Conscious Manhood, widely thou shalt not remember used by therapists, counselors, and men's groups as an aid thou shalt not feel in the exploration of masculine psychology and men's issues. thou shalt not tell His second book, Scapegoat's Cross: Poems about Finding I will remember and Reclaiming the Lost Man Within, is currently awaiting I will feel publication. He lives in Austin, Texas. Excerpts from Rick's I will tell books, poetry, essays, and video are available at I'll take back my life from this shadow blue plague www.rickbelden.com and if that makes me an outcast a traitor in the eyes of the family then so be it.

Copyright © 2008 by Rick Belden. Excerpted from Scapegoat's Cross: Poems about Finding and Reclaiming the Lost Man Within.

8 Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012

“There is strong archaeological evidence side, I would in some sense die. I notice in too many directions and on too many to show that with the birth of human con- the thicket surrounding me magically levels. I would like to comment, though, sciousness there was born, like a twin, the coming alive, like the sentient brambles on a few of its aspects. impulse to transcend it.” of a fairy-tale, closing in on me. I flee the The Bow and Arrow . . . —Alan McGlashani shrinking tunnel and the dream ends. When I first awoke from the dream I The Autonomy of Dreams . . . n the dream, I wield the bow in my didn’t realize what a powerful archetype Ileft hand and the arrow in my I have presented this decades-old the bow and arrow constitute in the right. It’s not exactly an arsenal, but it will dream because the dream itself demand- human imagination, but I would soon find suffice. Besides, I’m not really hunting in ed it of me. As I mulled over which dream out. That’s one of the benefits of dream the strict sense; this is more of a quest, to consider for this essay, it claimed my study, for dreams demand of us an though I don’t really know what my tar- attention by pushing its way to the front unusual degree of cultivation. They com- get is. I’m here alone in a deserted of the dream-queue like an alpha-animal pel us—if we take them seriously—to cityscape, definitely seeking something. insisting on being fed first. When uncon- learn something about cultural and reli- I begin by fitting the notch to the scious contents behave like insistent per- gious history, mythology, symbols, how string, raising the bow and letting the sons or creatures in this way, I listen, for I things work, the many levels on which arrow fly. It sails a distance and falls to have long-since learned to respect the images operate, the relationships the pavement. I run after the arrow, autonomy, even the superiority, of between different phenomena, the sub- retrieve it, and shoot it again. I do this dreams. tle, poetic correspondences, etc. three or four times. Then the arrow lands The bow and arrow, it turns out, have probably been in use for at least near a dead heron that is lying on the “Dreams demand of us ground. I run up to the arrow and see yet 60,000 years.ii That’s sixty millennia of another dead heron, not far away. Then an unusual degree of playing, tinkering, fiddling, observing, another. I run from heron to heron as if cultivation. They compel shaping, teaching, refining and practic- following a trail, soon arriving at an open- us—if we take them ing—not to mention all the life-and-death ing in dense shrubbery. It is a narrow tun- uses to which bows and arrows have nel, in fact, but tall enough for me to seriously—to learn been put. This kind of activity over mil- stand upright. I enter the tunnel. something about cultural lennia—like striking sparks for a fire or Two more dead herons lie in the and religious history, wearing an animal skin for warmth—is tunnel, as if still marking the trail. There bound to etch deep grooves in the is no doubt that I must follow it. The fur- mythology, symbols, how human imagination, a phenomenon that ther I advance into the depths of the tun- things work...” is central to Jung’s theories regarding nel, the closer and narrower it becomes, archetypes. So we see the arrow-like until I am close to crawling. Then the solar rays on the golden crowns of kings. path widens and I enter a kind of gallery, We see Cupid and his love-darts, passion such as will occasionally occur in deep After thirty or so years of consider- made visible. We admire Bernini’s volup- caves. Ahead of me I see a formal door- ing this dream, I have not reached any tuous depiction in marble of St. Teresa of way, on either side of which stand two sense of finality about it. Would the door- Avila in her ecstasy, the angel lovingly fierce and resplendent herons. They are way at the end of the dream have led me brandishing an arrow with which he quite alive, exuding vitality and shimmer- into the beginning of something larger—a pierces her heart, filling her with Divine ing with iridescent, peacock colors. I also glimpse into future potentials? At any Love. Examples beyond number abound. notice that, paradoxically, these live rate, I was a neophyte at the time—wit- But quite apart from their obvious herons are also statues or sculptures— ness my flight from the tunnel and there- uses in hunting and warfare, the bow and like icons, perhaps, or living patterns. fore the dream. But the dream continues arrow also symbolize, in my mind, the As I face the doorway I am filled to reverberate in my waking life like a presence of something deeper still, more with an intuition—“knowledge”—of what cannon-shot from a dreadnought, fired fundamental and primary, even, than the lies on the other side of the threshold: a across the bow of my intentions. Decades terrible paradox of killing to live. I see in realm of Absolute Reality, or Pure later, I can still feel its portentous echoes. the simple-but-sophisticated Stone Age Possibility. I realize that, if I were to open There is not enough space here to technology of bow and arrow an arche- the door and step across to the other treat this dream exhaustively—it extends typal symbol of the evolutionary groping

Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012 9 Hijacked by a Dream of the universe, where darkness itself, suggests that I am traveling away from the Holy Grail myth when Parsifal the embodied in all its creaturely forms, the day-world of normal life toward some Fool plunges into the dark forest. The reaches toward the light. I can also see in other kind of paradoxically awakened proud knights, mounted atop their this same forward longing a simultaneous state. That was not my reaction when I impressive chargers, hesitate to take that bending back of eros toward its divine first woke up with the dream, however. I plunge. They are wary of the humiliation source. In elevated spiritual terms we was frankly alarmed by the image, since I of dismounting and proceeding on foot. could call this the longing of the Creature regard the heron as my soul-bird. I had to In that case, ego-pride is the obstacle. for the Creator, like an erotic instinct pause, reminding myself that in dreams toward life, an impulse flowing in all death is symbolic. Furthermore, it is rela- The Doorway . . . directions and on which entire religions tive. What dies in a dream can come back The tunnel led me to the doorway, and cultures are based. To me, this evolu- to life. And death, of course, is always a with its two heron guardians. This is the tionary instinct, at once physical and spir- pre-condition of re-birth—the essential threshold, the boundary, on the other itual, underlies all the killing and mating side of which lies a different order of real- and feeding. It is the gist of McGlashan’s “Even when crossing ity. According to the dream, it was quote in the opening epigraph, his intu- “absolute reality,” and I have no reason ition that “with the birth of human con- the border between the to doubt that. It’s just that getting to the sciousness there was born, like a twin, conscious and uncon- other side would require dying. the impulse to transcend it.” scious, as in dreaming, Here I stood in the dream, then, at There is a passage in Jung’s essay the brink of a revelation, like an initiate “The Psychology of the Child the ego-body seems to into a mystery cult. The fact that I did not Archetype”iii that echoes this subtle remain protective of its cross the threshold in the dream says insight. Referring to the symbolism of the own substance and something about my state of readiness at divine child motif, Jung calls it “the deep- the time of the dream: To wit, I was not est, most ineluctable urge in every being, fearful of its demise.” yet ready. Perhaps I was still dragging namely, the urge to realize itself.” unconscious childhood fears with me; or Self-realization, in this sense, is perhaps it was the lingering trauma of equivalent to a rapprochement with the significance of the archaic Easter rites. having already tasted the proximity of divine, a coming face-to-face with, or at Nevertheless, it was not for me to physical death in a severe auto accident least a sidling toward, God. Hence the decide, death or no death, because the years before the dream. Even when cryptic biblical assertion that “man was dream, on its own cognizance, had con- crossing the border between the con- made in God’s image.” And, indeed, structed this trail of death-images. It even scious and unconscious, as in dreaming, Jung’s psychological and cultural intensified the trail, for the number of the ego-body seems to remain protective researches have shown that, at certain dead herons rose, as I made my way of its own substance and fearful of its levels of psychic depth, one can no longer deeper into the dream. In following the demise. Years of experience crossing the distinguish between Self-images and God- trail I was being led away from this life, bridge between the conscious and uncon- toward some kind of death. And how scious, working in the terrain of dreams, images.iv And in a resonant cross-cultural could I follow the dream’s own trajectory would elapse before I was consciously parallel, Zen archers understand that the if I allowed myself to be dissuaded by prepared to pass over to the other side. spiritual, contemplative aspect of their fear of the image of dead herons? This is When I finally did so, it was not in a discipline of archery amounts to a para- something that often occurs in dreams: dream but in an active imagination. doxical letting go of the ego—no We reach a crucial point where our thoughts, no illusions—in order to hit the progress depends on how we relate to Crossing the Threshold . . . v larger target of oneself. the obstacle raised by our own fear. It happened just a few years ago. This fundamental impulse—let’s call For some time, I had been thinking and it a longing for the light—is in everyone. Entering the Tunnel . . . reading about lucid dreams, active imagi- But it is not given to everyone, putting it I would have to persist, then, if I nation, shamanic activities and such top- mildly, to spend their lives chasing after wanted to stay with the dream: I would ics. One day, as I was reading, the bow- it, following the arrow over hill and dale have to enter the tunnel—the point at and-arrow dream suddenly came to mind in search of the divine. That is the which the path becomes excruciatingly and I decided at that moment to cross province, it would seem, of questing spiri- narrow, the razor’s edge of the mystic. the threshold. I put the book down and tual pilgrims like me and, perhaps, you. For the more conscious we become, or closed my eyes. The Trail of Dead Herons . . . the closer we get to God, or to the Self, Soon I was back in the tunnel, in the or to the Philosopher’s Stone, or to the clearing, standing before the heron- The arrow of my dream led me to a Doorway, the less leeway there is for guardians and the doorway. Without hes- trail of dead herons, a series of hints error. This tightening process, paradoxi- itation I opened the door and stepped planted in my path like Easter eggs—evi- cally, loosens the ego from its own across. dence of some fertile mystery to come restrictions, at least for a time. I immediately found myself flying at and a confirmation that I was on the right The tunnel also required a no-turn- great speed through the blackness of track. The fact that the herons are dead ing-back decisiveness, like the moment in outer space, into vast distances. At one

10 Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012 Paco Mitchell point some black birds flapped toward because dreams so often behave as if The Questing Pilgrim . . . me as if trying to frighten me off, but I they have a mind of their own. I would The fate of the questing spiritual pil- brushed them aside and kept on zoom- even say that dreams are more intelligent grim, it seems, is to follow the arrow ing. Then the thought occurred to me: than we are, they see more than we do where it leads, to resist panic when con- Why am I zooming through outer space? I and they know more than we do. They fronted by images of death, to squeeze want to go back to the doorway and look come to us laden with intentions— through the narrow passage of the tun- through it again, only this time I want to despite Freud’s disparaging statement nel, to stand at the threshold of the door- look through it from this side. that “the unconscious can only wish”vi way to the Absolute and, sooner or later, As many out-of-body accounts testi- and they seem to encompass aspects and to cross over to the other side and bring fy, no sooner is something thought than potentials of our future before we have back a report. Freudians might see in this it is done. So it was with me. I found even lived them. In this regard dreams entire progression—all the images of tun- myself back at the open doorway, but still conform more to Jung’s hypothesis nel-entering and squeezing-through—a on this other side. I received a shock, regarding the prospective aspect of return to the womb, chalking it up to however, when I looked back through the infantile impulses. I disagree. dreamsvii than to Freud’s hypothesis of opening, because what I saw there was But, to an extent, the dream-trajec- wishing. myself—still at the threshold! There I tory does resemble, metaphorically, a stood, the questing pilgrim in all his reversal of the birth progression, in the imperfect glory—his sincerity, his doubt, “A dream, due to its sense of going back to the source. As his weaknesses and strengths, his intense such, it touches on the secret of re-birth. dynamic, symbolic For the spiritual pilgrim, home is in the desire to communicate with the divine. orient, the point at which the rising sun I crossed back over the threshold nature, never yields appears, the place where we all originat- and took him in my arms. I felt an to final analysis; it ed, where we were born, where we immense love for this person, and always maintains its elemental began. Symbolically speaking, then, had. I put my hands on his shoulders, mystery to the end” knowing where home is, in that spiritual turned him around and began walking sense, is to be oriented. Think how disori- him out of the tunnel, back toward the ented our culture has become, over the waking world. We walked step for step, past few centuries, for having lost touch he in front, I behind. Then I began to float The images and motifs in dreams with this primal truth. above him, where I knew I had always weave in and out of the threads of our The visionary experience of myself been and always would be, accompany- in two different forms, standing face-to- waking lives, like warp and weft, creating ing him wherever he went. face on either side of the doorway, a mysterious tapestry whose larger, I emerged from the fading vision, in amounted to a radical re-orientation for panoramic and visionary images fully tears. me. By finally opening the door and reveal themselves to us only over time. crossing the threshold, I came to know The Other Side . . . And I cannot separate the dream from something about the other self who the active imagination that, however The outcome of that unplanned, seems to belong to that other side. It was belatedly, seemed to complete the imaginal experiment confirmed what I as if my earthly and celestial selves had dream. Dreams elucidate and reflect our had intuited in the dream about the finally met face-to-face. This is one way feelings, emotions, impulses, desires, other side: I had entered some unquali- to interpret the Zen archer’s intention of thoughts, ideas and attitudes before we fied state or realm, and the notion of aiming at the target of himself. There are are even aware of them, bundling them pure potential that had come to me in many other traditions, metaphors or nar- into meaningful, purposeful packets of the dream, suited it quite well. Should I ratives that describe this kind of experi- images soaked in history and culture, ence. For now, let it suffice to say that call what I experienced in the active viii they exist, and that anyone who casts a imagination an epiphany, a theophany, or biology and anatomy, philosophy and net in these mythic waters is likely to an angelophany? Any one of them will religion—even humor, puns and etymolo- gies. bring them up. do. But by whatever name, the experi- Each of us must decide how far we A dream, due to its dynamic, sym- ence has altered my views about the will go in the process of tracking our bolic nature, never yields to final analysis; nature of reality, even touching on the images back, down and in, re-tracing it maintains its elemental mystery to the relations between life and death—a topic them through their deeper layers, to their for another essay. But an intriguing ques- end. This particular dream—the bow and original, higher valence and their ultimate tion remains to this day: Who was I, arrow leading to a doorway to the source—a process Henri Corbin calls when I stood on the other side looking at absolute—is one of those. Decades old, it ta’wil.ix Whether we think of ourselves as myself? came back to me with surprising force, psychological or spiritual seekers, or hijacking my attention as soon as I both—are these modalities so different, Hijacked by a Dream . . . addressed myself to this essay. It is my in the end?—it is for each of us to file our I said above that I chose to write responsibility, in this essay and beyond, report on what we find in our individual about the bow-and-arrow dream—or did to continue my efforts to catch up with quest—to bring back an offering, as it I capitulate?—because the dream itself the dream, which has been way ahead of were, a strand of Golden Fleece. demanded it. I want to emphasize that, me all along, and still is.

Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012 11 Hijacked by a Dream

Notes vii See C. G. Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, CW X (New York: Having studied dreams and depth psy- i Quoted in Loren Eiseley, The Star Bollingen Foundation, Princeton chology since 1972, Paco Mitchell has Thrower (New York: Random House, University Press, 1966), paragraph 197: practiced as a Jungian Therapist, operat- 1978), p. 297. For a biography of “The unconscious is continually active, ed his own art bronze foundry as a sculp- McGlashan see Wikipedia: Alan c ombining its material in ways which McGlashan - Wikipedia, the free encyclo- serve the future. It produces, no less than tor and performed as a flamenco gui- pedia. the conscious mind, subliminal combina- tarist. He holds advanced degrees in ii See Sibudu Cave, South Africa: tions that are prospective; only, they are Romance Languages from Stanford http://www.uj.ac.za/EN/Newsroom/News m arkedly superior to the conscious com- University, and Counseling Psychology /Pages/Stone-Agearrowsfound.aspx binations both in refinement and in from the University of Oregon. iii See “The Psychology of the Child scope. For these reasons the unconscious Archetype,” in C. G. Jung, C. Kerenyi, eds., could serve man as a unique guide, pro- Essays on a Science of Mythology, vided that he can resist the lure of being Princeton University Press (Bollingen misguided.” Series XXII) 9th ed., 1993, pp. 70-98. viii For an excellent description of Jung’s iv For a sympathetic discussion of the diagnostic analysis of a dream in terms of “Spirit is the living God-Self conundrum from a Christian per- anatomical correlations, see Russell A. body seen from spective, see Jerry Wright’s essay, Christ: Lockhart, “Cancer in Myth and Dream,” A Symbol of the Self (Jung Society of published in Words As Eggs: Psyche in within, and the body Atlanta, 2001). Language and Clinic (Dallas: Spring http://www.jungatlanta.com/articles/fall Publications, 1983), pp. 60-62. (This text is the outer 01-crist-symbol-of-self.pdf is currently being reprinted and made manifestation of v Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of available in both digital and print versions Archery (NY: Random House, Vintage through Amazon.com.) the living spirit.” Classics Edition, 1999), p. 4. ix See Henri Corbin’s essay, “Mundus vi For an informed critique of Freud’s Imaginalis, or the Imaginary and the Imaginal,” at: - Carl Gustav Jung, comment and of psychoanalytic theory Modern Man in Search of Soul ingeneral, see C. G. Jung, The Theory of http://hermetic.com/bey/mundus_imagin Psychoanalysis (New York: Journal of alis.htm Nervous and Mental Disease, 1915). ###

12 Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012

t a 1935 lecture in London, Jung fering from disregard and devaluation As I was trying to find the snake, an Astated the following: brought about by years of flight into a old cat jumped out of a vase. It spiritual regime. looked awful and had shit hanging I consider my contribution to psy- from its ass. It landed on a newspa- chology to be my subjective confes- My psychological life was marked per I was holding and died. Somehow sion. It is my personal psychology, with an acidic self-attacking style, I had lost the cat and forgot about it. my prejudice that I see things in such obsessed with the tumultuous struggle to I found the snake and shouted for a and such a way. So far as we admit create meditative stillness. I had recur- container. It bit me several times and our personal prejudice, we are really sprayed venom at me. I put the snake contributing towards an objective rent dreams of fighting with old friends i in a cardboard box and try to fold the psychology. from my hometown. They were furious sides in. It resisted my efforts with In the spirit of Jung’s claim, I will with me. My flight left them responsible tremendous force, seeking to escape begin this essay with my own confession for carrying my pain—the unfinished my grip. I considered letting it go in about how my yoga practice became a business of psyche. Despite their persist- the backyard, but I decided it might ent presence at night, the compulsivity disturb the ecosystem. The cardboard defense against my psychological life. was not holding. I looked at my Like many young adults, when I and rigidity with which I engaged a highly hands and saw drops of blood at the reached the age of 18, I set off at a fast structured yoga practice coalesced into a bite marks. I began searching for the sprint from all that was familiar towards violent defense against these sponta- package the snake came in to see if it the promise of adventure—a casting neous images that were attempting to really was harmless—then I woke up. away of all that was associated with push through the membrane of con- Looking back on this dream, it home. The spirit of seeking soon became sciousness. appears evident that these vivid images a seeking of spirit. I was introduced to the were the living embodiments of the tor- practice of yoga, and my longing for “What falls into the tured, erratic, and angry personae of psy- change was quickly translated into a che, tired of their forced containment. steadfast dedication to the yoga tradi- shadow of the These creatures were furious, and they tion. I held tight to the practice—it wanderer is that which desperately wanted their freedom. The became my panacea, a cure all, a path is already present” tight confines of spiritual practice could that offered a vision of the very pinnacle not withstand the fury and instinctual of development. rage embodied in the snake and the My relationship with yoga eventual- lizard. When tightly packaged, the snake ly brought me to the fertile ground of In the fall of 2008, I was shaken is apparently harmless, not to mention India—a place that seems to have a mag- awake by the following dream: lifeless. Wrapped so tight in the packag- netic pull for the wandering spirit, offer- I am at my mother’s house standing ing of mass production, it evokes in my ing promises of transcendence, enlighten- at the counter in the kitchen. As a waking mind a feeling of disgust and ment, mentorship, and peak experiences. birthday gift, my girlfriend gave me a black snake tightly bound in a pack- shame—a move so far from the In a period of four years, I took two age and seemingly lifeless. I autonomous nature of Snake. Echoing extended trips to India, seeking to satiate unwrapped the snake and it began to this theme of abuse, the forgotten cat the unmistakable longings of spirit. unfold and fill out. I read the pack- dies from neglect, trapped in a vase. Shit Although India was generous with her age. The snake is supposed to be hangs from its ass. The lizard displays its bounty, I returned home with my needs harmless. I went to the bathroom, intending to keep the snake con- instinctual urge to mate and kill. The fre- unmet, fantasies deflated. The high I had tained there. The snake crawled up netic dream ego, anxious in the face of once gotten from yoga was rapidly dimin- the ceiling to a basket where it found instinct, tries to forcibly contain these ishing—a fall from the peak marked by a big lizard. At first the lizard wanted urges, killing the lizard in the process. depression, irritability, and existential to mate with the snake. Then went The dream depicts the unmistakable confusion. into a frenzy attempting to eat it. I seized the lizard and searched des- power and kinetic energy actively embod- With time, I began to realize that perately for a container. I pushed on ied in the images of psyche. It is easy to behind the fervor and dedication to spiri- the lid, forcing the lizard inside. It see that an equally powerful energy is tual development, my psychological life reacted with intense anger and tried required if the ego attempts to contain had become withered and dry. What falls to get free. Suddenly it stopped and control the psyche. However, as the into the shadow of the wanderer is that resisting and began excreting saliva like stuff from its exoskeleton. I killed dream so vividly depicted, the instinctual which is already present. The figures of it by pressing too hard. Meanwhile, forces never simply disappear. The imagination, so close to home, were suf- the snake was let loose in the house. repressed is bound to return either

Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012 13 The Shadow of Yoga through symptom, complex projections, air, and mountainous height—from which his oft-quoted assertion that soul is not or violent acting out, and as the dream everything below appears unified, parts some static reified feature; soul is a way stated the ecosystem will be disturbed. of a whole. Spirit bears a close relation- of seeing, a way of being in and with the Having now formed a more respect- ship to Apollo, the far-sighted, the god of world, and it is something that must be ful relationship with psychic images, and light and rationale foresight, a god of made out of one’s encounters with life— through a great deal of personal reflec- purity, deliberation, and discipline, twin hence his now famous line “Call the tion on my experience with the yoga tra- to the chaste huntress Artemis. The spirit, world if you please, ‘The vale of Soul- dition, I have formulated a critique that in its fantasy of flight, its yearning for making.’ Then you will find out the use of appears to have relevance for the rapidly transcendence, and its relentless push the world.”ix expanding population identified as yoga toward the peaks, interdigitates with the The practice of yoga favors a one- practitioners. Specifically, I have come to dynamics of the puer aeternus, the eter- sided privileging of spirit over and against believe that yoga has become unneces- nal youth embodied in our mythologies of soul. This one-sidedness is not only part sarily narrow through the widespread the highflying Icarus, Phaeton, and Peter and parcel of a collective and ubiquitous neglect and devaluing of psychological Pan. spirit complex, it is validated and support- thinking and the autonomous images of Hillman characterized the puer as ed by the ancient tradition from which dream, fantasy, and reverie. The yoga tra- “narcissistic, inspired, effeminate, phallic, contemporary yoga stems. In this tradi- dition, as I have experienced it, places inquisitive, inventive, pensive, passive, tion, the practitioner aggressively trains aspiring practitioners in danger of becom- fiery, and capricious.”v The puer makes the mind, takes it off its natural meander- ing blind to their own psychological idio- himself felt in the obsessional self- ing, instinctual course, and sets it on a syncrasies, and unless the tradition involvement of spiritual practice. More contra naturum course toward the moun- makes a valued place for the phenomena essentially though, he is the all-consum- taintop—a steadfast pursuit of psy- of psyche, practitioners are bound to ing fire of spirit. It is he who fuels the chophysical cessation and spiritual real- experience psychological stagnation, neu- intoxicated longing, or pothos, inherent ization. rotic symptoms, and violent eruptions of to any spiritual discipline. The etymological root of the word unconscious material. yoga is yuj, which means to yoke: to har- In the remainder of this essay, I will ness, to unite. Before the term was used attempt to highlight elements of the yoga “The etymological to denote a particular practice or reli- tradition that may reinforce rigid psycho- gious aim, yoga was a word used to logical defenses and cut one off from the root of the word yoga describe the dangerous and difficult task rich depth of the psyche. In addition, I is yuj, which means of yoking a horse in a state of battle fren- would like to share concrete suggestions zy.x When preparing for battle the chario- that will make room for the dynamic and to yoke: to harness, teer would execute the task of placing spontaneous occurrence of image within to unite” the yoke, the harness, a locus of control, a yoga practice. around the neck of the violently manic Beyond a doubt, yoga has proven warhorse. This was a task that required beneficial for millions of modern individu- great skill. When yoked, the power of the als. My point is not to undermine or Hillman’svi soul/spirit distinction horse could be properly directed. When argue with these benefits or the pro- places soul in the deep valley below the free, the horse’s energy and behavior found impact yoga practice can have on a towering mountain of spirit. In the valley was, from the perspective of the chario- person’s life. My intention here, as the many things are hidden. There is multi- teer, wild and scattered, driven by title states, is to look at the shadow of plicity, relationship, particularity, foggi- instinct as opposed to refined discipline. the yoga tradition. I will be coming from ness, and muddiness. There dwell the This analogy evokes the central sensibility the depth psychological sensibility that nymphs, fairies, leprechauns, ancestors, of the yoga tradition. The wild, instinctu- everything casts a shadow, has a dark and gnomes, the myriad characters of al, out of control mind, requires a stead- side; and the brighter the light, the dark- imagination—a retinue of voices and fast harness, the act of yoga, and the er the shadow. Such is the case with the vii opinions. It’s where you get messy and skillful control of the charioteer, the yoga luminous light of the yoga tradition. messed with. Here you find the bitter practitioner. Once harnessed, the energy To explain further, I will take up a fecundity of tears. The valley of soul con- dialectical tension postulated by Hillmanii of the mind is then channeled in a single- tains the many experiences disavowed by in his essay titled Peaks and Vales. aimed pursuit, which according to the Hillman argues for the fundamental dif- spirit. This is the phenomenology of Classical Yoga tradition is the cessation of soul, and by walking this valley, encoun- ference between spiritual discipline and the turnings of the mind.xi tering events that can be digested into psychotherapy by differentiating the The doctrines and practices aimed viii needs of spirit and soul. I would like to embodied experiences, falling into the at the suspension of the functions of use these distinct archetypal propensities murk and mud, rubbing shoulders with mind has withstood the powerful impact to present the need for a yoga practice the multitude of characters and the chal- that “keeps soul in mind.”iii of Western appropriation and remains at lenges and blessings constellated in these the very core of contemporary yoga, Hillmaniv described spirit as pertain- relationships, one is given the opportuni- resulting in an unconscious and at times ing to peak experiences, transcendence, ty to make soul. Here we follow Keats in destructive repression of the animal psy-

