Dancing in the FlameJ

BUDDHISM _ BUDDHIST

Contentd

A CKN O W L E D G M E N T S IX

I N T R O D UC T I O N

I. THE FIERCE AND LOVING GODDESS I3

From Great Mother to Goddess 14
The Eclipse of the Great Goddess 21
The Black Goddess 28
Rediscovering the Light in Matter 36

2. A HEART IN THE BALANCE 47

Beyond Duality 48
The Judgment of Maat 54
Building the Subtle Body 73

3. TELLING IT LIKE IT Is 87

4. AND A CRONE SHALL LEAD THEM 1 25

5. THE RosE IN THE FIRE 163

6. CHAOS AND CREATIVITY 1 77

7. WHERE THREE 0 REAMS CROSS 201

The Eye of the Beholder 214

N OTES 23 1

C R E D I TS 239
 lntroductwn

WHo IS THE GoDDESS? Who is she who sometimes replaces he in our

prayers? Is Goddess any different from God in our inner pantheon
or have we merely changed the nouns and pronouns? What are the
attributes of the Goddess? Who is she as Mother, Virgin, Crone?
How does she relate to the masculine? If we throw ourselves into the
flames of desire and then dance with her in the refining fire, how will
our everyday lives be changed? If we really do believe she holds the
whole world in the palm of her love, how do we live with that
sacramental truth at our center?
This book explores these questions concerning the unknown
feminine figure who is appearing in the dreams of so many contem­
porary men and women. Many people dismiss dreams as speculative
and anecdotal. However, for those of us who have lived in close
touch with our dreams all our lives, they offer truth far beyond facts.
They bring new perspectives and new understandings to our experi­
ence. Fred Alan Wolf, a theoretical physicist, claims that "dreaming
is vital to our survival as a species and a necessary 'learning labora­
tory' wherein the self and the universe evolve. In brief, matter evolves
through dreams." 1
This unknown figure whom so many people encounter in their
sleep speaks to the psyche and to the very cells of the body. She
seems to push through from the very depths of the collective uncon­
scious like a universal force that speaks individually and culturally.
HopefUlly, this book will add to the pool of consciousness that is
expanding around her.
Although she takes many different forms, this goddess­
sometimes a Black Madonna or an Asian or Indian Madonna-
Introduction always carries authority. She guides and advises and acts with
absolute clarity, often with a startling sense of humor that delights
in play. These moments in dreams or active imagination are filled
with her compassion for our human situation. She is blunt, neither
indulgent nor sentimental. She demands embodiment. Living in the
creative intercourse between chaos and order, she calls us to enter
into the dance of creation, "her love in her livi ng body."2 She speaks
to men as clearly as to women.
Both genders need a well-differentiated masculine and a well­
differentiated feminine. The power structures of patriarchy have pro­
foundly wounded both, making mature relationships almost impossi­
ble without hard psychic work. As a culture, we are presently stuck
in the parental complexes. Many women have worked for years trying
to find their own identity, freed from the mother and father com­
plexes. Men, too, are working to find their own feeling values, values
that are not dependent on pleasing or hating Mother and Father and
all they represent. The archetype of the Black Madonna, or Lilith, or
Mary Magdalene may be a way to freedom for both.
In writing this book, the authors have been very aware of the
pitfalls of using the terms masculine and feminine. While these words
are not synonymous with male and female, they unquestionably carry
connotations that are so ingrained in our psyches that we consciously
and unconsciously react to them with ancient gender prejudices. It
would be a great relief to forget the words, but the fact remains that
the balance of energies in the dream cannot be understood without a
recognition of the interplay between the male and female figures.
(The dream images are rooted in the instincts.) This interplay enacts
the balance or lack of balance between the two complementary ener­
gies that are continually relating to each other within us and without,
continually struggling to compensate for the one-sided world of con­
sciousness. The Chinese yang and yin represent the two energies as
two fish in a circle, each containing part of the other. The Hindus
represent them as Shiva and Shakti, the universal lovers out of whose
divine embrace everything is born. And in the Bible, the new para­
digm is imaged as the New Jerusalem gradually taking shape
throughout both the Old ;.md New Testaments. In the final book,
the New Jerusalem descends as a Bride to meet the Bridegroom in
the divine marriage.
2 Part of the resistance to the words masculine and feminine lies in
our inability to accept that each of us contains both masculine and Introd1

feminine energy and that both energies are divine. We pay lip service
to the concept consciously, but if we listen to ourselves, we hear the
archaic, gendered, pigeon-holed thinking plop out of our mouths like
an unexpected toad. For example, some men and women who accept
the Goddess as equal to the God and proclaim her divinity in matter
can still become angry if they hear femininity related to earth. At
some unconscious level, they continue to relate femininity, to earth,
snake, Satan, dark, evil-all these words that keep femininity in a
subordinate position, or worse, a diabolical one.
If we expand our consciousness a bit, we begin to see that our
attitude to the Earth, to nature, and to our own bodies is radically
shifting. In the dire consequences arising from the well-documented
abuse of E::mh, nature, and our bodies, we begin to see that they will
no longer tolerate the tyranny of our control. They will no longer
submit to the slavery to which we try to subject them. The Goddess
is the life force in matter. She has laws that have now to be learned
and obeyed. Her indwelling presence is the sacred energy, energy on
which our egos have no legitimate claim. Confronted with this real­
ity-a reality that is a confrontation with our own threatened sur­
vival-we realize that like Earth, nature, our bodies, we too are the
vessels of an energy far greater than anything that tries to contain it.
We realize that we, like the rest of nature, are participating members
in the vast community of life, whose sacredness we must embrace if
we are to survive. If we are ever to arrive at this expanded conscious­
ness, we will have to surrender our ego desires to the wisdom of the
Self. Masculine and feminine will have to learn to cherish each other.
(It is important to note here that Self with a capital S in Jung's
terminology refers to the divine within that mirrors the divine with­
out; self with a small s refers to the individual self.)
Many times throughout the book, we have chosen to use the
word transcendence referring to the masculine spirit, and immanence refer­
ring to the indwelling feminine. Neither of us is a theologian, but
both of us can believe in the unknowable mystery sometimes called
God, and we can see that mystery manifesting its radiance through
every living form in every moment. Transcendence uniting with Im­
manence. If you go into your garden, you may feel yourself present
in the divine embrace right there in the presence of a golden sun­
flower with a mandala for its center-the Immanence of the Tran-
Introduction scendent in the flower. (If not here, where?) Each has to be separated
out from the other before the magnetic pull of the opposites brings
them together.
While we are clarifying words, we need also to note that patri�
archy and masculinity are not synonymous. Female patriarchs can be
just as domineering as males. Like their male counterparts, they live
in a patriarchal ethos that operates through control over others, over
themselves, over nature. We need to recognize also that many men
have a more finely honed femininity than many women. We all are
the children of patriarchy and, therefore, we all have to take responsi­
bility for a killer power shadow that would massacre the feminine
and the masculine in whatever form they manifest. This book is not
a defense of the feminine at the expense of the masculine. The one
without the other leads to suicide or tyranny.
The historical data concerning the relationship of patriarchy to
the feminine in Western culture has been well documented in other
studies. The psychological implications of a few of the historical
events of the past nine centuries have been included in chapter I in
order to bring some added dimensions to the Black Madonna that
lies buried in our depths. Psyche does not work on a basis of causal­
ity as history does. I t does not respect temporal cause and effect
patterns of everyday life. Sometimes historical facts illustrate psycho­
logical phenomena.
H istorically, our Western concepts of feminine consciousness
have been far too restricted to take in the Great Goddess as the
majestic, empowered figure she once was. For most people today,
femininity still has something to do with the social values that deter­
mine how a "lady" will act. That myopic vision makes it almost
impossible for us to see the grandeur of the "thrones of wisdom" of
the twelfth century. In Chartres Cathedral, for example, the great
Goddess, Mary by name, sits on the cathedra, the throne of the cathe­
dral. She is Wisdom, crowned with leaves. Enthroned on her knee is
the young king, bearing in one hand the orb and raising two fingers
of the other in blessing of her and the world. He is the Word made
flesh, consciousness sitting on the lap of nature. Without the lap,
consciousness is uprooted from i ts source, assuming a life of its own
that can be self-devouring. It is as source that the lap is throne. The
relationship between masculine and feminine is well balanced, if not
4 on a physical scale, certainly on a psychic one.
 Later, during the Renaissance, when the Christ figure became a Introduction

suckling babe at the breast of the mother, the balance was danger-
ously upset in the direction of the tyranny of the feminine. The
conventions of courtly love with its adoration of the feminine and
the masculine putting itself in her service had intervened. Another
aspect of the suckling babe is imaged in the pi etas, in which the dead
son lies in the lap of the Great Mother. H istory seldom, if ever, gets
it right. The psyche, as a self-regulating system, yin and yang in
perfect balance, is a vision that historically has yet to be realized.
Even now, in the patriarchal excesses of militant feminism, we see in
yet another swing of the pendulum, the failure to find the balance.
In history, as in marriage, or within the individual, when a balance
becomes stagnant, one or other of the energies moves out to new
adventures. The spurt forces the complementary energy to move also,
until a new balance is found. So the spiral moves.
In this book, we look at some of the h istory of the Goddess in
order to orient ourselves in relation to the past. We look at contem- ·

porary dreams in an attempt to discern the quality of her energy, as it

manifests today. We look at some of the recent scientific discoveries
concerning the "light in matter." Because the Goddess in her virgin
aspect carries the transformative energy, some of the recent findings
of psychoneuroimmunology related to the transformation of energy
bring new meaning to metaphors. Hopefully, new thoughts and new
connections will open new eyes and new ears to what it means to
worship the Goddess. Perhaps, too, by recognizing the dawning of
feminine energy that is moving in the collective psyche, we may catch
more of our own personal dreams and ask ourselves again, "What is
conscious femininity?" What does the balance of masculine and fem­
inine as a self-regulating system operating in both men and women
look like?

T H E G O D D ES S

It might be of value to you, the reader, to meditate on the Goddess

for a few moments and then to write down a list of words that you
associate with her. Afterwards, you might compare it with a list that
came out of a recent workshop. The first associations, for the partici­
pants, were to the Goddess in her motherly aspects: Creator, nurtur- 5
Introduction ing, cherishing, large breasts, child-bearing, mandala, earth opening
to sky, earth itself, solid like a rock, reality of the body. The other
side of the mother archetype came out in words like untamed, vol­
canic, terrible, ferocious, voracious, Goddess of Death, Devourer of
the Dark, inertia, crocodile, mud.
In working with these attributes, we have to recognize the dif­
ference between archetypal and personal energy. Archetypal energy
carries a much higher charge than personal energy-the difference
between a thunderbolt and a duckling's quack. J ung understood the
archetype as a magnetic energy field at the core of a personal com­
plex. For example, around our personal mother or loss of our per­
sonal mother, we build up powerful responses, psychologically and
physically. These responses are laden with uterine, preverbal, and
early childhood feelings. They reverberate in our responses to women
in general.
At the core of the mother complex is the archetypal mother,
the Goddess. The archetype itself cannot be seen. It is a potentially
magnetic energy field onto which we fasten an image that is eventu­
ally projected out. That energy attracts or repels other creatures that
come within i ts orbit. More important, it attracts or repels the ego
so intensely that it can wipe out consciousness to the point where
the ego is no longer present to make choices, yes or no or maybe.
Now, mud and crocodiles hold immense creative energy so long
as you are not being sucked into them. But watch addicts steadily
sink into the mud of mother crocodile if they take one bite out of
the second muffin, or two swigs from a bottle of Scotch, or one lusty
kiss too many, or too much of whatever their mud is. You can see i n
their glazed eye the moment the archetypal energy vanquishes the
ego. No one is home. So long as the ego container is not strong
enough to relate to that numinous power without identifying with i t,
destruction lies ahead. To identify is "to become" the God or Goddess
without the feminine ground to reestablish the boundaries that return
us to our humanity. To relate is to know that the ego is the instrument
through which the divine energy flows. Pavarotti both relates when
he honors the divine for his gift, and when he steps off the stage and
becomes just plain Luciano enjoying his pasta.
In the early phases of learning to relate to archetypal energy, we
usually think of the archetypal as having two opposing sides. Associ­
6 ating with the Mother, for example, we think of the positive mother
as the nurturing, cherishing, protective feminine. We in the West Introduction

split those characteristics off from the voracious, devouring, terrible

Death Goddess. At the same time, we know that if we fail to break
out of the feathered nest in our adolescence, we may find ourselves
incapable of standing free. We may then be compelled to find an-
other mother who will tenderly take away our strength.
If, on the other hand, we were raised by a judgmental, even
rejecting, mother, we may have assimilated her strength in order to
survive. Simply by contending with her every day, we finally stood
on our own feet-liberated. And free to find a liberated partner, free
to create a mature partnership.
With the broader perspective, we can see that the words positive
and negative do not ultimately apply. They become judgmental words.
The fact is the Goddess who gives life is the Goddess who takes life
away. That fact allows for no sentimentality. In feminine thinking,
we hold the paradox beyond the contradictions. She is the flux of
life in which creation gives place to destruction, destruction in service
to life gives place to creation.
Relationships in our culture are in crises around mothering. For
centuries, mothering has been synonymous with femininity, and
many of us still think our femininity is well developed if we are
manifesting the nurturing, solid-like-a-rock aspects of the mother. If
we look again, however, with a new pair of glasses, we may ask our­
selves some new questions: Have I established manageable bound­
aries for my children? Do I mirror them, reflect back to them their
own feelings and values, or do I expect them to mirror me? Am I
dependent on their dependence on me? Am I coming from power or
love? Am I identified with mothering? Am I a conscious mother?
Many men (including male therapists) are doing as much moth­
ering as females. They, too, need to ask themselves these questions.
In homosexual and lesbian relationships, these questions are equally
relevant, because mothering is a part of every relationship.
Men are also looking at their own wounding from the patri­
archs (both male and female). If they have been raised as son heroes,
they may be fearful of their own femininity. They may know that
their fathers cannot accept the reality of their sons. As sun heroes of
their mother, they may have to deal with shattered idealism. "Who
am I when the ideals crumble? What aspects of myself can I not face?
Greed, lust, violence? Who am I without my inflated fantasies?" To 7
Introduction pass from son to mature man, they need the strength to hold onto
the totality of themselves-their full humanity, shadow included.
That humanity is grounded in the love that holds the cells of the
body together. The life force is another aspect of the Goddess. Men's
bodies, like women's bodies, carry both the masculine and feminine
energ1es.
All of us need to remind ourselves that mothering is only one
aspect of femininity. Otherwise, in our self-satisfaction in being con­
scious mothers, we are going to be shocked out of our complacency
when our partner one day responds from a place that is not mother.
The feminine that is striving to find its own voice comes from the
Virgin archetype. This is not the voice that comes from the con­
stricted throat and military shoulders of the patriarchal complex say­
ing, "This is who I am and this is what I want."
The real work in many relationship problems for both men and
women is separating their new femininity, their own virgin, from the
mother complex. Thus, instead of acting from introjected, automatic
responses, the virgin learns to live spontaneously from the emotions
and values that are grounded in her own musculature. The initiated
virgin is the feminine who is who she is because that's who she is.
Like the virgin forest, she is full of her own life force, full of poten­
tial, pregnant. Her characteristics cannot be totally separated from
mother and crone. One day, hopefully, mother, virgin, crone become
an integrated whole.
For purposes of differentiating the Virgin, let us look once
again at the workshop associations: resonating, veiled, embodied,
connected, erotic, natural rhythms, fearless, fecundity, living in the
Now, poetry, light in the darkness, consciousness in the darkness,
complete within herself, black.
As soon as we put the word "black" with the Black Virgin or
Black Madonna, we hear deeper resonances. According to Robert
Graves in his exquisite version of The Song cif Songs, "[ t]he words black
and wise [areJ almost indistinguishable in Semitic script."3 Further
explaining the connection between black and wise he writes, "The
many black Virgins in Spain and Southern France . . . are black
because the Saracen occupation during the Middle Ages taught the
local Christians to equate 'black' with 'wise'-hence the ' Black Arts'
were originally the Wise Arts."4
8 This connection between blackness and wisdom may also have
something to do with the Black Madonnas that were brought back Introduction

to Europe by the Crusaders from the Islamic world. Their love for
these figures was sometimes connected to their belief that they had
survived a fire and, therefore, understood their suffering. It was love
forged in fire. Within a century, the Black Death was ravaging
Europe. People began to fear that they were being punished by God
for heretical practices. The order of the universe (wisdom), which
they connected with the Goddess, was collapsing into chaos, the
Black Arts, and everything associated with their own shadow side.
Their love for the Black Madonna was not diminished but became
tinged with fear.
Today her darkness is associated with the unknown, repressed
side of our femininity. She is intimately tied to the integration of
shadow materials as compensation for the one-sidedness of logocen­
tric thinking, even, as we shall see, as the acausal behavior of atoms
at a subatomic level compensates for an overdetermined perception
of their classically conceived rational behavior. Experiencing her in
our body is a startling step toward experiencing ourselves whole.
That sense of wholeness is essential to healing. It cannot, we shall
suggest, be achieved until we are able to surrender in trust to a reality
that cannot be contained in a rational system of causality, a system
that the new physics has now, if not abandoned, at least corrected by
making it answerable to a larger indeterminacy.
The Black Madonna somehow carries the energy of the Black
spirituals as sung by Blacks-passionate, rooted in suffering, lusty,
singing the tragedy in the ordinary, imponderable, subatomic depths.
The connection between Virgin, Wisdom, and Sophia is sig­
nificant. In their book entitled Sophia, Cady, Ronan, and Taussig ex­
plain their "use of the name 'Sophia' . . . when the biblical translators
invariably prefer 'Wisdom.' Sophia is, in fact, the Greek word for
wisdom, or rather, a transliteration of that word. Sophia immediately
suggests a person rather than a concept . . . . Use of the title 'Wisdom'
rather than the name 'Sophia' contributes to further avoidance and
repression of this unique biblical person."5 Since the unknown femi­
nine figure that appears in contemporary dreams carries so many of
Sophia's attributes, and since these attributes span feminine qualities
from primal goddess to immanent radiance, we will sometimes refer
to her as Sophia.
The Virgin is not to be identified with Mother. She is born 9
Introduction from the womb of the conscious mother within us. She is matter i n
the process of being refined-dancing i n the flames. Within her, the
metamorphoses are slowly taking place. The Virgin carries the new
consciousness-the consciousness that may radically shift the con­
sciousness of the planet, and in the new physics is shifting it. We will
focus on this process in depth in chapters 6 and 7.
The Crone is the third in the feminine trinity. Words associ­
ated with her begin to take on a different dimension: timeless, space­
less, detached, fearless, free, beauty, guide, Wisdom, surrender,
spontaneity, paradox.
While age does not necessarily create a crone, certainly "the
slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" do have something to do
with her maturing. She evolves out of the conscious Mother and
conscious Virgin. As we, men and women, respond to what life
brings, the Crone very gradually presents herself. She can shock us
when we hear what comes out of her mouth. She speaks her blunt
truth and lets the chips fall where they will. Not that she is without
feeling, certainly not without sensitivity. But she has seen enough to
be able to separate the irrelevant from the essence. And she has
neither the time nor the energy to waste on superficialities.
H aving passed through her crossroads, the divine intersecting
the human, the Crone will have learned to accept the surrender of
her ego desires and, having accepted her own destiny, she is free and
fearless. She no longer has to justify her existence, nor fear the judg­
ment of others. This deep acceptance of herself unites her with the
Virgin-the Virgin forever transforming into the maturity of the
Crone. The new sense of freedom brings with it a childlike energy­
spontaneity, play, creative ideas. With her well-developed masculin­
i ty, she may put her ideas into action in the world, ideas that
confront causality with what Jung calls synchronicity.
In a well-honed crone, we may feel the transparency of her
body that is open to another reality. Being with her, we feel the
presence of a timeless, spaceless world. We begin to see everything
from two sides-the side that is totally in life and the side that is
already dwelling in disembodied soul. The Crone helps us hold the
paradox.
Because she has learned to love without any personal agenda,
she makes an excellent guide. She knows how tough and how gentle
l0 we have to be to enter into this life and to leave it. She holds an
unspeakable wisdom in the very cells of her body. The beauty and Introduction

the horror of the whole of life are held together in love.

The Crone energy is strong enough to guide men into the femi­
nine. She can hold the container in which they can experience their
own shadow rage without destroying themselves or others.
As we move into the new millennium, we are dancing deep in
the flames-physical and psychic. Sophia calls to us as she has called
throughout the centuries.

0 people: I am calling you;

my cry goes out to the children of humanity.
You ignorant ones, study discretion;
and you fools, come to your senses.
Listen, I have serious things to tell you,
and from my lips come honest words.
My mouth proclaims the truth . . .
All the words I say are right,
Nothing twisted in them, nothing false,
all straightforward to the one who understands,
honest to those who know what knowledge means.
Accept my discipline rather than silver,
knowledge )n preference to gold.
For wisdom is more precious than pearls,
and nothing else is so worthy of desire.6

ll
 The Fierce and Lo�ing Godder:1r:1 I

THE IN V O C A T I O N T O K A LI

. . . The Black Goddess Kali, the terrible one of many names,

"difficult of approach," whose stomach is a void and so can
never be filled, and whose womb is giving birth forever to
all things . . .
-JOSEPH CAMPBELL

It is time for the invocation:

Kali, be with us.
Violence, destruction, receive our homage.
Help us to bring darkness into the light,
To lift out the pain, the anger,
Where it can be seen for what it is-
The balance-wheel for our vulnerable, aching love.
Put the wild hunger where it belongs,
Within the act of creation,
Crude power that forges a balance
Between hate and love.
Help us to be the always hopeful
Gardeners of the spirit
Who know that without darkness
Nothing comes to birth
As without light
Nothing flowers.
Bear the roots in mind,
You, the dark one, Kali,
Awesome power.
-MAY SARTON
The Fierce
and Loving
Goddess

F R O M G R EA T M O T H E R T O G O D D E S S

A B ou T FIvE Y EA R s AG o I was sitting in my sun room reading

the morning paper. A sense of excitement grew as I read an article
on the dedication of a temple to the black goddess, Kali, right here
in Toronto, Canada. Although I knew very little about her, I had
become fascinated by her image. I saw her dancing, a bloodied sword
in one hand and a severed, bearded head in the other. Her lolling
tongue hung out of her gaping mouth, and around her neck dangled
a necklace of skulls. Why was I fascinated by such a fierce image?
Was I harboring some unconscious rage that wanted to burst out?
Much as the patriarchal systems that dominate our culture irritate
me, even enrage me, I sensed that that wasn't the explanation. I felt
Kali herself crying out to me.
At first glance, Kali comes across as a fierce embodiment of the
devouring mother, who gobbles up everything, even her own chil­
dren. A closer look, however, reveals a great halo around her head, a
halo not seen in early depictions of the Great Mother. The halo
attests to Kali' s status as Goddess, to her need to be understood not
only as devourer, but also as transformer. She is black, dark as the
matrix, dark as the vortex, from which all creation comes and to
which it returns. To her devotees, she is like a black sapphire; radi­
ance shines through her blackness. She dances and laughs with aban­
don, intoxicated with the mystery she is.
Kali's dual role as devouring mother and enlightened goddess
is highlighted in a poem written by Yivekananda, a Hindu sage of
the twentieth century.

"I am not one of those," he chanted,

" Who put the garland of skulls round
Z4 Thy neck,
 The Fierce
and Loving
Goddess

The Grear Goddess Kali, India, Kali when \i• ewed

.. in her high­
est fom1 as wife of Shiva. is a perfect example of the J9simiJin.
tion ()f the old Great Mother image imo a new ;md higher
corpus of Gtear Go<idess mrthology.

"And then look back in terror

"And call Thee 'The Merciful.' "
"The heart must become
a burial ground,
"Pride, selfishness, and desire all
broken into dust,
"Then and then alone will the Mother
dance there!"1

In this poem, Vivekananda dissociates himself fi·om those who

project their own fear onto Kali and then tremble before her, seeking 15
The Fierce t o appease her wrath. I n these few opening lines, the poet captures
and Loving the essence of genuine Great Goddess worship: there must be a death
to the ego self; there must be a transformation in which there is a
Goddess letting go of all false values, of all the things that the egotistical
nature mistakenly clings to. In the burial ground of the heart, Kali's
enlightened devotees see beyond literal death to the death of values
rooted in fear. When they come to accept death as a necessary step
in their transformation, then Kali can dance her dance of perpetual
becoming. Once her cycles are accepted, those who love her are free
of the fear of death, free of their own vulnerability, free to live her
mystery.
The mystery of Kali is that she is perpetually destroying and,
at the same time, creating-destroying in order to create, creating in
order to destroy, death in the service of life, life in the service of
death. Kali is time, immanence, ceaseless becoming, nature as process.
As ceaseless motion that has no purpose other than its own activity,
Kali is as i ndifferent to the demands of the ego as she is to the
instinct to survive. The opposites of life and death, love and hate,
humility and pride, poverty and riches, mercy and revenge, justice
and tyranny, mean nothing to her, because with her there is no polar­
ity. For Kali, all experience is one-life as well as death.
In the Indian villages where Kali is celebrated in her own festi­
val, the villagers spend weeks shaping a clay statue of their beloved
Goddess, she who is the feminine wisdom deep in the body, who
makes no sense in the light of rationality. When her day arrives, they
sing and dance from their primordial roots, carry her through the
streets, and at the close of day throw her into the river. Instantly, she
goes back to mud. All the love and care that have gone into her
creation are dissolved in the waters. Kali's creation and dissolution
symbolize what the world of appearances looks like to those who
recognize it as part of a larger totality. Those who can accept her
cycle-life and death-are no longer vulnerable. They are fearless.
Along with Krishna, Kali became one of the most popular dei­
ties in the H indu pantheon. As David Kingsley points out, "In many
Tantric texts Kali's position is unambiguously declared to be that of
a great deity; indeed, in many texts she is declared the supreme deity,
triumphant over all others, equivalent, in fact, to Brahman."2 This
16 rise in the worship of Kali and her subsequent elevation to supremacy
represented a significant step in the evolution of matriarchal The Fierce
mythology. and Loving
Drawing on the works of Bachofen, Neumann, Campbell, and
others, Ken Wilber outlines three stages in this evolution. The first Goddess
stage, the typhon, refers generally to the period of earliest Homo sapiens
(Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon), and is itself a structure of con­
sciousness dominated by body-bound mentality and instincts.3 "In
the earliest typhonic times," Wilber writes, "the Great Mother was
probably not much more than an impact, a non-verbal shock at sepa­
rate-self existence, and an expression of simple biological depen­
dence."4 In this period, the Mother was the one who fed, who
provided the necessities of life through plants, seeds, and animals.
Caves afforded the protection of her womb, which eventually became
the tomb in the cycle of life and death. She was both the nourisher
of life and the destroyer. Life and death, joy and pain, were a seam­
less reality. "And death," declares the Earth Mother, in Shelley's Pro­
metheus Unbound,

shall be the last embrace of her

Who takes the life she gave, even as a mother,
Folding her child, says, " Leave me not again."5

Life, in this first phase, was closely associated with blood. The
monthly bleeding of women was thought to be the source of cre­
ation: when a baby was being formed in the womb, the bleeding
stopped. New life was, therefore, assumed to come from the blood
of the mother. Likewise, the Great Mother created out of her blood.
She was the womb/tomb of existence. All physical existence and the
Earth's abundant provision for the sustenance of life flowed from
that essential source-the Mother's fertility.
The second stage of Great Mother mythology, as Wilber de­
scribes it, grew out of the earliest awareness of separation from the
mother. As humans slowly separated out from nature, the primitive
emotions of life and joy became differentiated from those of death
and pain. In this phase, "the self sense [wasJ more structured, more
articulate, and so likewise the Great Mother. Men and women were
more conscious of their own tenuous existence, and thus more con­
scious of the Great Mother-what she was, and what she de­
manded."6 As life and death became polarized, humans began t� l7
The Fierce contemplate the possibility of nonbeing-a terrifying prospect for a
and Loving
fledgling consciousness. Death came to be invested with starkness
and terror, and the question then became, " How do I please Mother
Goddess so that she will give me life rather than death?"

[W]hat was the ':Vay to appease the Great Mother, to keep her as
protectress and prevent her wrathful Vengeance? Give her what she
demands-blood! And likewise, invent a precise way to do it-ritual!
Thus, the first great ritual was a ritual of blood sacrifice, offered to
the Great Mother-to Mother Nature-in a bartered attempt to
quench her desire for blood. . . . Blood is indeed bodily life, and if
you want to purchase life, you buy it with blood. So goes paleologic;
like magic it works with partial truths; and like magic, since it is
unable to grasp higher perspectives or wider contexts, it arrives at
barbaric conclusions. 7

Just prior to and during the early part of the pre-Iron Age, a
third form of matriarchal mythology began to emerge. Those with a
more highly evolved consciousness began to see beyond the concrete
reality of nature and saw into the underlying essence that pervaded
and unified all things. With this insight came the first glimmerings
of an awareness of the subtle or archetypal realm. The unif}ring light
in nature came to be worshiped as the Goddess, the mediator of
transformation.

The Great Mother was seen as the "One," the creatrix of all things
and the ultimate source of life and death. Her Oneness was bound
to the realm of nature as the unconscious personification of it. The
Goddess, as distinct from the Mother, while remaining immanent in
nature, and while demanding sacrifice, did not require blood sacrifice.
Worship of the Goddess required a movement from the literal and
concrete to the symbolic, a movement that launched a radical muta­
tion in consciousness. This mutation effected a release from the
mother-bound limitations of nature not unlike that which occurred
when Abraham was released from the blood sacrifice of his son, Isaac,
a release that launched the ethical consciousness identified with the
Semitic tradition.
The Goddess reached a high level of conscious articulation in
8 many of her numerous forms. Perhaps the best known are the Egyp-
tian goddess Isis and Sophia, the wisdom figure of the Old Testa­ The Fierce
ment. The sense of oneness, the sense of absolute authority that and Loving
each carried in her respective milieu is evident from the following
descriptions. In the Book of Wisdom, Sophia "reaches mightily from Goddess
end to end of the earth (8. I ) and . . . is praised because ' Though she
is but one, she can do all things' (7.27)."� In the aretalogies of Isis
we read, "I am Isis, sole ruler forever, and I oversee the ends of the
sea and the earth. I have authority, and though I am but one I oversee
them (Cyrene 4 )."9
Isis was recognized as "the creator of the universe and as such
preside[?] over all its elements: 'I divided earth from heaven. I set
forth the paths of the stars. I established the course of the sun and
moon . . . .' (Cyme I 2 - I4 ) . . . 'Whatever I determine, this too will
be performed for me: all things obey me' (Cyme 4 6)." 10
The goddess, Sophia, whom we are called to enthrone in our

The Bl,;;.:k Virgin of Rocarw1de>ur, France.

19
The Fierce being, is our life, "and no choice pos­
and Loving
session can compare with her." 1 1 Con­
tinually, she prepares a banquet that is
Goddess food for the soul.

Wisdom has built her house, she

has set up her seven columns; she
has dressed her meal, mixed her
wine, yes, she has spread her table.
She has sent out her maidens; she
calls from the heights out over the
city: " Let whoever is simple turn in
here; to him who lack understand­
ing, I say, 'Come, eat of my food
and drink of the wine I have mixed!'
Forsake foolishness that you may
live; advance in the way of under­
standing."1 2

The most important factor in

lsi� suckling Horus. ·nu: bnh,
the evolution of consciousness is that
t.he bp of the Great Mother, is
the seat of power. The Egyptian
in reaching this level of archetypal
gt)ddts$ his and the Virgin Mary Oneness the individual dies to the
<lre both often represented ;;.s sense of a separate self As stated by
the Throne of Wisdom. Wilber,

That simple yet crucial insight-"the sacrifice of self discloses the

Eternal"-was the esoteric insight empowering the mythology of
self-sacrifice to the Great Goddess, sacrifice carried out in prayer, in
contemplation, in meditative ritual and ceremony, in symbolic
Mass. 13

Worshiping the Great Mother meant identifying with her and

trying to appease her great power over one's life by offering a sacrifice
outside of oneself The worship of the Goddess, on the other hand,
involved entering into a process of self-transfomution. In order to
reach the desired level of archetypal oneness, one had to transcend
the ego boundaries. At this early stage in ego development, transcen­
dence could be very threatening. It was safer merely to maintain par­
20 ticipation mystique with the Mother. Penetration to the level of
archetypal Oneness involved moving beyond the body-self, beyond The Fierce
the ego-self, to a realization of soul consciousness. and Loving
Goddess
T H E E C LIP S E O F T H E G R E AT G O D D E S S

With the onset of the Iron Age, worship of the Sun God, albeit a
Sun God bound to the Mother, began to emerge. As consciousness
developed, a sense of self began to emerge from the body-self. This
is the natural course of human development. As the self developed
even further, human beings began to take their projections of divinity
off the Great Mother and the Goddess and to identify with the
ascendant symbol of the Sun God. Whereas they had once taken
power from nature through bone, feathers, and blood, now they
sought to exert power over nature. All the powers of nature that had
been an expression of the Great Mother were transferred to the Sun.
Humanity moved from polytheism to monotheism. No longer did
the king serve as the phallic consort of the Great Mother, but, in
keeping with the shift to monotheism, he assumed supremacy as the
representative of the Sun God.
Nature, in this patriarchal paradigm, was seen as something to
be controlled and dominated. In an odd reversal of roles, nature was
now pressed into the service of man. Power came to be perceived as
deriving from strength. Virtually unchanged since its inception, this
paradigm has dominated Western civilization down to the present.

The new state of ego consciousness that emerged gave rise to the
Hero Myth, which achieved dominance by 1 500 BCE.

Now there are several fascinating aspects to this historical emergence

of the Hero Myth-the myth of the individual Hero triumphing
over the Great Mother or one of her consorts, such as the old serpent­
dragon-uroboros, or over a Great Mother derivative, such as the
Medusa with serpent-monster hair, or over a Great Mother offspring,
such as Typhon. The first aspect is that the Hero is simply the new egoic
structure rf consciousness, which, coming into existence at this time (the
low egoic period), is naturally given living expression in the mythol­
ogy of the period.14 21
The Fierce Since she was rooted in the chaos of nature, the Great Mother
was defeated by the Hero. Her cyclical realm allowed only for repeti­
and Loving
tion, not for the linear sense of progression that the Hero desires.
Goddess Instead of integrating the mother mythology, the Hero dissociated
from it. So complete was that dissociation that generations of chil­
dren have grown up and come through the educational system with­
out ever having heard of the Great Mother. At best, it is an h istorical
footnote of little significance.
Tragically, with the rise of ego consciousness, repression of the
Great Goddess as well as the Great Mother occurred. The result was
a gradual eclipse of the understanding of the unifying ligh t in cre­
ation, the subtle Oneness of the Goddess that had begun to break
through into human awareness.
With the loss of this burgeon ing consciousness as a container
for the process of transformation, an enormous split took place in
the psyche, both culturally and individually. The Encyclopedia if Human
Behavior describes a dissociative reaction as "a psychoneurotic reaction
in which a portion of experience is split off, or isolated, from con­
scious awareness."15 This dissociation not only protects us from
threatening impulses, it also allows us to act them out without having
to bear any conscious responsibility for our actions. We thereby
avoid both anxiety and guilt.
When the dissociation takes place at a cultural level, it forms a
basis for the neurosis of the whole culture. Patriarchy dissociated
from its maternal ground reconstructed that ground in the guise of a
phallic mother that appears, for example, as Mother Church, Moth­
erland, Alma Mater. Ironically, the very fear that led patriarchy to
repress matriarchy has kept patriarchy neurotically bow1d in a strug­
gle for power to what it did and does repress. What is repressed out
of fear reemerges in the form of its repression. It is not therefore the
absence of the feminine that should be lamented (both feminine and
masculine are always already present in some form); it is the distorted
forms of their presence that exaggerate the tragic imbalance between
them. That imbalance undermines an entire civilization, contributing
to its collapse.
With characteristic insight and wit, Gloria Steinem invents
Phyllis Freud, who, unlike her more celebrated male namesake, does
not come to the conclusion that women are obsessed with penis
22 envy. "Female psychiatrists and psychoanalysts were imbued with the
philosophy of this female Freud, the founding genius who had The Fierce
proved that men's lack of wombs made them anatomically inferior and Loving
and terminally envious; men who dared protest were doubly pathol­
ogized by a diagnosis of womb envy, thus it was a belief system with Goddess
no way out. . . . " 16 This notion of "womb envy" does, in fact, have
historical support, namely, in patriarchy's ongoing attempts to rein­
vent and control the womb through its assumptions, institutions, and
legislation.
If we look at the English Romantic poets of the early nine­
teenth century, we see something very different going on. Essentially,
their gifts made them outcasts from patriarchal society. Their genius
opened them to the collective unconscious, and their poetry is an
articulation not only of their personal unconscious, but of the cul­
tural unconscious as well. Great poetry may be compared to big
dreams in that both come directly from the unconscious and are then
amplified in the waking state in order to understand them more fully.
When Blake, Shelley, and Keats were writing, they did not under­
stand, nor did they have the means to understand, the unconscious
as it was unveiled by Freud and Jung in our century. The unifying
light in creation, the Feminine that had been eclipsed particularly
during the seventeenth century, began her return and made her pres­
ence known in the unconscious of these male poets.
Although the patriarchal ego prides itself on being reasonable,
the twentieth century has been anything but the Age of Reason. In
our collective neurosis, we have raped the earth, disrupted the deli­
cate balance of nature, and created phallic missiles of mass destruc­
tion. Ironically, in our desperate attempt to keep death at bay (or
prevent dissolution, from the point of view of the ego) we have
brought ourselves to the brink of extinction. So long as we deny the
Great Mother and refuse to integrate her as Goddess in our psychic
development, we will continue to act out neurotic fantasies and en­
danger our very survival as a species.

In spite of the rising sun, the Great Mother is still very much alive
in the murky depths of our unconscious. Her presence is often dem­
onstrated in our dreams. In one dream, for example, a man sees his
mother in the kitchen. Blocking the kitchen door is a large crocodile.
The man goes into the living room with his cat and dog. The croco- 23
The Fierce dile comes toward him and swallows the dog. He manages to save
and Loving the cat.
In our homes, as in fairy tales, the kitchen is one of the most
Goddess important rooms. There we prepare food, and, through the miracle
of fire, we transform the energies of nature into energies we are able
to assimilate. This dreamer's mother is in the kitchen, but his way to
her is blocked by a crocodile. He later recalled that when he was ten
or eleven, his mother was very depressed. In this image, he is cut off
from h er by this immense animal that sleeps in the mud, the epitome
of i nertia. The crocodile is near the beginning of the evolutionary
scale. Symbolically, it brings up images not only of the personal
mother but also of the collective mother, that huge mother half
asleep in the unconscious, who can either suck us to our doom or fill
us with creative energy. The transformative potential lies in her mas­
sive energy.
This dreamer's personal mother was depressed and needed her
son to mirror her. She became overprotective and constantly forbade
him to go swimming with the boys, climb trees, or do anything that
might h urt him. His burgeoning masculinity and his yearning for
action were thus swallowed up. He lost his dog but he did manage
to save his cat (feminine instinct). He explored the realms of art, and
eventually achieved success in film, art, and music. In his marriage,
however, he was insecure and jealous, fearing that other men, because
he perceived them as more potent, would steal what he had. H is
energy, erratic at best, tended to flow toward depression and inertia
in anything he did. The energy of his personal mother and the energy
of the collective unconscious, which prefers sleeping in the mud to
transforming in the fire, was in the Great Mother crocodile. Her
energies were not available to him, and he was therefore unable to
transform them into higher levels of integration.
The word mother sometimes elicits a negative response-a fact
that displeases many women. It must be remembered, however, that
like fairy tales and fantasies, dreams use metaphorical language. The
image "mother" is a tuning fork that sets off vibrations far beyond
the realm of the personal mother. It resonates in the creative matrix
at the core of the psyche-the matrix that contains both the devour­
ing mother and the cherishing mother. It is the ego's fear of being
sucked into an earlier unconscious state that makes it regard the
24 Great Mother as negative. When the ego is strong enough to relate
to the Mother without losing its own identity, then Mother becomes The Fierce
the source of all creativity. Paradoxically, so long as the ego fears the and Loving
unconscious, it is at the same time magnetized by it. Driven by fear,
it moves into Mother in destructive ways-drugs, food, sex, alcohol, Goddess
spending money, whatever. These destructive ways indicate the hos­
tility that, quickened by fear, inevitably lashes out against the mother
and/ or against oneself.
Falling into the maternal unconscious is a repeated theme in
the consulting room. A woman has a dream in which a young man
is riding toward her on a bicycle. He falls into the ditch and ends up
in the mud (primeval matter). His mother appears behind him and
says, "Now come on home. Everything will be all right." This seem­
ingly simple dream reenacts the classical myths and summarizes
whole periods of history, both personal and cultural.
In this dream the woman's new masculinity is seeking to break
out of the unconscious depths, but instead he is thrown into the
primal mud. Matter, mater, mother, and Mother are pulling his ego
into the mud of oblivion. "Be safe here. I will look after you. Why
do you want to leave home? Stay here and be a good boy." This is
Oedipus, who "rebels against the solar-father principle of a higher
and more demanding mode of awareness, and seeks instead a union
with the old comfort of the chthonic earth, an emotional-sexual in­
cest with the Mother, an immersion in her domain." 1 7
When a young boy begins to separate out from his mother, he
may suddenly start imitating his father-walking like him, sitting
like him, dressing like him. As soon as he is tired or hurt, however,
he runs to Mother for comfort. This pre-Oedipal stage soon gives
way to confrontations with Father, and an increased turning to
Mother for support. Thus, the process of separating out from
Mother can often be waylaid. A man may remain locked into Mother
all his life, with varying amounts of resentment occasioned by a deep
psychic fear of being cut adrift, of being alone physically or psycho­
logically. Because his own inner feminine has not separated out from
his mother, he is unable to express his real needs or stand up for his
own values. He probably does not know what they are at a mature
level. Ironically, he may be married to a woman who finds her
strength in mothering her boy.
Girls can identify with Mother for a much longer period of
time, since there is no biological or social imperative for them to 25
The Fierce separate from her. Yet even with the most loving and caring of moth­
and Loving ers, a girl needs to separate out and become her own person. Failure
to sever the unconscious bond eventually constellates a negative rela­
Goddess tionship. The need to separate is captured in a young girl's poem,
which was written for a high school yearbook.

Who am I?
I see the answer
h alf at least
m your eyes

when you smile at me

just me
focusing and defining me
in time and space
I feel
the fine ground lenses
of love
pulling me together
oh how beautiful
you make me seem
you love me
and give me life
and courage
and a way to be
you surround me with
yourself
and I never notice
that I don't exist
apart from you.
You are always here
standing between me
and the emptiness
between me
and myself.18

It is this fear of emptiness that blocks most people from com­

ing to at-one-ment. To reach the place where we belong to ourselves,
we have to sever the umbilical cord that binds us to archaic depend­
26 encies. If we have never known a loving mother, that severing can be
even more difficult, because we continue to long for what we have The Fierce
never had. We continue to seek Mother in our relationships. Often and Loving
in analysis, the analyst must hold the role of loving mother until the
Great and Loving Goddess has become a reality in the analysand's Goddess
psyche. Out of this reality comes a love affair with life and sheer
delight in creativity.
When the differentiation between mother and the young femi­
nine is about to begin, the young masculine usually asserts himself.
The following dream focuses on the ego's decision to encourage the
young boy to act:

I am on a ship. We are whale-watching. The whales are gracefully

riding the waves. On the other side of the boat there are two whales,
one practically on the back of the other. A little girl falls overboard
and is swallowed whole by the whale. I encourage a young boy to
open the whale's mouth and take out the little girl. It's incredible
how this happens. The whale seems to be in a playful mood, and it
is no trouble for the boy to release the tiny girl. Then there is a party
to celebrate the girl's safe return. Everyone is in colorful costumes
and there is dancing and lively music.

This is not the patriarchal masculine, which makes the rules

that keep people in their place. This is a new masculine conscious­
ness that can pull the feminine out of the inertia of the mother,
bringing a new assertiveness, a new perspective on life.
Most men and women are appalled when they look at the con­
dition of their femininity in their dreams. They are more deeply
appalled when they talk to those female figures. Those female figures
have stories to tell, and they will tell them if they are listened to. Our
culture has made us deaf and blind to feminine anguish. The media
is making us increasingly aware of marital batterings, assaults, harass­
ments, rape. As a culture, however, we are still blind to the false
assumptions underlying many relationships, still deaf to the snide
remarks some women make to undercut other women, still unable to
pull the feminine out of the mud.
Why has that energy become so mired? Working with dreams
is like working on an excavation. We have to dig through layer upon
layer of facades that cover the feminine before we can reach it. The
individual psyche is a microcosm of the cultural macrocosm. Centu- 27
The Fierce ries of abuse have brought us to a crisis in which we look the Death
and Loving
Goddess straight in the eye. That look can change our lives. It may
not, in which case, we may obliterate ourselves. Even a very brief
Goddess look at a few of the critical turning points in Western culture over
the last eight centuries will give us some insight into the Goddess
that lies buried in our depths.
Anyone who has labored to release the Goddess from the dark­
ness of centuries of abuse has returned from the excavation with a
paradox. She who is dead is alive. All we have to do is open our eyes
an extra sixteenth of an inch, and there she is, dancing in every apple
blossom, in the song of every purple finch, as well as in the flames of
passion that we call life.

THE BLACK G O D D E S S

Beginning in the eleventh century, the Crusades unleashed immense

slaughter and plunder across the ancient world. Something of Kali's
energy was manifested in the passion and excess that accompanied
this well-intentioned but ill-fated campaign. The goal was to release
Jerusalem (biblically imaged as the Bride )-and indeed the entire
Holy Land-&om the captivity of the Muslim hordes. Although this
goal was, in the long term, not achieved, the Crusades were to have
far-reaching consequences, both for Europe and for the rest of the
world.
Along with a vastly expanded vision of life, the Crusaders
brought back to Europe many treasures of the East. Among them
were exquisite statues of the Black Goddess, Isis. These were en­
shrined as the Black Virgin. Devotion to her spread from cathedrals
to small shrines dotted over the countryside in settings natural to the
goddess of fertility. Literally hundreds of shrines to the Black Virgin
sprang up throughout Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
One reason for the Black Virgin's great popularity during this
period was the growing adoration of the chaste Virgin Mary. Courtly
love, the legend of the Holy Grail, the veneration of the Virgin, the
ascendancy of the idealized woman, were balanced by the compensat­
ing adoration of the Black Virgin. She was an underground figure;
much of her so-called paganism still adhered to her (fertility, nature,
28 earth). She was revered in an underground way-the blessing of the
crops in the field, the blessing of pregnancy and childbirth, the dark The Fierce
excesses of sexuality and delight in the mysteries of the body, and and Loving
the wisdom that can be experienced in lovemaking. She it was who
in the most intimate experience possible to the soul, opened herself Goddess
to the Holy Spirit, was impregnated, and bore God a son. In her
aloneness she was independent-a liberated image of the feminine.
In the thirteenth century, the magnificent "thrones of Wisdom"
were beloved icons in the cathedrals. A stately, royal mother figure
sits on her throne, her skirt sweeping in majestic folds. H er throne is
the cathedra, the chair that makes the cathedral her palace. (In dreams,
a large chair or a large lap often symbolizes a mother complex.)
Standing on her knee is the Child King, with his ancient face, holding
the scepter and the orb. He stands like a king; his standpoint is
secure on the lap of Wisdom.
This image of the Madonna and her son shifted into mother
and young child. By the Renaissance, the icon had come to carry a
to�ally different meaning. Leonardo da Vinci, however, maintains the
concept of Sophia (Wisdom as Nature) in his cartoon of Mary and
her son sitting on the lap of her mother. Mary appears as a finely
honed feminine, totally integrated with the powerful nature goddess.
Her son echoes the Little King of the "thrones of Wisdom." In the
Virgin if the Rocks, the nature goddess appears as the grotto and the
rocks, the womb in which Mary and her child and John are located.
The Age of the Black Virgin, the twelfth and thirteenth centu­
ries, was followed by the Black Death of the fourteenth century. In
1 34 7 the Black Death devastated Europe and by I 36I had killed up
to one-half of the population. In 1 34 9 alone, it killed at least a third
of the population of England. In today's terms, this would be the
equivalent of a nuclear holocaust. It had an enonnous effect on the
psyche and the future development of the Western world. H istorian
Barbara Tuchman, writing about this period, concludes:

Survivors of the plague, finding themselves neither destroyed nor im­

proved, could discover no Divine purpose in the pain they suffered.
God's purposes were usually mysterious, but this scourge had been
too terrible to be accepted without questioning. If a disaster of such
magnitude, the most lethal ever known, was a mere wanton act of
God or perhaps not God's work at all, then the absolutes of a fixed
order were loosed from their moorings. Minds that opened to admit 29
The Fierce these questions could never again be shut. Once people envisioned
the possibility of change in a fixed order, the end of an age of submis­
and Loving
sion came in sight; the turn to individual conscience lay ahead. To
Goddess that extent the Black Death may have been the unrecognized begin­
ning of modern man.19

The fixed order Tuchman refers to is the hierarchical order of

the feudal system: king, prince, dukes, all the way down to the serfs.
Equally rigid was the hierarchy of the Church: pope, bishops, clerics,
laity, all fixed in their place by divine decree. Not only was the divine
purpose of the rigidly controlled patriarchal order questioned, but so
was the Divine purpose of death, which had h itherto been seen as
part of the natural order.
The plague was a catalyst for a major shift in human perception
in many areas-in cosmology, in science and medicine, in attitudes
toward women, and in philosophy and religion i tself Unexplained
and irrational, death was an i nsult-an aberration thrown in the face
of man's newly acquired image as the "controller." Man turned in­
creasingly to his own rational power, and began to look upon death,
nature, woman, his own body and sexuality as being irrational, and
therefore as something to be subdued and brought under more rigor­
ous control. Man began to be more resolute in his confrontation
with the created universe. H is dominance over nature became one
expression of his power. As E. F. Schumacher succinctly puts i t,
"The old science looked upon nature as God's handiwork and man's
mother; the new science tends to look upon nature as an adversary
to be conquered or a resource to be quarried and exploited."20
Man began to put distance between hin1self and the forces of
death. The new order would create a more habitable world built on
a more precise knowledge of the universe, including man himself All
elements of chance were to be systematically eliminated.
The irrational elements that man so rigorously attempted to
subdue after the fourteenth century, and well into our century, are
the very elements that we are now finally learning to creatively em­
brace in, for example, contemporary science, depth psychology, and
the arts. The underground Black Goddess is surfacing again to be­
come the cathedra of the creative mind. This surfacing, first seen in its
modern fonn in the visionary world of Romanticism in the first
30 quarter of the nineteenth century, is now finding i ts way into actual
life, a life now experienced by most inhabitants of the planet as far The Fiem
more acausal than causal, far more inexplicable than explicable. Be­ and Loving
fore we could arrive at this apparently chaotic state, however, ratio­
nalism had to bring us to the brink of extinction as a result of the Goddess
mind's determination to enslave the body.
Man's focus on the mind was to find its fullest expression in
the writings of Descartes in the seventeenth century. Descartes intro­
duced a view of mind as an incorporeal thinking substance, radically
distinct from body. As entirely mindless, matter or body had to be
controlled by mind, mind not being in matter but over matter as a
master ruling a slave.
The mind as the enslaver of matter became, in the seventeenth
century, a metaphor of the operation of the mind of God in its
creation of a material world. For Sir Isaac Newton, the cosmos itself
was the enslaved body of an omnipotent mind which, having created
the cosmos by an act of divine will, withdrew into the contemplation
of itself, leaving the cosmos as an autonomous self-regulating mecha­
nism. In this image of a vast self-regulating mechanism lay for New­
ton what Thomas Berry has called "a model for human activity"2 1
behind which lay mind itself contemplating, like Descartes' cogito ergo
sum ("I think therefore I am"), its own detached divinity.
The goal of science as initiated by Descartes and achieved by
Newton lay in the total submission of matter to mind, of slave to
master. As "a model for human activity" it affirmed man's rational
submission to the immutable laws of nature. That matter had a mind
of its own that would eventually rebel against its enslavement be­
longed to the realm of fantasy rather than reality.
Not surprisingly, therefore, considering the long-standing pa­
triarchal association of matter (mater) with the feminine, the feminist
revolt in this century against what many feminists considered patriar­
chal subjugation, belonged for many men (and women) not to the
realm of reality as masculine science defined it, but to the realm of
myth as women by their "inferior rational nature" continued to in­
habit it.
The dualism of mind and matter epitomized by Descartes
began, however, long before Descartes. Immediately following the
Black Plague, nature was more and more perceived as a chaotic realm
unrelated to the thinking principle. Prior to the plague, the body had
been studied not just by those wishing to become doctors, but also 31
The Fierce by tho� e desiring a more intimate knowledge of God. During the
and Loving
plague, however, the need to control disease and death gave the prac­
tical applications of the study of anatomy greater impetus. The inter­
Goddess action between self-knowledge and medical practice disappeared in a
system that was becoming more and more materialistic the further
away man moved from seeing himself as a part of the created order.
The link between consciousness and body no longer applied. The
body became a fascinating system to be studied in the same way as
the stars and planets. With the nineteenth-century formulation of
the Doctrine of Specific Etiology (namely, that a single agent such as
a microbe can be the cause of disease), the door was opened for the
control of the spread of infectious diseases. Man began to develop a
new sense of power over his own body.22
These advances in science were accompanied by a profound
alteration in man's perception of woman and death. As Philippe
Aries has observed, it was during this period that death began to take
on an erotic meaning in art and literature. Death and the sex act were
"henceforth increasingly thought of as a transgression which tears
man from his daily life, from rational society, from his monotonous
work, in order to make him undergo a paroxysm, plunging him into
an irrational, violent, and beautiful world."23
The intensified association of woman with death and erotic
love increased greatly the anxiety that man experienced. He began to
project his own guilt about his sexual impulses onto woman. An
example of this re-enactment of Adam's blaming Eve can be found
in a I 486 report by the Dominican inquisitors, Heinrich Kramer and
James Sprenger.

