The Orphan is a kind of archetypal figure of the melancholic mood, an image for this for the moment is the grieving process which is more than personal, which has a shared, perhaps universal, quality to it. It is a kind of code of the soul by which strangers recognize each other as fellow travelers. It is a pattern of human experience for the deep longing to be home and for the awareness that we are always on the way, that home is as much a destiny which awaits us as it is a heritage which sustains us.
To be an orphan, Saint Augustine says, relates one to God. Carl Jung's psychology of individuation makes a similar claim. For Jung this process of individuation is an ongoing incarnation of God for the sake of divine transformation. In becoming who we are called to be, we bring the Divine into the creation. In this respect, it might be proper to say that the Divine enters the world through the cracks in creation, including, and perhaps especially so, in our moments of breakdown and loss. Perhaps then, the Orphan is our God-face, the face which we wear when loss cracks open our stony hearts into wider fields of love. In these moments, the Orphan is the one who is present to the holy splendor of the ordinary, the one who sees the miracle in the simplest moment, the one who glimpses the numinous quality in the shadows of loss.
In accepting responsibility of our orphanhood, we become faithful sentinels for the passing and the flowering of the world. The Animal perishes but we, and those whom we love, die. In a curious way, then, the Orphan, the most homeless of all, is the one who appreciates the journey towards home, and who understands that this journey is marked by a fierce devotion to each moment as it presents itself.
None of us is ever promised a next moment, none of us even assured of the next breath. The Orphan knows this truth, and knowing it embraces each moment to its fullest.
What do the dead want from us? I think they ask us to go on celebrating the rhythms of life, but now in a special way. I think they ask us to become better lovers by taking notice of the dying which belongs to all life, and in the midst this raise our voices in songs of praise. This is what the Orphan can do, sing those hyms of praise and joy which flower from lament and loss.
The poet Rilke understood the simplicity of things and the appeal they lay before us:
"These things that live on departure
understand when you praise them: fleeting, they look for
rescue through something in us, the most fleeting of all". (Rilke, Duino Elegies, p. 77)
To awaken to the Orphan in our grief is the necessary precondition for hearing the lament of the world, for witnessing its dying, and perhaps, if we are lucky, assisting in its healing. The Orphan who arises in our souls from the ashes of our grief is one step in the transformation.
Earlier I said that to be an orphan relates one to the Divine. In this regard the Orphan is also the figure in our souls who, although most homeless, beckons us towards our spiritual home. Here, I think the Orphan encounters the Angel. Why the Orphan and the Angel dwell together, I don't know. But sometimes I feel they hold between them the tension of home and homelessness, which seems to lie at the root of the soul. Noel Cobb, poet and Jungian analyst says it like this: "Angels above us, around us and below us-/Did you not have to become outcasts/In order to discover your true home?" (Cobb, Hymn to the Star, p. 17)
Angels as outcasts; orphans as angels! Is the Angel a piece of us left behind, the Orphan part of ourselves? Is the Orphan in teh soul a kind of spiritual deposit of our angelic existence, a residue of that part of ourselves left behind to remind us from where we come and where we are going?
It seems to me that the mood of melancholy, which attends the Orphans' presence, could be the aftertaste of our angelic existence, or a foretaste of it, or perhaps a bit of both-a heritage and a destiny.
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Initiation
Initiation means the beginning of the revelation of one's true self (Eliade, 1958). It includes the opening up of the inner life of the spirit and releasing the potentials and possibilities within the person.
The distinctions between the ways we view change and death become more important at the end of eras, at funerals, and at births. The attitudes of mourners have a crucial effect on a funeral, and the manner of the people at birth can help or harm the new life. Mid-wives once assisted the newborn into this world and helped the newly dead on to the 'other world'.
Willing or not we are all attendants at the funeral of the last era and the birth of the next. We are all mid wives placing the shroud on a body soon to disappear and anointing the next birth with our prayers, fears, denials, and hopes.
The radical dismantling of institutions, boundaries, beliefs, and ecosystems that characterizes the end of an era is an extended funeral that we can consciously attend or try to deny.
