MYTHIC FORMS

IONA MILLER

MYTHOLOGICAL STUDIES
Mythological Studies explores the understanding of human experience revealed in mythology and in the manifold links between myth and ritual, literature, art, culture, and religious experience. Special attention is given to depth psychology and archetypal approaches to the study of myth.

Mythic forms

Descent From the Gods
by Iona Miller

We Don't Live Just One Myth
If we compulsively or obsessively live out one single mytheme, all the others necessarily fall into the unconscious through neglect, denial, or lack of recognition. They are ignored.

“...put it my way, what we are really, and the reality we live, is our psychic reality,
which is nothing but...the poetic imagination going on day and night.”
James Hillman, We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and
the World Is Getting Worse, p. 62

Excerpts from James Hillman on Polytheism

“Jung used a polycentric description for the objective psyche. The light of nature was multiple. Following the traditional descriptions of the anima mundi. Jung wrote of the lumen naturae as a multiplicity of partial consciousness, like stars or sparks or luminous fishes’ eyes. A polytheistic psychology corresponds with this description and provides its imagistic formulation in the major traditional language of our civilization, i.e., classical mythology. By providing a divine background of personages and powers for each complex, polytheistic psychology would find place for each spark. It would aim less at gathering them into a unity and more at integrating each fragment according to its own principle, giving each God its due over that portion of consciousness, that symptom, complex, fantasy, which calls for an archetypal background. It would accept the multiplicity of voices, the Babel of the anima and animus, without insisting upon unifying them into one figure, and accept too the dissolution process into diversity as equal in value to the coagulation process into unity. The pagan gods and goddesses would be restored to their psychological domain.”

“Polytheistic psychology obliges consciousness to circulate among the field of powers. Each god has his due as each complex deserves its respect in its own right. In this circularity of topoi there seem no preferred positions, no sure statements about positive and negative, and therefore no need to rule out some configurations topoi as “pathological”; pathology itself will require a polytheistic re-visioning. When the idea of progress through hierarchical stages is suspended, there will be more tolerance for the nongrowth, non-upward, and nonordered components of the psyche. There is more room for variance when there is more place given to variety. We may then discover that many of the judgments which have previously been called psychological or rather theological. They were statements about dreams and fantasies and behavior, and people too, coming from a monotheistic ideal of wholeness (the self), that devalues the primal multiplicity of souls…”

“Babel and the proliferation of cults in the Hellenistic period always seen a degeneration… One might, however, consider the proliferation of cults as a therapeia (“worship, service, and care”) of the complexes in their many forms. Then one can understand the psychic fragmentation supposedly typical of our times as the return of the repressed, bringing a return of psychological polytheism. Fragmentation would then indicate many possibilities for individuation and might even be the result of individuation: each individual struggling with his daimones. If there is only one model of individuation can there be true individuality? The complexes that will not be integrated force recognition of their autonomous power. There archetypal cores will not serve the single goal of monotheistic wholeness. Babel may be a religious decline from one point of view and it may be a psychological improvement, since through the many tongues a fuller discordant psychic reality is being reflected… Without the gods, who offer differentiated models for the peculiar psychic phenomena of anima and animus, we see them as projections. Then we try to take them back with introverted measures. But “The individual ego is much too small, its brain much too feeble, to incorporate all the projections withdrawn from the world. Ego and brain burst asunder in the effort; the psychiatrist calls it schizophrenia” (CW 11, par. 145). Without a consciously polytheistic psychology are we not more susceptible to an unconscious fragmentation call schizophrenia?”

“As I have spelled out in several later writings, psychological polytheism is concerned less with worship than with attitudes, with the way we see things and place them. Gods, for psychology, are neither believed in nor addressed directly. They are rather adjectival than substantive; a polytheistic experience finds existence qualified with archetypal presence and recognizes faces of the gods in these qualifications. Only when these qualities are literalized, set apart as substances, that is, become theologized, do we have to imagine them through the category of belief.”

Hillman writes in The Lament of the Dead,
"When Jung seeks the myth, there are basic questions like in The Red Book: 'what is my myth, where is my soul?'. But the question is that he's looking for the myth, not my myth. [...] everyone reading Jung ends up thinking 'I have to find my myth". What's my myth? What's the myth I live?' And it all comes down to an astrological statement about the kind of person you are, or you use the myth of the puer, the myth of the hero, the myth of the soul, the myth of the non-wanted daughter, ridiculous things. Jung wanted - the myth -. Joseph Campbell would say that the myth is the hero; beware, not the hero myth, but the myth is the hero, the myth is what revives, the myth is the true psychic energy expressed in the Language, shapes and figure. Jung discovered this. He discovered the myth at base. [...] there is a responsibility to bring the general into life... to share it with other people."

Our lived, our loves, our life is not just personal, 'ours', but it always leans on a collective background, transpersonal, archetypal and legendary. That is why when we communicate sometimes with others or in writing or in public, a lot of people feel that there are certain reflections. We perceive them, ours. This kind of perception occurred to anyone who listened to Jung or Hillman's speeches. They thought "but he's talking directly to me or me"... this is the mythical background that lives there. Acknowledging it is extremely important. (Eldo Stellucci)

“Acorn“, Io Miller, 2017
In James Hillman’s ‘acorn theory’ of soul we already hold the potential for unique possibilities inside ourselves, much as an acorn holds the pattern for an oak tree. It shows in our calling and life’s work when fully actualized. Our calling in life is inborn and our mission in life is to realize its imperatives. The "acorn theory" is the idea that our lives are formed by a particular image, just as the oak's destiny is contained in the tiny acorn. The acorn theory expresses that unique something that we carry into the world.

"When the gods arrive on stage, everything becomes silent and the eyelids close. Plunged into oblivion by this experience, we re-emerge and without knowing exactly what is happened, we know only that we have been transformed.". --James Hillman

Artemis Ephesus - coming soon
Relations to Kybele and Prehistory
The Ephesian Artemis, the "great mother goddess" related to other Anatolian mother goddesses, like Cybele, the mother goddess of eastern lands. Both material and literary evidence reveal the syncretistic and multivalent nature of the goddess of the Ionian city of Ephesos. Artemis Ephesia, as the Greek appellation of an indigenous deity identified as Kybele or Hekate, retained many of the functions and traits of her Anatolian predecessor while also taking on aspects of the traditional Greek Artemis. Tied intrinsically to Ephesos, she was patron goddess and protector of the city, as well as an international guarantor of refuge for suppliants. She was also a liminal goddess, who was associated with transitions from childhood to adulthood (especially for girls). Lastly, she was a fertility goddess whose role as such became exaggerated as she was assimilated into the Pan-Hellenic religious tradition.

Both ancient authors and modern scholars agree that when the Ionians founded Ephesos they
appropriated the already-existing cult of a local goddess and called her by the name of Artemis. Pausanias records that the cult of Artemis Ephesia pre-dated the Ionian migration, but he does not speculate on her original identity . The provenance of Artemis Ephesia may be located in two local goddess-es, Kybele and Hekate. Excavations on the northeast slope of Mt. Panayirdag, near Ephesos, reveal that the area had originally been the sacred space of Kybele and was later claimed by Artemis for use in the procession route to the Artemision. Artemis also took over Kybele’s function as guardian over he graves along the route, and a series of altars dedicated to her marked out her predominance. The cult statue of Artemis Ephesia recalls many aspects of Kybele.

In Ephesus, a principal city of Asia Minor, a great temple was built in her honor, which became one of the "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World". But at Ephesus she was worshiped mainly as a fertility goddess, and was identified with Cybele the mother goddess of eastern lands. The cult statues of the Ephesian Artemis differ greatly from those of mainland Greece, whereas she is depicted as a huntress with her bow and arrows. Those found at Ephesus show her in the eastern style, standing erect with numerous nodes on her chest.

She was worshiped in some form from paleolithic times on, and if art and souvenirs are any indication, in a way still is. The first image ever found of the mother goddess, alias the Great Mother or mistress of the beasts, comes from a Turkish site and dates to 6000 B.C., give or take a couple of hundred years. Greeks who had colonized the western coast of Turkey by 1000 B.C. simply appropriated her and incorporated many of her attributes into their own gods. First they identified her with Cybele, who went about accompanied by lions, and finally with Artemis.
https://www.mcgill.ca/classics/files/classics/2005-6-05.pdf

Wrestling with Thanatos:
A Mythological Study of Primordial Darkness
by Iona Miller, 2019
https://ionamiller2020.weebly.com/thanatos.html

Keywords: Death, assisted dying, post-Jungian, near-death experience, ego death, descent, aesthetic imagination, James Hillman, Carl Jung, raw psychic energy, vacuum fluctuation, the Void

We are doomed to die and we know it in every fiber of our being. It arouses the primordial imagery of darkness in our original nature that lies below our personality, introspective focus, and in the oceanic dissociation of our dark voyages each night.

Death welcomes everyone equally. Every culture lies about the possibilities of beating death through some sort of self-perpetuation. Yet, we are confronted with increasingly darker futures: population bombs, electrosmog, ecosystem collapse, and catastrophes like "insectageddon." We are ephemeral entities destined to expire. The bringer of death is crucial to all life. The philosophical path of wisdom urges us to practice dying. The Void awaits.

HELIOS: PRIMORDIAL LIGHT
Creation, Catastrophe, & Titanic Forces
by Iona Miller, (c)2018
https://ionamiller2020.weebly.com/helios.html

Myths reveal the human condition in relation to the sky, stars, and planets. The theory and nature of myth is related to the sky. The Titan god Helios is one such personification. The ancients naturally worshiped the life-giving sun, the symbol of the Source and origin of all things.

The circumpunct symbol has been around for millennia, as "the circle with the dot in the middle." The circumpunct meaning ranges from an explanation of deity, to an explanation of the self. The circumpunct is one of most symbolic of all symbols. An Egyptian solar symbol dates back to Ra (or Re), god of the midday sun. In fact, the circle with a midpoint, plus a vertical line is the hieroglyph meaning "sun."

The all-seeing eyes derives from the circumpunct. The most ancient initiatory and healing symbols, the circumpunct, a dot within a circle and/or a cross within a circle symbolizes the inner sun. is all-seeing eye evolved from prehistoric sun-disc images. The solar cross and wheel pendants mark the cardinal directions and the zodiacal houses of the precessional Great Year, a 26,000 years long cycle.

