feminine - Blogs - Depth Psychology Alliance
2024-03-28T22:50:27Z
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The Hunger Games: The Female Heroine & Uranus in Aries
https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/the-hunger-games-the-female-heroine-uranus-in-aries
2012-03-27T01:36:02.000Z
2012-03-27T01:36:02.000Z
Cathy Pagano
https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/CathyPagano
<div><p align="center"><span style="font-family:'comic sans ms', sans-serif;">EMERGING ARCHETYPAL THEMES:</span></p><p align="center"><span style="font-family:'comic sans ms', sans-serif;">The Hunger Games</span></p><p align="center"><span style="font-family:'comic sans ms', sans-serif;">The Female Heroine: Uranus in Aries: The Courage to Be Yourself</span></p><p align="center"><span style="font-family:'comic sans ms', sans-serif;">By</span></p><p align="center"><span style="font-family:'comic sans ms', sans-serif;">Cathy Pagano</span></p><p align="center"><span style="font-family:'comic sans ms', sans-serif;"><br /></span></p><p align="center"><span style="font-family:'comic sans ms', sans-serif;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9142439477,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-full" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142439477,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="214" alt="9142439477?profile=original" /></a></span></p><p><span style="font-family:'comic sans ms', sans-serif;">Aries, considered the first sign of the Zodiac, begins when the Sun comes north of the equator at Spring Equinox. When the Sun resumes its journey here in the north each year, we experience a new beginning, a return of green, growing life. Many religious holidays celebrate this season as a time of new life, of Resurrection and Freedom. The reverse is true of our friends south of the equator. They’ve just celebrated the harvest and the coming death of the year at Autumn Equinox as the Sun moves away from their southern homelands.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:'comic sans ms', sans-serif;">Just as the sign of Aries starts the astrological year, the energy of Aries is all about new beginnings and a new sense of identity. Aries’ energy is energizing, exciting, driven, self-confident and enthusiastic. Aries are the explorers, the pioneers, the scouts, and the leaders of the Zodiac. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:'comic sans ms', sans-serif;">And this year, Aries carries a primal spark of lightning, because the planet Uranus is moving through the early degrees of Aries. Uranus symbolizes the energy of awakening, of innovation, of rebellion and originality. In the sign of Aries, Uranus is energizing us with a new sense of ourselves, an awakened sense of ourselves, as if we’ve been hit by a lightning bolt. With its square to Pluto in Capricorn coming up, the call to discover a new identity includes using that new identity to help recreate our society.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:'comic sans ms', sans-serif;">This sense of quickening is accelerated when an archetypal story helps give this new energy a structure to coalesce around. A story gives meaning to what we’re doing, as well as providing clues on how to ‘pass the tests’ of the issues being raised. The Aries quest is that of being true to your original Self. We are here at this moment in our history to meet the challenges and deal with the issues facing our world, and we will need to find the hero and heroine within ourselves. Uranus in Aries can inspire us to find and embrace our archetypal identity.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:'comic sans ms', sans-serif;">So this month’s blog is about one of the Aries lessons that help us discover our true identities. This is the lesson of finding the courage and self-confidence to be ourselves, even under fire. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:'comic sans ms', sans-serif;"><u>The Hunger Games</u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:'comic sans ms', sans-serif;">I was delighted to discover that the movie version of <i>The Hunger Games</i> was almost as good as the book. I chose it as my example of Aries’ courage and self-confidence because its main character, <i>Katniss Everdeen</i>, is a beautiful example of a young woman finding the courage to meet her destiny and the self-confidence to do it in a truly feminine way.</span></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><span style="font-family:'comic sans ms', sans-serif;">Continued at: <</span><a href="http://thebardsgrove.blogspot.com/%3E">http://thebardsgrove.blogspot.com/></a>;</p></div>
Marion Woodman: Dancing in the Flames
https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/marion-woodman-dancing-in-the
2011-02-16T17:30:00.000Z
2011-02-16T17:30:00.000Z
Melissa Jane
https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/MelissaJane
<div><h3 class="post-title entry-title"></h3><div class="post-header"></div><p>The evolution of Jungian psychology owes a great deal to the work of Marion Woodman, a renowned analyst and author who is a pioneer in the understanding of the role of feminine principles in the healing of the human psyche. Her life and work are chronicled in Adam Greydon Reid's striking documentary <i><a href="http://dancingintheflames.com/Marion_Woodman/VIDEO.html">Marion Woodman: Dancing in the Flames</a></i> (Capri Films, 2010), which I highly recommend to anyone with an interest in depth psychology and to Woodman fans especially.<br /><br />Through dynamic conversations with mystic and political activist <a href="http://www.andrewharvey.net/">Andrew Harvey</a>, Woodman shares the personal and professional experiences that fuel her belief in the importance of cultivating a sacred connection to the feminine—meaning to body and to earth—in order to facilitate personal, cultural, and environmental transformation. She teaches that opening to change requires a willingness to surrender to the archetypal processes of death and rebirth, and asserts that even our very Earth is going through such a process now; it's up to us whether or not the Earth is reborn. <br /><br />With sparkling eyes and her trademark passion and grace, Marion details how she became intimately acquainted with psychic death through her struggles with anorexia and uterine cancer, both of which she overcame by working with her dreams, particularly by learning to integrate the emotional energy of her images into her body. The story of her recovery from cancer is an exceptionally moving testament to the miraculous healing power of making the unconscious conscious.<br /><br />Probably one of the most poignant and inspiring aspects of the documentary is its exploration of Marion's 50-plus–year partnership to her husband, Ross. Reflecting on the many shifts that have been a part of their journey to mature intimacy, the Woodmans joke that they have had four marriages. Each stage of the relationship has involved the shedding of increasingly deeper levels of projections—a process their marriage is still undergoing, Marion reveals.<br /><br />As Marion speaks, her words are at times illustrated by the evocative animation of Academy-Award–winning artist Faith Hubley. Hubley's whimsical, at times surreal, images do a wonderful job of bridging the gap between intuitive and intellectual understanding of Woodman's philosophies, and also reflect the dreamscape from which many of Woodman's ideas originated.<br /><br />All the elements of the film—dialogue, animation, and music—seamlessly work together to capture the fiery spirit of a woman whose desire to become conscious—to dance in the alchemical flames of her soul—saved her very life. Longtime fans of Woodman may find, as I did, such an intimate portrait simply sublime.</p><p> </p><p>Find more of my writing on <a href="http://www.thenightisjung.com">www.thenightisjung.com</a>. —Melissa Chianta</p></div>
A Revolution of the Heart is at Hand
https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/a-revolution-of-the-heart-is-at-hand
2016-12-01T21:06:48.000Z
2016-12-01T21:06:48.000Z
Pamela Alexander
https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/PamelaAlexander