But the natural reason is that she [woman] is more carnal than a man,
as is clear from her many carnal abominations. And it should be
noted that there was a defect in the formation of the first woman,
since she was formed from a bent rib, that is, a rib of the breast,
which is bent as it were in a contrary direction to a man. And
since through this defect she is an imperfect animal, she always
deceives . . .24
.

While guilt and carnality were projected onto women in gen­

eral, there occurred a compensating idealization through the cult of
32 virginity, both within and without the Church. Within the Church,
the emphasis was placed on chastity, since death and sexual coupling The Fierce
were regarded as synonymous. Thus St. John Chrysostom wrote in and Loving
Della Verginita: "For where there is death, there too is sexual coupling;
and where there is no death, there is no sexual coupling either. But Goddess
virginity is not accompanied by such things."25
Rosemary Ruether sees the disjunction that occurred in man's
perception of woman as a split between spiritualized femininity and
carnal femaleness. She points out that this split is analogous to the
one between mind and body:

This split continued to grow more and more intense during the Mid­
dle Ages until it erupted in a veritable orgy of paranoia in the late
medieval period [ I 300s-I 600s]. It can hardly be a coincidence that
the same period that saw Mariology reach the greatest heights of
theological definition and refinement with the triumph of the doc­
trine of the Immaculate Conception in nominalist theology also saw
the outbreak of witch hunts that took the lives of upwards of one
million women between the I 4th and I 7th centuries.26

Man's split perception of woman manifested itself most clearly

in the witch hunts. Not only did woman carry the burden of man's
guilt and response to death, but she also became the scapegoat for
the economic instability that came in the wake of the plague. In Cesta
Trevirorum we read: " Inasmuch as it was popularly beli.eved that the
continued sterility of many years was caused by witches through the
malice of the Devil, the whole country rose to exterminate the
witches."27 In town after town, the Inquisitors ordered countless
women stripped and shaved and subjected them to vaginal and rectal
searches. Those found to have the devil' s mark were hanged or
burned at the stake. Women became the scapegoat, for, as the Inquis­
itor concluded, "all witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in
women insatiable."2�
About this time, devotion to Mary as Universal Mother began
to spread, as man started looking for a new source of security. Mary
became the disembodied Mother. As Queen of Heaven, she became
part of the Church's redemptive theology-not as the Black Ma­
donna, bridging sexuality and spirituality, but rather, as the obedient,
chaste, Virgin Mother.
With consciousness focused on the perfection of the Virgin 33
The Fierce Mary, the dark shadow of lust constellated in the unconscious. A
and Loving
refle ction of the mind/body dichotomy, this virgin/whore split
drove the feminine soul, the receptive, unifying principle that had
Goddess begun to emerge, deeper into exile. The soul became an isolated
entity, the immortal and immaterial part of oneself that needed to be
"saved" out of the conupting influence of the material world.
Although it was woman who suffered the most through this
period, man also became painfully alienated from himself, torn as he
was between the need to idealize woman (reflected in the disem­
bodied mother/virgin) and the simultaneous need to dominate and
control her. There can be no real wholeness in heterosexual relation­
ships until this split is healed in both man and woman. In their
dreams, men often encounter the good little girl or docile mother
along with the seductive snake woman or beckoning whore. The
virgin soul, meanwhile, lies buried in the basement or is dumped into
a trash can. Such dreams of the exiled soul are among the most
common initiatory dreams.
The virgin/whore split manifests in women's dreams as well. A
woman dreams, for example, that she is visiting a construction site,
where a house is being built. The dream ego, white and properly
dressed, is supervising. A dark shadow woman is also present, forni­
cating with the workmen. The dream ego wants to make a hasty
retreat, but is fascinated by the energy of the shadowy whore. The
shadow is distracting the workmen (the constructive energies of the
unconscious), and it is she who will have to be integrated if the
construction of the inner house is to go ahead.
Given this split and the repression of the feminine, it is not
difficult to see why Freud mistakenly placed sexuality at the root of
the underlying anxiety in the psyche. Only very recently has it be­
come clear that patriarchal pathology is rooted in the dread of death,
the fear of dissolution. Not since the plague of the fourteenth cen­
tury have human beings been so traumatized by the sudden loss of
the boundaries that established their security. The holocaust in
Europe, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were a nightmare
that everyone has had to contend with ever since. Here was mass
death on an unprecedented scale. Now the terror was not the un­
known forces of nature rebelling against man, or God punishing man
for his sins; now it was "man's inhumanity to man" that was to be
34 feared. Inasmuch as the plague had forced man to relate differently
to nature, so the Second World War placed man in a new relation­ The Fierce
ship to himself Not only did men begin to fear each other, but and Loving
man also began to fear himself, his own overwhelming capacity for
destruction. Goddess
The suppression of death, or "forbidden death," to use Aries's
term, has had a profound effect on the organization of the self In
Freud's day, the suppression of sexuality took the form of hysterical
neuroses and obsessions, which characterize the deterioration of the
ego from internalized pressures. In our own day, particularly follow­
ing the Second World War, the breakdown of the self has become
evident in the predominance of the narcissistic personality. Power­
lessness, emptiness, and paranoia characterized the neuroses of the
eighties and continue to make their presence felt in the present dec­
ade. As Peter Giovacchini writes, "The growing prominence of 'char­
acter disorders' seems to signify an underlying change in the
organization of personality, from what has been called inner-direc­
tion to narcissism."29 Michael Beldoch has this to say: "Today's pa­
tients by and large do not suffer from hysterical paralyses of the legs
or handwashing compulsions; instead it is their very psychic selves
that have gone numb or that they must scrub and rescrub in an
exhausting and unending effort to come clean." These patients suffer
from "pervasive feelings of emptiness and a deep disturbance of self­
esteem."30
The characteristic feature of borderline patients is an obsessive
need to re-create a womb, which will rescue them from their sense
of emptiness. Addictive or dependent relationships are often sought
as an antidote to a traumatized ego. While the regression to the
womb is predominant in the borderline personality, many people in
our crumbling society seek to establish relationships based on partici­
pation mystique through sharing drugs, alcohol, sex, or other addictive
behaviors.
We have become alienated from the earth, from others, and
from our own deepest feelings. In such a condition we become nar­
cissistic. In all the mirrors that reflect reality we see only ourselves.
We have become highly self-conscious, but this state is a mere par­
ody of true self-knowledge. Self-knowledge comes through a rela­
tionship with and a commitment to something or someone beyond
one's self, beyond the gratification of one's personal needs. Sexual
repression has given way to sexual liberation, but neither has anything 35
The Fierce to do with true passion or true self-knowledge. I n the e i gh teenth and
and Loving
nineteenth centuries, we denied, through the practice of puritanism,
the guilt we felt toward our bodies; in the twentieth century, the
Goddess discomfort of repressed guilt became too much to bear, so we aban­
doned it in favor of bodily gratification. We may now be a little
more comfortable with the fact that we have bodies, but we have no
context to give meaning to our new-found awareness.
Existential guilt requires forgiveness, something we cannot give
ourselves. Instead we remain trapped in a hedonism that is at best a
manipulation of our own bodies.

It is commonly thought that contemporary man has swung from

Puritanism to hedonism-to the pursuit of pleasure rather than the
denial of pleasure. But these are two sides of one coin. Both these are
two sides of one coin. Both the hedonist and the puritan face the
body in the condition of fear; the puritan fears gratification while the
hedonist fears the absence of gratification. Both derive their sense of
identity through conflict with the natural rhythms of the organism;
both are manipulators, at war with what is:ll

R E D I S C O V E R IN G THE LI G HT TN M A T T E R

Not until we recognize the Divine Immanence, the light of the God­
dess in matter, can we hope to establish a balance, a reconnection
with our own deepest nature that can root us in a world of meaning
and imagination. Perhaps, we will have to face the darkness, walk out
on the moor alone at nightfall, or dive to the bottom of the sea
before the old ossified ego boundaries can be shattered to make room
for the dance.
In dreams, the Goddess often leads the dreamer into a deep
cave or a dark place. In the following dream, the dreamer, a woman,
was led down into the basement, where everything was pitch black.

I am at a large celebration. I go down into the wine cellar to get some

wine. As I go down, it is extremely black. I lose my direction walking
down the corridors. I feel an opening and I get down and start feeling
around the walls and then I touch the Roor. As I do this, little clumps
of golden light spark up in every spot I touch, and soon I begin to
36 see where I am-a large empty room. Next, the golden light becomes
 women-young, middle-aged, and very old, on crutches, in wheel­ The Fierce
chairs. What is peculiar is that their faces are radiant--glowing eyes,
and Loving
clear and sparkling. I distinctly hear the words: "I will give you trea­
sures out of the darkness, and riches that have been hidden away." Goddess

In search of wine (spirit), the dreamer goes down into the

blackness of the basement (the unconscious). In her searching, she
finds the light (spirit), but it is light embodied in matter-the gold
sparks that appear where she touches the black walls. This is the
light, the consciousness within our own bodies as well as within all
creation, that will be recognized and released as we continue to
evolve. The embodied light reveals itself in the feminine threesome
(mother, maide�, crone). The crones are crippled, but their eyes are
shining. The voice knows where the treasure is hidden. Out of the
darkness will come the treasures, and the hidden riches.
This is the darkness we have always feared. Beneath the mature
persona of the ego lies the child's imagination, which fears being
devoured by the wolf or the wicked witch. If we remain trapped in
fear, we will never know the treasures of the dark. Being catapulted
into the underworld is a common mythological theme, found in al­
most all cultures. The descent is undertaken either voluntarily, in
search of a deeper goal, or involuntarily, when the abyss unexpectedly
opens. The potential in either case comes &om the fact that ordinary
ego perceptions are shattered; cracks occur in the well-crafted per­
sona. Through these cracks emerges the possibility of something
new.
In tribal cultures, the shaman had to go into the underworld
and sometimes wander there for three years. Usually, he had to un­
dergo dismemberment-a death and resurrection-before he could
assume his true vocation. Often, crystals were placed in the orifices
of his body during this period to signify the light in matter.
Descent into the underworld can happen at different stages in
life. The midlife descent often requires a whole reorientation of iden­
tity. In the first half of life we live mainly in tem1s of doing. We find
out who we are through going to school, pursuing a career, marrying,
having children and raising them. In the second half of life, we are
pushed toward a deeper consciousness of who we are, an identity in
terms of being, an identity based not on the ego but on the soul.
The gap we pass through, sometimes lasting several years, is what is
commonly known as the midlife crisis. 37
The Fierce Tibetan Buddhism has a tradition of delor-stories of people
and Loving
who are catapulted into the underworld, often through grave illness.
Depression can also lead us into the black hole that exists at the
Goddess center of our being. Perhaps, if we are "lucky" enough, we fall into
that hole-the confusion, the lethargy, the hollowness of old enthu­
siasms, old addictions that don't work any more. Until the ego feels
its own despair, there is little motivation toward change.
If all we have known of the feminine is the old devouring
Mother, we may become stuck in the black hole. I( however, we are
able to recognize the Great Goddess in her role as the tran iformer of
energy, then we can trust, even if we don't know where we are going.
The blackness will reveal its gold. Sometimes with humor, sometimes
with bluntness and even harshness, sometimes with tenderness, she
will both challenge and gui de.
In writing about the dakini in the BuddJ1 ist tradition, Tsultrim
Allione speaks of the possibility that "[ wJ e could have little gaps in
the claustrophobic game of dualism, and clarity could shine through .
. . . The world is not as solid as we think it is, and the more we are
open to the gaps, the more wisdom can shine through and the more
the play of the dakini energy can be experienced."32
These "gaps" in the "solidified fantasies of dualistic fixation"33
have become the subject of present-day physics. Chaos theory puts a
scientific spin on the myth of Tiamat, the early Babylonian goddess
of chaos out of which everything was created. Until recently, the
problem was that chaos has been seen as "bad." In fact, up until this
century it was widely believed that we would, sooner or later, find an
explanation for chaos, and then order would prevail. "Chaos was
merely complexity so great that in practice scientists couldn't track
it, but they were sure that in principle they might one day be able to
do so. When that day came there would be no chaos, so to speak,
only Newton's laws."34 Reductionism lasted until the I 970s, or until
high-powered computers made it possible for us to solve nonlinear
equations more rapidly. It was found that the most minute variation
in any system, when amplified, would lead to random behavior-that
is, to chaos.
Science has very nearly grasped the paradox at the heart of
reality-the paradox that mythology calls "Goddess"-creating a
momentum that has never existed at any other time in history. As we
38 begin to look at the quantum reality of nature and of our own bodies,
we are called to a new level of consciousness. In many ways, we are The Fierce
discovering what we have intuitively known for centuries. In psycho­ and Loving
logical terms this is the yin/yang reality, separate but indivisible.
While the new metaphors-"chaos theory," "quantum reality"­ Goddess
speak more directly to contemporary culture, the ancient yin/ yang
and Shakti/Shiva realities still hold true.
Gaps in nonlinear systems make most naturally occurring proc­
esses impossible to predict with certainty. With nonlinearity, reduc­
tionism and the great illusion of ultimate control go out the window.
Ancient wisdom, in which chaos was recognized and preserved (par­
ticularly in gnosticism and alchemy) as the necessary element of
transfonnation, has finally been restored.
It is within this chaos that a deeper, intrinsic order reveals itself.
This is not the imposed order that we have become so accustomed
to in a patriarchal, conceptualized world, an order that is not con­
nected to the creative matrix. Rather, it is an order that emerges
instead of being imposed. When we are connected to this emerging
order we are psychically living from the incarnate feminine energy
that has within it the possibility of transformation. We are in touch
with the rhythms of matter and its deepest wisdom.
The oldest mythologies of the Great Mother saw life essentially
as an unending cycle of life-death-rebirth, a process that did not
allow for transformation into new levels of consciousness. Patriarchy
rejected this cycle as something that was "stuck" because it did not
allow for linear progression. In a linear concept of progression, death
is seen as something that can only be denied or projected.
While the manipulation of material things may give the impres­
sion of progress, consciousness and the movement upward from an
animal existence to a more humane human existence are less obvious.
We need only watch television news to realize that the evolution of
human beings has, in fact, been "stuck" for a very long time. Animals,
being closer to the rhythms of nature, have a more intrinsic morality.
Sometimes, the only sign of "progression" seems to be our more
precise technologies, which perform blood sacrifices with greater de­
pravity.
The energy that is now emerging from the unconscious of so
many contemporary dreamers is not the energy of the old matriarchal
consciousness. One woman, for example, recently had a dream in
which she was a little girl; she had moved into a huge new house and 39
The Fierce was wandering around, amazed at the size of the rooms. In the sec­
and Loving
ond part of the dream, she shifts locales:

Goddess I am standing on a dock beside a lakeside house. It's a sunny, warm

day. Looking down into the brown water of the lake, I see the long
backbone of a whale. As I move closer to look at the whale, suddenly
a huge woman rises from the water. She h as light-brown skin and
thick black hair that falls to her shoulders. She is draped in cloth of
dark brown and blue and her huge breasts are bare. She stands h ip­
deep in the water. She laughs, and her teeth look very white against
her brown skin. "What are you gawking at?" she says to me. "Go
inside."

In the first segment of this dream, the young feminine has

moved into an enormous new house and she is exploring this large
space with wonderment. In daily life, the dreamer had entered a new
understanding of the feminine, which had led her into an entirely
new concept of the Self, the God/Goddess image within. It is these
large, new spaces within herself that amaze her.
With the feminine having moved to a new place, the second
part of the dream introduces the dream ego to a sun-filled space that
includes both conscious and unconscious energies (the lake). The
dreamer sees what appears to be a whale (an old mother symbol).
Suddenly, it is not a whale, but a huge brown-skinned woman. Fig­
ures that appear larger than life are archetypal energies from the col­
lective unconscious, in this case, a Goddess. She is laughing and
merely asks the dreamer what she is gawking at, or why she is so
surprised at her appearance. Then, in her customary fashion, she
gives the dreamer a very cryptic message: "Go inside." With th is
transfonnation in her interior landscape, the dreamer may be on the
way to genuine change.
In another dream, a multi-bodied snake slides out from the hair
of a large, black, African woman. The dreamer recalls: "It looks gross
and disgusting to me, but she cheerfUlly shows me how it unfolds
into a complete circle, which she puts on top of her head. She says
she uses it as a basket to carry things in, and it protects her head
from the rain, like an umbrella."
On hearing the dream, one is immediately reminded of the
!Q snake hair of the Medusa, the Gorgon who was so ugly that anyone
who looked at her turned into stone. As the dream continues, it The Fiene
becomes clear that this energy is not that of the Devouring Mother. and Loving
The unconscious deftly presents it as a beneficent Goddess figure.
The dreamer later drew the "halo" formed by the snake. Her sketch Goddess
called to mind the image of the enlightened Buddha with the halo of
seven snakes (representing the seven chakras) that appears above the
head to signify an enlightened consciousness.
The Buddha is depicted with seven heads emerging from one
body. In the dream, the Goddess is shown with seven bodies uniting
in one head. Could this be an indication of the difference in the
processing of masculine and feminine energies?
In dreams, the position of the serpent is very important. If it is
crawling on the earth it is usually representing an old, chthonic life
force, regressive and possibly treacherous. When it is upright or be­
yond the head, it represents ascendance of energy through the energy
centers of the body to a place of enlightenment. This is the kundalini
energy that has risen from its coiled position in the lowest chakra,
the biological energy, that has become the spiritual consciousness.
The reemergence of the Goddess as distinct from the Great
Mother is also apparent in men's dreams. One man had a dream in
which he was approaching what looked like a mountain. This turned
out to be the pubic mound of the Great Mother. He stood between
her massive legs and then ap-
proached her vagina, realizing
he was supposed to walk into
it. Atop the pubic mound were
three witches straight out of
Macbeth. In his fear of being
devoured-a deep-seated mas­
culine fear-he attached a
feather to the foot of the Great
Mother. To the feather he fas­
tened one end of a rope; the
other end he held in his hand.
The idea was that, if he became
trapped inside, he would pull
on the rope, which would tickle
the foot of the Great Mother
and he could escape. Once in- 41
The Fierce side the Great Mother, however, he saw a haloed object, which
and Loving
turned toward him, revealing the Goddess buried within the womb
of the Mother.
Goddess In this dream as well, the unconscious seems to be differentiat­
ing between the old Mother mythology and her more conscious
form, the Goddess. This image is reminiscent of the Tantric dakini,
Vajra Varahi. "She springs out of the cosmic cervix, the triangular
source of dharmas, burning with unbearable bliss, energy in an un­
conditional state. She has the three-dimensional triangular source of
dharmas just below her navel and she is standing on one. This form
acts on the being of the tantrika when he or she visualizes Vajra
Varahi, and the effect is the activation of internal energies which
dissolve the sense of inner and outer and plug in to a sense of all­
pervading energized space which is primordial wisdom and a kind of
burning transcendental lust and bliss."35
This dakini energy that emerges from the womb of the Great
Mother is similar, in many respects to Kali's. The three main objects
that accompany the dakini are the hooked knife or sword, the skull
cup of blood, and the trident staff. According to Allione, the hook
in Tibetan Buddhist imagery is the hook or knife of compassion,
"the hook which pulls beings out of the cycles of transmigration. . . .
[It] pulls one forth from suffering, chops up the ego-centered self
and is guided by the diamond
clarity of the vajra."36 The skull
cup is likened to the cauldron,
the container which holds the
primordial passion of blood.
"The red blood suggests the
burning interior power of
women, primal matrix which
can become babies, milk, pas­
sion and fierceness, primal lava
of life.":17
The third accouterment is
the staff "with a trident at the
top, and underneath the trident,
tied to the staff, is a double
vajra with three severed heads.
42 The top head is a dry skull,
under the skull is a head that has been severed several days, and The Fierce
below that is a freshly severed head. The staff is held in the crook of and Loving
the elbow of the left arm and extends from her head to her foot.
Usually she is dancing, so one foot is raised and the other is standing Goddess
on a corpse, which represents the negativity which has been over­
come."3H By her staff. the death that the Goddess brings is the trans­
formation of the three poisons: lust, anger, and ignorance.
The three skulls symbolize not the concrete blood sacrifice of
an earlier time but the death (transformation) of the three highest
levels of consciousness: the Nirmanakaya body (physical body), the
Sambogakaya body (subtle body), and the Dharmakaya, the latter
represented by the dry skull, "a level of being which has no form,
but contains the potential for everything."39
The staff also carries the symbolism of a deeper integration.
"The overall significance of the Khatvanga staff is that of the 'hidden
consort' . . . . By holding the Khatvanga she shows us that she has
incorporated the masculine into herself. This energy is at her service.
With this staff she has the power to stand alone . . . . The same is
true for male figures who hold the Khatvanga as their 'secret consort.'
The Tantric practitioners who visualize themselves as these deitieS'
understand that in order to be whole we must embody and appreciate
both the masculine and the feminine in ourselves."40
The stake, or staff. as analyzed by Sylvia Perera in Descent to the
Goddess, is the peg of Erishkiqal, the peg on which she hangs her
bright sister, Inanna. It "fills the all-receptive emptiness of the femi­
nine with feminine yang strength. It fills the eternally empty womb
mouth, and gives a woman her own wholeness, so that the woman is
not merely dependent on man or child, but can be unto herself as a
full and separate individual."41
Given this potential to grasp our own uniqueness, our own
wholeness through an ability to stand alone, we can begin to manifest
the interaction of positive masculine and feminine energies within us.
These are not the old devouring matriarchal energy or the tyrannical,
one-sided patriarchal energy. The evolutionary imperative within the
collective unconscious is pushing us toward a new level of conscious­
ness.
An alienated ego can think of wholeness only as the accumula­
tion of more and more matter under its control. It stands in relation­
ship to people and things as outside of itself. no matter how it may 43
The Fierce
and Loving
Goddess

secretly long to incorporate or devour whatever is around it. In prob­

ing the deeper symbolism of the Goddess, we are challenged to go
"inside." Evolution at this point is no longer in terms of the material
body; it seems to be moving toward a greater interiority, and, para­
doxically, a greater sense of all.
In tenns of our mythology, a new image of God/ Goddess
yearns to be found within ourselves. The kingdom is first within. It
is manifested through body and mind. We are moving beyond an
ego consciousness not only to an integration of body and mind but
to a transcendence of the body/mind split, to a new level of con­
sciousness based on the dance between soul and spirit.
The soul embodied in matter, manifested in the Goddess as
44 container and transformer, will take us beyond dualism, beyond the
defensive splits within our psyche if we open up to her energy within The Fierce
us. She faces us with our greatest fear and by showing us the treasure and Loving
hidden away within it, she takes us to a place where love is born.
Love is the true antithesis of fear. It expands where fear constricts. It Goddess
embraces where fear repels.
In "The Tablet of the Holy Mariner" of Baha'u'llah, the
prophet of the Bahai faith, Wisdom as the Maid of Heaven descends
to earth seeking one who is able to embrace her. Unable to find
anyone worthy of her love, she returns to her own lofty mansion,
shares her grief with her handmaidens, and falls prostrate upon the
dust.42 In the Book of Enoch we are also told of the flight of
Wisdom:

Wisdom went forth to make her dwelling

Among the children of men,
And found no dwelling place;
Wisdom returned to her place
And took her seat among the angels.43

The Black Goddess, who emerged in history centuries ago, was

exiled into the unconscious. Will it be any different this time? Per­
haps not by choice but by necessity, we will recognize and honor her.
Without the recognition of the cycle of life-death-rebirth there can
be no transformation, no true progression grounded in nature for the
human species. In the transition from Great Mother to Great God­
dess, the possibility of transformation in rebirth began to dawn. The
chaos that she embodies is a shattering of rigid categories. If we enter
into i t, that chaos can resurrect us into a higher wisdom, rooted in
the wisdom of the creative process. The chaos that we fear is the
very thing that can free us. To refuse to enter into Kali's d:mce of
creation and destruction is to get stuck in a one-sided view of reality
that can bring anarchy-destruction without creation. Armed with a
new understanding of the very nature of reality itself, we may now
be able to embrace the Goddess energy that is necessary if we are to
move forward in our evolution.
In examining the Goddess as she has functioned in her role as
the One of creation, the chapters that follow will attempt to make
her energy and her challenge more visible. Hopefully, we will recog-
nize her when we see her and welcome her among us. 45
 A Heart in the Balance 2

LEProus: Y'have strange serpents there.

ANTON Y: Ay, Lepidus.

LEPIDus: Your serpent of Egypt is bred now of your mud by

the operation of your sun; so is your crocodile.

-SHAKESPEARE, Antony a11d Cleopatra, II, vii.

Split the Lark-and you'll find the Music­

Bulb after Bulb, in Silver rolled-
Scantily dealt to the Summer Morning
Saved for your Ear when Lutes be old.

Loose the Flood-you shall find it patent­

Gush after Gush, reserved for you-
Scarlet Experiment! Sceptic Thomas!
Now, do you doubt that your Bird was true?
-EMILY DICKINSON

The tree that would grow to heaven must send its roots to
hell.
-NIETZSCHE
A Heart
in the

Balance

B EY O N D D U AL I T Y

W H ET H ER Y ou R E A K N 1 G HT looking for a horse, a maiden

'

looking for fire, or a youth looking for a bride, in Russian folk tales
you usually end up deep in the forest. On your journey, you may
stumble upon a house, walking, hopping, twirling or spinning on
chicken legs. The door is made of human bones, the bolts of human
fingers; the lock is a mouth of grinning death. Around the perimeter
is a picket fence with a skull on each stake. One stake stands empty,
to receive your head, should you fail to meet the test. This sight
alone is enough to shock the seeker out of ordinary perception. This
is not a place of rational logic.
The proprietor of this remarkable house is an ancient hag, the
Baba Yaga, who may swoop down on you in her mortar and pestle
as you ride. A broom trails behind her, wiping out any traces of her
comings and goings, for she cannot be pinned down.
With cackling laugh and eyes that become like points of fire,
she inquires what you seek. You must stand up to her boldly and
declare what it is that you want. "The kingdom ten times ten"; "a
knightly horse, Grandma, to retrieve my lost bride"; "the well with
the waters of Life and Death"; "I have come to ask for fire."
Now these are no ordinary requests. One does not venture deep
into the forest without good reason. One has already felt some loss,
something missing, in the ordinary routines of life. One has begun
to search in the depths of the unconscious for what is essential to
growth, to change, to wholeness. In fact, the hag, the sorceress, the
wisdom energy of the Goddess, does not appear in dreams until
the traveler is strong enough to be vulnerable. The ego has to have
surrendered some of its defensive control before it can tolerate con­
48 fronting such energy. Then she appears, without ceremony, and, after
detennining whether your search is legitimate or not, she has one A Heart
more question, "Do you come here of your own free will, or do you in the
come by compulsion?" or "Have you come to do deeds, doughty
youth, or to Hee from deeds?" Balance
This is the test of how ready you are to proceed in your quest.
If you say, "I have come of my own free will," your bones will
become part of her adornment. If, on the other hand, you say, "I
have come by compulsion," your head will, likewise, go on the post
awaiting it. The test is simply this, " Have you become conscious
enough to go beyond duality?"
Duality belongs in the ego development stage. It is the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil, which symbolizes humanity's fall up
from an unconscious Eden. While Eden is characterized by participa­
tion mystique, duality has to do with differentiation of energies-a
necessary step in the progression toward higher consciousness.
Things are identified by their parts-good or evil, black or white,
strong or weak-in an either/ or world. The ego world in which we
live exercises power over against, thus perpetuating the neurotic either/
or dichotomy discussed in chapter I .
The Baba Yaga challenges us to go beyond that immature stage
of development to a both/ and world. Neither the 'Undifferentiated
world of early matriarchy, nor the overly differentiated world of pa­
triarchy allows for a conscious world that can contain the opposites.
The right answer for the Baba Yaga would go something like this, "I
am here seventy-five percent of my own free will, sixty-five percent
by compulsion."
This answ�r implies that we have a humbler, more accurat�
understanding of our own nature. The truth is most of us are where
we are partly through overwhelming circumstances that have landed
us here and partly because this is where we want to be. Seventy-five
percent one way, sixty-five percent the other. If we see the opposites
in ourselves, we are less likely to judge and blame others. If we have
identified too closely with the light, have too idealized an image of
ourselves, then our shadow will surely come up and hit us on the
backside. The same is true if we have identified with our negative
side: we could be struck from behind by our goodness. Either posi­
tion is a denial of our wholeness.
The impulse toward false virtue is well understood in the Bud­
dhist tradition, where the dakini energy manifests itself in order to 49
A Heart create balance. In her study of the dakini (fierce feminine energy),
in the
Allione finds that "in almost all the stories of great saints in Tibet,
the dakini appears at crucial moments. The encounters often have a
Balance quality of sharp, incisive challenge to the fixated conceptions of the
practitioner. They may occur through a human dakini, or through a
dream or mirage-like appearance which vanishes after the message is
communicated. These encounters often have a grounding, practical
insightful quality that is sharp and wrathfUl. This is the primordial
raw energy of the dark goddess." '
To illustrate this raw energy, Allione tells the story o f Abhaya­
karagupta, a famous high-caste scholar. "A young maiden approached
him in the courtyard of his monastery and shoved a piece of bloody
meat at him, saying that it had been slaughtered for him. He was
taken aback and replied: 'I am a pure monk. How can I eat meat that
has been so blatantly prepared for me?' At once she disappeared.
"Tantric Buddhism urges i ts adherents to go beyond all restric­
tions, even those imposed by the Buddha, such as not eating meat
that has been killed for oneself. This is because in Tantrism all habit­
ual patterns, even 'golden habits,' must be relinquished so that we
may experience reality without conceptuality [italics mine]. . . . In any situa­
tion we must not be conditioned by concepts of good and bad . . . .
By not recognizing this girl who acted as a dakini to test his under­
standing, he [the monkJ cut off his progress in the practice. The next
time she appeared to him she was in the form of an old hag. This
time, having consulted with his guru in the meantime, he recognized
her and confessed his failure to acknowledge her before. This was a
turning point in his practice. He went on to become an accomplished
yogi rather than a strict monk."2
By breaking through the either/ or rigidities, the Black Goddess
creates the space for spontaneity, for new experience, for new insight.
Intellect can give us knowledge, but wisdom is based on experience
that, if reflected on deeply enough, leads us to paradox and the recog­
nition of the unity that exists. It is to bring forth wisdom that goes
beyond conventional concepts that the dakini works "directly with the
energy cj the body, speech and mind."-'
A duality in which one valence is valued over the other causes
dichotomies within our perception of ourselves and others. We begin
to live a one-sided reality, an illusion created by our own mind.
50 Among our most dominant dichotomies are masculine/ feminine,
mind/body, thinking/feeling, and life/ death. Feminine, body, feel­ A Heart
ing, and death have all been subjugated by their opposite. Distinc­ in the
tions are indispensable, the recognition of differences is necessary. It
is only when we identify exclusively with one side of the duality and Balance
dissociate or repress the other that we begin to have a false view of
reality. Clinging neurotically to our chosen identification, we cannot
move to a position of wholeness. In choosing mind over body, we
have cut ourselves off from the rootedness of our past body con­
sciousness out of fear of falling into it. A new balance must be found
if we are to proceed wholly into our future evolutionary growth.
Being the consciousness in matter, the unifying light in creation,
the Goddess symbolizes the energy we need to become whole, to
proceed toward consciousness. This is not an easy task for ego con­
sciousness to pursue, because all change, all growth, presupposes the
death of the old. It is for this reason that Kali is represented as
dancing in the cremation grounds, or the dakini as dancing on a
corpse. This is also the reason we fear such images as the Goddess
wielding her curved sword.
The essence of the journey and the true nature of the sword of
the Goddess have been captured in a poem by David Whyte entitled
"No one told me."

No one told me
it would lead to this.
No one said
there would be secrets
I would not want to know.

No one told me about seeing,

seeing brought me
loss and a darkness I could not hold.

No one told me about writing

or speaking.
Speaking and writing poetry
I unsheathed the sharp edge
of experience that led me here.

No one told me
it could not be put away. 51
A Heart I was told once, only,
in the in a whisper,
"The blade is so sharp­
Balance It cuts things together
-not apart."

This is no comfort.
My future is full of blood
from being blindfold
hands outstretched,
feeling a way along its firm edge:}

The feminine leads us to the sharp edge of experience. There

we have to feel our feelings in our bodies; there our secrets become
visible in the darkened, unvisited corners of our psyches. Claiming
the unswept corners of our psyches leads us to compassion for our­
selves and for others. Knowing we have done our best and it simply
wasn't enough opens our hearts to other human beings whose best
has likewise failed. The mind has its logic; the heart alone can know
wisdom, bridge chasms, make peace.
Again, this is illustrated in a story, told by Allione, of a famous
Indian Buddhist teacher.

Naropa was the greatest scholar at the prestigious Nalanda Univer­

sity. One day as he was reading a book on logic, a shadow fell across
the page. When he turned around he saw a hideous old hag. She
asked him if he understood the words or the meaning and when he
replied that he understood both, she was furious and told him that
he only understood the words, not the meaning. She recommended
that he find her brother, who understood the meaning and then she
disappeared into a rainbow. Because of conran with the dakini he
decided he must seek true realization outside the monastic university.
The dakini appears as an ugly old hag because she is primordial
wisdom, ancient beyond conceptuality. She is ugly because Naropa
has been repressing and rejecting this part of himself. This ambassa­
dor of primordial wisdom appears in a hideous f01m because he has
been deluding himself, thinking that he really understands when in
fact he has been building a deluded castle of intellectuality and prud­
52 ishness.5
 Much of what we learn at universities is related to "head knowledge." A Heart
When we have the words, we think we have the meaning. Words and in the
ideas are necessary containers, but they take on meaning only through
refle ction on lived experience. Balance
Allione goes on to tell of Naropa's journey and the fact that
his habitual thought patterns were slow to change. This is something
we can all relate to. We have the desire, the quickening of intuition
about what we must do or say, but it dies under the weight of habit.
Without the intuitive, symbolic language of the feminine soul, the
seamless mirror of the mind is easily shattered by conceptuality and
literalness.
"Due to his [Naropa'sJ lack of relationship to the dakini, who
exists beyond duality and speaks in a symbolic language, he acted as
if there were a 'self' to act. He saw everything external as being
separate from himself, and fell into the trap of dualism, rather than
seeing the mind as a mirror with the capacity to reflect without dual­
istic notions of good and bad."6
It is only by recognizing and healing the dualities that exist in
ourselves that we can come to a true sense of interdependence with
the rest of creation. We are just beginning to have some understand­
ing of the interdependence of nature and all natural systems. If we
pollute the earth, we are polluting ourselves; if we destroy the rain
forests, the lost of oxygen affects every living thing. Weather patterns
change; habitats change. This has always been true: over the millen­
nia, the earth's systems have changed dramatically for one reason or
another. What is different now is that we are aware of such systems
and are, therefore, compelled to take a conscious position towards
them and towards ourselves.
We are, likewise, beginning to recognize the interdependence
of economic systems. The realization is dawning that on this planet,
seen as a whole for the first time from space, we are all part of an
interdependent system. We are inextricably tied to each other. But
interdependence, as the necessary state for community, calls for
something more than knowledge and logic. We can, and do, conceive
of it in conceptual terms, but living within a world community inter­
dependently calls for compassion, for feeling about the particular
other, the particular situation. Once we realize that the particular "I"
cannot have justice unless the other "I" has justice-that others can­
not have clean water to drink unless I respect the earth-we begin 53
A Heart looking at things differently, through the eyes of wisdom born of
in the embodied experience. Justice is no longer blind.

Balance
T H E J U D G M E N T O F M A A T

In her book, The Crone, Barbara Walker presents some of the laws of
Maat, the Egyptian goddess of justice. The list includes such com­
mandments as:

I. No one should cause pain to others.

2. No one should make anyone sorrowful.
3. No one should steal, cheat, bear false witness, stir up strife.
4. No one should harm animals.
5. No one should damage fertile land.
6. No one should befoul waters.7

As Walker points out, these laws foreshadowed "by many cen­

turies the 'golden rule' that appeared later in Buddhist, Jewish, and
Christian traditions."8 What is most striking about them is that they
encompass all of nature, in recogni­
tion of the fact that humans are de­
pendent upon the Earth. The
interdependence we talk about so
glibly today was recognized intu­
itively as early as 2000 BCE, based
on the understanding of the God­
dess (Maat) as the unifying princi­
ple in all of creation.
Maat, the Mother of Truth,
held sway during the Middle King­
dom of Egyptian history, when the
The Judgnwnt of I'vb.u . ln dw
kings were known as "good shep­
auok of the Dead of Kcnrl;l, rb
!wan n( t ht• Je..-cas<."d is we1ghed m
herd kings." They ruled by the laws
tiH: sc01Je agams.t a frat her from tht' of Maat, which were regarded as
headdt<."�s of Mrw, £ymbohc ,)r "the cosmic force of harmony,
htr role lS dw moral onkr of order, stability, and security, com­
ing down from the first creation as
54 the organizing quality of created
phenomena."9 The forms (order, justice, truth) arise out of the cre­ A Heart
ative matrix. This order that rises out of chaos (as archetypal truths in the
rise out of the unconscious) is attributed to the Goddess; it is not
the imposed order of the patriarchal (ego) world. Balance
The judgment of Maat, as depicted in Egyptian papyrus paint­
ings, is an apt representation of the individuation process. Most de­
pictions show a tall central pole with seven nodules on it. Across the
top is a horizontal pole with a pan attached at each end to form a
scale. At the bottom is a large composite creature with a crocodile's
head, its open mouth placed between the third and fourth nodules.
At the top of the vertical pole sits a hawk-headed bird. When a
person is to be brought before Osiris, the god of death and resurrec­
tion, he or she must first pass the judgment of Maat. The person's
heart is placed in one pan of the scale; an ostrich feather from the
headdress of Maat is placed in the other. The ostrich feather depicts
truth and justice, since the feathers on an ostrich are all perfectly
equal. Now if the heart is too heavy, too densely packed with matter,
it will fall into the jaws of the crocodile. If, on the other hand, it is
too light from lack of embodied experience, it will fly into the talons
of the hawk-headed solar god. Similarly, in the process of individua­
tion, when we experience the world with a transparent heart, when
there is truth in the body as well as in the mind, we are raised to a
new level of consciousness.
The struggle between instinct and spirit, body and mind, pre­
sents itself today in many dreams. A man dreams of a crocodile
swallowing his masculine instinct; a woman dreams of tiny crocodiles
coming out of her skin; a dreamer dreams of voiding his bowels, and
brown crocodiles come out; eagles circle ominou�ly overhead, or
carry off something of value. Frequently, these ancient images appear
in the forms of their modern counterparts: submarines and planes. A
dreamer is out swimming while planes are nose-diving at him, or,
additionally, dropping bombs. Submarines, often with a malevolent
captain, menace the dreamer.
This motif of the eagle and the crocodile comes through clearly
in the dreams of a gifted five-year-old boy. Children tend to be more
open to archetypal dream patterns than adults. The following dreams
capture the essence of the human struggle between instinct and spirit.
Young Sean had three sets of recurring dreams. Here is the first one: 55
A Heart I a m skipping down the sidewalk. M y steps get bigger and bigger so
that I begin to Hy-almost! I am excited about this because it is a
in the
sort of secret power I am discovering. But then the time between
Balance steps gets too long. I start to get scared that I can't control them. I
am too high above the trees. It is dangerous. I might never be able to
get down. Until it got scary it was wonderful.

The details of the dream occurred in the same pattern every

time Sean had the dream. He would almost fly above everything and
then become frightened because he might lose control. Although
Sean was only five years old, his dreams were warning him of the
danger of identifying too closely with spirit. Spirit yearns for light;
it wants to separate out from the maternal womb in order to gain a
new perspective and a release from the weight of matter.
This is the story of Icarus. In the story, Icarus and his father
Daedalus are attempting to escape fi-om the island of Crete. Daeda­
lus, a brilliant craftsman, makes a pair of wings for himself, and a
pair for Icarus. The quill feathers were threaded together, the smaller
ones were held in place with wax. Daedalus warned Icarus neither to
soar too h igh, lest the wax melt, nor to sweep too low, lest the
feathers become wet. He begged his son to follow him. Icarus, rejoic­
ing in the sweep of h is wings, soared toward the sun. H is father
looked back and saw the broken feathers on the waters below. Young
and inexperienced, Icarus could not resist sweeping toward the light,
and was destroyed by his arrogance. Old Daedalus understood the
necessity of holding the balance.
Falling into the abyss was the second of Sean's recurring
dreams. Dreams of falling are not uncommon, especially in child­
hood, because this is a time when the emerging ego must adjust its
feelings of omnipotence to the demands of reality. The ego is often
bruised i n its daily encounters with the real world. The h igher it fl i es,
the deeper it falls. All of us-children and adults-have to face our
inflations.
H ere is the third in Sean's trilogy of recurring dreams:

I am out on the sidewalk in front of my house. A horrible creature,

like an eagle, chases me. I am very frightened and wake up, and cry
in the dark.

The child feels endangered by power structures that he feels are

56 assailing him. Already, the eagle has become a part of himself. The
eagle represents the spiritual ascendancy of consciousness in its posi­ A Heart
tive aspect; in its negative aspect, that ascendancy overreaches itself in the
and becomes domination over and against that which belongs to the
earth. Balance
Many young children are given a dream or an experience, or
develop a passion for a particular fairy tale or story that prophesies
their task in life. Young Sean had another powerful dream that may
hold the secret of his life's journey. In this dream, he is again on the
sidewalk outside his house. All his dreams take place there, because
it is the limit, the frontier of his experience at this time.

I am standing on the sidewalk in front of the house holding a little

piece of paper in my hand that was a great secret and important for
me. A witch (like Witch Hazel in the comics) comes along and
snatches the paper out of my hand, and laughs at me and takes it
away to the far side of my grandparents' house up the little sidewalk
that goes up to the side entrance. Under a little shelter in front of
the door, she stands holding the paper up to me as though saying
"Oh, you want your paper back? Well, here it is, come and get it." I
go up to her and reach out my hand to take it. Just before I get it she
snatches it away and pushes it down into a hole in the ground, like a
drain. Then she cackles and laughs. I go down the hole after it. I find
in a room down there another witch, who has got hold of the paper,
and she is standing holding it in the same way! When I reach out to
grab it, she snatches it away and stuffs it down another hole and
laughs, and I go down this hole and there is another witch, and the
same thing happens over and over and over again and I keep going
down deeper and deeper, and finally I climb down into the place rhat
is absolutely the bottom. There are no more holes that go any deeper,
and when I go to grab the paper from the last witch, she throws it
into a pit full of crocodiles. The only way I can get it is by walking
out on a little metal rod like the towel rack in our bathroom. All the
crocodiles want to eat me and I am very scared, but I start walking
out like I'm on a tightrope . . . and then I wake up.

This is certainly the journey of the archetypal hero, down into

the matrix of matter, down into the core of the unconscious to the
primal material. In both men and women, the task of the masculine
is to incarnate. The "great secret" of importance is in the jaws of the
crocodile. At five, the young hero has an instinctive flash that may
become his life's task, and he wakes up. 57
A Heart The devouring crocodile represents the life-death cycle, the
in the ego's greatest fear, which lurks in the depths of the unconscious. Yet
rebirth to a higher level of consciousness is not accomplished by
Balance flying through the air. The ascent is balanced by the descent. The
treasure is recovered through encountering the chthonic devourer, the
dark side of the Great Mother. In Jung's terms, this is working at
the deepest level of the somatic unconscious in order to bring to
consciousness the subtle body.
In this dream the witch, while seemingly malevolent, directs
the young hero through the underworld toward the task he must
appropriately fulfill before he can safely know the great secret. The
witch here is not a negative figure to be feared, although the process,
whether one is young or old, is fearful. She is equally the wise witch,
who "tricks" us into doing what needs to be done to stop us from
languishing in duality. It is by going to the deepest depths and find­
ing there the treasure, the subtle body, that we realize that the very
fear that kept us from going there is the fear that has been hiding
. the treasure all along.
Nearly all advanced spiritual traditions deal with ways in which
the energy, the light, hidden in matter can be transformed before the
spirit can be embodied as wisdom. In the Eastern traditions, the
seven chakras, or energy centers, have been studied as a way of trans­
forming energy into consciousness. The pole holding Maar's scales
of justice with its seven nodules suggests that intuitively, the Egyp­
tians may have had some knowledge of these energy centers. Knowl­
edge of this energy flowered in cultures such as India and China, and
is now making its way into the West. Since this book focuses on the
transformation of energy into consciousness, a brief outline describ­
ing the transformation of the energies of the chakras may be of value.
The lowest, or root chakra, is the muladhara situated between the
anus and genital region. The second lotus center is the svadhishthana in
the region of the genitals; the third is the manipura, in the region of
the naval. The three lower chakras have to do with instinctual urges.
This recalls the crocodile beneath Maat's scales of justice, whose jaws
yawn between the third and fourth nodules on the vertical pole of
the scale.
The fourth chakra, in the region of the heart, is anahata. H ere
the lotus center has twelve red petals and within it a six-pointed star
58 composed of two uniting triangles, one pointing upward, the other
 A Heart
in the
Balance

downward. At the center of the star is a golden lingam-yoni symbol,

representing spiritual rapture, or the eternal embrace. The third cha­
kra, below the heart, has a fiery red triangle to symbolize the passion
of the instinctual forces, or blood as the power of the feminine. The
fifth chakra is the visuddha, located above the heart, in the region of
the larynx. It consists of a white triangle, which points downward,
connoting the spiritual power of the descending masculine energy. It
is in the heart that the two are brought together in dynamic interac­
tion, producing the divine marriage of masculine and feminine ener­
gies within the individual. Ajna is the sixth chakra, located in the
forehead, between and above the eyes. "The lotus here is of two
petals, white and radiant as the moon, supporting a supreme vision
of the Goddess, or of a God-with-Form." 1 0 The seventh chakra, saha­
srara, is represented by the Lotus of a Thousand Petals, inverted over
the crown of the head. This symbolizes a rapture beyond any fonn.
The chakras may also be interpreted in developmental terms.
The root chakra is the survival chakra, a kind of primal hold on life,
desiring food, desiring comfort, desiring love-ali the basic needs of
the young child. Sexuality, the second chakra, unfolds at adolescence,
followed by the achievement of the third chakra, the solar plexus,
which propels us into our identity in tenns of doin� which is the goal 59
A Heart of early adulthood. This is the realm of the developed ego conscious­
in the ness. It is in midlife (the fourth and fifth chakras) that most people
are compelled to seek a further identity in terms of being. The energy,
Balance as it moves upward, ideally resolves into a heart of flesh, a heart full
of compassion for self and others, a heart grown wise from having
struggled with the energy's inner transformation.
If, however, the ego becomes the basis for a split in the evolu­
tion of energy on i ts rise to consciousness, we are likely to develop a
heart of stone rather than a heart of flesh. If the ego consciousness,
in its will to power, represses the lower levels of energy, they become
distorted. Then, the root chakra, symbolized in kundalini by the
coiled serpent, becomes seemingly evil. What is repressed becomes
negative when the energy of the root chakra is blocked; the "I desire"
withdraws because it knows it will not be fulfilled. Unconsciously,
that withdrawal can become a withdrawal from the desire to live
consciously. It may appear as a fierce possessiveness-holding on to
an idea, a project, a person. But the possessiveness is based on the
terror of annihilation. Out of it arises rage, jealousy, greed, clinging
codependency, parasitic feeding on others, as an infant is forced to
feed.
Beneath these seeming passions lies dread-dread of life, dread
of chaos, dread of the fundamental feminine cycle (i.e., dying to be
reborn). Beneath that dread is frozen despair, the archetypal darkness
that lies at the core of the negative mother complex. That is why
Kali, i:he dakini, the Baba Yaga-even the Black Madonna-are so
often perceived as totally negative. It is also the archetypal darkness
at the core of much of our daily news, even our daily addictions. As
our i deals fly higher in to the sky, our reality is faced with a deeper
abyss in the earth.
Having a heart of flesh means being able to feel with, suffer
with, the other. The heart that is in balance has to find its source in
the root chakra. Its root is love, love of life and trust in life. Psycho-­
logically, the enlightenment of the root chakra leads not to possess­
ing the other, but rather to commitment to the wholeness in oneself
and, therefore, to the wholeness in the other. This involves standing
alone, which requires being grounded in the muladha-ra. From that
standpoint, one can desire what is best for the other, even if it means
surrendering one's own desires and letting go of the other. Within
60 oneself, it means suffering the death that brings new life.
 If the energy of the root chakra is fundamentally afraid of life A Heart
itself, transforming this energy into the very basis of life and further in the
evolution is a daunting task. If we remain in the ego world, the
externalized world of concrete reality, death in any form is unthink­ Balana
able. In the Old Testament Book of Wisdom, this is set out as the
patriarchal reality that exists without Sophia.

For they said among themselves, thinking not aright: "Brief and
troublous is our lifetime, neither is there any remedy for man's dying,
nor is anyone known to have come back from the nether world. For
haphazard were we born, and hereafter we shall be as though we had
not been; because the breath in our nostrils is a smoke and reason is
a spark at the beating of our hearts, and when this is quenched, our
body will be ashes and our spirit will be poured abroad like unre­
sisting air. . . .
Come, therefore, let us enjoy the good things that are real, and
use the freshness of creation avidly. . . . Let us oppress the needy just
man; let us neither spare the widow nor revere the old man for his
hair grown white with time. But let our strength be our norm of
justice; for weakness proves itself worthless. 1 1

Ego consciousness has difficulty going beyond this attitude. Re­

ligious systems hold out a hope of immortality, but i f we are split,
we can grasp that hope only with our heads. We have not experienced
immortality opening up within us. We have not seen death for what
it really is-a transformation-and we are, therefore, unable to enter
into a process wherein that transformation can be experienced con­
sciously at each level of growth. We may, consequently, be very fear­
ful of our ultimate encounter with the Great Goddess. Without
experiencing the light energy within us, either we see death as final
and meaningless, or we surr-ound ourselves with rituals, talismans, or
plenary indulgences, which assure us a place in heaven through their
power, rather than through our own transformation.
In the Book of Wisdom, Solomon the Wise provides the clue
to finding the balance of the heart. "Seek Wisdom," is his plea. Wis­
dom combines experience with knowledge. Experience is lived
through the passions of body; knowledge is learned through the dis­
cipline of mind. Wisdom connects body and spirit in soul. "Resplen­
dent and unfading is Wisdom, and she is readily perceived by those
who love her, and found by those who seek her. She hastens to make 61
A Heart herself known in anticipation of men's desires . . . . For the first step
in the
toward discipline is a very earnest desire for her; then, care for disci­
pline is love of her; love means the keeping of her laws; to observe
Balance her laws is the basis of incorruptibility." 1 2
Keeping the laws of Sophia, like keeping the laws of Maat, is
different from keeping the laws of the masculine. Wisdom, "the arti­
ficer of all," is praised by Solomon as "mobile beyond all motion,
and she penetrates and pervades all things by reason of her purity." 1 3
In approaching the temple in Egypt one must bathe in the waters of
Maat and repeat, "I have purified my breast and body with clean
water, I have purified my hinder parts with the things that cleanse,
and my inward parts have been [dipped] in the Pool of Maati; no
one member of mine lacks Maat. I am pure, I am pure, I am pure, I
am pure." 14
Residing in Wisdom or Maat is not a literal undertaking. It
means allowing consciousness to move constantly within oneself.
"And She, who is one, can do all things, and renews everything while
herself perduring."15 This is the worship of the Great Goddess, who
is incarnate, who builds up the body of incorruptibility or what Jung
called the subtle body or the somatic unconscious. Only in building
up this body of incorruptibility can we come to a point of soul
consciousness capable of receiving and experiencing spirit.
Part of the feminine task in its journey toward wholeness is a
recognition and reception of masculine spirit. This meeting can occur
in some moment of numinous experience-a moment when timeless­
ness intersects time. For many it comes in dreams.
A woman dreams she is looking at the stars, which suddenly
form into the shape of a dove that hovers over a church. A young
blond man comes to lead her into the church. Another woman is
watching an animal in her garden rooting in the mud. As she watches,
i t transforms into a Christ-like figure. A more frequent kind of
dream is that of an egg that gives birth to an eagle, or an egg that
cracks in the dreamer's hand and reveals a beautiful young boy. A
recognition of spirit takes place before the building up of the "body
of incorruptibility" can take place. If it is not there as an experience
of spirit, then the person will continue to cling to a concretized
perception of life over against death. Body work will not be an em­
bodiment of spirit, or a release of spirit. The root chakra, for certain,
62 will remain closed.
 Jungian analyst Nathan Schwartz-Salant points out that in al­ A Heart
chemy "the first stage is a consolidation on a spiritual level, the cre­ in the
ation of the so-called unio mentalis. Only then is there a descent back
into matter, whence the body is transformed."16 The transformation Balance
he is talking about is the reality that Jung called the somatic uncon­
scious, or the subtle body. Body work or body exercises, however
beneficial, will not bring about this transfonnation. The body will
remain essentially concrete. Without the building up of the somatic
unconscious the soul is not liberated and the feminine task has been
circumvented. This is such an important undertaking both for under­
standing the role of feminine energy and for our own evolutionary
growth that it will be dealt with more fully in chapter 5.
In a transformation that may take place over a period of years,
the sexual chakra becomes an energy center not of rage or lust but of
creativity and ravishment. Already rooted in commitment, love can
find its expression in a sexual union that is free of possessiveness and
jealousy. Here essence meets essence in the intense embrace of the
moment. One temporarily moves out of chronos, or chronological
time, into kairos, the eternal moment.
This timeless moment is characteristic of all acts of creation,
where the tension of opposites is resolved into a new unity, a higher
consciousness. The opening of the two lower chakras allows detach­
ment and passion to come together into a harmony capable of tran­
scending time. T. S. Eliot writes of this moment in the Four Quartets:

Men's curiosity searches past and future

And clings to that dimension. But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint-
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime's death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses, 63
A Heart H ints followed by guesses; and the rest
in the Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation. 17
Balance
It is this experience of union in self-surrender that has to be sup­
ported by the sexual chakra or love cannot find its flowering in the
heart.
The energy of the third chakra transforms control and will­
power into intentionality. Rollo May defines intentionality as "the
structure which gives meaning to experience." 1 8 In most people, will
power is used to control experience-particularly the experience of
the body. Over against perceived loss, it strives to shore up posses­
sions, relationships, whatever is needed to give the ego a sense of
security. Undifferentiated power emanating from the third chakra is
i n the service of the ego, maintaining the split between what Freud
called the id (biological drives) and the superego.
We try to control our actions and our thoughts through will­
power, or what we sometimes call intention. The word "intention"
actually comes from the Latin root intendere. Tendere/tensum means "to
stretch" toward something, not to block it off. In May's experience,
"what is most interesting is the times in psychotherapy when strong
voluntary intention-correlated with 'will power'-blocks the way
to a person's intentionality, and is just what keeps the patient from
communicating with the deeper dimensions of his experience. Inten­
tionality . . . goes below levels of immediate awareness, and includes
spontaneous, bodily elements and other dimensions which are usually
called 'unconscious.' " 1 9
May goes o n t o quote Paul Tillich:

Man's vitality is as great as his intentionality: they are interdependent.

