I found myself on the 27th of June talking to a homosexual history graduate about his own subject in his own university of Canterbury. The very likable young man was the son of a vicar and had no discernible understanding that his lifestyle (or chosen history period) related to anything more than personal preference and certainly not that it was an unconscious rejection of his father. I thought of Jung and the image Jung had of God shitting upon the church, in which Jung’s father was a pastor. I could not resist drawing the threads of my recent thoughts on Jung and The Old Wise Man archetype together in a teleological explanation of what the young man had studied and had hitherto only seen as causal. It was a brief encounter and feeling it was incomplete, I asked for his number and ended the discourse with the text: Man has created God in his own image. God is an alien intelligence that permeates everything, but has no consciousness apart from man's.
I had given a few examples of powerful synchronicity that had shaped history, including the classic of the double assassination attempt on the Austrian Archduke, Franz Ferdinand, not knowing that we were on the very eve of the anniversary of the fateful day back in June 1914. It led me to thinking about Jung's encounter with the Germanic spirit in his dream of the river of blood and his subsequent psychosis, all of which occurred while Europe committed mass suicide around his neutral refuge of Switzerland. For me these events are so linked that I cannot think of the one now without the other coming into my mind as a corollary: spirit and nature, god and man, division and unity.
The fact that the anniversary day darkened, as if in mourning and that Gemma (like a disassociated Anima) had been dispatched to Germany, just to place her signature on a piece of paper and was anticipating sleeping in the airport, seemed only the more apposite, when I found she had contacted and was lodging with Nadine - the Berliner's heir, in an act of reconciliation after the Didi affair.
This synchronicity relinking with past events, reflects upon, what was for Jung, a major disunity in the spiritual host - leading ultimately to the incarnation of The Minor Yin, or The Antichrist in Adolf Hitler. The contemporary implications for my own state of being, now my Anima is more precisely aligned with the new unity of Old Wise Man archetype - through David and the incarnation of the Father archetype, demonstrably brings me into contact with the legacy of the Antichristian host left on earth - the effect of which divides and inhabits all those that are without, including he, that shook his fist, but did not hit, in defiance of The Father’s ultimate authority.
Wednesday, 29 June 2011
Wednesday, 8 June 2011
The Truthers and Jonathan Kaye
I am pleased to see this book appear, since although the 9/11 conspiracy is a largely American phenomenon, it has surfaced in the UK among some of the people that I come into contact with in respect of matters of mental health. Listening to the author this morning. I was struck by how he explained the ability of the conspiracy theorists to expand their theory to incorporate the rational arguments of those who would argue against them. It was also significant that he felt there was only approximately one percentage of individuals, among the conspiracy theorists, who were actually suffering delusional states brought about by mental illness.
At this point I might have expected something different from the author, but his preferred explanation, for the remaining ninety nine percent, was to explain the phenomenon as a product of an over active sympathy for a leftist, or alternative sociological and political system to the capitalist democratic U.S system. In short, those who would blame their own shortcomings and all else, would blame it upon, ‘them or ‘they’, in other words, ‘the system'.
He did not enlarge upon this point in the interview, so I am assuming his idea, that 'the ninety nine percent' were 'normal', remains his view. Whereas, I don't think anyone involved with psychopathology, would consider this a particularly rational standpoint in itself. There is obviously something going on that is not rational and in my experience it is far more widespread than those who would be prepared to disclose their viewpoint as a conspiracy. It is, in my experience, merely the tip of the iceberg. I do not think I have spoken to one person, who, when challenged about their conventional assumptions, will stick to their guns, when the matter of 9/11 is raised. Jonathan Kaye at this point conflates this particular conspiracy theory with many others and it is on this assumption that I wish to take issue and offer some alternative views.
In psychopathology we find certain states that are reflected in the population at large. In this particular case, I would suggest a generalised tendency to mild paranoia. In extreme forms, it can distort a persons emotional attitudes and rational standpoint to almost everything they experience. In the general state, it has the effect of colouring the subject’s point of view. There are many aspects to the phenomenon, but predominantly it arises out of a negative orientation to a parental figure - most often to the father. This is by no means a universal phenomenon, their are many conditional nuances in a child's development, but a critical irrational father almost always predispose the child to self doubt, since meeting such a parent’s demands will deliver the child into the same conflicted condition as the father. If this conditioning is introverted it can cause all manner of psychopathological conditions, more frequently though, and especially in men, the negative conditioning, is extroverted on to the objects of individual experience, which become coloured with a mildly negative tarnish.
The subject in these cases, will almost invariably and perfectly unconsciously, look for 'father figures'. The relation to these father substitutes will always be toned in an unnatural way, where expectation is exaggerated and disproportionate. The complexity of these relations and interrelations are the subject of many a psychologist and councillor's rooms, but for the conspiracists, this lack of empowerment and confusion caused by the parental relation, is reflected is a quite different way.
It is here we must depart from common sense and take the unlikely route of treating the fantasy as a reality and examine what it is actually doing for the subject. The child, a priori, cannot hold a conscious orientation, that simultaneously loves and hates its parent. In this condition, the State, which reflects the providence and the authority of the individual’s father, becomes a displaced substitute. The inconsistency of the father, then becomes the connivance of the State and the conspirasist, in taking up arms against this connivance, is empowered in a way that was impossible in the child’s direct relation to its parent. The infantile nature of the conspiracy fantasies, the preoccupation with futuristic technology and weaponry, as is almost universally the case and reflected by Kaye, demonstrate that we are dealing with the mind of a child, but transposed upon an adult conflict situation.
Anyone familiar with bringing up or teaching a young child, will recognise the ‘tall stories’ produced in a perfectly convincing way (at least so far as the child is concerned) to explain the strange goings on that have resulted, shall we say for example, in a broken vase or trinket. It is the adult’s assumption that the child is lying, but the reality of the child’s mind is quite different from that. The reality is, that a child does not differentiate its actions in the same way that adult’s do. It sees, for instance, the breaking of a treasured object as impossibly its own fault. The object reflects the love bound up with the parent, so it becomes impossible that the child should offend against that love, so a fantastic story is substituted, as tortuous in complexity as the love bond between the child and the adult is strong.
