Tarot and the Martin Luther Factor

The most popular Tarot deck by far, and the one which many people will associate exclusively with the word 'Tarot', is that variously known as the Rider-Waite or Waite-Smith deck. It is not, however, a Tarot that I much resonate with personally or feel the wish to use.

There are two main 'difficulties' which present themselves with the Waite-Smith. First up is the undoubted Christian influence on some of the imagery, and hence on the nuances of meaning associated with the cards. This influence is overt in some of the images: Judgement, for instance. The issue first came to light for me with regard to the Hierophant card (see my post 'Hierophantic Revisitings' dated 24/06/2016), but as time has passed I have come to see that Christian touch as all-pervasive. It acts like a wash over everything.

The second element -related to the Christianism - is the aesthetic. Some people seem to like them, but I find the figures stiff, lifeless and lacking in joy, cartoon-like (nothing wrong with cartoon, but quite bad cartoon at that). Little of the magnificence of archetypal manifestation jumps out at me from these cards.

The creator-in-chief of this deck was Arthur Waite, a Christian mystic with his roots in the Catholic tradition. The artist, Pamela Colman Smith, converted to Catholicism shortly after completing the Tarot deck. Yet, despite the Catholic leanings of its creators, the Waite-Smith Tarot oozes a Protestant aesthetic and Protestant ethic as I experience it. The figures are in the main gaunt, dour, static, weighed down with the seriousness of something or another. Delight in the sensuous aspect of life is notable through its absence. The figures are manifestations, if you like, of Logos; Eros, meanwhile, has gone missing.

It's a thing about Protestantism in general, its puritan strains in particular: its unease with, fear of, even, the image, the human form. It's an old story, harking back to the days of the Reformation and the destruction of images in churches. Plain, simple, austere, and with a total absence of sensuous response: these are the hallmarks of worship in such places, reflecting a flight from the flesh, from the body; from the Word made flesh, from the sacred expressed through the beauty of human form, through the realm of the senses. For all its faults, the Catholic side of Christianism has at least held onto this element, the sacred image.

These characteristics are amply reflected in the history of  the visual arts. On the whole, the Protestant countries have given us landscape art. Landscapes and still life - pots of flowers and dead lobsters in bowls. Think 'British art' and you think Constable, Turner: cornfields, haywains, sunrises and sunsets. The human form is painted by Gainsborough, but it is stiff, formal, as far from the sacred image as possible. And in more modern times there is Francis Bacon, testament to the inability to rise up in joy at the sight of archetypal beauty. More comfortable and at home with the ugly than with the beautiful. Contrast this with what's come from the Catholic-based nations, especially those south of the Alps: Titian, Veronese, Michelangelo, Caravaggio (OK, a dodgy character....). The gods speak through the splendour of lovingly-created human forms, the splendour of silks and satins, the radiance of youthful flesh - and sometimes the flesh of the ancient and decrepit.

Actually, I sometimes land too much at the feet of Christianism. It's a trend that started way before Jesus Christ turned up on the scene, and in which Christianity is merely one player. An essay by D.H.Lawrence, called 'Puritanism and the Arts', much of which I find to be excellent, covers some aspects of this theme. He writes of the growth of the 'spiritual-mental' consciousness at the expense of the instinctive-intuitive consciousness, a process which Lawrence articulates both clearly and with passion. It's worth quoting a little from this essay of his. "The dread of the instincts included the dread of intuitional awareness. 'Beauty is a snare' - 'Beauty is but skin-deep' - 'Handsome is as handsome does' - 'Looks don't count' - 'Don't judge by appearances' - if we only realised it, there are thousands of these vile proverbs which have been dinned into us for over two hundred years. They are all of them false." And "This is the real pivot of bourgeois consciousness in all countries: fear and hate of the instinctive, intuitional procreative body in man or woman. But of course this fear and hate had to take on a righteous appearance, so it became moral, said that the instincts, intuitions ..... were evil, and promised a reward for their suppression....." Lawrence doesn't say so, but maybe we're back with Luther: suppress, have faith, and your reward shall be in heaven.

What is true for visual art in general applies to Tarot in particular: Tarot is, put one way, an attempt to communicate the workings of consciousness and the universe through the medium of image. Dark, mysterious, lunar, sensuous, embodied, feminine: these are a few of the adjectives which come to mind if I consider what appeals to, and therefore works for, me in the realm of Tarot today. It is no accident that most of the Tarot decks which speak to me are creations of artists from non-Protestant cultures. Some of the 'dark' and 'gothic' decks I have discovered have a particular resonance. OK, they might be a bit obsessed with bats, dragons, and fairy-like half-human female creatures with long fingernails and streaks of blood across their forehead; I can live with that.

Best of all, in my view, are the Tarots by Luis Royo, in particular his 'Dark Tarot'. Read about this deck and words like 'primal', 'empowering', 'confronting', and 'darkly beautiful' turn up.

Royo hails from Spain, and his art work literally could not be created by anybody from north of the Alps (and Pyrenees). If Titian were alive today, he would paint like Royo, I imagine. He is a true artist, with a remarkable grasp of how to communicate through the medium of the human body, especially the female form. If you are averse to depictions of scantily-clad warrior nymphs who sometimes fail to tick any politically-correct boxes, stay away from the art and Tarot of Luis Royo. But while a few of his paintings and drawings come close to being mere pin-ups, many capture real mythical and archetypal themes. They are meditations on the relationship of basic dualities: sun and moon, beauty and ugliness, sweetness and terror, dark and light, feminine and masculine, beauty and beast. Royo is an alchemist for our age.

