Latest / This Jungian Life Podcast / SOLSTICE: Why is the longest night so magickal?
Transcript
- 0:02Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
- 0:06Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
- 0:10Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
- 0:14Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
- 0:19Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
- 0:23Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
- 0:28Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
- 0:43Speaker 3: Hello everybody. In our podcast episode today we talk about
- 0:49Speaker 3: the solstice. This is one of those strange and amazing
- 0:56Speaker 3: astronomical events. We have the longest night of the year
- 1:01Speaker 3: and at this particular moment there is a return of
- 1:08Speaker 3: the solar forces. Cultures from the beginning of time have
- 1:13Speaker 3: noted this particular moment. Psychologically, we discuss how to rest
- 1:21Speaker 3: into the wintering process, when our life force goes down
- 1:27Speaker 3: under the ground. What are the different solstice traditions, some
- 1:32Speaker 3: of the myths of the return of light, and perhaps
- 1:35Speaker 3: most importantly, the pregnant darkness of the long night. After that,
- 1:43Speaker 3: we interpret an interesting dream about the survival of the
- 1:46Speaker 3: inner feminine in the face of intense aggression. So we're
- 1:53Speaker 3: glad to have you here, and we look forward to
- 1:55Speaker 3: talking with you.
- 1:58Speaker 4: Well, it seems to me, and I think to the
- 2:01Speaker 4: three of us, that the obvious overt meaning of solstice,
- 2:07Speaker 4: which has been celebrated everywhere, for eons by cultures all
- 2:12Speaker 4: around the world is the theme of the return of
- 2:15Speaker 4: the light. And so it seems very obvious and yet
- 2:20Speaker 4: somehow mysterious about what is the big deal about the
- 2:25Speaker 4: return of the light.
- 2:28Speaker 2: And I guess just to sort of put this out
- 2:30Speaker 2: at the beginning, we are obviously thinking about the winter
- 2:33Speaker 2: solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. Our listeners in Australia... and elsewhere, uh,
- 2:41Speaker 2: down there. And in, uh, in, in South America, we'll
- 2:44Speaker 2: be experiencing something very different this time of year. They'll
- 2:48Speaker 2: experience the return of the light six months from now. But, um,
- 2:53Speaker 2: our frame of reference, of course, is the Northern hemisphere.
- 3:00Speaker 3: So, um, I thought, let's just think about what the
- 3:04Speaker 3: solstice is, um, astronomically, um, So the Earth orbits around
- 3:12Speaker 3: the Sun, and the solstice occurs twice a year, and
- 3:17Speaker 3: it's marked by the longest and shortest days of the year.
- 3:19Speaker 3: And this happens because the Earth's axis is tilted as
- 3:24Speaker 3: it moves around the Sun. So this occurs when one
- 3:28Speaker 3: of the Earth's poles has its maximum tilt towards the Sun,
- 3:33Speaker 3: and this happens around June 21st. and December 21st, at
- 3:37Speaker 3: least in the northern hemisphere where we are. So, because
- 3:42Speaker 3: of this particular tilt, we have, as is going to
- 3:46Speaker 3: happen shortly for us, the shortest day of the year.
- 3:50Speaker 3: And I think in all cultures, recorded history has given
- 3:56Speaker 3: us a sense of this, that the shortening of the
- 4:00Speaker 3: days and the lengthening of the nights carries this... kind
- 4:05Speaker 3: of spectacular psychological process. And there's a great projection that
- 4:14Speaker 3: human beings have made upon the great lengthening of the night,
- 4:18Speaker 3: which since ancient times has been also the most dangerous
- 4:24Speaker 3: part of our time, that as human beings, we are
- 4:29Speaker 3: more vulnerable at night. We don't see at night. We
- 4:33Speaker 3: can't defend ourselves at night. We can't predict what's going
- 4:37Speaker 3: to happen, you know, in the pitch black night. And
- 4:41Speaker 3: so understandably, there's an enormous feeling about that.
- 4:45Speaker 5: Yeah.
- 4:46Speaker 4: There's an inherent human fear of the dark.
- 4:55Speaker 2: Joseph, you said it was a projection and I, I,
- 4:58Speaker 2: get what you're saying. But I think also, as we're
- 5:01Speaker 2: all saying, it's not just a projection. It is a
- 5:05Speaker 2: sort of very embodied primordial experience of a kind of death.
- 5:13Speaker 2: And it's the lengthening of the night. And that it
- 5:17Speaker 2: gets colder and the growing cycle shuts down and animals hibernate.
- 5:23Speaker 2: So it's really embodied. a kind of embodied experience. I
- 5:28Speaker 2: think even as moderns, we, we are not in touch
- 5:31Speaker 2: with that as much. Uh, but, but even so, I
- 5:36Speaker 2: think there's an echo of it in our bodies. I mean, uh,
- 5:39Speaker 2: you know, I think seasonal affective disorder is a, is
- 5:43Speaker 2: a echo of that.
- 5:45Speaker 3: Maybe.
- 5:47Speaker 4: Yeah. No, absolutely. And kids are afraid of the dark. Uh,
- 5:53Speaker 4: you know, I know, uh, My oldest first grandchild would
- 5:58Speaker 4: not go down into the basement of when we lived
- 6:02Speaker 4: in a brownstone in Brooklyn. And this is a full basement.
- 6:07Speaker 4: That's where my office was. It was not some sort
- 6:10Speaker 4: of dank place with spider webs.
- 6:14Speaker 6: It was beautiful. I saw it.
- 6:17Speaker 4: But she would not go. She would not go down there.
- 6:21Speaker 4: And I think the dark psychologically is such a great
- 6:26Speaker 4: representation of the unconscious. It's deep, and it's vast, and
- 6:32Speaker 4: it's embodied, and it's what we don't know. And we
- 6:40Speaker 4: have good reason, I think, from an evolutionary perspective, to
- 6:43Speaker 4: fear all kinds of things happening in the dark, that
- 6:47Speaker 4: there are predators in the dark. And so it is,
- 6:52Speaker 4: as you were saying, Lisa, it's deeply instinctual. And these
- 6:56Speaker 4: are the dark days. These are the dark days of
- 6:59Speaker 4: the here, when we sink into the unconscious, and who
- 7:05Speaker 4: knows what can happen in the unconscious. This is also,
- 7:10Speaker 4: I'm just thinking, not that far back, these were also
- 7:17Speaker 4: called the famine months. because the harvest had long since
- 7:22Speaker 4: been harvested. So you're running out of fresh food. A
- 7:27Speaker 4: lot of the animals would be slaughtered, so there was
- 7:30Speaker 4: meat for the winter, and some, no doubt, were preserved
- 7:34Speaker 4: so that they could reproduce. But it was a difficult
- 7:40Speaker 4: time of the year, and sometimes people starved.
- 7:44Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- 7:47Speaker 2: I can remember in college as a young adult, you know,
- 7:51Speaker 2: this is a tough time of year if you're a
- 7:54Speaker 2: college student, at least for me it was, because, you know,
- 7:58Speaker 2: it's dark, it's cold, and of course it's exam time.
- 8:01Speaker 2: So stress is really high and it's, you know, it's
- 8:06Speaker 2: these winter exams, not the, you know, at least the
- 8:10Speaker 2: summer ones, you're sort of like, you know, there's a
- 8:12Speaker 2: sense of culmination or you're going to have a summer afterwards,
- 8:15Speaker 2: but no, this is just This is just really hard.
- 8:18Speaker 2: And I, I would, I would get, it happened several
- 8:21Speaker 2: years in a row where I would get very low
- 8:24Speaker 2: and then I'd suddenly realize, oh my God, it's, you know,
- 8:27Speaker 2: December 20th or it's December 21st. And I would note
- 8:31Speaker 2: that my, my very low mood coincided with the darkest
- 8:35Speaker 2: day of the year or thereabouts, you know, close enough.
- 8:40Speaker 6: So I think, I think we, our bodies know.
- 8:42Speaker 2: Oh, yes.
- 8:43Speaker 3: Yes.
- 8:45Speaker 4: I think our bodies know, too. We've spent, I don't
- 8:49Speaker 4: know how many millennia, living in nature and close to nature.
- 8:55Speaker 4: And it's hard for us in modern times with high-rise
- 8:59Speaker 4: buildings and electricity and all kinds of things to remember
- 9:04Speaker 4: how deeply embedded in the calendar year and in nature's
- 9:10Speaker 4: cycles we really are. And you referenced seasonal affective disorder.
- 9:16Speaker 4: And part of me really wonders if we have given
- 9:22Speaker 4: something a negative label that is also very deeply embedded
- 9:28Speaker 4: in us, that we have a body cycle that tends
- 9:34Speaker 4: to slow down. We want to sleep more. We make
- 9:37Speaker 4: more melatonin when the days get dark. And of course,
- 9:44Speaker 4: it can plunge some people into a terrible depressive state.