14 Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012 Jason Butler che. The tradition of Classical Yoga, as a of melancholy, and the poetics of not- the will of the body play on the screen of key exemplar of the single-focused sensi- knowing. For the sake of soul, the dynam- consciousness. The practice becomes a bility of spirit, allows no room for, and in ics of spirit must be made conscious, dif- fine art of listening to the polycentric fact, actively undermines a relationship to ferentiated, and relativized as one way of dynamics of being—entities that are the surprising, instinctual, moralistically being, not the way of being. clearly distinct from the will and volition relative, ego-disturbing influence of soul. For the last hundred years, psycho- of the ego-mind. It is this very skill of lis- When engaged in a disciplined pursuit of analytic authors have attempted to bring tening, mutual modification, and explo- unity, what happens to multiplicity? What value back to the symptom, back to the ration of intensity that rests at the heart happens to the outliers of conscious- spontaneous and ego-dystonic, back to of a reflective relationship with soul. ness—the things that don’t fit into a nice, the irrational enigmatic images of the In addition, yoga practitioners and tight, unified package? They become split dream, and the unflattering fantasies that teachers would do well to expand their off, repressed, angry, and unconsciously fill our imagination. As primary voices of study of the yoga tradition to include the enacted. soul, these phenomena provide the raw vast body of Indian mythology. This rich The yogic ideal fosters and exagger- elements from which a profound relation- storehouse of story brings the coloring of ates identification with the longings of ship between soul and spirit, valley and imagination to complement the achro- the puer-infused spirit. When the propen- mountain, may grow. As Hillmanxiii matic ideals present within the spiritual sities of the puer are literalized, when the argued, the high-flying energy of spirit philosophies. The exploits, battles, fail- reflective function is absent, the inner life falls in love with the depth of soul ures, triumphs, humor, sex, and sexuality of the individual dries up for lack of psy- through imaginative reflection and an of the Gods can provide yoga practition- chic water. This dryness is the felt pres- aesthetic appreciation of the psyche’s ers with an archetypal basis for their life ence of the puer’s always-present coun- images. experience—giving transpersonal depth terpart—the senex or old man. to the variety of experience. Ganesha’s The influence of the senex is felt sweet tooth, Shiva’s voracious sexuality when the high ideals and ephemeral “The high-flying energy hidden just behind his ascetic exterior, longings of the puer are consolidated and of spirit falls in love Kali’s wrathful violence and loving grounded into regularity of practice and in with the depth of embrace, Krishna’s sensual nature and concentrated discipline. Whereas this trickster pranks, Bhrama’s foolish boons, meeting of high ideals with intense disci- soul through imaginative Ravana’s appetite for destruction, these pline can certainly result in a steadfast reflection and an stories ignite the imagination and give fla- climb towards the mountain peak, with- aesthetic appreciation vor to a tradition that can be desperately out attending to the poiesis of soul, the austere. Mythology balances the neti neti individual is in danger of falling into a life of the psyche’s images” of spirit-centered philosophy with a gen- marked by rote staleness, devoid of erous provision of space; while spirit says vibrancy and richness—a harnessing of no, not this, the mythic imagination energies that chokes off the natural It means that the search and quest- appeals to soul with a resounding, “Yes, undulations of psyche. ing be a psychological search and this too has place, may find its archetypal questing, a psychological adventure. The yoga practitioner is encouraged It means that the messianic and rev- significance, belongs in a myth.”xv by text and teacher to abide in equanimi- olutionary impulse connect first with As Slater noted myth is “found in ty, to be free from attachments, yet per- the soul and be concerned first with fragments, versions, and contradictory haps the soul needs to reject, judge, have its redemption. This alone makes details.”xvi These characteristics balance partialities, and passions; needs to argue, human the puer’s message, at the same time reddening the soul into the self-assuredness that comes with get annoyed, be perturbed, and suffer life. It is in this realm of the soul that identifying with a school or philosophy. anxiety. In short, soul needs symptoms; the gifts of the puer are first need- The multiplicity presented in myth excites or better, symptoms and affects are ed.xiv the soul with potentials and affords the inherent to soul, and any system that The foundation for a dialectical rela- space needed to bring out the many frames these experiences as defilements tionship with image is already in place facets of character. or distractions to be uprooted is actively within the yoga tradition. Hatha Yoga, the This move towards soul, valuing working against the voice and needs of branch of yoga from which we derive myth, fantasy, dream images, and rever- soul. As Slater noted, “symptoms need to modern posture-oriented yoga practice, ie—meeting these phenomena on their xii be fulfilled, not just ‘resolved.’” There quickly teaches the individual the art of own terms just as the Hatha Yoga practi- is value in falling apart, and it is the spirit dialogue with the autonomous voices of tioner meets the body on its own terms— complex that anxiously tries to get things the body—a process of adjusting the would undoubtedly bring a rich complexi- together, commanding: be centered, be pose in search of the perfect threshold of ty and depth to the lofty ideals and the grounded, be present, be here now, be psychophysical intensity. In a refined high-flying aim of spirit. Perhaps if meth- enlightened. While the spirit pursues practice of postures there is a subtle and ods of inner work, such as dream analy- enlightenment, the soul is left in its long- fluid conversation occurring among the sis, active imagination, and mythic ampli- ing for an endarkenment. The soul yearns multiple elements of one’s being: move- fication, were adjoined with the more for mystery, depth, death, the black bile ments of energy, sensation, breath, and traditional yoga practices, Western yoga

Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012 15 The Shadow of Yoga practitioners could enjoy the richness hid- 9 John Keats, The Complete Poetical Francisco. His areas of interest include ing in the depths of psyche, thus making Works of Keats (Boston: Houghton Mifflin archetypal psychotherapy, the use of a home for the wandering spirit in the reverie in clinical practice, and mythic Co., 1899), 369. valley of soul. dimensions of psychopathology. 10 Ian Whicher, The Integrity of the Yoga ### Notes Dar?ana: A Reconsideration of Classical Yoga. (New York: SUNY Press, 1998) i C. G. Jung, The Collected Works of C.G. 11 Patanjali, Yoga: Discipline of Freedom: Jung, tr. R.F.C. Hull, (Princeton, NJ: The Yoga Sutra Attributed to Patanjali. Princeton University Press 1977), Vol 18 § translated by Barbara Stoler Miller. (New 275. York: Bantam, 1998) "One thing that comes 12 Glen Slater, introduction to Senex and out in myths is that at ii James Hillman, Senex and Puer. Puer, by James Hillman (Putnam, Conn: (Putnam, Conn: Spring Publications, 2005) Spring Publications, Inc), xix the bottom of the abyss 13 Hillman, Senex and Puer. iii Robert Romanyshyn, The Wounded comes the voice of salvation. 14 Ibid., 58. Researcher: Research With Soul In Mind. The black moment is (New Orleans, LA: Spring Journal Books, 15 Hillman, Re-visioning Psychology, 69. 2007), xi 16 Slater, introduction to Senex and Puer, the moment when the real xvii. message of transformation 4 Hillman, Senex and Puer. 17 Henry Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth (Princeton University is going to come. At the 5 Ibid., 50. Press, 1977 darkest moment 6 James Hillman, Re-visioning Psychology Jason Butler is a doctoral candidate in comes the light." (New York: Harper and Row, 1975) the clinical psychology program at 7 Hillman, Senex and Puer. Pacifica Graduate Institute. He is current- ly working as an intern at Access Institute - Joseph Campbell, 8 Hillman, Re-visioning Psychology. for Psychological Services in San The Hero with a Thousand Faces

16 Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012

Introduction it becomes clear that a researcher who to retail all sorts of unflattering tid- wants to shed light on Jung’s reception of bits about him. Most of them had ung was fascinated by Nietzsche. Nietzsche has his work cut out for him not read a word of Nietzsche and From the time he first became J indeed. Because of this complexity of the therefore dwelt at length on his out- gripped by Nietzsche’s ideas as a student subject, none of the books written about ward foibles, for example, his putting in Basel to his days as a leading figure in on airs as a gentleman, his manner of Jung and Nietzsche provide an accessible the psychoanalytic movement, Jung read, playing the piano, his stylistic exag- introduction to the topic. Only one short- and increasingly developed, his own gerations. (Jung, 1965 [1961], p. 122) er text about the topic exists – Paul thought in a dialogue with the work of Bishop’s chapter on Nietzsche and Jung in As Jung related in Memories, Nietzsche. As the following quote from the collection of essays Jung in Contexts Dreams, Reflections, he postponed read- Memories, Dreams, Reflections reveals, (1999) - but even this text is highly tech- ing Nietzsche, because he “was held back Jung even went as far as to connect nical in nature, and is likely to leave the Nietzsche to what he saw as the central by a secret fear that [he] might perhaps uninitiated reader feeling perplexed. This task underlying his life’s work: be like him” (1965 [1961], p. 102). Jung article serves to correct this imbalance by would have been well aware of the fact The meaning of my existence is that offering an introductory roadmap to the that Nietzsche had gone mad towards the life has addressed a question to me. subject matter that is both clear and con- That is a supra-personal task, which I end of his life. As Jung himself had had cise. As such, it will hopefully be the per- accompany only by effort and with frequent visions and strange dreams ever difficulty. Perhaps it is a question fect point of entry into the debate for the reader with little or no previous knowl- since his childhood, he perhaps worried which preoccupied my ancestors, that this was proof that he himself might and which they could not answer? edge of this important — as well as fasci- Could that be why I am so impressed nating — topic. also go mad. Finally, however, Jung’s by the problem on which Nietzsche curiosity got the better of him, and he foundered: the Dionysian side of life, started to read Nietzsche vigorously. This to which the Christian seems to have “Jung would have been reading project had a huge influence on lost the way? (Jung, 1965 [1961], p. the way his early thoughts took shape. 350) well aware of the fact This becomes particularly obvious when Given the huge influence Nietzsche that Nietzsche had one analyses the Zofingia lectures (Jung, had on Jung, examining this line of influ- gone mad towards the 1983 [1896-1899]), a book which contains ence is a project of substantial impor- tance for the field of Jungian scholarship. end of his life.” the transcriptions of four lectures Jung It should come as no surprise, then, that gave to the Basel student-fraternity the a substantial amount of academic Zofingia society, of which he was a mem- research has already been dedicated to it. ber during his student days. In all four of While no articles have been written Jung’s reception of Nietzsche: the lectures Jung repeatedly referenced about the subject thus far, there are preliminary explorations the work of Nietzsche. He quoted the three books on the subject: Paul Bishop’s On April 18, 1895, Jung enrolled as a famous line from Zarathustra “I say to The Dionysian Self: C.G. Jung’s Reception medical student at Basel University, the you, one must yet have chaos in himself of Friedrich Nietzsche (1995), Patricia same university where Nietzsche had in order to give birth to a dancing star,” Dixon’s Nietzsche and Jung: Sailing a been made a professor 26 years before. and he made multiple references to Deeper Night (1999), and most recently Untimely Meditations, which was the first Lucy Huskinson’s Nietzsche and Jung: the Up until this point, Jung had not read Whole Self in the Union of Opposites Nietzsche, even though he had been book by Nietzsche which he had read. (2004). highly interested in philosophy while in Although the Zofingia lectures, then, Untangling the exact influence of secondary school.i In Basel, however, might lead one to think that Untimely Nietzsche on Jung, however, is a compli- Jung soon became curious about this Meditations had the most impact on him cated business. Jung never openly strange figure about whom there was still during this time, he later revealed that a addressed the exact influence Nietzsche much talk at the University. different book deserved that particular had on his own concepts, and when he As Jung himself claimed in his semi- honor — Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the did link his own ideas to Nietzsche’s, he autobiographical book Memories, reading of which Jung described as “a almost never made it clear whether the Dreams, Reflections,ii most of the talk tremendous impression”: idea in question was inspired by about Nietzsche was negative at that When I read Zarathustra for the first Nietzsche or whether he merely discov- time, gossip almost: time as a student of twenty-three, of ered the parallel at a later stage. Add to course I did not understand it all, but this the large number of references to Moreover, there were some persons I got a tremendous impression. I Nietzsche in Jung’s Collected Works, and at the university who had known could not say it was this or that, Nietzsche personally and were able

Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012 17 Jung’s Reception of Friedrich Nietzsche though the poetical beauty of some nique (Noll, 1997, p. 78). Psychoanalysis, to be true. Gross probably functioned as of the chapters impressed me, but for him, was a tool that had the ability to a catalyst for Jung’s heightened interest particularly the strange thought got enable the sort of anti-moral, Dionysian in Nietzsche and his concept of the hold of me. He helped me in many respects, as many other people have revolution he thought Nietzsche Dionysian. The knowledge of Nietzsche’s been helped by him (Jung, 1988 preached. In his attempt to live the philosophy was already there for Jung, [1934], Vol. 1, p. 544) lifestyle he thought Freud and Nietzsche but Gross amplified this knowledge and When his student days were over, implied, Gross — apparently a most made Jung more sensitive to its applica- however, Jung gave up on his exploration charismatic personality — urged many to tion on a practical level. Needless to say, of Nietzsche’s thought for a while. The live out their instincts without shame. In Jung never became such a radical as complexities of life drew his attention Gross’s own case, these instincts led him Gross was. What Gross did do, most like- elsewhere: he took up a position in the to dabble in drugs, group-sex and ly, is install in Jung an even more urgent famous Burghölzli clinic in Zurich, and polygamy (Noll, 1994, p. 153). sensitivity to the problem with which developed a collaboration and friendship Nietzsche had battled: how to deal with with Freud. It was only when Jung had the Dionysian side of life. There was one been acquainted with Freud for a number “What Gross did do, work by Nietzsche in particular which of years that he finally began to be inter- most likely, is install in Jung turned to in this period to investi- gate that question, and that was the book ested in Nietzsche again. As the published Jung an even more letters to Freud reveal, Jung became par- which had tremendously impacted him as ticularly interested in Nietzsche´s concept urgent sensitivity to the a student: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In of the Dionysian.iii Take for example the problem with which 1914, right in the middle of the very diffi- cult phase in his life which followed after following passage, from a letter to Freud Nietzsche had battled: dated the 31st of December 2009: the split with Freud (the same period dur- how to deal with the ing which he also wrote his famous Red I am turning over and over in my mind the problem of antiquity. It’s a Dionysian side of life” book), Jung embarked on a second read- hard nut… I’d like to tell you many ing of the work, this time making lots of things about Dionysos were it not notes (Jung, 1988 [1934], Vol. 1, p. 259). too much for a letter. Nietzsche By the time Jung met Gross in 1908, Such was the impact that the book made seems to have intuited a great deal Jung was, as we have seen above, already on him again that in 1934, twenty years of it (The Freud-Jung Letters, 1979, pp. 279-280) influenced by Nietzsche, albeit only on a later, Jung embarked on an even more philosophical level, not a practical one. extensive reading of the book. This time, Jung’s fascination with Nietzsche’s He was, at that time, happily married, still however, he chose to devote an entire concept of the Dionysian, as the letters tied to the Christian beliefs of his child- seminar to it. The book that resulted he wrote to Freud in this period reveal, hood, and a successful member — if not from this seminar is the most elaborate suddenly arises in 1909. What then, one leader — of the psychoanalytic move- source available to us for the examination might ask, brought on this sudden inter- ment. He was, in other words, a far cry of Jung’s mature thoughts on Nietzsche, est in one of Nietzsche’s most famous removed from the wild Dionysian and for that reason I will devote an entire concepts? Although we cannot be entire- Nietzscheanism that Gross practiced and section to it. It is to that section that we ly sure, I consider it highly likely that this preached, and it comes therefore as no will now turn. interest was sparked by Otto Gross surprise that his initial judgment of (1877-1820), who Jung first met in May Jung’s seminar on Nietzsche’s Gross’s thought was one of distaste (Noll, 1908. Zarathustra 1994, p. 158). However, after Jung had Otto Gross — Nietzschean, physi- treated Gross for a while, the disgust At the time of the seminar (1934- cian, psychoanalyst, adulterer and notori- gave way to admiration, as the following 1939), Nietzsche was increasingly being ous promoter of polygamy — was admit- letter to Freud reveals: associated with National Socialism (Jung, ted to the Burghölzli psychiatric hospital 1997 [1934], p. xviii). This made a semi- In spite of everything he is my friend, nar on Nietzsche’s Zarathustra a sensitive in May 1908. He was to be treated for his for at bottom he is a very good and relentless addiction to cocaine and mor- fine man with an unusual mind. . . . issue, especially for Jung himself, who phine, and fell under the personal super- For in Gross I discovered many had already been accused of National vision of Jung himself (Noll, 1994, p. 153). aspects of my true nature, so that he Socialist affinities more than once at that time.v Despite all of this, Jung still decid- Gross had, when still in a better condi- often seemed like my twin brother — except for the dementia praecox. ed to persist in his discussion of this now tion, been a disciple of Freud, and had (The Freud-Jung Letters, 1979, p. controversial work. In the early sessions been regarded by many (including Freud 156) of the seminar, Jung clarified why he felt himself) as a man of great intelligence Whether Jung having fallen some- that Zarathustra was deserving of this and promise.iv He endorsed a very radical what under Gross’s spell influenced his attention. The collective unconscious, as philosophy of life, which perhaps can best Jung reminded his audience, operates by renewed fascination with Nietzsche and be explained as a mixture of a mechanism that in Jungian language is the Dionysian is a question to which we Nietzscheanism and psychoanalysis. called compensation. It will try to correct will probably never have the answer. In According to Gross, Nietzsche provided conscious attitudes that are too narrow my opinion, however, the fact that both the metaphors, Freud provided the tech- or one-sided by offering, by means of instances coincide does make this likely archetypal content, a compensatory