This makes man the most vital of all beings. He can transcend any
given situation in any direction and this possibility drives him to
create beyond himself. Vitality is the power of creating beyond one­
self without losing oneself. The more power of creating beyond itself
a being has the more vitality it has. . . . Only man has complete
vitality because he alone has complete intentionality.20

Intentionality in itself does not lead to an enlightened heart. It

is better thought of as a way of giving meaning to experience. It is
64 open to both conscious and unconscious information.
 Idealization is a projection of childlike energy onto persons or A Heart
institutions seen as omnipotent or perfect. Often, individuals get in the
caught up in trying to express that state of perfection in their own
lives. The perfect body, the perfect wife/husband, the perfect Balance
teacher, all become disembodied images of the ideal, in whose light
they inevitably fall short. Sons and daughters of patriarchy are very
susceptible to this light. Women trapped in anorexia love and dread
the light. They are in real danger of being swept off the earth by
their perfectionist ideals and demands for perfect order. In dreams,
these standards at first appear as a light figure, even a Christ figure.
As the anorexic becomes more ill, this figure becomes demonic. Men,
too, are vulnerable to being carried out of reality by the light. Their
ideals, their hopes and dreams and artistic endeavors, can carry them
right out of home, children, wife, and bills to be paid. Fantasy is one
of the most dangerous addictions in our society. What is missing is
embodiment.
Schwartz-Salant makes this distinction between the energy and
the child-like expression of it: "The proper reception of idealization
involves knowing instinctively, if not consciously, that the energy
belongs to the young child: the object of the i dealization is not god­
like but the energy is, and that energy belongs to the child's emerging
Self structure."21
What is necessary and adaptive in the child becomes maladap­
tive in the adult. The child's energy (capacity) for realizing the Self
is projected onto parents, or teachers, or in the case of teenagers onto
rock stars, athletes, TV characters. Projection in adults is still essen­
tial, otherwise analysis would not work. In recognizing what is being
projected, people learn to know what is in their unconscious. Real­
ization, on the other hand, is the internal process of taking off the
projections and accepting responsibility for one's own potential.
In analysis, this process toward self-responsibility is the key
factor if any growth or transformation is to take place. Until we
recognize and accept that change is up to us, we are stuck in infantile
judge-and-blame games. "So-and-so should be different, then I
would be all right. If the workplace were different, I would be fine.
Why don't they change? I try to give them everything and they are
indifferent, stubborn." The list can be quite long. Everything would
be so simple if the object of our projection would just carry out its
proper role and if others would just conform to our projections and 65
A Heart needs. Granted, a situation "out there" may be far from perfect from
in the an objective point of view-the hysterical wife, the alcoholic hus­
band-but the fact remains that the only person we can take respon­
Balance sibility for is ourself.
We know we can change ourselves when we realize that we are
not dependent on how we feel, nor on how others feel about us, nor
on what the situation is around us. The values we hold, the choices
we make within ourselves and for ourselves remain our prerogative.
In most situations, if we begin to change, to do our own inner work,
to accept our own darkness and work toward consciousness, the situ­
ation will change. We will begin to emanate a different energy, one
that exudes a sense of autonomy and authenticity.
This process of self-realization is the embodying of spirit in
the fifth chakra. This is the throat chakra, and has to do with being
able to speak one's own truth. Here one's truth becomes the expres­
sion of a journey already undertaken, of facing the fear of aloneness,
of refusing to listen to the voices of conformity that would smile
and suck our lifeblood, and lay us in eiderdown to die.
This is an inward journey that usually begins on a wild, stonny
night. It takes great resolve to enter into the darkness of our own
chaos, to give up the familiar path and begin to trust our own experi­
ence. The recognition and unconditional love of oneself is never a
selfish journey. Most people, if challenged to love themselves uncon­
ditionally for fifteen minutes, reel in embarrassment. "What is love
without judgment? How can I love myself so long as I am this assert­
ive little prick? What does that mean-love unconditionally?" Ulti­
mately, that is what the journey is about.
In our yearning to be perfect, we have mistaken perfection for
wholeness. We think we cannot love ourselves until we and others
meet some external standard. Depression, anxiety-in fact, most neu­
roses and compulsions-are ultimately a defense against loving our­
selves without condition. We are afTaid to look at the damp, dark,
ugly yet exquisite roots of being that stretch deep into our survival
chakra. We are fearful of finding that the spirit is not there, that our
Home is empty, even as our outer home is empty. Yet it is in that
place of survival, where the dark mother has been abandoned, that
spirit longs to be embodied so that the whole body may become
66 light. Ego wants to be the god of our own idealized projection; spirit
wants to be incarnated in our humanity where it can grow in wisdom A Heart
through experience. in the
The sixth chakra is related to the higher, spiritual, realms of
perception, namely, to the form of the Divine that the soul seeks. In Balance
patriarchal monotheism, the Divine is widely perceived as Creator,
Dispenser of Truth, Law Giver, Ruler of Humanity. He is the "be­
yond" of ego consciousness, who must be interpreted by the theolo­
gians, who claim to know what he wants. In his most benign form,
this God is a superego figure that espouses civilization over anarchy,
love over hate, peace over war. At his worst, he dictates carnage in
order to preserve his "kingdom." Such a God-image may function to
keep an individual or culture in check, but it cannot bring about the
transformation of consciousness.
The great limitation of ego consciousness is that it tends to
concretize reality in order to make i tself feel secure about its own
place in the scheme of things. Thus, it perceives life in terms of
doing, and doing implies being able to control or manipulate. From
this perspective, life is safe and secure-and static and dead. If, on
the other hand, we can root our identity in being, in trusting the
Great Mother, who cherishes all life-our own included-then the
door is open for spontaneity, for something new to burst in with the
security of those roots. Spirit blows where it wills. It is agile and
quick, playing within the spaces of matter, constantly changing color,
changing form, changing language, moment by moment open to new
beginnings. The third eye, or Ajna center, at the core of the sixth
chakra, has been called the perception of the imagination. Imagina­
tion is without limits, constantly bringing forth myriads of possibili­
ties. Soul and spirit delight here in the garden of creation.
Laughter, joy, and ecstasy are associated with this chakra-and
sorrow as well. These are not the personalized emotions of the ego,
with i ts depression and anxiety, or pleasure and excitement. The
emotions of the soul are real-intensely real, but they are not person­
alized. The soul can weep over injustice or the stupidity and greed
of humanity. It can rejoice over the budding of a flower, or a little
act of kindness. These are the keenly felt emotions of love devoid of
self-interest, love that perceives the possibilities and grieves the in­
ability to respond. When we meet someone who loves in this way
we know inunediately that we are in the presence of a great soul.
Beyond this chakra is the source of pure light, the God/God- 67
A Heart dess without a form. If the chakras are dark, if the energy is not
in the
flowing, one cannot image this possibility. Ego consciousness cannot
go beyond a God with form. Some mystics in the West, like Meister
Balance Eckhart, realized the need to go beyond the fom1 of God, but this
concept was quickly repressed.22 On entering this realm, the vibra­
tions in the soul/body become so intense that the individual be­
comes one with light itself, light beheld consciously. With the death
of the gross material body, according to spiritual accounts, the soul
enters this realm of light.
An analysand who was to leave for South America to work
there was hesitant to go because his mother was hospitalized and
becoming quite frail. One day he visited her, and she told him of a
dream she had had the previous night.

There was a boat and a lot of people jostling on the wharf. It was
dark and I went to sleep. When I woke up I was on the boat. There
was a bright light shining from somewhere above and a voice said,
"Are you there, Margaret?" I thought, " Well, at least they speak
English, wherever we are." There were other people lying in the boat
head to toe, alternating like sardines, and I saw Marge and said, "Are
you here too?" She said, " Yes," and I thought, "It's nice to have
company." Then the light shone again, and the voice said, "Margaret
R-, are you all right?" Then the boat went on, and I didn't know
where it was going or why I was on i t.

In her dream, the dreamer falls asleep and awakens in a boat, a

mythical vessel for crossing over into another life. She is awakened
by a great light and a voice coming out of the light indicating that
she is known by name. She recognizes a friend who has recently died.
The feeling is not one of fear but of comfort and even a sense of
adventure into the unknown. This movement into the light seems to
be the way the unconscious prepares the soul for the next step i n the
journey. In this case, the analysand and his mother were able to talk
of her approaching death and take their leave of each other. This
being done consciously, both felt free and the son was able to leave,
although he knew he would probably never see his mother alive
agam.
Mystics of many traditions have written of this experience of
68 entering pure light, or of going into the void. Since it is beyond our
normal experience, description becomes very difficult. Those mystics A Heart

who have entered the light while still in the body warn of the dan­ in the
gers: the body can hardly stand the intensity of the energy vibrations.
Unless the body has become a "pure" vessel, that is, the energy cen­ Balance

ters are all open and in balance, the physical body will collapse.
The sixteenth-century Spanish mystic, John of the Cross, ex­
pressed it this way: "As, however, this sensual part of the soul is weak
and incapable of experiencing the strong things of the spirit, it fol­
lows that these proficients, by reason of this spiritual communication
which is made to their sensual part, endure therein many frailties and
sufferings and weaknesses of the stomach, and in consequence are
fatigued in spirit."23
In today's language, we would say that the soul, which is em­
bedded in body, needs to be released through an increased suppleness
and consciousness in the body, so that spirit may be more and more
embodied. When this happens, all external phenomena disappear.
This experience of light is also given credence by the experience of
those who have been pronounced clinically dead and then been resus­
citated. Dr. von Franz in On Dreams and Death, tells of Victor Solov,
who was "dead" for twenty-three minutes.

I was moving very quickly toward a bright shining net which vibrated
with a remarkable cold energy at the intersecting points of its radiant
strands. The net was like a lattice which I did not want to break
through. For a brief moment my forward movement seemed to slow
down, but then I was in the lattice. As I came in touch with i t, the
light Bickering increased to such an intensity that it consumed and,
at the same time, transformed me. I felt no pain. The feeling was
neither agreeable or disagreeable, but it filled me completely. From
then on everything was different-this can be described only very
incompletely. The whole thing was like a traniformer, an energy-traniformer,
which transpo-rted me into a formlessness beyond time and space. I was not in
another place-for spatial dimensions had been abolished-bm
rather in another state of being.24

This dream is particularly interesting because it features the net,

which "vibrated with a remarkable cold energy," a characteristic of
the yin (feminine) force. The dreamer touches an energy field so
powerful that he is at once consumed and transformed. From that
moment everything is different-another state of being arises. If we 69
A Heart compare this transformation to shamanic healing or healing through
in the
imagery, we need to take careful note of the words "like a trans­
former, an energy-transformer." Psychic healings happen when the
Balance imagination is so charged that it can heat a metaphor to an intensity
powerful enough to change the energy in the body. Metaphor means "a
crossing over." If we really believe that psyche and soma are one,
then we need to ingest our metaphors with as much respect as we
ingest food. Both act as transformers.
This changing of energy is the subject of a hypothesis formu­
lated by Jung in a letter to Raymond Smythies.

It might be that the psyche should be understood as unextended intemity

and not as a body moving with time. One might assume the psyche
gradually rising from minure extensity to infinite intensity, transcend­
ing for instance the velocity of light and thus irrealizing the body . . . .
In the light of this view the brain might be a transformer sta­
tion, in which the relative infinite tension of intensity of the psyche
proper is transformed into perceptible frequencies or "extensions."
Conversely, the fading of introspective perception of the body ex­
plains itself as due to a gradual "psychification," i.e., intensification
at the expense of extension. Psyche = h ighest intensity in the small­
est space. 25

Commenting on the existence of a subtle body, Dr. von Franz

writes: "If we take the hypothesis of the existence of a subtle body
seriously, then this would suggest that the transformation of the
coarse material body (and its energic manifestation) would continue
gradually into the psyche. This would mean that what we call physi­
cal energy and psychic energy today could, in the last analysis, be
two aspects of one and the same energy. . . . We would therefore be
dealing here with a form of energy which gradually changes, from the
physically measurable to the psychically immeasurable."26
In another letter, Jung makes clear that space and time have no
influence on a certain part of the psyche.

What is commonly understood by "psyche" is certainly an ephemeral

phenomenon if it is taken to mean the ordinary facts of conscious­
ness. But in the deeper layers of the psyche which we call the uncon­
scious there are things that cast doubt on the indispensable categories
70 of our conscious world, namely time and space.27
 In referring to the irrelevance of time and space to certain parts A Heart
of the psyche, von Franz writes that "at a certain threshold in the in the
increase of frequency, the psychic functions which produce our per­
ception of time and space seem to cease functioning."211 The physicist Balance
David Bohm postulates a projected model of the collective uncon­
scious based on the suggestion that the "observable material universe
is just the unfolded or 'explicate order' of existence as the surface of
an underlying enfolded or 'implicate order.' "29 Dr. von Franz con­
cludes: "This new image of the physical world can very well be asso­
ciated with Jung's hypothesis of a single energy, which physically
appears to be unfolded in space-time but coexists psychically as pure
spaceless-timeless (enfolded) intensity.''30
The wholeness out of which the manifest world unfolds is the
perception of the sixth chakra, which leads to the experience of such
reality in the seventh chakra. This is the reality that for many people
seems to present itself at death. It is also the reality toward which
Eastern meditation practices such as kundalini yoga, as well as the
process of individuation, are oriented. Both are directed at transfor­
mation of energy to higher and higher levels of intensity so that
ultimately the material body becomes more and more subtle in its
ability to receive spirit or light. This is the process towards which
the Goddess, or feminine energy, is directed.
Kundalini power, the symbol of raising the energy coiled at the
base of the spine upward through the chakras, is called by Sri Chin­
moy "the power of the Supreme Goddess."-' 1 Repressed or coiled in
a circle, she can be poisonous both to the body and the psyche, but
once risen and standing upright, she is beneficent. The power of the
serpent, rightly understood, is one of the ways the Goddess over­
comes duality.
One of the ancient understandings of creation in Chinese phi­
losophy is: "The Tao begot one. One begot two. Two begot three.
And three begot the ten thousand things." The dynamic between the
two is a pulsating rhythm, a vibration. Bonheim, in an article on
kundalini, sees this as the primordial wave, which "developing into
consciousness, . . . appears in the form of a snake. For what is a snake
other than a single, undulating, pulsating wave motion?"32
The inherent rhythm in the body becomes an important step
in the journey toward the "ten thousand things" represented by the 71
A Heart crown chakra. It is this snake power that lies deep within the uncon­
in the scious and deep within the body.

Balance
Where, then, does the snake-wave appear within the human being? Ir
dwells, first and foremost, within our very center, the spine, which,
viewed from the side, looks like a snake, and moves like a snake.
Further, it presides over the entire underworld of the body, governing
many of our involuntary movements: the swallowing of food, the
pulsating flow of blood, the peristaltic movement of the intestines,
the pulsating rhythm of orgasm, and the tiny undulations that ripple
through muscle tissue. The snake symbolizes everything within our
bodies and minds that moves under the surface, hidden from the light
of consciousness:13

As the movement becomes more enfolded at the deeper levels

of the cell and finally at the quantum level, we can, through various
movements, dance, drumming, or meditation, "align our conscious
mind with the unconscious psychic forces."34 In this way, we are
"utilizing duality as a gateway into the consciousness of at-oneness."
Even among yogins, few achieve the h ighest form of kundalini,
and those, like Sri Chinmoy, who have achieved this experience of
the void-or acausal light-through kundalini, warn against ap­
proaching it without the appropriate sense of spirit awareness. As
Chimnoy states: "Kundalini power can perform all kinds of miracles;
but when it is a matter of elevating someone's consciousness, it won't
be able to elevate the consciousness even one inch. For that we need
spiritual power, the power that comes from the Supreme Goddess at
Her highest level."35
If we are trying merely to achieve a spiritual supremacy, a kind
of going for the light as if it bestowed some power or recognition,
we can put ourselves in danger on at least two counts. First, if some­
one does not have a deep spiritual commitment and the body has
not "surrendered" or unfolded consciously to receive that energy, it
is in danger of collapsing with the influx of such great power. Gopi
Krishna gives an account of unconsciously awakening the kw1dalini
power and almost going insane, feeling that his body was about to
be destroyed. The great mystic writer, Teresa of Avila, cautioned that
the health of the body is liable to deteriorate with the influx of such
72 energy. She also warned of the moral danger involved. In describing
the spiritual journey, she talks of the interior crystal castle, with its A Heart
seven levels, or rooms. She tells us that once the sixth level has been in the
reached, the spiritual awakening is such that there is little danger of
falling back or relapsing to an earlier state. However, in .the fifth Balance
mansion, there is a great temptation to use the knowledge gained
thus far, and the ability to express it (this corresponds to the throat
chakra) , for personal power or aggrandizement. The spiritual sense
can be subtly eroded by the ego's demands to gain personal recogni­
tion or to exercise power or influence over others.
The spirit has to be embodied, reunited with the soul, in order
to move toward the sort of consciousness Sri Chinmoy is talking
about. Without this reunion, this embodiment, the consciousness
necessary to move forward cannot exercise power within an interde­
pendent framework. This is what love means in i ts truest sense. The
evolution of the soul/body to a state where it can become the chal­
ice, the Holy Grail, that can allow Spirit, the creative masculine,
within or without, to give creative expression to the world seems to
be one of the particular concerns of the Black Goddess, at this point
in our history. Without our recognition of the sweetness and sadness,
rage and hope, in our bodies, and our honoring of our limitations as
human bodies, we have no way of experiencing our compassion for
one another. The wisdom of the Goddess manifests in the love we
feel rather than in what we think.

B U I L D IN G T H E S U B TL E B O D Y

Spiraling up and spiraling down, the transformation of masculine

and feminine, above and below is a constant theme in analysis. This
comes through in the following dream. The dreamer was Anna, a
high school teacher in her early thirties.

I was in a plane, and it took off slowly, circling up around a mow1-

tain. The plane was suffocatingly crowded, so I eventually got out
and stood on the roof I felt exhilarated and secure standing there
with my arms outstretched. It was as if I could reach out at any time
and touch the face of the mountain as we circled upward. Then I was
going down deep winding stairs into the earth. I came to a place that
was like thick yellow slime. It was awful! It was blocking my way, so 73
A Heart I began to shovel it out. People ran over to me shouting, "Stop! This
is God." But I kept shoveling. I circled down the stone stairs further,
in the
and came to another obstacle of red, flame-like leaves that were damp
Balance and matted together. I began to tear them out, and again people were
angry and telling me to stop, that I was tearing out God, but I kept
going in spite of their anger. Finally, I came to the bottom, and there
were fresh green shoots coming up out of the watery earth-like a
rice field. People were trying to tear the shoots out, but I said, "Stop!
This is God."

The first part of the dream is about getting out of the suffocat­
ing security of the collective to discover the freedom of spirit. With
her arms outstretched, Anna feels as if she is flying on the back of a
great bird, perfectly free and yet perfectly safe.
The second part of the dream relates to the dreamer's own
process in a very personal way. When this young woman first entered
analysis, she would start to talk and immediately go into spasms of
uncontrollable coughing, constantly bringing up thick yellow
phlegm. This went on for weeks, until she was able to recount the
oral sex-abuse that she had been subjected to as a young child. She
had, in effect, been forced to swallow the false, demonic spirit, just
as many today are being forced to swallow false masculine power,
false spirit, in the home, at school, in the workplace. They, too, are
being told, "This is God."
Red flames of rage can emanate from the first and second chak­
ras when victims realize what has been done to them. The release of
this rage is necessary, for only then can its repressed power be trans­
formed into creativity. Patriarchy fears this potential for power and
tries to suppress it. "Nice people don't get angry!" The second cha­
kra is related to the sixth-or throat-chakra, that is, to creative
expression. It is the generative power of embodied spirit.
Anna has been working on her rage. She is now ready for the
creation of something new. She comes to the root chakra, where she
discovers the new green shoots. This is the new life that is beginning
to grow in her, with its need to be nurtured and protected. These are
the tender shoots of her own unique truth, the beginning of her soul
energy that, with care, will eventually blossom into a consciousness
that is capable of standing firm in a love of self and of others. This
74 new life she must protect fiercely against the systems and injunctions
that would try to persuade her that her own feelings,and perceptions A Heart
are false. in the
Without an experience of safety in a loving relationship, Anna
could never have reached this position. "To protect the soul, the Self Balance
seems to set up a block, so that the unendurable pain is channeled
into the body, where nature deals with it as best it can. Because the
pain is somatized, its psychological component is not consciously,
experienced."36 Often, it takes a long time for the soul to trust, to
reveal i ts new green shoots.
The process of embodying spirit is unique in each person. That
it requires sensitive timing and understanding is clear from the expe­
rience of Sarah, a woman in her early forties. Sarah had engaged in
the discipline of meditation since her late teens. At thirty, she found
herself "caught up" in an intense white light every time she sat down
to meditate. It was as if the natural energy of her body would fail,
and her soul would burn with an intense heat. In such a state, she
had no sense of time, but she knew she had to "get back" at some
point or she would die. Although such awesome moments were a
great consolation to her, she intuited that this experience should be
set aside. The only way to do this was to avoid meditation, since she
had no control over what happened to her in that state. Then, an
eminent Spanish spiritual director happened to visit her town, and
she took the opportunity to ask for his advice. Should she set aside
such a rare gift? He sat silent for a while and then proceeded to
describe for her the images that came to his mind. They were related
to the story of the three apostles on the mountain witnessing the
transfiguration of Jesus. Awed by such an experience, they wanted to
put up rents and remain there forever. H owever, the time for that
had not yet come, and they were instructed to go down from the
mountain to live out their incarnate reality. " Yes," he said, "I think
you should follow your intuition to forgo such experiences."
A short time later, Sarah was sitting outdoors, overlooking a
valley, when she had an intense vision. A figure that she interpreted
as Christ, "dressed in his wedding garments of white and gold," ap­
proached her. Standing to one side was his mother, and behind him
stood a multitude of people rejoicing. He seemed to be making a
proposal, which she understood to be an offer of divine marriage.
She did not tell anyone of her experience, passing the next forty­
eight hours in turmoil and terror. The vision had been, at once, 75
A 1-leart awesome and awful. The ego recognized that in accepting such a
in the proposal she would undergo a profound transformation, one that
was tantamount to death-not immediate physical death in a literal
Balance sense, but rather, the death of the ego. Some heroic response would
be required of her: she would be given some cross to bear, some
unimaginable suffering to endure. Sarah had a great love of life and
all the pleasures that life was calling her to pursue. To use her own
words, she was "a very passionate and sexually oriented young
woman." She felt incapable of making the sacrifice that would be
required of her. But yet, the allure of the vision was irresistible. Tim­
idly, she uttered the word: "Yes!"
For Sarah, this was the beginning of the embodiment of spirit,
of going from the pure radiant light to the "god-with-form." On
being "reined in," the intense psychic energy took the form of the
Divine Lover, an archetypal masculine figure-the masculine spirit
seeking union with the feminine souL The visitations of the Divine
Lover lasted for about three weeks, a time in which Sarah experienced
such ecstasy that she hardly knew whether she was in her body or
out of i t.
For the following six years, Sarah was away, pursuing a profes­
sional career that required much discipline and intellectual energy.
Meditation and spiritual awareness took a back seat to the more
pressing demands of her professional life.
Returning home at the age of thirty-six, Sarah took the summer
off before taking up a new position. During this time, she experi­
enced some regret at having neglected her spiritual life, and she re­
solved to regain her balance through prayer and meditation.
Shortly thereafter, while she was in a gathering of about two
hundred people, Christ appeared to her again, this time in the red
robes of a martyr. He gently chided her for her infidelity to her inner
quest, but then he said, " Do not be afraid, for I have prayed for
you." Moving toward her, Christ placed a martyr's crown on her
head, not the crown of victimization, but rather, a "knotted crown
of fire" that turns suffering into love. This is how Sarah described
her response:

A wave of incredible joy went through me. I realized instantly that

this was a promise that in spite of my fiery sexuality, my drivenness,
and the many things I had come to regard as selfish, I would love
76 completely-at least before I died!
 The more Sarah grew in consciousness, the more she realized A Hea rt
that what we so often call love has little to do with the ability to in the
love consciously with our whole being-selfless surrender to a higher
purpose, becoming love. She was more aware of her dependence on Balance

others, mistaking it for commitment; her fear, which asked for assur­
ances; her indifference to the pain of others, which lurked beneath
the surface of her own best efforts.
She was no longer tied to the literalness of the ego's interpreta­
tion of what was happening in death. The symbolism pointed more
sharply to the ego death that would be necessary if love was to be
achieved. This was an intuitive soul response to the symbolism of
the gift of Christ. The gift had to do with the heart, and it made
Sarah impatient for the transformation that would release her capac­
ity to love. Although not consciously aware that anything had
changed during those six years, Sarah now began to realize that she
had undergone a transformation, because she had remained open.
Two summers later, Sarah had a very different vision. This one
lasted for eight hours and gripped her in a kind of transpersonal fear.
Difficult to describe because of its intense feeling of chaos, it was a
vision of the world without spirit, without consciousness-a vision
of matter without light. Out of this apocalyptic nightmare of boiling
oceans and crumbling mountains, the only distinct image that
emerged was of someone caught in a whirlpool, completely sub­
merged in the spiraling waters except for a hand reaching up and
grasping a large rock. Sarah realized that it was her hand. She was the
person in the whirlpool. In the midst of the chaos that was swirling
about her, all she could do was try to hold onto some kind of con­
sciousness, some kind of center.
Morning came, and Sarah went out to the lake. Sitting under
an overhanging tree and listening to the birds, she had the profound
realization that everything is connected in love. The others were in the
kitchen, getting breakfast ready. As she walked over to join them, she
suddenly experienced her own being at one with love. This deep
awareness of Self, this experiencing of her own true identity was to
become the bedrock of her experience. In the hurly-burly of daily
activities, we are apt to lose sight of our real identity, but an experi­
ence or a dream can become a reference point to return to in regain­
ing that lost vision.
Sar;,�h's energy now went into an extension of her core experi- 77
A Heart ence, although she did not do this consciously. She spent the next
in the seven years exploring the writings of Thomas Ben-y, Joseph Camp­
bell, and Carl Jung, whom she called her "three wise men." Thomas
Balance Beny, who writes and speaks so compellingly of the spirituality of
the universe, brought an evolutionary perspective to her thinking.
Joseph Campbell gave her an appreciation of myth and symbol, a
way of interpreting that evolutionary experience. Carl Jung brought
her to the nature and structure of her own psyche in its heights and
depths. She was now in touch with the masculine energy that would
take her out into the world.
The influx of masculine energy (spirit) resulted in a flurry of
extroverted activity. Enthusiastic to empower others, she got involved
in training people to minister to the elderly. For ten years, she gave
workshops and served on the boards of directors of several charitable
organizations-all in addition to her regular job. Inspired by spirit,
she was trying to live out an ideal, and inadvertently fl o oding her
soul with too much light. Then, on three successive nights, she
dreamed. The vividness with which she recalled these dreams startled
her. Up to this point, she could not remember ever having had a
dream. For the first forty-three years of her life she was not "a
dreamer."

Night One: I am deep under the earth, inspecting some kind of

missile site. My parents are there, and my sister. Suddenly there is an
earthquake, and the earth begins to cave in on us. I grab my sister
and we take a high-speed elevator up to the surface.
Night Two: I am with my sister in an airplane that is sitting on the
tarmac. It is engulfed in ffames. My sister and I manage to get out.
Night Three: I am up on some rugged coast (like northern Scotland)
and I notice an enormous ( I O feet high) tidal wave bearing down on
us. (I am aware of a friend in the background.) I turn my back to it
and get down on my knees. I let it wash over me, and when it has
passed I look at my hair, which is hanging down with long strands
of seaweed. I say, "Oh, this is how seaweed is made."

A few days after having these dreams, Sarah awoke one morning
unable to breathe. Her body was finally protesting. She had devel­
oped pleurisy and pneumonia. This was not surprising, given her
78 dreams. The earth's caving in was a good indication that Sarah's
body was reacting against her drivenness. In the dream series, the A Heart
dream ego is assailed in turn by earth, fire, and water-all the ele­ in the
ments except air. Earth and water are feminine elements; fire is mas­
culine. Too much disembodied masculine "air" (spirit) had taken Balance
over her waking life, crowding out the feminine elements and embod­
ied fire. Sarah's dreams and her body were telling her that she was
suffocating the other elements with too much concrete activity; her
subtle body could hardly breathe, hardly take in pneuma, spirit, and
was suffering from pneumonia. Psyche and soma, Maat's scales, were
out of balance.
Sarah associated the underground missile site of the first dream
.
with unconscious rage. As the earth quakes in fury, she and her
shadow sister are carried by the high-speed elevator to air. The plane
on the tarmac in the second dream represents her intuition: it burns
(with rage and passion) on the spot, unable to take off into the air.
However, she and her sister escape. The tidal wave in the third dream
represents the danger of being overwhelmed by her unconscious. She
deals with it by kneeling with her back to it and letting it wash over
her, choosing to react passively to save herself. As she kneels with
her head on the ground, she inadvertently takes on the prayer posi­
tion, which the goddess so often demands in dreams. In lowering her
head to the earth, she allows the water to cover her hair with seaweed.
Its long tendrils are the exact gift she needs to ground her headiness.
The female figure rising out of the water is like Venus born from the
sea, a baptism by water.
The Goddess wakened Sarah from the depths of her uncon­
scious with the following dream:

I am in bed, lying in the dark, when I am awakened by a bright full

moon. I am looking at the moon, when a cat leaps up on the bed. It
becomes evident that I am to follow it. I start down a dark, steep
staircase, and when I come to the second landing I see a young man
and woman embracing and gently making love. They are quite primi­
tive looking (dressed in skins) but they have an innocence and gentle­
ness about them. My task is to bring them up into the light of day.

The full moon symbolizes the Goddess in her role as a nurtur­

mg mother. She i t is who wakens the dreamer from her state of
unconsciousness. Once the dream ego is awake, her feminine instinct 79
A Heart is aroused (the cat leaps onto her bed), and she, wisely, follows its
in the promptings. She is led deeper into the unconscious until she comes
to the second landing (the second chakra). The "primitive" young
Balance couple she finds there are gently making love. Sarah was able to see
them as a reflection of the divine marriage that she had earlier seen
in her vision. As above, so below: what happens in the psychic realm
is min·ored in the somatic realm. Instead of being obsessed by lust,
she now has an image of love. Sex is innocent and the body is pure
in this young couple. This innocence and purity, however, can be
distorted by lust, which leads to repression of instincts. The body is
then made to appear evil, and the gratification of its needs con­
denmed as sinful. Sarah's task was to differentiate her own driven
and repressed sexuality, to recognize it as part of her body's greatest
gift. The wounding is ultimately the blessing.
Another dream that was important in presenting the Goddess's
role in embodying spirit was as follows:

I am sitting in the middle of a huge field in the lotus position. A

large bright moon makes it seem almost like day. I am holding an
enormous white snake upright in front of me. All around, as far as I
can see, white snakes are standing upright as if they are coming right
up out of the earth.

Again, this dream takes place in moon time, the realm of the
Goddess. At that point, Sarah knew little of the meaning of the
symbols, particularly of the white serpent. She did not know that the
white serpent represents the sacred life force, the power of the God­
dess. The snakes in her dream portrayed divine energy in its incarnate
form, coming right up out of the earth, as prima materia, as virgin
mother energy. This was an image of the energy in matter (mater)
and of the feminine role in releasing, directly from the root chakra,
this energy into the earth and in her own body.
This moon dream seems to bring into balance upper and lower
chakra energy. In the first moon dream, the release of moonlight into
the young couple mirrors the earlier sunlight of the divine marr_iage.
In this dream, the rising of the white snake from the earth mirrors
the inundation of pure light that preceded the image of the divine
marriage. The stronger the spiritual energy in the top chamber, the
stronger must be the somatic energy in the lower chakra. The light
80 has to be grounded.
 Sarah continued with body work, daily meditation, voice work­ A Heart
shops. As her body became more conscious, the light from within in the
was released, and the symptoms that had manifested themselves when
she first embraced spirit began to disappear. At seventeen, Sarah had Balance
developed a chronic bowel problem diagnosed as "spastic colon."
She had lived with this for most of her adult life, controlling it,
when necessary, with a narcotic-based medication that inhibited the
peristaltic activity. As might be expected, this strategy invariably
'
backfired the following day. As the lower chakras began to open,
through body work and dreams, Sarah's bowel ailment completely
and permanently disappeared. The problem had been so chronic that
she continued to carry her medication in her purse for almost a year
before she finally flushed it down the toilet-a "ritual" she thought
very fitting.
Sarah's dreams illustrate the relationship between the above and
the below: the release of energy in the lower chakras provided the
grounding necessary for embodying spirit. Before this embodiment
could happen, before the primitive young couple on the second land­
ing could be brought into consciousness, the split in both the femi­
nine and masculine energy had to be dealt with. The split feminine
surfaced first in a dream in which a wild, dark whore was lying on
her back on the sidewalk, offering her services to anyone who came
along. The dream ego stood by, looking embarrassed. In a later
dream, Sarah encountered the same dark figure outside her analyst's
office. The whore asked Sarah how she might get into the office.
There followed a heated debate as to the propriety of letting her
in. Only reluctantly was she granted admittance. Similarly, Sarah's
powerful sexual energy came into consciousness gradually and was
transformed into the great white serpent.
The repressed sexual passion symbolized in the whore arche­
type appears in many contemporary dreams. Sometimes Mary Mag­
dalene or Lilith or even a madonna figure appears. Because she does
not belong with the faithful wives of the collective, she often appears
sadistically beaten, brutalized. But, as every woman who has realized
this energy knows, for better or for worse, it carries huge transforma­
tive power.
In her outward life, Sarah had reached the point where she
was ready to forsake the patriarchal system and her own addictive
drivenness. She resigned from boards, gave up her charitable work, 81
A Heart even discontinued religious practices as she had understood them.
ir1 the
The end of these practices was depicted in one of her dreams as a
group of robed monks sailing into the sunset.
Balm1a
When the ship leaves with the robed monks on it, I begin to climb a
river bank on the other side and come out onto a lush meadow. A
small rabbit hops by. Then a fox goes by, and we eye each other
warily. After this, I turn around and see an enormous bull charging
straight at me. I break off a tree branch, and as the bull charges I run
the branch through his left eye and bring him to the ground. Sud­
denly, a black-caped demon figure springs from his body.

As long as Sarah had sought to please others, her sexual energy

had remained buried in her unconscious. In stepping out of her Pol­
lyanna role, she realized that this latent energy had been manipulating
her from within and undermining more conscious experience of the
divine marriage. Now that this threatening energy of the bull was
coming into consciousness, what would she do with it?
The following nigh t, she had a second dream.

I am walking at the edge of a woods with a male friend. Suddenly a

fox goes by. Immediately, I become wary and reach for a shovel that
is at hand. Sure enough, an enormous bull comes out of the woods.
This time, however, a shaman figure dressed in skins and feathers also
comes out of the woods dancing and chanting. I realize that he is
here to teach me how to tame the wild bull.

This enormous energy cannot be killed, as Sarah had tried to

do in the first dream. In fact, it would be psychically damaging to
persist in trying to kill it. In a transformed state, it represents power­
ful creative masculine energy that needs to be integrated.
Sarah began to connect with the bull when the young Dionysus
came on the scene in the following dream. Sarah finds herself in a
farmhouse up on a hill with an intellectual male friend, having a
boring discussion. She leaves the farmhouse and goes down into the
valley, and there she sees another friend (a creative shadow figure)
riding bareback on a horse, expressing great glee. Then she looks and
thinks she sees an animal, possibly a bull. However, as she approaches
she sees a curly-haired young boy of four or five, with a goat at his
82 side.
 The solar masculine no longer held any interest for Sarah. She A Heart
went down into the valley, the deeper regions. Her shadow side was in the
no longer wild whore energy. She was now a creative woman con­
nected to her body (horse) in a playful, creative way. The black bull Balance
chthonic energy, the polar opposite of the divine lover, had now been
transformed into a third-a new, young masculine, connected to the
instinctual realm but not overwhelmed by it. The connection with
the goat points to Dionysus, now no longer repressed. When Diony­
sus is repressed he becomes a raging bull. "The Bull, the underground
Dionysian power, has been unleashed."37 I f Dionysus is held in bond­
age, he destroys us. He turns into addiction and madness. When he
is honored, "[ wJine streams forth, vines with swelling grapes appear,
ivy grows, honey trickles down, water or milk gushes forth. The
mystery which calls forth nourishing or intoxicating streams is the
same mystery which splits rocks, bursts chains asunder and causes
walls to crumble. Dionysus is the god of ecstasy, dance and song; he
is also Lysios, the loosener, the liberator. He brings plasticity and
flexibility i nto what is rigid and hard; he frees us from old bandages;
he dissolves old claims; he lifts the age-old barriers that conceal the
invisible and the infinite. And the infinite vitality that has been
locked away wells up from the depths like the milk, honey, and wine
that spurt forth from the earth."3ll
This young masculine points to a new Christ consciousness and
seems to be where Sarah's energy wants to go. This is the Christ
figure of Sarah's earlier visions, but restored to the vitality of the
earth, the ecstasy that causes springs to flow within us, the creative
masculine. This is the repressed vitality of the underworld and the
light energy of Christ coming into a new third creation within con­
sciousness.
Sarah had experienced great ecstasy following her early vision
of Christ. Such an experience can become a cornerstone for one's
life, but it does not become a way of life. The experience of the
divine lover, once it is embodied, does become a way of life. Rather
than singling out an isolated moment, it becomes a flame in every
moment of every day.
Sarah had been a nun. She had left the convent not because she
had lost her faith in Christ, but because the patriarchy that contained
him had become increasingly oppressive. The constraints of the con­
vent had finally become impossible to endure. She could no longer 83
A Heart put her energy into the institution. After several months of analysis,
in the
the following dream showed Sarah where the energy wanted to go.

Balance I was with my analyst and we had found a wild horse that had been
running in a field. We tamed it and took it up to the door of a
convent/ monastery. They said it did not belong there. However, they
had some dresses that they wanted us to exchange for some other
dresses at a neighboring convent. This seemed like an imposition so
we went further on down the road. I looked through a large opening
in the rocks and there in a deep underground cavern I discovered a
large golden cathedral. The walls, everything, were bathed in gold.
The priest was dressed in gold robes and had the gold chalice raised
in the sacrifice of the Mass. Then I walked on further and I saw an
old woman and a female friend up on a roof. The roof was made of
a board like bristol board and there was a large green S painted on it.
The women had been planting grass, individual blades about 3 inches
long into the holes in the board. They were about two-thirds finished.

The instinctual life, the passion of the body, had been tamed
and was now available to Sarah to live a more whole life. The con­
vent, however, was not a place that could receive this passion. The
nuns were interested in exchanging the outer garments: different
works, different structures, a deeper embracing of idealism. The fire
of inner transformation was not understood. Sarah's energy had
moved away from the nunnery.
In the second part of the dream, Sarah looks through a large
opening in the rocks and there, in a deep underground cavern, dis­
covers a large golden cathedral. The walls are bathed in gold. The
priest is dressed in gold robes and has a gold chalice raised in the
sacrifice of the Mass. H ere, the golden cathedral and the gold chalice
are not common gold but alchemical gold, or congealed light, the
interplay between the masculine and feminine within, transcendence
and immanence. It symbolizes the work that goes on in the center,
the Self. The feminine chalice in the Mass constantly receives and
issues forth the incarnate God of life, death and resurrection. Sarah
began to experience the light of her earlier meditations as an energy
emanating from within her body, an interiorized spirituality.
The energy of the dream then moves into the realm of the
Crone who is supervising the work that lies ahead. The roof, the
84 sheltering feminine principle, on which is emblazoned the identity of
the dreamer-a large S--is being covered with grass. The grass roof A Heart
is reminiscent of the thatched roof in many cultures or the sod roof in the
of Irish cottages, familiar to the Irish friend who is helping in the
dream. In Ireland, the grass roof was often thought of as a putting Balance
on of the earth, of putting oneself under the protection of the God­
dess, as if in a cave.
This putting on of the goddess is still a work in progress for
Sarah. The S, her identity, must still become more fully incorporated
into her feminine consciousness. The work that began (eighteen
months earli.er) with the seaweed covering her hair is continuing con­
sciously with the grass on the roof. The value in studying Sarah's
dreams is the insight they give us into the Black Madonna, whose
love is bound to nature and to the earth. H er love becomes a cove­
nant with psyche. The consequences of this bonding lead to embodi­
ment of light and relationship to reality.
Sarah's dreams show the spiraling up and the spiraling down of
the energies within our psyche. Like Jacob's ladder, they reach be­
tween heaven and earth. Here the angels are ascending and descend­
ing; the divine energies are circulating along the spine and vibrating
in the body, conscious energies that can transform dense matter into
subtle body and disembodied light into subtle body. Ultimately, their
union is the divine marriage.
The twelve-petaled lotus of the heart contains the ascending
and descending triangle with the golden lingam-yoni. The integration
of masculine and feminine energies within symbolizes the divine em­
brace, which includes all creation. It is the source of our creative
response to life. Here is the heart of love.
Over a space of several years, with total commitment to her
process, Sarah transfonned her lust into a love that could embody lust,
refining the energy that becomes a deep commitment to other people.
No longer driven energy, it is now an energy that stands in a little
hallway every morning and takes time to surrender the day to Sophia.
The movement toward empowerment through love can be seen
in two subsequent images. In one dream, Sarah was seated on a chair,
and, as individuals came up to her, she draped each with a silk cloth
of an appropriate color. In the second dream, she was on the side of
a hill; hands were reaching out, and from a basket of flowers she gave
each hand a flower, which turned into a jewel that symbolized exactly
what that person needed. This is no longer a desire to love that can 85
A Heart be driven by willpower. Rather, it is a love that comes out of the
in the center, a love that can see others cleJrly and give whJt is necessJry to
each.
Balance Anyone who has gone into the flames and been touched by the
Goddess knows the many deaths the ego has to undergo in order to
experience the unicrueness in oneself Jnd in others. Learning to love
is a life-long task. Only in Jn eternal moment cJn we experience our
true identity. As we begin to understand who we are, we can begin
to see the essence of others, an essence thJt is uniquely lovable.
Sarah's dreams are guiding her toward leaving behind the nar­
row confines of conventionality and duality. Leaving duality means
living i n paradox. Paradox is the core of wisdom Jnd the core of
the Goddess. Wisdom holds the balance of life/death, mind/body,
masculine/ feminine. By holding the balance of both, she Jllows them
to transform into something new. Paradox, presence, and process are
words we associate with the Goddess, she who "renews everything
while herself perduring."
This is the judgment of MJat. She does not assign any judg­
ment or rewards for keeping rules or practices. She weighs the heart.
If the heart is in balance, the process is complete; if it is not in
balance, the process will continue. On whichever side of her scale we
are trapped, we must start agJin painfully from there. In the Old
Testament, she is Wisdom. She is the supreme treasure.

I have directed my soul toward her,

and in purity have found her;
Having my heart fixed on her from the outset,
I shall never be deserted.39

86
 TeLLing It Like It Ir1 3

P A S S IN G AN O R CH A R D B Y T R, A IN

Grass high under apple trees,

The bark of the trees rough and sexual,
the grass growing heavy and uneven.

We cannot bear disaster, like

the rocks-
swaying nakedly
in open fields.

One slight bruise and we die!

I know no one on this train.
A man comes walking down the aisle.
I want to tell h im
that I forgive him, that I want him
to forgive me.
-ROBERT BLY
Telling It
Like It Is

MEN H A V E N OT ESCAPED patriarchy's bludgeonings. While

women are presently more articulate in expressing their demands for

equal rights, increasing numbers of men are becoming conscious of
their wounding. They are recognizing how deep is the hole at the
center of their psyche because their father was not present to them.
He may have died; he may have disappeared; he may have worked
hard every night at the office or at his computer at home. Life may
have been too much for him and he drowned himself in alcohol. He
may have been a tyrannical father, who always knew what was best
for his son and, therefore, never saw or heard his child. He may have
been the perfectionist, for whom nothing but top grades, top scores,
top performance were worth bothering with. Or he may have "opted
out" and let " Mother" take over-Mother, who was also shaped by
patriarchy; Mother, whose judgment was more severe than Dad's, her
eyes soul-blind, her ears soul-deaf; or Mother, who in her essential
hatred for men, sucked her son's life out. These are patriarchal par­
ents, who may be doing their very best but who are totally unaware
of the unconscious devouring complexes that destroy life around
them.
Men are no less at risk than women. They, too, even as tiny
children, had to "measure up." As little boys, there is something in
them that wants to make Dad proud and Mom happy. As adults,
their bodies are often forsaken and their feelings buried. Loving
words may be on their lips, but they do not feel. If the floodgates
open, their hearts may break. In this chapter, we will look at the
dreams of some sons of patriarchy who have done their utmost to
understand their wounding.
Daniel was a successful, forty-year-old filmmaker when he first
came into analysis. Like many successful men, he was propped up
88 with addictions. All the unresolved issues of his life were begging for
attention, and he felt that life was slowly eroding from under him. Telling It
His unconscious resistance made him late for everything. The spaces Like It Is
that should have been vibrant with creativity were dulled by alternat­
ing indulgences of coffee, alcohol, cigarettes, and sexual fantasies.
Daniel's preanalysis dream was about the death and resurrection he
would go through in order to find his inner feminine.

I am the captain of a ship-a huge ocean liner, sitting in the harbor

of a large city like New York. I have been given an order that rhe
ship is to be sunk because it is contaminated in some way. I am very
sorry to have to do this. Then I am a worker on the ship. I am down
in one of the deepest cabins-my room I guess, and I have a lot of
things to do, but I am late and resisting the inevitable. I become
overwhelmed by a wild panic; my mind races in all directions at once
trying to figure out what to do. I don't know which way to go or
what to do first. Suddenly I am calm as I realize that the ship is going
to sink, and there is nothing I can do about it. I resign myself. But
when I start to see water seeping in under my door, I get a deep sick
feeling in my stomach, and then there is blackness.
Now I am the captain again, on the top of the ship, and it is
up out of the water again, all washed and sparkling clean and bright.
I am overjoyed because my ship had sunk, but now it is floating and
clean. I run from place to place, ecstatic. Then I remember that I had
been trapped in a lower cabin as a worker and had drowned, and I
start down towards that cabin feeling a horrible dread. I hesitate
outside the door, dreading the wreckage and destruction inside.
When I open the door and look in, everything is neat and cozy and
a young woman is sitting at a desk with a light on, her head lowered
on her arms. A voice says: "She's fine. She's just sleeping."

Daniel is the captain of an ocean liner: a large ship often sym­

bolizes a large mother complex. In life, his mother had been absent
since his infancy, and therefore, her absence became his dominant
fantasy. His ship (the container of his life) is contaminated and must
be sunk. Here is the archetypal theme of baptism: a symbolic sub­
mersion in water, a death and rebirth from the womb to a new life.
In the second phase of the dream, Daniel is a hired hand, running
around in confusion, accomplishing nothing. His split masculine in
his dreams was putting his life in jeopardy. In his waking life at the
time, Daniel was no longer in charge of his life: While this part of 89
Telli11g It the dream images his current condition, the final phase of the dream
Like It Is points to the future, unveiling a rechanneling of energies in a very
creative way, with his inner feminine firmly located at his center,
though still dormant. When he approaches the lower cabin, he finds,
not the wreckage of his inner masculine, but a young woman deep in
the hold of the ship with the light on. She is not dead, but sleeping.
When she awakens, "the light on" suggests that the process of inner
transformation will be further illuminated.
Daniel felt that he was trying to protect the young feminine
from the addicted captain with the polluted ship and the ineffectual
shiphand. A death and resurrection would be needed before he could
safely waken and relate to his own inner feminine, and, indeed, this
turned out to be Daniel's process over the coming months. Before
the inner feminine can safely emerge within the unconscious, she
needs a strong, discerning masculine partner, who can maintain the
boundaries, create the sacred space where feelings can emerge and be
listened to. The intuitive wisdom that arises from the body, the cre­
ative matrix, needs a focused masculine that can release the creativity
of the soul. The danger in waking up the sleeping feminine whose
lamp is lit is that the masculine as captain will be flooded by her
presence so that the ship may sink again. What is constellated in the
dream is masculinity standing as captain before a feminine figure who
has not yet awakened. Archetypally, the scene constellates the sleep­
ing princess of the fairy tale, about to be awakened by the prince's
kiss. H ere is the young feminine who needs to be free of the mother
complex.
Conscientious as Daniel was about his dream work, the follow­
ing dream shows how easily the neglected feminine can be aban­
doned. The dream takes place in a day-care center, where all the
adults are either eating or watching television-two common addic­
tions in our culture.

A little girl, sort of gray-looking, wanders over from a large table to

where I am doing something. She puts herself head first into a garbage
can. Like a suicidal person, she proclaims herself to be garbage and
throws herself out. I take hold of her feet and lift her out of the
garbage can and carry her upside down to someone else. He takes
hold of her hands and lifts them up so I can put her on the ground
90 right side up. I lead her over to her friend, who is in the adult room
 and is supposed to be looking after her, but is actually watching some Telling It
show on TV and ignoring her. I tell him that she needs a medical
Like It Is
check-up (as though he is a doctor) but he says she's fine. I point out
that she's so feverish that there are beads of sweat all over her fore­
head. He agrees to give her a check-up. He stands up and I lead her
over to him and although she is gray and sweating she does a little
skip of excitement at the fact that she's going to be looked after.
When I see the joy she feels from such a small display of caring, I
put my head in my hands and cry.

Sick though she may be, the child brings joy without any de­
mand to Daniel. She proclaims herself to be garbage. For the
dreamer, this is a wake-up call to do something about the obsessive
drivenness of his life. Coffee, cigarettes, and sex had kept him from
feeling anything beyond an artificial high interspersed with bouts of
depression. Like so many men and women at midlife, he had run
headlong into the aching emptiness he had tried so desperately to
avoid. This dream was his soul's plea to be heard and cared for.
In the following dream, the archetypal depth of the split in the
masculine energy is evident at an individual and collective level:

I am making my way down a deep, mazelike cave. It is quite dark and

I am very apprehensive. I am urged on, however, by a medieval-like
sorceress, who is behind me, pushing me forward. I am drawn toward
a light in the distance and find my way down to a large opening in
the middle of the maze, where two huge figures are seated at a table.
One seems bathed in light; the other was equally dark. I become very
frightened that I will be seen. The sorceress turns me into a cat so
that I can creep forward to the table at which they are seated without
being noticed. I look first at the face of the light figure and then at
the face of the dark figure, and realize that they are the same. Then I
realize with shock that it is my face. I want to get out of there because
I am afraid that I will turn back into my usual form and be caught.

Daniel woke up from this dream with an enom1ous pain in the

area of his heart, the center of the cave in terms of his body. It was
in the heart that this stand-off of energies was taking place. He could
hardly breathe, and was sure he was having a heart attack.
The dark feminine, whom he didn't know yet, made Daniel
face what was for him the core issue: his potentially creative mascu- 91
Telling It line and his repressed dark shadow. The task was to hold the tension
Like It Is between these two enormous energies until a third could emerge. The
temporary bridge was in the power of the sorceress to change him
into a cat (feminine instinct), which could face both parts of himself
and allow his ego to remain invisible and, therefore, safe.
The feminine instinct (in the form of a cat) had often appeared
in his dreams. It was a part that he had saved from the devouring
mother and patriarchal father that gave him his interest in art and
kept him from carrying out the death wish that was very real for
him. In his dreams this cat began to take the form of the homosexual
shadow that would bridge the gap between the negative parental
complexes.