This going back to a world of fantasy when the going gets tough, is something that becomes reflected as a generality among the ninety nine percent…
This empirical explanation is in my view not an exception, but a generality and is shared by more than just the ninety nine percent of conspiracy theorists. There is at the root of our culture a deeply infantile state - we are all children who have grown old. The condition by which children develop, means that the rich world of myth and fantasy is ignored as the pressing demands of a material world make it impossible to sustain. This mythological complexity is our root and beyond it lies only the material. It is therefore a natural assumption of mine, as a Jungian minded person, that this numinous substructure to reality will find expression in our contemporary world, acknowledged or not. It is my understanding, that the same process that occurs to a child searching for answers to an inexplicable lapse in regard (for a parent), is the same process that inflates our conspiracy fantasies. In a way it allows a degree of control and empowerment in a situation that is inexplicable and beyond normal understanding, but it also opens the door to the unconscious.
Jung wrote a book on UFO phenomenon in which he looked at the mythological equivalents and historical precedents, to what was to him a modern set of mythological fantasies. I cannot imagine, because of his discovery of synchronicity, that he was not aware of the fact that he had succumbed to the unconscious in a personally momentous way during times of remarkable world upheaval. In my opinion, it will come to be understood how important was his work on the unconscious during and after these experiences - leaving a legacy, not merely of written work, but also of a universally valid psychical nature, (The Red Book).
The events that Kaye cites in his book, especially 9/11, are in themselves momentous in a way that I regard as a special category of history. This category of history is, as I understand it, more precisely mythological in origin than it is a causal contingency of preceding events. Meaning, that such events appear to come out of the blue and seem to be guided with precision by unseen hands, but the reality is, that these events are the result of a latent capacity for the unconscious to express itself collectively in a very precise way, at what one might regard as turning points in human history. The very ignorance of humanity to the effect of the will in amplifying the latent capacity of the unconscious to express the opposites is prerequisite to these ‘big events’. It is reflected in the homily: that the truth will out. More precisely, by holding back or twisting the truth, as mankind inveterately does (the grown old child), it inevitably leads to a moment when the opposite must take effect and it does so with momentous force and meaning, leaving the world to react and reflect upon its impotence in the face of fate.
The smallest of coincidences have given rise to the most remarkable events. The shooting of Prince Ferdinand is as classic an example as the shooting of Kennedy or of Lincoln and are equally mythological in form and outcome. The ignorance by the majority, to the mythological substructure of our world and to its effect in each individual life, leaves everything to fate. As a result of this, the secularists cling on to the will and the religious to an unseen god in a world that is clearly beyond man’s control. The only forward solution to the problems of the world, is that mankind, individually, must stop being a grown old child and re-assume a connection with the truth of his mythological life and by a process of differentiation become psychically objectified (as Jung was).
The alternative is that the unconscious will express the generality of the chaos of the wilfull world by a dramatic expression of the opposite - a single being embodied in maturity, myth and truth…
At this point I might have expected something different from the author, but his preferred explanation, for the remaining ninety nine percent, was to explain the phenomenon as a product of an over active sympathy for a leftist, or alternative sociological and political system to the capitalist democratic U.S system. In short, those who would blame their own shortcomings and all else, would blame it upon, ‘them or ‘they’, in other words, ‘the system'.
He did not enlarge upon this point in the interview, so I am assuming his idea, that 'the ninety nine percent' were 'normal', remains his view. Whereas, I don't think anyone involved with psychopathology, would consider this a particularly rational standpoint in itself. There is obviously something going on that is not rational and in my experience it is far more widespread than those who would be prepared to disclose their viewpoint as a conspiracy. It is, in my experience, merely the tip of the iceberg. I do not think I have spoken to one person, who, when challenged about their conventional assumptions, will stick to their guns, when the matter of 9/11 is raised. Jonathan Kaye at this point conflates this particular conspiracy theory with many others and it is on this assumption that I wish to take issue and offer some alternative views.
In psychopathology we find certain states that are reflected in the population at large. In this particular case, I would suggest a generalised tendency to mild paranoia. In extreme forms, it can distort a persons emotional attitudes and rational standpoint to almost everything they experience. In the general state, it has the effect of colouring the subject’s point of view. There are many aspects to the phenomenon, but predominantly it arises out of a negative orientation to a parental figure - most often to the father. This is by no means a universal phenomenon, their are many conditional nuances in a child's development, but a critical irrational father almost always predispose the child to self doubt, since meeting such a parent’s demands will deliver the child into the same conflicted condition as the father. If this conditioning is introverted it can cause all manner of psychopathological conditions, more frequently though, and especially in men, the negative conditioning, is extroverted on to the objects of individual experience, which become coloured with a mildly negative tarnish.
The subject in these cases, will almost invariably and perfectly unconsciously, look for 'father figures'. The relation to these father substitutes will always be toned in an unnatural way, where expectation is exaggerated and disproportionate. The complexity of these relations and interrelations are the subject of many a psychologist and councillor's rooms, but for the conspiracists, this lack of empowerment and confusion caused by the parental relation, is reflected is a quite different way.
It is here we must depart from common sense and take the unlikely route of treating the fantasy as a reality and examine what it is actually doing for the subject. The child, a priori, cannot hold a conscious orientation, that simultaneously loves and hates its parent. In this condition, the State, which reflects the providence and the authority of the individual’s father, becomes a displaced substitute. The inconsistency of the father, then becomes the connivance of the State and the conspirasist, in taking up arms against this connivance, is empowered in a way that was impossible in the child’s direct relation to its parent. The infantile nature of the conspiracy fantasies, the preoccupation with futuristic technology and weaponry, as is almost universally the case and reflected by Kaye, demonstrate that we are dealing with the mind of a child, but transposed upon an adult conflict situation.