- 9:49Speaker 4: But we still live according to nature's rhythms and timing,
- 9:55Speaker 4: even though we tend to forget it.
- 10:00Speaker 3: And interestingly, the idea that there's more melatonin that's produced
- 10:04Speaker 3: is that melatonin suppresses sexual androgens. So it prevents animals
- 10:10Speaker 3: in the woods from breeding. are giving birth during a
- 10:15Speaker 3: time of the year that's very, very difficult to survive
- 10:18Speaker 3: and food sources are very low. So that shift of
- 10:23Speaker 3: testosterone and estrogen also is an enormous effect on people's moods,
- 10:27Speaker 3: their energy levels, et cetera. So I think as you're saying,
- 10:31Speaker 3: this response that our brains have to the amount of
- 10:36Speaker 3: light that we see, suggests that we are so profoundly
- 10:42Speaker 3: attuned to the lengths of the days and the nights
- 10:47Speaker 3: and how it affects us so deeply. And there's a
- 10:52Speaker 3: way in which our whole survival, physically and psychically, has
- 10:56Speaker 3: something to do with this idea of how much light
- 11:00Speaker 3: and how much darkness there is. From that standpoint, with
- 11:06Speaker 3: the approach of winter, we know that, at least historically,
- 11:09Speaker 3: in harsher climates in the north, that the life retreats
- 11:14Speaker 3: from above the earth and it goes down into the roots.
- 11:20Speaker 3: And this is part of also the Persephone and Demeter cycle.
- 11:25Speaker 3: That Persephone who is associated with spring and flowering and
- 11:29Speaker 3: fruiting is drawn down into the earth and that there
- 11:34Speaker 3: is a secret life that is occurring underneath the earth
- 11:40Speaker 3: Demeter is grieving, and so the plants go into stasis,
- 11:44Speaker 3: and animals hibernate, and food. As you were saying, Deb,
- 11:48Speaker 3: it's the famine time. The abundance is less. But I
- 11:53Speaker 3: think the Persephone myth is letting us know that in
- 11:55Speaker 3: the underworld, there is this enormous churning life that is occurring.
- 12:03Speaker 3: In the Eleusinian mysteries, this was a very, very important
- 12:07Speaker 3: part of that religious process of going under the earth
- 12:12Speaker 3: as a kind of death and coming back up to
- 12:17Speaker 3: the daylight as a part of rebirth. And the Persephone myth,
- 12:23Speaker 3: I believe, was part of the mythology of the Eleusinian mysteries.
- 12:30Speaker 3: So what does that mean psychologically? If we were to
- 12:34Speaker 3: rest into the wintering process, What might that look like
- 12:40Speaker 3: for each of us?
- 12:43Speaker 4: I really like that phrase, rest into the wintering. And
- 12:51Speaker 4: for me, it's evocative of, you know, can we use
- 12:56Speaker 4: it for rest intentionally, a slowing down, self-reflection, quietude? And gestation,
- 13:12Speaker 4: even though this wasn't a time for animals to regenerate,
- 13:16Speaker 4: something clearly happened for Persephone when she was in the underworld.
- 13:21Speaker 4: She went down as a maiden and she came out
- 13:26Speaker 4: as queen of the underworld. So how do we rest
- 13:33Speaker 4: into this time of year and use it to become more,
- 13:39Speaker 4: use it for some kind of inner growth rather than
- 13:44Speaker 4: a barren and difficult time. It can be barren, difficult,
- 13:51Speaker 4: and fuel.
- 13:53Speaker 2: For growth all at the same time. Well, Deb, your
- 13:57Speaker 2: reference to gestation brings up another image for me, and
- 14:02Speaker 2: that is the image of the bear. Now I might
- 14:06Speaker 2: get some of this wrong. So if there's any bear
- 14:08Speaker 2: biologists listening, you can write in and correct me, but
- 14:11Speaker 2: I believe that bears birth their cubs maybe toward the
- 14:15Speaker 2: end of their hibernation. So they emerge in the spring
- 14:19Speaker 2: with these new cubs. And that's, that's part of why they, they, that,
- 14:23Speaker 2: that was part of their kind of mythological significance is
- 14:28Speaker 2: that they, they, they go into hibernation in a kind
- 14:31Speaker 2: of an, a sort of death like state. but emerge
- 14:36Speaker 2: with new life. And, and I think that speaks to what.
- 14:39Speaker 6: You were saying.
- 14:40Speaker 2: And I, you know, so, so this is very, uh,
- 14:43Speaker 2: unusual for us to think about how can I turn
- 14:47Speaker 2: toward the darkness? How can I use the darkness as
- 14:52Speaker 2: a place for gestation and renewal and find that life
- 14:55Speaker 2: in the roots that you talked about, Joseph, which in
- 14:59Speaker 2: some sense, you know, um, getting a, um, some special
- 15:05Speaker 2: light and sitting underneath it for 20 minutes a day.
- 15:08Speaker 2: I mean, if it helps, that's great. On a symbolic level,
- 15:13Speaker 2: that's kind of an image of a manic defense, right?
- 15:16Speaker 2: And I'm not suggesting to anyone who finds that helpful
- 15:18Speaker 2: not to do it, but that we're going to artificially
- 15:22Speaker 2: impose light where there isn't any and force ourselves to
- 15:30Speaker 2: operate as if rather than honoring the natural cycles and
- 15:35Speaker 2: using it as a time to maybe inhabit a low
- 15:39Speaker 2: place and see what there might be for us there.
- 15:43Speaker 2: You know, there, there is wisdom in, um, there is
- 15:51Speaker 2: wisdom in darkness. There is wisdom sometimes in depression.
- 15:59Speaker 3: One of the great, uh, benefits, I think, of the
- 16:02Speaker 3: wintering is spending more time paying attention to our dreams.
- 16:09Speaker 3: Just quite literally. We're not outside. We're not mowing the lawn.
- 16:15Speaker 3: We're not doing a lot of the outdoor sports we
- 16:18Speaker 3: might have done during the spring, the summer, and the fall.
- 16:22Speaker 3: So there's this retreat towards the hearth fire. There's a
- 16:26Speaker 3: retreat towards the sleeping. And being liberated from a lot
- 16:31Speaker 3: of the summer outdoor expansive dynamics, you know, this is
- 16:38Speaker 3: a time to linger in bed for 20 more minutes
- 16:42Speaker 3: and try to remember the dream or to have a
- 16:44Speaker 3: little more time to jot it down or ponder it.
- 16:50Speaker 3: And I associate that very much with hibernating. I have
- 16:54Speaker 3: to say that I have, ever since I was a kid,
- 16:57Speaker 3: I found the whole, The whole thing of bears hibernating, astounding. Okay.
- 17:05Speaker 3: I mean, just like their bodies recycle their water, like
- 17:10Speaker 3: their kidneys create this uroboric cycle where their fluids move
- 17:18Speaker 3: in and out and they don't need to eat. They're
- 17:21Speaker 3: barely awake. Mother bears give birth when they're hibernating. They're
- 17:25Speaker 3: really almost asleep. When it happens and then the babies
- 17:29Speaker 3: kind of crawl up and start suckling, I mean, it's
- 17:34Speaker 3: an astounding thing. But when I imagine the hibernating mother
- 17:41Speaker 3: giving birth and suckling to the cubs under the ground,
- 17:46Speaker 3: it gives us this extraordinary image of new life that
- 17:52Speaker 3: is emerging and being nurtured.
- 17:55Speaker 4: Yeah, that the life force is underground.
- 18:00Speaker 3: But it is darn active. It might be sleepy. It
- 18:03Speaker 3: might be subtle. But there's a lot going on. So dreaming, journaling, yeah. Yes.
- 18:13Speaker 3: Go ahead.
- 18:14Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
- 18:14Speaker 2: I was just going to say some of this is
- 18:15Speaker 2: reminding me of Stan Marlin's book, The Black Sun, The
- 18:19Speaker 2: Alchemy and Art of Darkness. Yes. So this idea of
- 18:26Speaker 2: a kind of pregnant darkness that's fertile. It's not jubilant.
- 18:33Speaker 2: It's dark and it's heavy, but there's something fertile in it.
- 18:37Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 18:42Speaker 4: That's the mystery. I'm linking this with a Persephone myth
- 18:49Speaker 4: that you mentioned, Joseph, and with bears. of the mystery
- 18:54Speaker 4: of how life generates in the dark, in the womb,
- 19:01Speaker 4: in a bear, in the underground, where we don't know
- 19:06Speaker 4: and we can't see, and yet something moves us to
- 19:13Speaker 4: create new life, literally, in the case of bears, and psychologically.
