Mythos

Have You Ever Experienced The “Numen”?

The reason people choose atheism rather than belief or agnosticism, may simply be that professed atheists have not experienced, at least in this lifetime, the “numen” (adj. “numinous”). See meaning below.

Numinous ( /ˈnjuːmɪnəs/) is a concept derived from the Latin “numen” meaning “arousing spiritual or religious emotion; mysterious or awe-inspiring”.
numinosum, numinous, numinosity (Wikipedia)

The terms were popularized by the German theologian Rudolf Otto in his influential 1917 German book Das Heilige, which appeared in English as The Idea of the Holy in 1923. (Wikipedia). For Otto, the numinous forms the universal, basis of all world religions: “From the very beginning religion is experienced as the Mysterium, of what breaks forth from the depths of our life, of the feeling of the “supersensual”.

He uses words like “shudder,” “stupor,” “astonishment,” and “blank wonder” to describe this sensation. This universal religious “moment” is primarily an experience of feeling, whereas theology is above all an exercise of thinking and reflection.

Jung had experienced the numinous many times in his life. Freud had, apparently, not. It isn’t a question of supremacy; it’s more just a fact of life. There are those that have and those who have not. Both Freud and Jung were esteemed in life and so they are, also, in death. Their paths and legacies were different, but linked, and equally grandiose.

Jung’s individuation project was to make the numinous content as conscious as possible, to sublimate and integrate it, and to bring it into relationship with other quite different aspects of the Self, thereby making it relative, not superior, to more worldly gifts and aspects of the self.

It seems to me, that experiencing the numinous, is a precursor to a belief or knowledge of “God” in the broadest sense, as distinct from religious practices, based on ritual and dogma. Those who possess artistic or imaginative temperaments are more likely to be drawn to an awareness of the numinous. The French Romantic writer, Stendhal, is renowned for having fainted before exceptional works of art, giving rise to the term “Stendhal Syndrome.”

Carl Jung had such gifts to an extraordinary degree. His accounts of firsthand numinous experiences appear in several of his writings — Memories, Dreams, Reflections, (1962) and above all in the famous Red Book (2009).

A belief in an afterlife is common. Many of us sense the existence of the numinous, without believing there’s a God up high on a cloud directing things down here on earth. One might even use the term “God” to describe the “great unknown”, or the mystery of it all. Words at our disposal are often limited. For Jung, the numinous and its relationship with an afterlife, was based on hints rather than facts or notions.

Life experiences had suggested to Carl Jung, the existence of mysteries unable to be explained by science, and hinted at in poetic or lyrical works of the imagination. However, he saw himself as a scientist first and foremost. He feared ridicule from other scientists at the time, if he professed a belief or knowledge of the afterlife. The Red Book, in which he spoke of his explorations into the unconscious mind, was published posthumously in the 1990s, because of this fear of ridicule.

More and more people today seem to be on the pathway of exploring this subject, and in bringing some sort of bridge between science and what Jung and others called the mysterium tremendum.

April 27, 2022 0 comment

$golden-ratio-math$

Mythos

The Golden Ratio and How it Works in Nature

Just look around you…on the ground and in trees, in the sky…

The Fibonacci Sequence is everywhere!

In Plants

In Pine cones the spiral pattern of the seed pods tend to develop in steps, upward and in opposite directions, numerically matching the Fibonacci sequence.

Sunflower seeds also follow this pattern, radiating outwards from the center to fill in spaces. And the number of Petals on some flowers, such as the rose, follows the Fibonacci sequence.

In accordance with Darwinian theory, each petal is placed to allow for the optimal exposure to sunlight.

This patterning also appears in some surprising places:

Hurricanes: Much like shells, hurricanes often display the Golden spiral.

Spiral galaxies have a number of spiral arms, with an overall shape identical to the Golden rectangle of the Fibonacci Sequence.

The Golden Ratio in the animal kingdom:

Dolphins, starfish, sand dollars, sea urchins, ants and honeybees also exhibit the proportion.

A DNA molecule measures 34 angstroms by 21 angstroms at each full cycle of the double helix spiral. In the Fibonacci series, 34 and 21 are successive numbers.