APHRODITE:
MYSTIQUE & MYSTERIUM
Breath of the Soul Is the Heart of the Matter By Iona Miller, ©2016
https://ionamiller2017.weebly.com/aphrodite.html

ARES:
ARCHETYPE & ANCESTOR
Divine Descent; Mythology As Family
By Iona Miller, 2016
https://ionamiller2017.weebly.com/ares.html

SOBEK:
CARNELIAN TEMPLE
Wild Psyche
by Iona Miller, 2018
https://ionamiller2017.weebly.com/sobek---wild-psyche.html

HEPHAESTUS:
THE HERMIT,
Harnessing Fire
by Iona Miller, 1984
http://holographicarchetypes.weebly.com/hephaistos.html

https://the-wild-psyche.site123.me/
SOBEK: THE WILD PSYCHE
by Iona Miller, (c)2018
Prepared for Bibliotheca Alexandrina
https://ionamiller2017.weebly.com/sobek---wild-psyche.html

This essay is a deep dive into the Dark Waters of the human unconscious embodied in the dual nature of Sobek. The self-generated sacred crocodile deity of primal originating force expresses both celestial and chthonic forces of nature. The archetype is an ideational as well as celestial constellation. This dark journey into a dangerous place of unfathomable infinity is a necessary process. It provides an excursion into descent and renewal.

So, like the ancients we appeal to the soul and to myth for coherence, for order, for assurance the terrors of suffering and history are not blind, arbitrary or meaningless. The depths of soul become a void. While still felt deeply, we are stripped of our capacity to truly know and differentiate the other. Reactions are experienced only subjectively.

Mythologies perform their functions through symbols. The focal point provided by image and symbol holds the mind to truth. The ultimate is, of course, unknowable. Therefore, the images themselves are not "the truth." For us, a journey into the unconscious provides the vital meanings and relatedness to the cosmic order that myths once gave us. It is a return to the source. Meaning is inherent in conscious experience of archetypal processes and the soul's 'suffering of meaning'.

FELLOWSHIP OF ISIS FEATURE ARTICLE:
GEN-ISIS The Goddess in the Roots of Your Family Tree
Iona Miller, July 2017
https://ionamiller2017.weebly.com/gen-isis.html
Prepared for Summer 2017 Issue of Isis-Seshat Journal

There is possibly no older tradition than that of honoring our ancestors. Genealogy is both a traditional and modern way to see how the gods fit into our personal existence. We don't have to take the ancient ancestral lines literally to appreciate how they directly connect us to the gods and goddesses as our ancestors. Genealogy mediates their voices.

Tracing our family tree back to descent from antiquity is a way to actively tap the mythic dimension and the archetypal field of the ancestors. Genealogy is a mythic journey through the intergenerational labyrinth, and there are many ways to make it experiential and interactive. As we turn and 'face' ourselves and our forebears, we move back naturally in time to the timeless root of our inception, our origins.

In this regard, Isis is one of the most ancient goddesses who still bestows her gifts to humanity in a wide variety of cultural forms. One of the best documented connections are the ancient lines of royal descent, branches of which can be found from the ancient King Lists to many modern families. We want to connect with the goddess, to be related in deeply meaningful and tangible ways -- to rise with her on the Phoenix wings. We find her in our own family by reversing our lines of descent as we ascend the Tree.

Embodying Osiris
Review for Alchemy Journal
Review by Iona Miller

EMBODYING OSIRIS: The Secrets of Alchemical Transformation, by Thom F. Cavalli

"The road to the unconscious is not a one way street; rather, it is a living part of the psyche that responds in its own mysterious way to all that happens in our conscious lives. Building an image of a lost god revives ancient memories, and in this way Osiris is psychologically recalled and brought back to life."

Life, Death & Immortality

Egypt remains a realm of mystery as does the psyche. The ancient land of Egypt is not the same as the eternal sunshine of the Egypt of our modern minds. We can never "embody Osiris" with concepts, but only through fully entering the inherent mystery of alchemical processes that define the rhythms of life.

In this insightful Jungian volume, Dr. Thom Cavalli is correct in insisting that "empathic engagement of the god on an imaginal and physical level" is required. In this way a more meaningful life springs from death, through a "body" of integrative experience. The Egyptians presumed "death" was not the only option.

Universal Solvent

There is a generic process in nature and consciousness which dissolves and regenerates all forms. Inherently unpredictable holistic repatterning is the essence of transformation. The dissolution (solve) of death can be followed by a sublimation (coagula) that releases the Ultima Materia of the Soul. Coagulation transcends heaven and earth, producing a transcorporeal incarnation that can survive both. Through this Body of Light we learn to exist at all levels of reality, fusing individual and universal fields.

In Anatomy of the Psyche, analyst Edward Edinger describes seven major aspects of solutio symbolism, which recapitulate the cycle of Osiris: (1) return to the womb or primal state; (2) dissolution, dispersal, dismemberment; (3) containment of a lesser thing by a greater; (4) rebirth, rejuvenation, immersion in the creative energy flow; (5) purification ordeal; (6) solution of problems; and (7) melting or softening process.

The most undesirable outcome of any Egyptian life was to become nonexistent. But, we can resurrect that portion of the Osirian spirit that we carry in our unconscious. We can resurrect the magical names of Osiris: 'Wenennefer" or "Wennofry", "joy of existence" or "beautiful being". Osiris is a realization -- a Way of being, not simply a philosophical worldview.

Epic Ordeals

The consensus of all authors on the subject of Osiris may be "dead" wrong. Dynasties of priests, priestesses, and royals practiced the Royal Art. Cavalli claims there is scant evidence of abstracted philosophical thought among the ancient Egyptians. We don't know if they were having mystical experiences, but we know they consumed alcohol and drugs that altered their perceptions.

We will never know the felt-sense of Osiris in the Old Kingdom. There was no structural separation between thinking and doing. Cavalli calls the ancient Egyptian art “unconscious alchemy”. Maybe being closer to nature they grasped it with more immediacy, without cognitive dissonance or dissociation.

We share this ancient wisdom when we dive into our experiential depths. Does this subjective Jungian narrative of theories, dreams and myth illumine or inform our alchemical practice in a necessary way, or does benchwork provide our projections with a certain objectivity that promotes insight into universal processes? Adopting the so-called "spiritual" or "practical" approach depends on our essence.

As unconscious, Osiris is the paradoxical life/death ground where integrative impulses arise. His epic ordeals mirror our own. Perhaps the Jungians need alchemy for articulating psychic processes more than alchemy needs Jungian models. After all, benchwork went on for millennia without Jung's hermeneutics. Alchemy had its own ways of describing proto-scientific interpretations of phenomena. Still, Jung and Cavalli's categories, metaphorms and mytho-poetic language broaden our descriptive vocabulary, helping us articulate the deep meaning of what we see in the vessel.

An alchemical mytheme exists on a higher level than simple narrative. There is a relationship between bundles of relations which produce meaning. They emerge from the structural oppositions of the alchemical process. The psychological approach is valuable and can add depth to practice if not taken literally or used to preempt what needs to emerge organically and experientially.

Applicants for the priesthood of Osiris entered the tomb alive to await his light. They spent the night in the coffin, entering their fear to achieve mastery. Left alone in the darkness of the crypt, the initiate in the sarcophagus felt the cold of the grave. Under sensory deprivation, the initiate experienced a life review or began to see colors and lights. Such illumination was recognized as the visionary light of Osiris. Some aspirants had conversations with Isis or Osiris. Others visualized themselves in the land of the dead, walking and talking with departed spirits and receiving special teachings from Osiris before a resurrection like those conducted in Mystery Schools today.

Zero Point / Dark Light

Embodying Osiris presents a belief system about a belief system of a belief system. It may speak to the psyches of today's audience and appeal to their spiritual desires, but it remains an interpretation that only hints at mystery. It fails to carry us into either the Old Kingdom or alchemical being as many practitioners define it. Still, Cavalli's luminous treatise helps our journey be Light and our lead turn to gold. Jung's brilliant interpretation and codification of alchemy remains just that. However, he renewed the relevance of alchemy in our modern lives.

Jung suggested we find language that unifies psyche and physics. Using a sub-quantum physics view, the downloadable "universal information field of Osiris" is directly available as the coherent biophotons of our living system, zero-point energy. The Egyptians had their Zep Tepi, home of all creational forces. From this "First Time" the gods move through the void continuously creating reality.

Zep Tepi is also embodied as an alchemist which makes him a Magician, Magi, Master, who can bend light to create illusion in the electromagnetic program or our reality. He is Thoth, (thought), "Lord of Magic and Time" - Hermes, 'Messenger of the Gods" – and, the enigmatic wizard Merlin, who disappears up an apple tree to mythic Avalon, seeking the secret of immortality and vowing to return.

Zep Tepi claims he will return at the end of this Cycle of Time through the alchemy of DNA and consciousness. He brings with him the secret keys to the gates of a sacred land or golden age, meaning a spiraling vortex of consciousness returning to higher frequencies of light and understanding. DNA, the Tree Of Life is a live vibrating structure, a shimmering waveform configuration, modulated by light, radiation, magnetic fields or sonic pulses.

For thousands of years, the Egyptians conducted genetic experiments in the quest for immortality. Only the pharaoh intermingled with the god as the conduit for all the people in ancient dynasties. That is a very different model than presuming such experiences are universally available to those who engage in the therapeutic process outlined by Jung with his alchemical metaphors and psychological practices. Alchemy calls its concrete result the Stone.

The Opening of the Way

"Osiris" is Greek for the sacred name 'Wasir". The Greeks also called him Typhon, "the passionate, titanic, reasonless aspect of the Soul." His adversary Set or Seth was/is the universal principle of destruction and dissolution. We cannot speak of Osiris apart from the rejuvenating processes of Isis (Aset), who complements and completes him.

Only those who live close to nature can unlock her secrets. The Egyptians themselves loved their world so much they considered their whole country a universal temple they wished to perpetuate in the afterlife. Is the perpetuation of an ideal life after death the ultimate? Fraser had a formulaic interpretation of Osiris as a tree spirit and fertility god, a symbol of "dying and resurrecting" plant life of an agricultural society. Mastering nature's secrets meant becoming like a god. But clearly this view, while not inaccurate, is reductionistic.

Color-coded Transformation Cycle

Interpretation of dynastic Egypt and the Osiris cult is riddled with Western religious and psychological bias. .A thousand books cannot convey its true essence. E. A. Wallis Budge wrote two exhaustive volumes on Osiris. Still, no extant Egyptian records confirm these scholarly deductions or illuminate their experiential levels. No one can read hieroglyphics forward, backward and inside out for all the sacred symbolism they encapsulate. R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz came far closer to describing the nuanced esoterics of the Egyptians. His writing "makes sense" of Osiris. Cavalli's volume makes it pertinent to each refreshing nanosecond of our existence.