<div><div class="entry-meta"><span class="posted-on">On <a href="https://wisdomoftheswan.wordpress.com/2016/11/21/a-revolution-of-the-heart-is-at-hand/">November 21, 2016</a></span> <span class="byline">By <span class="author vcard">WisdomoftheSwan</span></span></div><p></p><p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-16" src="https://wisdomoftheswan.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/cropped-artwork1-026a.jpg?w=640" alt="cropped-artwork1-026a.jpg" /></p><p>We stand on the brink of an epochal shift in consciousness. Just as our forefathers stood on the steps of Independence Hall and proclaimed their independence from their Father, the King of England, we are on the cusp of a historically significant moment. Our forefathers sought freedom by the sword. Our freedom will not come by way of the warrior and fear, but by the cup of truth and love.</p><p>When the immigrants streamed by boat toward Ellis Island, they were greeted by a majestic woman who was lighting their way to a new life. She stood with a flaming torch in one hand and the Declaration of Independence in the other. There were broken chains at her feet and a halo around her head. She was in this world but not of this world.</p><p>The French gave us the Statue of Liberty because they felt a kinship with our revolutionary spirit, but they no longer felt war was the way to freedom. They had seen the result for themselves, how the oppressed had in turn became the oppressors. Lady Liberty’s artist made sure there were no traces of the warrior present in her image or countenance.</p><p>The inner structure of the statue is iron, the metal of Mars, the god of war. The outer surface of the statue is copper, the metal of Venus, the goddess of love. In mythology, the two unite and some stories suggest the product of that union was Eros, the god of love. The Statue is of a woman and although the structure that holds her up is associated with Mars, whom we know as the god of war, he was in fact originally known as the god the pagans worshiped in the spring when planting seeds.</p><p>The Romantics saw the results of the bloody French Revolution and turned to their pens to create a revolution. In the sixties, revolution was again the buzzword, with a desire to transform the warrior. Now the way is no longer through power at the point of a gun, but through the heart, which is reached through feminine consciousness, as the Statue of Liberty illustrates.</p><p>Fairy tales repeatedly show the feminine as evil or hidden, trapped and fearful. These cultural portraits of the collective symbolically represent what’s happening and how to rectify it. The masculine in these stories can be a Beast, frog, devil, or inept father who sacrifices his own daughter for gain. The Handless Maiden’s father, after cutting off her hands, tells her she can stay with him and he’ll always take care of her. She does not accept his offer and leaves her father’s house, as do many of the other heroines in fairy tales.</p><p>We need to leave the fear-based house of our forefathers. This house built on conflict must be replaced by one constructed on a foundation of peace and love. This house is created within. A revolution of the heart is at hand. We must set down our swords and walk a new path to freedom. The time of the warrior has passed. Now is the time for the Child of Love to be born.</p><p><a href="https://wisdomoftheswan.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">https://wisdomoftheswan.wordpress.com/</a></p></div>
The Passionate Feminine
https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/the-passionate-feminine
2016-05-04T21:41:27.000Z
2016-05-04T21:41:27.000Z
Silvia Behrend
https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/SilviaBehrend
<div><p> </p><p> </p><p>For over thirty-six years, we have gathered to celebrate the Passover, a re-telling of the Hebrew peoples’ crossing the desert into the Promised Land of milk and honey. We read the Haggadah, we drink the wine, pass the matzo, flick the plagues off our fingers like an Italian curse gesture. We sing Dayenu, the song that voices the wonder of any small act to be sufficient for knowing God’s abundant love and grace to us, the people who follow the law. The youngest ones present ask the four questions, why is this night different, why do we eat reclining, why do we eat bitter herbs and only matzo, why do we dip twice? And we are off, back in time to the story and the ongoing drama and trauma of freedom from oppression. In our yearly Seders, we have named numerous oppressions, holocausts, genocides, racisms and sexisms. It is part of the tradition to know that the story is not confined to the Biblical account, but an ongoing revelation and experience.</p><p> I have often asked myself, why, as a non-practicing Jew, I have been compelled to celebrate the Passover, dare I say it, religiously. I am reminded of Jung’s assertion in Psychology and Religion, that rituals are the containers for the experience of the Numinosum, a safe space where the psyche can be held, like the infant in the mother’s arms, from the perils of direct contact with the Source of Mystery. (Jung, 1938 p 53). It is only when the experience is dead that the ritual loses its meaning and efficacy, and becomes rigid and arid. What have I experienced of that liberation from oppression that continues to have the power and energy to keep me setting the table, cooking the traditional foods, and inviting others into my home to eat, recite and sing?</p><p> This year, the question is not difficult to answer. What is driving the ritual remembrance of the Exodus is my involvement with Seeing Red, an inter-disciplinary initiative out of the Assisi Institute: The International Center for the Study of Archetypal Patterns. When Loralee Scott-Conforti, the Executive Director, invited me to be part of exploring the underlying roots of oppression and violence against women, I said yes. What I didn’t know was that my assent would lead me through the desert of sojourn, sometimes on my knees and sometimes resting by Miriam’s well. As Passover neared, I realized that in the past, I had been captured by the suffering of others. This year, I had to traverse the suffering of my soul, entrenched and captured by inner oppression. </p><p> It is one thing to blame patriarchy, especially coming out of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and name the many injustices women have suffered, from the original disobedience to stay unconscious, to the sundering of the feminine into the Madonna/whore. It is easy, in fact, to look out into the world and point to the horrors that happen to women, girls and children, because they are the ‘weaker’, the Other, the ones who bear the scars, if they survive at all, of violence.</p><p> Actually, I don’t think it is easy, it is horrific, sobering, and traumatizing to see the images posted on Facebook, the New York Times, other social media and news feeds, of violence, rape, torture, and random attacks on the feminine. When the oppression is recognized as “out there’, we can join the chorus exposing and opposing injustice, we can act. It is another thing to recognize and feel the sadness, shed the tears for our own internalized oppression; the myriad ways we cut ourselves, do violence to our dreams, friendships, relationships, our very destiny. It is excruciating to face the demons that seek to eat our very lives, name them, perhaps, for the first time for what they are and fight tooth and bloody nail against them.</p><p>The redeeming grace is that we walk through the desert, relying on the mana and the water of our contemporary companion sisters, as well as those who have come before us. They hold us as we keen and grieve and take from Egypt, the narrow place of oppression, that which belongs to us - the land of our soul. No longer sojourners in a strange land, we lay claim to our own fertile knowing. On May 9<sup>th</sup>, Muriel McMahon, a seasoned traveler on the road, a guide and voice in the wilderness, will present a webinar on Walking with our Grandmothers: Exploring Trans-Generational Complexes at <a href="http://www.seeingredconference.com">www.seeingredconference.com</a>. Wherever you may be on this journey, I invite you to join us, as we traverse the terrain of liberation together.</p><p> </p><p> <a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9142455298,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142455298,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="225" class="align-full" alt="9142455298?profile=original" /></a></p></div>
2015, Humanity's Year of Happiness
https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/2015-humanity-s-year-of-happiness
2015-01-03T18:06:24.000Z
2015-01-03T18:06:24.000Z
Ariane Page
https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/ArianePage