Some of Royo's cards are also, by the way, achingly beautiful, such as the magnificent 'Judgement' card accompanying this post. And, interestingly (to me), the Royo Dark Tarot seems to have more female than male enthusiasts, despite some of its images, which the tedious and deluded Protestant mindset will undoubtedly condemn as 'sexist'. Maybe some males are intimidated, I don't know.

That's it for now. There may be more on the dark tarots in future. Or maybe not. I'm not sure where I'm going at the moment, with this blog or anything else.... if anywhere at all. New voices wanting to be heard, but how......?

Images: The Judgement card.        Top: Waite-Smith Tarot
                                                    Centre: Gothic Tarot
                                                    Bottom: Royo Dark Tarot

Who was Shenrab Miwoche Really?

You may not have come across Shenrab Miwoche. Outside a smallish circle of cognescenti, he is little-known. Take it from me, though, he is an extremely interesting character. You see, Shenrab Miwoche lived a long long time ago......

Shenrab Miwoche is the enlightened, realised, founding figure of the Bon-Po tradition. The Bons were the pre-Buddhist - we might say indigenous - peoples of Tibet, with their own spiritual/shamanic beliefs and practices, until the Buddhists came along and took over. It is worth remembering that, though less vicious than its Christian and Muslim counterparts, as a mainstream exoteric system, Buddhism too has its imperial, conquistador-type aspect.

The thing is that, according to many of the Bon sources, Shenrab Miwoche lived 18000 years ago. "Ha! Ha!" I can hear the scholars and academics scoff. "That's stupid. In fact, that's ridiculous." True - we have no 'hard facts', no 'hard data', the gold of our modern culture, on Shenrab. But is there anything so special about that? Take Siddhartha Gautama, who became the Buddha of our times. How many sources will tell you that he was born in 563 BCE, and died 80 years later, in 483 BCE? But different traditions have varying - some wildly so - dates for the life of the Buddha. It is a classic case of 'truth', generally recognised 'truth', being a fabrication for the purpose of convenience. We don't really know. It just makes for a neater story.

The same goes for our local buddie, Jesus Christ. His 'story' is well-established, but from what I have gleaned, there is precious little 'hard data' on his life - or indeed whether such a character really roamed the face of this Earth at all.

We know very little about the literal Shenrab Miwoche. But how much do we know about most of what is so easily accepted as 'truth' anyway? Take Syria. Everyone knows about Syria, it seems. Everybody has an opinion, has a view. But how much do you know about Syria really? 'Personal expertise' is a fiction nowadays based upon dodgy youtube videos, facebook posts, 'analysis' by armchair specialists, and that's that. Do you really know anything much about Assad? Does he really like killing and maiming his own kind with chemical weapons, knowingly incurring the wrath of the rest of the world? Most of us know as much about Syria as we do about Shenrab Miwoche. Too many of us still go along with the bad guys (Syria and Russia) against the good guys (USA, NATO, Syrian rebels) fantasy, which is fuelled by the mass of people who have been too lazy spiritually to (in Jungian terminology) integrate their own shadow side, thus leaving it hanging to dry in the outside world, where it is easy meat for the latest story in town. A story which is fed to us through organs of propaganda of whatever political leaning: the BBC, the Telegraph, the Guardian, whatever.

Paradoxically, the modern spurning of myth and of mythological truth in favour of 'hard facts and statistics', the prima materia of our age, renders people especially vulnerable to deception and manipulation. Give them a few 'facts' and they will believe anything that the propaganda machine wants them to.

Where our credulity with Shenrab Miwoche is really stretched to the limit is when we take a look at the details of his life. His story is known mainly through termas, 'hidden treasures' discovered and taken out by accomplished spiritual practitioners called tertons. According to the story related through the termas, his life journey is almost identical with that of the well-known Buddha from 2500 years ago. He was born into a royal family, lived an early life of luxury in a palace, before leaving behind family and friends at the age of 31 in order to live as a renunciate. He died at the age of 82.

Down even to the details of age, this is practically a carbon copy of what you'll find in most 'life stories of the Buddha'. There may be a few hard-headed literalists who will insist that this is the pattern by which all Buddhas live, but that, frankly, is ridiculous. I have little doubt that the original 'life of Shenrab Miwoche' was very different. What we are presented with is a re-invention by Buddhists over the earlier story. It is an early example of what is currently known as 'fake news'.

While there might have been some kind of dancing girls to provide entertainment, there's no way that folk lived in palaces 18000 years ago. Whatever evidence we have suggests that the notion of a renunciate's life is also a far more recent happening. The tale of Shenrab Miwoche has been re-cast in the light of the later arrival of solar cultures and their attendant mythologies: 'Buddha as sun god'. The predominant guise of our current Buddha is as transcendental sun god (see the much-missed Acharya S. for more on this). He appears at a time when solar mentality was taking over as the defining paradigm across the cultures of Asia, Europe, and North Africa, and this shift is transposed onto poor old Shenrab. Our great Bon-po hero issues from a period far before all that, when for sure lunar mythology was more prominent; speculatively, a greater harmony between sun and moon then held firm.