Jungian psychology is "informed" by hermetics and uses its symbols and metaphors as benchmarks of the transformative process/goal. Active immersion in the "anima-ted" alchemical worldview binds us to the process. Wisdom is encoded in the fundamental perceptions of black, red, white, green and gold. Alchemy is a science/art wed to observation and experiment.

Spiritual & Practical

Alchemy opens the imaginal, the psychic dimension of reality, realm of depth. Energy/life/matter cannot be split into "organic" or "inorganic". Today, alchemy is divided into "spiritual alchemy" and "practical alchemy," but the Egyptians had no such artificial divisions. Jungians institutionalized this split to bolster their interpretation of psychic phenomenology, using alchemical homologues. At best, it is one level of lab work.

Rituals were recipes. The Egyptians were "hands on" artificers. Their alchemy was a collective social process, requiring a whole society for its execution. The proto-science of medieval alchemy turned the tables making alchemy an extremely private, even secretive encoded practice in which one experimented upon oneself, physically and spiritually. Its execution was idiosyncratic. Artists in action seamlessly weld thinking, doing and being, stimulating the creative flow of innovation.

The Egyptians noted the hidden processes of nature, such as desiccation and preservation of the body, and emulated nature to speed it up. They solved their problems with their hands. Their hands were not separate from their hearts and spirit; soul was not separate from body. Their experience of time was cyclic, not linear. Metallurgy, tanning, baking bread, and brewing still had their magic.

They kept their recipes secret, but it was no secret that their Pharaohs were being prepared for immortality. In preserving the corpse they perpetuated the soul. Perpetuating a Name by remembrance assured immortality. This Great Work went on long after the ruler left the realm of the living and was conducted by an elaborate support system. At death the pharaoh surrendered to the passive portion of the process, trusting his intention had been set in motion and the universe would conspire to make it so -- forever.

Radical Resurrection in the Womb of Space

Many ancient royals have been retrieved by archeologists and their corpses are still cared for while their names and deeds are noted and sung. Is this a testament to the continuing power of their heka (magic)? In loving their stories, we love them with remembrance. We perform the sacred act of Isis.

Modern conservation constitutes a sort of "second coming" for each mummy, though the cult of academia is quite different from their original priesthood. Their evolving society first merged the individual with the collective, then launched one representative into eternity as an archetypal symbol, merging individual with universal. Society served the redemptive function of the person who was the social glue of the kingdom. Later, mummification of wealthy but common people emulated this act on a broader scale. The priests developed a cottage-industry, duplicating their Book of the Dead instructions for all who could afford it.

Re-Membering Osiris

Human beings weave imaginal tales about the nature of nature, their experience and dreams. We still stave off our fears of death with hopes of eternal life when the existential fact remains that it is impossible for us to leave the sacred source field that undergirds both our corporeal existence and our potential immortalization in the virtual field, the groundstate of continuous creation.

We will never know if their ardent efforts granted the Pharaohs primordial awareness or not. We just change form -- and that may be the essence of alchemy. Our alchemy is kept alive by practice and open-ended questions and spiritual questing that keeps the transformative process flowing. The method works if we do. What we derive from it has everything to do with what we put into it.

A Jungian approach is not a requirement for alchemical practice, "spiritual" or otherwise. It is a valid approach with its own coherence. A book of this sort can probably help us articulate some of our experiences. It can also highlight where we might strongly disagree about our style of practice. Both resonance and cognitive dissonance add to our self-awareness.

Theory and Practice

None of this reduces the inherent value of Cavalli's book. He admits he does not take on the burden of unifying Egyptian life conceptually as it is beyond the scope of his practice. The scholarship and points he makes can help us in our daily lives as well as our transformative journey. Analytical psychology is a coherent system that produces objective healing and integrative effects.

The first rule of process therapy is not to "import" foreign notions and symbols into the system. We facilitate the emergence of inherent metaphors that alone create healing deeper than a "one size fits all" formulaic approach. We deepen the process through the childhood, ancestral, cultural and cosmological layers of the psyche, kindling the redemptive metaphor, the inner healer.

Remaining true to his profession as an analyst, Cavalli interprets one cult, (Osiris), in light of another, (Jungianism) to illuminate a third -- Alchemy. But whose "alchemy" is it? His "unpacking" of ideas interprets one belief system, with another belief system, calling it a third belief system that has evolved over the centuries to suit its own social, political and scientific environment.

Ultimately, "Jung" can be just another limiting model that conveniently codifies the one process into neat categorical boxes which must be explored via "active imagination". If today's alchemy mirrors this process it is not the fault of our art, but of ourselves -- a failure to launch our unfettered imagination in truly novel ways. Perhaps this is why we can only illuminate our search further by asking more open-ended questions that keep the Mystery if not our individual "Self" alive. Mystery can only be known by gnosis, revelation and grace. Alchemy helps us stand in this Mystery, embodying Osiris.

Sacred Knowledge

This Jungian interpretation is a narrative which is legitimately imaginal, yet its validity may not extended beyond its own cultural context. While Jung's ideas are widely accepted in Western culture, there is no consensus within psychology that his is the correct or only view, anymore than there is consensus in models of physics. The Standard Model is accepted despite its flaws because it "allows us to do work." Jung's theory has a similar relationship to the science/art of alchemy.

The One World of alchemy remains elusive in both psychology and physics, so we have no unified field theory. What we have are the models that guide our practice. The alchemy of Jung is not necessarily the alchemy of Osiris or Old Egypt. It may not even be representative of contemporary alchemical practice by anyone but Jungians. Further, contemporary lab work may have little in common with the immersive alchemical experience and processes of ancient Egypt that were necessarily tied to their culture.

In Jung's allegedly phenomenological model we find a repertoire of constructs or categories that may or may not relate -- archetypes, individuation, the "Self", psychological transformation. There is dissension among professional therapists about the relevancy or accuracy of such notions, though they have proven themselves invaluable for grasping and experiencing aspects of the unconscious (aka, "Osiris"). Certainly "reading the recipe" is not the same as "tasting the dish." But this may not be the alchemy of Egypt despite the nomenclature.

Is Alchemy Psychological?

Cavalli's last work was Alchemical Psychology and now he has written about a "psychological alchemy". What about labwork? Can we really substitute the therapeutic hour for the laboratory? Alchemy isn't only conceptual. Many practitioners of the royal art insist that the experimental side must be practiced in order to bring about its transformations by remaining true to the hands-on alchemical spirit. Is it unavoidable that we impose multiple layers of interpretations from alien societies, muddled by foreign worldviews onto the Egyptian foundation?

None of this is a criticism of Cavalli's scholarship, hermeneutics, nor healing methodology. Just as archeologists can only tell so much from digging up artifacts and interpreting archival material, psychologists can do no more. Such works may point us in the right direction, but the path itself is necessarily experiential. We cannot fully "embody Osiris" without the realization that he always undergirds our being, just as death informs life in the most fundamental way, giving life its edge and immediacy.

ionamiller2017.weebly.com/thanatos.html

Holographic Gods
by Iona Miller, 1983-2015
https://holographicarchetypes.weebly.com/pantheon.html

Archetypes generate (or "cause") an endless variety of transformations that are experienced as images and ideas had in dreams, fantasies and visions. These images, ideas and beliefs bear the mark of personal and cultural conditioning, and the archetypes themselves are involved in the development of consciousness. The archetypes produce all of the universal material in myth and ritual drama. Archetypal experiences tend to be numinous and transpersonal in their impact upon personal development, for they are the eruption of archaic and timeless meaning into the personal world of the ego.

The archetype exists as the intersection of spirit and matter. We are now beginning to understand in a scientific way how this intersection might be possible, if by "spirit" we mean the order of the quantum sea. Human experience becomes the localized instantiation of the universal - the transcendental - through the medium of neurognosis. And neurognosis is precisely the local embodiment of the structure of the sea, and at the same time the structures mediating consciousness.

Holographic gods remain true to their own primordial patterns and domains of influence, effectively exerting their wills over our own and apparently usurping or overriding our rational agendas and plans for our own lives. Which of these patterns intrudes on our lives determines whether we are in resonance with the broader environment or at odds with it and ourselves. Try as we might, we cannot separate ourselves from this spiritual component that underlies our existence and all existence, as archetypes are in no way limited to the human sphere.

Holographic Gods produce their own forms of archetypal intoxication; they can possess, frustrate and even defeat our best intentions. But we are not the eternal slaves of these behavior paradigms. Jung's methods of individuation and other transpersonal therapies open the way to developing more conscious relationships with these cosmic patterns, leading to more individual freedom from archetypal role-boundedness and spiritual parochialism.

The story of gods in our lives and the universe is still being written. Extra-dimensional truths are encoded in the descriptions traditionally described as gods and goddesses. The ancient classical gods are well documented, but the Gods of the gaps are less well-known, occupying those parts of the Universe that are unexplored and unexplained, that science is just beginning to explore, such as the so-called god particle.

Holographic Gods challenge our own beliefs in God or not, putting them to the secular acid test. The catch-22 is that even all those notions are conditioned by the very archetypes we seek to illumine, whether or not we identify with them consciously. They are just as likely to produce misguided inner authority as perennial wisdom. Whether we like it or not they enter us, intrude on our personal dramas, by modulating the playing field in the game of life.

All archetypes are a form of human expression that is both holographic and physical. Physical formations of archetypal sequences cause humans to behave in parallel ways to each associated ancestor, experience or process. Integration is a function of intentionality -- conscious and unconsciously maintained, or incorporated. Integration occurs both without effort, as a redesign of the central processor of our minds, and voluntarily as a deliberate effort to understand, find meaning, and rectify our behavior towards self, other and world. Sometimes when we lose ourselves in transcendent experiences, we somehow come back reborn and full of compassion. We are nurtured by the depths.

Images, like the holographic universe, have a deeper enfolded dimension. Memories aren't localized in one place, but are spread across the associative areas of the brain. Associative areas aren't set aside for particular functions like speech production, language comprehension, and memory encoding. Instead, they are responsible for all "miscellaneous" tasks. Each associative area seems to contain echoes of all of the information. Symbols arise from and are embedded in the environment as holographic fields of energy. There are innumerable morphogenic veils of primal forces.

INANNA

Primordial Creation
When history begins to speak, it speaks as a Tree, represented as the progenitor of the human race. The very first written story from Sumeria -- the world's oldest poetry -- is a creation story about Inanna and the sacred Tree of Life -- a World Tree with instinctual DNA knowledge living in it. This Tree of Life is the first legend and the link between the transcendental and phenomenal worlds. Our kinship bonds and genealogical ancestry are expressed through the sacred tree archetype.