According to Stephen Skinner, the study of sacred geometry has its roots in the study of nature, and the math principles at work therein. Many forms observed in nature can be related to geometry; for example, the chambered nautilus grows at a constant rate and so its shell forms a logarithmic spiral to accommodate that growth without changing shape. Also, honeybees construct hexagonal cells to hold their honey. These and other correspondences are sometimes interpreted in terms of sacred geometry and considered to be further proof of the natural significance of geometric forms.

beehive

In Art and in Architecture

Geometric ratios, and geometric figures were often employed in the design of Egyptian, ancient Indian, Greek and Roman architecture. Medieval European cathedrals also incorporated symbolic geometry. Indian and Himalayan spiritual communities often constructed temples and fortifications on design plans of mandala and yantra.

The golden ratio, which is equal to approximately 1.618, can be found in various aspects of our life, including biology, architecture, and the arts. But only recently was it discovered that this special ratio is also reflected in nanoscale, thanks to researchers from the U.K.’s Oxford University. Their research, published in the journal Science on Jan. 8, examined chains of linked magnetic cobalt niobate (CoNb2O6) particles only one particle wide to investigate the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. They applied a magnetic field at right angles to an aligned spin of the magnetic chains to introduce more quantum uncertainty. Following the changes in field direction, these small magnets started to magnetically resonate.

February 2, 2022 0 comment

Mythos Writing

Revisiting Persephone in the Underworld

My Links to the Myth

I have for a long while been drawn to the archetype of Persephone, who must descend into the underworld for half the year. My connection is linked to a long-term personal wish and desire for growth and change through psychological means. Personal attraction to an archetype is like an urgent calling, something that really speaks to you and urges you to investigate it further. There is also a possibility of extending this to a social context.

I previously wrote about this myth in relation to global warming and environmental degradation. See the previous post on my site at: https://www.anneskyvington.com.au/the-myth-of-persephone-and-demeter/
Now we have been rocked by a global epidemic that we have come to know as Covid19, a virus almost certainly transferred to humans from animals. Misinformation leading to increased fear among people, including the explosion of conspiracy theories, has added to the problems of finding solutions. If we are to progress as a species and as social beings, we must learn to work together as a global community.

This latest shock, represents a Persephone in the Underworld occurrence on a global scale. We are all in these dark times together, and we therefore need to look for solutions together.

The overarching symbol of the underworld is ‘the unknown’. Because it is hidden from view and unseen, it is a realm to be feared. However, one can learn to accept the reality of the underworld, just as Persephone has had to do. And by so doing, one can gain in fortitude and endurance.

The Story

Out of a crack in the earth, four black horses appear. Driving a chariot, Hades kidnaps Persephone who is picking flowers in a meadow, takes her against her will, down into the subterranean depths of the underworld. The earth closes up again, and all that is left above ground is the flowers that Persephone was collecting for her mother. She is to be married to Death, the consort of the King of the underworld. The black horses that draw Hades and the chariot represent intelligence, but, in this case, dying consciousness.

Demeter is finally able to recover her daughter, but not before Hades persuades his wife to taste of the forbidden fruit — that will ensure that she stays underground for half the year, representing the seasons of autumn and winter.

The relationship between Persephone and Demeter is basic to the whole myth. Persephone is the golden, naiive child of her mother, Demeter. She lives and plays in the apparent safety of the fields and sunlight provided her by Demeter, Queen of the horizontal world above ground. Demeter imagines that her daughter is safe from harm, happily picking flowers in the sunshine with friends and animals above ground.

The Role of Demeter

Demeter, whose domain is ‘cornucopian’ consciousness — the life of the fields and vegetation — is at first bereft, shocked and saddened over her daughter’s abduction. She then reacts with anger and inflicts famine on the earth above ground, instead of wisely seeking counsel about what to do in order to find her daughter and bring her back.

As goddess of grains and harvest, Demeter lives on the surface of things, unaware of the dark lurking out of sight; she is therefore lacking wholeness. Jung wrote that you can either have goodness or wholeness, not both together. In other words, experiencing the dark is part of becoming whole.