18 Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012 Ritske Rensma alternative. Zarathustra, according to Nietzsche had entered, which culminated fies. . . . Fascism in Italy is old Wotan Jung, consisted of such archetypal, com- in a work of archetypal content that again, it is all Germanic blood down pensatory content. It was therefore a stood in a compensatory relation to the there (Jung, 1997 [1934], p. 196). book which not only said something age in which it had been created. Or consider this quote from about Nietzsche, but also about the zeit- Nietzsche, because he was so sensitive, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, which geist of Western culture at that particular was among the first to have such an also sums up Jung’s thoughts on the rela- moment in history. Nietzsche, as Jung put experience, but it was Jung’s conviction tionship between Wotan, Nietzsche and it, “got the essence of his time” (Jung, that the very archetypal content that had the disasters of war quite well: 1988 [1934], Vol. 1, p. 69) . captivated Nietzsche would later enthrall [The] Dionysian experience of Jung labeled the process that results all of Europe. Nietzsche . . . might better be from the compensatory nature of the ascribed to the god of ecstasy, unconscious enantiodromia, a term he Wotan. The hubris of the Wilhelmine borrowed from Heraclites to denote a “When the psychological era alienated Europe and paved the process of alternation between oppo- way for the disaster of 1914. In my sites. When the psychological system has system has reached a youth, I was unconsciously caught up reached a certain extreme, the uncon- certain extreme, the by this spirit of the age (Jung, 1965 [1961], p. 262). scious will intervene by means of an unconscious will inter- archetypal compensation, thus causing Both quotes illustrate very clearly the psychological system to change its vene by means of an that Jung saw the archetype of Wotan as course towards the opposite of that archetypal compensa- an explanatory cause for both World War extreme. Jung not only saw this principle tion, thus causing the I and Fascism. The second quote, howev- as underlying the psychological life of the er, also illustrates something that is of individual, but as underlying the process psychological system to much more importance to our discussion of life itself: here: Jung related Wotan directly to the [In] the process of life and becoming, change its course the pairs of opposites come together towards the opposite of Dionysian. Indeed, when we examine . . . the idea that next to the best is Jung’s discussion of Wotan in the seminar the worst. So if a bad thing gets very that extreme” on Zarathustra, he makes explicit the fact bad, it may transform into something that he considers the two related: good. . . . This is the natural enantio- Therefore one can say he [Wotan, dromia. (Jung, 1997 [1934], p. 309). So what archetypal, compensatory RR] is very similar to the Thracian Jung believed it was this process of content is it that Jung claims we can find Dionysos, the god of orgiastic enthu- enantiodromia that had been the driving in Zarathustra? In the seminar, we find siasm(Jung, 1997 [1934], p. 196). force behind the creation of Zarathustra. Jung claiming again and again that the Now we have finally come full circle. essence of the book is characterized by a According to Jung, Nietzsche’s age (and in As we have seen in the first section of many ways, Jung’s own age too) was an single archetype: the archetype of this article, the work of Nietzsche that age characterized by a narrow and one- Wotan. Jung named this archetype after a sided conscious attitude. At the end of Germanic God who he described in Jung was most interested in was the Christian era, life had become another text as “a God of storm and agi- Zarathustra, and the Nietzschean concept repressed, too overly focused on the tation, an unleasher of passion and lust he found the most important was the Apollonian side of life, to put it in for battle, as well as a sorcerer and mas- Dionysian. Here, then, do these two Nietzsche’s own terms. It was Nietzsche ter of illusion who is woven into all strands finally come together. who, according to Jung, was among the secrets of an occult nature (Jung, 1936). It Zarathustra, according to Jung, was an first to recognize this fact, and who is this archetype which, according to archetypal work that stood in a compen- expressed that a part of human nature Jung, lies at the root of Zarathustra: satory relationship to the Apollonian age was not being lived (the instincts, the It is Wotan who gets him, the old in which it had been created, and the Dionysian side of life). Because he felt wind God breaking forth, the god of archetype which characterized it most of these problems of his own time so inspiration, of madness, of intoxica- all was the archetype of Wotan, or, in deeply, the collective unconscious pre- tion and wildness, the god of the vi sented him with a compensatory, arche- Berserkers, those wild people who non-Germanic terms, Dionysos. typal vision, therewith starting the run amok (Jung, 1988 [1934], Vol. 2, “In my youth,” Jung wrote in the process of enantiodromia, of a new p. 1227). passage from Memories, Dreams, beginning: This archetype first revealed itself in Reflections quoted above, “I was uncon- Nietzsche was exceedingly sensitive the work of Nietzsche, but had, by the sciously caught up by this spirit of the to the spirit of the time; he felt very time of the Seminar, already captivated age” (p. 262). We can now finally come to clearly that we are living now in a almost everyone in Europe, according to understand what he meant by this. time when new values should be dis- According to Jung, his age was character- covered . . . . Nietzsche felt that, and Jung. He associated it with the revived instantly, naturally, the whole sym- interest in paganism and eroticism, but ized by the spirit of Wotan, or, in bolic process . . . began in himself also with the disasters of war that would Nietzschean terms, the spirit of Dionysos, (Jung, 1988 [1934], Vol. 1, p. 279). so strongly characterize the first half of and it was in Zarathustra that he saw this Jung, then, saw Zarathustra not as a the 20th century: spirit announce itself, after having been conscious, deliberate construction of Now old Wotan is in the center of neglected for such a long time during the Nietzsche. Rather, he saw it as the result Europe, you can see all the psycho- overly Apollonian era of Christianity. of a sort of dream state into which logical symptoms which he personi- Zarathustra, in other words, “was the

Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012 19 Jung’s Reception of Friedrich Nietzsche

Dionysian experience par excellence” often remains so for a long time. It is of profound importance for Jung. Not (Jung, 1988 [1934], Vol. 1, p. 10). a struggle that cannot be abolished only did Jung see Nietzsche’s work as by rational means. When it is wilfully Conclusion essential for anyone wanting to grasp the repressed it continues in the uncon- essence of the time in which he himself We are now finally in a position to scious and merely expresses itself lived, Nietzsche’s ideas also had a strong indirectly and all the more danger- sketch a rough outline of the essence of influence on the way his own concepts Jung’s interpretation of Nietzsche. ously, so no advantage is gained (Jung, 1963, p. par. 514). took shape. Understanding Jung’s rela- Nietzsche provided Jung both with the tionship to this extraordinary German terminology (the Dionysian) and the case I do not mean to imply here that thinker is therefore of prime importance study (Zarathustra as an example of the Jung’s concept of the shadow is the exact for anyone who wants to truly under- Dionysian at work in the psyche) to help equivalent of Nietzsche’s notion of the stand Jung himself. Although coming to a him put into words his thoughts about Dionysian. Nietzsche used his term in a complete understanding of the exact the spirit of his own age: an age confront- much more abstract fashion than Jung nature of this line of influence is a com- ed with an uprush of the did. The shadow, after all, denotes a spe- plex task, the roadmap presented in this Wotanic/Dionysian spirit in the collective cific part of the human psyche, not an paper will hopefully have made it more unconscious. This, in a nutshell, is how manageable. Jung came to see Nietzsche, and explains “According to Jung, the why he was so fascinated by Nietzsche as Notes a thinker. best way to deal with i Jung’s favorite philosophers up until that A topic which still remains to be dis- this shadow side of our time had been Kant, Schopenhauer and cussed, however, is in which way personality is not to Plato. Nietzsche, and the concept of the ii As is well-known, Memories, Dreams, Dionysian in particular, influenced Jung’s deny it, but to become Reflections is NOT Jung’s autobiography. own conceptual framework. This is a conscious of it and Although Jung wrote sections of the book topic all its own, and one which I do not work with it” himself, most of the real legwork was have enough room for here to fully do done by his secretary, Aniela Jaffé, who justice. It is also a topic about which the based most of the passages she wrote on scholars who have written about Jung’s interviews she conducted with Jung in the reception of Nietzsche disagree some- abstract life force like the Dionysian. Still, period before his death. As Sonu what. For myself, I have come to the con- if we examine the characteristics of Shamdasani, in C. G. Jung: A Biography in clusion that the concept from Jung’s own Jung’s concept of the shadow, it becomes Books, has pointed out, the final version theoretical framework which was most clear that it overlaps significantly with the of the book was assembled after Jung’s explicitly influenced by Nietzsche is his concept of the Dionysian. The shadow, death, and included many editorial concept of the shadow. Jung hypothe- after all: changes made by Jaffé and the Jung fami- sized that all the inferior (Jung’s term) •Was neglected and repressed dur- ly that had not been approved by Jung parts of ourselves which we refuse pres- ing the Christian era; himself. This means that Memories, ence in our lives — our wild and untamed Dreams, Reflections is a controversial •Operates on a primitive and emo- instincts, as well as our unethical charac- work, the content of which cannot be tional level; ter traits and ideas — take on a subcon- taken at face value. It should be noted, scious life of their own, occasionally over- •Is also a source of vitality and inspi- however, that the passages about taking us when we least suspect it. ration, a “congenial asset” (Jung, Nietzsche in Memories, Dreams, According to Jung, the best way to deal 1918, par. 20) which represents “the Reflections are in all likelihood not pas- with this shadow side of our personality true spirit of life” (Jung, 1965 [1961], sages that would have been changed is not to deny it, but to become conscious p. 262). after Jung’s death in accordance with the of it and work with it. The shadow, in wishes of the Jung family, as they do not All of these characteristics apply to other words, is not to be neglected — it represent anything ‘controversial’. Nietzsche’s concept of the Dionysian as is to be confronted. When this task is Moreover, it is pretty much the only well. Needless to say, this overlap could accomplished, the shadow stops being source available if one wants to give a merely be a coincidence: it could be the antagonistic, and can even become a historical overview of Jung’s relationship case that Jung developed his concept of source of great strength and creativity. with the works of Nietzsche, which is why the shadow without any direct line of The shadow, in other words, must be I make use of it in this section. influence from Nietzsche’s ideas whatso- integrated into the conscious personality: iii The Dionysian was a concept which ever. As I will argue in a forthcoming Nietzsche first used in his book The Birth It is a therapeutic necessity, indeed, paper, however, there is clear evidence of Tragedy, in which he contrasted it with the first requisite of any thorough to be found in texts from the early stages the opposing concept of the Apollonian. psychological method, for conscious- of Jung’s career that Jung developed his ness to confront its shadow. In the According to Nietzsche, both of these concept of the human shadow with end this must lead to some kind of forces are operable in human culture. The Nietzsche’s concept of the Dionysian in union, even though the union con- Apollonian he associated with reason, the back of his mind. Nietzsche, then, was sists at first in an open conflict, and harmony and balance; the Dionysian, on

20 Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012 Carl Jung good discussion of this topic see Hove: Brunner-Routledge. Grossman (1999). Jung, C. G. (1918). The role of the uncon- Dr. Ritske Rensma is a lecturer in the vi Jung felt strongly that one had to stick scious. In The collected works of field of Religious Studies at Roosevelt C.G. Jung (Vol. 10). Princeton: Academy, an international honors college to the traditions/myths of the culture one Princeton University Press. had been raised in. This probably explains Jung, C. G. (1936). Wotan. In The collect- of the University of Utrecht. He is the why he preferred to refer to the ed works of C.G. Jung (Vol. 10). author of the book The Innateness of Dionysian by using a more Germanic term Princeton: Princeton University Myth (London: Continuum, 2009), which analyses Jung's influence on the American such as Wotan (so as to better suit his Press. Jung, C. G. (1963). Mysterium coniunctio- comparative mythologist Joseph own Swiss/Germanic upbringing). nis (The collected works of C.G. Campbell. Bibliography Jung vol. 14). Princeton: Princeton University Press. ### Bishop, P. (1995). The Dionysian self : C.G. Jung, C. G. (1965 [1961]). Memories, Jung’s reception of Friedrich dreams, reflections. New York: Nietzsche. Berlin: de Gruyter. Random House.

Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012 21 Sacred Art Sacred Calling By Laurie Corzett By Laurie Corzett

Wee one, brought bare into cacophony, Cloistered for warmth in this area between. this emergent pantheon. I've learned its scenery, like lattice worked into my eyes. This is your place Slowly turning toward a wise relief, pausing at this of smell, touch, blaring light. portal to awesome wonderment, This is how we show our face pure radiant bliss annoyed with your lack of social grace. dispelling knots of pain and betrayal. Immersed, made into a person, a defined moving space, Magnetic, archetype of mystic dreams carried through bound in time, mesmerized roughly, softly, into the world of Man -- psyche searing brand, whirling colors, voices, hands demanding I come to the promised land, potent stream of prophecy. Outcast from warm womb, safe discipline, of Commanded, I lay down my burden, weight against my back tribal faith of gathered assets I was certain to require. to create beyond common form, Freed to meet my mission, to accept desire, the pain of separation, bravery called, immortal pleasure, the opportunity to sketch, life's instinctual desire, to draw out beauty, to paint leisurely upon prism glass. tricks of the trade. Have I reached the bridge upon the crossroads, the glimmering? Within this sad parade -- Magick's sea through which I now may travel, native soul the human will to cure, kill, carry on returned, having earned my keep, my long journeyman's courageous -- wage. I have looked at age, a deep reflective pond. if the art is true, burnt pure in sacrificial A wild road calls, beyond this threshold, sculpted by flame, aimed impeccably -- oceanic power, drifts and meteors. I feel self-created destiny -- cathedrals of shudder slowly, seismically, as I prepare awe and inspiration, hallmark of salvation

Taste! Be made aware of sensation -- touch this instant a place beyond who you've ever been. "The study of lives and the care of souls Beyond glory, graceful soul-wrought energy means above all a prolonged encounter pours through these with what destroys and is destroyed, with sacrificial clowns poisoned by immortality. what is broken and hurts” It is for you we bleed, we cry, -James Hillman, imbued with such weight -- to hold Re-visioning Psychology that spark you know could set you free.