The story also tells us that Shenrab Miwoche led most of his life in what is now the region of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and northern Afghanistan, once upon a time a marvellously fascinating area of our magnificent planet. It was not, however, an ordinary geographical location which tourists can visit, but a hidden location (i.e. existing in another dimension). He visited Tibet only once, but that was enough. A pivotal moment.

There was a time when I considered the study of history as among the more noble pursuits. It was the discovery of truth, and through seeing where we have come from maybe shedding a little light upon who we are today. No longer. Aside from its study by a handful of researchers of high integrity, largely found outside of formal academic institutions, history is among the shadiest and most shifty of subjects. When we are presented with 'historical facts', they have normally passed through a process of filtering, suppression, and often plain destruction of knowledge. 'Reality' as provided by mainstream history is highly selective and selected; its main function is all too often that of tribal propaganda, rather than open education.

It is ironic that, at a time when the amount of information and data on offer is unprecedented, and when the majority of people take this as their baseline for what is real, we actually know so little. I recently met a somewhat troubled somebody who told me straight that he no longer knows what or who to believe. This is by and large the reality today. We need to learn to discern (one of Neil Kramer's favourite words), and to discern fiercely. At the same time, there is a challenge in facing up to the situation, and learning to live in and with this state of unknowing. What is dished up as news, history, reality, truth, is just another case like the story of Shenrab Miwoche.      

Images: Top: Tonpa Shenrab Miwoche
             Bottom: Ancestor, the Wildwood Tarot. Maybe this is closer to the real Miwoche...

Fairy Tales, Myths, and the Rest.....

It has been evident for some time to me that myth, fairy story, Jung and archetypal psychology, and aspects to shamanic practice, are all treading similar ground. Any regular reader of Pale Green Vortex will find it evident that I find it evident....

So here's a friendly and heartening site with a fascinating set of articles. Easy to read, and covering important stuff. Check out especially the section on 'folkloricforays':

www.carolynemerick.com

Sol y Luna

Part One

It's a long-delayed, much-needed (by me, anyhow, probably by nobody else on the planet....) domestic project. The little-used, little-in-size (what's with all the hyphenated adjectives today?) room upstairs at the front of the house is being painstakingly transformed. I'm not much good at this kind of thing: it all takes ages, step by little step. But the room is in process of snailpace conversion into......what?..... an alchemist's cave? Not really: caves don't normally locate themselves on the first floor, overlooking trees and hills beyond. Alchemist's den? The leonine quality isn't really me. Magician's workshop? Escape? Retreat? It's all beginning to sound a bit pretentious anyway. It will be a place to do Tarot, a bit of writing, and a bit of meditation stuff.

Consolidating, organising, processing are just three of the alchemical moves that have come into operation over recent weeks. One such has involved collecting together the various writing projects that I have done since, well, when I was twenty years old. Some of this stuff is fascinating, almost like newly-discovered treasure; some is being retained for historical purposes only; a few scraps of songs and poems are heading for the recycling ......

Alongside the items with which I am fully familiar are substantial pieces of writing that I had forgotten about. 'Personal identification' with some of it is pretty tenuous: the being who came up with some of that material seems related to the one on Pale Green Vortex today only in a most vague and wispy way. At the same time, revisiting my life-work of writing endeavours throws into full relief the patterns which have gone to make up a life.

I was particularly shocked - that's the best word for it - by a large A4 exercise book dating back to 1983, I would guess. It contains some writing that I did while on a rather long solitary retreat in the south of Spain. Page upon page upon page about Italian Renaissance art. In-depth studies of paintings, themes, the change from Byzantine to Renaissance styles, serious stuff. All sitting alongside analysis of the transformations in perception psychologically and spiritually which apparently accompanied these changes.

I struggle to recognise the guy who wrote all these weighty pieces; the analysis is far from how I see life nowadays. I am shocked by the facility with which 'I' write about God, the Son of God, the Virgin Mary in these paintings without cringeing or apologising. I suppose that I was seeing beyond the literalistic meanings given to these figures by exoteric Christianity to their more symbolic, archetypal aspects and universal qualities. I am also shocked by some of the themes which emerge in these essays. The outer garments are different, but the questions are in essence the same as some which continue to litter the posts on Pale Green Vortex over thirty years on.

Take these quotes from a dense and lengthy piece entitled 'The Annunciation'. "The angel is a messenger....... an intermediary between two worlds...... between man and god, between man and the divine....... The angel appears, and he announces....." Then, as if that's not enough, we've got Mary: "Like the angel, Mary is also, in her way, an intermediary......... intermediary between humanity and the son of god." Art, too, served this function, according to the author of these pieces; "True art...... like an angel, serves as a mediator between the human and the absolute."

There is pretty much zero personal resonance with this stuff today, maybe reflecting the reality that 'I' am better imagined as a flow, a stream, rather than as a being with any fixed attributes. Nevertheless, there is continuity between angels and the Virgin Mary on the one hand, and those fascinations which continue to the day, with Soul and with Anima. It is the same theme, attempting to work itself out in various ways.

The other thread running between the 'then' and the 'now' involves differences, dualities, pairs which are conceived as opposites. In the mid-1980s 'I' was preoccupied with the 'classical' (Apollonian) and 'romantic' (Dionysian) spirits. The former, according to my essays, emphasised clarity, order, rising above the unruly passions. The latter embraced the energy of passion, divine chaos and unpredictability. The aim was to bring about a certain synthesis, a fusion in which something greater than the parts was created. This endeavour 'I' saw as epitomised in the life and work of Michelangelo. And today, this stuff continues to find voice in alchemy (not that I have gone into alchemy in great depth), in my 'inner work' on light and dark, masculine and feminine, the basic polarities.