On a deeper level, however, the rape of Persephone represents for Demeter, a jolting of consciousness. This enables her to access, eventually, deeper levels of herself in order to grow.

The Transformative Meanings of the Myth

Demeter must learn that it cannot be always spring. She starts a relentless search for her daughter, but she remains depressed and angry; these negative emotions cause her surface domain to be depleted. If Persephone receives a shock at her abduction and kidnapping, Demeter is jolted out of her complacency, out of her superficiality. It’s a painful but necessary psychic shift that takes place within her. She experiences loss for the first time, and a new order, a new narrative, is born out of her despair and suffering.

Destruction is often the right hand of creation and creativity.

Can you see how this myth is relevant to our response to the pandemic as a community, both local and global?

The Rape of Persephone: C. Schwartz 1573

June 10, 2021 1 comment

Mythos

Births Deaths and Marriages

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Hamlet [Act 1, Scene 5]

Something extraordinary occurs at the occasion of a birth, and also at the time when a loved one is dying. If you are open and ‘tuned in’, you will experience this as something otherworldly and mysterious. William James coined the word ‘numinous’ to explain what can only be otherwise understood as the holy or the divine.

Since these are highly charged events, you might be inclined to say that it’s only natural, and nothing-out-of-the-ordinary that loved ones are hugely impacted at these times of high emotion. Yes, but no…

I’m referring to something much deeper and more mysterious than simply the emotional extremity of the effects of births and death. Special feelings and resonances occur, accompanied sometimes by omens and portents. The dying person calls out: Lift me, as he smiles, tranquil, and subsides into peaceful stillness. The newborn comes out quietly, blinking up at the lights, as if pleased to be here.

February 1, 2020 0 comment

Mythos

The Myth of Persephone and Demeter

The Myth Linked to the Earth Today

We earthlings are being jolted by human damage to our natural home. Climate Change is causing huge shock waves to register throughout the globe. Fierce fires have broken out this summer here, and recently in California and even in Athens, Greece. The temperature of the earth is climbing steadily towards a tipping point. Damaging floods have been increasing in intensity in China, Europe, India and in South East Asia, as the level of the sea continues to rise.

With bushfires ravaging our country at the moment, this ‘myth‘ about transformation may be more than ever relevant to us today in Australia. The feeling that many of us are experiencing is of hopelessness, depression and ‘falling into the abyss’. Like a descent into Hades. Others are asking what it will take for Climate Change deniers to wake up to the fact that something urgent needs to be done.

Like the cycle of the seasons, like death following on after birth, we must also try to keep in mind that ‘this too will pass’. And then, following on from recovery—that may take us months, if not years—let’s be motivated to work courageously together. Let’s work together to make changes, either via the body politic, or as individuals—in whatever capacity we can—so as to ensure that such terrible devastation may not happen ever again in this country in the near future.

Let’s take heart from the firefighters and from the amazing actions of volunteers; and from the outpourings of empathy, of money and of supplies from ordinary citizens here.

Let’s determine to fight for change that needs to occur.

Australians must become ‘climate change warriors’, world leaders in environmental matters, such as replacing the use of coal with energy renewables. For the environment of this country is fragile, something the indigenous owners understood eons ago. We are now playing the role of ‘the canary in the mine’ for the rest of the world to see. Let’s hear and heed the call to action.

We Australians are grieving for our country and for the people and animals who have lost everything, even their lives.

Can this myth assist us in understanding a little better, and in coming to terms with what is happening here? It is the deeper meanings of this myth that resonate with me, and which reflect the experiences of all who must suffer from pain and loss. And isn’t that all of us?

The Meaning of the Myth

Kristina Dryza is recognised as one of the world’s top female futurists, that is, scientists and social scientists whose specialty is futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities about the future and how they can emerge from the present. She is also an archetypal consultant and published author. In defining a myth, she referred to James Hillman, Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung, experts on mythology. For the purposes of Kristina’s workshop, myths represent the human search for what is true, significant, and meaningful from our cultural past.