Joseph Campbell (1965) said Inanna was the Tree herself, the "cosmic tree of life and death" (p. 64). She is the ineffable totality of what is -- the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge which are one and the same as the Tree of Truth.

Jung reminds us, "In the last analysis, most of our difficulties come from losing contact with our instincts, with the age-old unforgotten wisdom stored up in us. And where do we make contact with this old man in us? In our dreams." (Psychological Reflections, 76).

Vision Tree
The tree is our vegetative self, involuntary action and life in the body. Such experiences are closely related to death, which is a permanent resident of the psyche. The creatures that live in the tree, including the serpent, are our instincts. Your body is your subconscious mind. Mind and body are the same because mind is distributed.

We are all interdependent. The problem is we have isolated ourselves from each other, from animals, plants, and the inorganic ground of cosmos. We have forgotten our origins and embody a myth of loneliness. Our emotional and intuitive mind naturally engages with and is interactive with nature.

Mindell (1982) likens the dreambody ("subtle body") to a tree. Half is above the ground and can be described medically or biologically as the 'real' body and half is below ground as roots we can sense when we focus our attention on subtle signals in psychophysical reality. Dreambody appears in body images, rituals, and physical therapies.

Jung is very clear that, "...there is a thinking in primordial images, in symbols which are older than the historical man, which are inborn in him from the earliest times, and, eternally living, outlasting all generations, still make up the groundwork of the human psyche. It is only possible to live the fullest life when we are in harmony with these symbols; wisdom is a return to them." (CW 8, Pages 399-403).

The root is a deeper, universal description of matter, symptoms, and experiential realms where experiences are a matter of life and death. It's the hidden dimension, the "dark matter" of our existence. Mindell says, "The trunk of the tree is a dream symbol that bridges the world between deep sentient experiences and symbols."

We can amplify that somatic process by combining instincts, dreams (or trance), and images. The connection depends on unfolding subtle sensations of psyche-matter interactions of psychophysical reality. Somatic rhythms include pulsation, form, flow, construction and deconstruction, and oscillating polarities.

All of our cells are intelligent entities. The autonomic system is loaded with all kinds of receptors modulated by peptides stored in the spine all the way down. They can be emotionally expressed through movement and body-centered work.

There are receptors for chemical messengers on every cell of the body, and this is where memories are stored. Memory is how much the receptors have been stimulated or not. All the history is there. Emotions are universal. They arise at the cellular level from molecular information -- the remote smart key that fits the subconscious lock.

We have receptors in the central nervous system, gastric, endocrine, cardio, circulatory, immune, and skin systems. Peptide receptors are found in all organs, particularly the heart, which has all receptor types for information molecules on it. Our feelings are filtered by these molecules. Chakra regions are like mini-brains. Each is a nerve plexus of receptors that push the body state to do what needs to be done through the wisdom of the body -- Soma Sophia.

The Sumerian goddess takes the sacred tree home to her garden where she nurtures and cares for it. The tree mirrors Inanna herself -- the mirror of divine realities which has all the information of the universe. She comes to terms with all the creatures, including the serpent, that live in that tree, representing the duality of the goddess.

The snake is a personification of the unconscious, for, as early as the Gnostics, it was used as a symbol for the spinal cord and the basal ganglia, where the vegetative psyche is localized. ~Carl Jung, ETH, Lecture XIII, Page 111.

This serpent does not represent "reason" or anything approaching it, but rather symbolizes a peculiar autonomous mind which can possess one completely,
a spirit of revelation which gives us "Intuitionen" (intuitions).
~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 215.

Psyche symbolically unites the lower instinctual urges with the higher spiritual instincts and expresses them in the clear vision of modified and integrated images. The soul creates symbols that anticipates future alterations of consciousness, presaging uniting the opposites in wholeness -- upper and lower worlds.

Later she turns her tree into her throne and bed used in the "Sacred Marriage." She also makes the first recorded initiatory descent into the realm of the dead -- the realm of metatruths. Jung reminds us, "We don't attain any "ultimate truths" at all, but on the way to them we discover a whole lot of astonishing partial truths. (Letters Vol. II, 504-506)

Scholars (Wolkstein & Kramer 1983:51-89) link the cutting of the World Tree to the destruction of a cyclical view of life, death, and renewal to a linear view of life and death with the underworld as its end.

Descent & Renewal
The underworld is a dreamland of soul where we can retreat to interact with other psyches. We can explore the ancestral underworld through myths, folklore and visionary journeying, as a place of ageless wisdom and regenerative power. Jung said, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

The underworld and its powers of transformation and rebirth are the roots of the tree, essential to anyone on a spiritual path. Death is not the psychological opposite of life; in fact, any act that holds away death prevents life. When the physical form is destroyed, we enter a psychical form of existence. We learn from the shadows. What holds things in their form is the secret of death.

There is nothing to be done when we are emptied of certainty, doing, and being. Imaginal images don't require validation from external events. Hades means invisible -- unseen yet absolutely present. The invisible, whether we call them archetypes, gods or whatever, are only visible as metaphors which speak for themselves.

Metaphorical death, our morbidity is an enactment of that fantasy -- a way of mythologizing -- a disheartening mortification. In alchemy, mortificatio is the process of death, destruction and decomposition. It is a death-sentence for the ego. But if we remain paralyzed too long, we suffer the consequences. When we look for the cryptic key we ask what this particular image has do with my death.

Our deep nature is primordial wildness, aliveness, and intensity of images which automatically free the butterfly of the soul. As Hillman says, the revelations of fantasy expose the divine. Resemblance is a bridge to events. We can't be just objective observers because we participate in, are subjected to, wounded by, and suffer our images. The abysmal reality is that all changes and life demand sacrifices.

Even if we are fearful, we can repeat Inanna's journey to the underworld, the psyche with its radically altered view of life. This bed-rock of reality is devoid of feeling and empty of meaning. She makes an initiatory descent to reclaim the neglected side of life for the sake of making soul. The underworld and its dreams are not to be exploited to help to fix up our daytime life. We should not mine our dreams for images, ideas, and information that can help us be more productive and functional in mundane life.

Hillman (1979) cautions that, "It is this dayworld style of thinking—literal realities, natural comparisons, contrary opposites, processional steps—that must be set aside in order to pursue the dream into its home territory. There thinking moves in images, resemblances, correspondences. To go in this direction, we must sever the link with the dayworld, foregoing all ideas that originate there—translation, reclamation, compensation. We must go over the bridge and let it fall behind us, and if it will not fall, then let it burn."

In her dark descent, Inanna reclaims the unloving, unloved, abandoned, instinctual, raging, greedy, desirous, unfulfilled, and desperately lonely parts by attending to the depths, by giving it attention, by valuing it, by expressing it. She renews the relationship with her dark ancestress-sister and queen of the underworld, Ereshkigal. The creative energy of the primordial beginning feeds us and heals the suffering heart and soul. Instinctual life informs and powers our work. The creative process is renewed.

The Threshold
In the poem, Inanna moves inward and abandons the mundane world, the physical world, for her adventure into chaos by following her uncertainty. She deals with matters affecting her deeper soul -- imaginative possibilities in our nature -- and connects to her own power. The constructed notion of self is challenged and dies. For this to work for ourselves we must understand that medication, impatience, and fear of death are obstacles. Our pathologizing is a way of seeing and part of our wholeness.

The Sumerian word for ear and wisdom are the same. Inanna opens her ear to the Great Below, she "tunes in" or "listens up" to natural wisdom, the harmonization of thinking and feeling. She enters through the "seven gates" - the chakras or central nervous system. She is depressed, grieves and mourns the existence of suffering and pain in the world.

The myth speaks to anyone who undergoes a transformation. We must release or at least challenge our values or perspectives, and become vulnerable to the frightening possibility of change. The conscious part of the psyche witnesses the events below. Mourners rescue Inanna and bring her back to life. She is regenerated, resurrected by moving from a dissociated state to the detached observer self, to an associated state.

In our genealogy work, we mourn and resurrect our ancestors. We associate with them. Our family tree, our family system or ancestral field of information and energy is like a torus whose branches reconnect with their roots -- a hyperdimensional labyrinth that is the model of our universe.

When we visit the underworld, we visit our roots that fund our being. Flow emerges from awareness. Campbell likened the successful adventure to unlocking and releasing the flow of life into the body of the world. The living tree is our living web of interactions, including habits (trunk), our senses (branches), situation awareness (tip of branches), reasoning (emergent guidance), and resource flow (nurturance). Connecting those fields is flow.

Into the Labyrinth
Feeling is the entry point of this epic journey which may seem like a foreign country with a language you don't yet know. Subtle signals can be aroused within the genealogical exploratory process that we can use for deepening our connections, while we hold onto the red thread that maintains our connection to the present.

A journal or sketch-book may help. Attention can be directed to all manner of processes where something new is being formed -- in creative process, learning, thinking, and decision making. What's familiar is what was there first. What was there first is family and the first remembered experiences between 0-5 years old -- what feels good and what feels bad.

You can make a somatic bridge -- a channel to a subliminal or subjective feeling in your body that reflects your internal states so you can change the structure of the experience. States have two components: increasing absorption and a continually narrowing focus of attention. That is a trance. It communicates primally in spatial location, proximity, direction, size, movement, and feeling. We can locate where it is in the body by a first impression. The information is there when we know how to ask for it.

We may not be sure which direction we're going or how far we've gone. The path may twist or slowly turn into an experience that’s about being lost, both literally and metaphorically. The maze starts to feel more like a forest. It starts to feel like it’s changing as you 'walk' the labyrinth. Voices may start telling stories about experiences that threw their world out of order or made them feel more complete.

Feeling our way into the dark may sharpen other senses in the absence of sight and hearing. We may wonder if there are walls to the labyrinth, or just empty space. We have to reach far enough to find out. We have to focus right where we are as we continue stepping forward into nothing. It may feel bigger than we expected.

Genealogy is our map of the unconscious. When we enter the dark door, the Red Thread shows us the way, igniting the imagination, awakening the soul. You link your Tree to the World Tree, your history to world history and mythology.

Immersion is virtual reality, like actually "being there." We learn certain well-worn pathways from the present into the past. Focusing means holding a kind of open, non-judging attention to an internal knowing which is directly experienced but is not yet in words. We can use focusing to become clear on what we feel or want , to obtain new insights about our situation, and to stimulate change or healing of the situation.