At some level we each know that huge shifts in nature and culture are affecting us daily. But, without some spiritual vision and ritual structure we lose the capacity to handle death and embrace life fully. Instead, we build walls of denial to hold off terror and confusion and try to cover our helplessness with displays of force and greed. Denial arises as a primary symptom because of the scope of changes already happening and as a defense agains the flood of losses and endings.
And the momentum of loss increases because a death unmourned becomes a lingering ghost that haunts the living until it receives its share of attention and tears.
Mircea Eliade speaks of initiation as a universal rite, an archetypal form that surfaces and influences life wherever events have the spirit of beginnings or the weight of an end.
As an elemental pattern or archetype, initiation is a 'whole'way' of seeing into the world, one that sees death as part of the fabric of life. On the ground of initiation, death is the opposite of birth, not the opposite of life. Life includes both, and the spirit of life regenerates in the land of death. Archaic rites of initiation show the basic pattern for genuine change. For any transformation to be meaningful it must be thorough, and to be thorough requires both the ache of loss and a spirit of restoration.
It is only in initiation that death is give a positive value. More than an empty tomb, death becomes also the womb of change. In dreams and dramas of inititation, death represents change for the entire psyche and life of a person. It means change inside and out, not a simple adaptation or switch in lifestyle.
Initiation includes death and rebirth, a radical altering of a person's mode of being; a shattering and shaking all the way to the ground of the soul.
T.S. Eliot's poem The Wasteland was a poem about initiation.
The distinctions between the ways we view change and death become more important at the end of eras, at funerals, and at births. The attitudes of mourners have a crucial effect on a funeral, and the manner of the people at birth can help or harm the new life. Mid-wives once assisted the newborn into this world and helped the newly dead on to the 'other world'.
Willing or not we are all attendants at the funeral of the last era and the birth of the next. We are all mid wives placing the shroud on a body soon to disappear and anointing the next birth with our prayers, fears, denials, and hopes.
The radical dismantling of institutions, boundaries, beliefs, and ecosystems that characterizes the end of an era is an extended funeral that we can consciously attend or try to deny.
At some level we each know that huge shifts in nature and culture are affecting us daily. But, without some spiritual vision and ritual structure we lose the capacity to handle death and embrace life fully. Instead, we build walls of denial to hold off terror and confusion and try to cover our helplessness with displays of force and greed. Denial arises as a primary symptom because of the scope of changes already happening and as a defense agains the flood of losses and endings.
And the momentum of loss increases because a death unmourned becomes a lingering ghost that haunts the living until it receives its share of attention and tears.
Mircea Eliade speaks of initiation as a universal rite, an archetypal form that surfaces and influences life wherever events have the spirit of beginnings or the weight of an end.
As an elemental pattern or archetype, initiation is a 'whole'way' of seeing into the world, one that sees death as part of the fabric of life. On the ground of initiation, death is the opposite of birth, not the opposite of life. Life includes both, and the spirit of life regenerates in the land of death. Archaic rites of initiation show the basic pattern for genuine change. For any transformation to be meaningful it must be thorough, and to be thorough requires both the ache of loss and a spirit of restoration.
It is only in initiation that death is give a positive value. More than an empty tomb, death becomes also the womb of change. In dreams and dramas of inititation, death represents change for the entire psyche and life of a person. It means change inside and out, not a simple adaptation or switch in lifestyle.
Initiation includes death and rebirth, a radical altering of a person's mode of being; a shattering and shaking all the way to the ground of the soul.
T.S. Eliot's poem The Wasteland was a poem about initiation.
Saturday, May 25, 2013
Death
"The Soul, the anima, establishes the relationship to the unconscious. In a certain sense this is also a relationship to the collectivity of the dead: for the unconscious corresponds to the mythic land of the dead, the land of the ancestors". (Jung: Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, p. 191)
"From that time on the dead have become ever more distinct for me as the voices of the Unanswered, Unresolved, and Unredeemed; for since the questions and demands which my destiny required me to answer did not come from the inner world. These conversations with the dead formed a kind of prelude to what I had to communicate to the world about the unconscious, a kind of pattern of order and interpretation of its general contents...