It is as if, when we turn up on this planet, the gods give us a task, or number of tasks, that will form the basis for our 'inner work' this time round. "Here you go, buddie. Soul, anima, the keeper of the keys: you need to really check that out. Duality - it's basic. See what you can do. Good luck, and see you next time round." Thus they spoke, giving out the koans for this lifetime, as this particular stream of consciousness hurtled through the bardo en route to incarnation in Buckinghamshire in the springtime of 1953.

Part Two

There are recurrent themes which go to make up my 'life work', it seems. At the same time, there is a certain type of progression - not so much as a tedious straight line, aiming arrowlike towards its predetermined destination, but more as a ziggly zaggly path, running hither and thither, passing through brambles, thickets, on the edge of precipitous slopes, but heading vaguely in a certain direction. Or maybe it's not a line at all: more of a curve, a parabola, possibly ending up as a circle; I don't really know.

It is as if my life has taken on different shades, different hues, as the years have passed. The rainbow of colours expresses in different proportions with time.

The hues of life unmistakeably changed after my midlife, after my descent into darkness in New Zealand. There is a good quote from Jung (which I can't locate!), about how, the moment our life reaches its zenith, its midday, its texture begins to change with the long, slow descent towards midnight. "The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it" - Jung again. This is not an accurate description of my life's unique shape, but there is a degree of resonance all the same. The sun begins to set, and the moon comes up.

I shall speak of solar and lunar rather than masculine and feminine. Masculine and feminine are vague, indistinct, impossible-to-define and pin-down kind of words. Nevertheless, many people have strong and fixed views of their meanings, all too often accompanied by a jolly good dose of politically correct brain dross. Solar and lunar are similarly vague, indistinct, impossible to define. However, they are words which come out of the mythical realm, and people are sufficiently uncomfortable with them to jump to fixed definitions and tedious ideological standpoints.

Moon was never absent; yet the early decades of life were lived under the relentless influence of the sun. Vision, ideals, glory, heroism all loom large in my Renaissance writings of the 1980s. My ordained Buddhist name bespeaks heroes and sparkling jewels; the Bodhisattva visualisation that was conferred at my ordination and from which I benefitted greatly for many years, was of a solar figure. "Buddhism is a religion of sky gods,"(and I think we're talking of sun gods here) a colleague declared in a public talk; I wrote it down approvingly.

Now Sister Moon demands her say. Among her many entrances, she announced her presence early on through migraine. "The Gods appear in our diseases" opined Jung; and thus it was most literally in the case of my regular and increasingly severe head-and-intestine torture sessions of a few years back. The only correlation I could find for the occurrence of migraine was with the phases of the moon; full moon especially, but also new moon, dark moon. It was at this moment that I realised it was time to say goodbye to the G.P. on the subject.

"I am here. I am in your life. Do not ignore me. Do not forget. You do so at your peril" Thus seemed the moon to be speaking. Sometimes I remembered, sometimes I forgot - and 'ouch'. I still sometimes forget, though Tarot helps to keep me in touch.

Lunar is cyclical. Women have their periods, I had my migraines. And, interestingly, the migraines only appeared in my life in the phase following my year in New Zealand. You begin to see how I try to apply the Sherlock Holmes method in life. Sometimes it's wide of the mark, I'm sure, but at other times it seems spot on.

In the 1980s it was angels who announced the arrival of the unknown: bright, golden, glorious. Or Mary, the sweet virginal lady of chaste respectability. By the time we ushered in the new millenium it was feminine (oops, used the word) flowing, increasingly sensuous princesses during shamanic journeys, plus the occasional feisty lady warrior. And now is the time for the entrance of the  Moon Goddesses, no less. The Dark Moon Goddess, even, and her priestesses, who come down from their hilltop fastnesses in depth of night. I follow the moon in her different phases, her comings-and-goings. Watchful, expectant, with a touch of fear.

Another angle (this is the lunar way: looking from many different perspectives, circling, rather than a mad rush to find 'the one and only truth'). In my life, 'Sun' is a given. Male, pretty clear and confident about gender identity and sexual orientation (my 'conscious attitude'). As years pass and experience increases, focus necessarily passes to the opposite, the other. The Great Work of alchemy, the conjunction of opposites. This is my life. And in the sacred bridal chamber, both Sun and Moon demand their complete satisfaction.

Images:

                Hermes Trismegistus with Sun and Moon
                Full Moon on Water - Victoria Laloe



          

Jung's Red Book

Part One

I write about Jung and things Jungian for a reason. It is not out of theoretical enquiry, or because of philosophical preferences or ideological bias. It is not because of 'ideas' about life. It is because Jung and things Jungian have spoken to me about my actual experience when pretty much everything else has failed to do so. In particular, in times of crisis, of real personal need, Jung-type stuff has come to the rescue.