The World Tree maintains the cycles of life and death. The old cyclical understanding of death as merely one stage in the eternal round of birth, death, and renewal, symbolized by the tree, was replaced by a linear perception of life with death and the underworld as the end.

Walking the Labyrinth of our ancestral lines is a deeply meditative process that arouses spirit, intuition and gnosis from a deep sleep. It is a way of soul retrieval, uniting our personal and collective unconscious. It is a process of digging through the past, overturning old notions. Nothing lives as long as deep memory. Emotional states reveal and change what we pay attention to. Our nervous system filters our experience before it becomes conscious.

MYTHICAL LIVING
A Metaphorical Perception of Experience
by Iona Miller, c1977

“Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone
with others. Unfold your own myth.” --Rumi

"Jung has suggested that each individual life is based on a particular myth, and that we ought each to discover what our own basic myth is, so that we may live it consciously and intelligently, cooperating with the trend of this life pattern, instead of being dragged along unwillingly. These patterns can be seen recurring in the lives of certain people, who remain totally unconscious of what they are living. But if the individual becomes conscious in relation to the archetypal trend that underlies his life--his fate--he can begin to adapt himself to it consciously. The outer fate is then transmuted into the inner experience, and the true individuality of the man or woman begins to emerge. This is an important step in the quest for the Self." --M. Esther Harding/The I and the Not-I I.

"Myth is not fiction: it consists of facts that are continually repeated and can be observed over and over again. It is something that happens to man, and men have mythical fates just as much as the Greek heroes do." ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Para 648.

Myth may be defined as a paradigmatic model. In science, paradigms are thought-models which direct their holders to pose only certain questions and to utilize only certain methods in search of answers. This precisely parallels the effect of a given archetype when it is activated; it molds our attitudes in a characteristic manner so that we catch certain things but ignore or omit what just doesn't fit. The particular paradigmatic lenses we choose to form our conceptualization of reality function to shape the very reality we hope to capture and understand. By emphasizing particular relationships, or elements, they largely determine the nature of the "reality" we experience. This conceptualization of reality is known as one's worldview.

A person who embraces a particular paradigm can create a reality from his expectations, even without conscious intent to do so. In our technological world, most paradigms stress a routine or mechanical side of life. In order to acquire experiential freedom from cultural programming, one must have a model. A model is required for realization. Myths, then, serve a key function in the psychic economy. Myths provide the most comprehensive metaphors, or models, for the realization of liberating alternatives. The meaning in life is inherent in the archetypal experience of myth.

The aesthetic experience and its 'meaning' are identical. In a religious society, myths tell the people who they are and where they come from. To change the myth is to become lost in the most profound ontological (1) sense. Modern man lives in a world of intellectual fragmentation. He feels a need to dissect any and everything, especially himself, to find out the universal order of things and to seek his place in it. Mythological explanations arise when an individual or culture evolves the three primary questions:

1) who am I?
2) where do I come from?
3) where am I going?

The meaning of existence lies in a relevant answer to these questions. These answers formulate one's worldview. With these questions, a universal seed within man begins to germinate.

Self-consciousness begins to unfold its awareness of totality. The finite mind begins to bridge the gap to infinite awareness. In seeking to find the beginning of creation, man must first cease thinking in terms of space and time. In Reality there is neither. It is an illusion that man is contained in space and time. In fact, both are contained in man. Both experiences, together, illustrates psychic experience.

The Creations, as a psychological reality, was/is/will occur in the realm of the sacred, not the profane world. With our human limitations, sacred time is experienced as multiple recurrence. It is thus a continuous, timeless-creation. All parts of the process are inherent in its wholeness. Likewise, wholeness is inherent in all parts. This is the Alpha/Omega principle. As this universal seed starts to grow in an individual, he is plunged from his preconscious, womb-like security into a dazzling world of intellectual confusion. He experiences paradox. There is dichotomy, a lot of contradiction. So, man comes to duality of subject and object. Conflicts are produced, which, used creatively, may lead to the individuation, the subjective and objective spheres merge into one.

II. Orientation

A complete mythology provides helpful orientation in four ways:
1) In its metaphysical-mystical function, it wakens and maintains in the individual an experience of awe, humility, and respect in recognition of the ultimate mystery which transcends words and form.
2) It provides a cosmology, or an image of the universe. Science now serves this mythological function, admirably.
3) On the social level, myth supplies validation and maintenance of an established order.
4) Finally, on the psychological level, they provide models for the centering and harmonization of the individual.

Mythologies perform these functions through symbols. The focal point provided by image and symbol holds the mind to truth. The ultimate is, of course, unknowable. Therefore, the images themselves are not "the truth." For contemporary man, a journey into his unconscious provides the vital meanings and relatedness to the cosmic order that myths once gave us. It is a return to the source which goes a step further than genealogy. Meaning is inherent in conscious experience of archetypal processes. A model for pursuing the quest provides a foundation to which one's experience may be related.

The modern search for meaning is a variant of the age-old quest, or journey of the hero. This mythological motif is activated whenever cultural values and mores do not provide an adequate model for one's experience. The social boundaries dissolve and a person is thrown back on his own resources. Valuable connections and new forms must be re-established. During this period, symbols acquire great personal value. For many, this period is seen as an experience of rebirth or renewal.

This heroic stage does not go on indefinitely. Questing fades into the background when one becomes familiarized with the imaginal realm. Both processes, questing for and participating in the imaginal realm, require attention, effort, and creativity. Evidence of man's great desire for this experience is found in the common use of drugs in the counterculture. Rather than the gradual path of study, experience, and assimilation, drugs may provoke experiences which are "too much, to soon." Joseph Campbell has likened the situation to one found in Greek mythology "in which a person says to a god, 'Show me yourself in your full power.' And the god does and the person is blown to bits."

The personality suffers from an inability to relate, meaningfully, to society. Drug experiences provide ample evidence of the world of the psyche, but in order for us to obtain value from the contact, consciousness must be able to come to understanding, digestion, and assimilation of the experience. Liberating experiences require a context of strong ego-consciousness. This does not mean "willful assertion." It means that the ego has learned to discriminate between itself and the archetypal processes operating through and around it. It means, also, that the ego has learned to defer to, and cooperate with them.

A frightened ego, in danger of drowning in deep waters, will quickly regress to the natural standpoint, otherwise unaffected by its contact with the numinous. The boon, which the successful hero may bring back (which has both personal and collective significance), is not given to him. He does not find the gods cooperative. The lessons of the "trip" prove most troublesome and provide no benefit in daily life. He is lucky if his worst problem is merely the desire to stay "high."

There is a generation of "world-weary" people, eager to transcend off into some mythical realm. However, their methods are either haphazard, or ill-advised. This type of unassimilable experience stimulates the complex of the puer aeternus, or eternal adolescent. When it occurs in a woman, it is a puella complex. This complex is epidemic in our society, today. This was not the case a century ago, when our cultural model was more strictly defined. The ideal lies somewhere between, in a reunion of the values of tradition and futurity. This requires the ability to apply oneself to the task. It requires self-motivation, diligent effort, and the grace of god. When man enters the myth of transformation, he sets out to change the world. Soon, he becomes aware that he must first change himself. In this moment of transformation, myth is seen as an intuitive, ever-becoming processing. Man is not really contained in the myth, and in time. Both myth and time are contained within himself.

The gods and man are involved in a symbiotic relationship. Each requires the other for realization. When man seeks the motives behind the act of becoming, he transcends from concrete intellectual conception to metaphysical abstractions. Eventually, he comes to an understanding that metaphysics is the science of the content of myth. The so-called "occult" is mainly involved with developing man's latent subconscious powers, so he may develop greater access to the imaginal realm. This opens up a world which, by definition, contains wider parameters for experience and growth. It provides a comprehensive, cohesive method and model. With it, man may live his individuality within the context of tradition. There are aspects of creative mythology, and its form of metaphorical perception, which tie it in with a holographic concept of reality.

(2) Within metaphorical and mythic conception, a part does not merely stand in the place of or represent the union of several elements, but rather it is identical with the whole. If the part is the whole, then whoever controls the part controls the whole. In normal discourse, symbols represent their referents and are separable from what they represent; in metaphorical or mythic conception, the symbols are their referents; they cannot be separated. The elegance of language lies in its capacity to separate symbol from experience so that symbols can be manipulated in a way that experiences cannot be. While we cannot experience precisely the same thing ever again, we can attach similar symbols to represent two experiences as being roughly the same.

(3) The chaotic assortment of apparent and disguised mythological images have certain typical features. We may reduce the infinitely variegated and complex forms to their simplest expressions as a means of recognizing them. Jung's list of salient characteristics includes: Chaotic multiplicity and order; duality; the opposition of light and dark, upper and lower, right and left; the union of opposites in a third (complexio oppositorum); the quaternity (square, cross); rotation (circle, sphere); and finally the centering process and a radial arrangement usually followed by some quaternity system. The centering process is...the never-to-be-surpassed climax of the whole development, and is characterized as such by the fact that it brings with it the greatest possible therapeutic effect.

Experience of these archetypal processes offers the possibility of orienting oneself. Several traditional mystical exercises stress the importance of the centering process. Fundamental in these meditations is orienting oneself to the four cardinal directions. The role of creative imagination is fundamental.

Virtually any experience available to man is integrated via a form of imagery. Myth raises the individual to a superhuman or superhistorical plane. It enables him to approach Reality that is inaccessible at the level of profane experience. If the mind makes use of images to grasp the ultimate Reality of things, it is just because Reality manifests itself in contradictory ways and therefore cannot be expressed in concepts.

James Hillman, Director of Studies in Imaginal Psychology at the University of Texas, states that "We can describe the psyche as a polycentric realm of nonverbal, nonspatial images. Myth offers the same kind of world. It too, is polycentric, with innumerable personifications in imaginal space. Just as dream images are not mere words in disguise...so the ancient personifications of myths are not concepts in disguise." He states further that these "soul events are not parts of any system. They are independent of the tandems in which they are placed, inasmuch as there is an independent primacy of the imaginal that creates its fantasies automatically, ceaselessly, and spontaneously. Myth-making is not compensatory to anything else."

The more paradigmatic models one has access to, the more freedom of creation one experiences. "It is egoistic to recognize oneself in only one portion of a tale, case in only one role." (4) Polytheistic consciousness allows us to experience the gamut of archetypal perspectives. This leads the individual to broader consciousness and greater tolerance of other individual's perspectives.