22 Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012

arie-Louise von Franz (1996) is regarded as the Oral Torah. The Jewish Franz, “Myths are built into religious ritu- Mhypothesized that all fairy tales scholar, Gershom Scholem (1996) wrote als” (1996, p.28). We bring mythic con- endeavor to express and to deliver into that according to Jewish tradition, sciousness to light by performing ritual consciousness the same psychic fact; that Moses received both Torahs at once acts, by leading spiritually rich lives. fact which Jung called the Self, the psy- on Mount Sinai, and everything that It is with the above understanding chic totality of an individual and also, par- any subsequent scholar finds in the that we delve into applying von Franz’s adoxically, the regulating center of the Torah or legitimately derives from it, method of interpretation to “Miriam’s collective unconscious. Each individual was already included in this oral tra- Tambourine,” and in doing so, also high- and every nation has its own mode of dition given to Moses. . . .The oral light the unique Jewishness of this tale. experiencing this psychic reality (p.2). She tradition and the written word com- The first part of von Franz’s method of also asserted through the interpretation plete one another, neither is conceiv- interpretation is to divide the story into able without the other. (p.48) of fairy tales we can move closer to expe- four stages: the exposition, the dramatis riencing this psychic totality. This paper The fourth concept is the role of personae, the naming of the problem, will seek to interpret the 19th Century and the peripeteia. Similarly, Schwartz (1998) also identifies four uniquely Jewish Eastern-European Jewish tale of “In fairy tales time “Miriam’s Tambourine,” and in doing so aspects of the Jewish folktale: the Jewish illuminate the uniqueness of Jewish fairy and place are always time, the Jewish place, the Jewish charac- tales as they relate to Jewish spiritual life, evident because they ters, and the Jewish message. This last aspect is most closely aligned with the as well as the similarities of Jewish and begin with ‘once upon Jungian beliefs on about the psyche. third part of von Franz’s method, the Before proceeding, it is critical to a time’ or something interpretation of the tale; and as such, examine what sets Jewish myths and similar, which means discussion of the Jewish message will be reserved for that time. tales apart from other ethnic bodies of in timelessness and work. Howard Schwartz, considered by In identifying the exposition, Von many to be the foremost expert on spacelessness- the Franz noted that “in fairy tales time and Jewish folktales, noted that “in general, realm of the place are always evident because they begin with ‘once upon a time’ or some- folktales evolve until they are written collective unconscious’” down, and those written versions thing similar, which means in timeless- become the authentic text not subject to ness and spacelessness- the realm of the collective unconscious” (1996, p. 39). Yet major changes” (1998, p.xxvi), whereas mythic consciousness; and here Ginsburg Jewish folktales originate from the writ- within the tale of “Miriam’s Tambourine,” looked to Rabbi Arthur Green to best we are placed in the land of Babylon. This ten text of the Torah. In the forward to articulate its role. Green related that: Schwartz’s book Tree of Souls: The is what Schwartz would define as a Mythology of Judaism (2004), Elliot Scripture should in the proper sense Jewish place and it also indicates the be seen as mythical . . . as paradigms Ginsburg identified five central concepts Jewish time. The land of Babylon lends that help us encounter, explain and of the Jewish mythical imagination. The historical value to this tale for it was the enrich by archaic association the Babylonians who destroyed the first first is the grand myth, or meta-narrative, deepest experiences of which we Temple, built by King Solomon, in 586 which “is to hold that this world is creat- humans are capable. . . . By retelling, ed as an act of divine will; that one is the grappling with, dramatizing, living in BCE and marks the period of the Jewish heir of Abraham and Sarah; of those who the light of these paradigms, devo- Babylonian exile taking place between endure(d) Egyptian slavery and the gifts tees feel themselves touched by a the years of 597-538 BCE. The symbolic of Redemption, who stand at the pivot of transcendent presence that is made significance of this place will be discussed Sinaitic revelation and its Covenant, who real in their lives through the at a later point. At this juncture, it is know the joys of homecoming and the retelling, the re-enactments. (as cited important to understand that while the enduring dislocations of exile” (p.xxxvii). in Ginsburg, 2004, p.xxxvii) exposition is defined as a historical place Second is that this grand myth is rooted The use of we in this paper reflects with historical value, the conception of in the Hebraic Bible. The third is the this notion; we read the myth as if we Babylon takes on a mythic dimension for Jewish concept of interpretation, were living it. The last concept noted by both 19th Century readers (the time peri- midrash, which allows for expounding of Ginsburg is the expression of this mythic od in which this tale was written) and biblical narrative beyond written text and consciousness. As also noted by von present-day readers because we are far

Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012 23 A Jungian Interpretation of Miriam’s Tambourine removed from experiencing the reality of same breath. The rabbi and his son could the Jews of Babylon existed in peace this period. Babylon lives solely within read the stars as clearly as any book and because in each generation the king had our imagination. “they were the purest souls to be found a Jewish advisor, who protected the Another noteworthy Jewish time- in that land” (p.1). interests of his people. Each king kept a related element in this tale is the We encounter two female charac- golden chest and in that chest was a pre- Sabbath. While mentioned in passing, ters on the journey. We first meet an old cious Book. This book could only be the preparation for the Sabbath holds sig- woman described as having beautiful opened by one person in each generation nificant value for us within this journey. wise eyes. The rabbi and the son ask her and this person was destined to be king’s The symbolic significance of the Sabbath name and she replies, Sarah. They ask advisor. However, it was now time to find gives us a reference point to our present- her husband’s name and she tells them a new advisor and none who journeyed day lives. Sabbath’s symbolic significance that it was Abraham. Upon hearing this, were able to open the book. The peaceful will be discussed later on along with the “the rabbi wondered if she might not be existence of the Jews of Babylon would other symbolic places mentioned within the same Sarah and her husband be in jeopardy if the person who could the tale, the Garden of Eden and the Red open the Book was not found. Sea. The last stage identified by von The second stage is the identifica- “The wall’s gate was Franz is the peripeteia, the ups and tion of the dramatis personae, or people locked and the gate downs of the story. In this story, there involved. Schwartz (1988) would point are four peripeteiai and they occur at out the people involved are Jewish char- opened only once every points where the rabbi and his son’s faith acters. We are initially introduced to four hundred years, and are tested. characters: Daniel, the king, the rabbi, then only for the The first peripeteia occurs when the and the rabbi’s son. Unlike many other rabbi and his son become lost after trav- Jewish folktales, the biblical Daniel is not briefest instant” eling for four days and nights. They had featured as a prominent character; in become so absorbed in their contempla- fact, his name is only employed as an tion of what mysteries the Book might inspirational figure. Likewise we do not Abraham who are the mother and father hold that they did not know if it was day meet the king at this juncture; but the of every Jew. The woman just nodded or night. They had paid no attention to mention of his presence at the beginning that it was true” (Schwartz, 1998, pp.3-4). the path on which they were walking. of this tale is critical to the story’s unfold- Interestingly, we do not meet Abraham. Fortified by their faith that the Divine ing and ending. The tale focuses on jour- He is out in the Garden of Eden collecting would not lead them astray, they contin- ney taken by ordinary yet extraordinary leaves for Sarah. The second female char- ued on the path until they came to a characters: the rabbi and his son. The acter is again a biblical character. Miriam beautiful palace protected by a high wall. rabbi and his son are ordinary in that the Prophetess is described as being Here they encounter the second they are not given names. They are just a beautiful and young; her tambourine peripeteia of the story. The wall’s gate father and son living in small hut deep in playing induces animals and humans alike was locked and the gate opened only the forest; who spend their days studying to dance with joy. once every hundred years, and then only Torah. This existence is not uncommon We now proceed to naming the for the briefest instant. They are filled for a rabbi and his son; yet we are told of problem the tale seeks to resolve. We with wonder and yearning to enter the their extraordinariness almost within the find ourselves in a time and place where gate, and as fate would have it, the gate flies open at the exact time the rabbi and his son are present. Likewise upon reach- ing the locked door to the glorious Palace of Pearls, they find a golden key to unlock the door. The third peritpeteia is when they venture into the palace and meet Sarah, who was in the act of creating a powder that she casts into the wind before the Sabbath so that those who suffer from one Sabbath to the next breathe in a taste of Paradise on the Holy Day. The rabbi tells Sarah of the reason for their journey, and she informs them that although they have very pure souls, the Book can only be opened by the purest soul. They inquire if there is any way to purify their souls enough to open the Book. She tells them they must descend

24 Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012 Natasha Morton into Miriam’s Well and immerse them- them” (p.7). The rabbi and his son return imposed for this paper. selves in the waters. The well is located the tambourine and thank Miriam. They The Land of the Babylon was the just outside the palace; however, going take leave of the garden through the gate place of Jewish exile after the destruction there will be futile because the well’s which “could always be opened from the of the first Temple built by King Solomon. entrance is guarded by serpents. The inside” (p.7), and following the path, find Babylon denotes the continued theme for rabbi and his son are deeply saddened themselves at the palace of the king by the Hebrews’, one of exile and hope for that they had come so far and so close. morning. They are given audience as so return. Daniel, the protagonist of the bib- When the son asks Sarah if there is any many others before them who had lical book of Daniel, was carried off as a way to get past the serpents, Sarah attempted but failed to open the Book. child into exile and raised in the smiles and tells them they must seek out As the rabbi lightly touches the cover of Babylonian court. He served as advisor to Miriam and ask to borrow her tam- the Book, it opens to him. The rabbi the king and his chief talent was oneiro- bourine. To find Miriam, Sarah directs becomes the king’s trusted advisor and mancy, interpretation of dreams. them to a hollow tree in the middle of serves him for many years, referring to The golden chest denotes the Ark of the garden that is the entrance to a cave. the Book for every important decision. the Covenant, a portable chest that They descend through both the hol- When the rabbi passes from this world, served as the repository for the Ten low tree and the cave until they reach the his son, who also purified himself in the Commandments and five Torah scrolls shore of the Red Sea; there they find well, has no difficulty opening the Book. written by Moses. The chest was plated Miriam playing her tambourine to the And so the Jews of that land live in a time in gold inside and out. The Ark was car- delight of the fish and dolphins, who of peace and abundance for many years. ried by the Israelites through their forty dance to the music. Overcome by joy, the years of exile in the Sinai desert and then rabbi and his son begin to dance. They came to rest when the first Temple was would have danced there forever if “The archetypal images built. Some traditions claim that the Ark Miriam had not put down her tam- contained within was taken into captivity by the bourine. The rabbi and his son tell her of Babylonians (Dennis, 2007, p.19). their quest and without hesitation, the story serve as Likewise, the Book kept in the golden Miriam hands them her tambourine. markers denoting chest represents the Torah. Schwartz It is Miriam that notes the fourth deeper meaning” pointed to the theme that the book could peritetia of the tale. She cautions them be opened by only one in each genera- that only mortals such as themselves, tion as “a variant of the legend of the who have found their way here, hold the Book of Raziel. . . . This book was passed power to drive the serpents from the Having come to the tale’s lysis, down to the primary figure in each subse- well. She warns them that they must before tackling a psychological and cul- quent generation [starting from Adam] hurry because if she goes as long as a day tural interpretation of the tale’s themes, until it was destroyed along with the without hearing the music from her tam- its symbols need to be understood Temple (Sefer Noah 150)” (1988, p. 353). bourine, her eternal life will come to an through amplification. The drawing of “Miriam’s Tambourine” alludes to the end. parallels, constellations, and juxtaposi- Book of Raziel as still extant, having been The rabbi and his son ascend back tions of symbols from other sources is the carried off to Babylon, where it continued through the cave and hollow tree into the same process utilized by an author of to be passed down through each genera- garden, where they find the well sur- midrash. While von Franz’s would have tion starting with Daniel. rounded by serpents. Approaching the asserted that the symbols contained in The king remains as an ambiguous well, “they had reached the most solemn “Miriam’s Tambourine” also show up in figure throughout the story. Such a figure moment of their lives” (Schwartz, 1998, non-Jewish tales and are moreover typically represents God in Jewish tales. p.6). Von Franz would identify this part expressions of the collective-unconscious, From a Kabbalahistic perspective, the of the story as the lysis, the height of ten- focusing on the Jewishness of these sym- term “king” relates to any of the upper sion. The son begins to play the tam- bols illuminates their evolution in relation three serifot (Keter, Chochmah, Binah) bourine, but without the compulsion to to the Jewish message underlying the which represent the intellectual powers dance as Miriam was not playing it. The tale. of the Divine through which Creation is serpents writhe in agony at the tam- Schwartz noted that “the biblical directed (Kaplan, 2005, p. 2). bourine’s sound and slither out of the text packs a maximum amount of mean- The advisor or viceroy to the king garden, never to return. The purity of the ing into a minimum number of words” denotes the righteous man or tzaddik. well and the garden are restored with (2004, p. xxxiii). I would extend this to The tzaddik is alternatively known as this act of bravery in the face of evil. The tales as well; the archetypal images con- rebbe. In the Hasidic tradition, after a rabbi and his son descend into the life- tained within the story serve as markers beloved rebbe dies, his son or an immedi- giving waters of the well and their souls denoting deeper meaning. “Miriam’s ate relative assumes his role in the com- are purified to their “very kernel” (p. 7). Tambourine” contains a plethora of sym- munity (Dennis, p.216). From the Their eyes open and “all manner of bols to examine. Only a handful of sym- Kabbalahistic perspective, the tzaddik is angels and spirits that had flocked around bols, and briefly at that, will be examined related to the serifah of Yesod, the sixth that garden now became apparent to at this time due to the limitations serifot. It represents the sixth day of