Way back in February 2013, I wrote a piece called 'How Lou Reed Saved My Life'. About how, when on the far side of the planet (for me), in New Zealand, I fell into a deep dark hole. Light became dark, up became down: you get the picture. The only voice which spoke to me, echoing the host of newfound feelings and perspectives which overwhelmed me (murderous, suicidal, utter hopelessness, and a bucketload of similar delights) was that of Lou Reed. Some time later I came across Jung: his 'nekyia', the night-sea journey. Here, at last, was another human being who had been there,
investigated it thoroughly, and lived to tell the tale. What's more he managed to place the ordeal within a broader context of, in his terminology, unfolding individuation. It was a necessary step in my own adventure of life. 'Confrontation with the Shadow' is the neat package in which it is often presented today; or demythologised into 'mid-life crisis'.

A decade on, and I entered my period of intense shamanic journeying. I was once more unwittingly propelled into Jungian territory. All kind of persons, animals, mythical beings turned up uninvited during these 'visits to the lowerworld'. What's more, these characters seemed intent on communicating with me, and took up temporary residence in the hitherto-unknown bits of my mind catalysed by this particular technique. Jung's work on archetypes was the thing which best seemed to acknowledge, address, and attempt to elucidate what I had been experiencing. Along with some of his slightly maverick successors in 'archetypal psychology', notably James Hillman and a few others such as Mary Watkins and her excellent book 'Invisible Guests', Jung proved a kindred spirit in this weird and wonderful world that I had dropped into. These inspirational champions of the imaginal gave shape to what was going on, providing context, if not a map (which would be a bit too neat and tidy for the project).

I have written about, and pointed out ad nauseam, the female figures that would turn up on the shamanic journeys, and with whom, following an exchange of greetings, I would take off, along with my 'power animal', on adventures into unknown, magical worlds. And how, following research by a co-journeying friend of mine, I began to see some of these female persons as what Jung referred to as 'anima figures'. Figures that mediate between our normal conscious lives and what Jung calls the unconscious, especially the collective unconscious. Which is precisely the function that the figures in my journeys seemed to be undertaking.

So, to repeat, really. I have embraced some, at least, of Jung and his successors in archetypal psychology, not out of idea or theory. It is as the consequence of direct and personal experience, and wishing to find resonating spirits who might bring shape and illumination to my own experience - which is all that I have to go on......

Part Two              

I recently purchased a copy of a remarkable book. It had better be remarkable: I coughed up over £20 for the privilege (the full illustrated edition is £195. Dream on.....). Remarkable it indeed is. 'The Red Book' by Carl Jung is his kind-of diary of his visionary experiences around 100 years ago, when he decided to undertake the 'experiment' of deliberately descending, into what he terms the unconscious, to find out what lurked there. 'The Red Book' finally became available for the general public to read in 2009.

Jung is recorded as saying in 'Memories, Dreams, and Reflections': "The years when I was pursuing my inner images were the most important in my life - in them everything essential was decided....... It was the prima materia for a lifetime's work." It was easy to take this statement a bit figuratively, or with a pinch of salt. Until 'The Red Book' was published, that is. Jung hadn't wanted the book to come into the public arena until after his death, if at all, and a read of some of its pages demonstrates why. It is over 500 pages-full of his visions and experiences as he regularly sat of an evening in his study, imagined himself digging a deep hole, entering, and going down. The parallels with shamanic journeying as practised by myself along with friends and acquaintances are unavoidable and many. Different 'philosophical' framework, same manner of exploration, same kind of result.

I am only halfway through the book; it may well take a time. But it is remarkable for a number of reasons. I would venture that, without acquaintance with 'The Red Book', a person only knows certain sides to the multifaceted Jung. Day after day he goes down that hole, meets all kind of characters (many of whom he has an uneasy relationship with), and proceeds to engage them in lengthy conversation about religion, metaphysics, ethics, philosophy.

Amongst all this, the experiential, visionary basis of much of Jung's later writing becomes clear. In his first descents, he encounters three main characters: his 'Soul', 'the Spirit of the Times' and 'the Spirit of the Depths'. In a vicious nutshell, 'the Spirit of the Depths' informs Jung that all his professional ambition and striving to date has been a waste of time, and tells him to stop thinking - he thinks about things too much. In these encounters is found the germ of Jung's notion of 'the Shadow'. Additionally, his being thirty-eightish when he undertook these adventures leads to the observation that his 'night-sea journey', nowadays trivialised into 'mid-life crisis', when the second half of life takes on a radically different trajectory to the first, also originates in these journeys, where his values are turned well-and-truly upside down.

In the next series of meetings, the increasingly stupified Jung encounters Elijah, the prophet from the Old Testament, along with Salome, famous for having John the Baptist's head on a plate. A serpent also turns up in these adventures. Here are the seeds of Wise Old Man and Anima as focal archetypal characters in the evolving mythology of Jung.

I don't find 'The Red Book' particularly easy reading. Jung sometimes writes in prophetic style, and, despite the 'Spirit of the Depths' exhortation to stop thinking, spends a lot of time turgidly discussing and debating the meaning of the meetings and conversations. This stands in contrast to the treatment meted out in my own shamanic journeying diary, It is a notebook full of weird happenings. Some have been seriously absorbed by me, but much has had a "cor blimey, there's a load of archetypal stuff there, and I've got no idea what it's about" treatment from me, and little more.