A young girl and I were prisoners with a group of people. We were

waiting in an upper room to be taken somewhere. We were waiting
for the guard, a big, fat, slobby, disgusting, animal-like man. When
he arrived, he picked a young boy from the group and made him
come into the next room to have sex with him. There wasn't really a
door on the room, so we all knew what was happening, but nobody
did anything. We were all afraid. I was horrified and terrified that he
would spot the young girl with me and want her roo, so I tried to get
her to kneel down next to me so she would look smaller than she
was, or not be noticed. When the pig had finished, he and the child
came out. J was amazed that the boy appeared to be flirting with him.
Then we were given the order to start out. He went first, down the
stairs, and we all followed in a line. I spotted a pair of scissors on a
table by the stairs, and I was determined to grab them secretly as I
passed by, so that if the slob tried to take the young girl, I'd kill him
with them. As I passed by the table, I tried to reach for the scissors
without looking back, so no one would notice-bur I missed them.
Then somebody tapped me on the back, and I was terrified that I
was going to be told on. I turned around and X (a gay guy who
works as a shipper at the studio) handed me the scissors.

This dream is certainly about Daniel's trying to protect his

young feminine from the brutish, Nazi-like part of himself But it is
also about the betrayal of his young masculine. The young boy is
raped, and in being raped he identifies with the power figure in the
dream. Many child psychology studies show that children often iden­
92 tify with the perceived parental power figure in the family whether it
is mother or father. Children are essentially helpless, and they natu­ Telling It
rally compensate for this by identifying with power. This was part Like It Is
of the constellation of Daniel's shadow side that blocked the devel­
opment of his creative masculine.
The final image is that of the homosexual shadow, who gives
Daniel the scissors to protect the young feminine. Scissors may also
enable Daniel to cut his way out of the web, the collusion with
negative energies. The homosexual shadow often appears in dreams
in this bridging role. It seems to carry a natural sympathy toward the
feminine, while at the same time, being very effective against the
tyrannical male and female figures locked in either matriarchy or
patriarchy. The brutish Nazi is the power that constellates fear.
Buried deep in the unconscious, it would rape both the little boy and
the little girl. This is evil, the shadow side of God that the Crone
showed Daniel deep in the core of his unconscious. Why is such
demonic energy, masquerading as the "super man," so prevalent in
our culture?
While violence against women and children has become symp­
tomatic of the present state of our culture, and has recently received
much attention, the real problem often goes unrecognized. At the
root of this social malady is a pervasive feeling of male impotence, a
psychic impotence that most men are loath to confront, let alone
confess. Such feelings of inadequacy or impotence a.re either buried
or acted out as aggression or rage.
In another dream, Daniel is twelve or thirteen years old and has
a pet snake with which he plays games. This snake is a secret pet. If
anyone approaches, the snake immediately turns i tself into a rigid
square frame, like a picture frame. One day an old priest knocks on
the door and walks into the room. Immediately, the snake assume�.
the guise of a picture frame, and young Daniel throws a newspaper
over it. The priest quite heedlessly knocks the frame (snake) to the
floor and steps on it. After he has left, Daniel picks up the snake,
which is near death, and takes it to a swamp in Florida in hopes that
it can be revived.
At twelve, Daniel was coming into his own phallic power. He
did not have a strong enough ego, nor strong enough inner support
to transform this emerging power, now relegated to the Florida
swamp. He was born into a working-class f.<mily of six children.
Shortly after his birth, his mother was admitted to a sanitarium and, 93
Telling It except for infi·equent visits, he did not see her until he was ten. His
Like It Is siblings were older. Daniel was raised by his father, an Irish Catholic,
a hard-working man who did the best he could. Daniel's father was
unable to recognize his young son's imagination and creativity.
D aniel's snake dream takes him back to puberty. This is a time
of burgeoning manhood; it must be nurtured in secret and integrated
into the personality gradually. The snake carries the potential for
wholeness, but this potential is hidden behind the rigid square frame
of tradition. In ancient cultures, puberty was recognized as a transi­
tion time, when the men of the tribe introduced the young boys into
manhood through initiation rites. In this dream, however, the old
priest (symbolic of the old patriarchal system) offers no such recog­
niti on of the boy's phallic power, but heedlessly steps on it. The
emerging phallic power is crushed-in this case not cruelly or delib­
erately but unconsciously. There is no masculine consciousness that
can initiate the young boy into manhood, nor is there a feminine
container within or without that is strong enough to withstand the
onslaught of patriarchal power.
In the face of this assault, the only thing Daniel can do is take
the injured snake to the swamp. This is an ambivalent image; the
swamp suggests a place of stale water, where one could become
bogged down, inert, passive-a place of the devouring mother, the
crocodile. At the same time, it is a place of chaos, teeming with life.
It is a dangerous place. In taking his snake to the Florida swamp to
resuscitate it after the priest's near-fatal assault, Daniel is attempting
to nurture his young masculine, now entering manhood. At this cru­
cial juncture in his psychic life, he has no masculine guide, no posi­
tive father figure to show him the way. He consequently finds himself
among the dangers of the swamps, where, as Blake points out in his
Proverbs rf Hell, we should " Expect poison from the standing water."1
Temporarily, the phallic energy is driven into the unconscious,
where its strength manifests itself negatively as rage. The real source
of this rage cannot be acknowledged, because it would open the
pubescent male to a further threat of annihilation by, for example,
the patriarchal priest of the dream, who would inadvertently kill the
snake. Often, this rage is directed at the feminine, which confronts
the masculine with its woundedness. In chis century, the impotence
of patriarchy, disguised as power, expresses itself in genocidal be­
94 havior.
 The packs of young boys stalking our city streets today display Telling It
untransformed, raw instinct being acted out (phallic power being Like It Is
relegated to the swamp). They are stuck at an infantile level of raw
reactions being projected onto other people and "the system." H ad
they had fathers to attend them in male situations (as the elders of
the ancient cultures had done), they would have heard stories of their
own forefathers and realized that their fears and dreams were part of
an ongoing heritage; they would have been put through challenges
with nature that would have demanded their all for survival; they
would have sung and danced until their raw instincts were trans-
formed into music that could contain them. In other words, they
would have experienced profound respect for nature and the equally
profound process of transforming raw instinct into culture. In our
society, the decisive transformation rarely happens and the resul� is
an alanning growth of anarchy in the streets, with no respect for
nature, law, or culture.
What is evident archetypally in this brutal, regressive behavior
of street gangs (though in a very different way and coming from a
very different place), is Antony's descent, in Shakespeare's Antony and
Cleopatra, into the Alexandrine swamp of Cleopatra, where the mud
of the Nile, though potentially fertile, buries Antony. If the man fails
in the initiation that would take him out of the incest, he falls into
negative aggression toward the Mother. He fai ls to step into his own
manhood. Then it is difficult for him to harness his masculine energy
to the energy of the matrix that would move him ahead into new
creative energy.
As a young man, Daniel married a very beautiful woman-the
idealized feminine that he carried within him. This unconscious liai­
son soon became a collusion of negative projections that served only
to further his own feelings of impotence. He gave up his art career
and found himself holding down two jobs in order to supply the
material possessions he felt his wife was demanding. She looked for
the Dionysian in other men, and left him feeling that she would leave
him if he did not meet certain standards. He finally freed himself
from her. In subsequent relationships, he felt some degree of potency
only when he had sex without any feeling for his partner. While this
freed him from his sense of inadequacy, it did not connect him to
his own Dionysian side; it drove him further into his addiction to
work, cigarettes, and alcohol. 95
Telling It At the same time he began to have homosexual fantasies in
Like It Is which he would attract or dominate other men, or sometimes turn
the relationship around and become completely dominated by them.
Had Daniel had access to some kind of male initiation, he might
have had some way of breaking free of his early emotional bonding
to his father and been put on a path toward his own creative mascu­
linity (the powerful positive energy he saw sitting at the table in the
dream of the cave).
Daniel's emotional impotence is the subject of a dream in
which he was to be married.

I am to be married. Before the wedding, I am having sex with some­

one. I am not able to penetrate, and I can't tell why. I notice a sore
on someone's penis. The wedding is also a shooting of X [a film that
Daniel was working on at rhe time]. I am to sing a solo part, but
there is no time to go over it before the performance. I am extremely
nervous about the wedding and the solo. Then everyone arrives. The
whole crowd is watching me. I notice a sore on my own penis. I am
worried that I won't be able to meet anyone's expectations. I'm afraid
I will fail.

Daniel's phallic power was wounded, and his anxiety about his
inability to penetrate governed his life at this time, not only in his
relationships, but also in his work. The film he was working on,
which was the cause of a great deal of his anxiety, was his first at­
tempt at going "solo." He could not get away from the expectations
of others because he had no firm grounding in his own reality. He
did not have confidence in his own ability to stand alone and direct
his own life from within his own center.
In patriarchal culture, men are burdened, perhaps even more so
than women, by the expectations placed on them to be active and
successful in the outside world. Competition is the operative word
from the schoolyard on. A man has to find a channel for his own
sense of potency, or mastery. If he is not an athlete or a scholar,
and does not have the support to develop his own potential, his
woundedness can easily translate into some kind of covert or overt
violence, a usurpation of power through manipulation, or at the
point of a gun.
A gradual shift in Daniel's energy is seen in a dream he had one
96 year later to the day.
 I am some sort of god-king, yet confined within a long narrow pen Telling It
with rounded ends. (It resembled a large penis.) A youth passes by,
Like It Is
and I desire him sexually; but I am disappointed when he finishes his
business and returns to where he came from. Later, he returns to pass
by the pen again, and this time I command his attention. He is nude,
and I secretly blow icy blasts of breath onto his nipples and onto his
genitals in order to arouse him. I am able to get him close enough to
my pen so that I can kiss him on the mouth, and I began fingering
his asshole. I tell him that I want to fuck him. He says, "But I
shouldn't go back to my wife with an asshole all red and raw." I reply
seductively, "Will she really notice?" Then I stopped kissing him,
realizing that. there is no passion in it for either of us.

Here we have the identification with the old god-king, the sym­
bol of the whole patriarchal system. This is the distillation of inter­
nalized patriarchal energies in Daniel, who wants to have intercourse
with the new young masculine energy. Interestingly, the breath that
comes from his body is not warm. Its icy blasts do nothing to arouse
the youth. For the time being, he is still imprisoned in the patriarchal
pen. Patriarchy has tried-and continues to try-to seduce the new
masculine, to lure it into a sphere that promises power and all its
illusory trappings. But, as the dream suggests, this sphere is really a
pnson.
This juxtaposition of power and imprisonment can be interpre­
ted on the cultural level as well. The prison is not just a prison-it
is a phallic prison. The king-god (the Sun God) is a symbol of ratio­
nality, logic, reason, by which the world is to be governed. What
then is the meaning of the phallic prison?
The answer to this question may lie in a study done by Carol
Cohn, a Senior Research Fellow of the Center for Psychological
Studies in the Nuclear Age, affiliated with the Harvard Medical
School. She studied the language of defense intellectuals, "the cre­
ators of strategic doctrine [who J actually refer to members of their
community as 'the nuclear priesthood.' "2 They have, after all, the
esoteric knowledge, a grasp on power and reality from an objective,
empirically-minded, scientific point of view. This technostrategic
language is very compelling in its logic, and Cohn admits to becom­
ing seduced by it. However, even false systems can appear compel­
lingly l ogi ca l , given their starting point, their underlying premises. 97
Telling It Technostrategic language is based on a logic devoid of values,
Like It Is feelings, and humanity. It makes it possible to think the unthinkable,
to speak the unspeakable. The horror of a possible one hundred
thousand charred bodies is reduced to sustainable "collateral dam­
age"; the incineration of cities is sanitized to "countervalue attacks."
Even something as innocuous as peace does not escape the euphemiz­
ing influence of technobabble: peace is now spoken of as "strategic
stability."
Whence comes the power of this mighty priesthood? According
to Cohn, "[M]uch of their claim to legitimacy . . . is a claim to
objectivity born of technical expertise and to the disciplined purging
of the emotional valences that might threaten their objectivity. But
if the smooth, shiny surface of their discourse-its abstraction and
technical jargon-appears at first to support these claims, a look just
below the surface does not. There we find the strong currents of
homoerotic excitement, heterosexual domination, the drive towards
competency and mastery, the pleasure of membership in an elite and
privileged group, of the ultimate importance and meaning of mem­
bership in the priesthood, and the thrilling power of becoming
Death, the shatterer of worlds."3
The phallic-shaped missile is, perhaps, the ultimate symbol of
patriarchy. Cohn recorded conversations in which the unconscious
imagery involved "penetration aids," or "more bang for the buck."
In talking about the placement of the new missile, one professor said,
"Because they're in the nicest hole-you're not going to take the
nicest missile you have and put it in a crummy hole." She attended
lectures that "were filled with discussions of vertical erector launch­
ers, thrust-to-weight ratios, soft lay downs, deep penetration, and the
comparative advantages of protracted versus spasm attacks-or what
one military advisor to the National Security Council has called 're­
leasing 70 to 80 percent of our megatonnage in one orgasmic
whump.' There was serious concern about the need to harden our
missiles, and the need to 'face it, the Russians are a little harder than
we are.' "4 While she sat in disbelief at the transparency of the im­
ages, no one else (with the exception of another woman) seemed to
nottce.
Cohn also noticed among the "priesthood" an obsession wi.th
what she calls "patting the missile." Their inordinate delight in this
98 activity was so obvious that she had to ask herself: "What is all
this 'patting'? What are men doing when they 'pat' these high-tech Telling It
phalluses? Think about what else men pat. Patting is an assertion of Like It Is
intimacy, sexual possession, affectionate domination. The thrill and
pleasure of 'patting the missile' is the proximity of all that phallic
power, the possibility of vicariously appropriating it as one's own."5
What Cohn unearthed in her research was the unconscious split
in patriarchy between the head and the phallus, in other words, the
tension between power and imprisonment. Here, then, is the meaning
of the "phallic prison" in Daniel's dream. While the head goes about
constructing its stratagems of power, assured of its own logic, the
repressed phallus (the missile) carries out its destructive activities,
driven by its own instinctual needs, which have nothing to do with
logic and objectivity. Neither the head nor the phallus is, of its own
accord, able to break out of this disjointed relationship. They are
both held, as it were, in a prison.
The concern over phallic power is carried in the unconscious
of many men. Recall Daniel's dream of a year earlier. Daniel was
extremely nervous about the wedding and the performance (his
work). He then noticed a sore on his own penis, and was worried
that he wouldn't be able to meet anyone's expectations, that he would
fail. There is a homoerotic element associated with this concern
about phallic power. Recall Daniel's sexual fantasies of wanting to
dominate other males as a way of experiencing his own masculinity,
or sometimes of submi tting to another "powerful" male, that is, par­
ticipating in the other's phallic power.
Men today are no less seduced by power or imprisoned by fears
of impotence than they were in the witch hunts of the fourteenth
century. At that time, many husbands denounced their wives to the
Inquisition, accusing them of having secret liaisons with the demon
lover, who could satisfy them better than they themselves could.
Today, as then, underneath the paranoia and propaganda that drive
the patriarchal power system is the fear that someone else will have
a bigger, more effective penis than one's own. This is the tyranny to
which men have become conditioned: they have to compete with
each other in a tournament that has only one measure of success.
Another notion pertinent to this discussion is that of "nuclear
virginity." The initiation of a country into the "nuclear club" is
looked upon as a deflowering, a loss of virginity. If a country, such
as New Zealand, rejects the invitation to initiation, the response (as 99
Telling It it was in the case of one Air Force General) is that of "a man whose
Like It Is advances have been spurned. He is contemptuous of the woman's
protestations that she wants to remain pure, innocent of nuclear
weapons; her moral reluctance is a quaint and ridiculous throwback.
But beyond contempt, he also feels outraged-after all, this is a
woman we've paid for, who still won't come across. He suggests that
we withdraw our goods and services-and then we'll see just how
long she tries to hold onto her virtue."6
This is the language of the virgin/whore split that has existed
for centuries. To lose one's virginity, as India did in testing a nuclear
device, is to be looked upon with scorn and alann. If, on the other
hand, a country chooses to remain a virgin when the "protector"
wants to make a whore out of her for his own purposes, her refusal
is met with anger.
Defense strategy is not fonnulated on the basis of objective,
logical, rational premises, even though this may appear to be the case.
Rather, the language it uses suggests that i t is shaped by an uncon­
scious desire for sexual domination-a situation that is even more
dangerous, since what is actually going on is unacknowledged. All
the technology that we are developing will bring no real change to
the human condition so long as we act out of a mind/body split that
leaves both attempting to function outside their natural totality.
Discussing the mind/body split at the level of language is not
a digression. Language mirrors our metaphors and those metaphors
are our spontaneous revelations of ourselves. The dichotomy between
mind and body in military strategists is no different from the dichot­
omy in most contemporary men and women, including the individu­
als whose dreams are related in this book. Daily exercise may produce
excellent bodies, but those bodies may live quite cut off from feeling
and thought. Most of us know very little about our vital organs and
are quite unable to p ick up their important messages. In working
with dreams, the body's organs and symptoms are essential to a full
understanding.
Daniel discovered that the god-king imprisoned in his penis­
shaped pen no longer held any attraction for him. His energy was
moving toward his own seeds of creation. Two months after the
god-king dream, Daniel had another dream, in which he was in a
"wonderful, home place," preparing to frame some Book of Kells
1 00 pages. In the background was some exquisitely beautiful Irish music
played by two instruments, and Daniel was intrigued by the way the Telling It
two instruments interacted to produce the music. Daniel's male Like It Is
friend T. had brought over a book that revealed the secrets of waxing
the pages he wanted to frame. Here, in Daniel's own words, is the
end of the dream:

I am looking through the book, and it has wonderfully beautiful

designs with exactly the colors I want to work with--dark turquoise
and bright rust, gold ochre and kelly green. As with the music, look­
ing at the book is like looking at my art, which has never gotten
done-I am impressed. T. tells me that the first step in the process
is to have a tiny piece of skin snipped off each of my balls! I am quite
uncertain of this, but he goes ahead and does it. I examine the little
pieces of skin, puzzled.

The energy in this dream is moving toward a wonderful home

place, home as the symbol of belonging to oneself, the place within
us that each of us is journeying to. There is the realization of two
energies playing together to make beautiful harmony-a foreshadow­
ing of the integration of masculine and feminine. He wants to restore
the Book of Kells, a spiritual document linked to his heritage. He is
given the exact colors he needs to work with in order to restore this
spiritual heritage. There is also the allusion to his work as an artist,
which he gave up in his first marriage. The first step in the restoration
process is a symbolic sacrifice of two tiny bits of skin from his scro­
tum (which contains his testicles). That is, he must contribute his
own creative power to the process of spiritual restoration. No one
else can do it for him.
Nowhere has the woundedness of the creative masculine been
symbolized more powerfully than in the legend of the Holy Grail.
The legend tells of a whole land laid desolate because the Fisher­
King has been wounded in his generative capacity. One version tells
us that he was wounded in the thigh, another that he was wounded
by an arrow that pierced both his testicles. The arrow through his
testicles is not a phallic wound. Rather, it is a wound that precludes
the giving of life-producing seed. The phallus is a means of penetra­
tion, a vehicle readily linked with performance. If it is cut off from
the feminine within a man, from his feelings and values, the loss is
destructive. True potency, however, lies in the testes. 10l
Telling It The identification of new life with the sacredness of the testi­
Like It Is
cles goes back at least as far as Abraham, the father of many nations.
When men were about to swear an important oath or enter into a
covenant, they placed their hands on each other's testicles. Thence
came the custom of swearing on the father's testicles. (The words
testicle and testament are derived from the same root.) Not surprisingly,
the testicles often feature in the dreams of men who are beginning to
reconnect to their potency, to the possibili ty of being creative, of
delivering the seed of life.
Early in his analysis, Daniel's dreams often centered on two
themes. The first had to do with the link between his ego and his
shadow: in his dream, he was both criminal and detective, both mur­
derer and hero. The second involved the feminine in some precarious
position that the dream ego was unable to do anything about.
Following the dream of reconnecting his potency to the cre­
ative, spiritual realm, Daniel made changes in his outer life. He quit
his job and genuinely began to honor his own creativity. Naturally,
his dreams also changed. Instead of passively allowing things to hap­
pen to him, he began to shoulder his responsibilities. He became
more patient and, with his growing confidence, more assertive. He
was able to stand up for himself without hurting anyone else. He
began to state both his masculine and feminine needs clearly, without
manipulation.
The real healing of the split in Daniel's masculinity came
around the time of his father's illness and death. He had gone to be
with his father during the time of his illness. One evening, as he was
massaging his father's back, he was able to tell him that he thought
of him as "a good guy." "Thank you," his father replied. "That's all
I have ever tried to be." By now, Daniel had sorted out his personal
father from his own interiorized father and the Great Father. He was
thus able to see his father for the human being he was, a straightfor­
ward man struggling with his own circumstances. That night, follow­
ing this simple exchange, Daniel had a dream.

I am sitting on my father's front porch. There are people coming and

going in and out of the house. The party seems to spill out into the
street. Across from the house, there seems to be a carnival going on,
with games, and rides, and booths. The people on the porch with me
start out to the carnival, and want me to come too, but I realize that
1 02 I prefer to sit quietly on the porch.
 After they leave, I am sitting, looking at a large picture of Telling It
myself as a baby. The longer I look at the picture, the more I see
Like It Is
what a beautiful baby I was. I seem to fall in love with the baby.
Suddenly I become ecstatic as I perceive that this baby is more than
beautiful, more than wonderful-this baby is e�quisitely perfect! The
love I feel is so great that I reach right into the photograph and lift
the baby up out of it and hold it to my chest. I feel a beautiful bond
of love between us. He lies against me completely contented, and I
sit quietly, feeling overjoyed. Eventually, I decide to take him for a
walk and look around the carnival.
As we are walking, a man running some kind of thrill ride
pressures me to take a ride on his machine. He is quite negative, and
reminds me of my uncle, with whom I had a fair amount of tension
and conflict when I spent my summers working on the family farm.
I maintain a careful calm so as not to disturb the baby resting peace­
fully on my chest. I avoid confrontation with the man, and get on
the ride, even though I don't particularly want to. When he gets it
going, he seems to make it go faster than it is supposed to. I think
he is deliberately trying to make me lose my balance; nevertheless, I
maintain it perfectly. When the ride is finished, I simply get off and
walk away, still feeling calm and happy with my baby. I decide the
carnival isn't very interesting and start to walk back to the house.

In this dream, Daniel is no longer in his father's house. H is

presence on the front porch suggests some separation from the old
bonding. Other people (the less differentiated energies in Daniel's
psyche) are going in and out, and finally decide to go to the carni­
val-a place of play, but also of shadows and distractions. In saying
"no" to the distracting energy, he is able to contemplate his own
newly-born masculine, reconnecting not only with his past innocence
but also with the new possibilities in his future. His early innocence
and potential had been frozen in time, as symbolized by the photo­
graph. The beauty that was once his-and every child's-had been
lost, obscured, besmirched by life's experience. Now, this innocence
is reclaimed-not by a regression into the past, but rather, by a
movement forward into the world, the carnival.
The ride keeper is Daniel's patriarchal shadow, associated to an
uncle &om his childhood. In contrast to the stormy relationship with
the uncle, this time Daniel does not lose his balance. His responsibil­
ity to his own innocence and potential is strengthened by his genuine
love of self. l 03
Telling It To become innocent is not to be naive. The child holds a naive
Like It Is
innocence, which is lost through family relationships, through the
school system, through · the competitiveness of work, through any of
our experiences that demand conformity at the expense of the soul.
From within, our own fears of failure, rejection, or loneliness cause
us to give away so much of our self that we eventually can no longer
recognize our own uniqueness, our own beauty. As we gradually re­
claim the "I am," we begin to move toward a conscious innocence.
Our opaqueness dissolves into a transparency that allows us to com­
municate honestly and directly with others. We recover the spontane­
ity of the child. We have burned our way through the debris of life
to simplicity.
Twenty-three days later, Daniel had a dream in which he was
wandering through hallways in a maze-like structure with a homosex­
ual friend. The friend says he is leaving for good. Daniel is shocked,
but realizes there is nothing more to say. H e goes on by himself.
Then the dream changes.

I am a religious novice in some kind of "celestial" novitiate, with a

group of novices, being put through vigorous gymnastic exercises on
free-floating scaffolding way up in the sky. We are quite giddy from
the height. Our teacher is an extremely stern and sober master, who
gravely stresses the precise importance of every exercise we go
through. At that height, his instructions are literally a matter of life
and death. We pause briefly, and I am not paying very close attention.
Suddenly the Master heaves the swinging ladder at me and shouts,
"Now!" I freeze, terrified, as I watch the ladder swing toward me,
because I've never done this exercise by myself and I am not prepared
for it. However, I leap into the air at exactly the right moment, grab
the correct rung in exactly the right way, and swing through the entire
maneuver perfectly, flipping over and landing beside the Master.
Since I pass the "test," the practice concludes for the day and we all
go inside.
Then I am in a living room, and a group of people is buzzing
with excitement at some news. "Have you heard?" they ask me, "The
Master is leaving!" I am stunned. I walk away by myself, full of grief
" How could he do this to me?" I think. "How could he decide to
leave, and not even tell me?" I go outside his office and sit down,
waiting to talk to him. Many people come and go, all setding their
1 04 affairs with him, and getting instructions. Because I am a novice, I
 have to wait until they are all done before I can see him. At last he Telling It
comes to the door and looks out and sees me. He says, "Oh, yes, I
Like It Is
suppose I should talk to you before I go." I go into his office, very
sad and hurt. He knows I am upset. In the privacy of his office, he
turns into my father, but he looks quite different. He is calm and
wise, and has a certain radiance and power. He tells me his decision
to leave is not due to a loss of faith. It is not a bad thing, but a good
thing-a decision he had made with God. He tells me that now it is
up to me to carry on without him, on my own.

This dream is primarily about assuming responsibility for one­

self. In the first part of the dream, the homosexual shadow leaves,
and Daniel journeys on alone. The second part of the dream is about
saying good-bye to the father. The evening Daniel had this dream,
his father died. What is extraordinary about the dream is that the
unconscious put forth the positive things that Daniel had learned
from the "stern master." He had been taught to grab hold and to let
his spirit soar high above the Earth. He had learned self-discipline
and industriousness. Daniel had yet to accept that there are no per­
fect parents and no perfect children. He still had pain to acknowl­
edge and pain to let go before he could completely forgive his father
and fully integrate the message of the dream.
In this dream, there is no judgment or praise on the part of the
master. He allows his student to trust his own insights and intuitions
without being dependent on others for validation. The transformed
father, who has made his own decision to die, leaves Daniel to carry
on without him. The son must become his own man, the father of
his own inner child. Understandably, this dream was a very special
gift for Daniel on the morning of his father's death.
In sorting out his life within and without, Daniel might have
thought that he could breathe a little more easily. With the uncon­
scious, however, the more we move toward the light, the more the
darkness attempts to constellate against us. It is as if the negative
energy is saying, "No, no! Not that easy!" One day, Daniel arrived
for his session with a nightmare. In this terrifying dream, he is in the
living room, when he feels a cold, icy blast blow through the house.
Everything becomes menacing, and a horrific figure appears, dressed
in black. The figure comes after him, and Daniel trtes to shake him
off. Finally, in th e hallway, the figure pins Daniel to the wall, choking l 05
Telling It him. In the end, Daniel is able to muster the spiritual strength neces­
Like It Is sary to defeat this demonic figure, who then loosens his grip on
Daniel's throat and flees.
In the dream, a death wish is constellated. The demon personi­
fies highly charged energy emitted, as it were, from the clash between
the tyrannical father and the helpless anarchist son-a negative trin­
ity. The demon is a negative spirit that must be confronted if the
killer energy is to be transformed into something more creative.
We can never bring the unconscious shadow energy into full
consciousness. Rather, in holding the tension between the positive
and negative energies, we make room for a new, "third" entity to
arise. Early in his analysis, in what he called "the crone dream"
(p. 9 I ), Daniel saw the two huge figures at the table-Christ and
Satan-and recognized his face in both.
An apparent resolution of these opposing energies took place
in Daniel in a dream he had close to the end of his analysis.

I am in a medieval-looking town with old cobblestone streets that

lead to a large public well in the middle of the main square. There
are people down the well, and I am lowering a rope and pulling them
up one by one. Finally, at the very bottom of the well, there is only
one person left. I pull and pull on the rope, and finally he comes
bursting out with great energy, shouting, "I want a good fuck!" I am
appalled. He goes right over to a young woman and begins dancing
with her. I tell him to stop, but neither of them pays any attention
to me. They just keep dancing with abandon all around the square,
laughing. N. (his new wife) is there, and I say I don't trust this man,
but she thinks he is wonderful. I want to get on my bicycle and ride
off.

At the very bottom of the well, in the unconscious depths,

underlying the other archetypal energies that Daniel had to pull up,
is the " Lord of the Dance," often referred to as the Horned God.
Daniel had difficulty accepting him in his dream. He wanted to put
distance between himself and this dancing, singing, ecstatic image of
unself-conscious sexuality.
This is Cernunnos, Lord of the Animals. It is Shiva, or Diony­
sus-archetypal energies long repressed by Christianity. Repression
I 06 turned the Horned God into the Horned Devil, the root of all evil.
 For Daniel, however, this dream Telling It
signified transformation m the Like It Is
split-off part of himself and the
possibility of unity within.
The Horned Devil is energy
so repressed and cut off from the
earth that it is best symbolized by
Mephistopheles, that light and airy
creature that floats above the earth.
The Horned Devil is the disembod-
ied spirit that manipulates, usurping
situations for the gratification of its
instinctual desires for domina-
The Devil. The horned god was
tion-sexual or otherwise. The
associated with nature and the
Horned God, as Gary Lingen l:eminine. Since being banished tn
points out " . . . is a positive model the unconscious, he has become
for male power-free from the pa­ the disembodied horned deviL
triarchy and all other authoritative
models-as he grows and passes through his changes during the
wheel of the year, he remains in relationship to and not separate from
the prime life and nurturing force-the Goddess."7
The Horned God, moreover,
is an archetypal figure qui te unlike
most masculine images as they ap­
pear in our culture. He is difficult
to understand because he does not
fit into any of the expected stereo­
types, neither those of the "macho"
male nor the reverse-images of
those who deliberately seek effemi­
nacy. He is gentle, tender and com­
forting, but he is also the Hunter.
He is the Dying God-but his
death is always in the service of the
life force. He is untamed sexual- Cermmos. Lord of the Animals
ity-but sexuality as a deep, holy,
connecting power. He is the power of feeling, and the image of what
men could be if they were liberated from the constraints of patriar-
chal culture.� 1 07
Telling It The Horned God, the wild man, symbolizes everything that the
Like It Is patriarchal persona disdains, because he plunges people into change,
uncertainty, freedom from conformity. He is spontaneous, not ratio­
nal and controlled; he is honest and straightforward, not devious and
manipulative; he is in service to life, not in domination over it. He is
confident of his own potency and does not need to compensate with
phallic missiles. He is creative, not destructive of the earth or of
relationships. Whereas Apollo, the Sun God, turned women into
trees, or stones, or made them lose their voice, Dionysus, the god of
ecstasy and dance, was, perhaps, the only god on Olympus that re­
mained faithful to one woman, Ariadne.
The real reason Dionysus has been banished from our culture
is that he is the God of death and resurrection. Patriarchy, with its
unrealistic faith in the goals of this life, is built upon the denial of
transformation and death. It cannot tolerate a god who dies-an
Osiris, a Dionysus, or a Christ. For men and women, allowing the
Horned God to live within us means accepting death as transforma­
tion. It means living an incarnated life-a life in which spontaneous
spirit is allowed to transform matter. It means allowing spontaneity
to burst through outworn patterns of thought and behavior, recog­
nizing that these patterns are dead, and allowing them to die to make
room for the new. Daniel was appalled by this energy in his dream,
although the women were not. In reality, however, his whole journey
deep into the realms of the unconscious demanded many deaths.
Stark honesty, however painful, is needed on this journey
toward the Self; the unconscious will not tolerate anything less. One
must be willing to face many cruel truths, those we keep hidden from
the light of day, and those we keep hidden from ourselves. Not only
do we have to die to a false image of ourselves, but we have to change
our outer life accordingly. Change means change. We may have all the
i nsights, but if we do not incarnate them, they are all in vain. We
may have to die to our job, to a particular relationship, to our faith.
Death is agonizing, lonely, risky. We have to be willing to suffer the
loss of those things that stand in our way to freedom. It is the
Horned Devil who says, "No, there is an easier way, a pain-free way.
Come fly with me." For the pain of an actual transformation, the
Horned Devil would substitute the delusion of an addiction. Instead
of flying, one has first to crawl.
1 08 Once Daniel began to integrate this energy into his own experi-
ence of self, his own sense of potency, he could turn his energy to Telling It
embrace the feminine both within and without. During, and after this Like It Is
time, he made many changes. Through swimming and body work, he
could feel the energy rising from his root chakra. He began to walk
differently. Outwardly, he established a new career, and though he
was not driven to win awards, his creativity was honored by those
around him. He married and eventually had a son. One day he was
holding his infant son in his arms, when suddenly he remembered
the dream he had of lifting his own infant child out of the photo-
graph. Tears of joy fell down his cheeks at the thought that now he
would be given a chance to more consciously father the young mas-
culine. This experience gave new meaning to th e phrase "a dream
come true."
The Horned God can come back into the culture only in rela­
tionship to the Goddess. He is the embodied, incarnate masculine,
the rightful consort of the Goddess who is also incarnate, the Divine
Immanence. Shiva was the consort of Shakti, as Osiris was the con­
sort of Isis. Christ gave voice to Sophia's wisdom. Incarnate life is
the coming together of masculine and feminine in both men and
women. A man who is not in relationship to the Goddess has no
choice but to project his soul needs onto a woman. No woman can
carry this projection, but if she seems to reject the man, or fails to
comply with his wishes, fails to be the womb or the nurturing breast
that he is projecting, then he feels a loss of potency. Violence against
women springs from the deepest insecurities in the male, because, in
the absence of the Goddess, the woman carries for the man his soul
projection. His experience of the woman, because she is not the God­
dess, is a betrayal of his soul needs. To lose her is to lose his soul. If,
on the other hand, he wins the woman by pleasing her, his rage is
equally great, even if it is repressed rather than acted out.
Daniel's mother was absent; he was raised by a strict father.
James's mother, on the other hand, was a devouring mother and his
father a passive agent in his upbringing. Although their backgrounds
were so antithetical, both experienced the healing power of the
Horned God.
James was in his early forties when he came into analysis. He
could be very charming, sensitive, and gentle-qualities that attracted
many women. On closer examination, however, his relationship with
them turned out to follow a predictable pattern: sexual conquest l 09
Telling It followed by repressed rage and disappearance. He was married and,
Like It Is although he was estranged from his wife, he used his marriage as an
excuse not to make a commitment to anyone else. Always, wife
(mother) was in the background. As he entered midlife, the un­
satisfactory nature of these swiftly abating relationships became
increasingly apparent to him. They were, he realized, driven by a
compulsion he did not understand, except as a repressed rage, the
real source of which was unknown to him.
Upon entering analysis, he had the following dream:

A tenant farmer has killed someone and h as returned to me with a

rifle. He was driving along the beach and now comes up a path
towards me with the gun. I take it from him and he talks. I am an
editor of a newspaper and often publish his comments. He shaves a
large broken thumbnail with a chisel. Then he turns from me and
starts down the path towards the shore/ beach again. Something
warns me not to get too close to him-for my life.

The tenant farmer, the shadow figure, does the dirty work. He
tells James about it, but James doesn't want to get too close to him
or acknowledge him in public. In talking about the dream later,
James said that he felt that the farmer had buried his victims on the
beach. The buried corpses represented the relationships that James
was involved in. Every time a relationship was aborted, it was buried
so that he could go on with his socially respectable life. Psychologi­
cally, we unconsciously project onto others what is in our own un­
conscious. We may fall in love with the person who can·ies the
projection, in which case we are bound to our own projected image.
We may equally hate or fear another person, in which case we are
also bound to our projection. As we become conscious, we recognize
and take responsibility for the aspects of ourselves that the other
person has carried.
What is missing in the dream is a feminine figure-smneone
who will carry a soul connection. Until a man has drawn back and
integrated his projection, he cannot recognize or embrace his own
inner feminine; he constantly looks for it outside himself. Because
his own feminine is so undifferentiated, he will unconsciously seek
out "mother" on whom to project his soul. Men tend to remain
I I0 content within this mother-bound projection so long as they are
emotionally "little boys" consistently seeking to climb back into the Telling It
womb. This son-mother bonding will continue so long as mother/ Like It Is
wife is equally unconscious, making no demands that son grow up.
Her own inner masculine is still a little boy over whom she has
power. In their unconscious collusion, both partners are denying
themselves and each other their own truth.
When a man enters emotionally into early adolescence at the
age of forty, he may rebel against "mother" and turn his sexual fanta­
sies onto "mistress," as was the case with James. Throughout his life,
James had been unconsciously bonded to his mother. While his
father was physically present, he was psychologically absent and
failed to ground his son in his own manhood. James could not leave
mother, nor could he copulate with her any more, since his own
manhood was beginning to assert itself. A split occurred in his own
feminine; therefore, while in the external world he remained essen­
tially mother-bound in his social roles as husband, father, church­
goer, within himself he rebelled against his bondage to the mother in
a series of affairs that affirmed his own late-burgeoning manhood
but at the same time threatened his social position.
Only after many years of this split existence (which was a failed
attempt to assert a manhood independent of the mother) did James
realize he was stuck in a cycle that was hurtful to everyone else and
totally unsatisfactory to him. He was stuck in a role in which his
acting out in the series of affairs became a burial of the very energies
he sought, in the name of his manhood, to release. He did not recog­
nize in the release of these energies the operations of the anima (his
inner feminine) in its struggle to break out of the mother. His anima
remained mother-bound. For this reason, in the dream version of his
affairs, he encounters not a woman, but a man with a gun, who hands
him the gun as if to kill the feminine-the mother-in himself. The
apparent absence of the feminine and the attendant repressed rage of
burying corpses in the sand provides the unconscious representation
of his situation.

Given the overwhelming attention he received from his mother,

James had to recognize the negative side of his positive mothering.
One of his early dreams was of a little boy climbing a hill (Figure
I ). He came to a great boulder blocking his way. This boulder took Ill
Telling It on the personality of a domi­
Like It Is neering presence commanding
and directing his life. It was like
an oracle, with the voice coming
out of the stone and a finger
pointing at him. Then a figure
began to emerge from the stone,
almost witch-like, with dark cir­
cles around the eyes and gaunt
Fig. I cheeks. All the figure consisted
of, it seemed, was an enormous
head and a menacing vagina. The
little boy knew the only way to save his life was to avoid any con­
frontation.
James developed the habit
of recording the messages from
his unconscious through non­
dominant hand drawings when
he awoke, rather than writing
them down. Drawing, like writ­
ing, with the nondominant hand
tends to release the untrained,
primal energy of the child, allow­
ing the unconscious to move di­
rectly onto the paper without
judgment from the ego. The
drawing James did of this figure
�" emerging from the boulder is
presented in Figure 2. Whatever
we fear we tend to concretize,
Fig. 2 only to find that what has been
written in stone continues to op­
press us. This figure is, in its fierceness, not unlike the images of Kali,
the dakini, or the Baba Yaga. This is the fierce Great Mother that
most of us must face on life's journey. To those who see her from a
transcendent consciousness, she is fierce because she demands truth,
sacrifice, and transformation. For the young boy (the unconscious
masculine), she symbolizes death and prohibition. Her energy can
1 12 guide the masculine to wholeness, if he perseveres. But, like the Me-
dusa, she cannot be faced directly. The masculine must be conscious Telling It
enough to approach this repressed energy with caution; otherwise, i1;. Like It Is
'
will devour him.
During the first half of his life, James avoided the confrontation
with the devouring mother. He learned how to be charming, how to
please women, seeing himself somewhat as a knight in shining armor,
ready to rescue the fair damsel in distress. This persona was carried
out, however, with a good deal of patriarchal condescension. Out­
wardly, things were going along the conventionally accepted
path-he had a professional career, a wife, and a family; he was an
upstanding church member. Then James hit forty. On his forty-first
birthday he wrote in his journal:

I can date the beginning of my mid-life crisis precisely. The moment

I pulled open the door and first stood on the threshold occurred on
a Sunday morning in June, I 970. As I knelt on the chancel steps in
my church and the minister placed his hand on my head, saying the
words ordaining me as a deacon, I could feel something like fire
coming down from his hand going through my head and throughout
my body. At the same time, I could hear myself making a personal
vow to follow my emotions and not let these vows constrain my
exploration of my emotions and my self. For many years I have felt
very guilty about this vow, which I took to be rather Faustian in
nature. Today I am less certain that I made a pact with the devil; I
did, in fact, make a commitment to finding my inner self. However,
shortly after this event [his becoming a deacon], I deliberately let
myself get emotionally involved with someone, and [thusJ began my
first [extramarital] affair.

James's experience of becoming a deacon constellated a classic

confrontation between the anointing spirit and the split-off instincts.
The spirit could not really be received because there was no con­
scious feminine container to receive it. His body was not ready, nor
was his psyche. What was constellated, then, was the rebel masculine
as imaged in the horned deviL Had he made a Faustian vow or a
commitment to finding his inner life? In the long term, it was both.
He was no longer prepared to please at the cost of repressing his
instincts. For many years, and through many affairs, James had little
consciousness, if any, that the horned devil was operating in secret 1 13
Telling It while h is patriarchal persona was holding onto the old respectable
Like It Is way of life.
Often we learn wisdom by way of disillusionment-with our­
selves as well as with others. It was disillusionment that brought
James into analysis. Sex had become an addiction. Caught in a repeti­
tive pattern, he could not move forward. Finally, his soul screamed
out for some kind of resolution.
In his many affairs, James was acting out the virgin/whore split
in his psyche. He needed the comfort and security of his wife/
mother, and was anxious that she might reject him. At the same time,
he was unable to express his lust to his wife/mother (virgin). In
taking up a mistress (whore), he was providing himself with a stand­
in as well as a stand-by: he now had someone to project his lust onto,
and should wife/mother leave him, mistress would provide h im with
the comfort and security he needed. For James, as for most men, this
split was rooted in the mother complex. This highly charged complex
carries with it the need for acceptance, comfort, security, and nurtur­
ance, and, at the same time, the fear of rejection, denial, destruction,
and death. It sets a man upon the knife edge between womb and
tomb. Dependence and fear create a psychic impotence that generates
deep unconscious rage. This rage is at the crux of the patriarchal
position.
Many of James's early dreams revolved around his ambivalence
towards the feminine. Here is one of them:

I am trying to design a building and am being thwarted, or having

permission denied, by a planning officer-a woman-who doesn't
like it, or doesn't like the shadows it casts. I talk to a friend, who
encourages me and then takes me up onto a bridge, or roof, and
shows me over the town to the mountain in the background. The
planner is there on the roof, with a jeep with a canvas roof. She is
checking the shadows, especially their angle. My friend talks to her
and notes the roll of maps she is consulting. " You need the ordinance
survey maps to do anything here-they are essential," he says. I look
at the sun's shadows on the roof of the jeep and think about getting
·the map numbers from the roll for future refermce, but I don't do it.
We look across the rooftop/ bridge to land farther on and contem­
plate moving, but we don't.

In this dream, James is trying to build a new self but feels

1 14 thwarted because he needs the guidance of the feminine, who has the
maps. There is a part of James (the friend) who can talk to her, who Telling It
is not paralyzed by her. The woman's concern is the angle of the Like It Is
shadows created by the sun (the solar consciousness). Every building
(self) has shadows; it's where they fall-their angle-that is at issue.
The dream ego is rebellious and looks upon the woman as a barrier,
because she denies permission. The friend presents a broader per­
spective, a new horizon, but, being neither willing nor able to ap­
proach the woman, James's masculine ego goes nowhere. It is
paralyzed.
A dream two weeks later shows how the ambivalence toward
the feminine is acted out in a regression into the negative mother.

I am in a house (not mine) sitting in a living room chair. A young

man is entertaining his girlfriend at dinner with several other friends.
Another girlfriend comes and joins them at the table. Then a third
girlfriend arrives and is sent to the dining room. I sink deeper and
deeper into my chair and laugh, thinking, "This is your life-all your
girlfriends together." Then, I am upstairs, talking to a much older
woman, who is in bed with the covers up to ber chin. We talk and
talk, and then she twists and turns and exposes some of her stomach
and chest, keeping her arms across her breasts. I notice her white skin.
I continue talking and find that I am crossing and criss-crossing my
legs to hide a developing erection. She says, " For heaven's sake, stop
fighting it and come to bed with me." I rush off into the bathroom,
wanting to pee, and turn between tub, shower, basin and toilet. I
come back to strip down the bed and lie on it, while she stands at
the side, ready to join me.

The first part of this dream has a party atmosphere, with the
young man entertaining the feminine. There is nourishment here,
around the dining table. The ego, however, sinks deeper into the
chair, thinking of his own girlfriends. He goes upstairs (another level
of consciousness), where there is an older woman in bed with the
covers up to her chin. She tempts him to come into bed with her.
The unconscious mother seduces toward inertia or paralysis. He goes
into the bathroom and is indecisive about tub, shower, basin, toilet.
All four are places where we cleanse ourselves or work creatively with
our shadow side. Unable or unprepared to allow the bathroom in the
dream to function in this symbolic way, he succumbs to joining the
woman in the bed. 1 15
Telling It Some time later, the mother complex was dealt with more di­
Like lt ls rectly. After attending a lecture by a male Jungian analyst, James had
the following dream.

I am in the office of a male analyst. We are standing on either side

of a coffee table in front of a fire. Above the fireplace is a large picture
of the Great Mother. (She looks like a rather cross representation of
Queen Victoria.) The analyst invites me to take the picture down
and place it face down on the coffee table. "See what is behind it,"
he says. I begin to pry the first layer off the back of the picture. It is
a young girl looking very dismayed because she has gotten only 4 9 /
50 on her spelling test. Father, or teacher, is standing there sternly,
holding a ruler. I take off the second layer: it is a dark, seductive
woman, looking like Spiderwoman. The third layer is a society type
woman, somewhat vacuous, but richly dressed in white with a pastel
shawl (or cape) and wearing a red rose. The fourth is a naked,
helpless-looking woman trying to cross a field of barbed wire with
bullets strafing her path. The fifth is a woman with a large head and
small arms but no torso. Her head is fragile and shaped like a tea
cup, full of writhing snakes.

In the presence of a stroJJg, masculine figure-a father figure

who can accept him-James is able to look at the full dimension of
his mother complex. The picture of the Great Mother hangs above
the central blaze in the office. When the analyst invites him to look
at what is behind the cross queen, he looks at layers of femini ne
victims and seductresses. The most deeply repressed image seems to
sum up all the other images: as fragile as a tea cup, yet as fierce as
Medusa (her hair full of writhing snakes), whose ugliness can turn
men into stone. In these images, James began to see the projections
that he directed toward the women with whom he was having affairs.
Some of them called forth the rescuer in him: attracted by depen­
dence and vulnerability, he would gladly rush in to help. While out­
wardly he played the role of hero, sexual conquest was his hidden
agenda. Spiderwoman and Ice Queen called for a psychically aggres­
sive approach. Leaving them could always be justified, since they
might either devour him or turn him to stone.
These images are James's projections onto the real women in
his life, whom he pursued with much fascination and anguish. Want-
1 16 ing to possess, yet fearing rejection, James put more and more energy
into his obsessions and fantasies. Once the conquest was accom­ Telling It
plished, the energy level would drop, but sooner or later the pattern Like It Is
would be acted out with someone else.
After three months of obsessive activity, James had a dream
(illustrated in figures 3 and 4) in which he confronted his " Horned
Devil" shadow.

I am walking in the forest on some kind of journey, when suddenly,

out from behind a tree, a black-caped figure appears wearing a huge,
devilish-looking mask. He blocks my path, and at first I am fright­
ened, but then I become angry. When I try to confront him, he seems
to merge into the tree. It is as if a huge, pointed mask, with thick
eyebrows that seem to become horns, is there among the branches. I
try to lunge at him, but then the mask changes into the angry-looking
face of a woman with huge breasts sitting in the tree. I back away
and sit on the ground.

This dream shows very clearly

the collusion between the demon,
and the devouring mother. At a col­
lective level, this collusion sums up
unconscious patriarchy. The disem­
bodied masculine, which sees its
freedom as control over the cycles
of nature, matter, mother, puts its
energy into dominating her. What
our energy flows into, we are capti­
vated by. If love is behind that en­
ergy, it can lead to an intoxication
with life-the Horned God and ·
the Great Mother. However, if fear · ·

is behind the energy, drivenness can

Fig. 3
lead to captivation by destructive
forces-the Horned Devil and the
Devouring Mother.
The underlying fear is what is revealed to James in this dream.
The black-caped mask figure operates only so long as the Great
Mother is not transformed into a conscious inner feminine energy.
Until James confronts the fear rooted in the mother complex, his 117
Telling It masculinity as well as his projection onto the feminine will remain
Like It Is
split. These energies move in a repetitive cycle, an addictive cycle
that stalls any real evolution of consciousness.
In James, this destructive
collusion of energies blocked­
as in trauma-his perception of
what was going on in his soul.
He had, that is, no experience of
the inner feminine. She was
trapped somewhere, in a cycle of
despair, while his suspended
masculine, ungrounded and un­
contained, repeatedly tried to
ground itself by projecting his
soul onto an outside woman. At
his core was an enormous rage
against the mother.
Not until James was strong
enough to allow the Goddess/
Fig. 4
Crone energy into consciousness
was he able to confront this un­
derlying archetypal rage. This confrontation took place in the fol­
lowing dream:

I am at a building site. Suddenly, I notice an old oak door on the far

side of the site. I approach the door and go through it. I enter a place
that is quite primitive. I see an opening, like the entrance to a cave,
with a wooden beam across the top, with "White Bison Woman"
carved on it. I am met by a tall old woman, who makes me lay aside
the mask I am wearing and enter the cave. When I put the mask on
the ground, I notice that it is the same mask that was on the demon
shadow figure [in the earlier dream]. We go down a long winding
shaft until we come to the center. There, she shows me a large mirror.
In the mirror I see myself kicking my mother in the cunt. I am
horrified.

Here is the core truth, at the center of things, stripped bare by

the Goddess/Crone, who can also appear as an Oriental or Native
l l8 American woman. It was a horrifying experience for James, but one
that he could no longer turn Telling It
away from. The mask of char­ Like It Is
mer, of hero-rescuer, the illusory
perceptions of self he had used
to justify his previous behavior,
all had to be left outside the cave.
The rage he had never expressed
against the huge energy that was
taking away his manhood is fi­
nally released in the presence of
the Crone. It is imperative to
note that while this mother in
the depths of the cave appears as
his personal mother, the energy
she presents is archetypal, the
magnet that would keep him F. 5
Jg.
inert in the mud. This dream has
�

to be seen at the archetypal level.