<div><p></p><p>This title seems taken right out from the world of Utopia. I said <em>seems</em>. What would it take for our world to start on this road toward happiness for all? For the last 3000 years we were presented different theories, religions, recipes that, we thought, would eventually allow just that: happiness for all.</p><p>Now in 2015 we have to agree; it didn't work.</p><p>I do not need to paint the world as it is now as we all know the picture isn't pink, unless I attribute this color to cancer.</p><p>We have to pause again and look around us. Although the natural world is in dire state thanks to human thoughtless actions, we can still see that it is <em>intelligently organized</em> and that it is because of this organization that nature reacts the way it does. The model behind this organization is the one on which the human brain developed. It therefore holds the key to happiness.</p><p>Contrary to many behaviorists, feminists or sociologists, I do not say that the male brain is different from the female brain because "men are from wars and hunts and women are from gardens and care". Indeed, other primates and mammals carry the same structural differences between male and female brains. Human actions didn't create the organization of the human brain, the model behind nature did. I say male and female brains are different because "male" and "female" have different and complementary functions beyond the genital, material aspect. Energy and organization precedes matter and how it is expressed. That is to say that right at the beginning the perception of the world from a little girl or a little boy standpoint are different. Their needs differ also. So we ought to understand these differences as well as find their common point if we want both to find and cultivate happiness in their lives.</p><p></p><p>This, for the last 3000 years, many philosophers discussed, followed by countless of individuals. Lately though, two point of view have been largely popularized: those of psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung. The first point of view leads to the release of subconscious patterns mainly through the unleashing of sexual energies, within the theory that this would allow freedom and psychological health. This is a masculine standpoint. The second took a curve to avoid the cul-de-sac resulting from the first approach and sensed that we must lead humans to the the expression of their inner identity in order to free them from the material world. This is a feminine standpoint.</p><p>This is what the front cover of <em>Love Them Back to LIFE</em> expresses, understood through new results from research on the brain.</p><p><a href="https://isiscodeblog.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/cover-love-them-back-to-life.png"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-154" src="https://isiscodeblog.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/cover-love-them-back-to-life.png?w=214" alt="Cover Love Them Back to LIFE" height="300" width="214" /></a></p><p>These two arms are from Michelangelo's painting, <em>Creation of Adam</em>, adorning the Sistine Chapel ceiling. The lower arm is that of Adam or humanity. The top arm belongs to God or the archetypal world.</p><p>Adam has an effect on the aspect of life associated to mortality: food, environment, the physical, the emotional, actions. It directly affects our perception of the world and its tool, our physical being, allowing us to survive in this world. Adam or humanity has control over the physical regulator of his own existence. In the same way, I have control over my personality.</p><p>My perception of God, or of the archetypal world affects how I define my identity: the mental and social. Not only does it affects my perception of the world around me but it also controls the physical regulator of my life. My actions, my eating habits, my relationships ; it influences my whole life.</p><p>Adam is associated to our personality and develops from conception to 14 years old. The individuality, associated to the archetypal world develops on top of this personality between 14 and 28 years old. This is why parents have such a permanent influence over their children. If we want happiness for all, it seems essential to understand not only our structures but the functions of these structures in humans and most of all the model behind both.</p><p>As we begin 2015, I wish for all to understand this model and therefore to have a better grasp over life. Then only will we clearly see what is important and what is not. Then through our choices we will march together, as one, on the road towards happiness for all.</p><p>Happy 2015 to all!</p><p>Ariane</p></div>
The Star of David and the Divine Feminine
https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/the-star-of-david-and-the-divine-feminine
2013-07-29T21:37:19.000Z
2013-07-29T21:37:19.000Z
Esther Waldron
https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/EstherWaldron
<div><p>Today sees a rare aspect that some astrologers are calling 'horoscope history': a Grand Sextile Merkaba six-pointed star pattern or Star of David.</p><p>According to <a href="http://www.astrograph.com/horoscopes/configurations/2013/July/29" target="_blank">astrograph.com</a>, "the Moon trines Venus to complete a grand sextile with Saturn, Neptune, Jupiter and Pluto. This inscribed six-pointed star within the circle of the Zodiac is a pattern also known as a Star of David. It is understandably rare and magical, and it actually consists of two interlocking grand trines, in Earth and in Water. Within these graceful flowing aspects it holds great promise for healing and peaceful energy."</p><p><a href="http://www.astrostyle.com/Blog/grand-sextile-july-29-2013/" target="_blank">Astrostyle.com</a> explains it as '<span>a six-pointed star, or hexagram, comprised of seven planets that form harmonious angles (trines and sextiles) to each other. This synergistic seven are all in “feminine” (earth or water) signs, emphasizing stability, gentleness, love and harmony. Many astrologers view this as the moment our culture will take a step toward embracing “feminine” principles.'</span></p><p>Robert Wilkinson at the always-excellent <a href="http://www.aquariuspapers.com/astrology/2013/07/the-great-sextile-star-of-david-merkaba-of-late-july-2013.html" target="_blank">Aquariuspapers.com</a> advises: "All should clearly understand in fairly simple terms some part of the past that must be left behind to open the door to self-renewal."</p><p>Eric Francis of <a href="http://planetwaves.net/news/astro-daily/about-that-grand-sextile/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+PlanetWavesDaily+(2012+Astrology%252C+Astrology+Blog%252C+Weekly+%2526+Monthly+Horoscopes%252C+Daily+Astrology+by+Eric+Francis" target="_blank">Planet Waves</a> notes of the T-square in today's skies: "<span>That T-square is as significant as the grand sextile - its message is ‘don’t take forever to do what you’re here to do. Time is of the essence’.</span></p><p>Astrologer Susan Miller who tweets <a href="https://twitter.com/astrologyzone" target="_blank">@astrologyzone</a> is keen to hear our experiences of the Grand Sextile - use the hashtag #July29 to tell her how it was for you. </p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9142446082,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}9142446082,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="480" class="align-full" alt="9142446082?profile=original" /></a>Image courtesy of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/DivineFeminineReawakening?group_id=0" target="_blank">Divine Feminine Reawakening Group</a>.</p><p></p></div>
My Mother and the Pope
https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/my-mother-and-the-pope
2013-03-14T19:45:49.000Z
2013-03-14T19:45:49.000Z
Silvia Behrend
https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/SilviaBehrend