Another element making for less-than-easy reading for me is the pervasive smell of  Christianism. While my own shamanic journeys were populated by wizards, witches, princesses, and other characters mainly from fairy stories and myths, Jung sees an Old Testament prophet and a naughty girl from the New Testament. Later on he engages in extended conversation with an anchorite who comes in distinctly Christian garb. Jung is frequently moved to torment and anguish in his archetypal conversations, recalling those tortured saints out in the desert or stuck in their damp little study. Once more in solar Christian fashion, he reserves his greatest suspicion and incredulity for the main female of the piece, Salome. She turns up blind, and tells Jung that she loves him. He is not well pleased with this revelation. In fact, he is completely confused and horrified. "Leave me be, I dread you, you beast" are Jung's first words at Salome's profession of love for him.

There is something amusing, not to say life-affirming, about the way that an edifice such as modern Jungian psychology has been in good part built upon such non-rational and visionary foundations. It is not so different to the way that a person might spend years trying to work out and live out their psychedelic visions: "What did that all mean? How can I live my life in accordance?" Or the two-a-penny non-dualists who have an experience of oneness while shopping for aubergines in the supermarket, and before you know it are teaching their own exclusive method for liberation from separate selfhood on the internet.

Jung's descents took place for a couple of years before ceasing to be productive. This is in accord with my own experiences, along with those of a few other people I know. It is as if the message is 'This is the map; these are the stories; this is the work to do. Now get on with it.' It seems that the voyages provide the raw material for the remainder of ones life. You can't spend all your time down a hole, or in the lowerworld of shamanism, after all. You need to collect the jewels, the prima materia if you will, come back to the surface and, without every forgetting, get on with everyday living.    

Images: Lou Reed 1972
              Naughty Salome (Caravaggio)
              Elijah (18th century Russia)

      

The Cry of the Orang Utan

Part One

It was one of the many bizarre elements in the time of my shamanic journeying. The animals. Read up on - or better, do - shamanic journeying, and you quickly become aware of the animals. Totem animals, power animals, soul companions, animal spirit guides, and the rest. There they all are, the typical shamanic ones: bear, eagle, coyote; wolf, deer, jaguar, leopard; owl, raven, crow; even the occasional friendly insect. In my case, however, none of these turned up at all. Instead, it was gorillas and orang utans.

Talk about autonomous characters in the unconscious, who come unbidden! I had never given a thought to these animals in my life before. Where and why these walked into and around my shamanic journeys I had no idea whatsoever. It was as if they appeared out of nowhere, for no reason, of their own accord. Since they had decided to connect with me, I felt it was a good idea to reciprocate the interest. Getting on the wrong side of a bunch of huge primates would not be a smart move. I read up on them, got to know them; put pictures on the wall, went to gorilla conservation meetings; made small donations to organisations supporting their plight, something which I continue to do.

Gorillas and orang utans strike me as being 'carriers of soul': think of the associations with the word 'soulful' to get an idea of what I mean. They are very different to their more celebrated primate relative the chimpanzee, who is excitable, chattery, kind-of-nervy, and easily moved to aggressive behaviour. Belying their size and hairy appearance, gorillas and orang utans tend to live quiet, ponderous lives. It is not too fanciful, maybe, to consider them reflective. Their centre of energy seems to be located low down their bodies, around the stomach. Orang utans, especially, are prone to mischief and humour. They can also be sexually naughty: adult males are known to have captured female humans and carried them off for sex.

Sadly, it needs only a brief perusal of any relevant sources to discover that the plight of our primate buddies is a pretty mess. I suppose that the last of your species hanging on in Ruanda-Burundi, Indonesia, and the DR of Congo is not the best move for the prospects of survival. But it's tough for these remarkable animals, and whether they will continue to remain as inhabitants of anywhere other than shamanic journeys is uncertain.....

Part Two

It behoves us to recall Neil Kramer's wise words on the current state of 'world affairs'. To the (everyday) Self it is a disaster, he says. To Soul it is a challenge. And to the Sun (the Divine, or what have you) it is a game. Having abandoned the 'escape to nirvana' approach to life, where the aim might be to see the 'game' as the real reality, I feel that the trick is to experience all three aspects kind-of simultaneously, interacting with each other. This is wholeness, totality. Many - probably most - people never get beyond the 'world as disaster' stage. My task is not to disown this perspective, but to allow it to be embraced, put into perspective, by the other dimensions to living. And at this very moment in time, the everyday Self demands its pound of flesh......

Today you can read all about Climate Change Treaties, and about how the Trump is putting America before the Earth by demurring about signing up once again, unlike the rest of our G7 summit heroes. Any responsible, right-on, caring person will protest loudly against Trump, and how he is trying to destroy the whole planet singlehandedly (anybody new to Pale Green Vortex, incidentally, to avoid getting seriously confused, should understand that the last sentence is intended to be ironic). Academic after stuffy, boring, stupid, small-minded academic will continue to queue up to tell us how vital all this is, and how we'll all burn in hell if we don't take yet further action on Climate Change. I've written plenty about this over the years, and I'm tired of it. Suffice to say that most of it's crap.

At the same time, real, visible destruction is taking place which is truly an ecological disaster. And you know what? Nobody seems to give a toss. Where are the screaming eco-fanatics now? Completely stuck in their own toxic ideologies, their blind belief in agendas and programmes which are not their own, handed down to them by people who are not exactly charitable.