Her talk on Persephone and Demeter at the Sydney Jung Society opened me up to some of the more meaningful concepts to do with this archetypal pair. Together, they represent the idea and experience of despair (Demeter) and shock (Persephone), when something untoward happens to you, for example a betrayal, a sickness, or a broken leg. It often comes like a jolt out of the blue. The extreme nature of the bushfires has taken many of us by surprise.

It’s our journey of pain, and no one else can take it for us. No one can understand what it’s like for us while in the underworld of despair and fear. And the hardest thing at the time is to tell ourselves that this too shall pass.

I have for a long while been drawn to the archetype of Persephone. Personal attraction to an archetype is like an urgent calling, something that really speaks to you and urges you to investigate it further. Only recently, have I realised that Persephone must be, necessarily and forever, coupled with the other archetype of Demeter. This, too, makes sense to me from a personal perspective.

What are the transformative aspects of this myth?

The overarching symbol of the underworld is ‘the unknown’. Because it is hidden from view and unseen, it is a realm to be feared. However, one can learn to love the underworld, too, or at least to withstand it. And by so doing, one can gain in fortitude and in endurance.

The Pairing of Persephone and Demeter

As goddess of grains and harvest, Demeter lives on the surface of things, unaware of the dark lurking out of sight; she is therefore lacking wholeness. Kristina reminded us of Jung’s words, that you can either have goodness or wholeness, not both together. In other words, experiencing the dark is part of becoming whole. Demeter imagines that her daughter is safe from harm, happily picking flowers in the sunshine with friends and animals above ground.

Out of a crack in the earth, four black horses appear. Driving a chariot, Hades kidnaps Persephone and takes her against her will, down into the subterranean depths of the underworld. The earth closes up again, and all that is left above ground is the flowers that Persephone was collecting for her mother. She is to be married to Death, the consort of the King of the underworld. The black horses that draw Hades and the chariot represent intelligence, but, in this case, dying consciousness.

Demeter, whose domain is ‘cornucopian’ consciousness, is bereft and enraged over her daughter’s abduction. On a deeper level, however, the rape of Persephone represents for Demeter, a jolting of consciousness. This enables her to access, eventually, deeper levels of herself in order to grow.

The Rape of Persephone
C. Schwartz 1573

The Transformative Meanings of the Myth

Kristina notes that destruction is often the right hand of creation and creativity.

Persephone represents transformation itself. She can and must go beyond her mother. In order to fulfill her destiny, she must undergo a rebirth into a new narrative, a new consciousness. The underworld is the interior world: that of the unconscious, the archetypes, the collective unconscious, and the unknown and unseen worlds. She now has a chance to become more complete, to find deeper levels of herself through interior work. Persephone also represents victim energy and the wounded healer.

Her journey toward wholeness helps others to heal.

Demetrian consciousness is depth potentiality: the gift of the shadow. She must experience famine, as well as fertility. And when her daughter is taken away, her grief produces that famine on the earthly horizontal level. Persephone, however, is beginning to thaw towards her abductor, and to enjoy her role as Queen of the Underworld. There is much work to be done at the vertical subterranean level. However, her mother’s despair—causing the continuing famine above—convinces Hades that he must relinquish his consort for six months of each year, during which time, she can return to her mother’s embrace, and enjoy the sunshine and fertility above.

The Myth Linked to the Seasons on Earth

Persephone and the Pomegranate

However, Persephone cannot return to the upper world without bringing some of the underworld with her. After all, she is the very bridge into the underworld. When she agrees to eat six pomegranate seeds offered to her by Hades, the deal is done. She must spend half of the year above ground, and the other half in the underworld.

Listen to Kristina’s TED talk on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o4PYNroZBY

January 13, 2020 4 comments

Mythos

Voices From the Past

Words in a book…

Esther learnt of my existence and found me through words in a family history tome. My older brother had written and published A Little Bit of Irish, while living in a farmhouse in the Isère region not far from the French Alps.

Esther and I discovered that we were cousins and became firm friends straight away.