The energies that were pulling James into the primal mud had de­
stroyed his capacity to live his own life according to his own values.
He was so identified with Mother Church, Mother Corporation,
Mother Wife that he could not know who he was. The metaphor in
the dream had the power to liberate him into his own manhood.
Later that night, James had another dream, in which he was
still in the cave. He felt naked and helpless, lying on his back, almost
in crucifixion form, while enormous naked female energies swarmed
all around him. Then he was driven out into the wilderness.
The wilderness is a place of reckoning. It conjures up images
of danger, isolation, and aloneness. Physically, it is the place where
we meet ourselves, undistracted by people or events. We are alone.
All our fears rise up to meet us. We are tested to the utmost. If we
can endure the terror, the wilderness also becomes a place where we
can begin to experience our own strength, our own resources, our
own truth. The gospels record that following his baptism, Christ,
too, was drawn into the wilderness, where he confronted the tempta­
tions of his shadow demon and overcame them.
We can all recognize in our own lives the place of the wilder­
ness: a severe illness, the death of a loved one, the breakdown of a
marriage, the loss of a job, the shaking of our faith, the shock of 1 19
Telling It realizing our own limitations. These places are a wilderness because
Like It Is they isolate us so that we cannot be reached by the outside world.
These experiences we ultimately have to go through alone. Others
may be present on the periphery, but it is as if a veil descends be­
tween us and them, leaving us alone, to struggle by and with our­
selves.
For James, the wilderness was a long, painful period during
which he attempted to withdraw projections and the accompanying
obsession with sex. It involved separating, finally, from the wife/
mother, whom he had used as a shield against being alone, and, at
the same time, hated, because of the emotional dependency this use
had engendered. It meant breaking the addictive cycle of possession
and fear of loss. Withdrawing of such projections is easy to talk
about, but very difficult and painful to accomplish. For many
months, James's progress was two steps forward and one back. In the
end, James came to realize that he would have to abstain from sex if
he was to come out of the wilderness alive.
If we can consciously hold the tension between the opposites,
the thwarted desire of the body and the i njunctions of the mind,
eventually something new will emerge. The emergence of the new
implies the death of the old. However, the old cannot die until we
recognize what i t is we have to
die to. This was brought home
to James on Easter Sunday, in a
dream in which he approached
the crucified figure of Christ
(figure 6). He was standing at
the foot of the Cross, contem­
plating this figure, when sud­
denly he realized that it was he
who was on the cross. As he
looked down from the cross, he
saw, within his body, the faces of
two women facing away from
each other, while a large black
snake rose up and encircled the
head of his own young mascu­
Fig. 6 line, as i f to strangle him. Then,
1 20 a knife-like object appeared. He
was not sure whether the knife was poised to cut his throat or kill Telling It
the snake. Like It Is
This Easter Sunday presented James with an immense chal­
lenge. So long as he merely approaches "the crucified figure of
Christ," he can stand at the foot of the cross. As his contemplation
deepens, he is suddenly aware that he is on the cross, his archetypal
Self is being crucified. Within his body, the faces of two women
look in opposite directions. James saw these faces as two sides of his
mother complex-mother and seductress-the energies that kept
him on the cross. Then he recognizes the phallic power rising up to
encircle his own young masculine. The final image is ambivalent. Is
the snake there to protect the child or to strangle it? Is the knife
there to cut his throat or to kill the snake? Or-and this is the
possibility James does not consider-is this Kali's knife, the sword
of discretion that could release him from the cross?
At this point in the process, James still sees the phallus and the
knife as dangerous. Yet these are the very energies he needs to release
his body and his psyche from the conflict between the two women.
His drawing emphasizes the energy of the phallus-the creative
strength he needs for his own masculine child. So long as he con­
tinues to focus his life energy on one woman or the other, imagining
that his problem is his inability to choose the right one, he is avoid­
ing his real issue-his own mas-
culine creativity.
For James, this was a cru­
cial point in his analysis. Two
days later, he had a dream in
which the new masculine ap­
peared (figure 7). Again, he was
on the cross, but this time the
feminine faces were facing each
other and had receded to the pe­
riphery. The black snake was not
killed; it had receded to the
coiled position at James's feet.
The young masculine stood in
the center, with an air of inner
freedom and a new standpoint
Fig. 7
from which to approach life. 121
Telling It This dream seems to be giving James a clear picture of where
Like It Is his energy wants to go. He is still looking down at his body on the
cross, but now the feminine faces are no longer in opposition and
they have receded to the periphery. The total focus is on the mascu­
line child, who stands with the coiled snake between his legs. James's
potential is in the child and the snake.
Following this dream, James began to draw a penis on the figure
of himself, something he had not done previously in his drawings.
This was not a conscious decision, and it said a great deal about his
feelings toward himself. When the power comes from within us and
we can claim it as our own, then we no longer have to affirm our­
selves by dominating others. The irony is that we are actually afraid
of our own power. For James, as for many contemporary men and
women, the lost masculine has to do with the Dionysian power,
which has been repressed as energy that could go out of control and
is, therefore, unacceptable to patriarchy. Repressed, it becomes like a
raging bull upon the land, operating outside the realm of rationality,
while the disconnected intellect constructs the illusion of a world
based on reason.
The recovery and transformation of that energy is essential for
men and women. As we saw ear­
lier in Daniel's dream, life was
renewed in the recovery of the
"wild man" from the well. In
James's process, a similar figure
appeared (figure 8). In a dream,
a horned man came over the
brow of a hill and embraced
both James and his feminine
companion in their old conven­
tional personas: rescuer and se­
ductive damsel in distress. Then,
the Dionysian figure laughs at
such illusory personas and invites
them both to take off these false
masks and get down to the truth.
Fig. S
Both James and the woman take
1 22 off their old "skins" and hang
 them on the wall (figure 9). Telling It
Then they sit down facing each Like It Is
other and begin to talk.
In recognizing the healing
powers of the "wild man," we are
not overlooking the significance
of the Crone in the dreams of
both Daniel and James (pp. 9 I
and I I 8). When they are strong
enough to look at their own psy­
chic truth, both men are guided
by the Crone to their place of
deepest wounding in the arche­
typal depths (the cave). There
she puts her finger exactly on the
wound that has to be healed if Fig. 9
they are to be whole. In Daniel,
she points out the profound split
in his masculinity. In James, she forces him to take off his devilish
charmer's mask and look at his rage against the Devouring Feminine.
Both men are confronted with the truth that can set them free.
Only the man who is truly in possession of his inner power can
afford to be "vulnerable," to lay aside his mask and his projections
and meet the feminine face to face. This is an encounter with his
own soul, she who animates the whole world, inner and outer.
An experience recounted by an analysand illustrates what might
be called the "new ground" of relationship. Ian had been married to
the same woman for thirty years. They were extremely comfortable
together. Indeed, he compared his relationship to her to his relation­
ship to his worn wool sweater that, so long as it held together, he
would never consider throwing out for a new one. One day he went
into a shopping mall to pick up a pen that he had left at a repair
shop some weeks earlier. It was during the lunch hour, and, passing
a restaurant in the mall, he decided to go in. To his great surprise,
upon entering the restaurant he saw his wife at the back of the dining
area sitting alone, reading and eating her lunch. His immediate reac­
tion was to walk up to her table and surprise her, just as she had
inadvertently surprised him. It would be fun to have lunch together
in this thoroughly unplanned way. Then he suddenly realized that he 1 23
Telling It could not do this. Totally unprepared for this second surprise, he felt
Like It Is completely disoriented. Looking at her sitting alone, Ian knew that
he would be intruding upon her privacy. The more he thought about
it, the more he realized that the woman sitting alone reading a book
and having her lunch was a complete stranger. It seemed as if he had
never seen her before. Shyness amounting to embarrassment, embar­
rassment amounting to shame, overcame him. Though he knew noth­
ing about her circumstances, what she was doing there, where she
had come from, what she was reading, he felt such a powerful surge
of love that he began to shake. Reeling, he turned and walked out.
The surge of love lay solely in this: his wife of thirty years had
suddenly been unveiled to him as a complete stranger.
When I asked Ian to explain what he meant by "embarrassment
amounting to shame" he hesitated. Slowly he put together his feel­
ings and replied:

Shame is the recognition of what the old ground was, playing the old
roles-persona and tyrant. Ashamed of my whole life. Recognition
that the relationship had been in projection and when the projection
fell away, the person was a stranger. Feeling the falling away of the
mask and realizing the contamination in the projection.
In the radiant otherness is the realization that the reality of the
universe is love.
I'd played all the rituals of society, played out the conventional
wisdom of the world. Suddenly, that was all gone and I saw that God
is love and these roles had kept me from seeing that.

If we, as a collective, continue to be driven by projections and

splits between disembodied spirit and unconscious matter, we can
never be present to each other beyond the demands of an ego that is
trapped in a one-sided need for order and control. When conscious
matter becomes a vessel that can receive spirit, this joining together
can bring us to a new level of consciousness. The ego can stand in a
creative relationship to the Self. To stand i n relationship to the Self
is to be totally present to oneself. When we are present to ourselves,
we are present to others in a totally new way. In the world of the
Self, we meet all those of whom we are a part, whose hearts we have
touched; here there is no aloneness, only presence. There is no ego­
ism involved here, no need to win or lose, no need to control. The
projections have been withdrawn and reclaimed as parts of ourselves.
1 24 Only when this happens is genuine relationship possible.
 And a Crone ShaLL Lead Them 4

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night

and day runs through the world and dances in
rhythmic measures.
It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the
earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into
tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.
It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth
and death, in ebb and in flow.
I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world
of life.
And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my
blood this moment.
-RABINDRATH TAGORE

. . . she is Sophia, which is to say divine wisdom and power,

embracing all the universes. That is . . . why her eternal
person, which is the secret of the world of the soul, is also
its manifestation without which the creative principle of the
world would remain unknown and unknowable, forever
hidden.
-MAZDEAN SuFI
And a Crone
Shall Lead
Them

R E ADING AN CIENT MYTHS and fairy tales can be very helpful

because these stories came spontaneously from people who had not
studied psychology. The stories came straight out of their uncon­
scious and, therefore, show us how the unconscious works unim­
peded by conscious intervention. The images are clear and stark. For
those of us who are i nterested in why we do what we do when we
want to do the opposite, the stories are gold mines of information.
If we accept, as Jung believed, that there are what he called
"archetypes" in our unconscious, then we can read myths and fairy
tales with an open mind. If we do not accept the existence of arche­
types, then we have no way of explaining the superhuman surges of
energy that magnetize us toward someone or something-or repel
us. The word does not matter. What matters is our recogni tion of
the power of these energy fields in our unconscious; they can dictate
our destruction (if our ego is weak) or they can be our greatest gift
in life. If we cannot tell the difference between human and super­
human (or subhuman) energy, we identify with gods and goddesses,
devils and enchantresses, and eventually walk into self-destruction.
We project images onto these energy fields. The god for one
generation is Elvis, for another, Michael Jackson. The goddess may
be the Virgin Mary, eclipsed by Lilith, eclipsed by Julia Roberts.
The task of the media promoters is to find the right image for what­
ever energy field is fl o ating up from the unconscious mass at that
moment. Stars pass by like meteors and are gone.
Some planets, however, we have always with us: mother, father,
child. The god and goddess energy that the parents carry for the
child is inherent in the infant/ parent relationship. "Mother" may be
slender, pert, and pretty for one person; she may be big-bosomed,
old, and funny for another. Yet, for both, " Mother" carries energy
1 26 that will influence their lives forever, for better or for worse. In trying
to understand god and goddess energy in ourselves we have to con­ And a Crone
sider our relationship to our parents, since the god is at the core of Shall Lead
the father complex and the goddess is at the core of the mother
complex. In reading the ancient tales, we can recognize the magnetic Them
interplay of overwhelming energies within ourselves.
In her book The Golden Ass if Apuleius, Marie Louise von Franz
shows how the ancient tale outlines the role of the feminine guide in
the development of a man's psyche. The story also has much to say
about the process of individuation in a woman. Lucius, the hero of
the tale, sets out on a white horse, the prototype of the knight in
shining armor. He imagines he can approach his journey rationally,
without any real commitment to feeling.
In the first house in which he takes up lodgings, Lucius loses
his head completely when he sees the servant girl Photis. He regards
her as the prize to be won, and together they are overtaken by lust.
She tells him tales of her mistress, Pamphile, a powerful enchantress.
Believing he will be turned into a bird, he goes with Photis to Pam­
phile. Instead, he is turned into an ass. He falls into his shadow side.
Lucius is forced to continue his journey as an ass in the com­
pany of criminals, usurers, sodomites, and sadists-all the under­
ground characters of his own psyche. As von Franz points out, "It is
an underworld that also opens up today in the psyche of every man
who identifies with only the intellect and its false ideals and who
represses his development of feeling." 1
In the midst of his confrontation with his own darkest shadow,
he meets Charite, a young girl who has been overpowered by robbers.
Lucius' own wretched condition gives him great sympathy for her.
Through her, Lucius experiences his own compassion. She is a sym­
bol of the woman, usually the wife, who connects a man to his feel­
ings. Often, this woman carries the soul projections of the man, the
values that he does not consciously recognize as his own. Until this
aspect of the feminine is integrated into a man, she may be one-half
of the equation in the virgin/ whore split in his psyche-the nurtur­
ing, protective wife, who carries his feeling values. The other half
may be a mistress, who canies his lust.
Lucius's next important encounter is in the story of Psyche
and Eros, an encounter Apuleius recounts halfway through his novel.
Lucius hears about Psyche, but in his "ass" state, he does not really
understand her. Still, he is fascinated by the tale of love between 127
And a Crone Psyche and Eros. Having been connected to genuine feeling through
Shall Lead
Charite, Lucius is now able to sense the possibil ity of love. Psyche is
not an ordinary woman. Rather, [ s]he is represented as a girl with
"

Them butterfly wings, that is, as a spiritual being or as a being not of

concrete reality but real enough psychologically. . . . She represents
an archetypal aspect of the feminine in Apuleius, that is remote from
consciousness."2 H ere the projection is beginning to be withdrawn
from the "outside" woman, and Lucius begins to get in touch with
his own inner feminine nature. When a man begins to sense the
feminine within himself, he begins to experience the possibility of
his own wholeness.
Whereas Psyche is one incarnation of the Goddess, she is not
the transcendent Goddess. " . . . Isis, who appears at the end of the
novel in all her cosmic majesty, personifies the archetypal collective
aspect of the anima. There is no longer anything of Apuleius' per­
sonal wishes nor of his desire for her. She is the remote, lofty revela­
tion of his deepest, transpersonal fate."3 Lucius becomes the devoted
follower of Isis and serves in her temple. As a man moves deeper
into experiencing his i nner feminine, he becomes connected to the
Self His feminine is the bridge that allows him to experience his
own godliness-his own creative powers in whatever dimension he
wishes to create. His projection onto a woman may begin that pro­
cess, but ultimately, the fire must come from within himself Para­
doxically, his love for the transcendent feminine releases the love that
i nspires his creativity-painting, sculpture, music, life. Transcen­
dence and immanence are two sides of one deity.
Encountering the Goddess within is not a task for the faint­
hearted. Only a hero can take the journey to find her. To reach her,
he must pass through his own wasteland, give up his false sense of
power, and discover what is of real value to him. Only then can he
give full expression to his own creative power.
Patriarchy, and the sons and daughters of patriarchy, do know
the Goddess. Locked in fear of her judgments, they see her as a
negative mother who could destroy them; therefore, they want either
to dominate her or please her. In her positive form, the Goddess is
the cup, the vessel, the womb in which they need to be protected if
they are ever to know the parts of themselves that are not recognized
by the collective.
1 28 The goddess Aphrodite, in the story of Psyche and Eros, is an
excellent example of what many would consider an archetype of the And a Crone
negative mother. The archetype is the white hot or smouldering core Shall Lead
at the center of the experience of the personal mother. It may be a
voice that ceaselessly judges, ceaselessly sets impossible tasks, cease­ Thtm
lessly sets up death marriages. She leaves her child failed, guilty, and
fi..t ll of shame. Hers is not a friendly womb.
In this story within the story of Apuleius, Aphrodite is jealous
because her followers are neglecting her altars and worshiping the
exquisite human being, Psyche. She calls upon her son, Eros, to use
his wiles to make Psyche fall in love with some odious creature.
Apollo, meanwhile, tells Psyche's father that she must clothe herself
in mourning dress and set herself upon a rock from which she will
be carried away by a fierce serpent. At the appointed time she is left
to die, and that night she is carried off by the wind to the castle of
her "serpent" husband. He comes to her by night and tells her she
must never set eyes upon him. Together, they delight in the ecstasy
of love. It all happens in the dark. As in most relationships, the bliss
of conjugal embrace, heightened by incestuous attraction, happens in
total unconsciousness.
Then Psyche's shadow sisters, jealous of her good fortune, tell
her she is sleeping with a monster, perhaps a serpent that does not
want his secret discovered. With that seed of doubt planted in her
mind, she eventually lights her lamp while her husband is asleep, goes
up to him and sees the divine Eros. In her rapture at beholding her
husband, she allows a drop of burning oil from the lamp to fall on
his shoulder. Instantly, he wakes and flees, and with him, the castle
disappears.4
Eros returns to his mother's castle. Psyche is left to wander
alone and weep. In an attempt to find her husband again-that is, to
experience that divine relationship in consciousness-Psyche goes to
her mother-in-law. Aphrodite is furious that her son Eros has taken
Psyche as his wife. She is angry on two counts: first, she had hoped
that he would rid her of her rival; second, she is afraid that he might
have learned something of love from Psyche. Despite his failure, she
lets him remain in her castle. Meanwhile, she chides Psyche for her
faithlessness and rebukes her with the words "So you finally remem­
bered you have a goddess!"
As punishment, Aphrodite sets Psyche three tasks-all seem­
ingly impossible and each carrying a death sentence. If Psyche fails 129
And a Crone to accomplish them, she dies either physically or psychically. Aphro­
Shall Lead dite's severe and unfeeling demeanor may seem cruel, but in fact she,
as dark goddess, is the catalyst that brings out all the strength and
Them defiance and individuality that sleeping Psyche never had.
The first task is to sort out bushels of different kinds of seeds.
Consciously, the task is impossible. But the ants, those helpful, well­
organized, tiny energies of the instincts, live in their natural state and
are able to spontaneously discriminate. Discrimination-the ability
to separate one's own values from those of other people, or true
ones from false ones-is essential to Psyche's survival. It was lack of
discrimination-that is, failure to separate her own values from those
of the shadow voices inside (her sisters}-that brought about her
terrible loss. Mother Aphrodite gives her a lesson in surrender to her
own deepest instincts, so that she may experience the self-discipline
necessary to find her own Virgin within.
The second task is to gather wool from the great sheep, shining
like gold. Psyche knows the animals are too wild for her to pick the
wool. Totally discouraged, she goes to the river to drown herself. A
reed by the riverside tells her to wait until the sheep are resting in
the evening; then she can pick the wool off the briars and take it to
Aphrodite. This Psyche succeeds in doing. What has Aphrodite
taught Psyche here? To listen to the voice of instinct; to cultivate
patience, which can prevent her from acting too quickly, thereby
bringing about her own destruction. Psyche learns courage, assertive­
ness, a certain wiliness-all attributes the Virgin needs, even in rela­
tionship to the Mother.
Psyche's third task is to take a crystal bottle to the top of a
nearby mountain to bring back some of the black water that courses
in a river down i ts slope. As she proceeds up the mountain, she is
surrounded by dragons and cliffs, and again contemplates suicide.
This time, an eagle, a sun bird, comes to her aid. He tells her that it
is impossible for her to go past the dragons. She must recognize her
own limitations. He offers to take the crystal bottle and fill it for
her. In this way, she completes her third task, and learns, at the same
time, the valuable lesson of allowing spirit to take her where instinct
cannot. As in the Christian myth, the Virgin surrenders her chalice
to spirit and learns her individual strength in relation to the divine.
Having accomplished all three tasks successfully, Psyche returns
1 30 to Aphrodite. Again, the Mother is furious. Not one to be deterred
so easily, Aphrodite presents Psyche with the ultimate task: to go And a Crone
down to Hades and bring back from the goddess Persephone a drop Shall Lead
of her beauty ointment. From her adventures in Hades, Psyche learns
that she dare not separate her body from her spirit, that she must Them
appease the guard dog at the gates of the underworld, that she does
not have enough energy to help everyone she meets, and that she
does need specific energy for specific tasks. Above all, she learns that
she cannot rescue other people from their destiny and that trying to
do so can undermine their strength.
In all of these tasks, Psyche is building her own creative mascu­
line energy as she strengthens her inner virgin. (The two go together).
As she nears home, she asks herself, "If this beauty ointment is so
precious to Aphrodite, why can't I use it myself?" She opens the jar
that contains the drop. Immediately, a vapor rises from the container,
causing Psyche to fall into a deathlike sleep. Disobedience toward
the mother is often essential to full virginity. This may or may not
be the personal mother. It can also be the collective mother-the
corporation, the alma mater, Mother Church.
The appropriation of beauty, the "putting on" of the Goddess,
is quite deliberate. Up to this point in the story, Psyche had held her
beauty unconsciously; she had unconsciously challenged Aphrodite
by not acknowledging her gift or what it really meant. Now, she has
acknowledged the Goddess, she has suffered through her tutelage.
Now, she dares to become like her, not only in her beauty but alsq
in her divine wholeness. For the final integration of the masculine to
take place, one has to go into the "land of the dead" (Psyche's fourth
task). For a time, one becomes detached from outer reality and sur­
renders to the inner workings of the soul. This process is echoed in
the New Testament's exhortations to put on . the "mantle of
Christ"-an image of death to the old self Psyche's deathlike sleep
is precisely this experience. Many conscious women who have come
far in their journey suddenly fall gravely ill for no apparent reason.
This near-death experience is a final surrender, a final initiation into
a new level of consciousness, a consciousness that must be "stolen"
from the Goddess herself
Greek author Arianna Stassinopoulos tells us that Psyche's mar­
riage to Eros, the divine son of the Goddess, is the only wedding to
take place in the presence of all the gods and goddesses on Olympus.
This union brings together all aspects of the divine energy. This is 13/
And a Crone the sacred union of soul with love. Zeus held a great feast to celebrate
Shall Lead this union and we are told that Aphrodite danced.5
Although Aphrodite may seem stern and demanding, her real
Them purpose throughout the story has been to bring Psyche to the place
where she can blossom forth in her full womanhood. Through the
tasks the mother assigns, she releases the attributes in the young
feminine that are necessary to the maturing. Psyche gives birth to a
daughter, whom she calls Pleasure, or Joy. Pleasure is the child of the
divine marriage on Mount Olympus. The feminine as Beauty and
Love can be the revelation of the Goddess in every human being.
This is not the beauty found in cosmetic jars, or facelifts, or beauty
parlors. It is a beauty that shines forth when the soul is no longer in
exile, but radiates in every living cell. The exiled Russian writer Alex­
ander Solzhenitsyn paid tribute to this beauty in his acceptance
speech on winning the Nobel Prize.

If the all too obvious and the overly straight sprouts of Truth and
Goodness have been crushed, cut down, or not permitted to grow,
then perhaps the whimsical, unpredictable and ever-surprising shoots
of Beauty will force their way through and soar up to that very spot,
thereby fulfilling the task of all three.6

This is the beauty that radiates from the soul whenever it ex­
presses i tself, whether in art, or music, or in the eyes of an old crone.
Her eyes may be fierce, or gentle, full of laughter, or full of tears.
They always instruct us, guide us, and become a mirror in which we
can see ourselves, if we dare to look closely.
So repressed has the Goddess been in our culture that it is very
difficult to find a story that illustrates her i n her loving transcendent
power. Yet she is present-so present that we take her for granted.
We do not see her.
Many poets know her. Milton, for example, knew his Urania,
his muse, who dictated Paradise Lost to him night after night through­
out twelve books. Shelley, likewise, communed with his muse and, at
her dictation, his winged pen created some of the finest lyrics in our
language. The intimacy with an inner Beloved creates the fire that
kinclles great art. The unconscious is released, the human being is
aflame with transcendent energy. The love that is enkinclled manifests
1 32 in the creation.
 For most of us, the fire of her love manifests most delicately And a Crone
and most fiercely in springtime. Out of the icy clutches of winter, Shall Lead
buds begin to become plump. Each day they are plumper and more
colorful. We notice green sprouts, perhaps a snowdrop or a bluebell. Them
Gradually, the whole world begins to vibrate in shades of green, and
our own heart swells with the mystery of creation. The Goddess
manifests in countless births from her womb. A crocus-purple in
whi te snow-speaks louder than any sermon about the sacredness of
birth.
Or perhaps we have been present at the birth of a child. For
nine months we have watched the belly become plump, and plumper.
And then, we have heard the anguished cries of labor. We have
watched the head beginning to crown, beginning to push i ts way into
this world. Finally, the last shriek of the mother, somewhere between
death and life. Then a new life with ten fingers, ten toes, nose and
ears, moves in, as life has moved in for millennia. Yet every life comes
from a silence so profound, we stand in awe, wondering.
As we stand wondering in the presence of death. The life that
one day moved through a birth canal with one tiny hand appearing
and then another, and two tiny feet, a body that blossomed through
all its potential, now withers, breath ceases, and all is silence. The
soul shimmers for an i nstant. Again, we stand before the mystery.
We stand in the presence of the Goddess-God unveiled on
Earth. The timeless intersecting time. The Goddess of birth, trans­
formation, and death. Within the container of her power, life hap­
pens. She is Immanent within the bud, within the baby, within the
soul that moves through yet another birth canal into its next abode.
She, likewise fierce and full of love, brings us face to face with the
transcendent that speaks to us of mysteries we cannot fathom.
For most people, it takes a lifetime for the psyche to find its
relationship to the Goddess. She appears in the psyche in her three­
fold nature, sometimes Virgin, sometimes Mother, sometimes Crone.
However, it is the Crone that our culture has so brutally repressed.
The wise woman, the healer, the transformer has been one of the
greatest threats to the patriarchal world. Ironically, with the founding
of universities (centers of oneness) in the eleventh century, women's
natural talents for counseling, healing, and being a source of wisdom
were curtailed; women were barred from attending. Public services
could be rendered only by someone with the proper credentials and, 1 33
And a Crone since women were not allowed to acquire these credentials, they were
Shall Lead effectively removed fi·om the intellectual life of the community.
Many who were burned as witches were among the most gifted
Them women of the time.

Our culture's official rejectton of the Crone figure was related to

rejection of women, particularly elder women. The gray-haired high
priestesses, once respected tribal matriarchs of pre-Christian Europe,
were transformed by the newly dominant patriarchy into minions of
the devil. Through the M iddle Ages this trend gathered momentum,
finally developing a frenzy that legally murdered millions of elder
women from the twelfth to the nineteenth centuries.7

As Barbara Walker observes, " Until the Crone figure was sup­
pressed, patriarchal religions could not achieve full control of men's
minds. Such religions tended not only to ascetic rejection of the
physical experiences of life, but also to fearful rejection of the Divine
Old Woman, and by extension of old women generally."8
As a symbol, the Crone had to be suppressed by patriarchal
religions because her power "overruled the will even of H eavenly
Father Zeus."9 She controlled the cycles of life and death. She was
the Mother of God, the Nurturer of God, and, as Crone, the Slayer
of God. While Christianity retained the feminine as Virgin and
Mother, it eliminated her role as Crone. It is interesting, however,
that in this century, her presence at Fatima and at Medjugorje in
Bosnia-Herzegovina (where she might well have been heeded) has
cast her very much in the role of the Doomsday Crone of old. Her
message, that the hand of wrath will fall if human behavior doesn't
change, has crystallized her voice in the face of the brutality of the
twentieth century.
Since she has not been present in the culture, she has not been
readily accessible to the conscious awareness of modern women.
Without her, even the dynamic symbols of Virgin and Mother are
distorted. The Crone in a woman is that part of her psyche that is
not identified with any relationship nor confined by any bond. She
infuses an intrinsic sense of self-worth, of autonomy, into the role of
virgin and mother, and gives the woman strength to stand to her own
creattve experience.
134 I n the mythological tale o f Hera, the divine consort o f Zeus,
we can see the transformation from unconscious wife to conscious And a Crone
virgin, she who is who she is because that is who she is. Hera's life Shall Lead
was totally bound up with what her husband did or did not do.
When Zeus was fai thful and attentive, she was the bountiful goddess; Dmn
when Zeus was promiscuous, as he frequently was, she was a raging
shrew, taking out her wrath on the "other woman." Hera's jealousy
consumed her life. Today we would say that her marriage to Zeus
was one of quintessential codependency. "As long as Hera projects
on her husband all her own unlived creativity, so long as she expects
to find fulfillment exclusively in her role as Mrs. Zeus, she creates
her own betrayal and a marriage that is in a permanent state of war
with brief interludes of peace in bed."1 0
It was not until Hera finally decided that she had had enough
of Zeus's promiscuity that things began to change. She left Zeus and
returned to her birthplace in Euboea. In aloneness she came to terms
with her own essential oneness. She had engaged her Crone state.
Women are, by nature, disposed to relationship and connectedness;
yet true relationship cannot be embraced until a woman has a deep
sense of her at-one-ment. Without this essential i ndependence from
all roles and bonds, she is a potential victim for servitude.
Once Hera had let this Crone energy in, had accepted that part
of herself that is bound by no relationship, she "bathed in the spring
flowing through the foothills and emerged with her virginity re­
newed-One-in-Herself, the Celestial Virgin." 1 1 With her own cre­
ative virgin restored, she could become Hera Teleia (fully grown,
complete). She returns to Zeus. "[F]illed with a secret, smiling wis­
dom that leaves no room for raging jealousy, she is reconciled to
him, now ready for the deep marriage for which she has always
longed." 1 2 From now on, this would not be a marriage based on
need-something that Zeus undoubtedly understood and responded
to. H era demanded and got her wish fully met, matched, and mated.
In the story of Demeter and Persephone, Mother Demeter is in
anguish for nine days and nine nights after the disappearance of
her daughter, Persephone, in the arms of Hades, the Lord of the
Underworld. In her grief, she allows the countryside to become bar­
ren. On the tenth day Hecate, the Crone, appears and assists Demeter
in getting reunited with her lost daughter. Hecate has the wisdom
that allows Persephone to be daughter to her mother and, at the
same time, wife to her husband. The countryside blooms again. 135
And a Crone The restoration of the cycle appears in dreams today. One
Shall Lead woman dreamed that she was in her Crone state, diving deep and
surfacing as she played in the ocean waves (the depths of the uncon­
Them scious).

I am swimming carefree in the ocean when I notice a big sh ip. As I

look, I realize it is headed straight toward me and intends to run me
over. I dive beneath the surface and elude it. I have no fear. I even
seem to be amused. I swim toward the shore, but a huge whale-like
creature surfaces and tries to swallow me. I take large chunks of green
and gold sod from the ocean and throw them into the creature's
mouth. As I approach the shore, I see mothers with their young
daughters, playing in the surf; but as I get closer, they are concrete
statues. I come up out of the ocean and move among the statues, and
as I do they become real flesh and blood and begin playing and
laughing. I walk on into a little building, like an office. Three or four
men are in there, sitting around. I tell them about the ship coming
into the harbor, and urge them to do something about it quickly.
They get up and point to a chart on the wall and explain that by
their calculations what I told them is impossible. They won't even
look out the window. I get disgusted and walk out, realizing I will
have to take care of it myself.

A woman in her crone state can easily, and almost playfully,

elude two powerful complexes in the unconscious. As she approaches
the shoreline, the boundary between consciousness and the uncon­
scious, she sees that the Mother/Virgin energies have been turned
into stone. This is the concretization that cements the feminine into
stereotypes. The dream ego's appearance as crone revitalizes this en­
ergy, restores it to i ts rightful potential.
In the last section of the dream, the masculine energy is locked
in its own patriarchal logic, not willing to open to the spontaneity
of the moment. Here is reason that is unreasonable because it refuses
to confront reality. The dream ego will have to call in her crone
energy in order to deal with the huge complex that is coming in and
with the blind stubbornness of her own masculinity.
For many women, the task of confronting patriarchal logic is
daunting. In offices and boardrooms, they routinely encounter plans
and organizational strategies that they instantly recognize as having
1 36 no connection to the lived reality. Being more in touch with frontline
reality, women are in a better position to sense what will work and And a Crone
what will not. Often, there is a tacit understanding among them: Shall Lead
"Well, let them talk. We will have to do what needs to be done to
make it work." Confrontation, however quiet but firm, is always dif­ Them
ficult, because the adversary is not just faulty logic, but a power
system. When a woman's crone is strong enough to confront the
Chairman of the Board, and he loses face, she has also to contend
with the sinking feeling inside, "There goes my job!" And even
though she may not lose her job, she still has to deal with the inner
feeling-and with the prospect of earning a reputation as a "bitch."
A man in her position would more likely be praised for his assertive­
ness. While attitudes are changing, it still takes a strong woman, with
a well-defined sense of her own boundaries, to stand up to patriarchy
and come through unscathed.
We hear a great deal these days about women stepping i nto
their own shoes, or finding their own voice. In other words, they are
trying to live their own feminine potential and speak with their own
feminine voice. If their voice is coming from their own musculature
and not from a complex, it is a real voice ringing with feminine truth.
Many men, too, are trying to hold onto their jobs and, at the same
time, live from their own inner values. Many of the largest corpora­
tions are attempting to recognize the voice of soul within the every­
day business world. Psychologically speaking, they are differentiating
the Virgin from the Mother, Psyche from Aphrodite. The young
uninitiated feminine, who is just beginning to know that she exists in
many men and women, inevitably faces the judgmen� of the Mother.
Mother may be personal mother, the boss at work, the corporation
that refuses to recognize the existence of the emerging feminine.
Often, in a crisis, lip service is paid to the feminine, but, when the
crisis passes, retribution takes over, even revenge. It takes a very
strong Psyche to stand up to the discipline the Mother sometimes
enforces. As the old saying goes, "If it doesn't kill you, you'll b �
stronger." The Mother's severity sometimes feels like abuse-and
sometimes it actually is. It is part of the differentiating process to
recognize which of the two it is and to act from that recognition.
For people who live in daily dialogue with the unconscious, the
Goddess herself may make quite clear how she hopes the evolving
feminine will respond in a given situation. And if Virgin replies, ''I'm
not strong enough to do that," she cuts in, ''I'll help you. Do it. 137
And a Crone There's n o time for farting around." In the absence of role models
Shall Lead for the new feminine in our culture, the Goddess speaks through
dreams and creative imagination, giving guidance to those who
Them choose to listen. Her sense of humor always softens the sharpness of
her approach. Her compassion for the human being in the human
situation establishes a strong, loving container so long as communica­
tion is kept open.
H er advice often proves to be a turning point in a person's
psychological growth. For example, women who tend to mother their
man even after years of analysis may be told that the mothering has
to stop when he begins to work with his rejected body. Mothering
at this stage can leave a man stuck in a mother complex for the rest
of his life, because he is afraid to drop into the deeper primitive areas
of his own musculature. The man may become angry and accuse the
woman of not being sympathetic. She may be irritated or cool and
distant. Both have to realize that in times of confrontation, personal
response very quickly fl i es into archetypal response. Anger shifts into
rage. When the archetype is constellated, the individuals cease to be
present and raw body response is acted out.
Our streets are dangerous because culture is giving way to anar­
chy. Psychologically speaking, archetypal acting out of raw instinc­
tual energy threatens the place of archetypal containment within art
forms disciplined enough to hold the confl i cts. Audiences still partic­
ipate in the grief and terror that is contained within the magnificent
poetry and music that is being embodied in the theater. Outside
the theaters, churches, concert halls, museums, and art galleries, the
container is barely strong enough to hold itself together against the
onslaught of archetypal acting out, much art now becoming nothing
more than undisciplined acting out. In that situation, the Death God­
dess is quickly constellated.
In contemporary relationships, Psyche and Aphrodite are often
confused. Women who are genuinely attempting to differentiate their
Virgin out from their Mother try to speak their own truth. If their
partner is still stuck in Mother, still thinking that femininity is only
mothering (mother providing a safe, cherishing container in which
life grows), he experiences her truth as a judgment. Or the inter­
change can happen with the man having a more finely honed femi­
nine voice than his wife, in which case she may experience his truth
138 as judgment passed on her. As the Virgin and Mother mature into
Crone, and the Crone speaks with the sharp truth that shocks and And a Crone
alarms others, again the woman may be looked upon as a negative Shall Lead
Mother voice. As soon as that old pattern surfaces, the infantile
. Them
judge-and-blame games are resumed. If we can remember that once
the old archetypal patterns start to resonate, the individual is no
longer present, it may make getting out for a walk an easy journey to
the door.
One of the darkest corners from which the negative Mother
can arise is angry women in women's groups. After years of closely
relating to each other in the loving container of the protective
Mother that they have created for themselves and each other, sud­
denly things may start to turn sour. Everyone is sad and embarrassed.
The fact is that everyone has a headache or vomits before the meet­
ing. No one is excited about coming. What is going on? There will
be many different dynamics, but one is worth examining here in
terms of the Mother. In a group of women, as each begins to feel
her own individual empowerment, she begins to move into a position
of leadership. Another without any desire to be at the top or in
competition also finds herself with leadership ideas. For some in the
group, this feels like the return of patriarchy. The ones who are
taking the initiative may be honored by the group but required to
stay in line. As a result, the best energies that are being born within
the best containers are stultified. Initiative and leadership become
questionable throwbacks. As the energies of the whole group build,
too much may be repressed. Then the group becomes the negative
Mother, who will not allow each child to be who she is. Most women
are fearful of the judging Mother. They don't need that from this
beloved group. So the group dissolves just at the point where each
member has the most to give, the most with which to experiment in
a group that loves her. Those dynamics need a clear eye and a loving
voice to discipline them before they go too far to recover.
The Crone has been missing from our culture for so long that
many women, particularly young girls, know nothing of her tutelage.
Young girls in our society are not initiated by older women into
womanhood with its accompanying dignity and power. Instead, for
their models, they look to fashion magazines, where they see the
kinds of bodies and faces that they themselves can never have. Para­
doxically, these are the ideals that are held up for them if they want
to be successful, particularly with men. A recent national survey of 139
And a Crone teenage girls in North America showed that "while I 3-year-old girls
Shall Lead are nearly as confident as I 3-year old boys, by age I 6 the females'
sense of self worth has plummeted." 13
Them With no inner Wisdom figure to guide them, and no outward
model to help them set boundaries and be their own person, young
women often fall victim to false and superficial ideals, such as pleas­
ing others. Ironically, they achieve their greatest success at the cost
of their own emerging sense of self.
Many women are locked into relationships that leave no room
for their own creative expression. In fact, they are not even aware of
their own creativity. Without the Crone, that part of us that can
stand alone, many relationships stagnate in codependence, in which
both partners act out carefully defined roles that block growth. If
both partners are not changing and growing, there is no excitement,
no challenge left in the marriage. Boredom sets in. A typical com­
plaint from women is, "All he ever does is work and watch sports on
TV. There's nothing to talk about any more. Our breakfast conversa­
tion yesterday consisted of him reading the nutrient label on the
cereal box." Equally typical is this complaint from one man, "Trying
to come to a meaningful decision about something is like trying to
pin Jello onto the wall." Many couples put up with these stagnant
relationships because change might mean aloneness. Without the
Crone, the task of belonging to oneself, of being a whole person, is
virtually impossible.
When a woman stands her own ground, exercises discipline, or
lays down her terms and conditions with "straight talk," she speaks
with the voice of the Crone. "Straight talk" is not language that is
writhing in a complex. Too often, complexed women unconsciously
overprotect, or try to placate, or manipulate others i nto doing some­
thing or into behaving in a certain way-usually with disastrous re­
sults, because they do not know their own voice. If a woman becomes
identified with any one role-wife, mother, teacher-she has no mir­
ror in which to see the situation objectively. She is hiding behind the
role without exploring her own reality. Crone energy is energy that
has been distilled through years of attempting to speak straight from
our own reality. One day we are surprised by the sound of our own
voice coming straight from its ground in our own body.
Take, for example, a professional woman in her early thirties
l 40 who came into analysis to "talk over" her failure to hold a particular
relationship. She had been involved with a married man at her church And a Crone
for about six months when she became pregnant. She decided to have Shall Lead
an abortion, and he acted the perfect gentleman by driving her to
and from the hospital. Then, he promptly ended the relationship and Them
moved on to another woman. She felt she should react in a "civi­
lized" manner and be understanding of his motives. However, she
had a dream shortly thereafter, in which a rabbit is popping in and
out of holes in the ground. An old woman comes along and hands
her a high-powered rifle. The dream ego looks through the sights of
the rifle and sees there the face of the man who had "dumped" her.
She pulls the trigger and blows out his brains.
This woman recognized her rage and realized that she had bet­
ter deal with it. Using her journal as a safe container, she poured out
her rage uncensored. It turned out that her rage was directed at all
men, particularly her father, and much of it was justified. She perse­
vered in this cathartic writing activity until she came to a "clearing,"
where she could begin to recognize her own reality and what she
needed to do to empower herself This was the turning point.
It became clear to her that the affairs she had been having were
a desperate attempt to have the relationship with her father that had
been missing in her life. Unconsciously trying to establish a parental
relationship that is missing or distorted, we inevitably choose a per­
son who is like the parent whose love we never had. Not surprisingly,
the same distorted pattern of interaction is acted out. This woman
began to see how she had reacted to the "betrayals" in her life and
how she continued to betray herself because her own motives were
not clear. Her attempts at self-assertion, of speaking in her own
voice, would often elicit displeasure on the part of the men she had
to deal with, whether socially or professionally. She would back off
at their displeasure, feeling misunderstood or unappreciated. This
betrayal of her own integrity eventually coalesced into an inner cess­
pool of rage. The only way out of the cesspool was for her to disen­
gage from the old patterns of self-doubt by speaking in her own
voice and repeatedly forgiving herself for her own self-betrayals.
Reflecting further, she discovered that her own inner masculine
was as fickle and uncommitted as she had perceived the outer mascu­
line to be. When she was working on a project, for example, she
would start off with great enthusiasm, but then lose interest and be
easily side-tracked. If doubts or questions were raised about her 141
And a Crone work, she would lose heart rather than take up the challenge. If she
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encountered difficulties, she would give up rather than try to sort
things out. "I have such difficulty penetrating to the heart of the
Them matter," she once said. In saying that, she realized that she was talk­
ing about her own uncommitted masculine.
The way unconscious dynamics operate and how they affect
our conscious life is clearly illustrated in the experience of Anne, a
thirty-eight-year-old teacher. Her work over a period of eleven
months shows how a woman who was locked in her head and alien­
ated from her feelings was released into her body by the Goddess
archetype manifesting in her dreams. At the time Anne came into
analysis, she had just returned to university to complete her doctorate
in English l iterature. H er friends had urged her to seek help for what
they thought was her inability to perceive situations correctly. She
had acquiesced, more to prove to herself and to her friends that
everything was all right than to find out what was wrong. The struc­
tured tests she was given showed nothing unusual, but the Rorschach
(which delves into unconscious dynamics) indicated that she was
using her intellect as a major defense. Everything in her life was
rationalized: there was no place in her awareness for feelings, needs,
affect. In addition, her profile showed loneliness, rage, and feelings
of incompetence. These, it seemed, were on the verge of breaking
through into consciousness, and to prevent them from doing so, she
was overincorporating her perceptions of what was going on around
her and intellectualizing them. So obsessive did her attempts at con­
trol become that she would often misperceive the situation and
thereby miss the point. Her friends were right-but she was not
ready to admit it.
Two months after her initial assessment, Anne had a brief
dream, which spoke to her in a way she could not ignore.
I am looking at these strange, inanimate animals shaped this way:

I feel them and inquire what they are called. I don't get an answer,
1 42 but I'm attracted to them and keep touching them. Their color is an
 off-white. In the next scene I have a large container, which I set down And a Crone
and begin emptying. It contains clothes, and a separator or divider
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between the top and the bottom of the container (like a cooler).
When I look down into it [the container], the strange animals that I Them
saw earlier are alive and, of course, I'm excited. I take them into my
hand and cuddle them. These shapes, in the bottom of the container,
are breathing.

When asked what the shapes looked like, Anne said, "Tear­
drops," and her tears began to flow. Her feelings were alive, but they
were buried and barely breathing under the weight of the personas
(clothes) she had been carrying around for such a long time. These
tears, these feelings, were "strange" to her, but there was great relief,
even joy, in acknowledging them. Often, when we get to the point
where we can no longer bear the constraints of a persona to which
we are enslaved, we are forced to surrender. The unconscious can
then begin to reveal to us what is missing, because we are ready to
look for it.
About a month later, Anne had another dream, which directed
her further in her longing to integrate her feelings into her life.

I'm standing more or less wrapped around a small black-haired, dark­

eyed female. Suddenly, she turns on me fiercely, extricates herself, and
orders me to move back and give her space. Her eyes are riveted on
me and her hands are strong as they push me back. I keep staring at
her as I step back. Then I turn around and see a crowd of p;eople
standing on the stairs behind me. "I can't move back or all these
people will fall backwards," I tell her. I stay put, and suddenly the
dark lady starts talking. She says she felt the other parts of my
body-they were solid-but she didn't feel my breasts. She begins
chatting in an animated but now friendly manner.

Having become aware of her undifferentiated feelings, the sad­

ness of all her repressed tears, Anne is now confronted with her
shadow self--a shadow that becomes separated out and therefore
recognizable. Having been repressed for so long, her shadow is fierce
and demanding, wanting to be recognized by Anne and given some
space. This fierce energy constellates and confronts the dreamer as
she is being pushed up the stairs by the crowd. All the undifferenti-" 1 43
And a Crone ated energy is pushing Anne up into the head. This is the old pattern
Shall Lead of trying to keep on top of things by solving them logically.
Anne's parents had come over from Eastern Europe. Her
Them mother had played the traditional role of taking care of everyone's
needs while denying her own. She was the silent and compliant part­
ner to Anne's father, a hard-working tradesman with a great deal of
ambition to get ahead materially. While Anne had adopted her
father's attitude of "getting ahead" and achieving, she had also inher­
ited from her mother the need to please others and be self-effacing.
Her religious beliefs, which were influenced by her mother, rein­
forced her need to serve others at the expense of her own happiness.
When we are locked into an ideal, it is difficult to give the shadow
side any room, not only because we do not want to acknowledge this
part of ourselves, but also because we fear letting other people down
by revealing to them our imperfections.
Anne was very energetic in her pursuits, both academic and
social. H er energy, however, was a drivenness in pursuit of an uncon­
scious ideal inherited from her parents. The dark woman tells her she
felt her body but not her breasts. The breast, the nurturing symbol, is
close to the heart chakra. The heart symbolizes the integration of
mind and body, of spirit and instinct, represented by the three chak­
ras below and the three chakras above. When energy is Bowing freely
between the chakras, the heart chakra symbolizes the movement of
love. When we love, it is no longer necessary to operate out of will
power, nor is it necessary to be driven by the need to be responsible
for others, or the need to achieve. What we do out of will power,
however noble, falls back into anger and loneliness, if our own legiti­
mate needs are not being met. The body becomes solid, rigid, con­
cretized in its efforts to serve the injunctions of the mind.
The body learns patterns of responding that become locked
into the musculature and become a concretized configuration of the
repressed or negative emotions. It was at this point that Anne agreed
it would probably be good for her to do some work with her body.
"[AJlthough a person may have conscious insight into the way a
complex cripples his or her action, if the body does not let go of the
conflict created through years of habitual tension, half the problem
is not solved and the former distorted pattern is quick to re-establish
itself." 1 4
1 44 Anne began to work, on a weekly basis, with a Toronto therJ-
pist, Beverly Stokes, who attempts to reeducate the body through the And a Crone
developmental processes and with experiential anatomy. Within a Shall Lead
month of starting to work with Beverly, Anne had a short dream that
showed that the energy was beginning to flow within her body. Them

My attention is drawn to an outdoor stage (like a pavilion). We are

celebrating. On the right is a solo performer, gracefully undulating
her body, and I'm really intrigued by her movements and want to
reach out to her. At the left of the stage are Chinese folk dancers
with silk banners and firecrackers. They are very colorful and loud,
and somewhat scary. Suddenly, the solo dancer comes closer and
becomes a waving, undulating, sky-blue silk banner, moving in and
out. I can see the thinness of the banner as it sways like waves moving
toward me.

Anne's work in repatterning her body stirred up different ener­

gies in both sides of her body. The right side is a dancer with undu­
lating wavelike motion who becomes a blue banner moving toward
the dream ego. The left side is also stirred up, but it is represented
by sharp, decisive movements punctuated with firecrackers. This kind
of energy is foreign to the dreamer, and is, therefore, a little frighten­
ing. The two energies are reminiscent of the fundamental wave/par­
ticle basis of reality as described in quantum physics. Both have "silk
banners," but each has its own special tempo and rhythm. At this
time it is the feminine (sky-blue) banner that attracts Anne, as it
reaches out like a wave, in a pattern of relationship. Subsequent
dreams showed that the release of the feminine was to be the route
by which Anne would eventually come to embrace the positive mas­
culine.
Two weeks later Anne came in very excited by two dreams she
had had on two consecutive nights. In the first dream, she met the
Black Goddess and experienced a release of energy in her unconscious
that was to be a turning point in her journey.

I am on a large blue-black-purple moor walking and stalking, a little

frightened, yet curious about my strange environment. Coming
toward me from a distance is a huge black figure, and as it gets closer
I see it is a woman with black aowing hair, black eyes, and long,
flowing black clothes. I stop and turn around to retreat and run as
fast as I can. However, when I turn I'm back facing her again. This 145
And a Crone happens at least twice (I felt like a swivel neck) and I'm facing her
again. This time I hear her say, "Come," and she takes me by the
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hand. We start walking, and suddenly I feel right in step with her, as
Them if we are gliding smoothly and very quickly. In front of us there
suddenly appears a beautiful, round, sparkling (jeweled?) house set
amid evergreen trees. We go up the stone pathway. The door opens
and I find myself in a magnificent, high-ceilinged room with a man­
dala on the floor and intricate but delicate markings on the walls
(Japanese, Chinese artwork?). I focus on the huge mandala-a very
intricate mosaic of figures and designs in vivid tangerine, gold, and
azure blue. I think it is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. As
I am staring at it, from its center a black ebony carving shoots up at
least 7 feet tall, continually changing its shape. I get closer to the
carving, mesmerized and wondering what it is, when suddenly an arm
extends from it to embrace me. Just as we are making a hand clasp,
it changes into flo wing gossamer-like material, with vivid brilliant
colors, gyrating in spiral form. Then I hear some music, soft with
exotic tones, which seems to keep the sculpture in motion. I sense
the sinuous rhythm and feel stirred inside. Spontaneously, I move in
slow motion (belly dancing?) toward it. Suddenly, I'm naked and
free. It has become water and I'm feeling cleansed and refreshed from
head to toe. Then I am wafted up and down and around, dancing in
the water flow. I start to laugh with glee, like a little child. It is so
exhilarating! Then I wake up.

At the beginning of the dream, Anne is wandering on a moor,

a desolate and frightening place. The desert, the moor, is a place of
aloneness, a place where the old, familiar patterns give way to the
unknown. This is the place of numinous experience; it is here that
the Black Goddess approaches the dreamer. This larger-than-life en­
ergy is frightening, and the dream ego wants to run from it. She is
afraid she will be overwhelmed by it. She turns in every direction,
but is always left facing the Goddess, who encompasses all points on
the circumference.
Finally, the dreamer follows the Goddess and is led by the hand
to the center, the heart of the feminine mysteries. The row1d, spar­
kling house represents the enclosure of sacred space within each indi­
vidual. The great Spanish mystic, Teresa of Avila, had a similar vision
of the interior castle as a round crystal structure within us containing
1 46 all the levels of consciousness. The house is surrounded by evergreen
trees, the regenerating principle of nature. On entering this magnifi­ And a Crone
cent structure (a symbol of the Self), Anne sees that the floor is a Shall Lead
brilliant, intricate mandala. The mandala, or circle, is a dominant
symbol in almost every culture and appears as a healing or unifying Them
symbol of the Self arising spontaneously from the depths of the
collective unconscious. It serves further as a container of the life
energy. From the center of the mandala, this life energy rises in the
shape of a black ebony carving that keeps changing shape.
This can be seen as the prima materia, the dark center of the
unconscious that rises up in the double container of the jeweled
house and the mandala. It is seven feet tall. Seven is the number of
the Great Mother. It suggests, as well, the kundalini energy rising up
the spinal column through the seven chakras.
Moving into the center, experiencing the outpouring of uncon­
scious energy requires a strong container, a safe place, a mandala.
This energy reaches out to the dreamer, who has temporarily become
mesmerized by it. Suddenly, the ebony transforms into a flow of
brilliantly colored gossamer-like material, kept in shape by music.
Allowing one's energy to flow from the depths of the unconscious
opens the body to new vibrational possibilities, safe within the reso­
nating womb.
Finally, the column turns into a fountain of water. The dreamer
finds herself naked, totally herself, and dancing in its clear, refreshing
spray. She is vulnerable, but unencumbered. This is a kind of bap­
tism, a restoring of the original wholeness. She goes around and up
and down, the motion resembling the quaternity within the circle.
The glee of this experience is that of the reborn child, the spontane­
ous new life within her.
Her initiation by the Goddess into the feminine mystery leads
Anne to the navel of existence. The dark wood becomes the crystal
fountain. The energy rising from the roots of existence is trans­
formed from the dark matter of the Great Mother to the translucent
matter of the Goddess. "Water is the source of all potentialities in
existence . . . associated with birth, the feminine principle . . . Water
is the liquid counterpart of light." 15 As such it is connected with the
transformation of matter. At a more archetypal level this dream
points to the Fountain of Life that rises from the root of the Tree of
Life in the center of Paradise. To be open to this inner fountain is
to be transformed by its life-giving water. 1 47
And a Crone This dream heralds the death of the old life and a rebirth to
Shall Lead new possibilities. The Black Goddess leads the dreamer into a safe
container, to the place of wholeness within herself. Mandalas, as Jung
Them saw them, are birth places, and in this dream, the transformation of
the energy erupting from the center, within herself, led Anne to a
place of freedom and spontaneity.
The theme of this dream was counterpointed by a very short
dream Anne had the following night.

I am swimming/ floundering in water with strange, ugly animals

(crocodiles) surrounding me. Whichever way I try to get out or bide
under the water they are there just w,aiting. Suddenly I start scream­
ing, " Eat me, just eat me! I don't ca�e! Come on, eat me!" Then the
crocodiles change into neon-tetra tiny tropical fish (rainbow colored)
and swim in and around me and I start to catch them. There are
thousands of them all around. The sun is reflecting off them with
brilliant, dazzling color! I am hugging them, trying to catch an armful
as I come up out of the water.

This dream clarifies what happens m the unconsoous when

blocks are removed from energy channels in the body. It is an exam­
ple of what Jung calls enantiodromia, the reversal of a psychic situation.
If we think of a pendulum swinging naturally back and forth between
the poles, action and reaction, we can see it suddenly overstimulated
and going instantly over the top from one energy into the other.
Such a rapid shift is common in children or in adults when they are
drunk or overtired. It also happens when new energy fields are
opened: as the energy climbs to new heights of joy on one side, it
suddenly flips into new depths of terror on the other.
In this dream, the crocodiles of the chthonic mother are not
about to let the dream ego escape. They have been concretized in her
body for a long time. No matter how she twists and turns, there is
no way out. Then-and here her ego strength is crucial-she con­
fi�onts them, "Come on, eat me!" This encounter provides an interest­
ing contrast to the earlier dream, in which she tried to elude the great
dark figure. That struggle ended with a very different "come." In
both impasses, the dream ego is strong enough to surrender. Far from
a passive giving up, this is an active choice involving huge courage in
1 48 the face of a supernatural challenge. It goes beyond fear to "Thy will
be done." Here is where transformation happens in the unconscious.
The menacing energy that pulls toward death is suddenly turned into
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energy vibrant with light. The Death Goddess shifts into Life God­
dess. The body is no longer concretized in fear. Transformation hap­ Them
pens at the cellular level, as if the very cells of the body are loosened
from the grip of fear and explode into vibrant multi-colored carriers
of life.
A few nights later Anne had a short, humorous dream that
points to the release of the kundalini energy into the same rainbow
color of the fish.

I'm standing in line with a large empty bag, waiting for a loaf of
bread to be put in. I'm in the middle of the line (about 20th). Finally,
when it is my turn, a man says, "Close your eyes and don't open them
until you are out of the building." When I finally look into the bag,
I discover a large snake (3 feet long) coiled at the bottom and start
to scream. As I do, I see the snake looking at me benevolently. I pick
it up and begin to pull the skin off from the rear, as one would a
stocking. Underneath its skin are rainbow colors (like those of the
neon-tetra tropical fish). Suddenly, the snake winks its left eye and
says, "Thank you, thank you!"