...It was then that I dedicated myself to the service of the psyche. I loved it and hated it but it was my greatest wealth. My delivering myself over to it, as it were, was the only way I could endure my existence and live as fully as possible" (Jung: Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, p. 191)
http://books.google.com/books/about/Death.html?id=MGMGhziXnZYC
"From that time on the dead have become ever more distinct for me as the voices of the Unanswered, Unresolved, and Unredeemed; for since the questions and demands which my destiny required me to answer did not come from the inner world. These conversations with the dead formed a kind of prelude to what I had to communicate to the world about the unconscious, a kind of pattern of order and interpretation of its general contents...
...It was then that I dedicated myself to the service of the psyche. I loved it and hated it but it was my greatest wealth. My delivering myself over to it, as it were, was the only way I could endure my existence and live as fully as possible" (Jung: Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, p. 191)
http://books.google.com/books/about/Death.html?id=MGMGhziXnZYC
Friday, July 22, 2011
"Hospitality Towards the Gods..."
I'm aware that doing this blog presents certain challenges because of my cognitive limitations. Even though I've spent years studying Jung it has been hard for me to access the material since getting sick four years ago. So it is with some self-consciousness and some fear that I won't be able to articulate or organize the information in a readable way that I begin.
Studying Jung was one of my favorite things to do. Having this blog will allow me to delve back into that place of poetic soulfulness that I use to enjoy so much.
I want to start with the classical story of Philemon and Baucis.
The story as told by Ovid goes like this: the world has become ungodly. The two divine strangers, Jupiter and Mercury, wandering the earth, do not find any hospitable place of rest until Philemon and Baucis, living under very modest conditions, accept the two guests into their home and serve them hospitably, not withholding from them anything that their scanty household can offer. Baucis is even willing to offer them their only goose, saved for a special occasion as a sacrifice to the Gods. Then it happens that the Gods reveal themselves, that the simple hut is changed into a temple, and that the two old people are made the priests of this sanctuary forever, whereas at the same time a flood consumes the ungodly human race.
The story tells of a metamorphosis. In the beginning there are two wanderers, likely dirty and dressed in rags, and not in the least bit divine. And a simple hut with two modest old people. In the end we have two Gods, a magnificent temple, and two dignified priests.
On the face of it, what happened is very simple and ordinary. Two strangers visit a home and are entertained. The hosts and guests get along well, and so the goose, saved for a special occasion is remembered and served. Philemon and Baucis realizing that in this very moment the special occasion has already arrived. That is all. It's simply a human encounter, eating food, having good conversation,, all this, however, within an atmosphere of true hospitality.
The revelation of the Gods completes this natural movement of hospitality. The Gods here embody the the essence of presence. Jupiter is Zeus Xenios, the God of hospitality. In other words Jupiter is the God of the present moment. And the presence of Mercury, the God of commerce and interpretation of exchange and communication, indicates that this evening must have led to a true meeting of souls between the hosts and guests. Jupiter and Mercury present the divine face of this ordinary situation.
Philemon and Baucis, with a total devotion to the shape of the moment, willingly spent or even wasated the little they had, without reserve, in response to its uniqueness of the moment. Because they lovingly surrendered to the present and allowed what they had to be consumed, the present could be consumated in return and reveal its own immanent archetypal or divine face. The moment of hospitality began to shine.
The name Philemon means the loving or hospitable one. Similarly, the name Baucis is the tender or affectionate one. And the goose that Baucis offers to the Gods is Aphrodite's bird. Love made it possible for the hosts to surrender and splurge. By letting go and freely sacrificing the goose to their guests, Philemon and Baucis fed the moment with love and with the rich fat and round wholeness of the bird.
Feeding the here and now with love or 'the goose' releases the image of the present moment, which would otherwise remain hidden. Any moment to which we abandon ourselves with this loving devotion will find its fulfillment.
Why hospitality? The story wants to show that it is hospitality to whatever present moment may knock at our door that allows this moment to reveal its Divine radiance.
In 1923 Jung built his Bollingen Tower. Acting as an axis mundi (cosmic axis, world axis, center of world; expresses a connection between heaven and earth where the four directions meet) the Tower connected Jung concretely with the three realms of earth, heaven, and the underworld, that is, with his total self.