- 19:21Speaker 4: in the case of us, that the underground and the
- 19:26Speaker 4: dark days represent the unconscious versus ego and solar, sun, light, spring, activity.
- 19:38Speaker 4: And understandably enough, we like that. And yet half our time,
- 19:47Speaker 4: more or less, is more dark than light. Must be
- 19:51Speaker 4: useful somehow.
- 19:52Speaker 3: And you had mentioned melatonin. Very interesting. Melatonin is generated
- 20:02Speaker 3: in the pineal gland. The pineal gland is the gland
- 20:06Speaker 3: in the center of the head that is associated with
- 20:09Speaker 3: this tracking of the light. It's also associated in many
- 20:14Speaker 3: yogic traditions with enlightenment, light, enlightenment, that these subtle changes
- 20:21Speaker 3: in the pineal gland as a result of meditative practices
- 20:25Speaker 3: and yoga actually changes how the brain functions so that
- 20:30Speaker 3: we can become aware of altered states of consciousness that
- 20:37Speaker 3: are particularly associated with spirituality and a kind of spirituality
- 20:42Speaker 3: that grants an experience of the unity of all life,
- 20:47Speaker 3: which is such an interesting irony that we associate the
- 20:50Speaker 3: wintering with the withdrawal of life. And yet melatonin and
- 20:56Speaker 3: dreaming and these altered states give us an opportunity to
- 21:00Speaker 3: expand beyond our limits. And so in the darkness, and
- 21:07Speaker 3: in the privacy of the darkness, that we can grant
- 21:10Speaker 3: ourselves permission to at least conceptually move beyond our current limits.
- 21:17Speaker 3: And that has something to do with that shift out
- 21:19Speaker 3: of ego consciousness, because it's the ego that says, here's
- 21:22Speaker 3: the schedule. We're up at 7, we're at work by 8.30,
- 21:25Speaker 3: I'm coming home at the end, then I've got this
- 21:27Speaker 3: to do, and this to do, and this to do,
- 21:28Speaker 3: and he's there. And in the wintering, when certain things
- 21:33Speaker 3: are taken off our plate, or at least it might
- 21:35Speaker 3: have been when we were in agrarian culture, you know,
- 21:38Speaker 3: working in the fields, there's this opportunity to expand in
- 21:42Speaker 3: the inner world, which in many ways is far, far
- 21:48Speaker 3: broader than what our waking consciousness would have thought. So
- 21:53Speaker 3: that time of poetry and even religious feeling, So around
- 22:01Speaker 3: the solstice, we also have to talk about the idea
- 22:04Speaker 3: of the birth of the great saviors. Yes. So, of course,
- 22:11Speaker 3: the birth of Jesus happening right around this time, which
- 22:17Speaker 3: makes sense that in the darkest metaphysical time of the
- 22:22Speaker 3: human soul, that there needs to be this enormous response,
- 22:27Speaker 3: spiritual response.
- 22:28Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
- 22:29Speaker 3: So that there is something in the human soul that
- 22:32Speaker 3: can stand against the darkness and not be consumed by it.
- 22:37Speaker 3: And this goes to the ambivalence about the unconscious, that
- 22:42Speaker 3: if the ego is intact, much like Persephone, we can
- 22:47Speaker 3: go into the underworld and return with a sense of
- 22:50Speaker 3: potency and maturity. But if the ego is immature, and
- 22:56Speaker 3: we become engulfed by the unconscious, then we are subject
- 22:59Speaker 3: to savagery and chaos and impulses that can be remarkably
- 23:07Speaker 3: destructive and self-destructive. So it's not a sure bet to
- 23:12Speaker 3: be swimming around in the unconscious.
- 23:14Speaker 6: No, it's not.
- 23:15Speaker 3: So I think in the Christian mythos, Christ being born
- 23:20Speaker 3: here at the solstice is this hope. that consciousness can
- 23:26Speaker 3: stand against these destructive unconscious impulses, that there is a
- 23:32Speaker 3: new civility, there is a birth of mercy, which is
- 23:37Speaker 3: a uniquely human trait, because it is a decision to
- 23:46Speaker 3: stand against our purely instinctive survival impulses and to consider
- 23:54Speaker 3: something that The environment itself might not suggest that mercy
- 24:03Speaker 3: is a transcendent consideration. And so we have the idea
- 24:09Speaker 3: of redemption. And to be redeemed is an intervention, a
- 24:18Speaker 3: restoration from beyond that purely instinctive realm.
- 24:24Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 24:25Speaker 3: Into a philosophic consideration.
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- 25:34Speaker 4: I'm thinking about how incredibly reassuring it is that restoration
- 25:43Speaker 4: is promised. that at the darkest hour, there's a dawn,
- 25:52Speaker 4: to invoke some old trope, even if I'm paraphrasing it,
- 25:59Speaker 4: that there is light in the dark, and that that's
- 26:05Speaker 4: a promise. I also like very much you referencing that
- 26:13Speaker 4: ego has to be able to stand and hold its
- 26:19Speaker 4: own against the dark. But to have a separate space,
- 26:27Speaker 4: to be able to stay intact, not to fight it,
- 26:34Speaker 4: but to somehow use it, to somehow maintain its own integrity.
- 26:41Speaker 4: And I have often wondered, you know, what was it
- 26:45Speaker 4: that Persephone did all day while she was down there
- 26:48Speaker 4: in the underworld? You know, at first she had to
- 26:51Speaker 4: sort of survive the trauma of her terrible abduction by Hades.
- 26:57Speaker 4: But then she was down there for, different myths give
- 27:00Speaker 4: different timelines, but let's say four or five months. And
- 27:05Speaker 4: did she wander around in the tunnels? Did she meet
- 27:08Speaker 4: the wise man Tiresias and have conversations with him, what
- 27:13Speaker 4: kinds of treasures did she discover, but something happened that
- 27:18Speaker 4: when she emerged, she was queen of the underworld, and
- 27:22Speaker 4: she had incredible magical powers. And I think it's a
- 27:30Speaker 4: wonderful image of how the darkness and the gleam of
- 27:38Speaker 4: light of the solstice of it just turning into slightly
- 27:42Speaker 4: more light can be inspirational and can help us stand separate, differentiated,
- 27:52Speaker 4: and conscious in the face of darkness.
- 27:56Speaker 3: So, leaning into the Persephone myth a little bit, is
- 28:00Speaker 3: one of the things that happens to Persephone is that
- 28:03Speaker 3: she discovers her fertility. We know that when she was
- 28:07Speaker 3: in the underworld that Hades gave her some pomegranate seeds
- 28:12Speaker 3: to eat. And any of us that have cut into
- 28:15Speaker 3: a pomegranate, I mean, what happens is that the blood
- 28:18Speaker 3: red juice begins to flow. So to eat the pomegranate
- 28:23Speaker 3: is also for her transition to move out of the child,
- 28:27Speaker 3: the core, into fertility. Freud called that prepubescent stage latency.
- 28:36Speaker 3: So it's in the mystery of the darkness that we
- 28:39Speaker 3: move from being childlike into being fertile. And of course,
- 28:46Speaker 3: that changes her status, that she is no longer the little,
- 28:50Speaker 3: little child of Demeter, but that she is a fertile
- 28:54Speaker 3: human soul. And so it often is in the darkness
- 28:58Speaker 3: that we discover that we are fertile, that there are
- 29:03Speaker 3: things that we can give birth to, like the bear,
- 29:05Speaker 3: or that Persephone, there is a menses cycle that begins
- 29:11Speaker 3: in her own fertility and the power of being fertile
- 29:15Speaker 3: is restored to her or granted to her rather in
- 29:18Speaker 3: the darkness.
- 29:20Speaker 2: Well, and the, the kind of climb climax of the
- 29:25Speaker 2: Eleusinian mysteries, apparently, I mean, we don't really know cause
- 29:28Speaker 2: the secrets were well guarded, but it was, you know,
- 29:31Speaker 2: that Persephone would appear and she would have become.
- 29:36Speaker 6: A mother So.
- 29:38Speaker 2: I think there was a cry like Brimo has become
- 29:42Speaker 2: Brimos or something like that. And so that goes exactly
- 29:49Speaker 2: to what you're saying that, you know, while Persephone was
- 29:51Speaker 2: hibernating down there, she became generative. And that was the
- 29:57Speaker 2: transformation that happened. So she returns, but she's different. It's
- 30:02Speaker 2: not a restoration of what was there prior. There's been
- 30:07Speaker 2: some change.
- 30:08Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 30:09Speaker 4: Development.
- 30:11Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
- 30:11Speaker 3: And I believe in one of the myths that she
- 30:14Speaker 3: is pregnant with Dionysus. She is one of the mothers
- 30:18Speaker 3: of Dionysus. Yep. Again, all of these extraordinary secrets that
- 30:25Speaker 3: happen in the dark. The other myth that I think
- 30:29Speaker 3: is relevant is the myth of Isis and Osiris. Isis
- 30:37Speaker 3: and Osiris are really the daytime gods and goddesses. They
- 30:43Speaker 3: teach winemaking and harvesting and the cultivation of wheat and culture.