Anne was expecting an everyday loaf of bread; she received a

gift she could not have chosen, nor asked for. This one can change
her life. The Goddess Isis is sometimes depicted as a coiled snake in
the bottom of a basket. The snake shedding its skin is a universal
symbol of rebirth and regeneration. The coiled snake the dreamer
finds is her own repressed sexual/ spiritual energy. On seeing it, she
panics, but then realizes it is benevolent and wants to be released.
The similarity in the color of the snake and the tropical fish points
again to the rainbow connection between heaven and earth. The
image makes a further connection between the transformation at a
cellular level within the body and the transformation of the core of
that energy in the serpent/spinal cord of the dreamer.
In Antony and Cleopatra, the same image, a snake coiled in the
bottom of a basket, appears as the Goddess Isis, Death Goddess of
Rebirth. Rising like Isis herself to her full archetypal stature, Cleopa­
tra is determined to die in order to be united eternally with Antony.
As the serpent bites her breast, it confers its sting of immortality.
" Husband, I come! " she cries, 149
And a Crone Now to that name my courage prove my title!
Shall Lead I am fire and air; my other elements
I give to baser life.16
Them
Free at last of the chthonic crocodile that sleeps in the ooze of the
Nile, Cleopatra awakens in death to her full Isis stature.
Anne's release from entrapment in the chthonic Mother is fur­
ther elucidated by a series of dreams she had in a single night about
three weeks later.

I am rushing down the stairs of a cathedral (dark wood paneling). I

am searching for someone. Suddenly, I see my mother sitting with a
babushka tied around her head. She looks at me; I look at her sur­
prised. We do not communicate because I'm still searching.

I am outside in a large field. I am conscious of the brightness and the

blue sky. I am thinking of flying kites when almost in the same
moment the sky seems filled with question marks-large red question
marks.

The question marks begin gliding down toward me. The first one, as
it comes to me, becomes my mother, holding a brightly colored um­
brella. She is suspended a little off the ground and beckons me to her.
She hands me a small transparent box, in which I can see butterflies. I
open the box, and at least six or seven butterflies fly out and circle
me. I keep turning north and south. Just as quickly, another question
mark comes down. It becomes a circus (midway) with a large Ferris
wheel. I am a bit apprehensive to get on it because I sense it is
almost toy-like-very plasticky and fragile. However, I am somehow
transported to it; I find myself sitting in it. It seems comfortable and
secure. It starts moving. At different moments I feel the movement
up and then down-my feet even touching the ground, and then
going up again. It is a very unusual sensation. I feel my whole body
one with the Ferris wheel. The dream seems to go on all night, with
the question marks continually coming to me. Later, I am in a tall,
transparent building with a huge skylight. Still later, I am very small,
looking upward at a very bright blue sky and trying to get out of a
deep, stark space with steps and steps, climbing endlessly upwards.
There is no light. I am counting the steps. Another question mark
comes toward me. It is a woman. She seems to be ten feet tall with a
1 50 flowing purple gown and a big smile on her face. I begin to shout;
 ''I'm not you, I'm ME-ME! Do you understand? I'm strong too!" And a Crone
Suddenly, she embraces me. I wake up and start to cry.
Shall Lead

These dreams express the downward and upward movement Them

between the opposites of the unconscious and consciousness that are
brought into what Jung called the circumambulatio, the circular motion
that connects all things to the center. Moving down into the old
cathedral, Anne encounters her mother wearing a babushb, for her
an image of the repressed feminine. This, however, is not what the
dreamer is looking for. Consciously, she has rejected this role and
sought for her answers in the intellect, in the sky. She is thinking
about flying a kite-in this instance, a kind of undisciplined reason­
ing, a going with the wind. In real life, this is what Anne was getting
into and what brought her into analysis. The answers she had pre­
viously sought become question marks, burning red questions that
now approach her.
The first question is around the mother-her own personal
mother, but also the mother complex. As the question mark comes
down out of the sky toward her, she recognizes it is her mother, who
now offers her a transparent box containing butterflies. Anne takes
the box and releases the butterflies. The butterfly symbolizes the soul
in its release from unconscious matter. This dream is similar to that
of another woman, whose mother was actually dying. The dream ego
holds her mother in her arms and does not want to let her go. The
old mother (the forces of inertia in the dreamer's body) wants to die.
Letting go of those old patterns, however, would mean the dreamer
would have to make changes in her conscious life. The mother gives
her a gold butterfly, with the words, "Butterflies are free." Then the
old mother dies. Subjectively, this dream, like Anne's, speaks of mat­
ter (mother) wanting to become conscious. Objectively, both dreams
suggest release from matter.
The second question mark becomes a large Ferris wheel. With
some trepidation, the dreamer is transported into the round of life,
the circumambulatio. Jung saw this circular movement as the marking
off of the sacred precinct, as fixation and concentration. "Action is
reversed into non-action; everything peripheral is subordinated to the
command of the centre . . . . Psychologically, this circulation would
be the 'movement in a circle around oneself' so that all sides of the
personality become involved." 1 7 All the light and dark forces, the 151
And a Crone opposites, in the personality are brought into play within the whole­
Shall Lead ness of the circle.
The later segments of the dream return once again to the up­
The111 ward/downward task of reconciliation of the opposites. The
dreamer is in a tall transparent building, but this is balanced by her
painstaking climb upward from the depths of the dark unconscious,
step by step.
The last burning question that comes to the dreamer concerns
the Goddess herself This is the energy that appears larger than life,
and she is clothed in the spiritual color, purple. Faced with this
enormous energy, the dreamer asserts her own individuality. On the
Ferris wheel, all the opposites of Anne's personality were gathered
together and finally in this dream she is able to assert her own whole­
ness, her own integrity. I am ME! I belong to myself and that is more
important than anything else. It is crucial to reach this stage from an
ego standpoint, because until we belong to ourselves we cannot enter
into a meaningful relationship with the archetypal energy. When
Anne can claim her own uniqueness, then the Goddess rejoices and
embraces her. It is important to remember that dreams give us inuges
that point in the direction of wholeness. The unconscious moves
ahead of consciousness. In these dreams, for example, Anne is being
given guidance toward her own totality. Conscious action may come
somewhat later.
Two weeks later, Anne encountered the Black Goddess again.

I meet a very tall, graceful, black lady with a black dog under her
arm. She takes me by the hand and we glide to a small stand by the
side of the road. On a table, there are many pairs of hands-long
fingered, shon and stubby, tanned, short-nailed, manicured-every
possible kind is there. I am mesmerized for a few moments. Suddenly,
a pair of big, warm hands reaches out and takes hold of my hands-at
first gently, then firmly-and begins to massage them very slowly and
carefully. I feel some pain and cry out-also an energy going through
me. I start laughing and begin to reciprocate and massage the other
hands. Then I realize that all these hands are mine.

This dream recalls the fairy tale The Handless Maiden. Through a
tragic relationship with her father, the maiden has lost her hands, her
1 52 capacity to take hold of reality. That story is about the feminine
refinding her connection to life through her hands. 18 Anne does have And a G·one
hands in the dream, but they need to be massaged. Her ability to Shall Lead
receive life, to create, to give, lacks real energy, lacks connection to
the instinctual depths. All the possibilities, represented by the other Them
hands, are cut off when a person is out of touch with the source of
energy. Slowly and carefully, the energy must be massaged back into
the hands in order for us to take hold of life. Physically and psycho­
logically, this is a painful process. As Clarissa Pinkola-Estes puts it,
"As we practice the deep, instinctive knowing about all manner of
things we are learning over a lifetime, our own hands return to us,
the hands of our womanhood." 1 9 We are able to grasp life with all
its polarities and possibilities, to give as well as receive. This gather­
ing together of all the possibilities lies at the core of Goddess energy.
In the weeks that followed, through analysis and body work
Anne "massaged" the energy back into her hands, her body, her psy­
che. She began to feel the energy in her body, to sense what increased
her energy and what drained it. As this energy became more differen­
tiated, she learned what fed her soul and what caused it to shrink
into a protective cover. A dream she had about eight weeks later
makes this "body learning" conscious.

I am scuba diving in the Mediterranean (wearing all the gear-wet

suit, snorkel, flippers, and tank). Suddenly, I am stripped of all my
gear and left naked without breathing support. I panic. Then I take a
deep breath and it seems ail right. I am swimming natHrally as if at the
water's surface. Yet, I'm under the sea observing coral and again the
neon-tetra fish are teeming around me. I find myself floating and
frolicking, laughing and carefree. Some dolphins come along and one
comes under me. I ride on its back through the water. I feel free and
unencumbered, and breathe normally.

In this dream, all the "gear," all the defenses are stripped away.
Suddenly feeling vulnerable, without all the patterns of defense, is
cause for panic. Walls not only keep others out, but keep us in. Yet,
we can afford to tear down those walls only if we are willing to
surrender to a sense of connectedness deep within ourselves. There
is a way in which we create our own reality. Our own inner dynamics
are played out in the people and situations that constellate around
us. When we come to a place of openness and connectedness within 1 53
And a Crone ourselves, our reality without becomes more open and connected.
Shall Lead Trust begins to emerge-trust in ourselves and trust in the universe.
This is not naivete, but an undefensive posture toward life. It is
Them surrendering to the journey that is uniquely ours.
In the dream, Anne begins to breathe deeply, to receive spirit
(the breath of life), to let it move within her. She can swim naturally
now, not afraid of the unconscious. She merely observes its contents.
Instead of whales or devouring crocodiles waiting to consume her,
the neon-tetra fish, the tiny vibrant cells, of her earlier dream sur­
round her. Dolphins, these extraordinarily sensitive denizens of the
deep, symbolize the psychopomps, or guides in the unconscious. She
is buoyed up and rides through the waves, guided now by the natural
forces of her unconscious.
It was now nine months since Anne had come to see me and I
gave her the Rorschach test once more-something I usually do not
do. However, I was so struck by the force of her dreams in releasing
emotional content and her openness to the process that I was curious
to see what the results might be. The results showed a significant
drop in the intellectualization score. This score represents a major
way in which the individual organizes his or her perceptions of the
world. Intellectualization is quite resistant to change, no matter what
the intervention. For Anne, i ntellectualization had been part of a
defensive posture. In letting go of her need to control through ratio­
nal means, her emotions began to surface. Rage and loneliness be­
came much more evident. With the surfacing of these emotions, her
psychic discomfort began to rise. Also, Anne's perception had now
moved from external scanning to internal scanning. Here too, she
had had a defensive posture toward the world, being overly alert to
what was happening "out there." Now she was able to look more for
the answers, the cues, within herself. She was now ready to begin
working gradually toward achieving an external/internal balance.
I did not share with Anne at the time the "objective" affirma­
tion that she was perceiving and experiencing the world in a different
way. I did not want to influence the process. The need to release the
emotional content within her body, to focus this energy and give it
an outward, creative expression still remained.
Over the next few months, Anne continued to integrate the
1 54 polarities between her instinct and her intellect, between body and
mind. This integration of spirit and instinct was manifested 111 a And a Crone
dream she had shortly after the Rorschach testing. Shall Lead

I'm in a large assembly room participating with others in a worship Them

service. A woman dressed in yellow/ green plaid, with hair of the
same colors (yellow and green), walks up the stairs to a stage to sing
a solo. I'm very much taken with this golden / green hair and how it
is part of her patterned dress. She is very graceful. She turns toward
the audience at the left and front and sings in a most lic1uid, yet
strong and clear voice. I'm really struck that she can sing so well.
Suddenly, I hear an authoritative voice (perhaps that of a bishop)
telling us to remove the pornographic posters from the walls, because
they are offensive and scandalous to the students. I happen to see one
of the posters at the back-a beautiful form of a human body. I
respond, "This is not pornographic. This is a beautiful human body!"

The green and gold plaid hair and dress symbolize the integra­
tion of the natural with the spiritual. With this integration, the femi­
nine finds her voice, a voice that allows her to speak out against the
patriarchal restrictions that have become part of her psyche. Having
moved away from a position that valued achievement and the superi­
ority of the mind above all else, Anne was now able to celebrate her
body in its own natural beauty.
Anne's integration of body and mind continued through a
series of dreams in which she was mountain climbing in the Alps in
the company of three other women. The climb, with its difficulty, its
exhilaration, its drudgery, and its demands for conscious awareness
at each step, was to become a metaphor for her life. Sometimes, she
would wonder, "What am I doing here? Why am I climbing?" At
the same time, she knew she could never go back to living uncon­
sciously. In one dream she had the experience of thinking to herself,
"This moment is very special. I feel and know I'm in communion
with myself, with nature, and with the Divine."
When the Virgin energy begins to mature, new masculine ener­
gies begin to appear in the dreams. The old demanding, authoritative,
judgmental father may be hovering somewhere in the background,
but the presence of the totally new masculine figures attests to differ­
ent energies. In a later dream, Anne encounters a man in a lab coat,
who wants her to really hear her own voice. She described the en-
counter thus: 1 55
And a Crone He picks up a small round box with VOICE written on it. He presses
it gently, and I begin to hear my voice. Qualities that I recognize give
Shall Lead
way to a deep, very auid resonance, a timber that I have heard in an
Them opera singer-very different. I am struck by it and begin to question
how and where he got my sound. He counters, "Do you want to go
on hearing this inside of you?" "Of course!" I exclaim, and then quip,
" How are you going w do it? Are you going to stick it [the boxJ in
my throat?" " No," he says quietly, "I want you to drink this slowly."
He hands me a glass of clear liquid (water). "And it's yours." I take
the glass and begin drinking. At first it is like drinking fi re. It sears
my throat and gullet, and I feel it going down quite deep, but I
don't-can't-stop until the glass is empty. Then, I put my arms out
in a questioning gesture, "So?" I begin to feel a change. I try to speak
naturally and my voice sounds the same, but I can hear the other
voice, the deep auidity inside of me. "Do I have to pay you, or what?
Who are you?" I ask. He just smiles with his eyes and shakes his
head-no-and continues looking at me. I wake up.

Anne, like many of us, had shut down her creative expression.
Her feelings were repressed in her belly, and her mind was working
overtime to keep the world in order. Between the two lay-quite
literally-a stone in her throat. One reason she was late starting her
analysis was that she was diagnosed with a tumor in her throat. Al­
though it was biopsied and found to be benign, it was beginning to
interfere with her breathing. Since she did not want to interrupt her
sabbatical year, the operation was postponed until May, when classes
were over. By that strange law of "coincidence," Anne had this dream
in April. When the doctors were preparing to operate the following
month, the tumor was no longer there. If, as Pythagoras once said,
"a stone is frozen music," then Anne had finally learned how to sing.
What it means to hear one's true voice is poignantly conveyed
in a poem by David Whyte entitled The Fire in the Sor:g.

The mouth opens

and fills the air
with its vibrant shape

until the air

and the mouth
1 56 become one shape.
 And the first word, And a Crone
your own word, Shall Lead
spoken from that fire
Them
surprises, burns,
gneves you now
because
you made that pact
with a dark presence
in your life.
He said, " If you only
stop singing
I'll make you safe."
And he repeated the line,
knowing you would hear
'Til make you safe"
as the comforting
sound of a door
closed on the fear at last,
but his darkness crept
under your tongue
and became the dim
cave where
you sheltered
and you grew
in that small place
too frightened to remember
the songs of the world,
its impossible notes,
and the sweet joy
that flew out the door
of your wild mouth
as you spoke.20

The mystery of our voice lies in the unique vibrational patterns

each of us has. The universe itself is ultimately a pattern of vibration. 1 57
And a Crone According to science, "the music of the spheres" can be taken liter­
Shall Lead ally. This music can resonate through us, but too often we are
blocked. The spirit cannot move within us or express itself through
Them us. In this dream, the masculine spirit appears in modern guise-a
man in a lab coat-but his gift, the treasure in the box, is priceless­
her own voice, "the deep fluidity inside of me."
Two nights later, the same masculine energy reappeared, this
time with a different gift.

I'm back at the lab and the same man [the one in the lab coatJ asks
me if l would like a "new skin." "Sure!" I reply. 'Til paint your body
from head to toe with this purple maximized concentrate," he in­
forms me. Before I know it I am standing naked with a purple body.
At first I laugh, but then I get frightened about what is happening to
me. As in the other dream, he responds with "smiling eyes" that keep
watching me. I look again at my body. My skin is clear and soft, like
a baby's. I put my hands over my eyes and dance around. I cannot
believe this is happening to me.

Symbolically, to receive a new skin is to be reborn. H ere, the

dreamer is painted in purple, the color of sovereignty, of the mantle
of divinity. The result is a new spiritual body. New wine poured into
an old wine skin will cause it to burst. The inner work Anne had
been doing in releasing the light in matter required a new container.
The light within, the growing consciousness, required a new body, a
subtle body, to contain the energy.
The concept of the subtle body draws on an ancient tradition.
"The subtle body denies neither psyche nor soma, but brings them
together in a tertium non datur, a third which holds the physical and
psychic tensions and acts as a catalyst releasing energy to both
sides."2 1
If we think of the masculine/feminine trinities within, or of
the judgment of Maat with the balance between the lower and upper
chakras, or of the spiraling up and down in Anna's mandala dream,
or of Sarah's journey, we get a sense of what it means to bring the
psychic and physical bodies into balance. This can happen only in a
body that has a greatly enhanced awareness and sensitivity. The body
now speaks, as it were, and we are well advised to listen to its voice.
1 58 "Once the subtle body begins to become conscious, it cannot be
treated as if it did not exist; severe physical and/ or psychic symp­ And a Crone
toms will erupt if it is disregarded. The laws governing the subtle Shall Lead
body have to be recognized, usually requiring radical changes in un­
conscious eating and drinking habits, breathing, sexuality, etc."22 If a Them
person goes back to the enslavement of patriarchal thinking, the new
body will not be able to endure.
In a later dream, Anne's own creative masculinity has found the
strength to separate itself from the tyranny of reason and, at the same
time, remain connected with the head (intellect, spirit) in a happy,
healthy relationship. The setting suggests that joy in the body has
contributed to this healing.

I'm at an assembly and sitting behind a man I think I know. I lean

close to his ear and whisper, "Hello." When he turns around, how­
ever, and looks straight into my eyes, I realize he is a total stranger. I
look on either side to the folks there, but I'm drawn back to the gaze
of this man ahead of me. Later, I am with this man in an exercise
room, ready for some body movement. He takes his head off and
puts it on the floor, and begins dancing and leaping like Zorba the
Greek! The head on the floor is laughing at him. I'm pulled into the
dance of life.

The stranger is a new masculine energy-one that Anne has

never encountered before, but now meets face to face. This is an
energy that can consciously lay aside the purely rational and enter
into life, body and soul. It can laugh at itself. It is a kind of wild­
man energy that many women find irresistibleP
Separation from a part of the body with all that the part sym­
bolizes is an old theme in mythology. In chapter I , we encountered
Black Kali with the severed head in her hand. To cut off the head of
patriarchy within us is to cut off the power drives-the injunctions,
the rules, false reasonings, false values that separate us from our real­
ity and take our voice away.
This dream ends with Anne being pulled into the dance of life.
Here the opposites are no longer in opposition. Mind and body have
a joyful appreciation of each other. Together, masculine and feminine
are delighting in the intensity of the flames. Together they are creat­
ing subtle body.
As the end of Jul y drew near and Anne's sabbatical was coming 159
And a Crone to a close, I began to wonder how her unconscious would handle this
Shall Lead event and what her last dream would tell us. The night before her
final session, Anne had two short dreams.
Them
I'm just walking naked and carefree along the beach aware of the
water and the land.

I'm playing chess with "the devil." We are locked in an intense

"showdown." Suddenly, a cat jumps up on the table and guides my
hand to the right move. I sit back and say, "Checkmate."

To walk naked along the seashore, aware of both the water and
the land, is to live without defenses, trusting in the inner rhythm of
life, balanced between the conscious and the unconscious energies.
Anne is aware of both the unconscious aspects of her life (the water)
and the conscious aspects (the land). Living in the awareness of both
realities bestows a great freedom-freedom from the fear of being
caught off-guard by the conscious world and of being overwhelmed
by the unconscious.
Fear is the realm of the devil. In the second half of the dream,
all the negative forces of the unconscious become locked in a deadly
showdown with the dreamer. Such a showdown often occurs in the
process, particularly when great progress has been made in dealing
with the shadow. The deepest point of regression, in this dream "the
devil," gathers all its force for one final attempt to take the dream
ego out of consciousness. Fear constellates in the unconscious, with
all its seductive moves, whisperings, and mocking laughter.
In the game of chess, a player can call "checkmate" when the
opponent's king is in check, unable to release himself The king' s
defeat brings the game to an end. Patriarchal values are overcome.
Only a Crone would dare to play such a game with "the devil," and
only a Crone would so easily trust her feminine instinct (cat) in such
a "showdown." Together, cat and Crone defeat the dark side of the
Father in the royal game of life.
Anne's analysis had lasted only eleven months-a relatively
short time. There was still much to do, much to be incarnated into
her lived reality. The dreams told us where the energy wanted to go.
They gave us an affirmation of a greater, more meaningful reality-
1 60 one that Anne had already begun to experience in her own subtle body.
She had become open and attentive to the process she was in. The And a Crone
time she had for this stage of her journey was, however, limited by Shall Lead
her outward reality-something her unconscious was aware of. This
awareness on the part of the unconscious is often evident in working Them
with people who have a terminal illness. The individuation process
is speeded up, as it were. Time becomes concentrated.
Although Anne's analysis was short, she left with a genuine
sense of her own womanhood. Through her dreams, she had found
her own Virgin strength. In spite of fear and anger, she had separated
herself out from the archaic Mother and patriarchal Father. She had
found a new mother in the Goddess figure who came to guide her
and teach her how to cherish herself H er new masculine energies
were released to lead her into areas of herself she knew nothing of.
Her Crone strength allowed her to relate to the archetype without
identifying with it. Her 'Tm me!" was free and spontaneous. Anne
learned to dance in the flames and to hear the sweet joy of her wild
mouth as she spoke.
Anne continued her journey in an unexpected way. She received
a request to teach and work among the native Mayan population in
the mountains of a Central American country. Anne's eyes would
shine and dance thinking about it. Her doctoral thesis was not fin­
ished, but it could wait. She was going to a people who lived in
harmony with nature, whose culture was rich in color and symbolism.
"Maybe," said Anne, "they will help me to understand more deeply
what it means to live from the heart."

/6/
 The Rode tn the Fire 5

Some day, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides, ,.
and gravity, we will harness for God the energies of love.
And then, for the second time in the history of the world,
humankind will have discovered fire.
-PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN

The Shalom of the Holy; the disclosure of the gracious

Shekinah; Divine Wisdom; the empowering Matrix; She, in
whom we live and move and have our being-She comes;
She is here!
-RosEMARY RADFORD R u ETHER

She's the joy of the earth,

She's the warmth of the sun,
Dark of the night and the depths of the sea.
She's the brilliance of thought,
She's the sweetness of breath,
She's the love that's forever-Amen.

You'd better believe she's alive

She's alive, she's alive, she's alive
And she lives in my heart
Hallelujah she lives in my heart.
-"Song of Sophia"
CATHY LEE FARLEY
The Rose
in the Fire

And all shall be well and

All manner of things shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

This is the final image in T. S. Eliot's Four Q:-tartets. Throughout the

poem, as in musical quartets, various themes have been introduced,
developed with many variations in major and minor keys, woven and
interwoven to reveal each nuance of tone. The rose and the fire and
the dance are three of the major themes that weave the Four Q:-tartets
together. The "lotus rose," as Eliot first refers to it, suggests the soul
flower of India, its roots firmly established in the mud, its stem
reaching through the water to support the exquisite blossom opening
to the sun-creation opening herself to consciousness.
For us in the Western world, the rose dances with a similar
soul value. Delicate, sensitive, vulnerable, the rose with its thorns
carries images of intense passion, passion that throws us into the fires
of life that "[b Jreak, blow, burn, and make [usJ new." l While it
burns in the fires of life, it is not consumed. Throughout the poem,
fire has danced its presence as a purifier, destroyer, creator. Having
moved through the paradoxes of descent and ascent, movement and
stillness, death and rebirth, agony and triumph, flesh and spirit, in
the final magnificent chord of the poem, Eliot recognizes that nature
and spirit, flame and flower, are one.
The rose in the fire symbolizes the daily rouJ!d of human pas­
sion intersected by the divine, so that what could be meaningless
suffering is transformed into soulmaking. Those of us who are con­
scious at all have experienced moments when the personal has been
164 intersected by the archetypal, time intersected by the timeless: one
 note m an aria from Norma, one triumphant cry from a newborn The Rose
baby, one flash of ecstasy in lovemaking, one final breath in one we in the Fire
love. Those moments are moments of NOW. They are not moments
bound to the past, moments in which we experience ourselves as
passive victims of our own fate. Nor are they moments bound to a
future that will never come. They are moments in which the soul IS,
present tense, NOW, dancing in the flames.
In such moments, matter is seen not merely with the natural
eye, but is perceived with the inner eye. Perception requires imagina­
tion and creativity and refl e ction. When matter is perceived, the soul
has created an image. The moment of perceiving concrete reality as
an i nner reality, as a soul-image, is a timeless moment, when the
mundane meets the divine. This is the process of soulmaking. For
example, an older woman is saying a last good-bye to her young
lover. Her hand drops almost imperceptibly. An observer may
scarcely be aware of the hand dropping, but if one perceives with
soul, that simple gesture may provide an image of the story of her
life. And the soul will hear her soul. "I have not been killed," i t
silently shouts. "I won't b e killed. Here I am. I have a song t o sing,
a life to live. Hear me, see me, love me."
What has this to do with the Goddess? What has she to do
with transforming meaningless suffering into soul-making? Tradi­
tionally, the individual soul has been thought of as feminine in men
and women. Matter, too, is thought of as feminine. Spiritual disci­
plines were meant to guide the soul on i ts path through creation to
consciousness, creation as the ground for consciousness, earth open­
ing herself to sun.
On the journey, individuals recognize their_animal passion and,
like children, tend to live it out. However, raw instinct tends to
become more raw. Society would be anarchy without personal disci­
pline. Feminine consciousness is the transformative energy that can
contain the energies of matter and, through the fire of love, connect
them to the energies of soul.
To enter the NOW of the soul is to perceive an image. To see,
hear, smell, feel NOW. To enter that image is to stop dwelling in the
past or the future and to enter the world of metaphor, the creative
moment. "One who cannot leave himself behind on the threshold of
the moment and forget the past, who cannot stand on a single point,
like a goddess of victory, without fear or giddiness, does not know /65
The Rose what happiness is, and, worse still, will never know what happiness
in the Fire is," writes Nietzsche in "The Use and Abuse of History."2
Jung talks about that single point in his essay "On the Nature
of the Psyche":

Since psyche and matter are contained in one and the same world,
and moreover are in continuous contact with one another and ulti­
mately rest on irrepresentable, transcendental factors, it is not only
possible, but fairly probable even, that psyche and matter are two
different aspects of one and the same thing . . . . Our present knowl­
edge does not allow us to do much more than compare the relation
of the psychic to the material world with two cones, whose apices,
meeting in a point without extension-a real zero-point-touch and
do not touch.3

This essay was published in I 947 and further revised in I 954.

Much has happened in the world of science in the past thirty-five
years, much that is validating Jung's concepts, much that is making
the connection between the instinctual images and the dynamism of
the instincts more available as empirical data. One analysand, for
example, drew a picture of a ferocious black bird nesting on the top
of a stunted tree. " It's my mother," she said, "sitting on my sexual­
ity." A few months later, she painted the same Y -shaped tree with an
ugly red and purple hand at the junction of the Y. Both of us had
ominous feelings about that foreign hand, so she went to a gynecolo­
gist, who at first told her there was no problem. However, when he
did an ultrasound examination, he was astonished that she had sus­
pected cancer at such an early stage. If we can perceive the inner
image of the physical illness, the soul will exercise its own dynamism
in the illness. The images it paints are often validated by the finely
tuned machines now available to modern medicine.
Another woman, suffering from chronic fatigue, depression,
fitful sleep, and breathlessness, drew a picture of her body as she
experienced it, after a dream about a black spider. Systematically, the
spider moved up, down, around, and through her body, making a
solid mass of threads; this was not a healthy web, but the thready
mass of a thoroughly psychotic spider. Her lungs, kidneys, bowels,
were enmeshed. When the results of her tests returned, she discov-
1 66 ered she had a candida infection, a yeast overgrowth sometimes asso-
ciated with a breakdown of the immune system. Her image had The Rose
revealed the dis-ease in her own matter. The Goddess is that energy in the Fire
in us that transforms matter into consciousness.
Another example of technology revealing the dynamism of in­
stinct is the record which the computerized blood pressure machine
gives of the rate and blood pressure of a breaking heart. James Lynch,
in his book The Language cif the Heart, gives convincing data concerning
the factors implicated in the development of hypertension, migraine
headaches, and heart failure. Patients with these disorders typically
show virtually no emotion while telling their sad stories; fundamen­
tally they are deaf to the language their bodies speak.
One such patient, a psychiatrist, Henry, suffered from hyper­
tension and took large doses of an antihypertensive medication. In a
controlled monotone, he told about his mother's death when he was
twelve. "Funny, I don't even remember crying at that time," he said.
During the telling of his story, his blood pressure had risen fiom an
almost normal 1 55/90 to 225 / 1 30. In order to lower his blood
pressure, Lynch asked him to breathe deeply, and shifted the conver­
sation to Henry's wife, who had been l istening. She agreed to have
her cardiovascular reactions monitored. She and her physician-hus­
band were shocked to find that her heart rate was around 1 20 beats
per minute and her blood pressure was elevated to 1 65/100. Later
in the day, she dropped her calm persona and began to sob: "I don't
want him to die. I don't want him to die." Her heartbeat pounded
at I 65 beats per minute. Her blood pressure rose to hypertensive
ranges. Lynch concludes, " Each . . . saw the links between his or her
blood pressure and the painful memories of love lost in childhood.
But, most of all, each began to look beyond the surface calm of the
other's body, and to pay attention to the meaning of its pained and
caring internal dialogue. Henry and Louise's bodies had revolted be­
cause neither was listening to or understanding the other's hidden
communications, in part because neither could tolerate the other's
suffering."4
One might wonder why all analysts do not have one of these
computerized machines in their offices. Surely it could give analy­
sands and analysts an instant view into the psyche, when someone
quietly says, "Because I expect nothing, I am never disappointed," or
"How often can your heart break?" or " Life is for other people. I am
fat." Behind the controlling mask, the soul yearns to speak its agony 167
The Rose even through a computer. However, there is an inner computer far
in the Fi1·e more sensitive than any machine. The soul knows how to compute
its . own destiny and, if it is given a chance, how to achieve it.
A few of the conclusions reached by the medical research team
as described in Lynch's book :1re worth careful consideration. These
conclusions have to do with psychosomatic disorders, not illness
caused by other factors. They are factually correct, but they do not
take into consideration the soul of the individual. For those of us
who believe that many illnesses are a manifestation of soul suffering,
these conclusions are alarming, because they leave no room for dream
imagery, not only as the healing power between conscious and un­
conscious, but as a guide to renewed creativity and new life.

• Psychosomatic disorders frequently are associated with unre­

solved emotional conflicts outside the patient's awareness.
• Supportive therapy that involves a great deal of re:1ssurance
can bring blood pressure down from dangerously h igh levels
but cannot eliminate hypertensi on.
• In virtually every study, the current interpersonal conflicts
could be traced back to emotional conflicts in childhood.
• Psychosomatic patients who have difficulty expressing their
feelings are "emotional illiterates." Such patients have so suc­
cessfully buried their emotional problems in their bodies that
they no longer have any capacity for insight.
• Patients [who have no words to describe their feelingsJ dem­
onstrate a conspicuous absence of fantasy and dreams. Their
mental activity is dominated by concrete detail utterly devoid
of unconscious f.m tasies. They do not realize they cannot
identify their own feelings. They use words like love, hate, jeal­
ousy, rationally but have never experienced them. This discon­
nectedness between language and emotion stems from a lack
of some crucial experience pertaining to their birth. These
patients are "super adjusted to reality" but beyond their su­
perficial impression of superb functioning, one discovers a
sterility of ideas and severe impoverishment of imagination.

These conclusions are based on studies of stress-linked medical

1 68 disorders.5 From a psychic point of view, I would understand the
"sterility of ideas and severe impoverishment of imagination" rather The Rose
differently. Stress is a crucial factor in disturbed sleep patterns, pat­ in the Fire
terns that do not allow the person to drop into deep sleep. This lack
of deep (REM) sleep may be related to the "conspicuous absence of
fantasy and dreams" in patients who have no words to describe their
feelings. However, while people often say they cannot remember
their dreams because the alarm goes off, instantly plunging them into
"superb functioning," I have yet to see an analysand who does not
eventually contact a world rich in imagery. The soul may go into
hiding, but it does not die.
Moreover, the most stressed adults were once creative children,
whose intensity and imagination collided continually with the ratio­
nal, rigid world of their parents and teachers. Adults who have lost
their own creativity and are smoldering with unexpressed emotions
are jealous and frightened of the child's creative imagination. They
demand that the child "be good," which means, "Swallow your anger,
initiative, and creativity and reflect me." Is this a possible root of
psychosomatic illness? When the soul decides to live, i t releases the
creative child, who loves to play, for whom every moment is NOW, the
artist whose perception bridges the timeless world and time through
1magery.
It is quite true that when most people first begin to relate to
their bodies, the flood of lost memories and the accompanying toxins
released may be overwhelming and produce severe illness. Soul and
body may need time to rest and become acquainted with each other.
Surrender to illness may be part of the journey. If body work, or
what is better called soulmaking, is being carried out with an accom­
plished therapist, the dam is gently and patiently removed so the
resulting flood does not drown the ego. The body may storm out of
control, but it does so in the safe container of someone who loves it
and knows how to encourage it to know and discipline itself. The
analysand may deteriorate when faced with the buried past, emerging
as a terrorized infant, thrashing, spitting, sobbing, but once the ego
reconnects with the infant, symbols are immediately present. Far
from being "emotional illiterates," these people express their needs
and emotions loud and clear. They can one day become highly at­
tuned to their exact physical and spiritual needs. Anne, whose story
was told in chapter 4, is a splendid example of a person who came 169
The Rose into analysis as an "emotional illiterate" and, guided by images of the
in the Fire Goddess, was reconnected to her soul.
From the soul's point of view, some comment is necessary con­
cerning the "disconnectedness between language and emotion [stem­
ming] from a lack of some crucial experience pertaining to their
birth." When a person works through to the deeper levels of pain in
the soul (the eternal part of ourselves, which dwells in the body), the
anguish surrounding the birth may become manifest. Sometimes the
dreams say, "Don't go in there," warning analyst and analysand that
the trauma is too intense for the ego to endure. Sometimes the
dreams suggest that the mother tried to abort the child, that the child
was not wanted, that a child of the opposite sex was desired, or that
the father rejected the child. vVhatever happened, the child was not
welcomed into this world and the bonding between mother and child
did not occur. However hard the child tries to be loved, it knows it
will always fail, simply by being who it is.
If the mother's emotions are not anchored in her own body,
the child has no way of finding that anchoring, no way of relating to
the body's loneliness. Nor can the mother mirror the child, since she
sees her own guilt and frustration every time she seriously tries to
relate. Most children go on living in spite of the grief that may have
surrounded their birth, but they do so at a price. Disconnected Jt
their deepest instinctual level, they hang on to life by becoming
"superadjusted to reality." They develop a charming persona, perfect
their perfonnances, and deny who they really are. They dream of J
nonexistent paradise in the past and an equally nonexistent future.
Their bodies are so armored against invasion that genuine feelings
are not accessible. On the other hand, they may become tyrannical,
like a street hoodlum, for example, and brutalize reality. Because they
are not wanted, they feel perpetually under siege and force their way
in. This kind of behavior is the dark side of their dream paradise.
Realizing that paradise does not exist, they become all the more
ferocious, because they know they are hanging onto nothing. People
who have something to hold onto can relax. People with nothing
have to hold on very tight.
The "super adjusted" may one day realize that their perfect
performances demand energy they no longer have. They are weary of
focusing their whole lives on jobs and relationships that demand
1 70 everything and return nothing. "If this is life," they say, "I don't want
it." What they may not realize is that they have been functioning on Il1e Rose
willpower all their lives. The rich, deep love of life is not in them in the Fire
because the primal bond is absent. They buried their soul early in
life and, with her, they buried their real feelings, their connection to
their body, and their imagination-in short, everything that makes
life vital and creative. Responsibility, duty, excellence hang heavily
about their necks. Glittering at the center of a world that has become
ashes in their mouths, their fires are almost out because consciousness
and unconsciousness are not in harmony. The metaphors that could
bring the two worlds together are blocked.
By definition, metaphor means "transformer; a crossing over from
one state to another." Just as the body will attempt to heal itself if it
is given the chance, so the psyche will attempt to heal itself; often
that healing comes about through metaphor-an image that is part
matter, part spirit-a physical picture indicating a spiritual condition
in the dreamer, like the image of the rose in the fire. Energy mani­
fested on one level may be transported to guite another. Living the
metaphors often involves a leap of consciousness, which forces us to
recognize not only gifts we buried long ago, but gifts we know not
of The leap involves taking responsibility for our own potential.
Metaphor is a gift of the transformative feminine, the energy that
connects psyche and soma.
A conaict that is resolved on one level of integration can come
up again at another level, particularly when there is a severe split
between psyche and soma. People with eating disorders, for example,
are c1uite out of touch with their bodies. Usually, the body has carried
the whole brunt of their unconscious conaicts; contrary to their ex­
perience, it is the best friend they have, and it attempts to maintain
whatever balance it can.
Food addicts-like other addicts-tend to develop a victim
complex. Whether the source is a controlling parent or a physical or
psychic trauma before, during, or after birth, they tend to experience
themselves as born losers. " Life," "the Universe," everything is
against them. In their powerlessness, they wonder where the next
blow is coming from, or, having given up wondering, they become
defiant or resignedly accept whatever comes. They dream of concen­
tration camps, where they are bound and raped by their own ideals
(in the form of Nazi officers of the Super Race); of animals being
tormented and starved; of their house being devastated by tidal 1 71
The Rose waves, whirlwinds, or nuclear explosions. Their inunune system is
in the Fire constantly on the alert, and, after years of stress, the adrenals weaken
and the body gradually succumbs to allergies, candida, and other
diseases connected with immune dysfunction.
In the course of their analysis, there comes a day when they
realize that they are loved. No performance is necessary, no mask.
Their soul can be as angry as she is, as spiteful as she is, as infantile
as she is, as sweet and coy and playful as she is, and still be assured
of the love of another human being. No judgment, no blame. No
longer attempting to be anything they are not, they love and are
loved.
Sometimes, in this exquisite moment of recognition, I have
reached out to touch an analysand. The body has falterecl cowered,
and, like a battered dog, withdrawn. Powerless to say why they are
so frightened, powerless to feel what is happening in their bodies,
they are turned to stone. Consciousness and unconsciousness are
locked in civil war. Their darkest night of the soul has begun. The
task of releasing a terrorized body is immense and is impossible if
not combined with dream work and imagery, because these , give
meaning and containment to the terror. Body work, like dream work,
is soul work; together they i lluminate that point where the apexes of
the spirit and matter touch and do not touch. The dream that fol­
lows a body/soul session usually indicates why the energy was
blocked, what complex was involved, and shows where the energy is
trying to go. It brings to consciousness what would otherwise be an
unconscious, unintegrated process, a picture that will be repeated
unti l consciousness receives the message.
Like a river, the individuation process follows a natural flow,
which Jung perceived as a natural gradient toward wholeness.6 As
the process unfolds, it becomes clear that energy blocks, which are
personified in dreams, are manifested i n the body in encoded pat­
terns, which shape the body, adjust the posture, determine the move­
ment or lack of movement and ultimately produce symptoms in
varying degrees of severity. In the fire of analysis, these encoded pat­
terns may be changed, making the repressed energy available to con­
sciousness. The analysand begins to experience his/her own life,
begins to feel free to make the choices that are crucial to wholeness.
Now the ego is strong enough to face the ultimate question.
1 72 At this juncture, the dreams point to a dark pit or a doorway,
behind which is an ancient, moss-covered broken staircase, or some­ The Rose
times only an earthen path. Sometimes, the dreamer is told to go in the Fire
into rooms in the basement that are totally unknown. At this point,
the body can turn to rock, in a resistance that must be respected. If
the ego is strong enough, the Self will guide the dreamer to the
loneliest loneliness, there to answer the question: "Do I want to live?"
Sometimes, this point is reached through an almost fatal illness. In
this encounter, the veils of illusion are ripped off If there are addic-
tions, they are seen for what they are: a suicidal rebellion against life,
a running as fast as possible on a tightrope across an abyss, a frenzied
drive in a vehicle that crashes into an abutment.
In other words, life has not been lived in the body; the soul has
not taken up residence. The body has become a machine, running on
willpower, and the soul, the young feminine, has been left to starve
in the darkness. At the moment of awakening, the individual has to
ask real questions and be prepared to take real action. It doesn't
matter any more what mother did to me-or father. Am I going to
stay in this job? Am I going to remain in this relationship? Am I
going to give my soul time to perceive life? Am l going to live? It is
common for people who have reached this point to say, "I really
want to live but I have no idea what that means."
Here, the dreams reveal the primal loss. For whatever reason,
the child did not bond with the mother and therefore cannot bond
with life. This is not to put a guilt trip on mothers. We are all the
children of a culture that rapes Mother Earth, that rapes the feminine
in all of us. However, we do not have to accept blindly that rape.
We can choose to rescue the little girl from the manure pile. We can
give our soul child time to play; time to imagine, dream, perceive;
time to put those images into painting, writing, music, dance. This
is the food that will nourish her. In our creating, we are created.
In our dreams, this manure pile may also appear as a black pit.
It sometimes contains a fearsome and magnificent image-the great
serpent, Kundalini, the life force itself, which rises from the base
chakra, the instinctual matrix, situated between the anus and the gen­
italia. If we fail to connect with that deepest part of ourselves, we
lack grounding in the cherishing Mother. The hips and legs that
would connect our body/soul to her are wounded, barely able to
stand in a world they cannot stand. However, if only we have the
consciousness to perceive it, the hand of the Goddess is in the shit. l 73
The Rose Without the soul's perception, the shit is meaningless suffering. The
in the Fire healing power of nature manifests i tself in the suffering. At the point
of wounding, the Black Madonna may appear in our dreams and take
the rejected soul in her arms and rock her with her head against her
heart.
So what is the rose in the fire all about? It is about perceiving the
soul's suffering in the fire of physical pain and passion. It is about
the anguish of spirit descending into physical limitations, and opaque
matter ascending toward spiritual aspirations; it is about the confl i ct
between these two realms producing consciousness in the soul, which
belongs to both time and timelessness. It is about perceiving light in
matter. It is about the creation of subtle body.

Most of us try to let our bodies and psyches function instinctively,

until we are ravaged by disease or neuroses. Then we realize that the
bodyIpsyche cannot function naturally in the concrete, concretized
world in which we live. Metaphorically, the body becomes a machine
to be driven or a garbage dump to be avoided. At the same time, the
magnificent Mother in whose womb we live is mindlessly poisoned
and raped. Surely, our insane denial has to be perceived and acted
upon. The Great Mother is sending us many messages warning us
that her immune system is breaking down. If we are to save her, we
must first embrace our own soul in our own flesh.
What we are doing in bodyIsoul work is contacting her light
in our own depths, becoming aware of our own subtle body (the
body perceived through imagery). Dreams can make quite clear that
until the subtle body is connected at the deepest instinctual level (the
base chakra) and until it is strong enough to act as a conscious con­
tainer, the spiritual energy related to the third eye (the spiritual center
in the forehead), must remain veiled. BodyI soul work is preparation
for the divine marriage in which the light of soul opens to the light
of spirit.
The rose burns in the fire of love, a love that pierces to the very
heart of our own self-destruction and self-creation. There we can
weep for what others have done to us and for what we, therefore,
have done to ourselves and others. There we meet others in our
mutual imperfections and forgive. At the heart of matter we find the
1 74 mystery-the presence i n which we are all one. The meaning of the
rose burning in the fire at the heart of matter is starkly expressed in The Rose
the following Zen koan: in the Fire

Ride your horse along the edge of the sword,

H ide yourself in the middle of the Aames,
Blossoms of the fruit tree will bloom in the fire,
The sun rises in the evening?

1 75
 Chaod and Creati"'ity 6

Let it be Known; today the Eternal Feminine

In an incorruptible body is descending to earth.
In the unfading light of the new goddess,
Heaven has become one with the deeps.
- V LADIMIR SoLOYIEY

The feminine line is not a line but rather a flow in harmony

with the impetus that carries the brush and paint across a
canvas. The impetus comes from within like a fluid flow
through the body, filling my being and flowing out into the
space of the canvas. If a canvas were not present it would
naturally flow into the room and become part of the air and
atmosphere of the room. Such an impetus does not have a
color or perfume to assist in making its presence known but
when working as an artist I can capture its feel and texture
giving it a presence and life on a canvas.
-LI N DA BETH
Chaos m1d
Creativity

" Dance, then, wherever you may be,

I am the Lord of the dance," said He;
'Til lead you all wherever you may be­
l will lead you all in the dance," said He. 1

This chorus is from one of the best-loved hymns in the Chris­

tian tradition. Its rhythm and melody dance their way through the
pews into the heart. Surely, dance is among the most important meta­
phors of our end-of-the-millennium culture. Prints of La Danse by
Matisse are favorites on living-room walls. One of The New Yorker's
funniest images is of La Danse with one change: one dancer has fallen
out of the circle. Part of the humor lies in our sudden realization of
the power of Matisse's circle. The fall-out of one dancer has sent a
new vibration throughout every other dancer as each attempts to
hold the momentum of the circle true. The circle creates the sacred
space-calm, dependable-within which the dancers dance their
own energy, or choose not to dance.
Ballet, jazz, free dance, square dance, rock 'n' roll-all have
their place in our memories. And who can doubt that whatever
catastrophe is happening in whatever part of the globe, the line
dancers in Nashville will be earnestly stepping out their routines on
Channel 38?
And metaphorically we dance. In dreams, we dance along a
fence, holding our balance between "the opposites." We dance up
the stairs, down the stairs, on the sands beside the sea, on dance
floors we have known and others we have yearned to know, with
bands from our high school formal to ensembles from our fortieth
wedding anniversary.
Dance celebrates the body in motion-striding, leaping, curv-
1 78 ing, soaring, holding. Dance-whether it be religious dance, tribal
dance, social dance, one soul dancing alone for the love of the Chaos and
dance-dance is an image of ceaseless energy forever moving toward Creativity
a threshold that begins in what is ending. And so we dance toward
the new millennium.
Science also speaks in images of dance. Astronauts penetrate
the immensity of space and the universe becomes a great galactic
tarantella danced in slow motion. Biologists describe the dance of
the cells. Physicists look into the depths of inner space and see, not
inert matter, but a dance of energy.

The exploration of rhe subatomic world in the twentieth century has

revealed the intrinsically dynamic nature of matter. It has shown that
the constituents of atoms, the subatomic parricles, are dynamic pat­
terns which do not exist as isolated entities, but as integral parrs of
an inseparable network of interactions. These interactions involve a
ceaseless How of energy manifesting itself as the exchange of particles;
a dynamic interplay in which particles are created and destroyed with­
out end in a continual variation of energy patterns. The particle inter­
actions give rise to the stable structures which build up the material
world, which again do not remain static, but oscillate in rhythmic
movements. The whole universe is thus engaged in endless motion
and activity; in a continual cosmic dance of energy.2

Describing the continual creation and destruction of particles

in the rhythmic dance is describing the Black Goddess, the Goddess
of the Dance. The rhythm of death and life, chaos and creativity, is
symbolized in the dance of Kali. "The world is created and destroyed
in Kali's wild dancing, and the truth of redemption lies in man's
awareness that he is invited to take part in that dance, to yield to the
frenzied beat of the Mother's dance of life and death. Redemption
lies in the realization that one is in the hands of Kali and that ulti­
mately one is directed by the Mother's will."3
To contemplate the Black Goddess as the flux of life, death,
rebirth, is to see things as they really are. "[Kali] illustrates strikingly
what the world of appearances looks like to the one who has seen
beyond . . . . her overall presence, which is frightening, and her dwell­
ing place in the cremation ground clearly mock the ultimate signifi­
cance of a world grounded in the ego."4
To go beyond the ego, we have to turn inward with our own
microscopes of introspection; we have to go into our own opaque 1 79
Chaos and matter to discover the unpredictability and spontaneity of our true
Creativity nature. We have to enter chaos, terrifying though it might seem, if
we are to find our own creativity. Courage and awareness of the
dangers are essential to our entering into the dance of our own dark
reality. To let go of the familiar landscape of our own restrictions is
to risk madness. "For Kali is said to be mad. . . . ·With her equally
mad and wild lord, Siva, Kali reigns over and impels onward the
dizzying creation that is this world."5
Change and flux, the decay of the old and the birth of the new
is the feminine rhythm. This rhythm manifests in history; it becomes
more apparent in periods of transition. Orderly systems, with their
manifestos and hierarchies, build and accelerate, then collapse into
chaos. Individuals, too, build and accelerate and then collapse. We
live in a "high-tech" world; we accelerate our busy schedules; we
meet the demands of family, work, and community; our minds out­
strip our bodies. Life becomes hectic; we try to exert control; we
create secure little pigeonholes; we deceive ourselves into believing
we are in control; and all the time we know chaos is leaping at our
edges. Feminine rhythms are forgotten. Purses are lost in dreams, and
little cats die.
We turn on our television sets; we are stunned by the chaotic
images. In the last few years we have witnessed the old order collaps­
ing throughout Eastern Europe. We have seen the Berlin Wall come
down. We have seen Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia, the
former Yugoslavia, Rumania, Georgia, Chechnya, one after another
saying "no" to the Great Father. Africa, India, Central America, the
United States, Canada-we are all facing our own chaos.
Within and without, chaos reigns. We look on, dismayed, as
the natural order buckles under the strain of ecological disruption.
We watch helplessly, as the institutions we believe in collapse. We
witness the dogmas that gave us faith being challenged. We see the
social order totter as crime and violence rock our schools and neigh­
borhoods. We sense our immune systems being assailed, as new and
virulent strains of virus emerge. We are overwhelmed by alienation
as our relationships fall apart. We feel the Earth move under our
feet, and we are terrified at the prospect of an inner earthquake.
In the wake of this social and personal turmoil, many people
who are attempting to become conscious are experiencing profound
1 80 changes in their psyches and bodies. New energies are being released,
collectively as well as individually. Countries around the world are Chaos and
attempting to rid themselves politically of the Old Mother and the Creativity
Old Father, those archaic parental complexes that hinder growth. At
the individual level, people are seeking inner freedom, psychic free­
dom. They want to be rid of the old parental complexes-Old
Mother Mud, who swaddles us in deadening security, and Old
Father Law, who keeps us mired in that mud with traditions and
precedents. These two huge complexes, when they are not brought
into consciousness, simply say, "No, kid, things are not going to
change!" But something is now stirring within individuals as it is
among groups. The yearning to be free is, hopefully, a manifestation
of a new energy that is driving individuals to take responsibility for
their own lives. Unless we can consciously recognize that we have
such a responsibility, we are doomed to anarchy.
The freedom we seek does not lie in the patriarchal control we
so desperately attempt to maintain. Rather it lies in letting go and
descending into the chaos of the maternal matrix where the seeds of
new life are waiting to be fertilized. Letting go is embracing the Black
Goddess, she who will open our eyes to our illusions, she who will
make us see that our treasure lies in the repressed feminine energies
that we once labeled weak, irrational, disorganized, supersensitive,
and all the other thoughtless labels-naive, stupid, slow, melodra­
matic. Descending into her territory demands the death of a rigidly
controlled life. Dancing with her means finding a new discipline that
allows the new life to sprout and grow.
In the following pages, we will discuss some of the ideas and
imagery from the earlier part of the book with deeper resonances. If
you can imagine a diamond suspended in light so tl1at we can move
around it, above and below it, and see the many colors and depths,
move and enjoy and accept that we cannot understand Sophia's Wis­
dom in one gulp, then you'll patiently read and patiently wait for
your own unconscious to respond in dreams. Then this will not be
an intellectual concept you are trying to understand with your mind;
it may come as a. "yes" in the cells of your body. Then you will know
you are in the creative matrix where the feminine work goes on.
In describing the balances of energy Bowing between spirit and
instinct in the psyche, Jung used the image of a spectrum. At the
infrared end is the dyna.mism of instinct, in which all the bodily
instinctual energies originate. At the ultraviolent end is the dynamism 181
Chaos and of the archetype, in which originate images, dreams, active imagina­
Creativity tion, all the activity of the imagination. If we imagine a pendulum
swinging from one side to the other in this spectrum, sometimes
slowly without much swing, sometimes violently with too much mo­
mentum, we get a sense of the energy moving between "the oppo­
sites." Jung described the archetype (the magnetic field, as we earlier
called i t) as psychoid, meaning that its energy can be experienced
through both body and psyche. So long as there is a relational bal­
ance between soma and psyche, the pendulum swings steadily from
side to side-action and reaction.