<div>I was surprised yesterday to receive a phone call from my very excited mother. She was thrilled to tears that ‘we’ had a new pope from Argentina. I could almost see her 82 year old self jumping up and down for joy. I, however, was a bit taken aback. We are Jewish.But we were both born in Argentina – and it seemed that regardless of religious affiliation or belief, regardless of the fact that Argentina protected Nazi perpetrators of genocide, my mother was caught up in the field of nationalistic pride. I would have thought that the millennial experience of diasporic Judaism would trump one generation of being Argentine, when I saw the images of people all over the world celebrating this Argentine cardinal turned Pope, I began to have other inklings.Jung, in Modern Man in Search of a Soul, speaks to the powerful force of the unconscious to compensate for the one-sidedness of the time or epoch. He writes: "An epoch is like an individual, it has its own limitations of conscious outlook, and therefore requires a compensatory adjustment. This is effected by the collective unconscious in that a poet, a seer or a leader allows himself to be guided by the unexpressed desire of his times and shows the way, by work or deed, to the attainment of what which everyone blindly craves and expects –whether this attainment results in good or evil, the healing of an epoch or its destruction (166)."So perhaps my mother was actually expressing something a bit deeper than nationalistic pride, she may have been possessed by the emergent possibility of a change in the collective itself. Dr. Conforti, in his blog radio program, spoke about Jung’s excitement when the Virgin Mary was taken into heaven. Jung saw that as the elevating of the previously repressed feminine into the Church.We may be entering a new phase of psychic balance in the world, or at the very least, it is clear that Psyche is doing her damnest to bring us into equilibrium. While the Church will continue to espouse dogma that keeps it in line with patriarchal rules and regulations, it is clear that here is a man who is very closely aligned to the feminine values of relationality, care and nurture of the oppressed, who admonishes priests for not baptizing babies born out of wedlock.His life, as we know it for the moment, is a testament to living close to the earth, to matter, to the Mother, whose ego stance seems to be aligned to service to the highest values expressed in the gospel and not to ostentation and external expressions of power.It remains to be seen whether he will be able to resist the forces of the Church which will seek to constrain him to ‘live’ into the proper role for the Pope, a role shaped by two millennia. Will his humility be deep enough and his ego strong enough to carry the function of God/dess without being annihilated by the projections of the curia and of others in the institution? I don’t know, but I will be praying for him and for all of us. After all, he is an Argentine.Jung, Carl G. (1993). Modern Man in Search of a Soul. San Diego: Harvest.</div>
A Mother's Day Bouquet Steeped in Mother Earth and Soul
https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/a-mothers-day-bouquet-steeped
2011-04-10T18:00:00.000Z
2011-04-10T18:00:00.000Z
Fisher King Press
https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/FisherKingPress
<div>From <i>The Motherline</i> by Naomi Ruth Lowinsky<br /><blockquote><i>So many of the stories that I write, that we all write, are my Mother’s stories. Only recently did I fully realize this: that through years of listening to my mother's stories of her life, I have absorbed not only the stories themselves, but something of the manner in which she spoke, something of the urgency that involves the knowledge that her stories–like her life–must be recorded.</i> –ALICE WALKER<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=2653592181746774511#_ftn1">[1]</a></blockquote><p><br /> Being a mother is an experience of body and soul which ties one to the source of our life and all life. <i>The Motherline</i> is for women who have mothers, are mothers, or are considering becoming mothers, and for the men who love them. Telling the stories of women whose maturation has been experienced in the cycle of mothering, this book does not sever mother from daughter, feminism from "the feminine," body from psyche. The path to wholeness requires reclaiming aspects of the feminine self that we have lost and forgotten in our struggle to free ourselves from constricting roles; it requires that a woman make a journey to find her roots in the personal, cultural, and archetypal Motherline.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Motherline-Every-Womans-Journey-Female/dp/0981034462?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwmalcolmclc-20&link_code=bil&camp=213689&creative=392969" style="clear:left;float:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-right:1em;" target="_blank"><img alt="The Motherline: Every Woman's Journey to Find Her Female Roots" src="http://ws.amazon.com/widgets/q?MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&Format=_SL160_&ASIN=0981034462&tag=wwwmalcolmclc-20" /></a><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=bil&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0981034462" style="border:medium none;margin:0px;padding:0px;" width="1" alt="ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=bil&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0981034462" /><br />Mother is the first world we know, the source of our lives and our stories. Embodying the mystery of origin, she connects us to the great web of kin and generation. Yet the voice of her experience is seldom heard in our literature. Psychology, the field that examines human nature, has tended to be child-oriented. And much of the feminist literature has been daughter-identified. We are so full of judgments about what mother ought to be that we can barely see what mother is. This has been shattering to a woman's sense of self and her connection to roots. We have no cultural mirror in which to envision the fullness of female development; we are deprived of images of female wisdom and maturity. Finding our female roots, reclaiming our feminine souls, requires paying attention to our real mothers' lives and experience; listening to our mothers' stories, and our grandmothers' stories, is the beginning of understanding our own. When we hear these stories, we tap into the wisdom of our Motherline.<br /><br />Being a mother is an experience of body and soul that ties one to the source of one's own life and to all life. In the deepest sense of the word it is a religious experience, for the word religion comes from the Latin religare, which means to bind back to, to reconnect with. <i>The Motherline</i> will help you reconnect to the story of your origins, your Motherline, your body, and your soul.<br /><br />I have been gathering material for this book all of my life, much like one gathers material for a patchwork quilt. I've taken the stories of the women of my Motherline, memories of childhood, journal entries, my experience raising children and stepchildren to adulthood, pieces of my master's and doctoral dissertations<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=2653592181746774511#_ftn2">[2]</a> (both of them studies of mothers), the stories I've heard as a psychotherapist and the stories I've told as an analysand, what I've learned from students and colleagues at the Women's Therapy Center and the Pacifica Graduate Institute, and what I've learned at the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco where I trained as a Jungian analyst. I've gathered dreams and poetry and prose, and sewed them all together with journeys I have made to create a pattern that evokes female wholeness. Like most women's sewing projects, it has been worked on, put away while children are being raised and life makes other demands, felt guilty about, and brought back out to be worked on again. As in quilting, the design of the book has been created by combining many separate elements into one pattern.<br /><br />Although <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Motherline-Every-Womans-Journey-Female/dp/0981034462?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwmalcolmclc-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">The Motherline</a><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0981034462" style="border:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;" width="1" alt="ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0981034462" /></i> contains the voices of many women, its structure is based on my personal life because it is the flesh and blood of our female, subjective experience that I seek to bring to consciousness. Each of our stories is unique and yet there is an underlying Motherline pattern. Other women's stories set up sympathetic vibrations so that we can begin to near our own.