- 30:50Speaker 3: and beauty and all of these kinds of products of
- 30:53Speaker 3: ego innovation. Seth, or Set, who is the envious brother
- 31:00Speaker 3: of Osiris, who is associated with the darkness, with the solstice,
- 31:07Speaker 3: with the underworld, grabs hold of Osiris and chops him
- 31:12Speaker 3: into pieces and scatters him all around. And so there
- 31:16Speaker 3: is this intractable problem that all of this luminous potential
- 31:22Speaker 3: is now lost. And Isis decides that the one who
- 31:30Speaker 3: can solve the problem is the sun, Ra. But she
- 31:36Speaker 3: has to trick Ra into giving her the secret of resurrection,
- 31:42Speaker 3: because the sun would seem to set in the west,
- 31:46Speaker 3: Travel in some magical way through the darkness and be
- 31:51Speaker 3: reborn in the East. And so she sets a serpent
- 31:56Speaker 3: into the path. So when Ra passes, the serpent bites
- 32:00Speaker 3: him and he becomes deathly ill. And Isis happens along
- 32:04Speaker 3: and says, well, you know, I do have a cure
- 32:08Speaker 3: for this viper that's bitten you. But in order for
- 32:12Speaker 3: me to want to give that to you, you have
- 32:15Speaker 3: to give me the secret of your true name. Because
- 32:20Speaker 3: if you have the true name of something, then you
- 32:23Speaker 3: have all of the secrets and power of the one
- 32:27Speaker 3: who has given you the name. Sarah hems and haws,
- 32:31Speaker 3: but eventually says, okay, here's my secret name. And then
- 32:35Speaker 3: having the secret name, she then has the secret of resurrection,
- 32:40Speaker 3: which she then uses to resurrect Osiris. but he is
- 32:45Speaker 3: resurrected in the underworld. And he is sewn together. She
- 32:51Speaker 3: is impregnated by him. But in the outer world of daylight,
- 32:57Speaker 3: he is a mummy. But in the underworld, he is
- 33:02Speaker 3: brilliant green. And the green is associated with having come
- 33:07Speaker 3: full of life. So he rules. over the living and
- 33:14Speaker 3: the dead, and he judges the dead as to their
- 33:18Speaker 3: fitness to go into everlasting life. We may recognize that
- 33:23Speaker 3: theme in other religions, by the way, so interestingly.
- 33:28Speaker 2: That was beautiful, Joseph. You know, talking about how these
- 33:34Speaker 2: themes recur, one of the things that strikes me about
- 33:38Speaker 2: solstice celebrations the world over is is how many of
- 33:42Speaker 2: them have light as their theme. Of course, you know,
- 33:47Speaker 2: Christmas time we associate with, you know, candles and fireplaces
- 33:51Speaker 2: and Christmas lights. And it's fun to drive around and
- 33:55Speaker 2: see how, you know, what decorations, what lights, light displays.
- 33:59Speaker 2: We go to light displays and there's a really beautiful
- 34:04Speaker 2: one at Longwood Gardens, not too far from me. And,
- 34:07Speaker 2: you know, Christmas is a lot about light. And of course,
- 34:11Speaker 2: Hanukkah has a very different origin story, but the important imagery, uh,
- 34:16Speaker 2: or some of the important imagery is the menorah and
- 34:18Speaker 2: the lighting of the candles and the feast of, um,
- 34:22Speaker 2: Santa Lucia in, in, um, Scandinavia, which, uh, was originally, um, uh,
- 34:30Speaker 2: you know, pagan. It was associated with Norse traditions. I mean, the, the,
- 34:35Speaker 2: the classic thing, and they actually still do this at
- 34:38Speaker 2: a Swedish church here in Philadelphia.
- 34:40Speaker 6: They, um, the girls.
- 34:42Speaker 2: Actually wear lit candles on their heads. I've, I've been
- 34:48Speaker 2: to the service here. There are people along the aisles
- 34:50Speaker 2: with buckets of water, but, um.
- 34:56Speaker 4: Practical matter.
- 34:58Speaker 6: Yes.
- 35:01Speaker 2: It is, it is very beautiful. So, uh, um, but,
- 35:05Speaker 2: but in, in, in the Norse times, um, There would
- 35:12Speaker 2: be lighting of fires to ward off spirits during the
- 35:15Speaker 2: dark nights. Yalda is a Mithraic solstice tradition that still
- 35:25Speaker 2: is practiced in Iran. And it was the birth of
- 35:29Speaker 2: the sun god Mithra also. And it was seen as
- 35:35Speaker 2: the victory of the light over the dark. So just
- 35:39Speaker 2: again and again and again, um, there are images of
- 35:43Speaker 2: light this time of year. And I, I think it
- 35:46Speaker 2: goes to, we were talking about how embodied this experience.
- 35:50Speaker 6: Is of solstice. It's also, so it's instinctual.
- 35:53Speaker 2: And of course it's also archetypal and the, the archetype
- 35:57Speaker 2: of the return of the light or the, the, the resurrection,
- 36:01Speaker 2: if you will, or the rebirth, whether it's, um, Mithra
- 36:06Speaker 2: or Persephone or, you know, Christ, that something gets reborn
- 36:12Speaker 2: this time of year. And, you know, I can, again,
- 36:15Speaker 2: I can feel it. I have a sense of relief
- 36:19Speaker 2: on December 21st because what I know is that December
- 36:22Speaker 2: 22nd is going to be a little bit longer. And
- 36:26Speaker 2: I can sort of feel that in my body.
- 36:29Speaker 4: So, What I'm thinking about is the Jungian term, one
- 36:36Speaker 4: of the first mysterious ones I came across, of enantiodromia.
- 36:43Speaker 4: And when I first started in a Jungian seminar about
- 36:47Speaker 4: 150 years ago, I came across this word, and I
- 36:54Speaker 4: remember I was so enthusiastic, and I, somehow had some
- 36:59Speaker 4: other question for the seminar leader. And I said, do
- 37:04Speaker 4: you know what this word means? And he said, yes.
- 37:14Speaker 4: But it's such a great word. And as I understand it,
- 37:19Speaker 4: it's not the swinging of the pendulum. You know that
- 37:22Speaker 4: the pendulum swings one way and then the compensatory force
- 37:27Speaker 4: will be It swings back the other way. But it
- 37:30Speaker 4: is what we're talking about, that the mystery is that
- 37:34Speaker 4: somehow the opposite is born. So that in the darkness,
- 37:43Speaker 4: the darkness itself gives way, gestates, yields to, creates its opposite.
- 37:50Speaker 3: Right.
- 37:54Speaker 4: And I think that's embedded in a lot of what
- 37:57Speaker 4: we've been talking about, that, you know, how did Persephone
- 38:00Speaker 4: become queen of the underworld? You know, that there is
- 38:04Speaker 4: the mystery of gestation, whether it's bears or, you know,
- 38:09Speaker 4: the birth of the magical savior child at this time
- 38:14Speaker 4: of year. And that's the joy, I think, and the
- 38:19Speaker 4: promise of is that light will be born of the dark.
- 38:27Speaker 3: And part of the good cheer of this time is
- 38:32Speaker 3: also captured in the Saturnalia of the Roman world.
- 38:37Speaker 4: Yes.
- 38:39Speaker 3: For all the bad press that Saturn gets for other reasons,
- 38:43Speaker 3: apparently when Saturn ruled the ancient world, it was the
- 38:47Speaker 3: golden time of humanity. that it was the best time,
- 38:53Speaker 3: the most prosperous time culturally in terms of resources. And
- 38:58Speaker 3: then Jupiter overthrew Saturn and all this turbulence started happening.
- 39:04Speaker 3: But the Saturnalia has to do with the harvest. And
- 39:09Speaker 3: in December, really, there still are food stocks. The fields
- 39:15Speaker 3: have finally been... claimed all of the fruits, all of
- 39:20Speaker 3: the pumpkins and squash and everything else, and there's still
- 39:23Speaker 3: meat in the larder. And during the Saturnalia, there is
- 39:28Speaker 3: this great celebration. of the abundance of the fall. And
- 39:34Speaker 3: people would walk along the streets and they would say, Sigillaria,
- 39:39Speaker 3: which is basically Merry Christmas. Yeah. Good abundance. This is
- 39:47Speaker 3: the golden moment where we get to cease the outer
- 39:52Speaker 3: work in feast and trust in the goodness of the gods.
- 39:58Speaker 3: So that wonderful greening, good cheer that we associate with
- 40:05Speaker 3: the solstice and Christmas.