Myth is the comprehensive metaphor, "answering our requirements for intellectual puzzlement and explanation through enigma by providing as-if fictions in depth, complexity, and exquisite differentiation." "Myth," says Hermann Broch, "is the archetype of every phenomenal cognition, of which the human mind is capable. Archetype of all human cognition, archetype of science, archetype of art--myth is consequently that archetype of philosophy, too." We might deduce from this that myth functions as a sort of metapsychology.

Mythic metaphors elude literalism; they dramatically present themselves as impossible truths. They have the ability to transform concrete particulars into universals, and to present abstract universals as concrete actions. They are ways not only of speaking, perceiving, and feeling, but of existing. We may experience mythical consciousness by finding Gods in our concrete lives. They are found by entering myths, since that is where they are. We may participate with them by recognizing our concrete existence as metaphors, or mythic enactments.

However, Hillman is very deliberate in stating that: "myths resist being interpreted into practical life. They are not allegories of applied psychology, solutions to personal problems. This is the old moralistic fallacy, now become the therapeutic fallacy, telling us which step to take and what to do next, where the hero went wrong and had to pay the consequences, as if this practical guidance were what was meant by 'living one's myth'."

"Living one's myth doesn't simply mean living one myth. It means that one lives myth; it means mythical living...to try to use a myth practically keeps us still in the pattern of the heroic ego, learning how to do his deeds correctly. Myths do not tell us how. They simply give the invisible background which starts us imagining, questioning, going deeper." Myths do not carry one to a central meaning, or the center of meaning. "To enter myth we must personify, to personify carries us into myth."

III. Exercise

Personification is a mode of viewing archetypal processes in their traditional forms as gods and goddesses. This method allows us to love the gods, giving them attention and worship. Their names aid us in discriminating them one from another. They give us the ability to call upon them. This process of devotion takes place in the imaginal realm of the heart. In QBL, this is Tiphareth, the heart-center. In Eastern systems, it is known as anahata chakra. It is the realm of soul-making. Personification is a spontaneous process, springing from the heart, where imagination reigns. This process of active imagination allows us to "see through" the literalisms of mundane existence and to participate in relationships with the divine.

A primary purpose of Middle Pillar Exercise is to orient oneself with the Universe (5). It promises equilibration and renewal. In Middle Pillar Exercise, the gods are brought into consciousness by intoning their names. This creates a resonance effect which stimulates glands. These names are related, via correspondence, to various centers in the body. Repeated practice of Middle Pillar Exercise is fundamental for any Magickal development. It heals the culturally-preprogrammed split between mind, soul and body. The Banishing Ritual and Middle Pillar Exercise are particularly effective because they are a dramatization of the Creation Myth.

In his book, The Sacred and the Profane, Mircea Eliade states, "The creation of the world becomes the archetype of every human gesture, whatever its plane of reference may be. Every construction or fabrication has the cosmogony as paradigmatic model. Techniques of orientation (aligning oneself to the directions), are designed for the construction of sacred space. The more closely a ritual reproduces the work of the gods in creation, the more effective it is in producing the desired psychological results. Knowing the value of a ritual satisfies both the rational and aesthetic mind. The model for the creation of sacred space begins from a center and projects horizons in the four cardinal directions. This model has been followed throughout history when settling new territory or in the founding of cities. We always reside at the center of "our world."

This quadrated circle sets up the conditions necessary for us to enter into sacred time. The Banishing Ritual "cleanses" the portion of space within the perimeter of the circle. This eliminates unwanted thoughts which could cause distraction. One then has enhanced ability to focus and concentrate. The circle is cleared of all 'entities,' good or evil. Then one may call in specific gods, at will. We may contact the gods through the medium of the sacred pole or cosmic pillar. Sacred time appears under the paradoxical aspect of circular time, reversible and recoverable, a sort of mythical eternal present that is periodically reintegrated by means of rites. When we enter this space, we experience the feeling of immortality, since we are in a time which is equivalent to the "beginning."

The principle characteristics of sacred space are:
a) A break in the homogeneity of space;
b) This break is symbolized by an opening where passage from one cosmic region to another is facilitated (i.e. between heaven and earth; earth and the underworld);
c) Communication with heaven is expressed by variants of the Cosmic Pillar, which stands at the Center of the World. This Pillar is a useful symbol for what is termed in psychology the Ego-Self Axis.

The axis is built up through various psychological exercises, involving active imagination. It forms the link between ego-consciousness and the Self. This represents both the conscious and subconscious mind working together in harmony. It is known in Magick as Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel. The Banishing and Middle Pillar exercises conform precisely to the creation myth. Since a myth is a paradigmatic model, one can see it is a very effective exercise. It establishes one's relationship to the cosmos, or totality.

Eliade has said: What men do on their own initiative, without a mythical model, belongs to the sphere of the profane; hence, it is a vain and illusory activity, in the last analysis, unreal. The more religious a man is, the more paradigmatic models he possesses to guide his attitudes and actions.

The importance of persistent practice of Middle Pillar technique, throughout the Magickal career, is not to be underestimated. Israel Regardie is quite firm on this point. "To my mind, the exercise described as the Middle Pillar is the groundwork of all actual developmental work. It is a process which is the basis of Magic. That this has been but seldom realized is obviously at the root of the futile attempts to do Ceremonial and perform Ritual, of which the general public hears every now and again. Even students of Magic of many years standing have been guilty of negligence in this respect, and also in failing to recommend it to their successors." (6)

Timelessness will appear as a multiple recurrence (chronicity). The archetypal order will make these appearances regular, both in time (wave frequency) and magnitude (wave amplitude). The ego has the option of actively participating in the process through the medium of active imagination. This develops insight. To restore our earth to a ground in creative imagination we must re-imagine the creation. (7)

3.4 MYTH
Gowan, TAC

3.41 General Introduction

True myth is defined by Graves (1955:10) as "the reduction to narrative shorthand of ritual mime performed on public festivals. ... Their subjects were archaic magic-makings that promoted the fertility or stability of a sacred queendom, . . ." Graves goes on to point out that magic, supernatural or totem calendar-beasts figured in these rituals, and that to understand Greek mythology we must appreciate the matriarchal and totemistic system which held sway there before incursion of patriarchal invaders. An example of such a mythical beast was the chimera, with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail.

While Jung believes that myths are original revelations of the preconscious psyche, Graves holds that a "true science of myth should begin with a study of archaeology, history, and comparative religion" (1955:22).

Eliade concludes that the value of myth lies in its ability to evoke a numinous relationship through a priest or by proxy for a believer who is otherwise, however, incapable of any other relationship with the ground of being. He says (1969:59):

The myth continually reactualizes the Great Time and in so doing raises the listener to a superhuman and suprahistorical plane; which among other things, enables him to approach a Reality that is inaccessible at the level of profane, individual existence.

It may be seen that this indeed is the function of all parataxic representation, not only with myth, but also with archetypes, dreams, art, and especially ritual. For whether we consider ritual magic or the Mass of the Church, it is obvious that ritual has the common purpose of gaining merit and personal advantage for the celebrant and his constituency, through approach to the numinous element or some manifestation of it.

The archaeology of man's developing social thought is preserved in myth. Recently acquired is the "loose and separate" consciousness of Western man which separates him from the continuum of nature in time, space, and personality. More primitive consciousness was not so differentiated; it was more dreamy and less clear. In myth we find remnants of images now less than precise, whose equivocal ambivalence was once an asset. In the dawning of consciousness, wherein myth abounded, it was easier to believe that man might be metamorphosed into an animal or vice versa, that magical flight could conquer space, and that precognition could reverse time. The vestiges of these motifs in myth is testimony to the development of a conscious ego from a primal self which did not know itself as distinct from nature. The periodic developmental stage theory (Gowan 1972,1974) presents an ontogenic recapitulation of evolutionary phylogeny. The differentiation of ego functioning culminates in stage 5, (the Eriksonian identity crisis), as the individual correlate of the evolution of the personal ego in the species.

Eliade (1969:14) points out that this mythical repository in modern man has been relegated to the attic of the unconscious:

For the unconscious is not haunted by monsters only: the gods, goddesses, the heroes, and the fairies dwell there too; moreover, the monsters of the unconscious are themselves mythological, seeing that they continue to fulfill the same functions that they fulfilled in all the mythologies - in the last analysis that of helping man liberate himself. . . .

But images possess the disadvantage of not being categorical. Says Eliade (1969:15):

Images by their very nature are multivalent (i.o.). If the mind makes use of images to grasp the ultimate reality of things, it is just because reality manifests itself in contradictory ways, and therefore cannot be expressed in concepts.

Eliade (1969:57) tells us:

Myth is an account of events which took place in principio, that is "in the beginning," in a primordial and non-temporal instant, a moment of sacred time (i.o.). The mythic or sacred time is qualitatively different from profane time, from continuous and irreversible time of our everyday de- sacralized existence. In narrating a myth one reactualizes in some sort the sacred time in which the events narrated took place.

Myth, therefore is a way of bringing the numinous to the common man without involving him in an altered state of consciousness. Its sacramental character veils an inner numinous truth which is explicated by the ritual which the myth demands, and which action reaffirms the relationship between the present which is in time, and the numinous which is out of time.

Eliade (1963:18) says:
Myth as experienced in archaic societies:

(1) constitute the history and acts of the supernaturals;
(2) this history is considered to be absolutely true ... and sacred;
(3) that myth is always related to creation (it tells how something came into existence);
(4) that by knowing the myth one knows the origin of things, and hence can control and manipulate them at will (by) a knowledge that one "experiences" ritually, either by ceremonially recounting the myth, or by performing the ritual for which it is the justification;
(5) that in one way or another one "lives" the myth, in the sense that one is "seized" by the sacred exalting power of the events recollected or re-enacted.

Gaster (1950:11) traces the origin of myth as "a sequence of ritual acts, which ... have characterized major seasonal festivities." These as he explains (1950:9) are "derived from a religious ritual designed to ensure the rebirth of a dead world." He elaborates on the central thesis (1950:17) as follows:

Seasonal rituals are functional in character. Their purpose is to revive the topocosm (i.o.), that is, the entire complex of any given locality conceived as a living organism. But this topocosm possesses a ... durative aspect, representing not only actual and present community, but also the ideal of community, an entity, of which the latter is but the current manifestation. Accordingly, seasonal rituals are accompanied by myths which are designed to present the purely functional acts in terms of ideal and durative situations. The impenetration of myth and ritual creates drama. ... What the King does on the punctual plane, the God does on the durative. . . . The pattern is based on the conception that life is vouchsafed in a series of leases which have annually to be renewed.3

It would be difficult to state more clearly and concisely the central motivating elements of myth than has here been done. The concept that the topocosm needs to be renewed like an annual lease, and that since it exists on the transcendental (durative) level, it can be affected as if in sympathetic magic on the temporal (punctual) level, and finally that it is a living organism amenable to the efforts of man, is both good anthropology and excellent psychology regarding man's parataxic relationship to the numinous element.

