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Shadow, Evil, and Individuation: Jung’s View of the Devil · This Jungian Life Podcast

0:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
0:06
Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
0:10
Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
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Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
0:19
Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
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Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
0:28
Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
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Speaker 3: So the idea of the devil is ubiquitous. This idea
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Speaker 3: of evil personified shows up in ancient cultures, in modern religions,
0:55
Speaker 3: across history, but the devil is less a monster than
0:59
Speaker 3: a mirror. So it crystallizes humanity's intuition that there is
1:05
Speaker 3: a source of destruction that is not wholly outside us.
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Speaker 3: And every culture needs an image that gathers its moral, shadow,
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Speaker 3: the hunger for domination, the delight in cruelty, the seductive
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Speaker 3: charm of power. So the devil becomes that image, the accuser,
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Speaker 3: the trickster, the rebel, the scapegoat, the teacher of limits.
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Speaker 3: So historically, he grows from the Hebrew chassatan, the divine persecutor,
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Speaker 3: and in Christianity, the cosmic opponent. And finally, for us
1:41
Speaker 3: as Jungians, a symbol of psychological conflict. In the modern era,
1:47
Speaker 3: we may not believe that the devil has horns, and
1:51
Speaker 3: yet the archetype survives in us. So Jung saw the
1:55
Speaker 3: devil as the psyche's way of dramatizing evil as an
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Speaker 3: autonomous reality within us because the shadow demands recognition, and
2:04
Speaker 3: to repress or externalize him is to become possessed by
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Speaker 3: what we deny. So we're going to tear away our
2:13
Speaker 3: denial around this and really stand in front of the
2:16
Speaker 3: devil in celebration of Halloween.
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Speaker 1: Right.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and this perhaps is the time of year when
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Speaker 2: we're encouraged to approach some of these darker forces in
2:30
Speaker 2: the psyche in a spirit of curiosity and fun. Yeah.
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Speaker 5: Devilishness.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, what a big topic. I think we all dove
2:41
Speaker 2: into this topic this week and found there is a
2:45
Speaker 2: lot to say on it.
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Speaker 3: So, Deb, I think you did a huge amount of
2:50
Speaker 3: research on the development and evolution historically of the devil.
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Speaker 3: There's so much to say. It'd be great to have
2:58
Speaker 3: you put that in the table to start with.
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Speaker 4: You know, it was fascinating to discover that something that
3:07
Speaker 4: might have been at the very fringes of my awareness.
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Speaker 4: But basically, what is the history of this image, of
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Speaker 4: this concept, of this idea? And I'll start with what
3:21
Speaker 4: Jung says as a sort of umbrella for all of
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Speaker 4: these concepts, which is binarius, Latin for binaries, polarities, opposites.
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Speaker 4: And what Jung says is that that is the origin
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Speaker 4: of all evil, which I think is absolutely fascinating because
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Speaker 4: it takes us to creation myths that most universally involve separation. Separation,
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Speaker 4: for example, of the earth and sky, separation of light
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Speaker 4: and dark, the lovely passage in Genesis about naming all
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Speaker 4: the animals. We categorize, we separate, and we also have opposites.
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Speaker 4: And then there is conflict, as well as categories or separation.
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Speaker 4: In Mesopotamia, The devil was Tiamat. Tiamat was a monster.
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Speaker 4: So the original image for this was not even human.
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Speaker 4: It was something truly monstrous outside the animal kingdom and chaos.
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Speaker 4: Tiamat wrought chaos. By the Old Testament Torah, we have
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Speaker 4: the image of Satan and Yahweh. Satan as the tester,
4:54
Speaker 4: as the accuser, who foreshadows the upcoming Christian image of
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Speaker 4: the devil, because Satan and Yahweh collude to test Job,
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Speaker 4: to test his faithfulness to God in that famous book
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Speaker 4: of the Old Testament. By the Middle Ages, Oh, I'm sorry.
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Speaker 4: I skipped over the New Testament. How could I? We
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Speaker 4: have Lucifer, the light bringer, who commits the sin of sins,
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Speaker 4: which is pride. So we would call it maybe an
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Speaker 4: inflated ego today. And Lucifer will not serve. He will
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Speaker 4: not bend. He will not exceed authority to God. We
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Speaker 4: have Gnosticism, which famously split good and bad, the divine
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Speaker 4: and the devil. By the Middle Ages, we have the
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Speaker 4: image of the devil having hooves and horns and a
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Speaker 4: tail and and kind of an image of Pan or
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Speaker 4: the satyrs with cloven hoofs and hairy legs, a kind
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Speaker 4: of evolution or variation, I should say, on Pan, the
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Speaker 4: nature spirit. The Middle Ages also saw the rise of
6:21
Speaker 4: alchemy as a counterweight to Christianity, and the image of Mercurius,
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Speaker 4: who combines dark and light, the creative and the destructive,
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Speaker 4: and represents the concept of transformation through conflict. As the
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Speaker 4: alchemists in their secret chambers tortured various kinds of metals
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Speaker 4: to extract gold or whatever was valuable from the ore.
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Speaker 4: By the Enlightenment or modernity, the idea of the devil
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Speaker 4: really diminished, but the symbol persisted. And I'm likening that
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Speaker 4: to the image of angels, you know, which eventually diminished
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Speaker 4: from something truly awesome to Valentine Day images. So we
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Speaker 4: get little caricatures of the devil sprinting around and sort
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Speaker 4: of like a little demon, but not such an awesome image.
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Speaker 4: Humanism comes along with the idea of creative defiance versus sin.
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Speaker 4: So again, we're moving into ego and what is under
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Speaker 4: the purview of ego versus split into good versus bad.
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Speaker 4: And of course, we have Jung. And he talks about
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Speaker 4: the devil over and over again as a personification of shadow,
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Speaker 4: that which is repressed, that we don't want to be,
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Speaker 4: we don't want to see. but we need to admit
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Speaker 4: it into consciousness and hold the tension that there is
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Speaker 4: no light without shadow, no spirit without matter, and no
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Speaker 4: God image without the devil, to which he also gives autonomy.
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Speaker 4: There is something about this image that goes beyond just
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Speaker 4: your personal history and hang-ups or what we call concepts.
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Speaker 4: There is more here. So that is probably the briefest
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Speaker 4: summation of the history of the devil that has ever been.
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Speaker 4: And let's see where we go from here.
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Speaker 2: Well, one of the things that strikes me as important
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Speaker 2: is that, you know, people believed in the pre-modern period
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Speaker 2: and the actual reality of the devil. And people might
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Speaker 2: understand that bad things happen because they've been cursed by
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Speaker 2: the devil or they were worried about being possessed by
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Speaker 2: the devil or devils. And they would have apotropaic rituals
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Speaker 2: to ward off the devil. In other words, it was something,
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Speaker 2: as you said, Deb, that was seen as autonomous, but
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Speaker 2: also had its own kind of subjective reality. And of course,
9:16
Speaker 2: we've killed off God with our modern consciousness, but we've
9:20
Speaker 2: killed off the devil too. But that reminds me of
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Speaker 2: Shakespeare's line from The Tempest, hell is empty and all
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Speaker 2: the devils are here. And now we see the devil
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Speaker 2: being lived out in just the terrible atrocities that we
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Speaker 2: commit against each other. It's like, well, yeah, the devil
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Speaker 2: is real and he really is with us, but he
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Speaker 2: is us, isn't he? So as a psychological principle, Jung
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Speaker 2: would say it's as real as ever.
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Speaker 3: In this modern kind of scientific attitude, abandoning these symbolic
9:59
Speaker 3: ways to represent these deep forces means that we're all
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Speaker 3: subject to them much more vulnerably than it was when
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Speaker 3: we believed there was a discrete... reality to evil and
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Speaker 3: to the devil it allows us to negotiate with it
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Speaker 3: which of course we see in fairy tales the devil
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Speaker 3: shows up and the various characters have to negotiate run
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Speaker 3: fight submit but there's a way in which there is
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Speaker 3: an imaginal container for this conflict so the first thing
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Speaker 3: that i find myself circling around is the characterization of
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Speaker 3: the devil as the adversary as the one that we
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Speaker 3: are standing against, or is standing against goodness, or in
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Speaker 3: the book of Revelation is standing against Christ. Because I
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Speaker 3: think that for most humans, we believe something is evil
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Speaker 3: because it subjects us to some form of suffering that
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Speaker 3: we do not seem to be able to control. And
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Speaker 3: I think that's a very challenging process that suffering and
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Speaker 3: evil have somehow become conflated with each other. As if
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Speaker 3: there is no objective, destructive energy in the universe. So
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Speaker 3: many of the things that we thought of as evil
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Speaker 3: when we were quite young, later on, we might feel
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Speaker 3: very neutral about or even come to think of as
11:36
Speaker 3: rather positive. There is a Jung, perhaps regressive or even
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Speaker 3: immature relationship to that which challenges us, that which stands
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Speaker 3: against us. And Jung famously said that he calls God
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Speaker 3: that which stands in his way, that blocks his path,
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Speaker 3: that won't let the ego go any further without a
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Speaker 3: kind of reckoning. So Jung, in that statement, is demonstrating
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Speaker 3: this change of attitude that the thing that opposes us
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Speaker 3: may not in fact be evil, but may have a
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Speaker 3: more intelligent purpose than we can appreciate in a given moment.