Many coincidences connected us—we’d spent exactly seven decades on the planet in the same country, the same state, and in the same city. Intuition, creativity, and a love of nature and family were further connections.

At our first meeting, Esther brought along a neat chart she’d drawn to show me the links to our Irish ancestors, going way back through the centuries. It was like ghosts speaking and waving to me from the past.

More recently, Esther emailed me about ‘voices from the past’: people, ancestors, wanting so strongly to speak to us that … physical laws of time and space appear to be broken.

The past lives in us…

She mentioned Charlie Perkins, an Aboriginal activist who studied at the University of Sydney in the sixties. His words, ‘the past lives in us’ meant a great deal to my cousin. Sometimes the past, through the land, sings to us, he’d said.

Aboriginal cultures often speak of the land talking to them.

The mineral pool in Moree spoke to me when I was about three. See my post on this blog.

Esther also referred to Songlines by Bruce Chatwin. This book explores the Aboriginal Dreamtime mythology and the lovely idea that the land was sung into existence: trees, rocks, paths and animals becoming one, along with the singers who sang them into being.

Places from the past…

Paterson and Vacy in the Lower Hunter Valley are further points of connection between us. Her Dixon ancestors first settled there from 1861-1867 and established a home for their expanding families. Vacy, this small remote community, unknown to most people I meet, is precisely where my son Joel, settled with his family in 2005. It’s also where Alice, a common ancestor, was born; the village Vacy, was spelt in historical archives as ‘Nessif’.

Ancestral Voices

Esther writes: I suppose when I say the ancestors speak to me, my body is a great indicator to me—sometimes urging me to follow up on these family matters. When I first began researching the Dixon family I can’t remember what guided me in that direction—something did, when I could have been engaged in my art work, painting my pictures. And when I really started getting into the search once again, I felt such … wellness! I hadn’t felt so well for a long, long time. It was that feeling that made me think something was guiding me in the ‘right’ direction. I was excited at finding more information and finally, I got in touch with William’s book, and then you two (Myself and my sister Susan).

The Dixons (Esther’s ancestors) and the O’Keefes (mine) were cousins, who migrated from County Clare in Ireland in the mid nineteenth century.

Paterson and Vacy, thence to the Clarence

William writes: It would appear that Michael Dixon and his wife, lived in Paterson for some seven years, from 1861 until 1867, whereas Michael O’Keefe and his wife only lived there for three years, from 1862 until 1864. The two related families may have decided to go there together. From this point on, in chapter 4, we need to examine the O’Keefes and the Dixons in parallel, as they move from Paterson up to Grafton: A Little Bit of Irish.

Family History Songlines

Could this urge to seek out past family links produce it’s own version of songlines? By retracing our ancestors’ steps, are we tapping into their songlines? While she’s explored different family members’ journeys, Esther has actually felt herself in the places where they’ve been. It’s such a strong feeling. While reading up on Vacy and Paterson she could feel herself there and picture different settings—buildings, men working, women cooking…. Could these be called ‘songlines’?

Is that the way our ancestors are talking to us?

She believes that there has to be some ‘other dimensional’ influence in all of this (family history singing to us.) She feels that her mother is guiding this, perhaps through her father James.

Ella’s Story

Ella’s story is remarkable, too, though she doesn’t belong by blood to the Dixons and O”Keefes, just by marriage to James Dixon. The way she found out about her story is quite astonishing too. And the way she guided her back in the 1990s to undertake more research.

Maybe it is Ella influencing all of this. She has ‘dialogued’ with her before and will no doubt do so again.

Song lines…

Since responding to Esther’s email, a strange thing has happened. Lyrics and songs from the past, a past in which I could not keep a tune, have been calling on me. Within my otherwise musical family, Dad and I, out of the seven of us, were both tone deaf.

Now I have started to sing, at first tentatively, and then more confidently. I have been even singing in tune, especially Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now. The words and tune from this song have been singing to me day and night for weeks on end. I cannot even remember learning it in the past. But I can now sing it right through, almost perfectly.