Anyone familiar with bringing up or teaching a young child, will recognise the ‘tall stories’ produced in a perfectly convincing way (at least so far as the child is concerned) to explain the strange goings on that have resulted, shall we say for example, in a broken vase or trinket. It is the adult’s assumption that the child is lying, but the reality of the child’s mind is quite different from that. The reality is, that a child does not differentiate its actions in the same way that adult’s do. It sees, for instance, the breaking of a treasured object as impossibly its own fault. The object reflects the love bound up with the parent, so it becomes impossible that the child should offend against that love, so a fantastic story is substituted, as tortuous in complexity as the love bond between the child and the adult is strong.
This going back to a world of fantasy when the going gets tough, is something that becomes reflected as a generality among the ninety nine percent…
This empirical explanation is in my view not an exception, but a generality and is shared by more than just the ninety nine percent of conspiracy theorists. There is at the root of our culture a deeply infantile state - we are all children who have grown old. The condition by which children develop, means that the rich world of myth and fantasy is ignored as the pressing demands of a material world make it impossible to sustain. This mythological complexity is our root and beyond it lies only the material. It is therefore a natural assumption of mine, as a Jungian minded person, that this numinous substructure to reality will find expression in our contemporary world, acknowledged or not. It is my understanding, that the same process that occurs to a child searching for answers to an inexplicable lapse in regard (for a parent), is the same process that inflates our conspiracy fantasies. In a way it allows a degree of control and empowerment in a situation that is inexplicable and beyond normal understanding, but it also opens the door to the unconscious.
Jung wrote a book on UFO phenomenon in which he looked at the mythological equivalents and historical precedents, to what was to him a modern set of mythological fantasies. I cannot imagine, because of his discovery of synchronicity, that he was not aware of the fact that he had succumbed to the unconscious in a personally momentous way during times of remarkable world upheaval. In my opinion, it will come to be understood how important was his work on the unconscious during and after these experiences - leaving a legacy, not merely of written work, but also of a universally valid psychical nature, (The Red Book).
The events that Kaye cites in his book, especially 9/11, are in themselves momentous in a way that I regard as a special category of history. This category of history is, as I understand it, more precisely mythological in origin than it is a causal contingency of preceding events. Meaning, that such events appear to come out of the blue and seem to be guided with precision by unseen hands, but the reality is, that these events are the result of a latent capacity for the unconscious to express itself collectively in a very precise way, at what one might regard as turning points in human history. The very ignorance of humanity to the effect of the will in amplifying the latent capacity of the unconscious to express the opposites is prerequisite to these ‘big events’. It is reflected in the homily: that the truth will out. More precisely, by holding back or twisting the truth, as mankind inveterately does (the grown old child), it inevitably leads to a moment when the opposite must take effect and it does so with momentous force and meaning, leaving the world to react and reflect upon its impotence in the face of fate.
The smallest of coincidences have given rise to the most remarkable events. The shooting of Prince Ferdinand is as classic an example as the shooting of Kennedy or of Lincoln and are equally mythological in form and outcome. The ignorance by the majority, to the mythological substructure of our world and to its effect in each individual life, leaves everything to fate. As a result of this, the secularists cling on to the will and the religious to an unseen god in a world that is clearly beyond man’s control. The only forward solution to the problems of the world, is that mankind, individually, must stop being a grown old child and re-assume a connection with the truth of his mythological life and by a process of differentiation become psychically objectified (as Jung was).
The alternative is that the unconscious will express the generality of the chaos of the wilfull world by a dramatic expression of the opposite - a single being embodied in maturity, myth and truth…
Tuesday, 24 May 2011
On The Symbol Of Philemon (Elijah) and Salome
BEING REVISED 2014
The great debate over the sexualisation of modern children rumbles on, compounded now by revelations of exploitation at almost every level of society. This all takes place in our press without any regard to either the underlying meaning, or the possible cultural implications of this phenomenon. Yet, in a technological age, where sexual information and images are freely available, and social media invites strangers into our homes, no one should be surprised that the curiosity of children will be stirred and their well-being put at risk. We all know the form this sexual material takes - it ranges within a spectrum-of the very soft to the very hard, but the minds it impinges upon are not so dissimilar, and the processes not so different, to those of my own childhood.
My sexuality appeared in latent form at an age when the phenomenon was played out in the roles of doctor and patient - seemingly the only common point of reference for nudity and bodily examination that most children shared at that time. This early but quite definite awakening was heavily censored by the surrounding adults and returned to the unconscious until some years later, when the first semi adult responses started to take place. With them came the fractured emotional orientation to the objects of this sexual reawakening that was consistent with my upbringing. This all took place in a very different age, where real sexual information was scant and always strongly toned. Parental advice was absent, so what guidance there was flowed from certain contemporaries who were more forward in promoting sexual currency than others. Most, if not all of this stuff was spurious. It was always mechanical, lacking any emotional attachment, and riddled with inherited prejudice. These individuals, from their own internal processes, seemed to have a monopoly on sexual information, which acted like a magnet for the more naive characters like myself. Unwittingly, and with little reflection, I swallowed this diet of filth and misinformation, blundering forward blindly into adolescence and accepting a mechanical view of the whole process of pair bonding. On reflection, this seems not so different from what is happening today, where the mechanics of pornography predominate the behaviour of most young male adults, or at least a particular section that suffers a similar emotional deprivation to my own generation. It is a giant step, and we cannot subtract the magnetic effect that sexuality imposes on most individuals, but we can make an effort to differentiate the necessity for sexual expression from the fundamental meaning that this diverse form of human activity conveys and see if it leads us to a more complete goal in life.