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Speaker 2: You know, Joseph, I think that's a great point, and
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Speaker 2: it reminds me of a quote that I have here
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Speaker 2: from the collected works, if I can share it. Jung says,
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Speaker 2: what seems evil... or at least meaningless and valueless to
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Speaker 2: contemporary experience and knowledge, might on a higher level of
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Speaker 2: experience and knowledge appear as the source of the best,
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Speaker 2: everything depending naturally on the use one makes of one's
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Speaker 2: seven devils. To explain them as meaningless robs the personality
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Speaker 2: of its proper shadow, and with this it loses its form.
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Speaker 2: The living form needs deep shadow if it is to
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Speaker 2: appear plastic. Without shadow, it remains a two-dimensional phantom, a
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Speaker 2: more or less well-brought-up child. So the necessity of this
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Speaker 2: to give us life and depth and breadth.
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Speaker 4: You know, that I appreciate so much. And it takes
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Speaker 4: us to the process of moral development. otherwise known as individuation,
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Speaker 4: as a part of individuation, of how do we wrestle
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Speaker 4: with ourselves? How do we wrestle with that which stands
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Speaker 4: in our way? I don't like it.
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Speaker 2: I don't want it.
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Speaker 4: And we start with it most of the time. It's
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Speaker 4: out there. It's not in here. It's out there with
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Speaker 4: someone or something opposing our will. And it does correlate
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Speaker 4: with moral development. There was a man named Lawrence Kohlberg
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Speaker 4: who posited stages of moral development, which correlates with wrestling
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Speaker 4: with shadow. How do we wrestle with these confrontations of temptation, seduction, desire, passion, will,
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Speaker 4: you know, all of that? He says that probably up
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Speaker 4: until about age nine, the litmus test is obedience versus punishment.
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Speaker 4: You know, I can't do that or the teacher will
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Speaker 4: be mad at me and I'll have to stay after school.
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Speaker 4: The other aspect of that is what's in my self-interest.
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Speaker 4: I want it. It's good for me. I'm going to
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Speaker 4: do it. The next stage, which he says... starts in
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Speaker 4: adolescence and continues on through adulthood, is an awareness of
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Speaker 4: interpersonal accord and the need for conformity. So we learn
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Speaker 4: sort of all sorts of social conventions, persona development from
15:13
Speaker 4: a Jungian point of view so that people will like
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Speaker 4: us and want to include us in various things. And
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Speaker 4: we also developed the concept of authority and social order,
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Speaker 4: so law and order kind of thing. So each of
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Speaker 4: those confronts us with a certain kind of shadow, you know.
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Speaker 4: Should I snitch that candy bar from the corner store? Nope.
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Speaker 4: I might, if you're at a primitive level, I might
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Speaker 4: get caught and punished. Or a little higher level, no,
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Speaker 4: it's against the rules, it's against the law. Thou shalt
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Speaker 4: not steal. I'm not going to do it. And so
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Speaker 4: it goes all the way on up to what he
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Speaker 4: calls the principled level of universal ethical principles. But each
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Speaker 4: of those requires a confrontation with shadow. And each of us,
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Speaker 4: as you were saying, Lisa, has grist for our mill.
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Speaker 4: Do we engage with ourselves? around these kinds of conflicts
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Speaker 4: so that we can eventually consider things like life and
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Speaker 4: liberty and justice and make decisions and confront shadow from
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Speaker 4: that kind of a broader, more collective standpoint. And there's
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Speaker 4: the devil at every stage of development from the tempting
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Speaker 4: candy bar in the corner store to all kinds of
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Speaker 4: decisions about in our personal lives that are very, very big.
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Speaker 2: So there's this way that it's unavoidable. And I think
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Speaker 2: that trying to avoid the problem of evil, as it were,
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Speaker 2: leads one into a real neurosis. You know, it's like
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Speaker 2: you have to confront this somehow. And you have to
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Speaker 2: understand that you have your own devil. And your devil's
17:18
Speaker 2: going to make demands on you. And you have to
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Speaker 2: kind of have a stance and a willingness to, in essence,
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Speaker 2: to claim your devil. Otherwise, you will be immobilized. And this,
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Speaker 2: I think, is illustrated really well in a dream that
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Speaker 2: one of Jung's and Alizand's brought to him. Here's the dream.
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Speaker 2: So he was a 16-year-old, and Jung describes him as
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Speaker 2: having a severe compulsion neurosis, which we would now call
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Speaker 2: obsessive-compulsive disorder. So this is the dream he had. He's
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Speaker 2: walking along an unfamiliar street. It is dark and he
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Speaker 2: hears steps coming behind him. With a feeling of fear,
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Speaker 2: he quickens his pace. The footsteps come nearer and his
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Speaker 2: fear increases. He begins to run. but the footsteps seem
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Speaker 2: to be overtaking him. Finally, he turns round, and there
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Speaker 2: he sees the devil. In deathly terror, he leaps into
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Speaker 2: the air and hangs there suspended. And this young man
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Speaker 2: had the same dream repeated twice. So the dream ends
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Speaker 2: with him suspended. He's immobilized. He's hanging because he's running
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Speaker 2: from the devil. Which I think does accurately describe the
18:42
Speaker 2: psychology of many things, actually. But OCD for sure, in
18:48
Speaker 2: a sort of depth psychological sense, that obsessive compulsive disorder
18:52
Speaker 2: often has an aspect of wanting to control things, wanting
18:58
Speaker 2: to ward off that which is deemed to be unacceptable,
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Speaker 2: wanting to strictly control things aspects of your inner and
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Speaker 2: outer environment, rather than being able to sort of make
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Speaker 2: a deal with the devil, which we all have to
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Speaker 2: do in order to get into life.
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Speaker 4: And that what is not undertaken with shadow becomes darker, bigger,
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Speaker 4: and more pernicious, as this dream beautifully illustrates. of that
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Speaker 4: there is, it's not a, it's grown into an image
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Speaker 4: of the devil that is pursuing him, rather than something
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Speaker 4: mild or just, some other kind of more humanized image.
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Speaker 4: It's taken on archetypal proportions because this young man had
19:59
Speaker 4: not been able to create a dialogue and make conscious
20:07
Speaker 4: that which was haunting him, his obsessive-compulsive disorder, which arrogates
20:13
Speaker 4: to ego things that do not and cannot belong to ego.
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Speaker 4: And so there he is, suspended, and no doubt in
20:28
Speaker 4: his work with Jung, are able to eventually make this
20:32
Speaker 4: conscious and integrate it in a way that enabled him
20:37
Speaker 4: to live in a less haunted way.
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Speaker 3: I'm really taken by this idea of being suspended and
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Speaker 3: how if we are caught in that regressive fantasy of goodness,
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Speaker 3: that there is some kind of a a divine perfect behavior,
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Speaker 3: the perfect thing to do or to say, lest we
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Speaker 3: do evil, for instance, that that would trap.
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Speaker 5: Us in ice, so to speak.
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Speaker 3: That we need to make peace with the fact that
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Speaker 3: our choices are, all of them, sacrifices in some measure.
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Speaker 3: whether we have to sacrifice other choices that we might
21:28
Speaker 3: have made, or even sacrifice our fantasy that everything is
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Speaker 3: going to be rosy and sweet and easy, or that
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Speaker 3: everyone's going to like us. So we have to make
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Speaker 3: a deal with that devil in as much as we
21:43
Speaker 3: have to tolerate conflict.
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Speaker 2: And lack of perfection.
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Speaker 3: And lack of perfection to move, to do anything other
21:52
Speaker 3: than just be suspended.
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Speaker 4: Jung says you cannot keep on the light or bright
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Speaker 4: side only. You have to admit that the spirit of
22:04
Speaker 4: life will at times take on the aspect of evil.
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Speaker 2: So Jung really loved his devils, didn't he? It's just
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Speaker 2: sprinkled consistently throughout the collected works, the importance of this.