<br /><br />The process of finding one's Motherline is idiosyncratic and chaotic. It takes most of a lifetime. Every woman must engage in it in her own way and in her own time. The reclamation of feminine soul is not a process that can be readily taught. Rather it is a potentiality that can be evoked by shifting the way we listen to women's voices, and the way we see ourselves, our mothers, and our grandmothers. I hope to facilitate this process.<br /><br />Each chapter of the book describes reclaiming an aspect of the feminine self. It is not the entire story. There are aspects of female nature, such as the warrior-amazon and the erotic lover, that are not addressed here. <i>The Motherline</i> is a search for female continuity and the sense of wholeness that is gained when we find it.<br /><br /><br /><b>OF SELF, SOUL, AND SHADOW</b><br /><br />What is self and soul? Self has come to have specific meanings in psychology. In self psychology, it is used to mean an inborn potentiality for an authentic and vital identity. Jungians use the word <i>self</i> in a similar but larger sense. For them, the self is the "potential for integration of the total personality"; it "contains the seeds of the individual's destiny";<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=2653592181746774511#_ftn3">[3]</a> it includes the psychological, biological, and spiritual aspects of being human.<br /><br />There has been much controversy among feminist thinkers about whether the experience of self is gender-specific. There are those who argue that a gendered sense of self is a by-product of culture. Though I agree that the culture may warp and damage the female experience of self, it makes no sense to me to separate one's sense of self entirely from one's body. Female identity is rooted in embodied experiences of menstruation, childbearing, lactation, and menopause, which are filtered through the veils that different cultures throw over them. Clearly a woman's identity consists of much more than her reproductive system, and this is where the feminist critique is invaluable in confronting cultural misogyny. But I believe that we go to the depths of our feminine selves in these primal, physical experiences, common to women of all cultures. Devaluing these depths is a function of our own cultural bias.<br /><br />The word <i>soul</i> is most commonly used in a religious context, and means the part of our being that is connected to the immortal. Some psychological thinkers such as James Hillman use soul in a broader way, to name the experience of seeing the gods or the sacred in all life forms. This book is about women's immortality through our birth-giving capacity. Soul here is not separate from body. It is through our full honoring of bodily experience that we become ensouled. Soul does not separate us from ordinary life. It does not float off into the stratosphere as spirit seems to in the distinction commonly made between spirit and flesh. In colloquial usage one who has soul is one who has acquired depth through suffering, often one who has been oppressed. Soul is born of the kind of suffering that brings us in touch with the mysteries of life.<br /><br />One way we garner soul is through the integration of what Jungians call the shadow. The shadow is that part of our personality that is cast into darkness by our fears, values, temperament, and cultural prejudice–a part of ourselves we do not know. Traits that we deny and repress in ourselves and dislike intensely in others are usually parts of our shadow. Contemporary women are prone to project aspects of their shadows on their mothers. We cut off our natural energy flow when we disown our envy, rage, competitiveness, pettiness, sensuality. Paradoxically, when these traits are recognized and owned, they tend to soften and get humanized. Learning to suffer our own shortcomings and those of others, even to develop a sense of humor about it all, gives depth and richness to the personality. It is an aspect of maturation and of soul.<br /><br />Jungian theory describes psychological experience on three levels: the personal, the cultural, and the archetypal. Most current psychology emphasizes the personal and neglects the cultural (leaving that to the anthropologists) and the archetypal (leaving that to the theologians). The problems created by this narrowness in psychological thought are more than academic. Mothers get saddled with cultural baggage or with archetypal expectations. Because the gods are dead, mothers are expected to stand in for them, taking the blame for much that more truly belongs to fate. Because we've lost a historical sense of how culture shifts, we are outraged that our mothers did not raise us according to the standards of our times but had the effrontery to be shaped by the values of their own generation. Thus painful intergenerational rifts and misunderstandings arise. Women whose mothers love them deeply feel estranged and unmothered. Women whose daughters long to know them can find no language of mutuality.<br /><br /><br /><b>OUR MAMMALIAN MAMA</b><br /><br />How do we distinguish between the three levels of experience–personal, cultural, and archetypal? Archetypal psychologist James Hillman sees Archetypes as the "roots of the soul."<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=2653592181746774511#_ftn4">[4]</a> Jungian analyst Joseph Henderson describes the archetype as involving both a primordial image and an instinctual root that "create a pervasive sense of being gripped by an urge and dazzled by an image of compelling power."<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=2653592181746774511#_ftn5">[5]</a> An archetype can be described as an underlying life pattern with both instinctive and symbolic poles of expression surrounding a core of great emotional charge. The Great Mother archetype, for example, is a primordial image that expresses our instinctual, mammalian nature. It takes many cultural forms, from images of the Virgin Mary to those of the death-dealing goddess, Kali, in India. But the female form with breasts is recognizable in all cultures. We are all born of woman. Her breasts and her womb permeate all times and all cultures. Every culture translates the mother archetype differently, and every biological, or personal, mother has her own unique psychology and connection to her child.<br /><br />The personal experience of the mother-daughter relationship is shaped by the individual lives and temperaments of the two women. If, for example, the daughter is the longed-for only child of an older mother who tried for years to get pregnant, her experience of her personal mother will be very different from that of the sixth child of an exhausted mother who considered getting an abortion. The quiet, introverted child of a quiet, introverted mother will have a different experience of self than would the fiery, extroverted child of that same introverted mother. When a woman becomes a mother she embodies the archetypal mother and becomes the culture bearer who will socialize the child. At the cultural level a child will be schedule or demand fed, bottle or breast fed, told she should be seen but not heard, or encouraged to express her spontaneity, raised by her mother or a nanny or an au pair depending on the culture, historical period, class, and personal circumstances into which she is born. However, all these children need to be held and protected, praised and fed and played with, scolded and limited. Though this is done differently in various cultures, a child needs some manifestation of the mother archetype in her life or she will be severely damaged.<br /><br />It is confusing to sort out the personal, cultural, and archetypal levels of our experience. Archetypes are mostly seen in their cultural manifestation, and changes in cultural attitude become personal battlegrounds between generations. But there are some areas in which the archetype shines through. For example, it is striking to consider how many cultures make similar sounds for naming the mother: Mama, Mutti, Ama, Ema. The "ma" sound brings the lips together as in reaching for the breast. Thus a linguistic form reveals the physiological nature of the archetype across cultures. <br /><br />I remember seeing a television report about a gorilla mother who had just given birth in a local zoo. She held her baby close. When she lifted her great gorilla hand to tenderly pat its head, a shiver of archetypal energy burst through me. I knew that gesture. Every human being knows that gesture. The mother archetype in her gorilla form had been revealed to me on the evening news!