There will always be a generalised state of expression to do with sexuality and in this respect marriage and normal pair bonding provide the greatest reservoir. Culture though has never been so simple that there are never counterpoints and opposites. If we take an archaic view of reality, which involves the Babylonian philosophy of the precession of astrological ages, the liberation of sexuality from its Christian shackles is no coincidence. This was predicted as part of the culmination of the bi-millennial (Christian) age of the Icthys, purported to end around the year 2000. This notion gained a following among part of certain generation, who were looking forward to peace and (free) love. The revolutionary atmosphere of the time certainly fostered the idea among many that things were changing. Some of the more esoteric types felt this was being ushered in by the age of Aquarius dawning, but that would now be eschewed as fanciful. Though it is undeniable that the overthrow of the old restraints placed upon the most important part of humanity during the last two thousand years seems to have been the program for the twentieth century. Freud, Darwin, Einstein, they all played their essential part in subverting Christian values, but then there was the mystic Jung. Jung also played his part in overthrowing god - indeed he was the first to relativise the deity into the condition of 'psychical phenomenon' - an archetype, but in doing so, Jung pointed to a very different state of reality from these other giants, on whom the superstructure of our modern material reality depends.
If there is any concern to be expressed for the young, then it is here that the work needs to be done. Unfortunately, the liberal state of consciousness that springs from a materially conditioned mind will only take us part way in this process, and while most young people find their way - tortuous or otherwise, it is often the adults in the process who have the most confused attitudes towards sexuality.
It is as if they suffer from a hangover from the past. Something undefined, that is inherited in our laws and way of life that informs us of the necessity to express sexuality within boundaries, which when examined, and in the absence of an over arching religious imperative, reveals the best available explanations as banal and lacking conviction. This generation of adults owe their liberation to the overthrow of spiritual values, but they can't quite come to terms with the material philosophy that supplants them. This has coincided with a phenomenon that might be described as a spiritual re-amnesis. This is where the reservoir of our past colonial conquests of natural cultures has come back to its sponsor with an imbibed set of Christian values, but no less fervor than was formerly expressed to the god of the forest or plain. The power that these new religions bear for the devout is still capable of overwhelming sexuality and placing it into context with its natural function of pair bonding, but in doing so it excludes all expressions but heterosexuality. It does not wrap up sado-masochism in the shroud of devotion as do the adherents of Opus Dei, but any that cannot conform to a normal expression of sexuality within the blessing of marriage are left to dangle in a limbo of guilt and self despising. / it was equally so in our unenlightened past, where a material imperative had not been placed upon our lives. Jung might have seen this clash
So, the question I am posing is what exact function does this apparently diminishing period of sexual latency actual perform in forming and informing the child's developing personality. More importantly; what is the fantasy of a sacred innocent childhood that is harboured and treasured almost universally by adults really about and why is it so readily conflated with an obviously divergent reality.
Perhaps we are seeing now a manifestation of what Freud only observed as a latent phenomenon in the children of his time. Latest sociological studies certainly tend to dispel the cherished view of an innocent childhood in favour of more progressive development of sexual awareness. Ironically, this is a situation that almost certainly has arisen as a consequence of, and in coincidence with, the general assimilation of Freud's original work on sexuality. In fact it may be quite damaging to prolong childhood, since it is almost certain that the absence of a very well defined right of passage in modern Western culture has a reductive effect on many individuals. In these young people, neurotic illness is often substituted for development, obviating and drawing attention to the fact that they have not been able to develop a proper adult status or Persona.
So how is this related to Philemon (Elijah) and Salome. Jung was alone, it seems, in his ability to accept the implications of these two symbols in combination - the royal child temptress, together with the ancient of days. In Jung accepting this seemingly disparate conjunction, he opened up the doorway to a form of wisdom that surpasses all contemporary and traditional views of human and spiritual nature and takes us to a place of psychological extremes, where the opposites in human and spiritual nature may be united.
In the biblical drama of John The Baptist, we come upon a series of actions that challenge any form of intellectual participation and as such I have discarded any attempt to treat this important story as historical. It is simply irrelevant to our lives to try to establish what factual basis there is for this and the other dramas of the bible. It is the myth that is important and how the underlying psychical configuration plays out in contemporary consciousness. We have seen how the figure of Mary Magdalene and Judas have been distorted, or rather recast, in a more sinister light by the successive human interpolators of the bible and I would conjecture that this is inevitable. Deepening the shadows and emphasising the highlights, is a trick all artists and poets play with their subjects.
But first, we must look at the phenomenon of dreams and associated psychical manifestations as they appeared to Jung. Jung was the first to grant autonomy to his dreams and the integral fantasies of the Red Book. The language of his dreams and the manifest content of his fantasies, are in a sense, both culturally universal, but also personal. His mind was attendant at the fabrication of these psychical objects, and although Jung formulated the idea of The Collective Unconscious around this time, nevertheless, it was his personal mind through which these psychical objects came to enter reality. I will restate my view that Jung reached a peak of development that was unsurpassed by his followers, who, like Christians, have placed their hero beyond mortal reach. This is not to say there are not detractors, there will always be dissenting voices, until an object emerges that is completely beyond reproach and embraces all but those who would fall beyond the pale. Jung lived his own myth and as such, his psychical being now forms the cornerstone to The Marriage Quarternity, the complex that holds sway in all our mortal lives. So, if you accept, as I have, the preceding premise, then you must accept that the figure of The Ancient of Days in conjunction with the Royal temptress, (as it appeared to Jung), is relevant to all.
It is the psychical substructure that is to be understood, for while we admire only the scenery and worship the king, we will be caught in the same figurative world as our forebears and not have the wisdom of understanding that we are immersed in a sea of intelligence, which, like the fish that swim in the ocean, we have little or no comprehension.
The great debate over the sexualisation of modern children rumbles on, compounded now by revelations of exploitation at almost every level of society. This all takes place in our press without any regard to either the underlying meaning, or the possible cultural implications of this phenomenon. Yet, in a technological age, where sexual information and images are freely available, and social media invites strangers into our homes, no one should be surprised that the curiosity of children will be stirred and their well-being put at risk. We all know the form this sexual material takes - it ranges within a spectrum-of the very soft to the very hard, but the minds it impinges upon are not so dissimilar, and the processes not so different, to those of my own childhood.