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Speaker 4: And he talked about it in the context of the
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Speaker 4: dawn of Christianity and its archetypal aspect as well as
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Speaker 4: the sort of personal shadow that we've kind of really
22:34
Speaker 4: been circumambulating here. And there's a little diagram where he
22:40
Speaker 4: has at the top of this triangle the father and
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Speaker 4: then the split between the son on one hand and
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Speaker 4: the devil on the other, that we get that duality
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Speaker 4: of going back to the binaries, or what he calls binarius,
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Speaker 4: and that we've talked a lot about the transcendent function,
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Speaker 4: and this may take place at a somewhat deeper level,
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Speaker 4: but how do we paradoxically integrate these two forces That
23:15
Speaker 4: cannot just be arrogated to ego. That there's something that
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Speaker 4: is bigger and beyond our own personal shadow. Yeah. That
23:27
Speaker 4: really does have substance. And we need to take that
23:33
Speaker 4: into consideration. And per the Jungian idea about fourness, the
23:41
Speaker 4: number four being structural, a symbol of structural unity that
23:47
Speaker 4: would extend the Trinity if we include evil, if we
23:52
Speaker 4: include the devil. What does that begin to look like
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Speaker 4: in a paradoxical union of the opposites?
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Speaker 3: One thing that Jung makes really clear in the answer
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Speaker 3: to Job is that we are attuned to the destructive aspect.
24:12
Speaker 3: that we often think of the divine as constructive and
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Speaker 3: creative and evil as destructive and chaotic. So we need
24:23
Speaker 3: to stand, I think, on our own two legs and
24:28
Speaker 3: weigh the tension between those things, what will be created,
24:33
Speaker 3: what will be destroyed, what will be pleasurable, what will
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Speaker 3: be painful, and to be able to make peace with
24:41
Speaker 3: that consciously.
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Speaker 4: Our perception of good and evil is from the ego.
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Speaker 4: And no one is going to disagree with that. You know,
24:50
Speaker 4: when something awful happens, no one is going to say, oh, well,
24:56
Speaker 4: you know, that's just your ego perception. We get it
25:01
Speaker 4: and we sympathize and things happen. And yet there it
25:06
Speaker 4: is there for us to confront and be confronted by.
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Speaker 4: And how do we deal with it? What do we
25:17
Speaker 4: do with that? That there is a limitation of goodness,
25:22
Speaker 4: like the opposites of day and night.
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Speaker 2: I mean, it's interesting, right? Because, I mean, this goes
25:28
Speaker 2: to what Jung said about good and evil. Because, Deb,
25:31
Speaker 2: what you're saying is so true that it's like it's
25:33
Speaker 2: just the ego perspective, which goes back to kind of
25:35
Speaker 2: where Joseph was going a little while ago. And the
25:38
Speaker 2: quote I read, like, what we might think of as
25:41
Speaker 2: evil or of the devil is, could have this incredibly productive,
25:46
Speaker 2: constructive effect, you know, and that it's always just the
25:50
Speaker 2: ego's perspective. And yet, it's also important to remember that
25:53
Speaker 2: Jung was very clear. He had a lot of disagreements
25:56
Speaker 2: with the Catholic priest, Victor White, about the nature of evil.
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Speaker 2: He said it's not just the absence of good.
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Speaker 4: Yes.
26:06
Speaker 2: There is evil in the universe, and we have to
26:08
Speaker 2: know that. And because we endanger ourselves if we don't
26:14
Speaker 2: acknowledge the existence of something like pure evil, that that
26:19
Speaker 2: is real. And it's hard to argue that if you
26:23
Speaker 2: look at even just recent, if you just look at
26:26
Speaker 2: current events, I mean, the extremes of cruelty that we
26:35
Speaker 2: can visit upon one another are shocking. And it seems
26:42
Speaker 2: in some sense it only gets darker as we become
26:45
Speaker 2: more split off from the instincts and technologically advanced. So
26:49
Speaker 2: I agree with you. We have to come to terms
26:53
Speaker 2: somehow with the existence of evil. And there's all this
26:58
Speaker 2: complexity around it, too.
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Speaker 4: That takes me to Mercurius, the alchemical spirit. that so
27:11
Speaker 4: fascinated Jung, who studied alchemy really for so many years,
27:16
Speaker 4: the second half of his life in the world, his
27:21
Speaker 4: professional work, was so involved with alchemy. And the spirit
27:27
Speaker 4: of Mercurius embodies. He's the trickster, he's the healer, he's
27:32
Speaker 4: the destroyer, he's the redeemer. It is both sides. a
27:38
Speaker 4: unification with all kinds of shades of meaning, of the
27:46
Speaker 4: good and evil, and the archetype of transformation. And the
27:53
Speaker 4: alchemists could see this with mercury, the silvery liquid metal
27:59
Speaker 4: that could unite with so many things. The Greeks saw
28:03
Speaker 4: it in Hermes, who was the guide of souls who
28:07
Speaker 4: could mediate between Olympus and the Earth and Hades. So
28:15
Speaker 4: it leaves it to us to do our own internal
28:19
Speaker 4: alchemy of what is the material that we are being
28:23
Speaker 4: presented with that needs to be transformed. There is work
28:30
Speaker 4: for a lifetime, at least one lifetime.
28:35
Speaker 3: Well, In service to this idea of completeness and the
28:39
Speaker 3: integration of what's secret, in Jung's answer to Job, he
28:46
Speaker 3: takes on the incompleteness of the Trinity and what he
28:52
Speaker 3: leans into and says through much soul-searching, actually, because it
28:56
Speaker 3: was kind of an agonizing process for him, having been
29:01
Speaker 3: raised in a home where his father was a pastor,
29:04
Speaker 3: a minister. So this demarcation between these phenomena is complicated
29:12
Speaker 3: for him. But what he suggests, moving from the Trinity
29:17
Speaker 3: to the Quaternity, is that the fourth missing piece is
29:22
Speaker 3: that unconscious, dark aspect of Deity. And that plays out
29:29
Speaker 3: so intensely in Answer to Job because God and the
29:33
Speaker 3: devil are talking about Job and subjecting him to all
29:36
Speaker 3: kinds of sufferings in that way. But without this ability
29:42
Speaker 3: to understand how life generates suffering and sometimes enormous destructive power,
29:52
Speaker 3: then we're kind of lambs to the slaughter relative to
29:57
Speaker 3: our own vulnerabilities. When I think about this also, it
30:01
Speaker 3: reminds me a bit of the idea of the fourth
30:04
Speaker 3: function in typology, that we often have one of our
30:08
Speaker 3: personality functions, and by that I mean we have sensation, intuition, thinking,
30:13
Speaker 3: and feeling, and one of those four functions is the
30:17
Speaker 3: least developed, so it is halfway submerged in the unconscious,
30:22
Speaker 3: and the unconscious and the infernal kind of go hand
30:27
Speaker 3: in hand. So we could also say that our fourth
30:30
Speaker 3: function is our devil. So if I think about my
30:34
Speaker 3: fourth function is introverted thinking, and one of the ways
30:38
Speaker 3: that that's problematic for me is that it's difficult for
30:42
Speaker 3: me to do long bouts of writing because I have
30:45
Speaker 3: to really stay in that introverted thinking process. So I
30:50
Speaker 3: often joke about that, that my fourth function is a
30:53
Speaker 3: troll living under a bridge with a broken typewriter trying
30:56
Speaker 3: to help me out. And that's what my writing can
30:59
Speaker 3: tend to look like. But with just a little bit
31:02
Speaker 3: of a tweak, he's also a devil under the bridge.
31:06
Speaker 3: And my ego's like, I'm going to write this or that.
31:09
Speaker 3: And then the troll's like.
31:10
Speaker 5: Yeah, sure. And that has an infernal effect.
31:16
Speaker 3: Disruptive process that my ego may want to think whatever
31:20
Speaker 3: it wants to think about itself but the fourth function
31:23
Speaker 3: is primitive primal half stuffed in the unconscious full of
31:28
Speaker 3: all kinds of conflicts and challenges and difficulties and i
31:35
Speaker 3: can often demonize my fourth function you know railing to
31:39
Speaker 3: the heavens why can't you write an article you know
31:43
Speaker 3: and uh And it laughs at me. So that fourth
31:51
Speaker 3: missing piece for all of us is a very tricky, slippery,
31:59
Speaker 3: often both divine and devilish part of ourselves.
32:06
Speaker 4: I just go back to the alchemical transformation through conflict
32:11
Speaker 4: of like, yeah, we all have these trolls. However, they're imaged,
32:16
Speaker 4: including as our inferior function. Can we wrestle with them?
32:21
Speaker 4: Can we, how do we do that with ourselves?
32:26
Speaker 5: Inviting our devils to dinner. Yes.
32:30
Speaker 2: Well, so it's interesting, Joseph, because, I mean, in a way,
32:33
Speaker 2: we're kind of circumambulating this topic and coming up with
32:36
Speaker 2: sort of different versions. I mean, I think there is
32:38
Speaker 2: the devil as an image of pure evil. There is
32:41
Speaker 2: the devil as that which blocks our path but may
32:45
Speaker 2: actually be necessary in some sense for growth and vitality.