<br /><br />The words <i>male</i> and <i>female</i> refer to our biological natures, while the words <i>masculine</i> and <i>feminine</i> imply cultural and archetypal meanings as well. Jungians historically have been interested in the archetypal distinctions between the masculine and the feminine, not limiting them to one gender. Whether these concepts are useful or stereotypical has been controversial in both Jungian and feminist circles. The feminist critique is that these are culturally biased concepts. Jungians respond by pointing out that the masculine is not limited to men, or the feminine to women. <br /><br />The terms <i>masculine</i> and <i>feminine</i> are vital concepts that are typically truncated by the tendency of cultures to make rigid gender distinctions. These hurt both men and women. There is an enormous overlap in what men and women can do. At all levels, including the physical, we are more alike than we are different. But we can rob ourselves of our deep instinctual roots in life if we deny the power of the differences between the sexes. The feminine experienced by a woman is very different from the feminine experienced by a man, and vice versa. Gender differences have biological roots that go far below the cultural level, below human history: they precede our evolution as a species and take us down to our mammalian beginnings.<br /><br />All mammals are divided into males and females. Females have breasts and wombs. Males have testes and penises. These sexual differences are meaningful; far from being a curse or a limitation on women's lives, our mammalian experience is what grounds us in our feminine selves. My thinking resonates with that of the men's movement, of which poet Robert Bly is a central spokesperson. He and others argue for a recognition of the differences between men and women at the instinctual level. It is a relief and a pleasure to hear men honoring their own embodied experience. These differences are, indeed, empowering for both men and women.<br /><br /><br /><b>A PATTERN OF FEMININE SOUL</b><br /><br /><i>The Motherline</i> is arranged in ten chapters, each evoking an aspect of the feminine self and how it can be reclaimed. The sequence describes the journey I made, but it is not a linear path. One could begin from any place in the pattern to find one's way into the Motherline.<br /><br />We begin with a conceptualization of the Motherline as the source of our stories. In the second chapter we consider the women's movement, which at once frees us and gets in our way as we seek our female roots. In the third chapter we pick up the thread of our Motherline search by going back to our forgotten knowledge of the mother tongue, remembering images we took in with our mother's milk, of the primal female experiences of bearing, bonding, and being in relation to children.<br /><br />In Chapter 4, we confront the developmental problem of differentiation between mother and daughter, which forces both women to engage in the painful process of sorting out self from other, and acknowledging shadow. The thread of our story is taken up in Chapter 5 by four women who, in telling their stories from the middle of their lives, loop from the past through the present to the future and back, weaving a rich tapestry of contemporary female maturity.<br /><br />In Chapter 6 we follow the thread of women's lives by looking at generational change and how we are shaped by the times we live in. Chapter 7 explores girlhood memories of a grandmother and how this process links a woman to her past and to her future and transforms the mother-daughter dyad into the ancient, sacred, female trinity: maiden, mother, and crone.<br /><br />Throughout <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Motherline-Every-Womans-Journey-Female/dp/0981034462?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwmalcolmclc-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">The Motherline</a><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0981034462" style="border:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;" width="1" alt="ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0981034462" /><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0981034462" style="border:medium none;margin:0px;padding:0px;" width="1" alt="ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0981034462" /></i>, my own Motherline story unfolds; I am confronted by the ghost of the grandmother I never knew. Her voice comes to me from before my birth and requires me to make a journey into the realm of my ancestors. This takes me to Israel in Chapter 8 to meet female relatives and learn their stories, and to Germany in Chapter 9 to see the landscape of my mother's childhood through the ashes of the Holocaust. My journey is part of a pattern of female development; you will see how many women make this descent into the past to find their roots.<br /><br />In the end we must seek our spiritual roots in the old female religion. In Chapter 10 we traverse the land from the lost shore temples of the east coast of India to a sacred hill in Glastonbury and discover that the forbidden and taboo aspects of feminine soul are a part of our landscape as well as our dreams and our visions. What we have lost or forgotten of the feminine mysteries is hidden in our everyday lives.<br /><br /><b>About the Author</b><br />Naomi Ruth Lowinsky is the author of <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sister-Below-When-Muse-Gets/dp/098103442X?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwmalcolmclc-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">The Sister from Below</a><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=098103442X" style="border:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;" width="1" alt="ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=098103442X" />: When the Muse Gets Her Way</i> and <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Motherline-Every-Womans-Journey-Female/dp/0981034462?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwmalcolmclc-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">The Motherline</a><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0981034462" style="border:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;" width="1" alt="ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0981034462" /></i>: Every Woman’s Journey to Find Her Female Roots and numerous prose essays, many of which have been published in Psychological Perspectives and The Jung Journal. She has had poetry published in many literary magazines and anthologies, among them After Shocks: The Poetry of Recovery, Weber Studies, Rattle, Atlanta Review, Tiferet and Asheville Poetry Review. Naomi has three published poetry collections: <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Adagio-Lamentation-Naomi-Ruth-Lowinsky/dp/1926715055?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwmalcolmclc-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">Adagio and Lamentation</a><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=1926715055" style="border:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;" width="1" alt="ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=1926715055" /></i> (2010), <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/clay-talking-Naomi-Ruth-Lowinsky/dp/0967022428?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwmalcolmclc-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">red clay is talking</a><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0967022428" style="border:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;" width="1" alt="ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0967022428" /></i> (2000) and <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Crimes-Dreamer-Naomi-Ruth-Lowinsky/dp/0967022487?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwmalcolmclc-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969" target="_blank">crimes of the dreamer</a><img border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0967022487" style="border:none;margin:0px;padding:0px;" width="1" alt="ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0967022487" /></i> (2005).<br /><br />Naomi has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize three times and is the recipient of the 2009 Obama Millennium Poetry award for "Madelyn Dunham, Passing On.” Naomi is a Jungian analyst in private practice, poetry and fiction editor of Psychological Perspectives, and a grandmother many times over.