My sexuality appeared in latent form at an age when the phenomenon was played out in the roles of doctor and patient - seemingly the only common point of reference for nudity and bodily examination that most children shared at that time. This early but quite definite awakening was heavily censored by the surrounding adults and returned to the unconscious until some years later, when the first semi adult responses started to take place. With them came the fractured emotional orientation to the objects of this sexual reawakening that was consistent with my upbringing. This all took place in a very different age, where real sexual information was scant and always strongly toned. Parental advice was absent, so what guidance there was flowed from certain contemporaries who were more forward in promoting sexual currency than others. Most, if not all of this stuff was spurious. It was always mechanical, lacking any emotional attachment, and riddled with inherited prejudice. These individuals, from their own internal processes, seemed to have a monopoly on sexual information, which acted like a magnet for the more naive characters like myself. Unwittingly, and with little reflection, I swallowed this diet of filth and misinformation, blundering forward blindly into adolescence and accepting a mechanical view of the whole process of pair bonding. On reflection, this seems not so different from what is happening today, where the mechanics of pornography predominate the behaviour of most young male adults, or at least a particular section that suffers a similar emotional deprivation to my own generation. It is a giant step, and we cannot subtract the magnetic effect that sexuality imposes on most individuals, but we can make an effort to differentiate the necessity for sexual expression from the fundamental meaning that this diverse form of human activity conveys and see if it leads us to a more complete goal in life.
There will always be a generalised state of expression to do with sexuality and in this respect marriage and normal pair bonding provide the greatest reservoir. Culture though has never been so simple that there are never counterpoints and opposites. If we take an archaic view of reality, which involves the Babylonian philosophy of the precession of astrological ages, the liberation of sexuality from its Christian shackles is no coincidence. This was predicted as part of the culmination of the bi-millennial (Christian) age of the Icthys, purported to end around the year 2000. This notion gained a following among part of certain generation, who were looking forward to peace and (free) love. The revolutionary atmosphere of the time certainly fostered the idea among many that things were changing. Some of the more esoteric types felt this was being ushered in by the age of Aquarius dawning, but that would now be eschewed as fanciful. Though it is undeniable that the overthrow of the old restraints placed upon the most important part of humanity during the last two thousand years seems to have been the program for the twentieth century. Freud, Darwin, Einstein, they all played their essential part in subverting Christian values, but then there was the mystic Jung. Jung also played his part in overthrowing god - indeed he was the first to relativise the deity into the condition of 'psychical phenomenon' - an archetype, but in doing so, Jung pointed to a very different state of reality from these other giants, on whom the superstructure of our modern material reality depends.
If there is any concern to be expressed for the young, then it is here that the work needs to be done. Unfortunately, the liberal state of consciousness that springs from a materially conditioned mind will only take us part way in this process, and while most young people find their way - tortuous or otherwise, it is often the adults in the process who have the most confused attitudes towards sexuality.
It is as if they suffer from a hangover from the past. Something undefined, that is inherited in our laws and way of life that informs us of the necessity to express sexuality within boundaries, which when examined, and in the absence of an over arching religious imperative, reveals the best available explanations as banal and lacking conviction. This generation of adults owe their liberation to the overthrow of spiritual values, but they can't quite come to terms with the material philosophy that supplants them. This has coincided with a phenomenon that might be described as a spiritual re-amnesis. This is where the reservoir of our past colonial conquests of natural cultures has come back to its sponsor with an imbibed set of Christian values, but no less fervor than was formerly expressed to the god of the forest or plain. The power that these new religions bear for the devout is still capable of overwhelming sexuality and placing it into context with its natural function of pair bonding, but in doing so it excludes all expressions but heterosexuality. It does not wrap up sado-masochism in the shroud of devotion as do the adherents of Opus Dei, but any that cannot conform to a normal expression of sexuality within the blessing of marriage are left to dangle in a limbo of guilt and self despising. / it was equally so in our unenlightened past, where a material imperative had not been placed upon our lives. Jung might have seen this clash
So, the question I am posing is what exact function does this apparently diminishing period of sexual latency actual perform in forming and informing the child's developing personality. More importantly; what is the fantasy of a sacred innocent childhood that is harboured and treasured almost universally by adults really about and why is it so readily conflated with an obviously divergent reality.
Perhaps we are seeing now a manifestation of what Freud only observed as a latent phenomenon in the children of his time. Latest sociological studies certainly tend to dispel the cherished view of an innocent childhood in favour of more progressive development of sexual awareness. Ironically, this is a situation that almost certainly has arisen as a consequence of, and in coincidence with, the general assimilation of Freud's original work on sexuality. In fact it may be quite damaging to prolong childhood, since it is almost certain that the absence of a very well defined right of passage in modern Western culture has a reductive effect on many individuals. In these young people, neurotic illness is often substituted for development, obviating and drawing attention to the fact that they have not been able to develop a proper adult status or Persona.
So how is this related to Philemon (Elijah) and Salome. Jung was alone, it seems, in his ability to accept the implications of these two symbols in combination - the royal child temptress, together with the ancient of days. In Jung accepting this seemingly disparate conjunction, he opened up the doorway to a form of wisdom that surpasses all contemporary and traditional views of human and spiritual nature and takes us to a place of psychological extremes, where the opposites in human and spiritual nature may be united.
In the biblical drama of John The Baptist, we come upon a series of actions that challenge any form of intellectual participation and as such I have discarded any attempt to treat this important story as historical. It is simply irrelevant to our lives to try to establish what factual basis there is for this and the other dramas of the bible. It is the myth that is important and how the underlying psychical configuration plays out in contemporary consciousness. We have seen how the figure of Mary Magdalene and Judas have been distorted, or rather recast, in a more sinister light by the successive human interpolators of the bible and I would conjecture that this is inevitable. Deepening the shadows and emphasising the highlights, is a trick all artists and poets play with their subjects.