- 40:07Speaker 6: Thinking of the ghost of Christmas present.
- 40:10Speaker 3: Yes. Santa Claus, who was another.
- 40:13Speaker 6: Yes.
- 40:13Speaker 3: Dr. Nalia, you know.
- 40:15Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 40:16Speaker 4: And in those times, the drinking and feasting was, you know,
- 40:22Speaker 4: a time of the famine months. You would compensate by
- 40:27Speaker 4: drinking and gambling and carousing and, you know, having abundance until...
- 40:36Speaker 4: There would be gift-giving and all kinds of things. And
- 40:43Speaker 4: then the Protestant Reformation happened.
- 40:45Speaker 2: Oops.
- 40:47Speaker 3: All the dour contraction.
- 40:53Speaker 4: And then it became, they tried to change it into
- 40:58Speaker 4: a religious holiday, a more sober and solemn one. And
- 41:04Speaker 4: Charles Dickens, you just referenced a Christmas carol, Lisa. And
- 41:09Speaker 4: his effort was to make it a family holiday. So
- 41:14Speaker 4: to preserve the joyfulness of it without going into the
- 41:20Speaker 4: Saturnalia of Roman times and beyond. But that sounds like fun,
- 41:27Speaker 4: doesn't it? I mean, there's been definite revival of that
- 41:32Speaker 4: in modern times.
- 41:35Speaker 3: And we also need to think about the myth of
- 41:38Speaker 3: Attis and Cabal in as much as Cabal is the ancient, ancient,
- 41:44Speaker 3: ancient birth goddess, pre-Greek, pre-Roman. She gives birth to, as
- 41:53Speaker 3: often happens, her son, who becomes her first high priest,
- 41:57Speaker 3: and her lover as well. The gods often fertilizing each other.
- 42:03Speaker 3: And Attis gets into this enormous conflict of whether he
- 42:08Speaker 3: should serve the goddess or fall in love with one
- 42:10Speaker 3: of the village girls, this intractable problem he cannot solve.
- 42:18Speaker 3: He rushes into the forest and castrates himself. And as
- 42:24Speaker 3: he is bleeding to death, his blood strikes the ground,
- 42:28Speaker 3: and the ground erupts in violence. Hebel senses that something
- 42:35Speaker 3: tragic has happened and rushes to him to save his life,
- 42:39Speaker 3: turns him into the first evergreen tree. And so the
- 42:45Speaker 3: solstice is also the time of the harvesting of the
- 42:49Speaker 3: evergreen tree. They would entomb the tree, dress it like Attis,
- 42:54Speaker 3: and then bring it from the earth in the spring.
- 42:58Speaker 3: But evergreen trees for Attis and Ivy, for Dionysus, because
- 43:05Speaker 3: as anybody knows, if you've got English ivy growing in
- 43:07Speaker 3: your yard, it never goes away.
- 43:10Speaker 5: You can mow it down, you can spray Roundup on it,
- 43:14Speaker 5: you can pull it out, and the next thing, you
- 43:17Speaker 5: turn around and the ivy's growing out of the ground again.
- 43:19Speaker 5: But it is this irrepressible, evergreen life that the winter
- 43:27Speaker 5: and the solstice and the darkness cannot destroy. So the
- 43:32Speaker 5: evergreen foliage, the rising of the sun, the fertilizing energy
- 43:38Speaker 5: of the dark, the birth of the bears, the pregnancy
- 43:43Speaker 5: of Persephone, all of the life in Hades.
- 43:47Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 43:51Speaker 6: It's the promise of continued life.
- 43:54Speaker 3: Yes.
- 43:56Speaker 4: I didn't know that that had been born of the
- 43:58Speaker 4: legend of Addison Cabell. But funny, I came across pine
- 44:04Speaker 4: tree also as the symbol of long life and immortality
- 44:10Speaker 4: and constantly constancy, courage, and steadfastness, which takes me back
- 44:17Speaker 4: to what you were saying earlier about ego's ability to
- 44:22Speaker 4: stand against, stand in the darkness with that evergreen of
- 44:33Speaker 4: the pine tree, that we can be there. And of course,
- 44:40Speaker 4: the Puritans, I mean, they were in the 1840s, this
- 44:44Speaker 4: was a real no-no that Christmas was sacred and We're
- 44:49Speaker 4: not doing this Christmas tree thing, which fortunately has. But
- 44:57Speaker 4: you see, but there it is, the power of the symbol,
- 45:01Speaker 4: even if you don't know the story.
- 45:02Speaker 6: That's right.
- 45:04Speaker 4: You know you want a pine tree. You know you
- 45:08Speaker 4: want the light. You want that tree.
- 45:12Speaker 2: Yeah, there's something about the tree with the lights on it, right?
- 45:16Speaker 2: I mean, I know it speaks to us, again, at
- 45:18Speaker 2: the level of the archetype. And so even if you,
- 45:21Speaker 2: you know, many people who are not of the Christian
- 45:24Speaker 2: tradition or, you know, I mean, you know, we appreciate
- 45:29Speaker 2: the symbolism of that, I think, no matter what tradition
- 45:33Speaker 2: we're from.
- 45:34Speaker 3: Remind me here, Jung has a wonderful story I think
- 45:43Speaker 3: it comes from a dream where he realized that he
- 45:46Speaker 3: is holding this tiny candle of consciousness.
- 45:50Speaker 4: In the dark.
- 45:51Speaker 2: Remind me, where does he say that? That's in Memory
- 45:55Speaker 2: Streams Reflections.
- 45:58Speaker 3: Is that from a dream that he had?
- 46:00Speaker 2: It is. He had a dream that he was holding
- 46:03Speaker 2: a little candle in a storm and he had to
- 46:06Speaker 2: cup his hand around it to protect the light. And
- 46:10Speaker 2: I can probably find it pretty quickly if you like.
- 46:12Speaker 2: I'll look.
- 46:13Speaker 3: That'd be great if we can find that. But that
- 46:17Speaker 3: is Jung's solstice.
- 46:20Speaker 2: Yes.
- 46:21Speaker 4: The little light of ego that is able to stand
- 46:26Speaker 4: against the great darkness.
- 46:32Speaker 3: And that the whole great venture of Jungian analysis and
- 46:36Speaker 3: Jungian work is to kindle our flame higher against the darkness.
- 46:44Speaker 3: To be able to stand in the vast unconscious, to
- 46:47Speaker 3: stand against our complexes and the confusion of the darkness,
- 46:53Speaker 3: to stand against our nightmares, the misfortunes that we have,
- 46:58Speaker 3: and to trust that being conscious or kindling consciousness in
- 47:04Speaker 3: the face of these unpredictable unconscious forces is a path,
- 47:12Speaker 3: is a way to be. And that to extinguish the
- 47:17Speaker 3: light is to extinguish consciousness. And so much of our
- 47:22Speaker 3: venture here as we move towards the end of another
- 47:26Speaker 3: year of our podcast The great venture of our work
- 47:30Speaker 3: at This Jungian Life is to do what small part
- 47:33Speaker 3: we can to kindle consciousness, to recommend that book, to
- 47:38Speaker 3: encourage people to look at their dreams or interpret a
- 47:42Speaker 3: dream and hope that some little bit of light is
- 47:46Speaker 3: useful for the person who submitted their dream or for
- 47:50Speaker 3: people to join us in dream school and to meet
- 47:53Speaker 3: with other people and to kindle their light. in the
- 47:57Speaker 3: midst of the darkness.
- 48:01Speaker 4: And that the darkness helps us kindle our light. That's
- 48:05Speaker 4: the generative power of dreams, which we're forever talking about.
- 48:09Speaker 4: That psyche and the darkness, the unconscious, is generative.
- 48:18Speaker 6: Would you like to hear the dream?
- 48:21Speaker 3: Yes, let's do it. Okay.
- 48:23Speaker 2: So I believe that this was during his student years.
- 48:27Speaker 2: So it may have been when he was at university.
- 48:31Speaker 2: About this time, I had a dream which both frightened
- 48:33Speaker 2: and encouraged me. It was night in some unknown place,
- 48:37Speaker 2: and I was making slow and painful headway against a
- 48:40Speaker 2: mighty wind. Dense fog was flying along everywhere. I had
- 48:44Speaker 2: my hands cupped around a tiny light which threatened to
- 48:47Speaker 2: go out at any moment. Everything depended on my keeping
- 48:51Speaker 2: this little light alive. Suddenly, I had the feeling that
- 48:54Speaker 2: something was coming up behind me. I looked back and
- 48:57Speaker 2: saw a gigantic black figure following me. But at the
- 49:01Speaker 2: same moment, I was conscious, in spite of my terror,
- 49:03Speaker 2: that I must keep my little light going through night
- 49:06Speaker 2: and wind, regardless of all dangers. When I awoke, I
- 49:11Speaker 2: realized at once that the figure was a specter of
- 49:13Speaker 2: the Bracken, my own shadow on the swirling mists, brought
- 49:17Speaker 2: into being by the little light I was carrying. I knew, too,
- 49:21Speaker 2: that this little light was my consciousness, the only light
- 49:25Speaker 2: I have. My own understanding is the sole treasure I possess,
- 49:31Speaker 2: and the greatest. Though infinitely small and fragile in comparison
- 49:35Speaker 2: with the powers of darkness, it is still a light.