In contrast to the void of the numinous element, but in no wise the antithesis of it, stands a conceptualization identified by Gaster (1950) as the "durative topocosm." It would be easy to say that this represents nature, seen in her anthropomorphic aspects, but that is too simple; another partial view would equate this conceptualization to the goddess Ceres with all her manifestations of bounty, but even this does not capture the full "durative" aspect. For it embraces not merely the progression of the seasons, and the fecundation of nature, processes which eventuate at a given time and place, but the generative element in these processes which continues as in a procession or ceremony to provide the continual source and origin of what man merely sees as an outcome at a given time and place. It is the numinous clothed and housed in forms which we perceive as natural.

Thus Malinowski (1928:23) says:

We can find among the most primitive peoples and throughout the lower savagery a belief in a supernatural impersonal force, moving all those agencies which are relevant to the savage and causing all the really important events in the domain of the sacred. Thus mana (i.o.) not animism is the essence of "pre-animistic religion," and is also the essence of magic. . . .

The durative topocosm is generally celebrated as Sir James Frazer noted in "The Golden Bough"in cults and ceremonies of vegetation and fertility. As in totemism (Malinowski 1968:45) "This ritual leads to acts of a magical nature, by which plenty is brought about" and man by his rites certifies the renewal of the annual lease of the potential bounty of the topocosm.

Malinowski (1968:73) quotes Codrington as saying:

This mana is not fixed in anything, and can be conveyed in almost anything. (It) acts in all ways for good and evil . . ., shows itself in physical force or in any kind of power or excellence which a man possesses.

Ultimate reality, in the guise of the durative topocosm, cannot adequately present itself through a language of tensed verbs. Hence it must do so through a metaphor of continual recurrence; we should learn to recognize such usage in myth and fable as signifying the advent of the "spacious present" in which clock time is transcended. Such fables as Sisyphus rolling up the stone, which rolls down again, the Medusa which grows two heads when one is cut off, Brigadoon which keeps appearing one day every hundred years, ghosts which keep haunting a castle on an anniversary, are alike examples of an incident which "occur" in durative time, and which, therefore, seem to keep repeating in ours. A second example of the durative nature of this reality is the fact that mortals immersed in it (in fable) are apt to find that a shorter duration in it amounts to a much longer elapse of clock time. Examples which come to mind include Brigadoon, Rip Van Winkle, and many fairy tales.10
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Myth involves explication of psychic tensions which activate archetypes and dreams, but are now expressed in the ordinary state of consciousness in terms of images. Cassirer (1955:11:25-36) points out the development of image in the parataxic mode as follows:

The mythical world is concrete ... because in it the two main factors, thing and signification are undifferentiated. . . . The concresence of name and thing in the linguistic consciousness of primitives and children might be illustrated ... (striking example: name tabus).... But as language develops, distinct from all mere physical existence and all physical efficacy, the word emerges in its own specificity, in its purely ideal significatory function. And art leads us to still another stage of development. . . . Here for the first time the image world acquires a purely immanent validity and truth. . . . Thus for the first time the world of images becomes a self-contained cosmos ... severing its bonds with immediate reality, with material existence and efficacy which constitute the world of magic and myth; it embodies a new step.

Psychic tensions exist in a society as well as in individuals. The parataxic outlet for these tensions in the individual is art; in society it is myth and ritual. Myth of course is an example of the outletting of such tensions: Abell explains (1966:94):

Similarly a myth has not only its "active period of psychic eruption and imaginative overflow, but also its subsequent period of extinction and disintegration." A later form of extinct myth will differ greatly from the earlier expression of the active period and may retain little of the tension-imagery.

He continues (1966:96):

The action of eruptive and erosive forces in the sphere of the near myth can be observed in the phases through which every artistic movement seems destined to pass. An exploratory or "creative" phase is eventually succeeded by a stereotyped or "academic" phase. Artists, participating in the exploratory phase, ... work with feverish intensity and bring forth results that are dazzling, often bewildering and seemingly unreasonable to those who witness their cultural emergence.

Some writers, perhaps metaphorically, see myth as the record of a "social womb" in which primitive man, not yet endowed with full cognition, is protected from reality by a dreamy placental envelope.

Hall (1960: 10) points out that from an occult point of view mythologies and mythological characters may have developed from racial memories of super-identities who helped our species become human.

3.42 Examples of Myth11

Henderson (Jung 1964:101) points out that the "hero myth" is the most common and popular in the world. He says:

Over and over again one hears a tale describing a hero's miraculous but humble birth, his early proof of superhuman strength, his rapid rise to prominence or power, his triumphant struggle with the forces of evil, his fallibility to the sin of pride (hubris) and his fall through betrayal or a heroic sacrifice that ends in death.

Radin (1948) in Hero Cycles of the Winnebago notes four cycles in the evolution of the hero myth, calling them (1) the trickster cycle, (2) the hare cycle, (3) the red horn cycle, and (4) the twin cycle. The trickster sees his environment as a giver or withholder of good things, and craftily exploits it or appeases it to get what he wants. The hare represents a socialization of the trickster for he cooperates with his group instead of exploiting them. The third cycle Red Horn, is a younger brother who has envious brethren and who proves himself through endurance, thus raising his self-esteem. Finally, the twins are a pair of superhuman brothers who conquer heaven and earth, but finally sicken of their power, and either fall out or one betrays the other, and the death of one ensures. It is very easy to see in this hero myth parallels to the development of self-concept in the growing boy from a solitary exploiter of the world (in the third stage), through socialization in the fourth stage to identification with a brother in the fifth stage. Thus does ontogeny in the individual parallel phylogeny in the species.12

Henderson (Jung 1964:130) points out another universal myth that is often found in dreams of adolescent girls who are having difficulty accepting their feminine role as wife and mother. He says:

A universal myth expressing this kind of awakening is found in the fairy tale of Beauty and the Beast. The best known version of this story related how Beauty, the youngest of four daughters, becomes her father's favorite because of her unselfish goodness. When she asks her father for only a white rose, she is aware only of her inner sincerity of feeling. She does not know that she is about to endanger her father's life and her ideal relation with him. For he steals the white rose from the enchanted garden of the Beast, who is stirred to anger by this theft, and requires him to return in three months for his punishment, presumably death.

As Henderson points out, the rose is the (sublimated) sexual love between daughter and father, a love which really belongs to a younger rival (the Beast), whose bestial aspects personify the rejected overt sex from which Beauty is free as long as she is "daddy's little girl." But as the tale tells us, Beauty is required to make an overt sexual advance (kiss the beast), and when she does so, she finds that he is transformed into a wonderful prince.

A third example of universal myth comes from tribal Africa. In Hahn's book on Africa (1961) "Ntu" is the numinous element, never seen but in its manifestations which are Muntu (man), Nommo (the power of the word) Kuntu (Modes and Styles), and Hantu (culture). All of these are part of the topocosm, that durative world of which our own series of events in space and time is only a shadow.

These three examples of myth account for bravery in males, beauty and charm in females, and the numinous quality found in man and indeed in nature.

3.43 Myth and Animals

Because primitive man lived much closer to the animals than we do and had reason to fear and totemize some of them, it is natural to find that animals play a great part in his myths. Myths about animals fall into three categories: (1) the transformation of man into animal or vice versa, (2) the totemization of a feared animal, and (3) the nagual or animal-twin of individual men. These categories are of course interconnected. They all represent attempts to extract the numinous quality from the animal and incorporate it into the individual (in character) or in society (in totem).

One of the environmental penalties of modern urban life is the estrangement of mankind from the animals. We do not realize this until we revert to the farm in the country or visit a game park. Man in simpler times, whether hunter or agriculturalist, lived on intimate terms with the animals in his habitat. He hunted them, he was hunted by them, he used them, he had them round and often in his dwelling, he played with them, lived close to them, and used anecdotes about them in his songs and dances. The importance of animals in the thinking of primitive man can scarcely be exaggerated; it is seen in myth and legend. The importance of animals in the farm life of man during the last millennium can be seen even in the different etymology and plurals of such ancient words as oxen, geese, mice, kine, deer.

One of the most important relationships of man to the animals in the hunting stage was success in finding game upon which sustenance and perhaps life itself might depend. Myth and ritual of the great hunter and the successful hunt thereby came to be very important.

Baumann (1954:149-50) explains the Lascaux Caves hunting magic dance pictures as follows:

These dances seem incredibly wild and grotesque. To an outsider the dancers appear to be quite beside themselves. And that is exactly what they are. Their burning desire carries them away while they are still dancing on the trail of the beast on which their thoughts are concentrated. In the dance their souls reach the utmost height of tension. Suddenly they let themselves go as the hunters' hand lets the arrow speed from the taut bow. They fall down; their bodies lie soulless, while their souls which have become arrows ... fly out and strike the beast.

But man was not only the hunter, he was sometimes the hunted. The universality of fear produced psychic tension which gave expression in myth. The prevalence of wolves as the primary predators upon our European ancestors is nowhere more noticeable than in the myth of lycanthropy as a projective defense mechanism. Wedeck (1961:171) tells us: "The werewolf appears in every culture and in every age. The ancients from Homer to Mela, from Varro and Virgil to Apuleius, Stabo, and Solinus testify to the prevalence of lycanthropy." The major predator explanation is reinforced again by Wedeck (1971:171) who points out that while werewolves are confined to Europe,

in some countries the change from man to animal involves another creature. In Malaya, for example, the human being changes into a tiger; in Iceland a bear; in Africa a tiger, hyena, or leopard; in India a tiger or leopard.

Let us remember that this fear of the supernatural animal is itself a totemization of an even more irrational fear of demons and monsters which plagued primitive man and is revealed in myth. But if animals were first invested with these magic properties of transformation, the fear of them could also be totemized by making the animal a blood brother ("I won't hunt you, and you won't hunt me), and this process eventually led to the myth of nagualism. Let us trace this syndrome in detail.

Abell asks (1966:155):

Was belief in the monster myths a useless though spontaneous result of the tensions of Neolithic life or did it perform some positive psychic function? . . . . Freud observes that "the dream relieves the mind like a safety valve, and that as Roberts has put it, all kinds of harmful material are rendered harmless by representation in dreams." No doubt the same could be said about myth.