But first, we must look at the phenomenon of dreams and associated psychical manifestations as they appeared to Jung. Jung was the first to grant autonomy to his dreams and the integral fantasies of the Red Book. The language of his dreams and the manifest content of his fantasies, are in a sense, both culturally universal, but also personal. His mind was attendant at the fabrication of these psychical objects, and although Jung formulated the idea of The Collective Unconscious around this time, nevertheless, it was his personal mind through which these psychical objects came to enter reality. I will restate my view that Jung reached a peak of development that was unsurpassed by his followers, who, like Christians, have placed their hero beyond mortal reach. This is not to say there are not detractors, there will always be dissenting voices, until an object emerges that is completely beyond reproach and embraces all but those who would fall beyond the pale. Jung lived his own myth and as such, his psychical being now forms the cornerstone to The Marriage Quarternity, the complex that holds sway in all our mortal lives. So, if you accept, as I have, the preceding premise, then you must accept that the figure of The Ancient of Days in conjunction with the Royal temptress, (as it appeared to Jung), is relevant to all.
It is the psychical substructure that is to be understood, for while we admire only the scenery and worship the king, we will be caught in the same figurative world as our forebears and not have the wisdom of understanding that we are immersed in a sea of intelligence, which, like the fish that swim in the ocean, we have little or no comprehension.
Sunday, 15 May 2011
The Twenty Four Elect
Open letter to Dennis
I have had a chance to further ponder your love announcement to do with Panni.
The symbol (archetype) of my marriage to Susan - 2.4.1991 - 24 days prior to your departure on Jemima's day of birth - 26.4.91, stand as an overriding archetypal precondition and synchronicity to your departure from England and your return 20 years later.
When you arrived in the UK again, you were in a mindset that precluded acknowledgement of the importance of the above symbols. You stated you were a Dawkins adherent and as a consequence I did not stress again how closely I felt we were linked psychologically and through the Icthus archetype. The fact that you regarded your visit to me with the same importance as to Paul (displacement symbol) and your other friends, is indicative of how buried were your unintegrated masculine feelings for me, which I, on the contrary, felt very strongly when you stayed here. This omission, like all omissions in expression of the spirit, could not avoid some form of compensation in reality. The paradigm for which, is expressed by me in the matter of my marriage (in denial of my masculine spirit), 24 days prior to your departure.
This naive personal act of mine in 1991, underlines and reverses the Christian drama in a way I could not have imagined at the time. The word Hoax which was imposed on me by my unconscious in respect of the biblical epic, breaks down into 48, which is composed of two pairs of 24 HO=24 AX=24 - the symbol being the sum of the Christian apostles, their female counterparts and the Antichristian apostles and their female counterparts. So it is about a form of Christian reality that goes far beyond the simple homily of the bible and is only referred to in Revelations in a cryptic way: 'they that shall be first shall be last, (and they that shall be last, shall be first)'. I would really stress here that this analysis is not exclusively about historical figures, past or present, it is about essence and the disincarnate (non temporal) intelligence that Jung regarded as archetypes, in other words, living pneuma. Hence, I can no longer take the historical story of Jesus (or the apostles) seriously as historical fact, when I know it relates as much to the activity of the Icthus (Piscean and Capricorn*) archetypes in the present, as it does to their activity in the past. Besides which, the origins of the rituals, that form such an integral part of modern Christianity, are obviously rooted in the obscure cult practices of one, or several groups of adherents and had evolved over many hundreds of years and through past cultures. These cult rituals involved in many cases the use of mind altering natural substances that evoked a 'spiritual experience' and they have left their footprint in such modern rituals as the mortification of the sacramental host, to mention but one. In this sense, both you and Panni are following a well trodden path in human culture, by using drugs and alcohol in pursuit of mind altering states. When Jung passed his understanding of the confusion between THE SPIRIT in the form of PNEUMA and these cult practices, in the form of drink (and drugs), he used the phrase: Spiritum, Spiritus. This eventually found its way to Bill Wilson, who like many before and since, confused SPIRITUS, with CHRISTOS. The reason that humanity is universally hooked on magic, dates back to the earliest cult practices that I mentioned. In using natural mind altering drugs as part of ritual practice (now sanitised - but not expunged), the function of THE SPIRIT is SIMULATED - (in its ability to transcend time and space and seemingly give foreknowledge of impending events, for instance).
Returning to the symbol of my marriage to Susan, 24 days before you departed and 24 days before the birth of Jemima in 1991. I knew that Susan (The Lily*) related to St Stephen (The Crown) by an inculcation I got many years ago from David about the historical and alchemical interrelation of the two archetypes, which I had not, until now, related to you (and to Pandora, who was obviously held in abeyance until now). Archetypal, St Stephen, expressed as a repressed celibate - (in imitatio Christi), left the door open for a successor to conjoin with the after effects of his unconsummated female partner. Thus, two of the twenty four original Icthians were reversed by two of the twenty four contemporaries in the black archetypal brotherhood. The Father archetype, by contrast, holds everything, both the Icthus, (minor Yang) and its counterpart (minor Yin) archetypes, in a continuum of integrated wholeness.
The emancipation of your relation with Pandora is therefore no mean issue of chance, the ground having been laid well in advance, both sexually and spiritually (archetypal), which is why the relation is so fertile. In my case, the transposition of my personal love of David on to Susan conforms to an archetypal transposition of the Goat Fish on to the Icthus. This is exemplified by the notion that no one comes to the Father except through Jesus. This archetypal transposition operates in the Christian belief of millions. That the figure of Jesus is held as the highest attainable state, is a negation of The Father (archetype) and also of the statement attributed to Jesus by the author of the biblical drama, in which the figure of Jesus says, 'greater things than these will you do'. In other words, a full stop has been placed at the end of the sentence and the inherent spirit (archetype) that moved the early Christians is regarded as complete in Jesus. It was left to the Alchemists and Gnostics to be carried forward by the archetypal influences that were as yet unfulfilled by those that had gone before and had surrounded The Anointed One at the beginning of the reign of the first Icthus.