32:50
Speaker 2: And the devil that you're just talking about, it seems
32:53
Speaker 2: to me, is very much aligned with the trickster. And
32:57
Speaker 2: in many stories, the devil is actually a trickster character.
33:02
Speaker 2: And that's the devil who is going to turn things
33:07
Speaker 2: on its head. and upset our expectations and cause us
33:12
Speaker 2: to overturn the rules as we know them. And it's
33:19
Speaker 2: going to frustrate ego expectations. And, you know, some devil
33:25
Speaker 2: stories have that kind of devil in them where, you know,
33:29
Speaker 2: there's a little wink and a nod and there's a
33:31
Speaker 2: somewhat spirit of fun about it even. It can be
33:33
Speaker 2: a kind of like dark mischievousness perhaps. which is a
33:38
Speaker 2: little different than, you know, for example, I think some
33:41
Speaker 2: versions of the devil, it's really that kind of pure evil.
33:45
Speaker 2: It reminds me of Freud's death drive, you know, that
33:50
Speaker 2: which is against the life force, you know, that can
33:52
Speaker 2: also be the devil. But I think a lot of
33:54
Speaker 2: what we're talking about, the devil is actually very much,
33:57
Speaker 2: it's actually quite lively, including your inferior function devil. Another
34:03
Speaker 2: way the devil might enter our lives is through our complexes.
34:07
Speaker 2: So we find ourselves, you know, thinking that we're going
34:11
Speaker 2: to do a certain thing. And then we wind up
34:13
Speaker 2: like slipping on a proverbial banana peel, metaphorically, and totally
34:18
Speaker 2: doing the wrong thing. You know, and it's this kind
34:20
Speaker 2: of like perverse perversity or this impishness that gets in
34:25
Speaker 2: our way. And it's like, what part of me, what
34:30
Speaker 2: the devil got into me, you know, or what devil
34:33
Speaker 2: got into me that I was supposed to, you know,
34:37
Speaker 2: shake this person's hand and saying, oh, Steve, it's great
34:41
Speaker 2: to see you. And instead I said, oh, you know, Sam,
34:45
Speaker 2: it's great to see you. Oh, I didn't mean to
34:47
Speaker 2: say that. You know, I just got his name wrong.
34:50
Speaker 2: So the way that these complexes can show up through
34:54
Speaker 2: parapraxis and other slips that bedevil us.
35:01
Speaker 4: But, you know, I want to.
35:06
Speaker 4: Make things even more complicated here by, you know, as
35:10
Speaker 4: we talk, we can't help but contrast, you know, our
35:15
Speaker 4: superior functions and our inferior function. You know, our complexes
35:20
Speaker 4: versus things that are, you know, more in our awareness
35:23
Speaker 4: and better integrated, not so conflictual. And yet, this also
35:29
Speaker 4: introduces with the trickster, you know, the idea of And
35:36
Speaker 4: that oftentimes in fairy tales, transgression is rewarded. You know,
35:42
Speaker 4: the princess with her little ball and the frog doesn't
35:46
Speaker 4: keep her end of the bargain that she agreed to
35:51
Speaker 4: and kills the frog who turns into a prince. Cinderella
35:57
Speaker 4: transgresses and goes to the ball. We all sit there
35:59
Speaker 4: and go, good for you, Cinderella. You know, that showed guts.
36:04
Speaker 4: go for it. But many another, you know, Hansel and Gretel,
36:09
Speaker 4: it goes on and on. So this takes me back,
36:13
Speaker 4: if I may, to the idea of moral development and
36:17
Speaker 4: that it comes down to our need to discern. When
36:23
Speaker 4: do we break the rules? When don't we? What is
36:26
Speaker 4: really going on here? That we're asked again and again
36:31
Speaker 4: and again, to deal with this in a way that
36:36
Speaker 4: doesn't just split things into good and bad. You know,
36:40
Speaker 4: the heroine in Bluebeard has a horrendous ordeal that she
36:44
Speaker 4: goes through. Rapunzel winds up, the first guy she meets
36:51
Speaker 4: gets her pregnant, and she's wandering around in the woods
36:53
Speaker 4: for 20 years. Mm-hmm.
36:55
Speaker 2: I hate when that happens.
36:56
Speaker 4: So.
36:59
Speaker 4: So this is a messy, murky business that doesn't divide
37:05
Speaker 4: itself so cleanly and clearly into good, bad, right, wrong,
37:12
Speaker 4: because the messiness of how our ego relates to the
37:18
Speaker 4: unconscious and the call and the pull of life, what
37:23
Speaker 4: we're confronted with, And integrating as much of the contents
37:28
Speaker 4: of the unconscious as we can is not a binary process.
37:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really calls for coming to terms with. On that,
37:40
Speaker 2: I'd like to read a longish quote from the Red Book,
37:43
Speaker 2: if that's okay. Yeah. So this is Jung. I earnestly
37:48
Speaker 2: confronted my devil and behaved with him as with a
37:51
Speaker 2: real person. So this would have been an act of
37:54
Speaker 2: imagination where he's talking to the devil. This I learned
37:57
Speaker 2: in the Mysterium, to take seriously every unknown wanderer who
38:02
Speaker 2: personally inhabits the inner world, since they are real because
38:07
Speaker 2: they are effectual. It does not help that we say
38:11
Speaker 2: in the spirit of this time, there is no devil.
38:15
Speaker 2: There was one with me, This took place in me.
38:20
Speaker 2: I did with him what I could. I could speak
38:22
Speaker 2: with him. A religious conversation is inevitable with the devil,
38:27
Speaker 2: since he demands it. If one does not want to
38:31
Speaker 2: surrender to him unconditionally. Because religion is precisely what the
38:36
Speaker 2: devil and I cannot agree about, I must have it
38:40
Speaker 2: out with him as I cannot expect that he, as
38:43
Speaker 2: an independent personality, would accept my standpoint without further ado.
38:48
Speaker 2: I would be fleeing if I did not try to
38:51
Speaker 2: come to an understanding with him. If you ever have
38:55
Speaker 2: the rare opportunity to speak with the devil, then do
38:59
Speaker 2: not forget to confront him in all seriousness. He is
39:03
Speaker 2: your devil after all. The devil as the adversary is
39:08
Speaker 2: your own other standpoint. He tempts you and sets a
39:13
Speaker 2: stone in your path where you least want it. Taking
39:18
Speaker 2: the devil seriously does not mean going over to his side,
39:22
Speaker 2: or else one becomes the devil. Rather, it means coming
39:26
Speaker 2: to an understanding, thereby uniting. accept your other standpoint. With that,
39:34
Speaker 2: the devil fundamentally loses ground, and so do you, and
39:38
Speaker 2: that may be well and good.
39:43
Speaker 3: So let's unpack that. What does that tickle.
39:46
Speaker 5: In your mind, Lisa? Well, I love.
39:50
Speaker 2: I love that he says, you know, this is your
39:53
Speaker 2: devil and you have to take it seriously. It's your
39:58
Speaker 2: own other standpoint. It's that which is in the unconscious.
40:03
Speaker 2: And of course, one of the ways that we take
40:05
Speaker 2: our devil seriously is through dream work, because the dreams
40:10
Speaker 2: present our own other standpoint, that which is often opposed
40:15
Speaker 2: to the conscious attitude, or at least kind of compensatory
40:18
Speaker 2: to it in some sense. And it's important to take
40:23
Speaker 2: that seriously. I mean, in some sense, you know, I
40:27
Speaker 2: love that passage because there's something charming about take your
40:31
Speaker 2: devil seriously, but it really is a kernel that sums
40:36
Speaker 2: up Jung's entire approach, right? You have to take the
40:41
Speaker 2: unconscious standpoint seriously. You have to have it out. He
40:45
Speaker 2: says somewhere in the Collected Works, he talks, It's the
40:48
Speaker 2: old story of the hammer and the anvil.
40:51
Speaker 4: What I like about that analogy and the passage that
40:55
Speaker 4: you read is that it goes beyond, underneath, around and
41:02
Speaker 4: above the idea of the binary split. It's a different
41:10
Speaker 4: point of view. It is an unconscious position. We have
41:17
Speaker 4: dreams where we do things we would never do in life.
41:22
Speaker 4: How do we take that seriously? There is content that
41:28
Speaker 4: is presenting itself, you know, and Jung could talk to
41:34
Speaker 4: his devil in all its various manifestations of unconscious realities.
41:42
Speaker 4: He could dialogue. Our dream maker sends us such images
41:47
Speaker 4: and scenarios all the time. Do we take that seriously?
41:54
Speaker 4: In other words, our dreams bring things home to us
41:58
Speaker 4: in pieces. Different dreams every night, different images every night.
42:04
Speaker 4: There it is. Parts of our very own self that
42:08
Speaker 4: are not necessarily just all black or all bad or,
42:12
Speaker 4: you know, all you know, the thing to be resisted.