He continues (1966:156):

The myth centered tribal fears in a being so formidable that no man could be condemned for fearing him; an indirect way of granting the fears a social sanction.

Abell opines that the positive note in religious belief is a developing function in culture, little seen in early man. He states (1966:158):

It seems evident that the positive aspects of Neolithic tension imagery were relatively little developed, offering nothing comparable in vividness or intensity to the monsters who swarmed around the negative pole.

According to Salar (1964) a nagual has two definitions; (1) the animal alter ego of an individual, a "guardian-spirit" or "destiny animal" (Middleton 1967:71, who gives many other cites), sometimes with astrological significance. Saler states that some believe in an affinity between the human and animal in regard to character traits and destiny; and (2) that of a transforming witch (akin to our werewolf) who is able to change into animal form in order to do evil at night.

Oakes (1951:170ff) reports that the Guatemalan Indians of the highlands show traces of a belief in nagualism (animal co-spirits for humans). According to this belief each child has a nagual animal and their lives are closely connected. From this it is easy to go to the ability of chimans (shamans) to change at will into animal form, and she relates tales of this sort given by the natives. Whereas the animal form in Europe is generally the wolf (werewolves), the animal form in this location is the coyote. For more on nagualism see Brinton (1894).

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Radin (1927:343) describes how the bear totem affects ceremonial treatment of the captured animal:

When a bear is caught, it is treated with all imaginable veneration and respect. First the hunter addresses a few words of apology and explanation to the animal. Then it is killed and dressed up in all the finery obtainable. . . . When a dead bear is dressed up, this is done as an offering or prayer to the chief of the bears, that he may send the Indians more of his children. ... In gratitude for the treatment accorded him, the bear forgives his slayers and enters their traps a willing and fascinated sacrifice.

Baumann (1954:152) speaking of the Lascaux cave drawings discusses nagualism as follows:

And just as every Red Indian felt he was bound in some special way to some animal, so also did every ice-age hunter. The guardian spirit dwelled in this one animal. Among the Red Indians the animal is called the totem. The ice-age hunter too had his totem animal, and he also tattooed the picture of his animal on his breast.

This process of "totemizing" the fearsome aspects of experience whether found in the natural world or in the numinous is extremely important as it shows how myth was used to reduce fear and irrational dread and to bring the experience into rational consciousness from the trauma with which it was first associated. It is hence necessary to discuss the totemization of myth.

3.44 Totemization of Myth
3.441 General

For a definition of "totem" we go to Malinowski (1928:24-5):

Totemism, to quote Frazer's classical definition: is an inanimate relation which is supposed to exist between a group of kindred people on the one side and a species of natural or artificial objects on the other, which objects are called the totems of the human group.

Malinowski (1928:25) quotes Durkheim as saying:

"In this the totemic principle which is identical with mana and with the God of the clan ... can be nothing else than the clan itself."

As man ascends in evolutionary development, he becomes more conscious of the numinous element and of himself as apart from it. He also begins the totemization of the more dreadful aspects of the numinous element: indeed, the whole parataxic mode is a kind of veiling of the head of Medusa. There is also a kind of slow change in regard to man's relation to various manifestations of the generalized preconscious.

We thus have a historical progress corresponding to slow evolutionary psychic development which goes somewhat as follows in regard to man's relationship to the numinous element:

1. In the ancient world man is seen as the puppet of the numinous element, which behaves in a capricious and irrational manner toward him.

2. Second, man is seen at the mercy of devils and demons; while menacing, they have only the power to tempt him, and may not punish or torture him unless he sins; furthermore he may at least partially ward off their evil influence by faith in the mother church.

This Christian belief has its pagan correlate in the similar belief about monsters and mythical animals (cf. Beowulf). As time goes on, however, the man triumphs over the monster more often, and remains to tell the tale. Sometimes (St. George and the Dragon) there is fusion of the Christian and Pagan elements.

A further change reduces the Christian numinous element to ghosts and the pagan counterpart to witches, fairies, and animals with supernatural power (werewolves).

3. Third, as the numinous element grows less to be feared, the human will comes more to be respected, and Promethean man is in process of birth.

To trace this progression more clearly let H stand for the human protagonist, and let N stand for the numinous element in some presentation indicated by a parenthesis:

1. H the plaything and puppet of N (gods and demons)
2. H preyed upon by N (mythical animals) (Beowulf)
3. H wars with and sometimes conquers N (animals with supernatural powers (St. George and the Dragon)
4. H plagued by devils who tempt him, but can resist them if faithful to tenets of mother church.
5. H plagued by N (witches, ghosts) whose power is definitely limited, and who may by craft be defeated or limited.
6. H helped by N (saints) who as former humans lived good lives.
7. H helped or hindered by N (fairies) whose magic is severely limited.
8. H aided by N (now a talisman or thing) whose power is beneficent but limited.
9. H uses N in a psychological manner for alleviation of pain (as in hypnotism, biofeedback, etc.).
10. H becomes creative and meditative (section 4.3, 4.6) thus "gentling" the effect of N, and placing it under more control.
11. H understands orthocognition (section 4.5) and gains fuller use of N, now expressed as power over environment.
12. H becomes psychedelic (4.7) and N is expressed in very positive affect and knowledge.

This interaction ranges from the human individual being used and persecuted to his using and exploiting, in other words from passivity to activity. The N variable goes from gods and demons through mythical animals, witches, fairies, talismans, and finally to a broader concept of the numinous element as an impersonal force.

3.442 Talismans

A talisman (Webster's International Dictionary) is a figure of a heavenly sign cut or engraved on a stone, metal, or ring sympathetic to the influence of the star, hence something that (is carried) to produce extraordinary effects, such as averting evil. "Talisman" connotes wider and more positive powers than "amulet." "Charm" may be equivalent to either.

Table VII Mythic Manifestations of Numinous Element

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Whereas a talisman may well be a gem with general powers for good, amulet (Dictionary of Magic) is generally a specific against a particular calamity, such as black magic, imprisonment, loss of property, and the like. "The amulet may be a gem or the tail of a fox, a lizard, a mandrake root, or colored threads, a ring, nail, key, or knot." There are specific amulets against nightmares; also some amulets were considered particularly efficacious on certain days of the week or at certain locations.

The concept of a talisman is an end anchor of a sequence of continued totemization in three factor dimensions: 1) from very malignant to potentially beneficial, 2) from strong and uncontrolled will to weak and residing in an object, and 3) from very active in all aspects, to passive and useful only in certain prescribed instances. Psychologists will recognize these three factors as the three major dimensions of Osgood's Semantic Differential which is a distillation by factor analysis of all the adjectives applied to things, events, and persons. Table VII spells out the details.

Jaffe (Jung 1964:257ff) notes that even when the numinous element has gone through the full cycle from a dreadful and all powerful god to the relative immobility of a talisman, mysterious qualities still remain, making it a powerful symbol. She discusses three of these symbols, the stone, the animal, and the circle, and notes the long history of each as an object, as a talisman, and as a universal art symbol or mandala.

History shows the amelioration not only of the major presentation of the numinous (as noted above), but also in some of its specific forms. Hahn and Benes (1971:17ff) make this point clearly in the case of angels. They show that seraphs in the Bible are described as winged serpents with fiery bites. They further say (1971:21):

The word "cherub" comes from the Babylonian karibu designating a monster looking like the Garuda of Hindu mythology, that is a griffin or cross between a mammal and giant bird. . . . The cherubim of Moses and Solomon were sphinxes or griffins.

They note that Psalm 18 has God riding on such a cherub. These fearsome forms in the guise of mythical beasts are a far removal from the chubby cherubim that float over saints or the pale angels in the heavenly choir of more modern fancy.

While ancient and medieval man saw this process as concerned with the gradual freeing of himself from the onslaughts of gods and demons, we should not forget, looking at it from the stance of modern psychology, that what has happened is the gradual totemization of the numinous element from prototaxic states involving no cognitive

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control from the individual consciousness, through parataxic states, to syntaxic states involving considerable such control. The decrease with respect to time is in numinous entropy, and the increase is in human will.

From a psychological point of view, once the feared and dreaded aspects of the numinous can be totemized, expressed, and externalized in myth, the symbol loses its frightening aspect and becomes benign, being used in intercession and prayer to the extent that it becomes habitual and hence seems friendly.

3.45 Myth and Ritual

Myth and ritual are especially closely connected, since ritual is often the celebration of the myth. Before we turn to ritual, it may be helpful to consider the connection more closely.

Myth is finally connected with ritual as Fontenrose (1966:50-1) states:

We do of course, find some fairly exact correspondence of myth and ritual, both in the Old World and the New. Wherever this happens, the ritual is in fact a ritual drama, and in every instance we may suppose that it was purposely designated to enact the myth. Surely ancient Greek tragedy ... and the Japanese No plays were constructed on previously formed myths.

In general, however, Fontenrose does not believe that the origin of myth is in ritual, for he sees many kinds of myth, some of which are mere story-telling, like folklore.

But as Henderson (Jung 1964:123) tells us, ritual as well as myth recapitulates for the individual, developmental process in the race. He says:

In tribal societies, it is the initiation rite that most effectively solves this problem. The ritual takes the novice back to the deepest level of original mother-child identity or ego-self identity, thus forcing him to experience a symbolic death. In other words, his identity is temporarily dismembered or dissolved in the collective unconscious. From this state he is then ceremonially rescued by the rite of a new birth. This is the first act of true consolidation of the ego with the larger group, expressed as totem, clan, or tribe or all three combined.

The construct of "ritual as the enactment of myth" presents myth as source. This concept is controversial; many scholars posit that the action, the ritual, existed and the tale was created from the need to account for this action.

Nagendra enters the controversy by saying (1972:32):

In fact the controversy whether myth is prior to ritual or ritual prior to myth arises only because the two are taken to be temporal relatives. If they are viewed as atemporal forms, the question of their temporal origin would not arise at all. When we say that ritual is acting out of a myth we do not suggest that the latter is prior to the former in point of historical origin. What we aim to emphasize is that ritual cannot be understood without action. And as the action must be logically prior to ritual, so myth must logically precede ritual.

Fontenrose points out (1966:57)

Myth narrates the primal event which sets the precedent for an institution. It may be a ritual institution or a cult. . . .

The old myth, which always holds within it something yet older and more aboriginal, remains the same, this being an essential quality of all forms of religion; it only undergoes a new interpretation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488

Nobody seems to have noticed that without a reflecting psyche the world might as well not exist, and that, in consequence, consciousness is a second world-creator, and also that the cosmogonic myths do not describe the absolute beginning of the world but rather the dawning of consciousness as the second Creation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488