Depth Insights, Issue 3, Fall 2012 25 A Jungian Interpretation of Miriam’s Tambourine Creation, when the human was created. snake that tempted Adam and Eve to eat process, it is that which keeps us from Hence, the advisor can represent of the Tree of Knowledge. The Hebrew experiencing the pure Unity. The rabbi humankind as a whole (Kaplan, p.6). word for snake is nachash, which trans- and his son are metaphors of each of us; The walled garden with the gated lates as to trick. the potential of being a tzaddik exists entrance represents the Garden of Eden, The number four, found throughout within each of us. the primordial place of Unity. The gate is this tale, is a significant number in the As related above, the number four emblematic of the entrance to celestial or Jewish tradition. It relates to the four car- plays a critical role in this tale. We first underworld realms. The Palace of Pearls dinal directions and four elements. The encounter its use when the rabbi and his represents the Holy of Holies in the sacred name of the Divine, YHVH, is com- son travel for four days and nights, days Temple. The pearl denotes wisdom and is prised of four letters. The Passover Sedar, and nights that blend into one another. related to dreams (Kaplan, p.18). Sarah is which commemorates the Jewish Exodus This echoes the timelessness existing representative of the archetypal Mother. from Egypt, is structured around the before the fourth day of Creation in She is the first Mother to the Jews and number four. In Kabbalah, there are four Genesis, when the sun and moon were also considered a Priestess. Sarah crushes realms: assiyah (body-sensation), atzilut created. Here the story finds us, with in leaves collected from the Garden into (souls), beriah (thoughts), and yetizah the rabbi and his son, traveling in a state powder, which she blows to the wind (emotions). of undifferentiated darkness. Their trans- (ruach) so it is carried to four corners of formative passage from journeying in a the earth, easing the suffering of her chil- state of unconsciousness through differ- dren on the Sabbath. Ruach also repre- “Jung would describe entiation to consciousness of the divine sents the heart aspect of soul. Sarah and Miriam proceeds through four peritetia: becom- The descent into the hollow tree as Anima figures, ing lost, arriving at the locked gate to the and cave symbolize the womb. Dennis unconscious just when it is opening, (2007) noted that the Cave of Machpelah representative of the descending into the unconscious to bor- is where Abraham’s family interred their emotional and intuitive row the holy instrument of the prophet- dead. The Sages described Machpelah as functions of the psyche. ess, and driving the serpents from the the nexus of power and an entrance to well in order to be purified by the inex- Eden. The shore is usually representative A Jewish take would be haustible well of the living waters. The of a spiritual realm (Kaplan, 2005). The that these women are four entrances passed in this process rep- Red Sea, where Moses performed the representative of the resent the psychological process of bal- miracle of parting the waters, is symbolic ancing of the four realms of the Kabbalah of the Jewish exodus from Egypt. This is feminine aspect – notably similar to Jung’s four functions the place where Miriam, the sister of of the Divine” of thinking, feeling, intuition, and sensa- Moses, played her tambourine and the tion. Israelite women danced with joy when It is through the rabbi and his son’s they reached the opposite shore. Music “Psychological interpretation is our descents into the unconscious that they holds a prominent place in Jewish spiritu- way of telling stories; we still have the encountered Sarah and Miriam, which al life and ritual. The Hasidic tradition same need and we still crave the renewal provide them with the answers and teaches that the nitzutzei kedusha (holy that comes from understanding archetyp- methods required for the success of their sparks), that every soul possesses are al images” (Franz, 1996, p.45). The same journey. Jung would describe Sarah and raised to holiness through music (p.41). is true with the midrashic process. Rabbi Miriam as Anima figures, representative Miriam is also known as Prophetess. Her Nathan of Bratslav, a Hassidic Master, of the emotional and intuitive functions well followed the Children of Israel during reminded us of Proverbs 1:5: “The wise of the psyche. A Jewish take would be the forty years of desert wandering, sup- man will hear and expand the lesson” (as that these women are representative of plying them with fresh water. According cited in Kaplan, 1995, p.xv). the feminine aspect of the Divine, the to the Talmudic tradition, the well was The underlying theme in the tale of Shekhinah; and are also linked to the created on the eve of the Sabbath at twi- Miriam’s Tambourine speaks of a psycho- realms of atzilut (souls) and yetizah (emo- light during the days of Creation. There is logical exile from ourselves and the tions). Rabbi Levi Meir (1991) wrote that also the association between Miriam’s Divine Self. As exiles in a psychological “the unconscious is God’s forgotten lan- well and the Torah; both serving as an Babylon, we live in constant jeopardy of guage or God’s way of guiding each indi- inexhaustible resource to quench a per- unrest. The symbol of Red Sea reminds us vidual. This process is an experience of son’s thirst (Schwartz, 1988). Purifying not only of our exile but moreover, the Shekhinah, God’s Divine Presence” (p.35). one’s self in the waters relates to the possibility of making it to the other side. The Shekhinah is also known as the Jewish ritual of the mikvah, an immersion This tale also speaks of a corrupted Eden Sabbath Bride, as well as described as into living waters. with a well overrun by evil snakes. The God’s Consort. Thus the rabbi and his Serpents occur throughout Jewish snakes relate back to the Genesis story, son reunify the king, the intellectual func- tradition as possessing both positive and where the Snake tricks Adam and Eve tion of the Divine, with the feminine negative attributes. The serpents in this into ego-consciousness. While this ego- aspects of the Divine. tale are most likely associated with the consciousness is necessary for our The allusion in the tale to the con-

26 Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012

Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012 27 A Mandala for Richmond By William Fraker

While constructing a sand mandala, A Tibetan monk smiled in a moment Across the room and mountains Of meditation. Calm delicacy Floated in patterns of brightly Colored grains of sand as the Great circle took form. Crimson Pillows cradled bended knees And patient transcendence. Elbows and hands outstretched To remember and re-create An ancient reflection of holiness.

Held in memory and the prayer Of expression, each monk Contributed to the mandala That took over a week to complete. Palettes of inner detail fell into A brilliant spectrum of temporality; Reverence in creative process Captured on the floor of a museum.

The monks swept the art into an urn. A procession led on-lookers across A footbridge to an island already Sanctified by Union soldiers who Suffered imprisonment, exposure, And frequent death in the winter “Fissure II” Before Lee's surrender. Leaning Over rapids from jutting rocks, the “I created this painting after I had a dream about my mom and I falling Monks offered a varicolored invocation; through ice, into deep water, and how I tried to keep her and I afloat. As I Grains of time cascaded into the water. couldn't push her up out of the water, suddenly an old hag rushed over and pulled us both up to safety. We felt deep gratitude. In some ways it's also about thawing out and using my creative abilities. There is fire, opportuni- ties, and access deep below. The key is to keep moving, start something, anything, and not stay frozen.” - Staci Poirier

Dolphins By Silvio Machado Their bodies moon-shaped needles--sky and sea I fumbled for my camera, are slim instruments of contentment. with what I dare say were knowing hoping to capture the moment, I realized this once while taking the smiles but there was no taking my eyes ferry on elongated faces. off their sleek, muscular forms. from Pico to Sao Jorge at sunset. The arcs of their bodies How could I? In the open expanse between islands, harmonized in the air Clumsily, I snapped a couple of photos a pod of what I could only guess as they leapt with enjoyment, that, numbered in the hundreds, one after the other and sometimes, when it was all done, hunted unsuspecting fish two at a time, showed nothing but fractured shards before taking to deeper waters for the in celebration of something of sun meeting water, night. I hope to know well: light meeting dark, With repeated and effortless coher- the ordinary pleasure of the body of animal, purpose, ence, doing what it is intended to do-- and amazement at the place they breached from the water in this case, where they came together. alongside the boat, moving through the salty brine, weaving together--their bodies, eating raw fish.

28 Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012

he United States of America has quence, the soldiers’ valor and anguish ly moves when he breathes. His eyes are Tbeen in an uninterrupted state of are reduced to a sterile set of symptoms glassy. He stares soft-focus at the wall. war for almost 250 years (Marsella, signified by these four letters. The late His shoulders slope. The expression on his 2011). 250 years of violence and loss… In James Hillman, a Jungian analyst and a still face is vacant, almost like a trick of these brutal battles, the soul of the sol- founder of archetypal psychology, camouflage. He blends into the stale air dier also becomes a casualty. The veter- believed that words had psychic compo- surrounding him. He was a warrior; now ans who return home are haunted by nents; that a word was a messenger, a he is a sick man impossible to understand. memories of terror and bloodshed. For person, an angel. Following Hillman, an He is a veteran, but the diagnoses, the them a new fight begins on this ground--a abbreviation is never just an abbrevia- meds, the stigma make him a living dead. fight for dignity, honor, and health--as tion. If we imagine into the capital letters, He, and the men and women like they face the cold-blooded diagnosis and within the given diagnosis we can begin him, are part of the incalculable cost of rhetoric of psychopathology. to discern the armies of gods and god- war as the unfathomable depth of trau- The fourth edition of the American desses—a pantheon of archetypal forces: ma to psyche is beyond all financial esti- Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and P.: Pain. Pride. Pandora. Psyche. mates. Every year United States Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders T.: Terror. Torture. Trust. Tragedy. Department of Defense spends hundreds (DSM-IV-TR) (2000) strives for “brevity of S.: Sacrifice. Self. Shadow. Suicide. of billions of dollars to amass the criteria sets, clarity of language, and D.: Denial. Dionysus. Depth. Death. required technical and material measures explicit statements of the constructs to fight all enemies, domestic and for- embodied in the diagnostic criteria” (p. eign. Yet, these plans ignore the psycho- xxiii). Yet in the name of brevity, clarity, “By inventing diagnostic logical dimension of the archetypal expe- and explicitness, this thick book betrays terms and reducing rience. By now we should know, as the depths of archetypal experiences. It Hillman (1975) did, that the real cost of avoids all possible contradiction, neces- language to fit the war is not monetary: “Human existence is sary tension, and expressive complexities medical model, we psychological before it is anything else-- that belong to psyche’s ways of being and believe we can shrink- economic, social, religious, physical” (p. its pathologies. With its codes and bullet 173). Our Western cultural fantasies points, the DSM-IV classifies and catego- wrap the mythical about war deny this truth. rizes a compendium of conditions. It dis- beings and archetypal Department of Defense objectives sects and distorts, injuring soul with truths words hold, begin as conceptual agreements on a deadening diagnostic criteria and descrip- piece of paper. When soldiers are tions of disorders. In its compulsive concealing them in deployed things change. They are attempt to simplify, the manual of the a prison of ordered to cross invisible desert borders; medical model becomes an abbreviation psychological jargon.” commanded to bring about the demoli- itself: DSM. tion of nuclear powers. Crossing back into While the DSM-IV and other hand- civilian life, the soldiers face a books on psychopathology offer the clini- Department of Defense that is blind to cians important scientific knowledge for By inventing diagnostic terms and the essential needs of the human soul. the standardization of concepts and lan- reducing language to fit the medical The soldiers who are sent back guage, they cannot effectively care for model, we believe we can shrink-wrap home no longer belong to their military the war-torn psyche of veterans. In the the mythical beings and archetypal truths divisions, but to Veteran Affairs. They are healing and helping communities, if we words hold, concealing them in a prison offered veteran pensions, disability com- identify solely with the medical approach, of psychological jargon. This economics of pensations, vocational rehabilitation, we become numb to the intricacy of psy- rhetoric is a misleading fantasy. It is an insurance, and prescriptions; and provid- chological realities. When we witness suf- illusion, dangerous and deadly, for it not ed with pamphlets that explain their fering, we rely on numbers. We report, only threatens the archetypes living in anguish and anxiety. In response the sol- rather than remember. We infer, rather the words, but also the psyche which is in diers’ need for healing, the DSM-IV than imagine. need of archetypal meaning and beauty. inflicts the differential diagnosis: Once home from war, the soldiers Imagine: A six-day old beard, a half- Posttraumatic Stress Disorder–PTSD. are given a new rank, an abbreviation— burnt cigarette. The soldier sits on an old Found under Axis I, code 309.81, this PTSD—a code for the insurance company, couch slowly inhaling the dust collecting diagnosis describes the symptoms to a clue for treatment plans. As a conse- in the corners of the room. His chest bare- assess in a mechanical language of

Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012 29 The Soul of the Soldier pathology which lacks psychological ple. The bullet aims at the brain. into the vast realm of visions and memo- depth. In this lack the soul of the soldier Psychology has become a mind- ries, carrying for all the rest of us war’s suffocates and suffers. game. By mistaking the concrete for the horrific numinosity. Therefore, the veter- A veteran is assumed to have archetypal and reducing soul to biology, ans’ silence is not necessarily “an impair- returned from the front, but this is not psychopathology has defined the disorder ment in social and occupational areas of the case. The soul of the soldier is still at living in the brain. There is only one way: functioning” like the DSM-IV claimed war. Caught in a “frozen war conscious- Ego’s scientific rationality, coded into (2000, p. 468). The internalization of ness,” the fighting goes on (Tick, 2005, p. diagnostic language, has to prevail. Such images provides the means for the psy- 99). Instead of Afghanistan, the soldier acts of reason bring us to Apollo’s altar. che to both speak and listen to itself. now moves in the “lacunae” of the psy- But we cannot understand the mad- Hillman (1975) explained that “the che, traveling through its “gaps” and ness of Ares with distant and calculated ideation process in psychology is far “wasteland” (Hillman, 1975, p. 89) æ thoughts. We need courage and passion. behind its methodology, instruments, and claimed by a ground that perhaps was as We need turmoil. applications and far, far behind the psy- foreign as the battlefields in the Middle The trigger moves. Bang! che’s indigenous richness” (p. 115). We East. This time around, the soldier The temple is instantly blown apart. witness this constant struggle in the rhet- pledges allegiance to the pathology as it Apollo sighs. The Goddess of Victory oric of the DSM-IV and its diagnosis for is both a matter of survival and honor. extends her lovely hand to Ares. The ego PTSD. The DSM-IV groups together the The civilians and even the clinicians does not leave a trace. We stand experience of military combat, personal may fear the moist darkness of veterans’ appalled. assault, torture, natural disasters, acci- eyes, but the veterans need this sickness. dents, and life-threatening illnesses in Their suffering is more significant than one neat box. It does not differentiate those small pills they are supposed swal- “By mistaking the between war, cancer, and rape. While low in order to suppress the symptoms. these are all archetypal journeys of As Hillman (1975) would argue, soldiers’ concrete for the encounter with Hades, each of them is pathology is “valid, authentic, and neces- archetypal and reducing fundamentally unique. Their images and sary” (p. 58). The affliction provides a cer- soul to biology, gods are distinct. It is a naïve illusion to tain vision to the soul of the soldier. think that we can justify them all through What the DSM-IV defines as the psychopathology has one diagnosis, enclose them in one code “recurrent and intrusive distressing recol- defined the disorder and shrink them into one abbreviation. lections” (2000, p. 468) is in fact the living in the brain” Once there were names addressing invincible force of imagination. For the the particular pathos of the veteran, like veterans the presence of war is every- “soldier’s heart” and “shell shock.” The where; the psyche holds onto the grue- This is the most intimate and deli- images of war were alive in these expres- some images of war to be able to make cate dance of psyche with Hades. As the sions. When we read the clinical diagno- sense of life. Thus, the veterans’ symp- veteran sits in his armchair seemingly sis for PTSD we cannot see or feel the tom is a sign of the soul striving for immobile, his soul tiptoes in circular changed heart and meaning-searching reflection. The veterans break down, in motions: a dancer, all white and weight- soul of a soldier. We cannot touch the order to crack open the meanings and less, ready to descend into the realm of gods that, in possession of peoples and metabolize the archetypal experience of Death. Slowly, she spirals down. nations, send the soldier into battle, nor war. The pathology becomes an opportu- Innocence surrenders to the near visions the anguishing burden the soldier then nity, a path to soul-making for soldiers of war; the soul submits herself to the bears. The language of modern clinical who are deemed helpless. Not recogniz- invisible hungry mouth of Hades, begging psychology fails to reflect the tragedy at ing the process of pathologizing as this to be devoured. the heart of the pathology. As it focuses ability and need, and undermining this The language of the DSM-IV cannot on behavioral data, it discounts the utter archetypal journey in the name of clinical depict this journey. Instead, it desperate- terror and tremendous grief that the vet- diagnosis are not only wrong, but treach- ly longs to control both the subtle and eran feels. It dismisses, and therefore, it erous. immense movements of the psyche, “insults the soul” (Hillman, 1972, p. 121). Imagine: When the house is most killing the archetypal specters with its According to the DSM-IV one of the quiet, the veteran gets off the couch, bullet pointed list of symptoms, and con- characteristic symptoms for PTSD is “per- drops his cigarette on the rug, and shuf- densing soul into categories with its sistent avoidance of stimuli associated fles his feet. He enters his bedroom, rushed rhetoric. The stubborn labels and with the trauma and numbing of general opens the closet, and takes out a shoe- stereotypes leave no space for metaphor- responsiveness” (2000, p. 468). However, box. The brand name on the cardboard ical possibilities. Nothing divine or pro- with its carefully drawn categories and reads: Nike. The Goddess of Victory. He fane remains for the imagination to conclusions, and precautious terms, the reaches in and takes out his handgun. He embrace. DSM-IV persistently avoids stimuli of presses the cold muzzle against his head. War is mythic. An experience that, imagination and attempts numbing. We His finger on the trigger trembles ever so as Hillman (2004) wrote, “begs for mean- are in the grip of a major phobia. We are slightly. ing, and amazingly also gives meaning” very afraid to enter into the disease and The tip of the gun points at the tem- (p. 10). In their silence the veterans step face the gods and their fury.