42:18
Speaker 4: We can step into that. We can understand what the
42:21
Speaker 4: images are. We can confront ourselves. We can face the
42:26
Speaker 4: fact that we're weak or vulnerable or greedy or envious.
42:33
Speaker 4: And that's just the rest of us. Right.
42:36
Speaker 2: Right. So just sort of review, we've talked about the
42:40
Speaker 2: devil as sort of, you know, the unconscious shadow that
42:44
Speaker 2: which the ego doesn't want to know about or doesn't
42:47
Speaker 2: want to confront. We've talked about the devil as kind
42:50
Speaker 2: of a trickster figure that confronts us through perhaps our
42:55
Speaker 2: inferior function or through a complex. We've talked about the
42:59
Speaker 2: devil as an image of absolute evil. That would be
43:03
Speaker 2: kind of an archetypal level. We've talked about it as,
43:08
Speaker 2: you know, maybe as sort of an anti-life force. But Joseph,
43:13
Speaker 2: I know you've got something up your sleeve that I
43:16
Speaker 2: think is another aspect of the devil that sort of
43:20
Speaker 2: leans right into the devil in the tarot.
43:25
Speaker 3: I do indeed. So I thought that we could take
43:28
Speaker 3: a look at the 15th tarot card. the devil and
43:35
Speaker 3: talk a little bit about its symbolism. And I think
43:40
Speaker 3: it is often powerfully misunderstood, which is unfortunate. So, to
43:49
Speaker 3: the initiate, the 15th tarot card represents the first stage
43:56
Speaker 3: of psycho-spiritual awakening. And it has to do with the
44:01
Speaker 3: use of the intellect to disprove some of our assumptions.
44:08
Speaker 3: So in the raised upper right hand in the palm,
44:12
Speaker 3: you can see there's some squiggly lines. And if you
44:16
Speaker 3: look carefully, it's actually the astrologic sign of Saturn. And
44:23
Speaker 3: in astrology, Saturn is often referred to as the great malefic.
44:28
Speaker 3: And that's because Saturn represents constraint. limits, the forces that say, no,
44:36
Speaker 3: you can't go there or you must go over here, which,
44:40
Speaker 3: as Jung was saying, thwarts our ego. But on another level,
44:45
Speaker 3: Saturn represents the concretizing reality.
44:50
Speaker 5: Of the universe.
44:52
Speaker 3: And so the secret teaching is that the devil is
44:58
Speaker 3: the way God presents itself to the wicked. And what
45:07
Speaker 3: that suggests is that the wicked are those who are
45:12
Speaker 3: satisfied to only perceive things at a surface level. So
45:19
Speaker 3: if we think about just the evolution of science, for instance,
45:23
Speaker 3: there were many things that were attributed to devilishness. Epilepsy
45:28
Speaker 3: was thought to be caused by demonic possession, ending up
45:32
Speaker 3: the plague. is something that could be defended against by
45:36
Speaker 3: the bone of a saint, because if we had enough
45:38
Speaker 3: goodness or divine protection, then we wouldn't get the plague.
45:45
Speaker 3: And yet, all of these evils, all of the sufferings
45:49
Speaker 3: that humanity has overcome, happen because we looked beneath the
45:55
Speaker 3: outer seeming of something to understand fundamental principles, and then
46:01
Speaker 3: taking that discovery and using it to master the suffering.
46:06
Speaker 3: Gravity is a kind of suffering. You fall and you
46:10
Speaker 3: hurt yourself. If we understand gravity, which I think our
46:15
Speaker 3: engineers have, then we can create airplanes that fly. Not
46:20
Speaker 3: by imagining that gravity is evil, but by looking beneath
46:25
Speaker 3: the outer seeming of something to a more sophisticated, more objective, observation.
46:33
Speaker 3: So the devil represents that part of our own psyche
46:36
Speaker 3: that says, don't look any deeper. Just deal with the surfaces.
46:41
Speaker 3: And based on the surface of things, you seem to
46:45
Speaker 3: be beset by terrible adversity. The universe itself seems out
46:51
Speaker 3: to get you or people in general. So what we
46:55
Speaker 3: see in this card, this tarot card, is that the
46:59
Speaker 3: male and female figures are chained to the devil, but
47:03
Speaker 3: if we look carefully, the chains are so loosely wrapped
47:07
Speaker 3: around the head that they could be lifted off by themselves,
47:12
Speaker 3: but they don't seem to be doing that, that they
47:15
Speaker 3: are entranced with the outer seeming of things. The depiction
47:21
Speaker 3: of the devil itself, which is also based on the
47:24
Speaker 3: idea of baphomet, which is a medieval concept of animality
47:30
Speaker 3: and other things, it's a bizarre amalgam of all kinds
47:34
Speaker 3: of animals. The truth is, if you saw that thing
47:38
Speaker 3: chasing you down a road with chicken legs, you know,
47:43
Speaker 3: stalking around in bat wings and bleeding like a goat,
47:48
Speaker 3: it might unnerve you, but you probably wouldn't think that
47:51
Speaker 3: it commanded the powers of the universe. you would think
47:54
Speaker 3: that it's kind of silly, bizarre, not something that could
47:59
Speaker 3: possibly ever exist in a real world. And that gives
48:04
Speaker 3: us a sense that the phantasmagorias that we create in
48:09
Speaker 3: our own mind to depict the things that are against
48:13
Speaker 3: us are often exaggerated, they don't stand up to scrutiny,
48:19
Speaker 3: and therefore the devils that we think are out to
48:22
Speaker 3: get us are often the manufactured fantasies in our own mind,
48:30
Speaker 3: which is very much what both Freud and Jung and
48:33
Speaker 3: all the psychoanalysts have said. And in this excessive collusion
48:42
Speaker 3: with the outer seeming of things, that we ourselves become bestialized.
48:49
Speaker 3: So we see the horns on the figures, the human
48:52
Speaker 3: figures at the foot of the devil. The last thing
48:55
Speaker 3: I'll say, and there's much, much more to say, is
49:00
Speaker 3: that the pedestal that the devil figure is standing on
49:06
Speaker 3: is drawn as two-dimensional. That the artist from this initiatic
49:12
Speaker 3: tradition is telling us something, that our fantasies of the
49:18
Speaker 3: devil are only two-dimensional, that they're not substantive, but they
49:24
Speaker 3: are actually products of our own imagination. And when we
49:30
Speaker 3: can challenge that, we may find that underneath the devil,
49:35
Speaker 3: there is light. And so the esoteric teaching is that
49:40
Speaker 3: the devil as it's represented here is actually the archangel Uriel,
49:46
Speaker 3: whose name means God as light. Now, this is very
49:52
Speaker 3: interesting also because quantum physics is telling us the same thing,
49:58
Speaker 3: that the outer seeming of all objects is a kind
50:02
Speaker 3: of luminous energy. Einstein gave us that idea first and
50:09
Speaker 3: Quantum physicists now go far beyond that, but the more
50:13
Speaker 3: they press, the more they calculate, they come back to
50:16
Speaker 3: this message over and again, is there is a unified
50:20
Speaker 3: field of somethingness that differentiates somehow to create all possible objects.
50:29
Speaker 3: And the ancients, I think, intuited that there is something,
50:34
Speaker 3: there is a light, behind even the terrible adversarial things
50:39
Speaker 3: that cause us suffering. And although our eyes may not
50:43
Speaker 3: report that to us without a kind of mystical revelation,
50:47
Speaker 3: our minds can at the very least suggest there is
50:52
Speaker 3: a depth that we're missing.
50:54
Speaker 5: And so, coming full circle, we call.
50:57
Speaker 3: Jungian work depth work, or part of the tradition of
51:02
Speaker 3: depth psychology.
51:05
Speaker 2: And Joseph, I'm thinking about, you're talking about the God
51:08
Speaker 2: of light. Of course, Lucifer means, etymologically, the light bringer.
51:15
Speaker 2: And there is a way, I think, throughout this whole conversation,
51:18
Speaker 2: one of the things that's been coming up is to
51:20
Speaker 2: deal with the devil psychologically is to bring consciousness to
51:25
Speaker 2: the psyche. If you can do as Jung did and
51:30
Speaker 2: talk with your devil, something gets made conscious that was unconscious.
51:37
Speaker 2: And so that's the great benefit of the work. I
51:40
Speaker 2: also want to, I think it's so interesting, and thank
51:44
Speaker 2: you for that discussion about the tarot and what it means,
51:48
Speaker 2: because there's a quote from Von Franz that really maps
51:52
Speaker 2: right on to that, that I just want to share.
51:54
Speaker 2: This is like one of my quote days on the podcast.