</p><p> </p><p style="text-align:center;">All of Noami Ruth Lowinsky's books are available for purchase directly from <a href="http://www.fisherkingpress.com" target="_blank">Fisher King Press</a>. Orders of $25 or more ship for free within the U.S.</p><p style="text-align:center;">Receive an additional 10% off by using the following redemption code during checkout: <span class="font-size-3"><strong>loyalty</strong></span></p><p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear:both;text-align:center;"><a href="http://fisherkingpress.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2_10&products_id=13"><img border="0" height="78" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IkQw10Wsg0o/TZ-U0EDty2I/AAAAAAAAAkk/8GcDiBoqSyk/s200/OrderButtonFKP.jpg" width="200" alt="OrderButtonFKP.jpg" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size:x-small;"><br /></span><br /><div><hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" /><span style="font-size:x-small;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=2653592181746774511#_ftnref1">[1]</a> Alice Walker, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Search-Our-Mothers-Gardens-Womanist/dp/0156028646?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwmalcolmclc-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">In Search of My Mother's Garden</a></i><img border="0" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0156028646" alt="ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0156028646" /> (San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovitch, 1983), p. 240.<br /><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=2653592181746774511#_ftnref2">[2]</a> Naomi Ruth Lowinsky "The Generation Cord: A Hand-Me-Down of Mothering in Four Families and a Changing Culture," (Master's thesis, Lone Mountain College, 1977). "All the Days of Her Life: A Study of Adult Development and the Motherline in Modern Women," (Ph.D. diss., Center for Psychological Studies, 1985).<br /><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=2653592181746774511#_ftnref3">[3]</a> Andrew Samuels, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Jung-Post-Jungians-Andrew-Samuels/dp/0415059046?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwmalcolmclc-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">Jung and the Post-Jungians</a></i><img border="0" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0415059046" alt="ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0415059046" /> (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985), p. 91.<br /><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=2653592181746774511#_ftnref4">[4]</a> James Hillman, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Re-Visioning-Psychology-James-Hillman/dp/0060905638?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwmalcolmclc-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">Re-Visioning Psychology</a></i><img border="0" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0060905638" alt="ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0060905638" /> (New York: Harper Colophon, 1975), p. xiii.<br /><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=2653592181746774511#_ftnref5">[5]</a> Joseph Henderson, Shadow and Self (Wilmette, Ill: Chiron, 1990), P. 54.</span><br /><span style="font-size:x-small;"><br /></span><br /><div id="ftn5"><div class="MsoFootnoteText"><div style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:x-small;">Copyright 2011</span> <span style="font-size:x-small;">©</span> <span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:x-small;">Fisher King Press - Permission to reprint this article is granted. </span></div><div style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:x-small;">Credits should be linked to <a href="http://www.fisherkingreview.com/">www.fisherkingreview.com</a> </span></div></div></div></div></div>
Animus Aeternus
https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/animus-aeternus
2011-01-29T04:30:50.000Z
2011-01-29T04:30:50.000Z
Fisher King Press
https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/FisherKingPress
<div><table style="float:left;margin-right:1em;text-align:left;" class="tr-caption-container" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align:center;"><a style="clear:left;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" href="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=CKTMSQJPS2ZVY"><img width="211" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_66tG-ibjAoU/TTy5OJgqtcI/AAAAAAAAAd8/nVN8ixuKxbA/s320/9781926715377.jpg" height="320" border="0" alt="9781926715377.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td style="text-align:center;" class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size:small;"><i><span style="font-size:x-small;">Animus Aeternus</span></i><span style="font-size:x-small;"> cover image</span></span> <span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-size:x-small;"> </span><i><span style="font-size:x-small;">Lovers’ Promenade </span></i><span style="font-size:x-small;">© 2009 <br />Iris Sonnenschein </span><span style="font-size:x-small;"><a target="_blank" href="http://www.irisquilts.com/">www.irisquilts.com</a></span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align:center;">With Great Pleasure Fisher King Press Announced Today:</div><div style="text-align:center;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align:center;">Now Available from Fisher King Press</div><div style="text-align:center;"><i>Animus Aeternus: Exploring the Inner Masculine</i></div><div style="text-align:center;">by Deldon Anne McNeely</div><div style="text-align:center;"></div><div style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:x-small;">Shipping Feb 15th, 2011</span></div><div style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:x-small;">List Price <s>$25.00</s></span></div><div style="text-align:center;"><span style="font-size:x-small;"><b>Introductory offer $19.95</b></span></div><div style="text-align:center;"><span style="background-color:#cc0000;"><a href="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=CKTMSQJPS2ZVY"><span style="color:#FFFFFF;"> Order Now </span></a></span></div><div style="text-align:center;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align:center;"><i>“The animus is the deposit, as it were, of all woman’s ancestral experiences of man—and not only that, he is also a creative and procreative being.”</i></div><div style="text-align:center;">—C.G. Jung</div><br />Inextricably enmeshed in the life of every woman is a constellation of autonomous energy that Jung called animus, her masculine side. As a woman develops psychologically, animus changes, appearing and reappearing as child or adult, lover or enemy, king or slave, animal or spirit. All these manifestations of animus energy are reflected in her experience of masculinity, both in herself and in others.<br /><br /><i><a href="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=CKTMSQJPS2ZVY">Animus Aeternus</a></i> weaves developmental theories from depth psychology with the poetry of women—including Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Emily Dickinson, Teresa of Avila and Edna St. Vincent Millay—to trace the history and meaning of this lifetime companion, illustrating how animus participates in a woman’s life, whether we are conscious of it or not. <br /><br />Like dreams and active imagination, poetry speaks in images from the soul. In choosing women’s poetry as well as their dreams to illustrate the essence of animus, the author adds the immediacy of soul-made truths to the lucidity of her conceptual matrix.<br /><br />Deldon Anne McNeely received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Louisiana State University and is a member of the International Association for Analytical Psychology. A senior analyst of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, she is a training analyst for their New Orleans Jungian Seminar. Publications include <i><a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Introduction-Jungs-Concept-Individuation/dp/1926715128?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwmalcolmclc-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">Becoming: An Introduction to Jung’s Concept of Individuation</a><img width="1" style="border:medium none;margin:0px;padding:0px;" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=1926715128" height="1" border="0" alt="ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=1926715128" /></i>; <i><a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/Touching-Therapy-Psychology-Studies-Jungian/dp/0919123295?