November 5, 2019 0 comment

Mythos Writing

Ancient Stories from Childhood

As a child growing up in a valley where diversity was met with suspicion, I learnt, first-hand, about racism. However, I also saw paradoxes within my cocooned world, and turned to STORY to try to understand the conflicted reality surrounding me like a grey pall after bushfires.

One of my favourite uncles, let’s call him ‘Barney’, was the most forthright in expressing overtly, the racism that reigned in our world. Don’t go near them dirty blacks; strange words, falling on deaf childhood ears in my case, since the Aborigines were mostly out of sight in this happy valley. Yet this uncle was kindly, with childlike, cerulean blue eyes, which twinkled when he laughed and played funny tricks on us; and he worked like a dog for my beloved grandmother, who whispered that he was worth his weight in gold and that the Good Lord (who hailed from Northern Ireland in her case) would reward him in the afterlife. He’d been caned by the nuns for his stutter, which turned him off school and, perhaps, away from religion, for good. (The nuns were real cruel to us kids, he told me. Dadda let me stay away from school afterwards.)

Later on, I thought that it was a pity they’d taken Barney out of school— ‘thrown the baby out with the bathwater’ to quote an apt cliché — since education can be what saves children who are stuck-in-the-mud of poverty or of ignorance.

Strangely, at the end of his long life, Uncle Barney’d requested a Catholic funeral. Was it in reverence to his father’s religion, or was he, perhaps, hedging his bets when it came to the afterlife? For this occasion, I, a lapsed Anglican/Buddhist — and the offspring of a marriage between Catholic and Anglican parents — officiated at the ceremony. The dark-skinned Filippino priest was grateful for my support, given his poor English and lack of acquaintance with the deceased. The funeral went off without a hitch, and I was applauded as a one-time celebrant for the Catholic Church par excellence, much to the chagrin of some of my atheist brethren who attended the service.

‘You can’t please everyone’ was one of the lessons I’d learnt in childhood from reading Aesop’s Fables: a collection of oral tales credited to a slave and storyteller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE. It was the story titled The Boy, the Man and the Donkey that first introduced that idea to me.

There was another supreme paradox, and one that proffered a kind of balm for my heart and eyes. Uncle seemed colour blind when it came to his choice of best friends. They were four brothers from a neighbouring farmhouse that fronted the riverbank, who looked like they’d stepped out of the pages from The Thousand and One Nights; swarthy-skinned Assyrian men with dark hair and Anglicised names — Sammy, Teddy, Dan and Freddy — who we kids idolised for their storytelling prowess.

One of the stories, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, kept us entranced for weeks at a time, we kids and our uncles, sprawled around on the grassy bank of the river beneath the starry sky. The brothers took turns to recount by heart such tales from The Arabian Nights.

They were, I realised much later on, from Assyrian Christian backgrounds.

Not until adulthood did I come to realise the extent to which religious differences had led to many immigrants, such as our Assyrian neighbours, having to leave their homelands — in this case from the Middle East. My reaction to religions has been, as a result of such experiences, to lose trust in dogmatism, and to move towards an appreciation of mythology and of mysticism, spirituality in the broader sense.

Mystics from all paths, Judaism, Christianity or Islam, seem to be more interested in what unites people of different religions, rather than what separates them. The Sufis were mystics, who may lay claim to being the originators of all of the major human attempts to penetrate beyond the apparent world, to glimpse the reality that lies beneath appearances.

Sufis say that, before you can acquire higher knowledge, you need to look within and rid yourself of psychological and emotional blocks, and to resist following the spiritual herd, which can lead to religious fanaticism.

According to Idries Shah, the last publicly know teacher of Sufism, Sufis have had a major influence upon Western thought, via important individuals such as Roger Bacon, St Francis, Ramon Llull, and many others.

The early Sufis were wanderers throughout Asia and the Middle East, dispensing a form of Islam different from the modern one, and from that of the Islamic Golden Age in the Middle Ages. They connected with spiritual travellers from the West, who were escaping religious persecution, and with traders from the Far East, who exchanged wisdom and ideas with them, including Oriental Buddhism.

Christian mystics, too — the contemplatives — have been the ones who reached out beyond the boundaries of institutional religion to embrace the teachings of other faiths.