The Psyd1oid Archetype

lmtiruts
experience
infrared _______ _
..__ _______ ultraviolet

(PhysiQiogirat body (P&ydwlogical: idea.s,

symptom:;, insti1KU1al conceptions, dreams,
perc(ptions, etc.) images, fimta$\es. etc.}

If, however, the balance is disturbed, something quite other

starts to happen, and, as with an off-balance pendulum, the whole
structure starts to shake. Within the human range of oscillation, the
balance can be held. Once the pendulum begins to swing beyond
human limits, it pushes toward the poles of instinct and spirit. These
hypothetical poles, at the two extremes of the spectrum, are outside
the range of human behavior. For example, a bulimic dancer who has
been trained to believe that she is a weightless angel, hears the voice
inside her head, perhaps outside as well, endlessly shouting, "Not
good enough, not high enough, not perfect enough, not light
enough." No matter how well she performs, she is never perfect
enough. The ante goes up. She as woman, human being, is not seen.
The voice does not shut up. It wants light, light, and more light. The
pendulum is swinging out of human range. Spirit is becoming de­
monic, Spirit is controlling ego. Spirit is wiping out ego. Spirit is
appearing in dreams as Hitler destroying everything human that is
not perfect enough to be part of his Super Race.
1 82 Now, action/reaction sets in. Crocodile surfaces when the pen-
dulum, following its compensating balance, swings too far into the Chaos and
dynamics of instinct-the infrared pole outside human boundaries. Creativity
Desperate for nourishment for her body and her soul, the bulimic
wolfs down mother food as fast as she can, chewing none of it. Very
little that goes into her stomach has been transformed by the mouth
and teeth into energy that can be further transformed, digested, and
assimilated in the human stomach and the human intestines. The
angel dancer does not want to know they exist. Their shrieks and
screams for food, she compulsively obeys as she blindly gulps down
her ritual feast. In the orgasm of vomiting that follows, she will
release herself from both poles of the insane swings of the pendulum.
Then, for a few moments, she will be a human being at peace.
To be trapped in this diabolic rhythm is life in hell. Countless
addicts are in it, desperately putting on a pretense of being human
for a few hours of the day, waiting to get back to the madness that
will take them to their moment of peace. They are swinging between
two inhuman poles. The only way they can stop the voices in the
chaos on both ends of the swing is to anni hilate themselves in the
orgasm of their compulsive ritual.
How to find one's own humanity? How to find that still place
and live in it? That is the question. Certainly, the violent swing has
to be brought under control before anything will change. The Twelve
Step program in its many forms is very helpful and in many situa­
tions essential. Some additional (1uestions are necessary in order to
move the energy out of dead channels i nto totally new ones-living
life from "Yes" instead of "No."
What is the addiction trying to tell me? Why is that wild dog
in my dreams desperately biting my hand, almost taking my arm off?
How are the symptoms of my illness trying to heal me?
To deal with these questions, let us first look at Jung's state­
ment, " . . . it is not only possible but fairly probable, even, that
psyche and matter are two different aspects of one and the same
thing. The synchronicity phenomena point, it seems to me, in this
direction, for they show that the nonpsychic can behave like the
psychic, and vice versa, without there being any causal connection
between them. Our present knowledge does not allow us to do much
more than compare the relation of the psychic to the material world
with two cones, whose apices [apexes], meeting in a point without
extension-a real zero-point-touch and do not touch."6 1 83
Chaos and If we put that statement in diagram form, it would look some­
Creativity thing like this.

Spirit with its pole as one cone, body with its pole as the other,
each reaches out to the other, touching and not touching. Touching
and not touching because in I 954 there was very little scientific un­
derstanding of how imagery influences the chemistry of the body, or
how the chemistry influences the images. Clearly, the apexes do touch,
because a sick thyroid does create depression, and conversely, the loss
of a loved one can i nfluence the growth of cancer cells.
Fifty years ago, Jung could not see where the psyche-soma con­
nection was biologically, but he knew there was a connector. H e
understood that the subtle body (the light body, the energy body,
the metaphorical body), the home of the soul, was the mid ground
between spirit and body. This midground is the world of the dream.
This is the world where we are given a picture of what is going on
in our instincts. It is also a picture that gives us a spiritual message.
We can see our spiritual condition in the images of our dreams.
In the last fifty years, a great deal of research has been done on
the biological connections between psyche and soma. At the Sympo­
sium on Consciousness and Survival, sponsored by the Institute of
Noetic Sciences, in the early I 980s, Candace Pert, Chief of Brain
Biochemistry at the Clinical Neuro-Science Branch of the National
Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, presented some
truly remarkable findings on the interconnection between the mind
and the body. Her research had uncovered the existence in the body
of chemical substances known as neuropeptides, as well as receptors
for these substances. The interaction of the neuropeptides and their
receptors, she believes, is the key to understanding how emotions are
manifested throughout the body.7 Summing up her presentation, she
said:
1 84
 My argument is that there are three classic �reas of neuroscience, C!Jaos and
endocrinology, and immunology, with their various organs-the
Creativity
brain (which is the key organ that the neuroscientists study), the
glands, and the immune system (consisting of the spleen, the bone
marrow, the lymph nodes, and of course the cells circulating through
the body)--t hat these areas are actually joined to each other in a
bidirectional network of communication and that the information
"carriers" are the neuropeptides . . . . In thinking about these matters
. . . it might make more sense to emphasize the perspective of psy­
chology-rather than that of neuroscience. A mind is composed of
information, and it has a physical substrate, which is the body and
the brain; and it also has another immaterial substrate that has to do
with information moving around.8

Subsequent research has gone still further in isolating the chem­

ical intermediaries between body and soul-the neurotransmitters
and neuroreceptors. We now know that a highly charged image can
create a correlative shift that stimulates changes in the body's chemis­
try, much as changes in body chemistry can alter moods and stimu­
late the imagination. As psychoneuroimmunologists and analysts
work together to correlate the workings of the body with the imagery
of dreams, the gap and nongap that Jung saw between psyche and
soma will rapidly narrow and, I believe, eventually close.
In the imagery of the Feminine, this midground between spirit
and body, the subtle or metaphorical body, is the place of the Virgin.
As an archetype, the Virgin is the transfonner. Like the virgin forest
that carries all the potential of new life, within her is the seed of the
new consciousness that may be quickened by the spirit and brought
into life. In Christian mythology, if that seed is nurtured, cherished,
reflected upon, allowed to mature into its full beauty, it becomes
the masculine energy strong enough to partner the Virgin. It is the
Bridegroom in the royal marriage to the Virgin Bride. These are the
archetypal images working in the background as we discuss balancing
energies.
Let us now look at the Virgin archetype as it manifests in our
lives. In doing so, try to let all superimposed images and associations
go. Try to imagine the transformative energy that bridges spirit and
matter, the energy that holds spirit and matter together, like a rain­
bow, the energy that lives in the subtle body. If we think of the
1 85
Chaos and power in the pendulum violently swinging from matter into sp1rit
Creativity without a bridge, and the power of the psychotic corners on either
end that may be constellated in the swing, we have some idea of the
strength necessary to hold that center point where spirit and body
meet and do not meet. The strength lies in the metaphor.
Metaphor is the language of the Virgin. Virgin, as we are using
the word, is an image of the soul, the eternal part of us that takes up
residence in the body for a few years and connects to the world
through the orifices of the body. Soul is from a different reality than
body. It is eternal. It hears with eternal ears, sees with eternal eyes,
smells with eternal nose-its Presence resonates with that other di­
mension. It has no language but the language of the transitory body.
Therefore, it speaks in imagery, the only way it can communicate
eternal truths to beings who are both eternal and temporal. It can, of
course, speak through music, paint, clay, marble, arches and domes,
arabesques and leaps, and gardens, and other creative forms. Right
now we are attempting to understand the power of metaphorical
language-a language that our culture dismisses at its peril.
At its peril because our Beingness thrives in the imagination.
Children who are given space to imagine dance their days through
hours of creative play. Adults who give themselves time to play, time
to connect to the energy that they so often repress in their workaday
world, go into their chaos and behold, childlike energy is available
to them. Their imagination dances with their soul. Without this
connection, shorter and fewer workdays, unemployment, and bore­
dom can trap exiled souls in the demonic vision of an archetypal
madman or madwoman who promises superhuman light on one side,
superhuman sex on the other, with no room for human life in the
middle.
More than that, without metaphor, culture is meaningless,
dreams are meaningless, symptoms are meaningless (except in tenns
of curing them), religion is meaningless. Life is two-dimensional, flat,
and boring. Drugs, sports, sex may restore metaphor for a few hours
before the meaninglessness of life settles in again. Life without meta­
phor is intolerable.
We have spoken many times in earlier chapters about the im­
portance of embodiment-the release of the repressed goddess in the
earth of our own bodies. In relation to metaphor, a released body is
186 capable of resonating. Like a cello, our body is an instrument that
vibrates in relation to sound waves. Every cell hears. Let us take, for Chaos and
example, a dream image. An eighty-year-old woman dreams that she Creativity
returns to her homeland in Europe and stands beside the streetcar
stop where she once waited for the streetcar that took her to school.
As she waits in the rain of a foggy evening, a child runs up to her,
puts her tiny hand in the eighty-year-old hand and says, ''I've come
to take you home."
Now, dreamers who have forgotten that they have soul ears
will respond to such dream with, "Do you think a trip to Europe will
help me?" People who are beginning to remember their soul ears will
say, "I just don't get it, but I know there's something there." People
who hear with their soul ears feel a trembling resonating through
every cell in their body and their eyes fill with tears. They recognize
the completion of the circle as the soul prepares to go "Home." And
Home is Eternity.
Now, if a father says, " My son is coming home. He didn't
receive the scholarship this year," the soul immediately senses trou­
ble. How can the son come home to his father if his father looks at
him and thinks, failure? The father "loves" his son, but he can neither
see his soul, nor hear him. The son cannot Be with his father. That
sense of alienation may drive him to drink with the boys, and father
may wonder what kind of selfish brat he raised. We hear this kind
of lost connection everywhere we go, soul genuinely looking for soul
and the door slammed in its face. The resonance that would make
the feminine connection is not present.
Life is so diminished without metaphor. Imagine going to the
film The Bridges if Madison County without metaphor. Imagine trying to
understand why people are gasping or sobbing in those long, silent
scenes. Imagine seeing and not seeing the fingers touching and not
touching, the eyes seeing and not daring to see, the body remember­
ing and trying to forget. Imagine sitting at that red light, seeing the
left-hand blinker on the truck ahead flashing in the rain, and know­
ing that all you need to do is push your door handle a quarter of an
inch and you'll be Home. Imagine all that with no knowledge of
Hecate and crossroads! And no knowledge of Shakespeare!

And whether we shall meet again I know not.

Therefore our everlasting farewell take :
For ever, and for ever, farewell, Cassius! 187
Chaos and If we do meet again, why, we shall smile;
Creativity If not, why then, this parting was well madeY

And no knowledge of Emily Dickinson!

Parting is all we know of Heaven,

And all we need of Hell.10

If you haven't seen The Bridges, don't worry. I'm only trying to demon­
strate the joy of resonances as they vibrate deeper and richer into the
body and psyche. They become powerful guides, helping us to recog­
nize the truth or falsehood of people and situations. We all have our
own metaphors and our own resonances. The images we choose to
ingest determine the daily refinement of the subtle body.
We need now to ask ourselves, "What happens if the metaphor
is concretized?" In other words, what happens if the energy comes
into the transformer-the Virgin that is strong enough to take the
transformation-and instead of transforming and moving into an­
other kind of energy, it is concretized in matter? I can illustrate this
with a story from an intensive workshop. Naive or courageous as I
was, depending on how you perceive the situation, I announced to
the thirty women that we would put our shadow concepts of the last
three days i nto life. We would have a shadow party. We had been
doing body work to contact this energy and most of the group were
experiencing new ripplings of energy up their spines and throughout
other parts of their bodies.
On the night of the party, a splendid turkey had been prepared.
Everyone was too excited to eat. Each was putting on feathers or
sticks or seaweed or red paint, whatever was necessary t� allow the
transformation to move into life. \Vell, it certainly did. The women
found themselves with gestures, walks, voices, language that they had
never had before. As the party progressed, the energy became hotter
and most hot. I was rather glad when it was safely over.
The next morning in session, I discovered that the turkey had
been gobbled to its bones at midnight with quantities of wine. Many
of the women had severe indigestion and hangovers. Can you imagine
releasing all that yearning spirit and feeding it turkey and wine? A
body vibrating with new energy is simply unable to digest turkey and
1 88 wine. This is concretizing the metaphor.
 I t happens because the body is frightened. With the upsurge of Chaos and
repressed and, therefore, unknown energy pouring in, the body is
Creativity
anxious, perhaps unable to deal with the cascade of rage and grief
that surges forth as it begins to experience i tself Chaos breaks out
within the body because the energy has not yet found its new chan-
nel. If the Virgin container is not strong enough to acknowledge and
contain the chaos that is bursting out, then the energy may regress
and destroy the new life by concretizing the metaphor-gobbling
turkey to quiet the chaos, instead of dancing or playing in some
creative way that feeds and releases the soul.
When each woman brought her own psychic confl i ct to con­
sciousness in the next session, we were able, in most cases, to find
the Virgin standpoint that could sustain the new energy without
allowing it to run amuck. The value of the experience was in bringing
the unconscious confl i ct to consciousness so that it could be dealt
with creatively instead of being allowed to regress into repetitive
behavior.
Most addicts cannot hold a Virgin standpoint, especially if
their own concretized metaphor is obtainable. To keep their aban­
donment fears down, they grab for mother (food), spirit (alcohol),
divine union (sex), light (drugs). Yet again, they put themselves to
sleep and regress to what they hope will be the security of Mother
Crocodile. They are terrified to move i nto her creative side. Instead
of holding the still point until the energy has a chance to transform
into the ultraviolet side of the archetype, they plunge i nto the in­
frared.
The power of metaphor was brought home to me in a situation
from my own life. In I 968 I was in a car accident that left one side
of my head and face badly damaged. A brilliant plastic surgeon, to
whom I am eternally grateful, cut through my scalp and with his
delicate instruments went under my skin and pulled my broken bones
back into place. Two weeks later, the swelling subsided and I knew I
still had an eye. Two years later, I had regained the feeling in my
face, but one major symptom remained. Night and day there was a
loud ringing in my ear and the sensation of a mosquito continually
flying inside-a disorder known as tinnitus. I went to specialists in
Canada and England and they all told me they could do nothing. I
would have to learn to live with i t.
I was in analysis with Dr. Bennet in London at the time. The 1 89
Chaos and more intense the analysis becan1e, the louder the bells rang and the
Creativity faster the mosquito flew, until I thought I was gotng crazy. I had a
dream in which someone and I were working on a machine that
transforms one kind of energy into another kind (a metaphor ma­
chine). I became confused because I didn't know how to work the
very complicated swi tches. But the other Presence did. Then some­
one said, " How do you feel on the eve of becoming everything you
have fought all your life against?"
The ringing was now so loud that I rushed out of bed and
landed on the fl o or of the kitchen before I knew I was awake. I
prayed to God to take away that ringing or let me die. Immediately,
a vision of a mock-orange bush in full bloom appeared, with its
delicate ivory-colored blossoms that perfume the month of June. I
was so enthralled by the beauty of the bush that I was not at first
aware of the perfume in my feet. But slowly, slowly the perfume rose
in my legs and its sweetness moved into every cell of my body until
the perfume and I were one. I became the metaphor. Gradually, un­
knowingly, I had come to a standing position, with my arms raised.
When the vision faded, the ringing in my ear had ceased. It has never
returned.
I had gone to the kitchen and was fed: my body was ensouled.
This, of course, changed my life. The efficient, clock-and-calendar,
always-in-control woman was n.o more. I realized my empowerment
was through concentration on an image, a gift from the unconscious.
I realized that the fear and chaos in my rational mind could be stilled
by the order in my unconscious. The archetypal image rising out of
the depths of my body-the Dark Goddess penneating the orange
blossom bush with love-could bring conscious and unconscious
into harmony and with each other and with the natural order. Then,
I could be whole.
At the time, I did not care much about what had happened
psychologically. I only knew that I had been visited by divine light,
that I had experienced a love I never knew before, a love within
matter that shattered the world as I had known it. Reason was si­
lenced. I could only say, " Yes. Thank you."
Later, when I read Jung, I began to understand what had hap­
pened psychologically. Tension, fatigue, pain had taken me into a
regression, metaphorically into the dark side of the mother, where
1 90 death seemed the only way out. The emotion was so intense that
the ego had to surrender. At that crossroads where conscious and Chaos and
unconscious meet, the dynamism of the instinct " Let me die" (the Creativity
infrared end of the spectrum) transcended the conflict, took me right
out of the pain. The image, the orange blossom bush (the ultraviolet
end), pouring perfume into every cell of my body, brought about a
hannony, physically and psychically, that transcended any feeling I
had ever experienced. Someone who knew how to work the switches
created the metaphor of the blossoming bush and transformed the
energy of the distraught consciousness into the harmonic energy em­
bodied in the unconscious. The archetype of the dark mother, Death,
was transformed into the archetype of the loving mother, Sophia, she
whose light permeates matter.
Knowing that someone is moving you, whether you understand
it or not, is an awesome experience. That nonrational knowing,
which is being known, is what brings the heights and depths together.
In that wholeness, healing lies. Every cell remembers its health. With­
out ego interference, psyche perceives light in matter. That was the
dawn of becoming what I had fought against all my life. The sweet­
ness of my body surrendered to her love. In being known, I knew myself
as part of the one.
Dreams of black snakes carrying light on their heads, golden
ants that can eat up or bring life to endangered bones, dreams of
transformers that change one energy to another accompanied by
shifts in symptoms suggest that the consciousness inherent in organic
processes at the biological end of the psychoid archetype are more
accessible to consciousness than we once thought. Indeed they are
pushing for recognition. Images of animals in the process of trans­
fanning into human beings seem to suggest that instinctual matter
permeated with light transforms into more subtle matter. To put it
another way, the Goddess in matter wants to be made conscious.
Surrendering to the wholeness that comes from hannony with
the natural order will make no sense to someone who is wedded to a
Newtonian/Cartesian paradigm. Quantum physics, however, pre­
sents us with other possibilities. A friend of mine, who is knowledge­
able about quantum physics, read the preceding paragraph, and
responded with the following statement: "Our very Beingness is the
manifestation of energy patterns-a manifestation that is made up
of many collapsed wave functions. The energy patterns of T are
whole themselves. It is only when the T clings to a part as if it were l9l
Chaos and the whole that the energy patterns become disrupted. This can lead
Creativity to a breakdown such as illness. Since it is the ego observer who
creates a particular reality, to allow the energy patterns to reconfigure,
we have to bypass the ordinary ego perceptions. The metaphor ma­
chine is one way of doing this, because i t acts as a bridge to the non­
rational (non-dualistic) reality that we really are." 1 1
Metaphor brings healing because i t brings wholeness. Take, for
example, the word "fire" in David Whyte's poem on pp. I 56-I 57.
If we free-associate with it, we come up with words like hot, red,
anger, alive, fierce, fire in the belly, fire flaming, exploding through
the mouth, loud, untamed, roar, Yessssss. We might experiment with
what the poem is describing. If we allow ourselves to breathe into
our belly and open our mouth, we might experience our whole voice.
Metaphor captures the passion, the movement, the meaning. In
one image, it brings together a total response-emotional, imagina­
tive, intellectual. If we focus the fire of our imagination, our own
metaphors begin to heat and transform, opening up new energy chan­
nels in our body. In taking the imaginative leap, we embody the
metaphor. In becoming the metaphor, we become whole. The whole­
ness may not last, but that moment rings like a tuning fork that the
cells do not forget.
What is the difference between embodying an image and con­
cretizing i t? To concretize a metaphor is to l iteralize and kill it. For
example, a woman dreams of making love to her neighbor. If she
literalizes the metaphor, she may joyously assume the unconscious
wants her to have an affair. She is probably wrong. The dream pro­
cess is a soul journey, in which all the parts of the dream are a part
of the dreamer. The dream is showing the woman a part of her own
masculinity with which she needs to unite. If she does have an affair,
that masculine energy is still projected, and the fire that should be
heating up the imagination in order to transform the energy will be
lost in the acting out of the p:1ssion. The dreams will probably cease,
or the woman will begin to dream of another man. The energy that
wants to move toward the inner maturity of masculine and feminine
is betrayed. The images become static or cease.
If the image is embodied, on the other hand, it becomes incor­
porated into the cells of the body, as I described my assimilation of
the perfume of the mock-orange blossoms. The image lives. Through
1 92 relaxation and concentr:1tion, the metaphor is taken in so that it
opens up areas blocked with fear or anger or guilt. As the new energy Chaos and
opens the darkness of the negative emotions, those areas are purified Creativity
and transformed. Gradually, the mutilated animals become whole,
the darkened house is filled with new light, the devouring mother
becomes the Dark Goddess and the tyrannical father a strong ;md
loving guide. If embodied, the metaphor bridges the gap between
head and heart. All the cells of the body respond.
This is a lifetime process that requires diligence and hard work
and much common sense. Images in the body can dislodge huge
complexes and one must be very respectful of resistance against mov­
ing into painful areas. Where there is trauma in the body, the com­
pany of a friend or professional therapist is essential. The metaphor
carries far more energy than anyone who has not experienced it can
believe.
Another question. Why do we have to have light in matter? As
I understand this process, a body that has never been listened to,
never been acknowledged for the courageous pack horse it has been,
never been treated as the temple of the Holy Spirit, that body is
essentially unconscious. Its messages are not part of the whole per­
son. It carries the unconscious conflicts, because the ego is not strong
enough to deal consciously with them. That body is not free enough,
or strong enough, to be penetrated by the light of Spirit. Therefore,
I think of body work as bringing matter (Mother) to consciousness.
What we realize as we work is that we are releasing soul.
If you have any doubt about the power of metaphor, ponder
the 0. J. Simpson trial as covered on television. Ponder the theme of
Shakespeare's Othello in relation to the Feminine. Ask yourself why
millions became addicted to the trial. The masses are not interested
if their own unconscious projections are not being acted out. Did
you find your own masculinity guilty? Did you find your femininity
colluding? What was your verdict? Could you convict? Reflect on the
icons and their effect on our culture.
Another powerful metaphor came to me as I was reworking the
meaning of my metaphor machine for this book. A friend of ours,
David, arrived at our home on a Sunday morning. He was visibly
shaken, as people are when the timeless world crosses their time. He
had recently purchased a laptop computer, taken it to the beach with
him, and had a profound experience as he wrote the following jour-
nal entry. 1 93
Chaos and 8 : 1 0 PM August 5, 1 995
Sitting down on the beach to write my journal with the new Toshiba
Creativity
400CDT multimedia laptop computer. I want to reflect on the tool
itself. I am fascinated by technology and recognize that what is sitting
on my lap is a paragon of tools. As my fingers start to hit the keys, it
occurs to me that the very mechanism of this machine is based on
representation. The machine is literally an embodiment of representa­
tion, of metaphor-a metaphor machine.
Take the words I am typing right now. From the keystroke,
each letter is translated to a digital machine code comprised of I 's
and O's before it shows up on screen. The inscrutable ROM (Read­
Only Memory) does its mysterious work: letters and words appear in
train as if impressed directly from the keys themselves, and what was
a thought runs a progress from kinetic impulse to binary code to
patterns on a screen. I think of the nerve screen in "Prufrock" ["It is
impossible to say just what I mean /But as if a magic lantern threw
the nerves in patterns on a screen; . . . " 12]. This marvel of technology
can do what it does, thanks to the silicon chip-manufactured from
silica, a gritty sand used in ancient Greece to cut the marble temple
columns and, in ancient Egypt, the pyramid blocks. Now, in an infi­
nitely more sophisticated form, it embodies the subtle heart of this
machine.
Waiting for words, listening to the waves gently washing
ashore, I can't help but be filled by their sound and their presence.
It's a sound that could have been heard a million years ago, five
million, a billion-before there were ears to hear. But here I sit with
a laptop computer-a machine built on the ancestor of an old cutting
edge-the cutting edge of the contemporary purveyor of the global
age. This quintessence of sand, in the form of silicon chips, gives the
machine its power to reproduce the world, to organize the flow of
electrons through myriad channels so that the world can be rendered
back to us. Right now, I can record the sound of these ancient waves
or capture video images of them and attach these sensory impressions
to this document as objects to preserve the moment. As yet rough
cut compared to their "real" counterparts, these images are themselves
a virtual reality.
The consciousness that I bring to the workings of the machine
before me becomes a mirror of my own consciousness, one that
allows me to realize what I am carrying about with me in my laptop
satchel. I am carrying the Earth as its silica element emerges in my
consciousness of it. My Toshiba multimedia computer mirrors the
1 94 world I construct, in and as consciousness. Proof rock. 13
 David knows a great deal more about computers than I do. He Chaos and
designs computer programs and teaches programming at a commu­ Creativity
nity college. As he read this aloud to us, I thought of Blake seeing "a
World in a Grain of Sand."14 I wondered if Blake's "World in a
Grain of Sand" minored David's world in the silicon chip.
David sees in the computer a metaphor of the mind in creation.
Beyond that, he sees the computer as minoring the entire creation
itself, the world being transformed moment by moment, recreated
before our very eyes. The electronic impulses that whizz around a
computer's silicon-chip circuitry recall Blake's "Pulsation of the Ar­
tery." 1 5 Every pulsation is the creation (and re-creation) of the world.
Something like that is what David experienced on the beach that
evening, and something like that is what a woman experiences in her
body.1 6
Metaphors act as guides. I f you trust i n your own dream pro­
cess, you know the moment when you no longer have a model, no
questions, no answers. You have nothing to help you but the images
of your dreams. If you want to live your own life, your images and
your body are your individual guides. Together, they strengthen your
inner core. Think of the images of athletes before they jump, musi­
cians before they play, actors and dancers before they step on the
stage. The great ones take the moment to see themselves present in
what they are about to do. They concentrate, still at the center. Then,
and only then, do they move into the image. The imagination moves
ahead of the action.
Releasing matter into light, or releasing matter into energy, is
part of living in the atomic age. The c in Einstein's equation E m?­
=

is squared, multiplied by i tself, and it is a large number on i ts own.

This implies that a lot of E (light energy) goes into making a small
amount of m (mass). Sometimes, people are heavy in matter, but
because their body is conscious, they fill it and seem to be exactly
the right size for what they exude. Think of Pavarotti or Jessye Nor­
man. Others are light in matter, but without light, and they seem to
drag an overwhelming burden.
Instead of thinking of matter as dense mass, imagine a picture
by Claude Monet. Monet could perceive a water lily. What he saw
was different intensities of light on lily, leaf, and water. His orchards
in spring, his haystacks at sunset, his pathways-all dance with re-
leased light. His world is a garden in which the Goddess delights. 1 95
Chaos and The French Impressionist painters were forerunners of our age,
Creativity as were the Romantic poets. The Feminine, which was just beginning
to push through from the depths of their unconscious, is now fully
present and ready to be lived in consciousness in many men and
women.
Sometimes she appears in dreams as an old woman sitting on
the ground with a cloak thrown over her head, weeping, while armies
fight around her. She roars in the symptoms that debilitate us, when
the pollution is too much, or we disobey her laws. She also roars
when we fail to recognize that our physical attunement must be har­
monious with our spiritual insight.
A woman dreams, for example, that she is met by an old woman
who firmly offers her a bottle of ointment. She is to apply the un­
guent to the soles of her feet. As she does so, light begins to move
up her legs and into her whole body.
Another dreams of entering a lush green valley. As she stands
admiring nature, a large woman dressed in purple chiffon appears on
the hill opposite. Immediately, everything in the valley, including the
dreamer, is suffused with inner light.
A man dreams he is cutting the grass with a hand mower. As
the grass flies off the blades, he sees sparks of light. They become so
animated, he stops his mower. He is overwhelmed by a presence. In
his own backyard, he experiences the mystery in whose presence we
are all one.
In whatever ways the process of bringing the body to con­
sciousness develops, a strong container in which the energies can
transfonn, physically and psychically, is essential. 1 7 With concen­
trated work, opaque matter gradually transforms toward more subtle
matter. Jung understood the subtle body as the soul body or energy
body present in matter, always in a state of flux, moving up or down
the spiral.
The effect of subtle body is delicately described by Margaret
Atwood in the last verse of her poem "Girl Without Hands":

Only a girl like this

can know what's happened to you.
If she were here she would
reach out her arms towards
1 96 you now, and touch you
 with her absent hands Chaos and
and you would feel nothing, but you would be
Creativity
touched all the same.18

In our everyday life, most of us have experienced the touch

Margaret Atwood is describing in her poem. Whether we know it or
not, we experience at a cellular level the love or lack of love that is
directed toward us. Unconsciously, children are very sensitive to the
subtle body connection. A gorgeous doll will be laid aside in favor
of an old pan if the doll is not given in love. The subtle body picks
up the unconscious intention of the person with whom it is commu­
nicating. Acausal and nonrational factors in a field of relatedness are
at work. This makes us aware of wider possibilities for prayer and
healing through the subtle body.19 In these areas, we are reconnecting
at a new level with native cultures.
In workshops, we have learned that perceived and perceiver are
one. Where two people are working as partners, what is going on in
the heart and mind of the perceiver will be picked up in the body of
the perceived. The more finely tuned the body becomes, the more
subtle this process is. We have become increasingly aware of the
power of imagery in the body, and between individuals, without a
word being spoken. The level of consciousness of one person holding
the concentration for the group can change the entire room.
The subtle body connection is quite clear in analytic work.
The abandoned child, or the child who has not experienced acausal
connection (love) with the mother does not trust that anything exists
between mother and child if mother is absent. The sense of rejection
quickly escalates into annihilation if mother's physical presence is
not there. Nothing IS. This is one of the most difficult situations in
analysis, because the abandoned child ceases to exist if the analyst is
not present. (Think of the implications in relationships.) Once trust
is built up through a feeling connection in the subtle body, the aban­
doned child can believe the analyst, who is not present, is still alive
and does care. The Presence holds.
Acausal, nonrational, relatedness are words associated with the femi­
nine. These words are not yet quite respectable in the West. But the
scientific discoveries of the past several decades are forcing us to take
seriously the ideas they embody. Scientists have begun to acknowl-
edge that certain phenomena in the quantum world imply acausal- 1 97
Chaos and ity/0 and they have even constructed cosmological theories that
Creativity require it.21 These manifestations of the Feminine in the scientific
world are yet another indication of the quiet transfom1ation that is
taking place as the paradigm shifts-a transformation that is enact­
ing, globally, the transformation that has been taking place in se­
lected individuals for millennia, a transformation that is the work of
the Feminine.
Recall Jung's image of the two cones with apexes that meet and
do not meet. This is the point where the transformation takes place,
the location of the metaphor machine I saw in my dream. The find­
ings of psychoneuroimmunology mentioned earlier in this chapter
suggest that we are close to understanding how this transformation
takes place. The work of the Virgin continually transfom1jng-even
transmuting-energies from instinct to psyche and from psyche to
instinct, is mirrored by the work of the neuropeptides and their re­
ceptors continually transmuting chemistry into emotions and emo­
tions into chemistry.22 The images we assimilate (at the ultraviolet
end) are as important to our well-being as the food we eat (at the
infrared end). In the chakra system (discussed in chapter 2), a similar
transformation takes place in the heart chakra where the energies
from the three lower chakras mingle with the energies of the three
upper ones. It is in this place of transformation that we can expect
to encounter the Feminine.
And when she is encountered, she is not to be taken lightly.
One young woman dreamed that a perfect replica of herself was lying
on a couch in her living room. The replica was a plastic, made­
up doll. A dark, ten-foot-tall woman knocked at her door and was
welcomed. When the dark woman saw the doll, she opened her hand,
thrust her raised palm toward the doll, and zapped her. Nothing
remained.
The accidental circumstances in which she appears should not
be taken as the only forms in which she manifests herself. As an
archetype, she is always present, in different images, sometimes at
more conscious levels. She has gone underground in some centuries,
but she has never been absent. The tragedy is that she is present and
we do not take the time to see her or to learn her basic laws.
She is compassionate. She does understand our human stupid­
1 98 ity to a point. She honors our suffering. She seems to know that our
place of wounding is where she will come in, where we will meet Chaos and
others in love, where we will celebrate our planet in love. Creativity
She is Mother, Virgin, and Crone. In her maturing, the Virgin
becomes the Crone. True to her process, she comes to know her ever­
transforming self in the bedrock of her being. Kali, with her fierce
energy, sometimes appears as a beautiful young maiden. Her mascu­
linity has honed his discernment, and he sees the Virgin in the Hag.
Together, they have moved beyond duality. The Virgin is moving
toward a consciousness that has never before been possible on the
planet. In her embodiment, she is known. She is recognized by her
Beloved. She receives the penetration of the Spirit that will change
consciousness forever.
Her coming is heralded in the following dream:

I am standing by the sea. A great tidal wave is steadily rolling in. I

am terrified. Gradually, I discern a large, chocolate-colored woman
riding majestic on the crest of the wave. She is triumphant, her body
poised, her arm uplifted like Delacroix's Liberty. She rides her inevita­
ble way.
Suddenly, I am a molecule of energy in the wave. My friends
and I are all molecules in the wave, each molecule dancing with every
other molecule in love. We are all dancing with the momentum of
the wave that will bring Sophia to land.

1 99
 Where Three Dreamd Crodd

For we are in the deepest sense the victims and instruments

of cosmogonic "love." I put the word in quotation marks to
indicate that I do not use it in its connotations of desiring,
preferring, favoring, wishing, and similar feelings, but as
something superior to the individual, a unified and
undivided whole. Being a part, man cannot grasp the whole.
He is at its mercy. He may assent to it, or rebel against it;
but he is always caught up by it and enclosed within it. He
is dependent upon it and is sustained by it. Love is his light
and his darkness, whose end he cannot see. " Love ceases
not"-whether he speaks with the tongues of angels, or with
scientific exactitude traces the life of the cell down to its
uttermost source.
-C. G. JuNG

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us

" Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences
himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated
from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his
consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us,
restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a
few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves
from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to
embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its
beauty.
-ALBERT EINSTEIN
Where Three
Dreams
Cross

WE A R E ABOUT TO ENTER the new millennium. Our children

and grandchildren will be the first generation to inhabit the planet as

citizens of one world. Already, we are feeling the impact of global
restructuring of trade and economic policies; we stand amazed before
computers that can connect us to the Internet and open our way into
the Louvre and the British Museum; world leaders are desperately
attempting to create a system of laws that all countries will accept;
already, world health plans are being recognized.
The quiet revolution that had its roots in the Sixties was more
than a fad of the flower children. Within their protests were the
seeds, at a culturally recognized level, of a movement based upon
hope for a more meaningful existence. Fads come and go because
they merely touch the periphery of our lives; the seeds of the "hu­
mane" revolution are still growing because they touch the core of our
lives. The seeds grow in response to the growing realization of the
collective threat to our survival. Our seas are being fished to the
point of depletion; our lakes and rivers are polluted to the point
of destruction; rain forests are being stripped; in many situations,
technology is posing a direct threat to our physical health; always,
there is the threat of overpopulation and nuclear weapons in the
hands of irresponsible bullies. A few greedy monsters manipulate the
imbalance and profit in the short term. Many other people around
the globe, however, are facing the issues, attempting to find a resolu­
tion in a deeper, more lasting foundation. What began as a protest
has become a challenge, a challenge that will involve not only tech­
nology, but a new understanding of human mythology.
Underneath the obvious chaos is an even deeper chaos. Most
thinking people realize that we have come ro the end of a paradigm
that is not only not serving us, but is destroying us. The familial,
202 tribal, and national loyalties that were so circumscribed in the past
are no longer sufficient. Indeed, isolated from a larger global loyalty, Where Three
they are a threat to human survival. Hierarchical structures are col- Dreams Cross
lapsing; religious wars based on archaic hatreds are endangering
global peace. "Who will have the most?" and "Who will sit on top
of the power pile?" are no longer relevant questions. The prospect of
becoming puppet kings in an overpopulated, poisoned desert makes
no sense.
The paradigm of power has forever been questioned. One
thinks of Shelley's Ozymandias, the Egyptian pharaoh with whom
Moses contended during the Exodus. In him we see the mold of
those twentieth-century dictators with whom many must still con­
tend in their continuing exodus from the last round of global empire
building. "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone/Stand in the desert,"
Shelley's imagined "traveler from an antique land" tells the poet,

. . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Noth ing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away. 1

What began as protests in the Sixties has now become a chal­

lenge not only to world leaders but to thinking individuals around
the globe. These thinking people care about children and grandchil­
dren and generations to come. They know that men and women are
equal and must have equal rights; they know that spirit and nature
are equal and must be honored equally. They know they are the
offspring of an infonnation revolution, a global communications net­
work. They know that with a single electronic beep, they can be,
already are, in contact with events in every part of this global village.
And they take responsibility for that gift Jnd individually search for 203
Where Three the new images, keep attuned to the global vision, and meanwhile
Dreams honor ecology in their own kitchen sinks.
In the first chapters of this book, we discussed the paradigms
Cross within which most early tribes flourished. Here we will summarize
briefly the essential aspects of those paradigms because new possibili­
ties grow out of old roots.
Given the dependent, concrete, magical thinking of our early
ancestors, given their symbiotic relationship with nature, it was natu­
ral that their primary mythology should center around nature as a
Great Mother who gave life and took it away. Matriarchy was a
natural state in which both men and women lived. The major reli­
gious structures were polytheistic, regarding everything in nature as
imbued with a spirit-life related to the source, the Great Mother. In
this participation mystique, the structures that gave expression to the
bonds between people were inevitably tribal. Nature was seen as the
final arbitrator of power, and therefore power could be assimilated
from nature. Feathers, bones, amulets were worn to give the wearer
something of the power that nature possessed. Rituals were per­
formed to ward off that power, to appease the spirit, or to gain its
beneficence. Often within the tribal structures, power was exercised
as gift, in that the most powerful person was the one who had the
most to give. This was seen as exercising the role of the Great
Mother.
Starting with the end of the Paleolithic Age, however, a major
shift in paradigms occurred. Of course, this shift took several hun­
dred years, with the old paradigm greatly overlapping the emerging
one. Indeed, traces of the early paradigm still linger.
With the emergence of ego consciousness, human beings began
to separate out from the Great Mother. During this period, matriar­
chy evolved into a more conscious form of Goddess worship, flower­
ing in Egypt and Crete. H owever, the predominant mythology began
to look heavenward and away from the earth. All power became
centralized in the Sun God. From this centralized source of power, a
male God of the sky became the dominant symbol of divinity. The
projection of power onto this solar God had to be represented on
earth, hence the rise of kingship. The resultant need to transfer
power downward set the stage for the evolution of hierarchical struc­
tures in society. The amount of power one wielded depended on
204 how close one was to the Light-the figure that represented the
divine will. Hierarchical ranking was largely based on strength. The Where Three
most powerful person in the hierarchy was the one with the biggest Dreams Cmss
army, the most wealth, the best access to privileged information, or
the greatest cunning. The hierarchical structures that developed are
familiar to us all: men, women, children, animals, insects, plants;
pope, cardinals, bishops, clergy, laity; king, lords, freemen, serfs.
The establishment of hierarchies was paralleled by the emer­
gence of a sense of individuality and independence. The significance
of this emergence was twofold. First, under the influence of individu­
alism, the collective thinking that had hitherto held societies together
began to lose ground. Tribal i dentities gave way to individual identi­
ties; cooperation gave way to competition. Second, notions of inde­
pendence ran counter to the underlying principle of h ierarchal
structures, which sought to exercise control rather than grant free­
dom. Growing tension between the two opposing forces would even­
tually lead to open conflict.
The abuse of power and the selfish, narcissistic, pursui t of
wealth and land on the part of the upper tiers of the hierarchy led to
revolt, rebellion, revolution-and the birth of modern democracy.
Only after countless blood baths was individuality (and indepen­
dence) accorded to members of the lower levels of the hierarchy.
Even so, men were the chief beneficiaries of these advances. Until
recently, women were not considered individuals in their own right.
As women are slowly achieving equality they are challenged
with an interesting dilemma. Now that the structures are more open
to women, do we want to take our place in the patriarchal power
paradigm? Many women today say no. Then the questions become,
" How do we transform the hierarchal structures without entering
them? If we do enter them, how do we resist becoming patriarchal?"
Men and women need a very conscious Mother, Virgin, Crone
within to sail in these waters.
Throughout this book, we have shown through case studies
how individuals follow a similar pattern through matriarchy and pa­
triarchy in their attempts to find their own lives. Their first need is
to free themselves from the inertia of the old crocodile and from the
judgmental voice of the patriarchs. Their biggest task is to find their
own path, their own paradigm. Both genders are without role models
because the world we live in never existed until now, and every day a
terrorist attack, a decision in a courtroom, an experiment in a labora- 205
Where Three tory changes the meaning of "Now." That is one reason the patriar­
Dreams chal paradigm no longer works. It is static. Its standards of perfection
depend on the unchanging stability of photographs and compact
Cross discs. Dreams eventually mock dreamers who never give up the old
family car and continually play old tapes and old records in the old
family house. And patriarchy is no longer feasible because it flies in
mind and spirit, ungrounded. The unconscious compensation is al­
ready at work, releasing the repressed instincts in the body. The
rejected instincts can be as vicious as the laws that attempt to repress
them. The new paradigm envisions a balance of e(1uals-body and
mind, feminine and masculine, immanent and transcendent. Many
men and women who are working toward the new paradigm are
finding an image of that balance of equals through the Goddess, who
comes out of the unconscious to guide them.
There are other guides, of course. This book happens to focus
on the Goddess. Another book, a natural follow-up to this one, may
someday be written about the Son, who is now beginning to appear
as a small child in dreams. He carries the energy that will one day
balance hers in the dance of mature masculine and mature feminine.
That image belongs to a totally new consciousness. We have i ntu­
i tions that point to i t, but it is far from being lived in individuals,
and it is almost unknown in the collective consciousness.
While a great deal of research has been done in the past twenty
years on the matriarchal and patriarchal paradigms, only the briefest
summary has been given here. Both individually and collectively, the
energy is ready to move to a new sacred dream.
The paradigms shown in the table are born of sacred mytholo­
gies. Only in the depths of the unconscious can any new global myth­
ology find roots that will survive. We, in the closing years of this
millennium, are still in the unsettled transitional stage. For many of
us, the strongest roots we can find are in the dark earth of our own
bodies-not that we would go there of our own choice, but we are
forced there through the guidance of the Dark Goddess in an addic­
tion or an illness. Like our Paleolithic ancestors, who buried their
dead with accouterments for the afterlife, we need to relate our real­
i ty to a greater Reality. Sometimes, the sacred bond has strange ori­
gins. The flames of passion in which we dance with food, alcohol,
sex, drugs, death are flames in which we may dimly discern the other
206 Reality as through a glass darkly.
MAJOR PARADIGMS IN HUMAN EVOLUTION Where Three
Matriarchal Patriarchal Androgynous Dreams Cross
instinctual self ego self soul/ spirit self
tribal hierarchical ecological
polytheistic monotheistic mner marr1age
(interiorized spiritual ity)
powerfrom nature power against nature power with nature
Cultural Expression
power as gift power as strength power as love

Psychological State
dependence independence interdependence

Approximate Time Span

30,000 years 4500 years

In the Seventies, people discussed the first two paradigms and

tried to imagine what the next one would be like. Generally, they
agreed that the new paradigm would be neither matriarchal nor patri­
archal; it would be androgynous. Rather than tribal or hierarchical, the
structures of such a society would be ecological. Ecology would be an
expression of interdependence, in which everything would be recognized
in relationship to everything else. Power would no longer be from
nature or against nature; it would be with nature. It would not be
exercised as a gift or as strength, but as love. Little did we neophytes
know the dangers of trying to differentiate the new feminine and the
new masculine, or the difficulties we would face in allowing them to
dance freely in the flames.
The most difficult transformation, as we move into this new
paradigm, is the realization of an interiorized spirituality. Polytheism
and monotheism as we have known them involve a projection "out
there" onto Mother (Nature) or Father (Sun) or their surrogates.
The Divine has relied, and continues to rely, on the evolution of
human consciousness for continuing revelation. The most important
step in the evolution of our consciousness is the pulling back of the
projections so that we can begin the process of looking for the Di­
vine within. Christ specifically warned that the kingdom of God does
not come "with observation," by looking here and there, for, he said,
"the kingdom of God is within you."2 Mystics and saints, and others
who have achieved a high level of consciousness, have sought and 207
Where Three found that realm of inner spirituality. The great Spanish mystic,
Dreams Saint Teresa of Avila, wrote of the Interior Castle. Far more than in
the West, the religions and esoteric traditions of the East have been
Cross concerned with attaining higher levels of consciousness. Today, we
are collectively moving to a higher plane as we are ushered into the
new paradigm and the new millennium. We are being impelled to
find our Interior Castle. The dislocations of the outer sphere of pub­
lic policies, attitudes, and behavior are making it imperative for us to
turn inward to locate ourselves in the "ground of our being."3
Within the center of every living thing dwells the soul of the world,
the anima mundi.
Moving into the "third sacred dream" requires us to live from
this center, the place of paradox, where the tension of the opposites
is held in balance, the "both/ and" world of mind/body, masculine/
feminine, sexuality/spirituality, life/ death. To l ive from the center is
to transcend the dualities and achieve wholeness.
The following dream suggests that a tremendous leap of con­
sciousness is required if we are to accomplish the shift into the third
paradigm.

I am in a broad-jump class. I am very anxious, because I am no

jumper. The teacher is very tall, with very dark curly hair. She disre­
gards my anxiety. She takes us up a cliff and tells us this is what we
h ave been practicing for. I'm terrified. We are going to jump across a
very wide, very deep gorge. It is a matter of life and death. I look at
my classmates. I see a tall, very simple, very concentrated man with
eyes like fire. I think, "That is Christ." He, too, will have to leap
across the gorge.

This dream suggests that the kingdom that Christ came to in­
augurate has not yet been ushered in (the Christ figure has not yet
leaped across the gorge). It became fashionable in the post-War years
to say that we were living in a post-Christian era. However, it could
equally be argued that we are living in a pre-Christian era, in that the
revolutionary message of Christ, though preserved over the years
among a few, has never been widely put into practice under the
power-as-strength mindset of the patriarchal paradigm. The basic
principles of Christianity-compassion, forgiveness, repentance, love
208 for one's enemies, tolerance, meekness-are a leap beyond what pa-
triarchy stands for. In requiring the Christ figure to make the leap Where Three
across the gorge, the dream highlights the folly of repeating old mis- Dreams Cross
takes. The new paradigm must not repress the existing one as it
emerges, but rather, integrate it, establishing a continuity with the
past. At the same time, Christ as a symbol of the Divine will make
the leap of consciousness, will be understood in a totally new way.
To the casual observer there seems to be little hope that such
an integration is possible. Few signs of a creative transition present
themselves. In our times, the lack of a guiding mythology, the frag­
mentation of the world, politically, economically, philosophically,
have led to widespread despair. William Butler Yeats's poem, The
Second Comint expresses this condition most poignantly.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.4

Two world wars and the horrors of a nuclear holocaust have

drowned "the ceremony of innocence." Many have had their belief
systems shaken to the core. These people, Yeats says, are "the best."
The "passionate intensity" of "the worst" was the subject of a recent
article in a national newspaper; the article suggested that "the spread
of fundamentalism, cults and hatred may lead us to a new Dark
Age."5
When the center does not hold, we regress. On a personal level,
we may find ourselves being moody or demanding-like a two-year­
old. When the crumbling center involves a par�digm that we have
been immersed in for over 4500 years, we regress collectively to the
infancy of our race. In regression, we return to the crux of an earlier
unresolved conflict-in this case, the transition from matriarchy to
patriarchy. This collective regression is manifesting itself today in the
resurgence of fundamentalism and the proliferation of cults. Both
rise in the face of fear. Both attempt to hold onto the old identity
through a forced collective mentality. Individuality is forfeited.
Thinking becomes rigid, concrete, dualistic, in an attempt to set 209
Where Three boundaries against what is perceived as threatening. Personal security
Dreams and meaning are preserved through a restricted world view. "Tribal
warfare" ensues, verbally or physically, against the "enemy" out there.
Cross When the center does not hold, enormous archetypal energies
are released from the unconscious. Cults and fundamentalism emerge
as an antidote to the potential anarchy contained in these energies.
The " New Age" movement draws upon the more positive aspects of
these energies, but its understanding of their true power tends to be
somewhat superficial, and playing with powerful forces that one does
not fully understand can be dangerous.
H owever, as Morris Berman suggests in Coming to Our Senses, the
greatest danger lies in the fact that the established paradigm (patriar­
chy) has taken over the language and trappings of the New Age
movement, thereby nullifying the somatic energy behind it. " [T]he
somatic energy of holistic thinking," he writes, "becomes the concep­
tual structure of cybernetics, or systems theory. . . . And that, not a
new Christianity or fascism, is the real threat facing us today. . . .
Lived experience is not the same thing as conceptual formulations­
dogmas and slogans-of lived experience, and given the Western
ascent structure, there is an inevitable pull toward safety, crystal­
lization."6
Although Berman does not equate "somatic energy" with the
feminine, as we do, he does equate body with soul. He warns that if
our experience is not grounded, "relational holism" will be deftly
eliminated yet again in history. As we would say it, if our experience
is not embodied, the feminine will once again be forced underground.
On a different front, the unfolding research of modern physics
is providing a core for a new mythology. Science has made a "quan­
tum leap" that is forcing us to rethink our notions about the nature
of reality itself No longer can we live in the rational and orderly
world of Newtonian physics. In the universe of today's physicists,
uncertainty and paradox abound. What is more, we have discovered
that "[ w Je are, in our essential makeup, composed of the same stuff
and held together by the same dynamics as those which account for
everything else in the universe."7 That is, we inhabit within ourselves,
as in the universe, a realm of uncertainty and paradox in which the
absolutes of good and evil, truth and falsehood, no longer hold.
Contemplating the uncertainty in the state of matter8 (includ­
210 ing the matter that makes up our bodies), we realize that the paradox
and lack of coherence in our psychic lives is, in fact, mirrored in the Where Three
material world. We contain within ourselves apparently irreconcilable Drea11ls Cross
modes of behavior not unlike the apparently contradictory wave/
particle behavior of light. The discoveries of quantum physics sug-
gest that these seemingly irreconcilable modes of behavior, once con-
sidered a contradiction to be resolved, are not mutually exclusive and
therefore do not demand resolution. Seeing ourselves in this way
allows us to act both within ourselves and within the universe in a
manner impossible or inconceivable to earlier generations. A higher
level of consciousness is required for such a world view.
To rise to this new consciousness is to experience the unknow­
able in the opposites working together without ceasing to be oppo­
sites. Differing world views, once thought irreconcilable, are now in
collision as they confront one another in the global village, bent, it
seems, upon destroying one another. In the new paradigm, however,
they are not seen to be in confl i ct, though seemingly opposed. They
serve as a counterpoint to one another, and their discordant interac­
tion at one level produces an overarching harmony at another, much
as the indeterminacy at the quantum level produces apparent stability
at the level of our sense experience.
The opposites are complementary, not contradictory. They are
partners in the dance of life-partners, that is, in the ongoing inter­
play between the observer and the observed.9 This dance, this inter­
play cannot take place in a world of absolutes, for such a world has
no room for differing modes of perception-only for a patriarchal
God who is himself the observer and the observed. The world of
opposites is a world of relativity, a world in which the observer cre­
ates his or her own reality and engages it with the reality created by
others, a world in which all things are possible and all things coexist.
As science has had to embrace the complementarityl0 of wave/parti­
cle duality to absorb the revolution of the new physics, so will we all
one day embrace the complementarity of the opposites of everyday
life as we participate in the revolution of the new paradigm. Learning
to live the paradigm of the opposites is our present-day challenge,
our modern mystery.
Contemplating this mystery, Jung, in his memoirs, written at
the end of his life (" Late Thoughts"), used the expression "cosmo­
gonic 'love' "-a love that transcends our human experience of love
and opens us to an unknowable reality that we cannot embrace, 211
Where Three though it embraces us. Seeing becomes a matter of perceptually
Dreams seeing through, until at last we know only that we are seen. Knowing
that we are seen, "if we possess a grain of wisdom," Jung writes, "we
Cross will completely surrender to this unknowable who embraces in love
all the opposites." 1 1 He then continues:

Whatever the learned interpretation may be of the sentence "God is

love," the words affirm the complexio oppositorum of the Godhead. In
my medical experience as well as in my own life I have again and
again been faced with the mystery of love, and have never been able
to explain what it is. Like Job, I had to "lay my hand on my mouth.
I have spoken once, and I will not answer." Qob 40:4f) i 2

The intentionality of an Ultimate Observer is finitely repeated

in every human act of unconditional love. Love is the dynamic of
the opposites, holding them together in their opposition, free of the
bondage of contractual union that may gratify the ego's demand for
a reconciling synthesis, a demand that places the ego's restrictions or
conditions upon the act of observation. This binding of the other to
the demands of the ego is precisely what unconditional love rejects.
There is what Jung calls the surrender of the ego to the Self-a Self
that, far from being known, remains forever unknown. The surrender
that Jung reaches at the end of his memoirs is the surrender of the
unknown to the more unknown, a surrender that is now becoming
the animating spirit of the new physics, a spirit that we call the
conscious feminine.
At this point, some comment on the pages that follow may be
of value. Otherwise, you may find yourself reading and wondering if
you picked up the wrong book. You may have already found, and
certainly will find, words put together in ways that are, perhaps, unfa­
miliar to you. We do not ordinarily speak of quantum physics and
the feminine in the same breath, nor do we put neurotransmitters,
Virgin, and metaphor machine into the same sentence. However, if
we are ever going to see the world as a whole-interdependent, eco­
logically conscious, androgynous, embodied in the inner marriage,
the realization of the third dream-then we are going to have to
make some effort to understand each other's metaphors. Even in a
partial exploration-and that is all this book intends to be-we can
212 begin t o see through other glasses, and recognize that the revolution
taking place in our own field of specialization is being mirrored in Where Three
many other fields. We all have an important contribution to make in Dreams Cross
bringing the Feminine to consciousness. And with that consciousness
will come a totally new understanding of the Masculine.
Traditionally, words such as irrational, illogical, uncertain, unfocused,
subjective, have been associated with the Feminine, usually accompa­
nied by a condescending smile or a dismissive wave of the hand.
Sometimes a thoughtless label was slapped on with a silencing judg­
ment: histrionic, hysterical, melodramatic, disorganized, naive, stupid. In setting
boundaries that attempted to dispose of everything these words
stood for, patriarchy lost touch with half of life.
Now, however, from quantum physics come words and phrases
like acausality, indeterminacy, chaos, non locality, complementarity, "perceived
and perceiver are one." Modern science has now released these femi­
nine concepts from their repressed condition. Even, the uninitiated,
who mock body awareness with phrases like "touchy-feely," are
proud to talk about "somatic wholeness" or "relational wisdom," so
long, of course, as they don't attempt to bring a ray of consciousness
into their big toe. Let us by all means rejoice that these words are
honored, as are words like relational and resonating in the corporate
business world. At the same time, let us not forget that the word �
hold the energy ·of the Feminine, that they speak for the half of life
that, outside of modern science, is still virtually repressed. These are
the very words that carry the potential for creative transformation.
We dare not allow the potential of the emerging feminine to fall
back into unconsciousness again.
Words do matter. Throughout history, abstract concepts have
co-opted personalized, feeling-toned words, thus driving the Femi­
nine underground. As we move into the new millennium on this blue
planet whose survival is at stake, surely we will be conscious enough
to honor her Presence with words that carry the passion, the magne­
tism, the fire that is hers. In honoring her, we are also honoring the
Masculine that knows her. So long as we fail to acknowledge the
two complementary energies within, we cannot acknowledge them
without. Their conscious differentiation both within and without is
essential in order for their integration to take place. Dream images
often provide the precision that makes both differentiation and con­
nection possible. Honoring the words we allow to resonate in our
bodies is crucial to that integration. 213
Where Three T H E Ey E 0 F T H E B E H 0 L 0 E R

Drea111s
Science has been largely perceived as the domain of the masculine,
Cross theoretical science as the offspring of pure thought. Its practical ap­
plications have been closely associated with ideas of progress and
perfectability, a kind of Utopian vision based upon the subjugation
of nature to human reason. This understanding culminated in New­
tonian physics, in which the whole of nature was understood in ra­
tional terms. The cosmos was seen as a vast mechanism, somewhat
like a giant clock, governed by immutable laws that were discoverable
by the intellect.
That view of science has been radically altered by a new recog­
nition of the role of the observer in the process of scientific observa­
tion, or, more accurately, of who the observer is. The new physics
has shown that the workings of the cosmos (especially at the sub­
atomic level) are far more elusive than Newton had imagined, that
intellect can actually interfere with what is perceived and can alter
the way it is perceived.
Living in the seventeenth century, Isaac Newton did not have
the benefit of our present-day understanding of the unconscious, as
developed by Freud and Jung. The qualities we now associate with
the unconscious-the instinctual, the acausal, the irrational-were
traditionally associated with the feminine. These qualities, when en­
countered in nature, were to be disciplined, controlled, made answer­
able to reason, which was traditionally associated with the masculine.
One of the seventeenth century's guiding metaphors was the
Great Chain of Being, structured very much along the lines of the
hierarchically ordered social institutions of the day. The Chain
stretched all the way from the mineral realm at the lowest end,
through plants, animals, humans, and angels, to God at the highest
end. The interaction of the members in this Chain was governed by
the law that whatever was closer to God in the Chain must rule, by
natural right, over what was more distant: men over women, humans
over nature, and so on.
Accordingly, John Milton, also a seventeenth-century figure,
and author of the great Christian epic Paradise Lost, defined the rela­
tionship between Adam and Eve in a single line: "He for God only;
she for God in him." Man's fall from paradise was the result of
214 woman's rejecting man's higher authority and following her own
foolish feminine desires. These desires were closely connected with Where Three
the serpent, who tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit of the Tree Dreams Cross
of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. She, in turn, tempted Adam to
do the same.
Being a man of his times, Milton simply could not deal with
the feminine. In his epic, he presents Eve as the betrayer, even though
it was she who opened the way to a knowledge that would otherwise
have remained sealed. This was the knowledge of good and evil­
intuitive knowledge, not rational knowledge. This was knowledge of
the opposites, a knowledge necessary for higher consciousness. Good
can be known only by confronting its opposite, evil. This applies not
just to good and evil but to other opposites as well. In opening
herself to a knowledge of good and evil, Eve was opening up a new
way of knowing. By the end of the epic, almost against Milton's own
wishes, Eve, who was initially responsible for the Fall, is identified
with the Redemption. From her womb, the womb of nature i tself,
will come the Savior whose Crone qualities transcend the opposites.
The plan of redemption is revealed to Eve in a dream. Adam is
surprised by her knowledge, unable to fathom where it came from.
Eve tells him that God does not communicate by man's faculty of
reason alone, "For God is also in sleep, and Dreams advise, . " 1 3
. .