- 49:39Speaker 2: My only light. And that's memories, dreams, and reflections.
- 49:47Speaker 3: So what a discovery to be granted.
- 49:50Speaker 4: In a dream.
- 49:50Speaker 3: That even though the light of our consciousness may seem
- 49:56Speaker 3: small as we stand against all the mighty and terrible
- 50:01Speaker 3: storms that are in the world at this moment, collectively, geopolitically,
- 50:07Speaker 3: perhaps moving in our own personal lives, but that tending
- 50:12Speaker 3: our own consciousness is a response, even to the great
- 50:18Speaker 3: storms that are happening in the world, much of which
- 50:23Speaker 3: Jung attributed to human beings not being adequately conscious and
- 50:31Speaker 3: subjecting themselves to these collective thought groups, submitting to propaganda,
- 50:40Speaker 3: and yielding into the homogenizing diminishment of consciousness. And that's
- 50:49Speaker 3: the other side of the darkness is that in the darkness,
- 50:54Speaker 3: you cannot distinguish the difference between things. You can't tell
- 50:59Speaker 3: if something is blue or green or yellow or orange.
- 51:03Speaker 3: You can't see, perhaps depending on how dark it is,
- 51:06Speaker 3: you can't see at all that we're kind of groping
- 51:10Speaker 3: and maybe can get a vague sense of how things feel.
- 51:14Speaker 3: But when consciousness is diminished, God forbid extinguished, we are
- 51:21Speaker 3: much more vulnerable to illusion, to untruths, to being manipulated
- 51:28Speaker 3: by strange algorithms and social media, to be saturated by propaganda, etc.
- 51:35Speaker 4: etc.
- 51:37Speaker 3: It's the light of consciousness that allows us to discern
- 51:41Speaker 3: one thing from another and to walk with safety in
- 51:46Speaker 3: the darkness, even if the safety is only a small
- 51:49Speaker 3: circle of light that's just a foot in front of us.
- 51:53Speaker 3: But at least for that foot, you can see what's
- 51:55Speaker 3: around you.
- 51:56Speaker 6: Yeah.
- 51:58Speaker 4: I'm thinking about your phrase, the homogenization of consciousness.
- 52:06Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 52:07Speaker 4: You know, and how we turn some of these amazing
- 52:10Speaker 4: images like Jung's dream that I'm so glad you could
- 52:15Speaker 4: find it so fast, Lisa. But we turn it into
- 52:18Speaker 4: a little trope, you know, this little light of mine,
- 52:21Speaker 4: I'm going to let it shine, which is wonderful and
- 52:26Speaker 4: it's dear. But I'm picking up on your point, Joseph.
- 52:31Speaker 4: It is crucially important. That each one of us find
- 52:39Speaker 4: our inner light of consciousness and protect it and grow
- 52:43Speaker 4: it and stand in the darkness with it because change
- 52:48Speaker 4: is not going to come from any place except within
- 52:53Speaker 4: us first. And so it may seem like, oh gee whiz,
- 52:59Speaker 4: what can I do about all kinds of difficulties in family, community,
- 53:06Speaker 4: the world at large. But that dream of Jung's says
- 53:11Speaker 4: it beautifully, is protect and guard your light, and it
- 53:17Speaker 4: will let you see and sense your shadow behind you.
- 53:21Speaker 4: And that's meaningful. That matters. That's part of it.
- 53:27Speaker 3: And that the light had to be shielded. that our
- 53:32Speaker 3: consciousness is vulnerable, that we cannot watch terrible images on
- 53:40Speaker 3: the news for eight hours and expect our nervous system
- 53:44Speaker 3: to be just fine about it, to listen to the
- 53:50Speaker 3: propaganda of whatever agency, news agencies, we submit to hour
- 53:55Speaker 3: after hour after hour and expect our tiny little light
- 54:00Speaker 3: of consciousness to withstand the barrage of material that we're
- 54:07Speaker 3: given or that is blown upon us like a great wind.
- 54:12Speaker 3: Instead of the small insights that come from within us,
- 54:17Speaker 3: what do you think? Not what some news commentator thinks,
- 54:21Speaker 3: but what do you think? What do you perceive? What
- 54:25Speaker 3: do you sense is important? Do you feel it is important?
- 54:30Speaker 3: For you, in this enormous world where millions of things
- 54:37Speaker 3: are happening all the time, which brings us back to
- 54:40Speaker 3: the wonderful gift of the solstice where there is a contraction.
- 54:48Speaker 3: One of the gifts of the cold is that it
- 54:51Speaker 3: contracts things. It expands things. So as it's 35 degrees
- 54:56Speaker 3: outside and it's Right now it's cloudy and it's kind
- 55:03Speaker 3: of silvery and I don't really want to go outside
- 55:06Speaker 3: and mess with the yard. And, you know, I want to.
- 55:09Speaker 5: Overeat is really what I want to do actually.
- 55:13Speaker 2: Stuff my face with fudge. That is not a contraction.
- 55:18Speaker 2: That is an expansion.
- 55:20Speaker 3: That's a Jupiterian expansion of that. Santa always has a
- 55:25Speaker 3: big belly for a reason. But we do. There's a contraction.
- 55:35Speaker 3: And so whether it's a contraction where we're shielding that
- 55:38Speaker 3: little light of consciousness, but this contraction inside ourselves and
- 55:47Speaker 3: that dropping into the rhizome is consciousness that's curious about
- 55:54Speaker 3: the rhizome. And the rhizome is that place from which
- 55:59Speaker 3: we emerge as our authentic self. And as I think, Deb,
- 56:05Speaker 3: you've talked before about, you know, inside an acorn is
- 56:10Speaker 3: an oak tree, and inside that oak tree, which is
- 56:13Speaker 3: yet to sprout, is an acorn.
- 56:14Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 56:16Speaker 3: And inside of that acorn is an oak tree. It's
- 56:20Speaker 3: only through our retreat to the rhizome, that we can
- 56:25Speaker 3: rediscover the natural matrix that we are. And so all
- 56:31Speaker 3: of the conditions of our lives that cause us to
- 56:35Speaker 3: retreat down below the earth also gives us an opportunity
- 56:40Speaker 3: to shed the luxuriant bullshit that has grown out of us.
- 56:48Speaker 3: All of the leaves, the decorations, the fruiting, the the
- 56:52Speaker 3: bizarre affectations, the clothing and fashion and money and possessions.
- 57:00Speaker 3: You know, it's in the beginning of the wintering that
- 57:02Speaker 3: all that falls off the tree.
- 57:07Speaker 4: You know, I'm aware that as we have talked about
- 57:13Speaker 4: the solstice, That there is in me, and I think
- 57:19Speaker 4: among us, but, you know, you tell me, a spirit
- 57:24Speaker 4: of real joy, of reassurance, and sort of an everlasting,
- 57:33Speaker 4: this is the great cycle. We are part of it. Yes.
- 57:38Speaker 4: And it has ever been and it ever will be.
- 57:43Speaker 4: And so I want to, you know, sort of say,
- 57:46Speaker 4: whatever your tradition is, you know, good tidings, happy holidays. Yes,
- 57:53Speaker 4: we wish you good solstice. The light will return.
- 57:58Speaker 3: Sigillaria! And so let's transition to a dream. Our dreamer
- 58:20Speaker 3: today is a 75-year-old male who is a teacher. And
- 58:27Speaker 3: this is his dream. I take my cat Charles, a
- 58:32Speaker 3: black and white socks cat, to someone's apartment, a place
- 58:37Speaker 3: I thought was safe. but the person's dog walks forward
- 58:40Speaker 3: and bites into Charles' face and just holds on. When
- 58:46Speaker 3: it lets go, Charles runs away. I find him, and
- 58:50Speaker 3: he's alive, but his face is terribly disfigured. I take
- 58:55Speaker 3: him home, while my wife, understandably, is quite upset to
- 59:00Speaker 3: see him. And he writes that the significant context is
- 59:08Speaker 3: Charles was my best friend in a certain community where
- 59:11Speaker 3: i lived for five years in the early 90s he
- 59:15Speaker 3: loved me unconditionally he disappeared way back then i'm not
- 59:19Speaker 3: aware of any big transitions currently my wife and i
- 59:23Speaker 3: have come a long way together in the 20 years
- 59:25Speaker 3: of our marriage and are generally doing well these days
- 59:29Speaker 3: He says his main feelings were really just horror to
- 59:33Speaker 3: witness his violence, and then the damage that it appears
- 59:37Speaker 3: will be lasting looks rather grotesque. And for associations, he says, Charles,
- 59:44Speaker 3: the cat, is like my heart almost, so deep and dear.