Take a read of the article linked below. It's from 21st century wire, one of the many more authentic media organisations out there. I'm not saying they are perfect, but I quite like them. Unlike the BBC, Guardian, Telegraph, and the rest, they attempt to be serious. Unlike the mainstream lackeys, who seem to rely largely on press releases, youtube videos and facebook tweets, they actually go to the places they report on. This article on Indonesia is an example, written by somebody 'on the ground', who has actually bothered enough to go out there. Similarly, 21st century wire's Patrick Henningsen recently went out to Syria and hung out there for a while, visiting real places, meeting real people, making his own real observations, coming to his own real opinions. People who we can actually take seriously, seekers after what's really happening rather than dark puppets out to provoke collective knee-jerks.

In the meantime, remember Brother Gorilla, Cousin Orang Utan. They could do with a bit of proper support.

21stcenturywire.com/2017/06/01/indonesian-borneo-is-finished-the-rape-of-the-orangutan/

        

  

    

Trash, Jung, and a Pansy for Anima

Part One

It was 1994, maybe. 1995? It hardly matters. I was on an elliptical orbit heading out of the world of organised Buddhism at the time, the world which had been my homebase for many years. I was teaching English part-time on Fulham Road in west London, living with a friend on a council estate in Waterloo ( Morrissey, dream on), and getting to know the lady who would eventually become my wife. The days of teaching mindfulness meditation to newcomers, the Buddha's Eightfold Path and the rest were over. Nevertheless, once a fortnight I would make the trek up to Westbourne Grove, not far from Bayswater and the famed Portobello Market, to attend a business meeting at the Buddhist centre there.

Most of the topics on the agenda were of peripheral interest to me, and I really had little constructive to offer. I sometimes wondered whether my presence was more as the token wise old man of the centre - in which case it was a grave misjudgement. From my perspective, my purpose for attending was quite different, and quite specific - even if nobody else realised it.

A major aspect of those meetings was the ritual tearing to pieces of the centre chairman by various other members of the council, as it was called. He would present progress reports, make business proposals, which would be duly pulled apart by some of the others. Then his personal life, actions, and the rest would come up for ripping to shreds. The somewhat hedonic nature of some of his attitudes and weekend activities rendered him easy meat for a quasi-spiritual savaging. It was reminiscent of the myth of Actaeon, torn into bits by his dogs, who should have been faithful to their owner, but who pull him to pieces as a result of his cupidity, having spied the goddess Artemis naked.

My main function was to try and put the unfortunate guy back together again. I was in a unique postion for the self-appointed task: though arguably less vicious, ten years previous I had been in a similar situation to his. So, typically, following the conclusion of the sports, the chairman -who also happened to be a good friend of mine - and I would adjourn to a nearby cafe where, bloodied and bruised, he would replay the events of the morning, and I would try to chip in helpfully.

On several occasions, sitting at a table adjacent to ours could be seen Brett Anderson, singer in the famous indie group 'Suede'. His features are as distinctive as features can get; though, curiously, my chairman friend didn't know who I was talking about, despite being far more in tune with the 'youth culture' of the time than I was.

I quite like Suede. Or at least some of the music of Suede. Or at least some of their music that I've actually listened to. 'Coming Up' is their best-known album, full of memorable songs and well-crafted melodies, some really fine pieces of indie pop-rock (a genre that I've just created).      

So let's imagine a certain randomly-chosen male (he is not a caricature of me, by the way, despite sharing a few similarities). He is educated, informed, and generally well-intentioned. A man of principle, high principle; a man of thought, adept in the art of abstract thinking in particular, quietly proud of his ideas and his logic. Reason is the way forward, his badge of identity and the key to civilisation. He spends a good deal of time with his Kindle, where he has a collection of works by not-too-difficult-to-read slightly modern philosophers and political commentators. 'Understanding', 'meaning' are two more words that are important to him.

Then one day, for reasons completely beyond our limited comprehension, Anima enters the scene. Amongst other possible labels which she may or may not have attached to her elusive being, Anima comes as Soul-Image, the contrasexual Other. She stands at the threshold to the collective unconscious, if we follow Jung. All those things which go to fascinate and identify our randomly-chosen male mean absolutely nothing to her. Abstract thought: no way. Meaning: what's that? Linear rationality: entirely irrelevant to the purpose of Anima - in the garbage bin. And her voice is heard loud and clear on 'Coming Up' by Suede.....

So what's so anima-like about these particular songs for our randomly-chosen male? Listen to 'Coming Up' and there is a shine, a gloss, a sparkle, which appears to simply jump off many of the songs. It is part of the attraction. To our champion of abstract thought, surface matters are just that: surface, superficial, and the subject of self-justified disdain. Sheen, shine, surface texture: he is above and beyond all that - although it may cause him a slight involuntary discomfort. In general, however, it is just wrapping paper, with no meaning. And this is the horror of horrors. Anima announces herself without 'understanding', without 'meaning', at least in the way our hero of reason interprets these words. It's not her style, not her interest. She revels in appearance, just as it is and just as she is. Should she have a 'meaning', this is it.

Then there are the words, the lyrics. Little stories of banal lives, devoid of philosophical thought or speculation. Songs about totally mediocre people, according to our random male. Take 'Trash' for instance:

"Maybe maybe it's the clothes we wear/ The tasteless bracelets and the dye in our hair/ Maybe it's our kookiness......... We're trash you and me/We're the litter on the breeze/We're the lovers on the streets....Maybe it's our cheapness.... our sweetness.... the crazes and the fads...."