30 Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012

Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012 31 Summer Fields by R. L. Boyer

There was a time when meadow, grove and stream The earth, and every common sight To me did seem Appareled in celestial light The glory and the freshness of a dream. -Wordsworth I. Vision, like a heavy eyelid or a shroud, like Sweet memories of youth, echoes in the Mind's Melancholy-heavy with tears that fall like Eye: the face of a girl, golden hair blowing Rain on the lost gardens of Paradise. Wild in the breeze; glittering sunlight on a Deep forest stream, swimming with trout; a III. O child of sorrows, twice-born, wounded Calm hidden lake in the blue sunrise; sweet Healer, shaman, initiate, hero, poet-the one who Innocence of a boy, at play in summer fields that Walks with a limp: Orchards grow fruitful in Sing to him like dreams. Springtime; a serpent sheds its skin, and grows

II. Another. Swallows return to their nests each Then the change came, a darkening of the Season. Sunset, sunrise. To the ebb, flow; to Moon: a child lost, Nietzche's orphaned Death, regeneration. To the dark of the Moon, Her Shrieks, a festering, wounded soul; knowledge of Fullness; to the journey of descent, Return. Good, and evil-of life, of loss and death. Dark The Way of Return is difficult, cry the poets, Side of the god that dies, the wounded thigh, the No one returns unmarked. But for that one, the Rib torn out; an invisible stain that won't wash Golden wheat ripens in summer fields that Clean; innocence betrayed, grown proud, and Sing to him like dreams. Sad, an eagle devouring its liver; flesh enclosing

Note: This work first appeared several years ago in Mythic Passages: The Magazine of the Imagination, a publication of the Mythic Institute

32 Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012

healthy wildness in which ego and Self the or 35 weeks in 1991 a book are in right relationship with one another, efforts to help men acknowledge and Fabout a wild man topped the are two different modes of masculinity. challenge their deep fears about con- bestseller list in the United States and According to poet Charles Upton, necting with other men and for Canada.i The author of the book, poet who wrote what he called a spiritual cri- enabling men to explore some of the Robert Bly, said he found the story of Iron tique of Iron John and the mythopoetic vitality they had lost on their way to Hans in the collection of fairy tales first men’s movement that grew up around sober sensible American manhood, published by the brothers Grimm in the book, what makes the transit including a sense of joy and playful- Germany in 1812.ii between these two modes of masculine ness. At the weekend events in the woods there were outpourings of According to classical Jungian theo- development troublesome—and poten- deeply felt grief and despair about ry, fairy tales “represent the archetypes tially lethal—is fathers who had abandoned or in their simplest, barest, and most con- that when the archetype of the abused their now-adult sons. These iii cise form.” After working with symbolic underworld comes up, it doesn’t retreats helped men begin to dis- material for many years, Marie-Louise always arrive neatly divided into pos- mantle the walls men build to make von Franz concluded that “all fairy tales itive qualities to be adopted and neg- themselves feel strong, powerful, endeavor to describe one and the same ative ones to be avoided. The things invincible—to shield themselves from psychic fact.”iv This psychic fact is, of men need to integrate and those we vulnerability, pain, need.ix course, what Jung called the Self. had better get rid of dawn upon us Retreats offered men a safe and--in With the archetypal pattern of the as a single complex . . . Thus when a Jungian sense--sacred, even numinous, Bly calls men to worship the sponta- Wild Man, the psychic factor of the Self, space in which they could begin to con- neous, the unexpected[—the Wild— tact and reclaim the feeling-based and the ability of the fairy tale to convey ]he is invoking appropriate wildness psychological meaning to consciousness, aspects of their experience which had and destructive savagery at the same been shamed by patriarchy. With this in mind, we travel into dangerous terrain. time.viii Here we risk the experience of Phallos, interior process in mind, Eugene Monick linked the underlying psychological cause that fundamental mark of maleness. Why of male rage to the castrating effect of do the experiences of erection, of testicu- “Retreats offered men a what he called the “patriarchal design.” larity, of insemination, feel dangerous, The rudiments of male rage begin to and thus risky? Because male develop- safe and--in a Jungian form when male weakness can no ment makes us all nervous. Indeed, sense--sacred, even longer be altogether hidden. according to David Tacey, “all peoples numinous, space in Patriarchal design typically lays the have shared a basic anxiety about the responsibility for male rage at the v which they could begin achievement of masculine maturity.” To feet of women, who supposedly engage the inseminating and annihilating to contact and reclaim prompt the rage by their closeness to capacities of Phallos is a psychological the feeling-based aspects the irrational and chthonic uncon- move that brings us into intimate com- scious.x of their experience munion with what Jungian analyst Femininity, Monick continued, Eugene Monick called “a powerful inner which had been shamed is a terror for men . . . . The implica- reality at work in a man,” a reality “not tion of subjective femininity suggests vi by patriarchy” altogether in his control.” castration. For men, the specter of In his preface to Iron John, Robert being feminine is based on the per- Bly distinguished between the Wild Man ception that femininity emerges The publication of Iron John, Robert and the Savage Man. “The savage mode,” when the annihilation of masculinity Bly’s book about men, galvanized a cul- .xi Bly wrote, “does great damage to soul, takes place by means of castration tural phenomenon that came to be earth, and humankind; we can say that For a man, Monick added, known as the mythopoetic men’s move- though the Savage Man is wounded he ment. In the years following the publica- the eruption of male rage signals the prefers not to examine it. The Wild Man, tion of Iron John, tens of thousands of presence of instinctual danger— who has examined his wound, resembles men attended weekend retreats often archetypal danger, in Jungian lan- a Zen priest, a shaman, or a woodsman guage—and with it, a sense of des- held in remote locations. Why did the more than a savage.”vii What Bly meant, I peration. Or, worse, a sense that men go into the woods? One pro-feminist think, is that violence born of unhealed catastrophe has already taken place, male writer, Michael Kimmel, supported injury and fear of vulnerability and that the man is therefore powerless,

Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012 33 Why the Men Went into the Woods

without phallus—castrated.xii places that held their potential for “Who are you, really, wanderer?” – growth. and the answer you have to give In his work on castration and male rage, Robert Bly himself said again and no matter how dark and cold Monick noted that the world around you is: again that the men who went into the xv conventional [patriarchal] wisdom woods were not trying to injure women, Maybe I’m a king. lets women express themselves, nor were they trying to perpetuate a With the word king we come to a while men think, abstract, plan, patriarchal emphasis arising from cen- organize, support. For men to get place of trouble. Archetypes, as we know, turies of Christian culture that left in emotional is ordinarily seen as an display an active-passive bipolar shadow abandonment of masculine strength place a rigid scheme of gender dichotomy structure. In the case of the uninitiated and directedness. Sometimes that is in which femininity always signals inferi- male, what we see, in the context of rela- the case, as when a complex seizes a ority. The men were, instead, trying to tionships between men and women, is man and he flies apart. But it need find and develop personal authenticity what Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette, not be so. Men can learn to over- and authority through contact with a in their work on the mature masculine, come the cultural restraint inhibiting Wild Man covered with hair the color of identified as the Tyrant (the active pole of emotional expression, to subjectively rusted iron. Bly believed that the image the shadow side of the archetypal pattern discover value and to express the of the Wild Man offered men a symbolic of the King) and the Weakling (the pas- emotion that inevitably flows from experience of the instinctive, and the sex- sive pole of the Shadow King). The xiii Tyrant, Moore and Gillette wrote, feeling. ual and primitive qualities, of the deep, If the woods marked the setting for exploits and abuses others. He is men’s move into feeling, Jungian psychol- ruthless, merciless, and without feel- ogy became the symbolic map they fol- “If the woods marked ing when he is pursuing what he thinks is his own self-interest. His lowed into the dark spaces of the deep the setting for men’s degradation knows no bounds. He masculine. According to Michael move into feeling, hates all beauty, all innocence and Schwalbe, a profeminist writer who strength, all talent, all life energy. He attended mythopoetic men’s events Jungian psychology does so because . . . he lacks inner while researching his book, Unlocking the became the symbolic structure, and he is afraid—terrified, Iron Cage: The Men’s Movement, Gender really—of his own hidden weakness Politics, and American Culture, Jungian map they followed into and his underlying lack of potency.xvi psychology comforted the mythopoetic the dark spaces of the What Stafford and the men of the men deep masculine” mythopoetic movement were referring to by saying that the psyche is naturally in terms of masculine maturity was what a wellspring of unruly impulses; that Moore and Gillette called the good King. strong, unpredictable feelings are a or archetypal, masculine. Bly, Michael The King archetype in its fullness pos- normal and fascinating part of every Meade, and the late James Hillman were sesses the qualities of order, of rea- man, and thus no man need feel fond of a poem by the late William sonable and rational patterning, of ashamed of being emotional. But it Stafford. Stafford’s poem, titled “A Story integration and integrity in the mas- also implicitly demanded, less com- That Could Be True,” spoke to the wild culine psyche. It stabilizes chaotic fortingly, that a man who wished to fierce personal presence so missing in the emotion and out-of-control behav- become a whole person explore this iors. It gives stability and centered- part of himself, even if doing so was “soft” (in a patriarchal sense, limp, even ness. It brings calm. And in painful. Real and sometimes disrup- impotent) men Bly indicted in Iron John [this King’s] “fertilizing” and cen- tive insights could thus be gained, if for their passivity: teredness, it mediates vitality, life- only by studying what was once force, and joy. It brings maintenance ignored. If a man undertook this If you were exchanged in the cradle and and balance. It defends our own work, Jungian psychology promised your real mother died sense of inner order, our own integri- relief from inauthenticity, relief from without ever telling the story ty of being and of purpose, our own the loss of control to dark psychic then no one knows your name, central calmness about who we are, forces, and the attainment of self- and somewhere in the world and our essential unassailability and knowledge that was previously limit- your father is lost and needs you certainty in our masculine identity. . . ed by the strictures of traditional [or but you are far away. . [The good King’s eye] sees others in patriarchal] masculinity.xiv He can never find all their weakness and in all their tal- In pinpointing even more precisely how true you are, how ready. ent and worth. It honors them and the pivotal role Jungian psychology When the great wind comes promotes them. It guides them and played in the mythopoetic men’s move- nurtures them toward their own full- and the robberies of the rain xvii ment, Schwalbe concluded that it helped and you stand in the corner shivering. ness of being. men enter wounded psychological ter- The people who go by— For men, the mythopoetic approach rain, previously experienced as a weak- you wonder at their calm. to the re-visioning of traditional, or patri- ness, without being shamed or patholo- archal, masculinity offered a promise of gized. Through this process, they were They miss the whisper that runs renewal—hope that they could gain any day in your mind, able to recognize their wounds as the access to a kind of potency, an instinctual