- 59:49Speaker 3: No personal associations with the dog. My wife is sensitive
- 59:53Speaker 3: to the visually grotesque in real life.
- 1:00:01Speaker 2: You know, this seems to me a whole subcategory of dreams,
- 1:00:06Speaker 2: which is kind of what I'm going to say like
- 1:00:08Speaker 2: a wounded or lost animal dreams. It's not uncommon to
- 1:00:12Speaker 2: have these dreams. I've certainly had them. I've worked with
- 1:00:15Speaker 2: lots of people who've had them. We get dreams like
- 1:00:17Speaker 2: this on the podcast. And I think it always shows
- 1:00:22Speaker 2: some way that we're not sort of tending to ourself
- 1:00:25Speaker 2: well enough. There's some tender... soulful aspect of ourself perhaps
- 1:00:32Speaker 2: that we've been remiss. We haven't cared for ourselves well enough.
- 1:00:39Speaker 2: So one of the things that comes up for me
- 1:00:42Speaker 2: about this dream is, first of all, I wish we
- 1:00:44Speaker 2: knew something about this place. The dreamer says, I take
- 1:00:48Speaker 2: him to this place that I think is safe. But
- 1:00:51Speaker 2: the dreamer has.
- 1:00:52Speaker 6: Made a miscalculation.
- 1:00:55Speaker 2: And so I'd be really curious about what this place is,
- 1:00:58Speaker 2: you know, are there any associations to this place? Is
- 1:01:01Speaker 2: there anything you can think about this place? Does it
- 1:01:03Speaker 2: remind you of anything? Who are the people there? You know,
- 1:01:07Speaker 2: just really search for any, uh, more information about the
- 1:01:12Speaker 2: place that might help you understand what that place is
- 1:01:17Speaker 2: symbolically that you've taken this cat to. And the other
- 1:01:22Speaker 2: thing I'll say on, on this theme is, um, The
- 1:01:25Speaker 2: Dreamer mentions that, you know, Charles was like his heart.
- 1:01:28Speaker 2: And I've had a cat like that. I've had a
- 1:01:30Speaker 2: soulmate cat. And boy, that is a really special relationship.
- 1:01:35Speaker 2: And I'm struck that the Dreamer says, you know, and
- 1:01:41Speaker 2: it would be interesting to go back and look at
- 1:01:43Speaker 2: this community where he lived in the 90s with Charles.
- 1:01:45Speaker 2: But I was struck by the fact that Charles disappeared.
- 1:01:48Speaker 2: Because if you have a cat like that, My guess
- 1:01:51Speaker 2: is that if the cat disappears, that there's a tremendous
- 1:01:54Speaker 2: sense of guilt that you somehow failed the cat, that
- 1:01:57Speaker 2: you let it escape and get away and maybe some
- 1:02:01Speaker 2: ill fate befell it. So that seems related to me, perhaps,
- 1:02:07Speaker 2: to this idea that somehow he hasn't made the best
- 1:02:11Speaker 2: choice when taking care of the Charles the cat part
- 1:02:17Speaker 2: of himself.
- 1:02:21Speaker 3: I'm curious, in the significant context about the dream where
- 1:02:25Speaker 3: he writes, Charles was my best friend in a certain community,
- 1:02:28Speaker 3: I was assuming that that was a human Charles. That
- 1:02:34Speaker 3: just the name Charles was something he was associating to
- 1:02:41Speaker 3: the cat. Am I understanding that correctly?
- 1:02:43Speaker 2: No, because the title of the dream is Charles the Cat.
- 1:02:47Speaker 4: Okay.
- 1:02:48Speaker 6: So I think Charles.
- 1:02:50Speaker 2: Charles was his best friend who loved him unconditionally.
- 1:02:54Speaker 3: Okay. All right.
- 1:02:55Speaker 6: That's that. That's my assumption.
- 1:03:00Speaker 3: Well, my first thing that strikes me is most people
- 1:03:03Speaker 3: don't take their cats around to other people's homes. Um, that,
- 1:03:08Speaker 3: that in and of itself is an unusual thing. I
- 1:03:12Speaker 3: can't imagine anyone who's ever, um, called me up and said, hey, listen,
- 1:03:18Speaker 3: I know we're coming over for dinner. Mind if I
- 1:03:20Speaker 3: bring my cat? I have on rare occasions said, do
- 1:03:24Speaker 3: you mind if I bring my dog?
- 1:03:25Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 1:03:26Speaker 3: But cats are so independent that it's so rare to
- 1:03:29Speaker 3: have to travel with your cat.
- 1:03:30Speaker 6: Well, and they don't like the car, and they don't
- 1:03:32Speaker 6: like new places.
- 1:03:32Speaker 3: You're right. Yes, yes. They can run all over.
- 1:03:34Speaker 6: Why is he bringing the cat somewhere? That's a great question.
- 1:03:37Speaker 3: Yes, it's a very unusual thing to do. So... As
- 1:03:47Speaker 3: you said, the great flaw is that he thought this
- 1:03:51Speaker 3: person's apartment was safe. And then, you know, this sad
- 1:03:57Speaker 3: thing happens. What it makes me think of is that
- 1:04:04Speaker 3: some of us, often, if we've had a difficult childhood,
- 1:04:10Speaker 3: develop a promiscuous trust. And you see this in children
- 1:04:19Speaker 3: who have been mistreated in one way or another that
- 1:04:23Speaker 3: as adults that they will be overly trusting or make
- 1:04:27Speaker 3: overly trusting assumptions so he brings something that to me
- 1:04:34Speaker 3: seems rather soulful you know his best friend cat he
- 1:04:40Speaker 3: brings it to a place that he's not really Sure,
- 1:04:44Speaker 3: he's decided it's safe, but it's someone's apartment or other
- 1:04:47Speaker 3: and it's not. So some people who are very, very
- 1:04:51Speaker 3: sensitive and again have promiscuous trust will often come into
- 1:04:56Speaker 3: the analysis and frequently say, once again, you know, I
- 1:05:01Speaker 3: met with, you know, my friend and I disclosed, you know,
- 1:05:06Speaker 3: one thing or another and then they were said something
- 1:05:09Speaker 3: biting to me or they said something cruel. Or they
- 1:05:13Speaker 3: mistreated the information or mistreated my feelings. And then the
- 1:05:19Speaker 3: person feels resentful or betrayed or hurt. But the dream
- 1:05:27Speaker 3: is suggesting, well, why are you bringing a cat? Why
- 1:05:31Speaker 3: are you bringing your soul around to environments or introducing
- 1:05:36Speaker 3: it to people that are vulnerable or that make you
- 1:05:40Speaker 3: vulnerable to getting bitten? In a certain way. I think
- 1:05:47Speaker 3: that there are certain typologies that are a little bit
- 1:05:51Speaker 3: more vulnerable to this. Introverted feeling types have a tendency
- 1:05:57Speaker 3: to show up and disclose really intimate material, soulfully important material,
- 1:06:05Speaker 3: and underappreciate how sensitive they are to having that mistreated.
- 1:06:08Speaker 5: Mm-hmm.
- 1:06:11Speaker 2: You know, I also wonder about the dog, because on
- 1:06:14Speaker 2: the face of it, no pun intended, this is a
- 1:06:16Speaker 2: terrible thing that's happened. And there is a feeling of horror,
- 1:06:22Speaker 2: but I am just curious about what happens if we
- 1:06:25Speaker 2: lean into the possibility that the dog is somehow the
- 1:06:27Speaker 2: medicine in the dream. That the dog's ability to be aggressive,
- 1:06:33Speaker 2: where the cat is all soul, you know, is that
- 1:06:37Speaker 2: somehow an undeveloped part of the dreamer or a part
- 1:06:40Speaker 2: of himself that he doesn't have a good relationship with, um,
- 1:06:47Speaker 2: you know, so where is that?
- 1:06:48Speaker 6: Where is that in?
- 1:06:50Speaker 2: I'd be curious where the dog part is in the marriage,
- 1:06:53Speaker 2: for example, you know, there's this kind of shrinking away
- 1:06:57Speaker 2: from feeling of horror on the one hand, but, uh,
- 1:07:02Speaker 2: but a marriage needs both the tender cat part and the, um,
- 1:07:08Speaker 2: aggressive dog part too.
- 1:07:14Speaker 3: So say more about how, um, the dreamer might work
- 1:07:17Speaker 3: with that.