You might realise that I regard the story of Christian celibacy among the apostles and by extension, the priesthood, as part of the Hoax of Christianity. I am once again reiterating the wisdom of treating the biblical drama, which has been interpolated over and over again, as a point of reference to the disincarnate intelligence of the archetypes, the fulfilment of which is in the present, not the past and hence the continued transposition of the figure of Jesus on to The Father.
.....................................................................................
For me, the relation with Susan led into the world, the founding of Imago and to the material fatherhood of Jemima. It also led to an abandonment of my celibacy and masculine love and a death of the creative masculine spirit. Your relation with Pandora seems to be a reflection and compensation in the same vein as mine with Susan, but reversed in effect - confronting your existing masculine values and in the process of a love relation, creating a necessary transformation.
The stolen oversize black bike that was secured to my fence and which was stolen before you arrived, might well have given me a clue to the outcome of your visit.
The demise of this promising relation is very unfortunate. It carried the spirit, but the human individuals could not sustain it - something with which, I am all too familiar.
The relation I had with Jill showed the promise of producing a child, but this was carried over to Susan.
I have had a chance to further ponder your love announcement to do with Panni.
The symbol (archetype) of my marriage to Susan - 2.4.1991 - 24 days prior to your departure on Jemima's day of birth - 26.4.91, stand as an overriding archetypal precondition and synchronicity to your departure from England and your return 20 years later.
When you arrived in the UK again, you were in a mindset that precluded acknowledgement of the importance of the above symbols. You stated you were a Dawkins adherent and as a consequence I did not stress again how closely I felt we were linked psychologically and through the Icthus archetype. The fact that you regarded your visit to me with the same importance as to Paul (displacement symbol) and your other friends, is indicative of how buried were your unintegrated masculine feelings for me, which I, on the contrary, felt very strongly when you stayed here. This omission, like all omissions in expression of the spirit, could not avoid some form of compensation in reality. The paradigm for which, is expressed by me in the matter of my marriage (in denial of my masculine spirit), 24 days prior to your departure.
This naive personal act of mine in 1991, underlines and reverses the Christian drama in a way I could not have imagined at the time. The word Hoax which was imposed on me by my unconscious in respect of the biblical epic, breaks down into 48, which is composed of two pairs of 24 HO=24 AX=24 - the symbol being the sum of the Christian apostles, their female counterparts and the Antichristian apostles and their female counterparts. So it is about a form of Christian reality that goes far beyond the simple homily of the bible and is only referred to in Revelations in a cryptic way: 'they that shall be first shall be last, (and they that shall be last, shall be first)'. I would really stress here that this analysis is not exclusively about historical figures, past or present, it is about essence and the disincarnate (non temporal) intelligence that Jung regarded as archetypes, in other words, living pneuma. Hence, I can no longer take the historical story of Jesus (or the apostles) seriously as historical fact, when I know it relates as much to the activity of the Icthus (Piscean and Capricorn*) archetypes in the present, as it does to their activity in the past. Besides which, the origins of the rituals, that form such an integral part of modern Christianity, are obviously rooted in the obscure cult practices of one, or several groups of adherents and had evolved over many hundreds of years and through past cultures. These cult rituals involved in many cases the use of mind altering natural substances that evoked a 'spiritual experience' and they have left their footprint in such modern rituals as the mortification of the sacramental host, to mention but one. In this sense, both you and Panni are following a well trodden path in human culture, by using drugs and alcohol in pursuit of mind altering states. When Jung passed his understanding of the confusion between THE SPIRIT in the form of PNEUMA and these cult practices, in the form of drink (and drugs), he used the phrase: Spiritum, Spiritus. This eventually found its way to Bill Wilson, who like many before and since, confused SPIRITUS, with CHRISTOS. The reason that humanity is universally hooked on magic, dates back to the earliest cult practices that I mentioned. In using natural mind altering drugs as part of ritual practice (now sanitised - but not expunged), the function of THE SPIRIT is SIMULATED - (in its ability to transcend time and space and seemingly give foreknowledge of impending events, for instance).
Returning to the symbol of my marriage to Susan, 24 days before you departed and 24 days before the birth of Jemima in 1991. I knew that Susan (The Lily*) related to St Stephen (The Crown) by an inculcation I got many years ago from David about the historical and alchemical interrelation of the two archetypes, which I had not, until now, related to you (and to Pandora, who was obviously held in abeyance until now). Archetypal, St Stephen, expressed as a repressed celibate - (in imitatio Christi), left the door open for a successor to conjoin with the after effects of his unconsummated female partner. Thus, two of the twenty four original Icthians were reversed by two of the twenty four contemporaries in the black archetypal brotherhood. The Father archetype, by contrast, holds everything, both the Icthus, (minor Yang) and its counterpart (minor Yin) archetypes, in a continuum of integrated wholeness.
The emancipation of your relation with Pandora is therefore no mean issue of chance, the ground having been laid well in advance, both sexually and spiritually (archetypal), which is why the relation is so fertile. In my case, the transposition of my personal love of David on to Susan conforms to an archetypal transposition of the Goat Fish on to the Icthus. This is exemplified by the notion that no one comes to the Father except through Jesus. This archetypal transposition operates in the Christian belief of millions. That the figure of Jesus is held as the highest attainable state, is a negation of The Father (archetype) and also of the statement attributed to Jesus by the author of the biblical drama, in which the figure of Jesus says, 'greater things than these will you do'. In other words, a full stop has been placed at the end of the sentence and the inherent spirit (archetype) that moved the early Christians is regarded as complete in Jesus. It was left to the Alchemists and Gnostics to be carried forward by the archetypal influences that were as yet unfulfilled by those that had gone before and had surrounded The Anointed One at the beginning of the reign of the first Icthus.
You might realise that I regard the story of Christian celibacy among the apostles and by extension, the priesthood, as part of the Hoax of Christianity. I am once again reiterating the wisdom of treating the biblical drama, which has been interpolated over and over again, as a point of reference to the disincarnate intelligence of the archetypes, the fulfilment of which is in the present, not the past and hence the continued transposition of the figure of Jesus on to The Father.