He carved over the entrance gate the following inscription: 'Philemonis sacrum, Faustis poenitentia' meaning Philemon's sanctuary, Faust's atonement (Geigerich, 1984). An inscription over the threshold of one's home is like a motto under which one's entire life and thought are placed. By placing his spiritual existence under a motto taken from the world of Goethe's Faust, Jung declares that what occurs there was personally significant for him.
Jung felt it was necessary to create a sanctuary for Philemon and a place of atonement for Faust. Bollingen could be this sanctuary, for it was the place whose specific purpose it was to give room to visitations. Jung writes: "At Bollingen I am in the midst of my true life. I am most deeply myself. Here I am, as it were, the "age old son of the mother". That is how alchemy puts it, very wisely, for the "old man," the "ancient," whom I had already experienced as a child, is personality number 2, who has always been and always will be....In my fantasies he took the form of Philemon, and he comes to life again at Bollingen...here is a space for the spaceless kingdom of the world's and psyche's hinterland." (Jung, Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, p. 214)
Bollingen was his place of silent solitude where he could receive the images, thoughts, and reveries, the waves of the lake, "the animals that come and go" and where he could house the ancestor spirits in hearth and cooking pot. Here pumping his own water, chopping wood, lighting the old fashioned lamps, cooking his own meals, Jung lived in the modesty and simplicity reminiscent of the old couple Philemon and Baucis.
During Jung's period of active imagination (define) in the years of 1913 and thereafter, there appeared to Jung a figure that Jung called Philemon. It's easy to see why Jung named this figure Philemon as it was Philemon who taught Jung that there are things in the soul that he does not make but that make themselves and have a life of their own, just like animals in the woods or people in a room or birds in the air. It was Philemon that taught Jung psychological objectivity, the 'reality of the psyche.' In other words it was Philemon that taught Jung that psyche and soul were real entities.
In this light, not only Bollingen provided sanctuary for Philemon in Jung's world but also his psychology. By naming the persons of the soul-such as, Anima, Old Wise Man, Great Mother, Philemon, Elias (Elijah), Salome-and by developing his archetypal theory and the idea of the reality of the psyche, Jung provided just this ontological (the philosophical study of the nature of being/existence) recognition of the objectivity of the diamones (spirits).
So it is in this spirit of hospitality toward the Gods that I begin this blog by being present to the moment and feeding it so that it will reveal the God(s) within and all that is hidden that wishes to be born into consciousness.
This blog is devoted to the birthing of the Soul. A symptom is a grave marker for the Soul to tell its story....more to be revealed...
Studying Jung was one of my favorite things to do. Having this blog will allow me to delve back into that place of poetic soulfulness that I use to enjoy so much.
I want to start with the classical story of Philemon and Baucis.
The story as told by Ovid goes like this: the world has become ungodly. The two divine strangers, Jupiter and Mercury, wandering the earth, do not find any hospitable place of rest until Philemon and Baucis, living under very modest conditions, accept the two guests into their home and serve them hospitably, not withholding from them anything that their scanty household can offer. Baucis is even willing to offer them their only goose, saved for a special occasion as a sacrifice to the Gods. Then it happens that the Gods reveal themselves, that the simple hut is changed into a temple, and that the two old people are made the priests of this sanctuary forever, whereas at the same time a flood consumes the ungodly human race.
The story tells of a metamorphosis. In the beginning there are two wanderers, likely dirty and dressed in rags, and not in the least bit divine. And a simple hut with two modest old people. In the end we have two Gods, a magnificent temple, and two dignified priests.
On the face of it, what happened is very simple and ordinary. Two strangers visit a home and are entertained. The hosts and guests get along well, and so the goose, saved for a special occasion is remembered and served. Philemon and Baucis realizing that in this very moment the special occasion has already arrived. That is all. It's simply a human encounter, eating food, having good conversation,, all this, however, within an atmosphere of true hospitality.