When I return to my Happy Valley and pass by the cathedral — with the lead glass window dedicated to my paternal grandmother — I remember the sense of mystery and of awe that enlivened me as I sat, long ago, in the pews there, and I realise that I have carried something of it with me to this very day.

September 8, 2019 0 comment

Mythos

C.G.Jung’s Active Imagination and the Dead

Active Imagination

Dr Stephani Stephens, a Jungian expert, took us on a brief journey with our eyes closed, exploring ‘Active Imagination’—the term coined that describes the process developed by Carl Jung that supported his body of work.

The speaker tried to give us a glimpse into Jung’s method of Active Imagination, which is based on the subject envisioning dialogues between oneself and different parts of the psyche. It is the method Jung used for descending into the unconscious, where he contacted figures from the depths that formed the basis for all of his main writings on the Collective Unconscious; this underscored his later analytical psychological method for treating patients.

In the same way that Ezechial warned Jung, (see reference below), Stephens states that getting in touch with the Unconscious Realm can be risky without a skilled guide/mentor, or at least the use of advanced meditation techniques.

Utilising his method of Active Imagination, Jung conjured up figures from the imagination with whom he entered into dialogue.

The Red Book

The Red Book is a large leather‐bound folio manuscript, creatively crafted by Jung between 1915 and about 1930. It recounts and comments upon the author’s imaginative, visionary experiences after his break with Freud and the beginning of a period of creativity and emotional dislocation. Despite being named as the most important work—central in Jung’s oeuvre—it was not published or made otherwise accessible for study until 2009.

It is an unfinished, personal and spiritual account that was, and still is, at odds with the atheistic and scientific direction of society. Jung’s family were concerned that it might not be accepted positively by the public, and kept it locked away until ten years ago.

According to Stephen A. Diamond, the Red Book, is a very personal record of Jung’s complicated, tortuous and lengthy quest to salvage his soul, and a first-hand description of a process that would later fundamentally inform Jung’s approach to treatment that he called Analytical Psychology.

This book was published in 2009 to much acclaim from Jungian scholars and psychologists, as well as followers of his analytical method of treatment.

The Lecture

Dr Stephens spoke well, contacting the audience and keeping our attention throughout. I was even inspired to ask a question at the end. In this lecture, the speaker introduced material from Jung’s biographical work Memories, Dreams, Reflections, and from the posthumously published The Red Book, a beautifully presented and hand inscribed journal of Jung’s encounters with visionary figures during his ‘active imagination’ explorations.

As he focused in this way, Jung was inundated with imagined scenes of global catastrophe—at a time when Europe spoke only of peace and prosperity. In less than a year, beginning in 1914, the First World War ravaged the continent with a bloodthirstiness unknown to history. Jung found vivid symbolic experiences, often of a healing kind, that personified his personal psychology, while revealing the devastating war’s underlying dynamics.

Stephens based her lecture around significant dates relevant to Jung and his work.

The Time Line

1899-1900: Jung attended séances with his cousin Helly as medium, but abandoned them when he discovered anomalies and possible subterfuge in the procedures. However, he went on to write his doctoral thesis based on his witnessing these events, which were very popular at the time, especially in his hometown of Basle.

1902: His PhD was awarded from the University of Zurich for his thesis entitled: On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena.

1907: His first meeting with Freud takes place in Vienna, when they converse for thirteen hours straight, having much in common. However, Jung’s different perspective on the implications of the Eros function, and his interest in the occult will, ultimately, separate them for good.

1909: Jung resigns his post at the Burgholzli Psychiatric Hospital and, during this year, he also visits the USA with Freud.

1911: His cousin Helly dies from tuberculosis in her early thirties. Jung is more and more interested in the psychology of the unconscious. The first Death Dreams begin the following year.

1913: The break with Freud occurs, and Jung’s strongest visions of ‘Rivers of Blood’ spreading throughout Europe begin. The war starts the following year, validating his intuitive visions. A period of personal uncertainty and disorientation begins for Jung.