- 1:07:18Speaker 2: Well, I guess, I guess I would say, you know, this,
- 1:07:21Speaker 2: this a little bit falls into the category of something
- 1:07:23Speaker 2: we talk about a lot that, you know, the least
- 1:07:25Speaker 2: trustworthy attitude is out of the dream ego. So the
- 1:07:28Speaker 2: dream ego and his wife were horrified, but is it
- 1:07:31Speaker 2: possible to imagine, I mean, I would just sort of
- 1:07:34Speaker 2: try it on as a hypothesis. Is it, is it
- 1:07:36Speaker 2: possible to imagine that somehow, um, this was, uh, was
- 1:07:43Speaker 2: necessary in some way, you know, was it, or, or
- 1:07:46Speaker 2: helpful or what is, what was, you know, I might ask,
- 1:07:49Speaker 2: what was the dog responding to was, you know, was
- 1:07:52Speaker 2: the dog just trying to protect the house? And again,
- 1:07:56Speaker 2: it would be helpful if we knew more about the
- 1:07:57Speaker 2: house or the person that it belonged to. But, but, um,
- 1:08:01Speaker 2: and then I, I think I would also wonder like, I,
- 1:08:04Speaker 2: if the, if this were my dream, I might ask myself,
- 1:08:06Speaker 2: so where is my kind of dog like aggression? Which
- 1:08:10Speaker 2: I think relates to what you're saying, Joseph, because if
- 1:08:12Speaker 2: this is a person who's kind of overly trusting, you know,
- 1:08:17Speaker 2: sometimes that kind of tracks with not having good access
- 1:08:20Speaker 2: to your healthy, aggressive instincts. So, you know, where is
- 1:08:25Speaker 2: my dog part? You know, is my dog part kind
- 1:08:28Speaker 2: of turned inward on me so that it's attacking my
- 1:08:30Speaker 2: inner cat? Or can I bring it to bear in
- 1:08:34Speaker 2: situations in the outer world where I need to be
- 1:08:36Speaker 2: protective of myself, for example? You know, is there, you know,
- 1:08:42Speaker 2: where is aggression in the marriage if he needs to?
- 1:08:45Speaker 2: I mean, he says they've been through a lot and
- 1:08:47Speaker 2: they've kind of come through. But, you know, a part
- 1:08:51Speaker 2: of a marriage working well is that both people can
- 1:08:56Speaker 2: sort of uh, assert themselves and say, this doesn't work
- 1:08:59Speaker 2: for me. I need more of this, you know? So I,
- 1:09:03Speaker 2: I don't have any reason to believe in particular that
- 1:09:07Speaker 2: any of that is going on in his marriage, but, uh,
- 1:09:11Speaker 2: those are some things I might explore.
- 1:09:14Speaker 3: So another, um, path into the dreams, could be just
- 1:09:21Speaker 3: the feeling of horror. And just resting into that and
- 1:09:29Speaker 3: asking the dreamer to just track the horror that he
- 1:09:35Speaker 3: has felt in the course of his life. Secondary to
- 1:09:41Speaker 3: the symbols in the dream. As you had said, it
- 1:09:47Speaker 3: may very well have been that, his inner cat and
- 1:09:51Speaker 3: his inner dog have been in a great clash, which
- 1:09:56Speaker 3: can say something about the relationship between his inner masculine
- 1:10:00Speaker 3: and his inner feminine. And what does it mean to
- 1:10:07Speaker 3: have a disfigured cat that you now are nursing inside?
- 1:10:17Speaker 3: Often the feeling of horror that we have can also
- 1:10:21Speaker 3: make it very difficult for us to be in relationship
- 1:10:24Speaker 3: to some inner part. Because when we say we're horrified,
- 1:10:29Speaker 3: we're overwhelmed. It's so inconceivable, so grotesque, so unexpected, that
- 1:10:37Speaker 3: we're in some kind of a state of shock. And yet,
- 1:10:41Speaker 3: he has discovered that there is an inner feminine instinct
- 1:10:46Speaker 3: that has been disfigured It's interesting that it says disfigured
- 1:10:51Speaker 3: rather than, let's say, injured. Because disfigurement is particularly related
- 1:10:58Speaker 3: to how something looks. Being injured connotes that there's something
- 1:11:07Speaker 3: now wrong with the functioning. So the dog and the
- 1:11:12Speaker 3: cat interact with each other And this feminine instinct looks horrible,
- 1:11:20Speaker 3: looks disfigured, grotesque. And so what does one do at
- 1:11:28Speaker 3: that point? And I wonder what he will do now
- 1:11:32Speaker 3: that he is aware that the feminine inside of him
- 1:11:35Speaker 3: has been disfigured, or is harder to love, or not
- 1:11:40Speaker 3: as pretty, perhaps, as he might have thought it was.
- 1:11:43Speaker 6: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. He's like a scrappy alley cat.
- 1:11:48Speaker 3: A scrappy alley cat with maybe one eye and one
- 1:11:53Speaker 3: of the ears really torn up. What do you make
- 1:11:59Speaker 3: of the dog biting the cat's face of all the
- 1:12:03Speaker 3: places that it might bite it?
- 1:12:04Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
- 1:12:05Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
- 1:12:10Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I, you know, I, I like what
- 1:12:12Speaker 2: you were saying about, you know, it changes how something appears.
- 1:12:16Speaker 2: I mean, obviously that, you know, in real life, that
- 1:12:18Speaker 2: would be a terrible injury that could endanger, you know, eyesight, um,
- 1:12:24Speaker 2: the ability to, you know, depending on where it is,
- 1:12:26Speaker 2: the ability to eat, it would be a serious injury. Um,
- 1:12:32Speaker 2: but it, it also, uh, you know, there's, there's something about, um,
- 1:12:37Speaker 2: sort of it wouldn't likely be fatal. It's not like
- 1:12:41Speaker 2: the dog went for the juggler. And the dog also
- 1:12:45Speaker 2: just holds on, you know. That reminded me a little
- 1:12:50Speaker 2: bit of the Norse god of war, Tyre. And he,
- 1:13:00Speaker 2: they're trying to trick, I think his name is, Joseph,
- 1:13:06Speaker 2: you can help me out. But they're trying to trick,
- 1:13:10Speaker 2: is it Fenrir, the wolf?
- 1:13:12Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know.
- 1:13:13Speaker 2: Yeah, to bind him because he's going to be, I'll
- 1:13:19Speaker 2: have to double check the name, but this is the
- 1:13:22Speaker 2: wolf that's going to bring about Ragnarok. So they have
- 1:13:26Speaker 2: to bind him and they want to bind him with
- 1:13:28Speaker 2: this magic cord. But he smells the trick and he says, okay,
- 1:13:33Speaker 2: I'll let you do it if one of you will
- 1:13:35Speaker 2: put your hand in my mouth. And so the god
- 1:13:40Speaker 2: of war, Tyre, agrees to do it, and Fenrir bites
- 1:13:43Speaker 2: off his hand. But there's this sense of the kind
- 1:13:51Speaker 2: of unrelenting quality of it, that the dog is going
- 1:13:55Speaker 2: to bite the face and not let go.
- 1:13:58Speaker 3: I'm thinking of seeing dogs attack small animals and They
- 1:14:07Speaker 3: normally just grab them and then they shake them violently,
- 1:14:11Speaker 3: which often injures the spine. So it's unusual to have
- 1:14:18Speaker 3: the dog just standing there holding the cat's face and
- 1:14:22Speaker 3: then just releasing it. That would be an unusual thing
- 1:14:25Speaker 3: to behold. Which does make it seem more like some
- 1:14:32Speaker 3: strange behavior. unconscious ritual process.
- 1:14:37Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 1:14:37Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 1:14:38Speaker 6: That's it. That's a good point.
- 1:14:41Speaker 3: So when the feminine goes into the mouth of the
- 1:14:43Speaker 3: masculine and then returns, it is disfigured.
- 1:14:48Speaker 6: Yeah.
- 1:14:54Speaker 2: There's a lot to consider here. So we hope we've
- 1:14:56Speaker 2: given the dreamer some ideas. Yes.
- 1:15:02Speaker 1: You've been listening to This Jungian Life. From our website, thisjungianlife.com,
- 1:15:08Speaker 1: you can follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook,
- 1:15:11Speaker 1: help us produce future episodes by funding us through Patreon,
- 1:15:15Speaker 1: and submit your dreams for possible interpretation on another episode.
- 1:15:19Speaker 1: We'd like to thank our listener who shared a dream
- 1:15:22Speaker 1: for today's show and hope you'll let us know what
- 1:15:24Speaker 1: topics you'd enjoy hearing more about. Until next time, keep
- 1:15:28Speaker 1: living this Jungian life.
- 1:15:31Speaker 2: Thank you.