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwmalcolmclc-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">Touching: Body Therapy and Depth Psychology</a><img width="1" style="border:medium none;margin:0px;padding:0px;" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0919123295" height="1" border="0" alt="ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0919123295" /></i>; <i><a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/Animus-Aeternus-Exploring-Inner-Masculine/dp/1926715373?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwmalcolmclc-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">Animus Aeternus: Exploring the Inner Masculine</a><img width="1" style="border:medium none;margin:0px;padding:0px;" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=1926715373" height="1" border="0" alt="ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=1926715373" /></i>; and <i><a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/Mercury-Rising-Women-Evil-Trickster/dp/0882143662?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwmalcolmclc-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">Mercury Rising: Women, Evil and the Trickster Gods</a><img width="1" style="border:medium none;margin:0px;padding:0px;" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0882143662" height="1" border="0" alt="ir?t=wwwmalcolmclc-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0882143662" /></i>.<br /><blockquote><a style="clear:right;display:inline;float:right;margin-bottom:1em;margin-left:1em;" href="http://www.fisherkingreview.com/"><img style="display:block;height:100px;margin:0px auto 10px;width:110px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_66tG-ibjAoU/StmAZLTraMI/AAAAAAAAASs/kmBy84VNLJ8/s200/fkplogo110x100.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5393483198773291202" border="0" name="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5393483198773291202" alt="fkplogo110x100.jpg" /></a>Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including Jungian Psychological Perspectives, Cutting Edge Fiction, and a growing list of alternative titles.</blockquote><ul><li>We Ship Worldwide.</li><li>Credit Cards Accepted.</li><li>Phone Orders Welcomed. Toll free in the US & Canada: 1-800-228-9316 International +1-831-238-7799 skype: fisher_king_press</li></ul></div>
Bone: Dying into Life, a Book Review of "Bone" by Jungian Marion Woodman| by Margaret Piton--from the C.G Jung Society of Montreal
https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/profiles/blogs/bone-dying-into-life-a-book
2011-01-18T08:02:41.000Z
2011-01-18T08:02:41.000Z
Bonnie Bright
https://depthpsychologyalliance.com/members/BonnieBright
<div>In 2009, I had the pleasure of attending a workshop with Marion Woodman. Truly, she is one of the greats in Depth Psychology. Not only a woman who runs in a world that has been traditionally dominated by its male founders and successors, Dr. Woodman has an authenticity and joie de vivre about her that is unmistakable. She has done the work to engage the world through soul, and that has truly had an impact on me, and on the world at large.I will never forget her saying she never sat down to write without getting into her body first and that the best way she'd found was to listen to Chopin's Nocturnes and let herself move. The next thing I knew, I was rolling around the on floor with Marion and 50 other people I'd never met before and experiencing myself in a whole new way. And she was 80 at the time! Truly amazing!The following content comes from a book review on the site of the C.G. Jung Society of Montreal at <a href="http://sites.google.com/site/cgjungmontreal/book-reviews-winterspring-2011">http://sites.google.com/site/cgjungmontreal/book-reviews-winterspring-2011</a>. Be sure to check their site for other great Book reviews and content.August, 2001Volume XXV, Number 1Bone: Dying into LifeMarion WoodmanNew York: Viking Penguin, 2000. 246 pp.In Bone, Marion Woodman writes movingly about her struggle with cancer, which began in the early 1990s. Written in a more accessible style than some of her books, this work shows how she was able to draw upon many resources in her struggle with the disease, and was able to maintain a gruelling schedule for much of the period.The book is written in journal style, so it is easy to follow. Those familiar with Woodman’s works may find it a pleasant change from some of her heavier works, although the subject matter is far from light. It begins in 1993, when she first discovered she had cancer and would need major surgery, and goes on for about a year and a half, until at least the first stage of the battle appeared to be over. In it we learn a lot about Woodman’s private life, her former career as a teacher, her relationships with husband, family, many friends and colleagues. We learn how she was able to apply insights from her long experience as a Jungian analyst to the fight of her life.She drew on sources of feminine wisdom to deal with a disease that targeted her female organs. She used the resources of modern medicine, but also those of the older feminine tradition of healing by means of energy, herbs and nutrients.Woodman writes of the death of her brother from cancer, years before. She also details changes she made in her life to accommodate the illness—closing her analytic practice, cutting back on travel, settling into a new home. She writes with great feeling of her experiences as she awaited and recovered from both surgery and radiation therapy and battled certain patriarchal aspects of the medical establishment.Woodman discusses openly her confrontation with aging and mortality. She notes that during her illness and treatment she experienced many losses.The deepest loss of all was loss of my connection to the sacred union within—matter no longer permeated by spirit. I was no longer galvanized by the inner marriage that kept me alive, in life, consciously trying to articulate and write. With that loss of creativity went my power to heal myself. I could not connect with the life force. No energy could get past the darkness in my pelvis to go down into my legs. No connection to the earth. By the time I began to realize what was happening, even the sexual urge was not strong enough to pull me into life.Still, Woodman appears to have a lot of energy at her disposal. Despite the illness and treatment, she keeps her journal, travels, entertains, speaks and keeps in touch with a large number of people. She notes that the cancer diagnosis destroyed the previous sense she had of knowing her own body, but clearly it did not destroy her determination to live her own way. She also writes of the many projections cancer patients are subjected to, those subtle ways in which they often get blamed for having caused their own disease.By agreeing to be treated with radiation, Woodman worried that she was betraying the Great Mother, but she did it anyway. She generally experienced lack of comprehension of her soul concerns from medical personnel, but she also recounts incidents of great kindness from doctors, nurses and technicians. In one case, she ended a relationship with a doctor because she found him too pessimistic.Toward the end of the book Woodman notes that… simplifying became my total focus ... I believe that failure to simplify would lead me back into cancer because I could lose touch with my life vibration—my tone that sustains my life force … I must stay in touch with whatever keeps me focused on the still point—the place of exact harmony in body and psyche. Simplify life to that point where the dance can happen—the dance between consciousness and the unconscious.For anyone who has had an encounter with serious illness, this should be an inspiring story. I was drawn to it because I had experienced a cancer scare that fortunately turned out to be a false alarm at about the same time as she was undergoing her trial by fire. Like Woodman, I found that the experience helped me to develop new approaches to life.Woodman shows how cancer can be not just an ending, but also an initiation into a new and more authentic life. Faced with the probability of a fatal disease, she was able to re-orient her priorities and sort out her relationships in order to live more fully. In writing so openly about her disease and her own inner life, she has given a gift to all of us as we struggle to face our own mortality bravely.—Margaret Piton</div>