51:57
Speaker 2: She says, The devil is the one who wants the
52:00
Speaker 2: concrete thing. He says something which has no evidence in
52:05
Speaker 2: concrete reality is not real. So there's something about losing
52:11
Speaker 2: a symbolic or psychological perspective that is of the devil,
52:19
Speaker 2: you know, that kind of tendency towards concretism, which is
52:25
Speaker 2: very much kind of the bane of modernity. That we just,
52:30
Speaker 2: we think like this, right? If it doesn't have existence
52:34
Speaker 2: in concrete reality, it's not real. Well, that is the
52:40
Speaker 2: devil's perspective, if you will. And it kind of creates,
52:44
Speaker 2: you were talking about it being two-dimensional, and I know
52:47
Speaker 2: you were kind of taking that in a slightly different way,
52:49
Speaker 2: but that's that same idea, right? Is that we just
52:52
Speaker 2: see everything on the surface, right? And it flattens our experience.
52:58
Speaker 2: It flattens our experience of ourselves. I mean, I think
53:01
Speaker 2: one of the things that people find really moving about
53:04
Speaker 2: discovering Jung is that you, as you start to read
53:08
Speaker 2: this material and become familiar with it, you understand that
53:11
Speaker 2: you have depths, that you're not just what you appear
53:16
Speaker 2: on the surface.
53:18
Speaker 4: You know, I'm going back to the problem of the opposites,
53:22
Speaker 4: which for Jung was so, so central. And the way
53:26
Speaker 4: that we concretize things or can concretize things now is,
53:31
Speaker 4: is there scientific.
53:32
Speaker 2: Proof for that?
53:35
Speaker 4: As if that is the only arbiter of what is
53:38
Speaker 4: real or true or good. And I'm going back to
53:43
Speaker 4: some of the other ways that we split things, you know,
53:48
Speaker 4: whether it's in history or, you know, sort of denying
53:54
Speaker 4: our own depths. that we have the problem of the
53:57
Speaker 4: opposites all the time. And what do we split off
54:02
Speaker 4: versus what do we try to include and converse with?
54:09
Speaker 4: So it's not as if modernity and the Enlightenment solved
54:13
Speaker 4: this problem.
54:13
Speaker 2: It did not. Certainly didn't.
54:16
Speaker 5: It didn't.
54:17
Speaker 3: I want to share just a quick dream that I
54:19
Speaker 3: had many, many years ago that was kind of an
54:22
Speaker 3: initiation into this.
54:25
Speaker 5: I've shared it before on the podcast, but not for
54:27
Speaker 5: a long time.
54:29
Speaker 3: So in this dream, I'm in an old Hollywood mansion,
54:35
Speaker 3: and I'm at the top of this very grand stairway
54:39
Speaker 3: that kind of sweeps around into a huge lobby underneath.
54:45
Speaker 3: And it's nighttime, it's storming, there's lightning, and then there's
54:50
Speaker 3: that proverbial knock on the door.
54:52
Speaker 5: Bam, bam, bam.
54:54
Speaker 3: And so I could feel the intensity, but I go
54:58
Speaker 3: downstairs and just like the beginning of every horror movie,
55:02
Speaker 3: I can't see out the door, but I'm compelled to
55:04
Speaker 3: open it anyway. So I reach over and I open
55:08
Speaker 3: the door and standing right there in front of the
55:12
Speaker 3: door is this monster that is just roaring. It has
55:16
Speaker 3: an enormous mouth that's howling and howling. And in that moment,
55:23
Speaker 3: through some act of grace, I feel this tremendous clarity
55:28
Speaker 3: that it is howling in pain. And I begin to
55:33
Speaker 3: feel this enormous amount of sadness and compassion and tearfulness
55:38
Speaker 3: for this roaring devil at my door. And as soon
55:43
Speaker 3: as I feel compassion, it transforms into this luminous and
55:48
Speaker 3: beautiful man in front of me. And I felt when
55:52
Speaker 3: I woke that I had passed some kind of a test.
55:56
Speaker 3: So this is the stuff we do inside all the time,
56:01
Speaker 3: that we find these infernal ideas, infernal feeling states, infernal images.
56:08
Speaker 3: And just as Jung demonstrated in the Red Book, leaning
56:12
Speaker 3: into it compassionately, curiously, having some kind of an interaction
56:17
Speaker 3: with it, Quite literally, the image can transform and we
56:22
Speaker 3: can find value and even divinity in something that we
56:27
Speaker 3: were so sure we should run away from or even
56:30
Speaker 3: try to kill or destroy.
56:32
Speaker 2: You know, that leads right into a fairy tale. Fairy
56:38
Speaker 2: tales are so great because they contain the wisdom, sort
56:43
Speaker 2: of like alchemy, you know, anything that's been sort of disallowed, say,
56:47
Speaker 2: in Christianity often popped up in fairy tales. If, you know,
56:51
Speaker 2: if we're looking at kind of the Western fairy tale tradition.
56:54
Speaker 2: And there's a, there's a, there are a bunch of
56:57
Speaker 2: Grimm's tales that, you know, have the feature, the devil.
57:01
Speaker 2: One of them is the devil's sooty brother. And I
57:04
Speaker 2: want to just try to kind of summarize the story really.
57:08
Speaker 2: So there's a discharged soldier. He has nothing to eat.
57:11
Speaker 2: He meets a man who's actually the devil, and the
57:14
Speaker 2: devil says, what's the matter? And the soldier says, I
57:17
Speaker 2: have no money. And the devil says, well, you work
57:20
Speaker 2: for me, and I'll take care of you for the
57:22
Speaker 2: rest of your life. So he said, but there's one thing.
57:25
Speaker 2: You're not allowed to wash yourself, comb your hair, trim
57:28
Speaker 2: your beard, cut your nails or hair, or wipe your eyes.
57:30
Speaker 2: So the soldier says, ah, what have I got to lose?
57:33
Speaker 2: I mean, it's very interesting that it's a discharged soldier,
57:36
Speaker 2: because as those of us who maybe have worked with men,
57:40
Speaker 2: military post-traumatic stress disorder know, soldiers often carry collective shadow.
57:46
Speaker 2: That was certainly true in the Vietnam War. Soldiers go
57:49
Speaker 2: do society's dirty work. We don't want to know. We
57:51
Speaker 2: don't want to know what they do. They come home.
57:54
Speaker 2: They have to deal with our collective shadow. They have
58:00
Speaker 2: acted out for us and we don't want to know from. So,
58:04
Speaker 2: you know, there are many fairy tales that feature a
58:08
Speaker 2: discharged soldier who's kind of a kind of marginal character
58:12
Speaker 2: like this one.
58:12
Speaker 5: Okay.
58:13
Speaker 2: So he goes down to hell, and what he has
58:17
Speaker 2: to do is tend the fires under the kettles in
58:19
Speaker 2: which the damned souls are sitting.
58:21
Speaker 3: Are you talking about Jungian training?
58:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
58:26
Speaker 3: All of a sudden it was like I was back there.
58:31
Speaker 2: Sweep the house clean and carry the dirt out the
58:33
Speaker 2: door and keep everything in order, but he was never
58:36
Speaker 2: to peek in the kettles. So he does this. He's
58:39
Speaker 2: like shoveling, you know, wood under the, keeping the fires
58:43
Speaker 2: burning and the souls of the damned are in the kettles.
58:46
Speaker 2: And so he does a really good job. But one
58:50
Speaker 2: day he just can't resist. And he opens the kettle
58:52
Speaker 2: and there he sees his old sergeant sitting there. And
58:57
Speaker 2: he says, aha, you crumb. Fancy meeting you here. You
59:01
Speaker 2: used to step on me, but now I've got you
59:04
Speaker 2: under my foot. And he puts the lid back on.
59:08
Speaker 2: And then he adds fresh wood. So he does this
59:11
Speaker 2: with all of the kettles and it's all of the,
59:13
Speaker 2: you know, his superior officers who treated him terribly. And
59:16
Speaker 2: now he gets to like stoke the fire under them.
59:19
Speaker 2: So he does this for his entire, the entire time.
59:22
Speaker 2: I think it's seven years or something. And, you know,
59:26
Speaker 2: he's blowing the bellows on it to keep everything hot.
59:29
Speaker 2: And the devil says, you know, well, you've done a
59:33
Speaker 2: really good job. You did peek in the kettles and
59:35
Speaker 2: you weren't supposed to, but you're lucky that what you
59:38
Speaker 2: did was you just put more wood on. Good for you.
59:42
Speaker 2: So the devil says, fill up your sack with dirt
59:46
Speaker 2: here with the sweepings and then go home. And so
59:50
Speaker 2: he does. He's like, well, that's not much of a reward,
59:53
Speaker 2: you know, but okay, that's my reward. That's what I'll do.
59:57
Speaker 2: And then as soon as he returned to the world above,
59:59
Speaker 2: he was going to shake the dirt out. And wouldn't
1:00:01
Speaker 2: you know it, it was gold. It was all gold. And,
1:00:08
Speaker 2: you know, there's this whole stuff because he looks pretty rough, right?