Believed b y many t o be the most patriarchal o f all English

poets, Milton was guided by a female muse, Urania, who came to
him nightly in his sleep to dictate his poem to him. In the opening
lines of Book VII, he invokes her to inspire him:

Before the H ills appear'd, or Fountain How'd,

Thou with Eternal Wisdom didst converse,
Wisdom thy Sister, and with her didst play
In presence of th' Almighty Father, pleas' d
With thy Celestial Song.14

She guides him to an understanding of the feminine, which only

now, with the advent of the new physics, is fully entering our con­
sciousness as it informs our understanding of the operations of the
cosmos.
While Adam learns rationally, Eve receives the information in
her sleep. Similarly, while John Milton thought rationally during the
day, his muse dictated to him by night a poem that was beyond the 215
Where Three scope of his rational mind. It took Milton twelve books of Paradise
Dreams Lost to discover that Eve is as much a participant in God's plan as
Adam. H e closes his epic with the following lines:
Cross
They, hand in hand, with wand'ring steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.15

Like his contemporaries, John Milton was immersed in the

Judea-Christian mythology that dominated the seventeenth century.
Nevertheless, he had glimmerings of the power of the unconscious.
He knew that he relied on his Celestial Patroness to write his poem.
Jung, too, realized that an encounter with reality requires the pres­
ence of the whole psyche-including feeling, thinking, instinct, and
intuition. For him, pure reason was a pure abstraction from reality
rather than an encounter with it. Not only is objectivity, as it has
been traditionally defined, not attainable, but it gives us a false pic­
ture of reality by virtue of what it excludes. Jung's friendships with
people such as Richard Wilhelm, translator of The Secret rif the Golden
Flower, and Laurens van der Post, that man of soul, especially the soul
of Africa, opened him to immediate experience in the acausal world.
These men, like the Romantic poets whom we have mentioned
throughout this book, were visionaries, essentially rejected in their
own time.
The vertical orientation of seventeenth-century thinking and
the unshakable belief in the existence of absolutes gave rise to the
heady optimism of the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, to
unquestioning faith in the power of Reason not just to understand
the universe but to solve the riddle of the human condition as well.
The Enlightenment spawned modern science and the so-called "sci­
entific method" with its emphasis on verifiability and objectivity. Sci­
entific conclusions could not be considered valid if the scientist had
a personal stake in the outcome of his experiments. He must put
·
his personal feelings aside and approach his subject with complete
detachment if he was to arrive at Absolute Truth.
It was in a climate such as this, in the early twentieth century,
that discoveries were made that would change forever the way scien­
tists would relate to their subject. The work of Albert Einstein, Max
Planck, Niels Bohr and others uncovered a world that was very dif-
216 ferent from the one Newton and his successors had seen. Einstein
showed that, on a cosmic scale, one's point of observation deter­ Where Three
mined what one saw, that two observers observing the same event Dreams Cross
from different locations could have widely differing perceptions of
what had happened. As if this was not enough to shake the belief in
the existence of Absolute Truth, the work of Planck and Bohr opened
up the infinitesimal world of subatomic particles, in which the very
act of measuring something changed the state of that thing and
thereby nullified the measurement, making it impossible to determine
anything with even a modicum of accuracy.
Science today cannot but acknowledge that objectivity, the
most cherished of its ideals, is unattainable. The experimenter cannot
detach herself from her experiment; the thinker cannot separate him­
self from his thoughts. The observer is as much a participant in an
event as the observed. As physicist John Wheeler states it: " . . . the
particular way in which we choose to observe quantum reality partly
detennines what we shall see."16 If quantum physics tells us anything,
it is that reality is indeed in the eye of the beholder.
Once viewed as the bedrock upon which science founded its
claim to legitimacy, objectivity now seems more like quicksand. The
undennining of the credibility of objectivity poses a vexing problem
for psychology and philosophy as well. If objectivity as we have con­
ceived it is a mirage, then we are left with only the old subjectivity. In
psychological terms, subjectivity results from projection. The subject
unconsciously projects his or her own feelings, attitudes, motives,
expectations onto the object, and is therefore unable to see the object
as it may actually be. We seem to be left with no way of getting a
"true" picture of the object-and the elusive question as to whether
such a view is at all possible.
Attempts to find a solution to this quandary have led to a
renewed interest in consciousness. Once the province of philoso­
phers, consciousness is now the hunting ground of scientists of every
persuasion. Each approaches the problem from the perspective of his
or her own scientific discipline. Chaos theorists suggest that con­
sciousness is an "emergent property" of matter. Neuroscientists seek
it in the delicate structures within the neurons in the brain. 1 7 Psycho­
neuroimmunologists track down chemicals in the body in search of
it. 1 8 Quantum physicists try to understand it in terms of quantum­
mechanical principles.
In a recently published book, the mathematician and physicist 217
Where Three Roger Penrose suggests that consciousness has a quantum-mechani­
Dreams cal nature. 1 9 The implications of this are enormous. If consciousness
operates in a quantum-mechanical way, then every shift in conscious­
Cross ness has the potential for creating a new reality. In any situation, the
level of consciousness of the participants is of inunense importance.
In the healing process, for example, the level of consciousness of the
healer is crucial, as is the relationship between healer and patient. As
observer of our own healing process, our own level of consciousness
is equally important. Who we are and what we are observing, con­
sciously and unconsciously, influence what is happening in our body.
In the first half of the twentieth century, physicist and Nobel
laureate Wolfgang Pauli recognized the participatory awareness that
quantum mechanics calls for and concerned himself greatly with the
"split-off" aspects of his own consciousness as a scientist. He recog­
nized, as many of us do, that the unconscious drives-perhaps more
than our conscious ego-govern much of our i nteraction with the
world and our interpretation of i t. The deeper he delved into the
subject, writes Fred Alan Wolf, a theoretical physicist, the more con­
vinced he became "that the unconscious was far more instrumental
in making theories about matter than most physicists would have
ever contemplated."20 He looked in his dreams for the resolution
between spirit and matter, hoping to find in that resolution answers
to the riddles of the quantum world.
Pauli's quest brought him into contact with Jung, whose own
quest was the mirror image of Pauli's. Aware that natural science had
replaced religion as the source of authority in the modern world,
Jung sought to link his investigations into the unconscious with the
discoveries of modern physics. He saw that if he did not do this, the
gap between soul and matter, between psyche and soma, would
widen. He was looking for a "scientific" basis for his theories about
the workings of the psyche.
Jung and Pauli were a perfect match, for they complemented
each other, each supplying what the other lacked and sought. Pauli
was fascinated with Jung's theories about the interaction between
consciousness and the unconscious, and saw in this interaction an
analog of the complementarity principle of quantum physics. "It is
undeniable," he wrote,

that the development of "microphysics" has brought the way in which

218 nature is described in this science very much closer to that of the
 newer psychology: but whereas the former ["microphysics"-i.e. Where Time
quantum physics], on account of the basic "complementarity" situa­
Dreams Cross
tion, is faced with the impossibility of eliminating the effects of the
observer by determinable correctives, and h as therefore to abandon in
principle mry objective understanding of physical phenomena [italics mine], the
latter [the "newer" or Jungian psychologyJ can supplement the purely
subjective psychology of consciousness by postulating the existence
of an unconscious that possesses a large measure of objective reality.2'

Pauli was intrigued by the parallel between the way nature was
unfolding in the new physics and the unconscious was unfolding in
Jungian psychology. He saw, however, that while the new physics had
no hope of arriving at an objective understanding of nature, Jungian
psychology offered the possibility of achieving objectivity by focus­
ing on the unconscious, which he saw as possessing "a larger measure
of objective reality."
Pauli's interest in Jung's psychology led him to come to grips
with his role as a physicist in the new physics, as the observer who
modifies and therefore partially determines what is observed. He real­
ized that in order to fill this role adequately he would have to deal
with his own unconscious and become intimately acquainted with it.
He also came to realize, through a series of dreams, that the path to
the unconscious lay in analysis.
These dreams, which Pauli analyzed with th � help of Marie
Louise von Franz, the foremost analyst of Jung's "newer psychol­
ogy," led him to the realization that he needed to open himself to
his own inner feminine, his anima, to access his unconscious. In the
movement of the feminine in his dreams, he came to see an analog
of the movement of the feminine in physics. He began to understand
that the feminine (the new physics) was not in opposition to the
masculine (Newtonian physics), that they were, as it were, partners
in a cosmic dance.
In the dreams most concerned with the role of the observer in
the new physics, three figures dominate.22 The first figure is a dark­
skinned young Persian who wants Pauli to help him get admitted to
the Polytechnic Institute in Zurich. Presumably, his task would be to
carry on the work of Einstein and Bohr by relocating it in the arche­
typal unconscious, which has the power to structure not only mental
images but matter itself (the ultraviolet and infrared ends of the
specttum). 219
Where Three The second dominant figure, related to the first, is a light­
Dreams skinned blond man who attempts, by means of a fire, to drive Pauli
out of the upper rooms of a house where a local conference on
Cross mathematics and physics is being held. Once out of the burning
house, Pauli encounters a light-dark stranger (a fusion of the Persian
and the blond man) who tells him that he will take Pauli to the place
where he belongs so that he can perform the task assigned to him.
That task is a course on cookery, a well-known image for transfor­
mation.
The third dominant figure is a dark woman who works with
the master whom she shares with Pauli. She is giving Pauli a music
lesson. His task is to move beyond reading the notes to hearing the
music. The woman sometimes looks like Marie Louise von Franz
(with whom Pauli was working at the time), but more often like a
Chinese woman. When the piano lesson ends, Pauli, about to leave
the room, bows to the lady, but the master says to him, " Wait.
Transformation of the center of evolution." The woman slips a ring
"i" from her finger. The ring floats in the air. The woman tells him
that the ring "i" symbolizes the union of the opposites, a union that
makes the instinctive, the rational, and the spiritual into a unified
whole that numbers without the "i" cannot represent. Pauli, in turn,
explains to the woman that the ring "i" is the unity beyond par­
ticle and wave, and at the same time the operation that generates
them both.
In I 9 5 I , Pauli realized that he could no longer "follow the
abstract dictates of the modern logos" i f he wished to penetrate the
movement in the depths of his unconscious. He realized that per­
sonal feeling was the missing link in the rationality that governed the
work of Einstein and Bohr. The key to that missing link lay in the
feeling tone of his anima as it was projected onto von Franz in their
working relationship. Though in his relationship to the male figures
in his dreams he was "still driven by the male-like logos," in his
relationship to the female figure (the piano teacher, associated to von
Franz) he was driven by something far less rational. This irrational
force was symbolized in the ring "i" carried within what Jung, at the
end of his life, called "cosmogonic 'love.' " It is a love that we cannot
know intellectually. Rather, it knows us, and if we possess "a grain
of wisdom" we will finally surrender to it. "And She, who is one, can
220 do all things and renews everything while herself perduring.''23
 PaUli died in 1 958 without completing his work in "micro- Where Three
physics." What his journey was demanding of him in his work with Dreanzs Cross
Jung and von Franz was not merely the masculine advancement of
new hypotheses about the nature of matter, but a life lived "beyond
reading the notes to hearing the music." The unconscious seemed to
be asking him to bring into life the balance of the opposites that he
saw modeled in the new hypotheses. Wolf speculates that Pauli's
death "may mean that now he really knows the truth about exis-
tence."24 In this world, however, Pauli remains one of those giant
male visionaries, along with Milton, Blake, Keats, and Shelley, who,
despite their vision of the Feminine that i nspired their best work,
were at least partially bound to an oppressive patriarchy. As a result,
their unconscious projections onto the women they "loved" made
genuine relationship almost impossible.
Pauli's dreams echo other dreams presented in this book.
Dreams point toward the center, the point where matter and spirit
meet, and do not meet. This is the point of the judgment of Maar.
For men, the dark eternal woman in her many guises is the bridge to
the Self For women, she is the feminine part of the Self In both
genders, she is the creative matrix that gives birth to the new order.
Here is the meeting of soul and spirit (feminine and masculine) in a
new conjunctio. From this center point, we can perceive the world in
i ts complementarity and indivisibility, the opposites no longer in
opposition. We hold the opposites-the mystery within which the
unknown is operating.
This is the point where love becomes possible. We see the other
with the eye of the heart, an eye not clouded by fear manifesting as
need, jealousy, possessiveness, or manipulation. With the unclouded
eye of the heart, we can see the other as other. We can rejoice in the
other, challenge the other, and embrace the other without losing our
own center or taking anything away from the other. We are always
other to each other-soul meeting soul, the body awakened with joy.
To love unconditionally requires no contracts, bargains, or agree­
ments. Love exists in the moment-to-moment flux of life. Here is no
lack of commitment to the other but a far deeper commitment to
oneself Making a commitment to another is really an illusion, a way
of holding. In the end, it is to no avail. Making a commitment to
our deepest Self, however, pulls us into life and opens the door to
others. Love carries a great responsibility to go where life leads, to 22 1
Where Three be where life resonates. If we have no passion for our own life, we
Dreams will constantly seek it vicariously in others. Seeking a greater realiza­
tion of the Self is the only commitment we can really make.
Cross Within the "magical" thinking of our ancestors, intuitions and
symbolic communication were the forces that drove human evolu­
tion. The reductionism and literalness of our recent patriarchal past,
however, has been a hindrance to our further evolution. Nevertheless,
with the emergence of the new physics, we are beginning to discover
a new "magic."
Many people today are rediscovering wisdom in tribal cultures,
in ancient techniques of healing, and in their relationship to the
earth. This rediscovery is not surprising. "Body consciousness" has
an innate wisdom of i ts own. It is a world view rooted in the natural
wisdom of our own embodied nature. We can never go back to the
earlier state of matriarchy, but the natural wisdom of that state, when
it is transformed, will form the basis of a third sacred dream. The
world is a spiritual unity, a dance between soul and spirit-the same
dance that scientists find under their microscopes and in their mathe­
matical formulas. Our ancestors were correct in recognizing the
world as spiritual, but, at their stage of development, were able to
express this recognition only concretely. Patriarchy, in i ts turn, has
been no more able to go beyond the concrete.
The more we recognize the nonmateriality of the body, of na­
ture, the more conscious it becomes. This consciousness is what we
call soul, a soul no longer forced into exile. William Blake depicts this
in his drawing The Reunion of the Soul and the Body. This reanimation of
the body allows us to enter consciously into the flow of life. We can
dance in the flames, dying and being reborn in every moment, be­
cause the fear that cuts us off from life has been eliminated. The soul
knows i ts immortality, and does not fear death as the ego does. Liv­
ing from the point of soul consciousness allows us to live fully in the
N O W.

There is, today, a gradual shift away from the patriarchal logos
of decisions based on statistics and administered from above to deci­
sions made cooperatively that include the feelings of the people in­
volved. Corporations are beginning to look at their own history as
part of their planning, to realize that people on the "front line" often
have a better idea of what will work in their own sphere of compe-
222 tence than those in the executive suite. People have an investment in
their own lives and when their Where Three
feeling is evoked in a con­ Drearm Cross
structive way, creative solu- .
tions become possible.
True interdependence,
however, is possible only if
other factors come into har­
mony. Conscious perception, ;_
'
seeing with the heart-and
the interdependence this leads
to-gives rise to creative pos­
sibilities, because it opens us ;
to what J ung called synchron­
icity.
Synchronicity, as Jung
understood it, is not ordinary
chance or meaningless coinci­
dence, but is closely allied to
the archetypes. "In J ung' s
The RtHrti<m �f Bo�y 1md Soul
thinking, the activation or
by Wi!liatn Blake.
awakening of an archetype re­
leases a great deal of power, analogous to splitting the atom. This
power, in the immediate vicinity of the psychoid process from which
the archetype takes its origin, is the catalyst for the synchronistic
event. . . . The activation of an archetype releases patterning forces
that can restructure events both in the psyche and in the external
world. The restructuring proceeds in an acausal fashion, operating
outside the laws of causality."25
The release of energy from the archetypal source leaves a person
with a feeling of numinosity or authenticity. Because the archetype,
as a psychoid energy, rises from both body and spirit, its effects will
be felt in the external and internal world. To understand how this
works in our lives, we could draw some columns on a page and label
them with such headings as important dreams, events, books that
resonated, meetings with significant people, and so on. Down the
left-hand side, we could put a period of time we want to look at, for
example, I to I 0 years. By looking over time at the events, books,
dreams, or significant people we have met, it is possible to see the
pattern that gave rise to our present position. In doing this, most 223
Where Three people begin to realize that much of what has happened to them is
Dreams the result of synchronicity. We went to the wrong place, but met the
right person. We were wondering about something, and the right
Cross book fell into our hands. The happening was acausal. Who, we may
ask, is the observer in this process? Whose consciousness makes it
happen?
Jung developed this notion of acausality or synchronicity along
with Wolfgang Pauli. "Indeed, Pauli and Jung proposed that the
traditional triad of classical physics, space, time, and causality be
supplemented by a fourth element, synchronicity, producing a tetrad.
This fourth element operates in an acausal fashion, representing the
polar opposi te of causality."26
Energy

Space-time

Here is a simple version of Wolf's diagram of this tetrad. Ex­

plaining i t, Wolf writes, "To the extent that we know where and
when events occur, we cannot say with what energy these events take
place. So much is said by the uncertainty principle."27

Thus space-time and energy are complementary descriptors of events,

and in a similar manner synchronicity and causality are complemen­
tary to each other. They deal, just as energy and space-time do, with
events. These events are marked by their psychic component as well
as their physical component. Here is the crux of the matter: our
Western consciousness has taken as meaningful only those events that
are labeled causal. By losing track of or dismissing this other dimen­
sion of meaningfulness, we actually become unconscious of much of
the universe.2�

This "other dimension" is often revealed to us in dreams, active

imagination, and the creative process in any art form. Our failure to
understand nonlocal causality in physics and synchronicity can take
the power of the archetypal energy into very negative implications
224 for the world.
 At a cultural level, the horrendous consequences of ignoring Where Three
what the Black Madonna symbolizes became all too clear in Nazi Dreams Cross
Germany. In his sobering study of the Third Reich, Morris Berman
writes, "All evil was dark and animalistic, all good was blond and
spiritual. The dark forces worked to promote chaos; the light, to
promote order."29 Berman points out that in periods of overpowering
transi tion, anxiety, economic depression, times that produce weak
ego structures, a charismatic man like Hitler can fill yearning people
with a dream of becoming gods, and if he supports that dream with
ritual and images that evoke somatic response, masses of people will
become captured by the light and blindly obey their leader.
We live in fearful transitional times. Archetypal energies are
exploding all around us, energies strong enough to collide with our
sense of personal responsibility. If we have dreams of Hitler or S.S.
troops, we need to ask ourselves where these brutal and barbarous
men surfaced in our thoughts and actions during the past twenty­
four hours. We need also to remember that cults are forming at our
own back door. Where energy has no link with a cherishing connec­
tion, it quickly bonds with eviL Where energy is surrounded by a
free Bow of trust, i t perceives life through the eyes of love. Where
opposites are polarized instead of held in balance, trouble erupts.
What manifests depends on the eyes that are perceiving. Intentional­
ity determines the outcome of most of the situations in our lives.
My own interest in synchronicity was awakened about fourteen
years ago in connection with a friend, whom I will call Jane, who
was in the last stages of Alzheimer's disease. She had been a vibrant,
intelligent, caring woman who, at sixty-four, was reduced to an
empty shell, staring vacantly into space, unable to recognize anyone
or do anything for herself On two successive nights, I had significant
dreams in which Jane appeared, giving me very salient messages about
my future path. On the second morning, her nurse phoned me and
suggested that, perhaps, I should visit her. Apparently, two days ear­
lier, Jane had found an old photograph of the two of us. She had put
it on the dresser and had sat staring at it. Even in the absence of
mental capacities, the soul can communicate in ways we know noth­
ing about in our. current models of reality.
Three or four months after this event, I was traveling for two
weeks in the States. Being relatively young, Jane was in quite good
physical health and I thought little of going away. Toward the end 225
Where Time of my travels, I was in a hotel and went out to get some papers I had
Dreams left in the car. It was about 8 PM and I looked up to see the "first
star." I remembered rather playfully the old wish "star light, star
Cross bright." Then I became more centered and reflective, thinking,
"What would I really wish for above all else?" At that moment I was
seized with enormous love and gratitude. I thought of Jane and
prayed that she might be released from the indignity of her terrible
suffering.
I continued my trip, and two days later went to Virginia Beach
to spend a couple of days at the ocean before flying home. Friends
who knew my plans tracked me down and left a message there asking
me to call Toronto. I called, and was told that Jane had suddenly and
unexpectedly fallen into a coma and had died three hours later. I was
a little startled when the nurse said that this had happened two nights
earlier. I asked when she had fallen into the coma. "Oh, about 8 PM, "
she said. The funeral was the next morning, and I could not get back
in time. Somehow it seemed unnecessary. The connection was pres­
ent, had always been present. I went out and swam in the ocean,
merging my tears with the waves. The ego grieves but the soul knows
that death is only a ripple in the ocean of time.
The reason that the notion of synchronicity has been so diffi­
cult for us to grasp is that it is linked to the feminine principle. "The
left-hand side [of the diagram, that is, causalityJ corresponds to what
we would call memory-the linking up of events that are not occur­
ring now with events that are. This process necessarily takes us out
of the here and now and into our heads-our intellect so to speak."30
Unlike causality, synchronicity is affective rather than intellectual. "It
is a realization of a deep connection that can immediately be broken
by logical dictate . . . . To the extent that we say left-hand-side events
become deathlike as a result of analysis, right-hand-side events be­
come ahve as a result of experience-coming to our senses."3 1 Syn­
chronicity and acausality are the Goddess in action. Synchronicity
rises out of the collective unconscious or the world soul, which con­
tains all possibilities, the proliferating womb of Sophia.
In Europe, during the Middle Ages, this proliferating womb of
Sophia was known by the Latin word Sapientia. In Psyche and Matter,
von Franz, discussing the relationship between synchronicity and
226 Sapientia, writes:
 The Sapientia Dei is a kind of primordial unity, a single-formed image Where Three
that proliferates itself into numberless primordial forms, which at the
Dreams Cross
same time nonetheless remain within the primordial unity. (Today we
would call these the archetypes.) The Sapientia contains higher myster­
ies than mere belief. As a feminine figure, it has more to do with
feeling, a factor that we must also take into account in connection
with Jung's idea of synchronicity, because the experience of meaning
is not only a result of thought but also something connected with
feeling.32

The medieval philosophers saw this unity as love. Marsilio Fici­

nio, for example, writes, "All the parts of the world, like the limbs
of a living being, are dependent upon the one love, and are bound to
one another by natural affinity . . . and that is the real magic."''
Giordano Bruno "compares this love that runs like a current through
everything with a lightning bolt (fulgur) or a light and also calls i t
'the world soul' in the 'spirit of the universe.' "34 Von Franz affirms
that Sapientia represents "the psychic total interconnectedness of the
universe through a spirit of love."35
The purpose of a myth is to locate human experience in the
largest possible community, the community of life in relation to the
Divine. Without a genuine mythology, human experience remains
imprisoned within boundaries that are exclusive rather than inclusive,
boundaries that may shrink to solitary confinement. Now that the
planet has become, in essence, one country, the necessity of finding a
way to relate human experience at the personal level to the entire
community of life becomes critical. The role of the Dark Goddess at
this moment of mutation is crucial. Her Presence is essential to the
emergence of a global community that includes not only human rela­
tionships but the relationship of human beings to every form of life
on the planet and to the planet i tself in relation to the Divine.
In quietly bringing our thoughts and feelings about the Femi­
nine together, let us return to some of our original questions: Who
is the Goddess? What are her attributes? Who is she as Mother,
Virgin, Crone? How does she relate to the Masculine? If we throw
ourselves into the Barnes and dance in the refining fire, how will our
everyday lives be changed? If we really do believe she holds the whole
world in her love, how do we live that sacramental truth at our
center? 227
Where Three If we concentrate on Edvard Munch's painting entitled Ma­
DreartJs donna, we may find within ourselves new questions, new answers. The
image is both electrifying and disquieting. It leaves us pondering the
Cross mystery of the contemporary Virgin.
Munch has captured a fleeting NOW. Her body vibrates with
sexual passion and not sexual only, but with the hidden Wisdom
that is released in the rites of lovemaking.
Munch has written about this moment:

The pause as all the world stops in its path. Moonlight glides over
your face filled with all the earth's beauty and pain . . . . Thus, new
life reaches out its hand to death. The chain is forged that binds the
thousands of generations that have died to the thousands of genera­
tions to come.36

Atadonn;: hr Edvard Munch

228
 She has entered into Wisdom, and is poised in that moment of Where Three
total fulfillment and total self-containment before she moves back Dreams Cross
into life. Sophia shines through the transparent body, precarious, as
it holds the balance with spirit and matter. The subtle body of the
observer resonates-soul to soul.
Her body rests in the swirls of life around it. The scarlet halo
that crowns her fl o wing dark hair, and the bits of scarlet around her
suggest the flames of passion in which she is still burning. Here is the
reality of matter, the reality of the body, the reality of the rhythms of
nature and shimmering light. Here is Mary Magdalene purified
through her earlier excesses, coming through the flames of lust and
purified in those flames. And here is the Virgin Mary within whose
womb lies the sacred power to transfonn seed into fruit. This is a
moment of birth, death, physical and spiritual ecstasy. Here is soul
in body-feminine Being in its naked vulnerability.
And here is the anguish of the feminine. Her veiled lids suggest
inner rememberings and inner imaginings, as does her rounded belly.
Does she in this moment feel herself transformed-forever trans­
formed, transformed by the new consciousness that will take shape
within her and come forth in the fullness of time? Can she bear the
fruit?
This Madonna has a vision of her child, or of herself, in the
deep left-hand corner of the painting-a tiny skeletal child like the
one who appears in dreams in a garbage bin into which it has thrown
itself. When the dreamer asks, "Why are you there?" the child re­
plies, " Because you would have killed me." And most of us can pin­
point exactly when our child went into hiding, and the driven times
in our lives when we have left the waif to die. That is the soul child
that yearns to connect with us in our dreams.
Equally disturbing is the sperm, floating on its ectoplasmic way
around her periphery. Some strength is not in the phallus. Some
conflict with the masculine is unresolved. Some terror fills the embry­
onic child. The opposites are not yet joined without opposition. Will
the fetus reach maturity? Will the new consciousness be born? Will
the creative phallus within herself be strong enough to release the
child into life?
And if we turn the picture upside down, the eyes look into ours
with unspeakable wisdom, unspeakable beauty, unspeakable horror.
We feel we have lifted a veil we ought not to have touched, and turn 229
Where Three the picture right side up. But infinity still rolls through us because
Dreams the truth that is in our cells is in her cells. They resonate true, too
true.
Cross This is a paradoxical Madonna, much more an expression of
soul because she is so utterly grounded. This body can·ies the Black
Madonna's energy. It is not concretized matter, body without feeling.
In her, metaphor lives, energy transforms. Soul is in every cell, beauty
in i ts naked essence.
Somehow this painting captures the Feminine in time, a Now
in eternity. The angle of her body and her upturned head, the bare
outline of her raised arms suggest a figure on a cross, an inner cross.
FJled with the rapture of her love, her body still vibrating in ecstasy,
she at this moment may be filled with new life-the moment of
surrender that opens her to an unknown future. She echoes some­
thing of Botticelli's Venus rising up out of the sea, something of
Bernini's Saint Teresa transcendent in religious rapture, something of
da Vinci's Madonna veiled in her female depths. Each of these icons
captures a moment when the Divine intersects the human. Each
holds the tension between saint and whore, and the yearning of the
lonely soul. What makes Munch's Madonna modern is the immedi­
acy of the body-the boldness, the sweetness, the vulnerability, the
divine fire, the knowing in every cell. Wisdom embodied. Sexuality
and spirituality seem to be one in this p icture. And yet, the tiny soul
cowers in the corner wondering whether it is safe to come in. This is
a painting in which the elements-womb, sperm, child-interrogate
rather than affirm each other. Though they belong together, they are
not yet one. In their separation, they speak directly to our uncon­
scious. They disturb in order to illumine. This Madonna is not a
victim. She embodies a new configuration. That configuration ac­
cepts death as a friend, knowing that nothing can change until the
universal shifting is firmly grounded in somatic reality.
The Goddess is the unspeakable wisdom that grows into the
very cells of the body. She lives with this sacramental truth at her
center: the beauty and the horror of the whole of life are blazing in
H er love. She is dancing in the flames.

230
 Noted

Introduction

1 . Fred Alan Wolf, The Dream ing Universe (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1 944),
p. I 6.
2. Carlos Suares, The Qabala Trilogy (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1 985),
p. 285.
3. Robert Graves, The Song if Sor:gs (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1 973), p. 9.
4. Ibid., p. 1 5.
5. Susan Cady, Marian Ronan, and Hal Taussig, Sophia: The huu-re if Feminine
Spirituality (San Francisco: Harper and Row, I 986 ), pp. I I 7- I 1 8. The authors
point out that many of the biblical references to Sophia appear only in Roman
Catholic editions of the Bible.
6. Proverbs 8:4-I I .

Chapter I . The Fierce and Loving Goddess

l. Vivekananda, cited in David Kingsley, The Sword and the Flute (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, I 9 75), p. 1 45.
2. Ibid., p. l i O.
3. Ken Wilber, Up From Eden (Boulder: Shambhala Publications, 1 983), p. 42.
4. Ibid., pp. 1 22-I23 .
5. Percy B. Shelley, Prometheus Unbound, i n David Reisman and Sharon B. Powers
(eds.), Shelley's Poetry and Prose (New York: W. W. Norton, I 9 7 I ).
6. Wilber, Up From Eden, p. 1 23.
7. Ibid., p. 1 26.
8. Book of Wisdom, from Elizabeth Johnson, "Jesus the Wisdom of God," in
Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses (December I 985): 266.
9. Cyme, from Ibid., p. 270.
1 0. Ibid., pp. 268-269.
1 1. Proverbs 8: 1 1 .
I 2. Proverbs 9: I -6.
1 3. Wilber, Up From Edm, p. I 42.
1 4. Ibid., p. 1 84.
Notes I S. Robert Goldstein, The Encyclopedia of Human Behavior (New York: Doubleday,
I 970), vol. I , p. 340.
I 6. Gloria Steinem, Moving Beyond Words (New York: Simon and Schuster, I 994),
p. 23.
I 7. Wilber, Up From Eden, p. 238.
I 8. Carol Solomon, unpublished personal papers.
I 9. Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century (New York:
Alfred Knopf, I 978), p. I 23.
20. E. F. Schumacher, A Guidefor the Perplrxed (New York: H arper and Row, I 9 77),
p. 54.
2 1 . Thomas Berry, "Planetary Managemem," Riverdale Papers VT (New York,
I 979), p. 6.
22. Today, however, the body is plagued by viruses that are so powerful that,
doctors tell us, we are moving into a "postantibiotic age." The immune system
is breaking down under the onslaught of pollutants, roxie [contaminated?]
food and water, and the rigid control of an overtaxed body that needs to
dance.
23. Philippe Aries, Western A ttitudes toward Death (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univer­
sity Press, I 9 74), p. 57.
24. Julia O'Faolain and Lauro Martines (eds.), Not in God's Image (New York:
Harper and Row, I 973), p. 209.
25. Saint John Chrysostom in ibid., p. 1 38.
26. Rosemary Ruether, "Sexism and Liberation: rhe Historical Experience," in
Eugene C. Bianchi and Rosemary Ruether (eds.), From Machismo to Mutuality:
Essays on Sexism and Woman-Man Liberation (New York: Paulist Press, 1 976),
p. I S.
27. Gesta Trevirorum, from O'Faolain and Martines, op. cit., p. 2 I 5.
28. Ibid., p. 209.
29. Peter Giovacchini in Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism (New York:
Warner Books, I 979), p. 88.
30. Michael Beldock in ibid., p. 89.
3 I. Jacob Needleham, A Sense of the Cosmos (New York: E. P. Dutton, I 965), p. 47.
32. Tsultrim Allione, Women of Wisdom (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
I 9 84), p. 29.
33. Ibid., p. 29.
34. John Briggs and F. David Peat, Turbulent Mirror (New York: Harper and Row,
I 9 89), p. 22.
35. Allione, Women of Wisdom, pp. 29-3 I .
3 6. Ibid., p . 33.
37. Ibid., p. 34.
38. Ibid., p. 34.
39. Ibid., p. 35.
40. Ibid., p. 35.
4 1 . Perera, Descent to the Goddess (Toronto: Inner Ciry Books, I 9 8 I ), p. 40.
42. Baha'i Prayers (Wilmette, Ill.: Baha'i Publishing Tntst, I 885).
232 43. Enoch 1 :42.
Chapter 2. A Heart in the Balance Notes

1 . Tsultrim Allione, Women if Wisdom (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,

1 984), p. 37.
2. Ibid., pp. 37-38.
3. Ibid., p. 38.
4. David Whyte, Fire in the Earth (Langley, Wash.: Many Rivers Press, 1 992),
P· 5 1 .
5. Allione, Women if Wisdom, p. 4 I .
6. Ibid., p. 4 I .
7 . Barbara Walker, The Crone (San Francisco: Harper and Row, I 9 85), p. 5 1 .
8. Ibid., p . 5 I .
9 . John A . Wilson, The Burden if Egypt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1 95 I ), p. 48.
I O. Joseph Campbell, The Inner Reaches if Outer Space (New York: Alfred Van Der
Marek Editions, I 986), p. 65.
I I . Wisdom 2: I -4, 6: T O-I I , the Confraternity-Douay version.
I 2. Ibid., 6: 1 2- 1 3 , I 7.
1 3 . Ibid., 6:24.
I 4. Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, The Dwellers on the Nile (New York: Benjamin Blom,
I 9 72), p. I 47.
I 5. Wisdom 6:27.
I 6. Nathan Schwanz-Salall[, Narcissism and Character Traniformation (Toronto: Inner
City Books, I 982), p. I 2 l .
I 7. T. S . Eliot, Fou r Quartets (London: Faber and Faber, I 9 54), pp. 32-33.
I 8. Rollo May, Love and Will (New York: W. W. Norton, 1 969), p. 223.
1 9. Ibid., p. 234.
20. Paul Tillich, in ibid., p. 244, from The Courage to Be (New Haven: Yale Univer-
sity Press, I 952), pp. 8 1 -82.
2 I . Schwartz-Salant, op. cit. p. 80.
22. Ken Wilber, Up From Eden (Boulder: Shambhala Publications, 1 983), p. 249.
23. Saint John of the Cross, Dm·k Night if the Soul, Book II, i. Peers I, p. 375.
Quoted in P. Marie-Eugene, O.C. D., I Am a Daughter if the Church (Chicago:
Fides Publishers Association, 1 955).
24. Marie Louise von Franz, On Dreams and Death (Boston and London: Shambhala
Publications, I 986 ), pp. 1 47-1 48.
25. Ibid., p. I 44, from Letters, v. 2, p. 45.
26. Ibid., p. I 44.
27. Ibid., p. I 49, from Letters, v. I , p. I I 7ff.
28. Ibid., p. I 49.
29. Ibid., pp. I 52-I 53, from David Bohm, Who/mess and the Implicate Order (Lon­
don: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1 980), pp. 1 47ff.
30. Ibid., p. I 53.
3 I. Sri Chinmoy, Kundalini: The Mother Power (Jamaica, N.Y.: Agni Press, 1 974),
P· I I . 233
Notes 32. Jalaja Bonheim, " Befriending the Serpent," Yoga Joumal (January-February
I 993): 56.
33. Ibid., p. 56.
34. Ibid., p. 56.
35. Chinmoy, K undalini, p. iv.
36. Marion Woodman, The Pregnant Virgin (Toronto: Inner City Books, 1 9 85),
p. 1 09.
37. Arianna Stassinopoulos and Roloff Beny, The Gods if Greece (New York: Harry
Abrams, 1 983), p. 99, from Kazamzahis in The Odyssey.
38. Ibid., p. 1 00.
39. Ecclesiasticus 5 1 :20.

Chapter 3. Telling It Like It Is

1 . William Blake, in David Erdman (ed. ), The Complete Poetry and

Proverbs if Hell,
Prose if William Blake (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1 982), p. 37.
2. Carol Cohn, "Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals,"
paper published by the Center for Psychological Studies in the Nuclear Age,
Cambridge, Mass., 1 987, p. 1 6.
3. Ibid., p. 33.
4. Ibid., p. 6.
5. Ibid., p. 8.
6. Ibid., p. 9.
7. John Rowan, The Horned God (London and New York: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1 9 87), p. 94.
8. Ibid., pp. 85-86.

Chapter 4. And a Crone Shall Lead Them

1 . Marie Louise von Franz, Projection and Re-Collection in Jungian Psychology: Reflections
if the Soul (LaSalle and London: Open Court, 1 980), pp. I 25- I 26.
2. Ibid., p. I 28.
3. Ibid., p. I 28.
4. Owing to limitations of space, important details must, unfortunately, be left
out. For the complete story and an excellent analysis, see Marie Louise von
Franz, The Golden Ass if Apuleius (Boston: Shambhala Publications, I 992).
5. Arianna Stassinopoulos and Roloff Beny, The Gods if Greece (New York: Harry
Abrams, I 983), p. 80.
6. Ibid., p. 85.
7. Barbara Vlalker, The Crone (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1 985), p. 30.
8. Ibid., p. 29.
9. Ibid., p. 29.
I 0. Stassinopoulos and Beny, The Gods if Greece, p. I 6 1 .
I I . Ibid., p . I 64.
I 2. Ibid., p. I 62.
I 3. Janice Turner, " Teenage girls crave respect, support, national poll shows," The
234 Toronto Star (March 1 2, 1 992): A I .
I 4. Marion Woodman, The Pregnant Virgin (Toronto: Inner City Books, I 985), Notes
p. 63.
I S. J. C. Cooper, An Illustrated Encyclopedia '!f Traditional Symbols (London: Thames
and Hudson, 1 982), p. 1 88.
I 6. Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Act V, Sc ii, II. 290-92.
I 7. C. G. Jung, A lchemical Studies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, I 976, Bol­
lingen Series XX), Collected Works 1 3, para. 38.
I 8. For a complete analysis of The Handless Maiden see Marie Louise von Franz, The
Fem inine in Fairytales (Dallas: Spring Publications, I 9 88), pp. 70-78.
I 9. Clarissa Pinkola-Estes, Women Who Run with the Wolves (New York: Ballantine
Books, 1 992), p. 449.
20. David Whyte, Fire in the Earth (Langley, Wash.: Many Rivers Press, I 992),
p. 35.
2 1 . Woodman, The Pregnant Vi1gin, p. 63.
22. Ibid. p. 63.
,

23. See Daniel's wild man dream, p. 1 06, also James's dream p. I 22. For a thor­
ough exploration of the wild man, see Robert Bly, Iron john (New York: Addi­
son-Wesley, I 990). For further discussion of the evolving masculine in
women, see Marion Woodman, The Ravaged Bridegroom (Toronto: Inner City
Books, I 990) and Leaving My Father's House (Boston: Shambhala, I 992).

Chapter 5. The Rose in the Fire

I . M. A. Shaaber (ed.), Selected Poems '!fjohn Donne (New York: Appleton Century
Crofts, I 9 58), pp. 1 04-1 05.
2. Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Use and Abuse of History," in Thoughts out '!f Season,
Part II (New York: Russell and Russell, 1 9 64), p. 7.
3. Carl G. Jung, "On the Nature of the Psyche," The Structure and Dynamics '!f the
Psyche, trans. R. F. C. Hull (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1 960), Col­
lected Wo1·ks 8, para. 4 I 8.
4. James Lynch, The Language '!f the Heart (New York: Basic Books, I 985),
pp. 26-27.
5. For a full discussion of these conclusions, see ibid., "The Hidden Dialogue,"
pp. 202-240.
6. Carl G. Jung, "The Personal and the Collective Unconscious," Two Essays on
A nalytical Psychology, Collected Works 7, para. 1 05.
7. Thomas Merton, Z m a n d the Birds '!f Appetite (New York: New Directions,
I 968), p. I .

Chapter 6. Chaos and Creativity

I . Adapted from a Shaker melody by Sydney Carter, 1 9 I 5.

2. Fritjof Capra, The Tao '!f Physics (Great Britain: Fontana/Collins, I 976), p. 236.
3. David Kingsley, The Sword and the Flute (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1 975), p. I 22.
4. Ibid., pp. 1 34- 1 35.
5. Ibid., p. 1 35. 235
Notes 6. C. G. Jung, "On the Nature of the Psyche," The Structure and Dynamics if the
Psyche, trans. R. F. C. Hull (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1 9 60), Col­
lected Works 8, para. 4 1 8.
7. To guote Ms. Pert directly, " My basic speculation here is that neuropeptides
provide the physiological basis for the emotions. As my colleagues and I ar­
gued in a recent paper in the Journal if Immunology: The striking pattern of
neuropeptide receptor distribution in mood-regulating areas of the brain, as
well as their role in mediating communication through the whole organism,
makes neuropeptides the obvious candidates for the biochemical mediation of
emotion. It may be too that each neuropeptide biases information processing
uniguely when occupying receptors at nodal points with the brain and body.
If so, then each neuropeptide may evoke a unigue "tone" that is equivalent to
a mood state.
" In the beginning of my work, I matter-of-factly presumed that emotions
were in the head or the brain. Now I would say they are really in the body as
well. They are expressed in the body and are part of the body. I can no longer
make a strong distinction between the brain and the body." Adapted for publi­
cation by Harris Dienstfrey and reproduced under the title, "The material
basis of emotions: the binding tie between body and mind is a dialog of opiate
chemicals," in The Whole Earth Review (Summer I 988) (no. 3): I 1 0.
8. Ibid., p. I I 2.
9. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 5, sc. I , II. 1 1 5- 1 1 9 .
1 0. Thomas N. Johnson (ed.), The Complete Poems if Emily Dickinson (Boston: Little,
Brown, I 960), no. I 732.
I I . This insightful paragraph was written by Juli<mna Switaj.
!2. T. S. Eliot, The Love Song if]. A!Jred Prujrock, in M. Mack, L. Dean, and W.
Frost (eds.), Modern Poetry (New York: Prentice-Hall, I 955), lines 1 04-1 05.
I 3. I am grateful to our friend David Kemp for letting me use this journal entry
and for sharing his experience with us that Sunday morning.
1 4. William Blake, Auguries if Innocence, in David Erdman (ed.), The Complete Poetry
and Prose if William Blake (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1 982),
p. 490.
I 5. Ibid., p. I 27.
! 6. For a detailed discussion of the building of the container, sec Marion Wood­
man, The Pregnant Virgin (Toronto: Inner City Books, 1 985).
I 7. See Woodman, The Pregnant Virgin.
1 8. Margaret Atwood, "Girl Without Hands," Morning in the Burned House (To­
ronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1 995), p. I I 3.
1 9. See Larry Dossey, M. D., Healing Words: The Power if Prayer and the Practice if
Medicine (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1 993).
20. See Paul Davies, The Cosmic Blueprint (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1 9 89),
pp. 1 76-1 77.
2 I . Ibid., pp. I 52- I 53.
22. The following statement by Candace Pert implies the reversibility of the rrans-
236 formation between body chemistry and emotions that is suggested here:
 "When we document the key role that the emotions, expressed through neuro- Notes
peptide molecules, play in affecting the body, it will become clear how emo-
tions can be a key to the understanding of disease." See Pert and Dienstfrey,
"The material basis of emotions," p. I 12.

Chapter 7. Wbere Three Dreams Cross

I . Percy B. Shelley, Ozymandias, in David Reinman and Sharon B. Powers (eds.),

Shelley 's Poetry and Prose (New York: W. W. Norton, 1 9 7 1 ), p. 1 03.
2. Luke 1 7:20, 2 I .
3 . Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1 9 63),
vol. 1 , p. 1 39.
4. William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming, in M. Mack, L. Dean, and W. Frost
(eds.), Modern Poetry (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1 9 6 1 ), vol. 7, p. 75.
5. The Toronto Star (July 29, I 994), Section E, p. 1 .
6. Morris Berman, Coming to Our Senses: Body and Spirit in the Hidden History of the
West (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1 990), p. 305.
7. Danah Zohar, The QHantum Seif (New York: William Morrow, 1 990), p. 1 0 1 .
8 . See Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, enunciated by Werner Heisenberg in
1 927, which states that at the quantum level there are absolute limits to the
accuracy with which pairs of physical quantities can be measured, the implica­
tion being that initial data cannot be specified with sufficient precision to
apply the laws of classical physics.
9. For further discussion of the implications of the interaction between the ob­
server and the observed, see the following section in this chapter, "The Eye
of the Beholder."
1 0. The concept of complementarity was introduced by Niels Bohr in 1 928 to
explain the apparently contradictory behavior of light. Depending on the ex­
periment, light sometimes behaves like a wave and sometimes like a particle.
The two differing sets of properties cannot be observed simultaneously. Bohr
suggested that neither behavior by itself was sufficient to understand the nature
of light at the subatomic level. The two complemented each other, and must
both be taken into account.
1 I . C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Rtif/ections (New York: Pantheon Books, 1 963),
p. 354.
1 2. Ibid., p. 353.
1 3. John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book XII, line 6 1 I, from Merritt Y. Hughes ( ed.),
John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose (Indianapolis: Odyssey Books, Bobbs­
Merrill, 1 976).
1 4. Ibid., Book VII, lines 8 - ! 2.
1 5. Ibid., Book XII, lines 648-9.
I 6. Danah Zohar, op. cit., pp. 44-45.
T 7. Stuart Hameroff suggests that the micro tubules within brain cells might be
the seat of consciousness. The microtubules are long, thin, hollow tubes of
protein within the neuron. He found that under the influence of an anesthetic
gas, the microtubules stop functioning. He concludes that the stopping of 23 7
Notes their activity is what brings about the state of unconsciousness in anesthesia.
For a more detailed discussion, see David H. Freedman, "Quamum Con­
sciousness," Discover (June 1 994): 88-97.
1 8. Refer co the work of Candace Pert, discussed in chapter 6.
I 9. See Roger Penrose, Shadows if the Mind: The Searchfor the Missing Srimrc if Conscious­
ness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1 994).
20. Fred Alan Wolf, The Dreaming Universe (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1 994),
p. 285.
2I. Wolfgang Pauli, Collected Works 8, para. 439, note 1 30.
22. We are indebted to Fred Alan Wolf for transcribing these dreams from the
archives of Aniela Jaffe in Zurich, Switzerland, drawing as well on unpublished
material including Pauli's letters to von Franz and Emma Jung.
23. Wisdom 6:27.
24. Fred Alan Wolf, op. cit., p. 297.
25. Allan Combs and Mark Holland, Synchronicity, Science, Myth, and the Trickster (New
York: Paragon House), p. 74.
26. Ibid., p. 75.
27. Wolf, op. cit., p. 57.
28. Ibid., p. 57.
29. Berman, op. cit., p. 26 I .
30. Wolf, op. cit., p . 58.
3I. Ibid., p. 58.
32. Von Franz, Psyche and Matter, p. 1 94-195.
33. Marsilio Ficino, in ibid., pp. 1 96-1 97, from Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic
Tradition (London, 1 9 64).
34. Giordano Bruno, in ibid., p. 1 97, from Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition
(London, 1 9 64).
35. Ibid., p. I 93.
36. Noel Cobb with Eva Loewe ( eds.), "Sphinx I." journal for Archetypal Psychology
and the Arts (London, 1 988), p. 55.

238
 Creditd

The authors thank the following publishers and rights holders for
permission to reprint material copyrighted or controlled by them:

Harcourt Brace & Company and Faber and Faber Limited for
the extracts from "The Dry Salvages," and from "Burnt Norton"
and " East Coker" from "Four Quartets," by T. S. Eliot, from Collected
Poems 1 90 9- 1 962 by T. S. Eliot. Copyright I 943 by T. S. Eliot and
renewed I 971 by Esme Valerie Eliot, reprinted by permission of
Harcourt Brace & Company.
Harvard University Press for extracts from the poems of Emily
Dickinson. Reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trust­
ees of Amherst College from The Poems if Emily Dickinson, Thomas
H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, copyright © I 95 1 , I 955, I 979, I 983 by the Presi­
dent and Fellows of Harvard College.
University of California Press for "The Cry of Innana," from
Samuel Kramer, From the Poetry if Sumer: Creation, Glorification, Adoration.
© I 979 The Regents of the University of California.
W. W. Norton & Company for the extract from A Crain if
Mustard Seed by May Sarton. Copyright © I 971 by May Sarton. Re­
printed by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
New Directions Publishing Corporation for the extract from
"The Goddess" from Collected Earlier Poems 1 940- 1 9 6 0 by Denise
Levertov. Copyright © I 957 by Denise Levertov. Reprinted by Per­
mission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Many Rivers Press for the excerpt from Fire in the Earth by David
Whyte.
HarperCollins Publishers for "Passing an Orchard by Train"
from This Tree Will Be Here for a Thousand Years, Revised Edition, by
Robert Bly. Copyright © 1 979, 1 992 by Robert Bly.
Oslo Kommunes Kunstsamlinger for pennission to reproduce
Edvard Munch's Madonna.
Mayumi Oda for pem1ission to reproduce her painting Dakini.

Diligent efforts were made in every case to obtain rights from copy­
right holders. In cases where these efforts were unsuccessful, the au­
thors and publisher express gratitude for the use of the excerpted
material.