The revelation of the Gods completes this natural movement of hospitality. The Gods here embody the the essence of presence. Jupiter is Zeus Xenios, the God of hospitality. In other words Jupiter is the God of the present moment. And the presence of Mercury, the God of commerce and interpretation of exchange and communication, indicates that this evening must have led to a true meeting of souls between the hosts and guests. Jupiter and Mercury present the divine face of this ordinary situation.
Philemon and Baucis, with a total devotion to the shape of the moment, willingly spent or even wasated the little they had, without reserve, in response to its uniqueness of the moment. Because they lovingly surrendered to the present and allowed what they had to be consumed, the present could be consumated in return and reveal its own immanent archetypal or divine face. The moment of hospitality began to shine.
The name Philemon means the loving or hospitable one. Similarly, the name Baucis is the tender or affectionate one. And the goose that Baucis offers to the Gods is Aphrodite's bird. Love made it possible for the hosts to surrender and splurge. By letting go and freely sacrificing the goose to their guests, Philemon and Baucis fed the moment with love and with the rich fat and round wholeness of the bird.
Feeding the here and now with love or 'the goose' releases the image of the present moment, which would otherwise remain hidden. Any moment to which we abandon ourselves with this loving devotion will find its fulfillment.
Why hospitality? The story wants to show that it is hospitality to whatever present moment may knock at our door that allows this moment to reveal its Divine radiance.
In 1923 Jung built his Bollingen Tower. Acting as an axis mundi (cosmic axis, world axis, center of world; expresses a connection between heaven and earth where the four directions meet) the Tower connected Jung concretely with the three realms of earth, heaven, and the underworld, that is, with his total self.
He carved over the entrance gate the following inscription: 'Philemonis sacrum, Faustis poenitentia' meaning Philemon's sanctuary, Faust's atonement (Geigerich, 1984). An inscription over the threshold of one's home is like a motto under which one's entire life and thought are placed. By placing his spiritual existence under a motto taken from the world of Goethe's Faust, Jung declares that what occurs there was personally significant for him.
Jung felt it was necessary to create a sanctuary for Philemon and a place of atonement for Faust. Bollingen could be this sanctuary, for it was the place whose specific purpose it was to give room to visitations. Jung writes: "At Bollingen I am in the midst of my true life. I am most deeply myself. Here I am, as it were, the "age old son of the mother". That is how alchemy puts it, very wisely, for the "old man," the "ancient," whom I had already experienced as a child, is personality number 2, who has always been and always will be....In my fantasies he took the form of Philemon, and he comes to life again at Bollingen...here is a space for the spaceless kingdom of the world's and psyche's hinterland." (Jung, Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, p. 214)
Bollingen was his place of silent solitude where he could receive the images, thoughts, and reveries, the waves of the lake, "the animals that come and go" and where he could house the ancestor spirits in hearth and cooking pot. Here pumping his own water, chopping wood, lighting the old fashioned lamps, cooking his own meals, Jung lived in the modesty and simplicity reminiscent of the old couple Philemon and Baucis.
During Jung's period of active imagination (define) in the years of 1913 and thereafter, there appeared to Jung a figure that Jung called Philemon. It's easy to see why Jung named this figure Philemon as it was Philemon who taught Jung that there are things in the soul that he does not make but that make themselves and have a life of their own, just like animals in the woods or people in a room or birds in the air. It was Philemon that taught Jung psychological objectivity, the 'reality of the psyche.' In other words it was Philemon that taught Jung that psyche and soul were real entities.
In this light, not only Bollingen provided sanctuary for Philemon in Jung's world but also his psychology. By naming the persons of the soul-such as, Anima, Old Wise Man, Great Mother, Philemon, Elias (Elijah), Salome-and by developing his archetypal theory and the idea of the reality of the psyche, Jung provided just this ontological (the philosophical study of the nature of being/existence) recognition of the objectivity of the diamones (spirits).
So it is in this spirit of hospitality toward the Gods that I begin this blog by being present to the moment and feeding it so that it will reveal the God(s) within and all that is hidden that wishes to be born into consciousness.
This blog is devoted to the birthing of the Soul. A symptom is a grave marker for the Soul to tell its story....more to be revealed...
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