1:00:10
Speaker 2: He hasn't trimmed his hair or his beard or his
1:00:13
Speaker 2: nails or all that. And so he has to tell everyone,
1:00:17
Speaker 2: I'm the devil's sooty brother. But eventually he gets a
1:00:21
Speaker 2: haircut and then he goes on, in fact, to marry
1:00:26
Speaker 2: the king's youngest daughter. So the devil's sooty brother got
1:00:31
Speaker 2: the king's daughter. And when the king died, he got
1:00:33
Speaker 2: the whole kingdom as well. So it's an interesting fairy
1:00:36
Speaker 2: tale because unlike what Christianity might teach is, oh, turn
1:00:40
Speaker 2: the other cheek. Now, this is like, oh, you've got
1:00:44
Speaker 2: your former superior officer who treated you like shit and
1:00:48
Speaker 2: Now you can turn up the heat. It's like, okay,
1:00:52
Speaker 2: go down to hell and live in that fantasy. Live
1:00:56
Speaker 2: it all the way through. You know, have those feelings
1:01:00
Speaker 2: of anger. Let that, you know, indignancy have its full expression.
1:01:07
Speaker 2: And then what comes from that is actually gold. And
1:01:13
Speaker 2: you can go forward to live a good, productive life.
1:01:18
Speaker 2: You know, it's sort of, it's kind of the opposite
1:01:20
Speaker 2: of what we're taught, but that there's something actually beneficial
1:01:26
Speaker 2: about giving those dark fantasies their fullest expression, at least
1:01:33
Speaker 2: in the imagination.
1:01:34
Speaker 5: Right.
1:01:36
Speaker 3: He discovers his own sadistic capacity, which he was projecting
1:01:41
Speaker 3: onto these superiors that were being sadistic towards him as
1:01:45
Speaker 3: a soldier.
1:01:46
Speaker 5: Now, he gets to be sadistic.
1:01:49
Speaker 4: But I think exactly what you're saying, Lisa, is we
1:01:55
Speaker 4: don't deny our feelings of fury and retribution and a
1:02:01
Speaker 4: whole host of other things. But we do it imaginatively.
1:02:07
Speaker 4: We do it, you know, we talk about it. Maybe
1:02:11
Speaker 4: we journal about it. Maybe we even go into therapy.
1:02:16
Speaker 4: So we're not blocking them out, but neither are we
1:02:19
Speaker 4: actually acting them out in the external real world any
1:02:25
Speaker 4: more than this man was. He was in the imaginal world.
1:02:31
Speaker 4: And all of those awful people were contained. Oh, they
1:02:36
Speaker 4: were in a cauldron. They weren't just diffuse and all
1:02:40
Speaker 4: over the place. They were in this nice kettle. And
1:02:44
Speaker 4: he could have the satisfaction of working through his complexes.
1:02:53
Speaker 4: And that's what turned to gold.
1:02:55
Speaker 2: Yeah. And he was in hell. But he had a process, right?
1:03:00
Speaker 2: I think it's like seven years, but it's like a
1:03:03
Speaker 2: set amount of time. It's not that you stay there forever.
1:03:06
Speaker 4: How much did it cost him after all that to
1:03:10
Speaker 4: go to a spa and a barber shop? And get
1:03:13
Speaker 4: cleaned up.
1:03:14
Speaker 2: Well, actually, the devil does it for him. I mean,
1:03:16
Speaker 2: I left out some of the details because I was
1:03:18
Speaker 2: just summarizing. But the devil sits him down and gives
1:03:20
Speaker 2: him a haircut and trims his nails.
1:03:23
Speaker 4: Oh, I had the fantasy of him spending a week
1:03:25
Speaker 4: at the spa. But be that as it may.
1:03:28
Speaker 3: Well, I think he did. It's just, you know, the
1:03:30
Speaker 3: devil's spa.
1:03:31
Speaker 2: Right. So. Well, we hope that you all have a
1:03:36
Speaker 2: wonderful Halloween and that you get a chance to talk
1:03:40
Speaker 2: with your devils.
1:03:41
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
1:03:42
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
1:03:43
Speaker 5: Hail Satan.
1:03:48
Speaker 2: And on that, perhaps, it's a good time to move
1:03:54
Speaker 2: to a dream.
1:04:06
Speaker 3: So before we jump into a dream... Let's talk a
1:04:10
Speaker 3: little bit about a way that we can get in
1:04:12
Speaker 3: touch with our own unconscious material and have tea or
1:04:17
Speaker 3: hamburgers with our own devilishness, which is dream work. So
1:04:23
Speaker 3: in our dream school, we offer programs, education, community, live events,
1:04:32
Speaker 3: so that you can encounter your own dreams at a
1:04:36
Speaker 3: level of depth and meaning. That is powerfully transformative, including
1:04:43
Speaker 3: the dark aspects of the personality. So for those of
1:04:47
Speaker 3: you that are not faint of heart and interested in
1:04:51
Speaker 3: perhaps a luminous infernal encounter, join us in Dream School.
1:04:58
Speaker 3: And on that note, we have a male mental health
1:05:02
Speaker 3: counselor who is 69 years old who has submitted a
1:05:06
Speaker 3: dream called My Pet Life.
1:05:09
Speaker 5: Cow. And here's his dream.
1:05:13
Speaker 3: I was cutting shrubs along my property line along the
1:05:16
Speaker 3: street and my pet cow started to come too near
1:05:19
Speaker 3: the road. It was looking for apples or something. I
1:05:23
Speaker 3: told it to get back in the yard. It moved
1:05:25
Speaker 3: away from the street a little, but came back out
1:05:28
Speaker 3: onto the road. I could hear cars coming down the road.
1:05:32
Speaker 3: I went back to help her. The people in the
1:05:36
Speaker 3: car could see how big and friendly she was to
1:05:38
Speaker 3: handle and I was petting her on the back. I
1:05:41
Speaker 3: helped her get back into the yard and she ran
1:05:44
Speaker 3: off to play with the dog. The dream now put
1:05:47
Speaker 3: me in a childhood neighbor's yard. A dog has a
1:05:51
Speaker 3: chew toy in its mouth. A few moments later, the
1:05:55
Speaker 3: cow comes over to play with the dog and it
1:05:57
Speaker 3: has a human skull in its mouth. For context, he adds,
1:06:04
Speaker 3: I've been working on myself for many years, starting in
1:06:06
Speaker 3: my 20s in Jungian analysis.
1:06:09
Speaker 5: I'm married, my.
1:06:10
Speaker 3: Wife is disabled, and I am her primary caretaker. I'm
1:06:13
Speaker 3: semi-retired but love being a mental health counselor with not
1:06:17
Speaker 3: much of a social life. His main feelings in the
1:06:21
Speaker 3: dream were love and care for the cow, and he
1:06:24
Speaker 3: liked how people in the car could see that he
1:06:27
Speaker 3: was caring for the cow. I was very surprised by
1:06:31
Speaker 3: the human skull, wondering where the cow could possibly have
1:06:35
Speaker 3: gotten it. And then for associations, he writes, No association
1:06:40
Speaker 3: to cows. Seen them, but never touched one. The dog
1:06:44
Speaker 3: would be a pet. The skull was human, but why
1:06:46
Speaker 3: would it be a chew toy? The neighbor's yard was
1:06:49
Speaker 3: just a yard next to a good friend.
1:06:53
Speaker 2: You know, this is a short dream, but it sure
1:06:55
Speaker 2: has a lot of powerful imagery, doesn't it? Yeah.
1:06:59
Speaker 4: The two images in the dream that stand out are
1:07:04
Speaker 4: the image of the cow and the image of the skull.
1:07:11
Speaker 2: And the image of the dog, which I think is
1:07:13
Speaker 2: in there too, right?
1:07:15
Speaker 4: It has a sort of intermediary function, but at least
1:07:20
Speaker 4: in the story of the dream, but Here's this beneficent
1:07:26
Speaker 4: image where the dream ego and the cow have such
1:07:30
Speaker 4: a warm, friendly relationship with the dream ego, caring for
1:07:36
Speaker 4: the cow. I told it to get back in the yard,
1:07:40
Speaker 4: I think is charming that you talk to the cow
1:07:44
Speaker 4: and the dream ego helps. People in the car are friendly.
1:07:51
Speaker 4: The dreamy goes petting the cow on the back. So
1:07:55
Speaker 4: all of this is, you know, makes me, as I
1:07:58
Speaker 4: listened to you read the dream, makes me smile. You know,
1:08:03
Speaker 4: isn't this really somehow delightful and connected and kind? And
1:08:14
Speaker 4: then the cow runs off to play with the dog.
1:08:18
Speaker 4: And the other significant thing is we're in the realm
1:08:21
Speaker 4: of the childhood, the childhood neighbor's yard. So we're back
1:08:27
Speaker 4: in the realm of the family or child complexes and situation.