.....................................................................................
For me, the relation with Susan led into the world, the founding of Imago and to the material fatherhood of Jemima. It also led to an abandonment of my celibacy and masculine love and a death of the creative masculine spirit. Your relation with Pandora seems to be a reflection and compensation in the same vein as mine with Susan, but reversed in effect - confronting your existing masculine values and in the process of a love relation, creating a necessary transformation.
The stolen oversize black bike that was secured to my fence and which was stolen before you arrived, might well have given me a clue to the outcome of your visit.
The demise of this promising relation is very unfortunate. It carried the spirit, but the human individuals could not sustain it - something with which, I am all too familiar.
The relation I had with Jill showed the promise of producing a child, but this was carried over to Susan.
Monday, 9 May 2011
Libellula Depressa - Symbol of The Central Archetype - 1 st May
Libellula Depressa (f) 2.5.2011 clearingFor outsiders, the idea that their own personality is part of an undifferentiated natural and psychical continuum, is almost always seen as foreign. It was however a quite common thing for tribes people to be in a synchronised state with the environment and wildlife around them in a very dynamic way. They had evolved to be so and it was the main imperative. Their primitive level of consciousness did not differentiate their individuality, nor time, nor even space, in the way of a modern person. To belong to a family group was to be subsumed by a group instinct for survival and continuity*. To act in harmony and to cooperate was a reflex and the idea of the survival of the fittest, far from being an individualistic trait, was an attribute developed in relation to mating, passing on of genes, the group, and its survival. For me, the idea that this brain - mind transposed magic on to its surroundings as a consequence of some leap in brain development brought about by diet or some other causal factor is preposterous and defies everything I know about the way I have interacted with nature throughout my life. Nature is a prime vehicle for symbolic expressions of the unconscious, simply because it is so unconscious of itself and it is my contention that it would have remained like that for ever, were it not for an imperative from a polar order of sentience in the continuum of the objective psyche and the objective material.
The symbol of the female imago Libellula Depressa in the clearing on the first of May and then the first of June, is a prime case of stooping low to see the face of god. The twice repeated imago, in this sense, is the symbol of the Imago Dei, the pristine central archetype. The area of the woods has become my back garden and therefore my unconscious. Reflecting on what Dr Venters propounded about my philosophy being of 'Spinosa', then I can only but associate the blackthorn (spinosa), with my shadow complex and the tunnelling that I have made among the dark and prickly mass of shrub - nothing less than the inroads I have made into my shadow.
* People may be unconscious of a family or group instinct, but it continues to exert a dramatic influence, often compelling people to undifferentiated and terrible acts of violence and callousness as well as acts of sacrifice and nurture.
The Present of Daisies
8.5.2011
I got another symbol yesterday from a lovely person called Lily. It consisted of a pot of daisies, (an experiment she said) and a beautiful sentiment.
There were eleven flowers and one lying down. It was not until after that I reflected about the gift of Jemima Daisy, from Susan, the Lilly, that I was able to put things together as a symbol.
The pure lilly and the crown of St Stephen.
I got another symbol yesterday from a lovely person called Lily. It consisted of a pot of daisies, (an experiment she said) and a beautiful sentiment.
There were eleven flowers and one lying down. It was not until after that I reflected about the gift of Jemima Daisy, from Susan, the Lilly, that I was able to put things together as a symbol.
The pure lilly and the crown of St Stephen.
Tuesday, 3 May 2011
The Mystery of The Stolen Black Oversize Bike On Easter Monday
No day of such note should pass without reference to its symbolism.
It seems, like unto like, the kid hanging around yesterday morning (Easter Monday), was not thinking of buying drugs down the road, but perhaps, was instead in the act of stealing the black bike I had just cleaned up for Joe, or maybe another tall man of dark countenance that has been stolen away from me...
The symbol of Joe relates to Joseph surrogate father to Jesus, who in this case rejected the bicycle, as the biblical figure is reported to have rejected Jesus.
The fact that I communicated with the thief as I left in the early morning to do some photography, means as a symbol I have a relation to this symbol of Mercurius (god of thieves).
16.5.2011 - The symbol of the oversize bicycle being removed on Easter Monday is the same as the removal of the body of Jesus from the tomb. The BLACK OVERSIZE bicycle however symbolises the Father Archetype in its aspect of The Greater Yin. The implications of the disappearance of the Greater Yin from the present, means that its appearance in the past (as The Father to the biblical figure of Jesus) leaves only the Greater Yang in the present, which will presumably manifest itself as a new spiritual age.
15.5.2011 Another disappearance of note to occur in an inexplicable manner - the young from the songbirds nest - no fuss or fight, no disruption, just a single much darkened infertile egg.
It seems, like unto like, the kid hanging around yesterday morning (Easter Monday), was not thinking of buying drugs down the road, but perhaps, was instead in the act of stealing the black bike I had just cleaned up for Joe, or maybe another tall man of dark countenance that has been stolen away from me...
The symbol of Joe relates to Joseph surrogate father to Jesus, who in this case rejected the bicycle, as the biblical figure is reported to have rejected Jesus.
The fact that I communicated with the thief as I left in the early morning to do some photography, means as a symbol I have a relation to this symbol of Mercurius (god of thieves).
16.5.2011 - The symbol of the oversize bicycle being removed on Easter Monday is the same as the removal of the body of Jesus from the tomb. The BLACK OVERSIZE bicycle however symbolises the Father Archetype in its aspect of The Greater Yin. The implications of the disappearance of the Greater Yin from the present, means that its appearance in the past (as The Father to the biblical figure of Jesus) leaves only the Greater Yang in the present, which will presumably manifest itself as a new spiritual age.
15.5.2011 Another disappearance of note to occur in an inexplicable manner - the young from the songbirds nest - no fuss or fight, no disruption, just a single much darkened infertile egg.
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