34 Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012 Dennis Pottenger wildness, or un-niceness, as Bly put it, of and] distance from mothers, thus result of a man’s attempt to defend that would lead not to power and abuse reconstructing patriarchy in a supposedly against his own castration, his own anni- of privilege but to a fierceness that leads gentler form.”xx Another feminist, Kay hilation. Eugene Monick spoke to this to forceful action undertaken, not with Leigh Hagan, expressed “cautious hope male experience of distress when he cruelty, but with resolve. The man with- that men are coming to terms with the wrote that male rage “is an indication out fierceness, Bly wrote, realities of true partnership and shared that a man is in living and excruciating xxi allows his own boundaries to be power.” With rape, domestic violence, personal contact with profound injury, invaded and in the moment that hap- and other forms of injury against women even nonbeing.”xxiv Monick also wrote of pens his uninitiated passivity will turn in mind, Hagan also expressed disgust at what he called the “castration complex,” to rage. Violence and brutality the “chorus of whining white men which he said: toward women and children are not [whose] movement has only succeeded in forms in a male’s unconscious when the function of fierceness but evi- legitimizing a fashionable new form of xviii an event or events take place causing dence of the absence of it. woman-hating.”xxii a boy inwardly to perceive that Feminist and pro-feminist male A third feminist, Starhawk, admitted something essential to his being as a commentators watched the hordes of that she was afraid that the men of the male actually has been taken from men retreat into the woods to find the mythopoetic movement were going to him. Ever after, he has a hole, a weak spot in his masculine grid, an empti- Wild Man and saw the painting of faces disappoint women as they had since the xxv and the pounding of drums in a different advent of patriarchy and simply use their ness. light. By embracing Iron John—a fairy personal growth to continue blaming This speaks to the affect, to the tale the feminists, with some accuracy, women for their problems and defending manifest emotion, in the male experience claim portrays women as prizes, as hags, their own privileges. Peek under the pain, of wounding. But what of healing? With or as cloying mothers who are blamed for however, and the feminists were willing shame, and the castration of a man’s con- making their sons into effeminate to admit a longing for men to heal. nection to the archetypal qualities of the sissies—the mythopoetic men were actu- Wild Man, in mind, an idea first attrib- ally reinforcing the patriarchal presump- uted to Paracelsus, the Renaissance tions of male superiority they claimed to “Peek under the pain, physician and alchemist, becomes mean- reject. Where does the patriarchal posi- however, and the ingful. To the alchemical imagination, tion—the attitude of power and domina- semen, as both a physical substance and tion that spawns the harmful behaviors of feminists were willing a metaphoric possibility of the imagina- the Tyrant and the Weakling—leave to admit a longing tion, was a particularly potent substance. women? Here is how one feminist writer for men to heal” In an essay he titled “Fear of described her experience of a patriarchal Semen,” Jungian analyst Joseph Cambray structure which systematically discounts quoted Paracelsus speaking about the women through rape, genital mutilation, Starhawk wrote: attraction of the sexes: incest, sexual harassment, sex trafficking, Those of us whose lives continue to The tendencies of man cause him to economic inequalities, reproductive be bound up with men want to see think and speculate; his speculation rights, and other manifestations of vio- them become whole. We dream of a creates desire, his desire grows into lence: world full of men who could be pas- passion, his passion acts upon his Patriarchy is like a razor blade sionate lovers, grounded in their own imagination and his imagination cre- embedded in a chocolate cream. We bite bodies, capable of profound loves ates semen.xxvi down eagerly, charmed by the heart- and deep sorrows, strong allies of According to Cambray, identifying shaped box and the shiny wrapper, and women, sensitive nurturers, fearless semen with the imagination is a radical then suffer the pain. Our gums are bleed- defenders of all people’s liberation, notion. For ing, but before the feminist movement unbound by stifling conventions yet nobody ever talked about it. We kept our respectful of their own and others’ in this theory Paracelsus makes it mouths shut, and if we occasionally boundaries, serious without being clear that for him semen is a basic, noticed a trickle of blood seep out the humorless, stable without being dull, archetypal, substance, involved in corner of some sister’s lips, we politely disciplined without being rigid, sweet the creation of the universe. . . . looked away so as not to embarrass her. without being spineless, proud with- Semen is, here, at the archetypal Feminism taught us to say, “Ow! Hey, this out being insufferably egotistical, foundation of the world. hurts, this is wrong—and look, it’s not fierce without being violent, wild Psychologically, it is equivalent to the just me, it’s you and you and you. without being, well, assholes.xxiii psychic reality upon which the self takes shape and manifests.xxvii Something is wrong with this candy! Let’s So the bar has been set. For opti- get rid of the razor, or change the mum maturity a man must embrace the What makes semen so important, menu.”xix vulnerability that is shamed by patriarchy psychologically speaking? In one passage Gloria Steinem blasted Bly for his and which threatens to annihilate his Cambray pinpointed the apocalyptic “warlike language of kings and battles” sense of self-definition. For a man shame impact semen can play in the work of and for a misogynistic attitude that insist- is simply insufferable. Rage and injury to individuation: ed on “closeness only to males” and others, including women, can be the What . . . is being sought psychologi- “measured adulthood by men’s [rejection

Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012 35 Why the Men Went into the Woods

cally in the retention [of semen]? Is it go from here? How can those who have needs both masculine and feminine to not the sense of a potent, powerful been, and are being, injured by patriarchy bring about the experience of wholeness. self that can be lost when arousal move toward a type of testicularity that This is sound depth psychological leads to discharge? Tantric exercises carries wholeness into the world? theory. But how, in particular, are men seem aimed at introverting the As depth psychologists we know too and women to address the political, eco- aroused masculine libido, sacrificing much. Like Jung, we don’t just believe in nomic, and socio-cultural aspects of gen- it in a return to the self . . . . In the language of psychological objects this the numinosum, we know there are der that perpetuate the castration and might be called a “retentive identifi- forces at work in the world that we do shaming of men and the patriarchal cation.” By this I mean the possibility not produce or control. As scholars of oppression of the feminine and inferiority of an experience of the self has been Jung, and as practitioners of analytical of women? One step toward the conjunc- projected onto an aspect of the body tion, or union, of the Wild Man and Wild image, in this case the semen, which Woman, and of men and women on a it then becomes crucial to hold onto “The work of the human, or ego, level of experience, is for for the sake of the wholeness carried us to forgive where we have been within xxviii inner life is by by it. the oppositional forces of masculine and If we consider our experience of nature intangible, feminine, and risk starting again. What gender difference, and our understanding unpredictable, and often comes next—learning to value, and inte- of gender conflicts, from the point of incomprehensible.” grate, both the inseminating quality of view of alchemical psychology, we realize the deep, or archetypal, masculine and that opposites cannot come back togeth- the gestating fecundity of the archetypal er consciously until they have first been feminine into the human experience of separated. My sense is that men and psychology, we engage in the work of gender constructions—may be more diffi- women—and here I include individuals of individuation in a bid to bring the intelli- cult. every sexual orientation and prefer- gence and numinosity of archetypal pat- There is much at stake in this work ence—are still in this phase of things, terns into the world through human of wholeness. And for those who make each wounded by patriarchy and by each experience. As Jung made clear in Answer meaning and soul through the practice of other, each longing, in their own ways, to Job: God needs man.xxx I wonder if depth psychology, the work of the inner for contact, for what David Deida called the same isn’t true of men and women: life is by nature intangible, unpredictable, intimate communion.xxix So where do we we need each other, and each gender and often incomprehensible. Demanding

36 Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012 Answer to Job (Toronto, Canada: Profeminist men respond to the mythopoetic Inner City Books, 1992, pp. 90-91). men’s movement (and the mythopoetic lead- poems (St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 1999, pp. 49-50). ers answer), M. Kimmel, Ed. (Philadelphia, PA: Dennis Pottenger is a depth-oriented Temple University Press, 1995, p. 15. xvi R. Moore, & D. Gillette, King, warrior, psychotherapist in Northern California. ii R. Bly, Iron John: A book about men (New magician, lover: Rediscovering the archetypes York, NY: Addison-Wesley, p. 5). of the mature masculine (San Francisco, CA: He plans to train as a Jungian Analyst. Harper, 1990, p. 64). iii M-L von Franz, The interpretation of fairy ###

Depth Insights, Volume 3, Fall 2012 37 Blue Woman Longing Thoughts on a Self-Portrait By Judith Harte

There are lovers content with longing. I’m not one of them. Gimme some shelter. —Rumi1 It’s just a kiss away.

Blue, here is a song for you … “Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took You’ve got to keep thinking me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.” You can make it through these waves…. —Joni Mitchell2 4/20/11 Might it be that the Blue Woman isn’t really blue after all? Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me At least not only blue, years to understand that this, too, was a gift. But the kind of black that turns slowly, —Mary Oliver3 Alchemically, Into blue? 3/31/11 And urges me to leave that sad woman, What does one say to a blue woman longing? Who fights for her life, Will only the words of others suffice? Behind. Poem after poem Tonight the blue woman refuses to be sad. Thought after thought Perhaps the clay wants happiness? A splash of tear Here, there. 4/27/11 A cape of clay cushions sorrow’s face Longing fills the room. Then … falls away. What does the longing want? I encounter the Self, as portrait Existence? And I am on my knees. Happiness? Union? Tricked, bound, Warmth? Naked revelations, My own ugliness revealed. Inner vision still unseen outside. Me as toad, where no princess can exist.

4/6/11 Grandma Lena wrapped in babushka. Ah, Witchery at its finest! Grandpa Sam left for another woman. Lena boiled his hat to cast a spell, Hoping it would bring him back.

Psychogenetic wounds Seed the generations And bring on the longing.

The first is sweet. The other burning, Wretched. Worst, when you’re in it alone.

I’m ancient inside, Not as sad today. Ancient equals eons of time, Billions of people. It’s hard to be sad And ancient at the same time. I place my sadness there, In antiquity’s container. Blue Woman Longing - Sculpture by Judith Harte C’mon Mick,

38 Depth Insights, Issue 3, Fall 2012

An image begins I embraced that knowing, And slowly evolves into a recognized subject. Kicked off the countdown to those last days Is that me? And crawled my way to the surface of my life. Overnight the sky had turned to a robin’s egg blue And … yes! And I heard It’s true, The sounds “No one does Blue like Margot.”4 The moans Especially her “Dream Anima(l)s.” The words She knows Anima is Soul, Of a blue woman longing. And that dream souls are dream animals, I understood then what Rilke meant And that soul animals are blue animals. When he wrote:

5/15/11 “God speaks to each of us as he makes us, Weary after class. Unhappy with the work tonight. I curse that then walks with us silently out of the night. Blue Woman and her longing. I arrive home, open my car door, These are the words we dimly hear: drop my keys on the half-lit ground. As I bend down to pick You, sent out beyond your recall, them up I notice a tiny, dark, shape on the gravel driveway near go to the limits of your longing. my feet. A closer look reveals a slightly curled, fragile, heart- Embody me. shaped brown leaf whose veined patterns anatomically mirror Flare up like a flame the arteries and veins of the human heart. I pick it up, expecting And make big shadows I can move in. it to crumble upon contact. Strong, sturdy, daring me to destroy Let everything happen to you: it, the leaf will have none of it. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. “Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took No feeling is final. me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.” Don’t let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life. 5/21/11 You will know by its seriousness. Photos taken for a self-portrait. Give me your hand.”6 An exercise in narcissism? A reparation of same? References Or my attempt to capture [1] Rumi, Mawlana Jalal-al-Din, The Book of Love: Poems of A glimpse of Self? Ecstasy and Longing, translated by Coleman Barks. [2] Mitchell, Joni, “Blue,” from the album Blue. 6/2/11 [3] Oliver, Mary, “The Uses of Sorrow,” from Thirst. I dream I visit someone at a retirement hotel/assisted living 4] Conversation with artist Margot McLean, co-author with building. I walk down the hall and into her room. I don’t find James Hillman of Dream Animals, during the Image and Psyche her. In the bathroom I find her lying in the tub partially Conference in San Francisco, California, March, 2006 immersed in water, dead. Her hair is brownish gray, her face [5] “I Should Care,” words and music by Sammy Cahn, Axel angular. I can tell she’s been there awhile. I go for help. Stordahl and Paul Weston. [6] Rilke, Ranier Maria, “God Speaks to Each of Us,” from Book I awake with lyrics from “I Should Care,” a jazz standard from of Hours: Love the early fifties, echoing in my head: A trained therapist, with an M.A. in Clinical Psychology and a “I should care Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology, Judith Harte has been an I should let it upset me. astrologer since 1975. She began to sculpt about six years ago. I should care Judith has a particular fondness for Depth Psychology and ”5 But it just doesn’t get me. Mythic Astrology as well as the incorporation of a soul-centered approach in her astrological consulting work: Over half a year ago, www.imagesofsoul.com While on my way to one of those final decades ### That mark the beginning Of the end, of a life, Just as I was about to turn the page On the way to another year, It happened:

“SOMEONE I LOVED GAVE ME A BOX FULL OF DARKNESS.”

Depth Insights, Issue 3, Fall 2012 39 Let the Feast Begin By Bonnie Scot

At the healing table welcome every starved rag-tag life-beaten aspect of the self

Open your door

Embrace the goblins the murderers the thieves of joy

With intimate scrutiny bring to light every sweet “In A Wood of You” dark longing of the soul

Bless curses with truth Mold blessings with wisdom Lay them all on the table

Then temper your old harsh hunger with robust offerings of earth and stars

It’s time love

Let the feast begin

“Endurance” Nightbirds by Bonnie Scot

Nightbirds are singing with the silvered fingernail moon

Inviting me to a celebration of the night

If the enchantment of their song should come to you say yes oh yes say

yes

“The Curved and Varied”

Above photo art by Scott Potter

40 Depth Insights, Issue 3, Fall 2012

“Si lasci pure cadere il concetto di 'Limbo se e necessario.” (“Let also drop the concept of Limbo if necessary.”) ~ Benedict XVI as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, 1985 After a hundred hundred generations the middle place -Limbo -it's a mess swaddling, cotton or muslin wraps, rabbit-deer-bear skin, softened grass bundles, silken-edged cozies heaped up to cornices along pink and blue walls dolls, leather or paper or cornhusk gourd-headed or glass-faced mounded in cupboards safe clowns with flat eyes toppled safe monkeys with sock hats crammed cribs and cradles and woven-rush baskets jostle and rock in wrist-warm rooms row upon row and pearled into the hallways both sides, down the center all cooing and whining, ready forever for nothing. One more miss-marked shudders outside, womb-red and wrinkled, fist-faced and neckless shoulder to doorjamb, knee-keen to loll fallow for eons, side-lined and shiny cosseted keepsake of mourning and pouty reason and dread. After a thousand thousand and one beyond the one way to nowhere full-to-bust burst petal-peeled daisy-splayed open and back in powder drift hillsides, sheen on sheen sifted dust layers over far tickling valleys where slow roaming rivers grassy and thick caught them in mercy, the millions who dropped, fat elbows flailing, spitty fingers, bud toes their dough brows and bellies, bobbing like fruit as the damp haunch of a white cow stirred the earth and she groaned.

Depth Insights, Issue 3, Fall 2012 41 Surrender By Jean Morin

Dusk falls As earth devours the last red rays of dying sun Silence wraps me in midnight Suffocating me with the whisper of dark wings Brushing my cheek with a shiver

I sigh, descending into darkness I feel in my bones Sinking into the sounds of earth’s magic Tasting blood on the tip of my tongue Where yesterday’s lie is still on my lips.

Shadows glide Into the deepest parts of me-- I surrender. And I emerge into the place where moonlight Licks the water like bees wings Lapping at the edges as they die

Dark heart Dances like a somber raven in autumn Scattering leaves that shimmer like starlight Softens the song of Saturn in my soul I wake in twilight

There! The charcoal sky thins with the faintest light The skeletal slice of crescent moon impales itself On a jagged crystal peak to the north Foreshadowing daylight and life

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42 Depth Insights, Issue 3, Fall 2012