Thus, into the world of our principled, high-minded, academically-inclined random male, enters Anima. To her, trash is magnificent - and her feeling comes devoid of value judgement. Cheapness, ordinariness, surface sparkle and charm: how, to him, it's anathema; and how she loves it.

Part Two

Alongside Christianity, which I wrote about on April 30th in 'Pansies of Numinosity',  Anima is my other 'topic of contention' with Jung. On closer inspection, the two probably prove to be the same: how could someone still harbouring hopes of redemption through Christianism have a distortion-free view of Anima?: two thousand years of repression of the divine feminine at the hands of this religion cannot sit comfortably with a healthy experience of Anima, preoccupied as she is with the conjoining of masculine - feminine polarities, and boasting as she does a direct line to an eternal and sacred feminine?

Jung is not, in my view, exactly 'wrong' on Anima. It is more that he is inconsistent, sometimes unsure of himself, a bit muddled. This may be in part a reflection of the nature of Anima herself, who is anything but clear-cut, and notoriously reluctant to be caged by logical definitions gleaned from linear, rational thought. I also concede that Jung's own view of Anima morphed with time: in particular, he came to see her less suspiciously. All the same.....

This confusion and unsatisfactoriness is evidenced by the considerable quantity of literature to come out of the Jungian world on Anima since the death of Carl Gustav. It is also evidenced by the majority of 'information' to be found in more popular writings on Anima. This is, to me, overwhelmingly superficial, derivative, formulaic, if not downright incorrect. It seems the work of people who have copied out of textbooks rather than bathed and battled in personal experience of Anima.

An example. Some of the many sources (do a quick websearch on 'Anima') state that a prominent attribute of Anima is 'relatedness'. The insinuation is that, should you have a problem in your marriage or relationship, then Anima will provide the solution. In particular, that tricky husband will, under the influence of 'his anima', turn into that caring, sympathetic, infinitely understanding fellow who always does the dishes that you have always dreamed of. This is total bullshit. Anima is a catalyst for 'relatedness', but it is not 'relationship' in this sense. She is no patron saint of nice, warm, snugly, adjustment-to-life relatedness at all. Her relatedness is, to continue in Jungian vein, between consciousness and unconsciousness. Her 'relatedness' will bring all matter of unexpected hell-to-play into life, rather than a passport to happy-ever-after.

Fortunately, Anima has been saved by a number of more serious Jungian types; I include links to two long but worthwhile (if you are into this kind of thing) articles by Karen Hodges and Paul Watsky below. Above all, in my view, Anima has undergone redemption in the hands of James Hillman: in his book 'Anima' primarily (no surprise there), and in 'The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World'. To paraphrase serously, his overarching point is that, while all manner of idea may accrete to Anima as a result of historical and cultural circumstances, which change through time, her archetypal essence remains, by definition, constant. The task is to distinguish the two. Thus, some of the attributes accredited to Anima by Jung are more a reflection of his own times with their particular attitudes, his own moment in history, than anything inherently Anima.

Hillman takes to task the co-mingling and confusion of Eros and Anima: much that is erotic in nature has nothing to do with Anima. Similarly with 'feeling': Anima's coupling with feeling is not necessarily and always true. Most importantly, Hillman contends Jung's association of Anima as Soul-Image of men, and Animus as the equivalent for women. Anima is unique in her own right, says Hillman, with her own special role. Women and men both require the soul-making quality of Anima. In this way we avoid the way that Jung gets his contrasexual knickers in a twist with the never-ending ping-pong of opposites and compensations that plagues some of Jung's work on this issue.

Anima, if we can say anything, is 'Soul' in the Jungian sense. She mediates between conscious and unconscious. She is gatekeeper of the Unknown: beware.

Anima is for the experiencing rather than the theorizing. All the same, a little mental clarity can help us avoid disappearing up too many fruitless cul-de-sacs.

Some Quotes:

"I have noticed that people usually have not much difficulty in picturing to themselves just what is meant by the shadow.... But it costs them enormous difficulties to understand what the anima is. They accept her easily enough when she appears in novels or as a film star, but she is not understood at all when it comes to seeing the role she plays in their own lives, because she sums up everything that a man can never get the better of and never finishes coping with....... The degree of unconsciousness one meets with in this connection is, to put it mildly, astounding." (Carl Jung, Collected Works 9. Just so, Carl, just so).

"Recognizing the Shadow is what I call the apprentice-piece, but making out with the anima is the master-piece which not many can bring off" (Jung, letter to Traugott Egloff, 1959. Jung was 83 at the time....)

Some more Quotes:

"When I asked my anima how to sum her up, she replied irritably 'Don't patronize me!" (Paul Watsky)

"Do not be afraid; our fate cannot be taken from us, it is a gift." (Dante, channelling the voice of Anima, maybe)

"I would speak of anima and animus as archetypal images and archetypal experiences only when numinous female or male figures appear, for example in dreams; they are emotionally highly charged and they produce an intense feeling that makes possible a sense of transcending everyday life. That would correspond with the archetypal experience as Jung describes it." (Verena Kast, as clarifying and concise as it gets)

Links:

jungatlanta.com/articles/Anima.pdf

Reflections on Women, Depression, and the Soul Image: Karen Hodges (use a search engine)

For all those eager to hear Suede doing 'Trash', go to Youtube. It's easy....

Images: Not pansies, but bluebells. A fifteen-minute walk from home.