The Realm of the Dead

Jung explores what he calls the realm of the dead, through descending into the unconscious. However, when he asks Ezechial, one of the figures he meets in the underworld, if he might accompany him and others on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Ezechial replies: ‘You cannot join us; you have a body, but we are dead.’

One of Jung’s Figures illustrated in the Red Book

Does Jung present, through his tortuous descent into the Unconscious, a suggestion of survival of Consciousness after death? Is there a plausible case for continuing consciousness after death?

June 30, 2019 2 comments

Mythos

Blackbird Mythology: Crows and Magpies of Australia

Many people lump black birds (crows or ravens) and pied ones, such as the Australian magpie, all together, and think of them as “birds of ill omen” or some such. Of course, not everyone dislikes birds that are black. My brother recounts a legend in his family history book, A Little Bit of Irish, connected to our Kennedy ancestors from Northern Ireland. They were descendants of Anglo-Scottish Protestants in Ulster and came from the village of Brookeborough in County Fermanagh.

William writes: “Brookeborough was in the hands of the Maguire clan until a rebellion in 1641, when it was given to the Brooke family. Lady Maguire loved blackbirds, and the ancient name of the village was Aghalun, which means “field of the blackbirds.” (page 187). He goes on to tell of a legend from childhood, passed around in our family when we were kids. This was about a maiden aunt in Grafton, Henrietta Kennedy, who kept three pet magpies that roosted at night on the foot of her bed. My brother likes to think of that behaviour “as a resurgence of the spirit of Lady Maguire.”

I remember Aunty Ettie as an elderly, stern-looking woman who never smiled. Perhaps her affection for Australian magpies, when she was younger, was a sign of her inability to find friendship among humans. Her younger sister, my grandmother, had a niece, Kitty Walker, whose sad story I have recounted on this blog. When I tried to find Kitty’s unmarked grave, recently, in the company of her granddaughter, the doleful dirge of the crows seemed to be aware of our search.

December 22, 2018 0 comment

Mythos

Bohemian Rhapsody the Movie

A Unique Love Story

The Movie

I loved the film Bohemian Rhapsody. Seated next to my partner just before the pandemic broke out, in the uber comfortable lounges at the Palace Central theater in Sydney, I pressed buttons to recline my seat, and ordered drinks from the phones at my side-table.

Bohemian Rhapsody is a British-American joint venture with Fox serving as distributor. Mercury, real name Farrokh Bulsara, was born in Zanzibar, Tanzania in 1946 and moved to England with his parents in the 1960s.

When Mercury died in 1991 of AIDS-related illness at age 45, Mary Austin was by his side, as she had been for much of his adult life. He left her half his reported $75 million estate, including the 28-room London mansion in which he passed away and Austin still lives in to this day.

The Lovers

When Freddie Mercury first met Austin, he was 24 years old and she was 19. Their real-life relationship is examined in “Bohemian Rhapsody,” starring Rami Malek as Mercury and Lucy Boynton in the role of Austin.

“All my lovers asked me why they couldn’t replace Mary, but it’s simply impossible,” Mercury once said of Austin. “The only friend I’ve got is Mary, and I don’t want anybody else. To me, she was my common-law wife. To me it was a marriage.”

Mary had the pain of seeing Mercury go on to live a life of lavish excess, a rock god’s existence fueled by substance abuse and random sexual encounters. She would marry and divorce. “When he died I felt we’d had a marriage,” she said. “We’d done it for better or worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health. You could never have let go of Freddie unless he died – and even then it was difficult.” Austin says she lost somebody she thought of as her eternal love when he died. (OK magazine March 17th 2000).

The Music

I remember Live Aid and the utopian wish we all had, at the time, to relieve African poverty forever. Dying children shown on television screens nightly. It was 1985 and my children were five and two at the time. I’m grateful that I took part in the heartfelt groundswell, led by Bob Geldof and rock stars of the time. It was a vain wish indeed, but maybe, just maybe, things have been getting a little better since.

See and hear the original Queen “Live Aid” performance on YouTube (below). I love this music, so eclectic and passionate!

November 24, 2018 2 comments