1:08:36
Speaker 4: The dog has a chew toy, but it turns out
1:08:38
Speaker 4: to be a human skull.
1:08:41
Speaker 2: You know, it makes me think about the role of
1:08:44
Speaker 2: surprise in dreams. And I think a lot of times
1:08:46
Speaker 2: in dreams, there's this, like, You know, there's this a
1:08:49
Speaker 2: little bit of revelation, something gets revealed, and it's not
1:08:53
Speaker 2: what we were expecting at all. And sometimes you have
1:08:57
Speaker 2: that in the dream as this one. And then I
1:08:59
Speaker 2: think if you're doing dream work, you often feel surprised
1:09:02
Speaker 2: when you realize what the dream means, right? There's something,
1:09:05
Speaker 2: you know, surprise has to do with an increase in
1:09:08
Speaker 2: consciousness because you know something you didn't know before. And
1:09:13
Speaker 2: that happens powerfully in this dream that there's a skull.
1:09:18
Speaker 2: The other thing I'd say that's worth noting is that
1:09:22
Speaker 2: it happens along the edge of the road. He's trimming
1:09:24
Speaker 2: the hedges. So it's something about a kind of borderland
1:09:28
Speaker 2: or there's a hint of a kind of a border
1:09:32
Speaker 2: experience here. He's taking care of the hedges that often
1:09:36
Speaker 2: demarcate the end of the field and it's got the
1:09:39
Speaker 2: field and the road. And he's protective of the cow.
1:09:42
Speaker 2: He doesn't want the cow going into the realm of
1:09:46
Speaker 2: the road, obviously.
1:09:48
Speaker 3: I'm wondering if the cow with the skull in its
1:09:52
Speaker 3: mouth is trying to capture something about him being a
1:09:58
Speaker 3: caretaker for his disabled wife. Because when we think of
1:10:02
Speaker 3: the cow as a symbol of the divine mother or
1:10:05
Speaker 3: the feminine, and yet it's playful, but holding something that
1:10:11
Speaker 3: is grotesque or often is a symbol of death in
1:10:18
Speaker 3: Renaissance and medieval art, the presence of a skull is
1:10:23
Speaker 3: a symbol of the memento mori, that there might be
1:10:28
Speaker 3: nymphs or feasts or fruit, but somewhere there's going to
1:10:33
Speaker 3: be like a little monkey holding a human skull somewhere
1:10:37
Speaker 3: in the corner of the picture, that we never escape mortality.
1:10:43
Speaker 3: And so in the midst of the playful cow that's
1:10:48
Speaker 3: kind of a pet, beloved, the dog that's beloved, this fun,
1:10:55
Speaker 3: warm scenario, that the specter of death is never far
1:11:01
Speaker 3: from space. And I think that caring for the wife,
1:11:06
Speaker 3: which again may be very loving, may even be very playful,
1:11:10
Speaker 3: but the specter of mortality is ever present, particularly when
1:11:16
Speaker 3: we're dealing with somebody that is disabled or chronically ill.
1:11:22
Speaker 3: So I think that the cow with the skull in
1:11:24
Speaker 3: its mouth is a picture of affect, something that you
1:11:27
Speaker 3: often bring up, Deb, that shows that complexity of those
1:11:35
Speaker 3: different valences.
1:11:37
Speaker 4: I think of the skull also. you know, that somewhere
1:11:43
Speaker 4: there's the rest of the skeleton or so we might presume,
1:11:47
Speaker 4: but that something has been dismembered. It's an image of decapitation,
1:11:55
Speaker 4: and it can often kind of symbolize ego, rational thought processes,
1:12:03
Speaker 4: individual stuff. And the skull appears when the dream moves
1:12:10
Speaker 4: to a childhood neighbor's yard. So he's now in the
1:12:17
Speaker 4: realm of earlier years, maybe family complex, not the neighbor,
1:12:27
Speaker 4: metaphorically speaking. Who's the neighbor? And what were they in
1:12:32
Speaker 4: his remembered life? You can associate to that. and chewing
1:12:39
Speaker 4: on something, and that they're playing, the cow and the
1:12:42
Speaker 4: dog are playing with a human skull. And I'm wondering
1:12:47
Speaker 4: about what might have been killed off, forgotten about, that's cognitive,
1:12:56
Speaker 4: that's memory, that's a complex, I don't know, in this
1:13:01
Speaker 4: very beneficent overall dream setting.
1:13:05
Speaker 2: I think I'm seeing the dream as very archetypal. And,
1:13:10
Speaker 2: you know, picking up themes that you've both brought up,
1:13:13
Speaker 2: I mean, the cow is obviously associated with the maternal.
1:13:18
Speaker 2: In many cultures, there are these kind of primordial cow
1:13:22
Speaker 2: goddesses or goddesses that are associated with cows. There's Hathor
1:13:27
Speaker 2: in Egyptian mythology and Norse mythology. There's a cow whose
1:13:33
Speaker 2: name is Adumla. And she is associated with the creation myth.
1:13:41
Speaker 2: Over the course of three days, she licks away the
1:13:44
Speaker 2: salty rime rocks and reveals Buri, who is the grandfather
1:13:49
Speaker 2: of the gods. And so I think we've got this
1:13:55
Speaker 2: kind of creative energy and, you know, it's also a
1:14:01
Speaker 2: kind of energy associated with birth, right? The cow, the maternal.
1:14:06
Speaker 2: And then we have the dog. And in mythology, dogs
1:14:10
Speaker 2: are very often associated with the passage from this world
1:14:14
Speaker 2: to the next, to the underworld. So we have Cerberus who,
1:14:19
Speaker 2: you know, guards the gates of hell. And we've got,
1:14:23
Speaker 2: you know, Anubis who is also associated with the passage
1:14:28
Speaker 2: into the afterlife and in other mythological systems as well.
1:14:32
Speaker 2: So The dog is associated with death and the passage
1:14:36
Speaker 2: to death, and perhaps the cow is associated with birth
1:14:39
Speaker 2: or the maternal principle. So somehow these two things are
1:14:42
Speaker 2: kind of playing together. And then just in case you
1:14:46
Speaker 2: didn't get the reference to death and that it's very personal,
1:14:49
Speaker 2: and Joseph, I think this goes to your thought about
1:14:51
Speaker 2: it being kind of a memento mori, there's the skull.
1:14:55
Speaker 2: It's like, yes, we're always being sort of haunted by
1:14:59
Speaker 2: the notion of our own mortality. And you think of
1:15:02
Speaker 2: Hamlet holding up, you know, a last poor Yorick. So
1:15:06
Speaker 2: it's a kind of contemplation and invites the skull as
1:15:08
Speaker 2: kind of an image of a contemplation on death. But
1:15:11
Speaker 2: here it's really lifting it up to this very archetypal level,
1:15:16
Speaker 2: you know, that this is the field we're all playing in,
1:15:20
Speaker 2: is the field of life and death.
1:15:23
Speaker 3: And I think that the cow and death in some
1:15:27
Speaker 3: myths are related. that there is a hindu myth that
1:15:32
Speaker 3: when one dies they go to the realm of yama
1:15:36
Speaker 3: and that there is a river of blood actually that
1:15:40
Speaker 3: protects the realm of yama and that the dead must
1:15:45
Speaker 3: seek the aid of a cow to cross the blood
1:15:49
Speaker 3: river into yama's realm another connection is that hathor um
1:15:59
Speaker 3: in her celestial manifestation as the Queen of the West,
1:16:05
Speaker 3: extends herself out of a mountain, reaches to the dead,
1:16:10
Speaker 3: and then draws them into the underworld herself. And in
1:16:14
Speaker 3: that way, she's called the Lady of the Sycamore, offering
1:16:18
Speaker 3: them bread and water and welcoming them into the afterlife.
1:16:24
Speaker 3: So I think as often happens is the womb and
1:16:26
Speaker 3: the tomb both have a connection to each other. The
1:16:31
Speaker 3: birth mother and the death mother archetypally are together, and
1:16:36
Speaker 3: the burying of the body is a way of returning
1:16:39
Speaker 3: it to the womb of the earth. So yes, I
1:16:43
Speaker 3: think there is a very unconscious, but I think archetypal
1:16:49
Speaker 3: connection feeling that the cow is more than just the
1:16:53
Speaker 3: milky mother.
1:16:54
Speaker 2: And what we also know is that this dreamer, his
1:17:00
Speaker 2: psyche is on friendly terms with these energies. He's open
1:17:07
Speaker 2: to this. He has a kind of solicitous attitude toward
1:17:12
Speaker 2: this cow. He wants to care for it. There's tenderness there.
1:17:16
Speaker 2: So it says something about his relationship, I think, with
1:17:19
Speaker 2: the unconscious. Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest
1:17:25
Speaker 2: an episode topic, or join our mailing list, visit our website, thisunionlife.com.
1:17:30
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