Soul Spelunker

The Great Masquerade

noreply@blogger.com (Zeteticus (Mark Dotson)) — Sat, 18 May 2013 02:55:00 +0000

Mask and Books, by Władysław Ślewiński (1854–1918)

Nearly all of us wear masks. It is almost impossible not to do so in a world so gripped by Ego. Most of us feel we must present a certain face to our employer, another to our spouse, another to our friends, and yet another to those who don't know us. The typical mask is usually diametrically opposed to the way we really are on the inside. Many go through life without ever knowing their true face.

From childhood, we mold our masks to fit a certain image that is inculcated throughout our formative years. Many factors create this phenomenon: family, societal norms, religion, social standing, education, etc. Sometimes, it's just easier to wear a mask than to be true to ourselves and our true face. In being someone else, it is easier to navigate the social waters we sail in. Even though it is, at times, a necessary fact of life, it's kind of a lazy way to live.

We know that Jung called this archetype the Persona and that this word is derived from the Greek word for "mask," specifically, the masks worn by ancient Greek actors. Referring to the Persona, Jung wrote:

Whoever looks into the mirror of the water will see first of all his own face. Whoever goes to himself risks a confrontation with himself. The mirror does not flatter, it faithfully shows whatever looks into it; namely, the face we never show to the world because we cover it with the persona, the mask of the actor. But the mirror lies behind the mask and shows the true face (Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious" (1935). In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. P.43).

A gaze into this mirror can be dangerous, if one has identified with a particular mask, but no one said our journey would take the easily trodden path.

Of course, the idea of the Persona is intermingled with transformation. J.E Cirlot wrote:

All transformations are invested with something at once of profound
mystery and of the shameful, since anything that is so modified as to become
‘something else’ while still remaining the thing that it was, must inevitably be
productive of ambiguity and equivocation. Therefore, metamorphoses must be
hidden from view—and hence the need for the mask. Secrecy tends towards
transfiguration: it helps what-one-is to become what-one-would-like-to-be; and
this is what constitutes its magic character, present in both the Greek theatrical
mask and in the religious masks of Africa or Oceania. The mask is equivalent to
the chrysalis (A Dictionary of Symbols, p. 205).

Our mask is our chrysalis, if we allow it to be. First, however, we must be aware that we are not displaying our true face to the world. Once we realize that our true visage lies buried beneath a thin veneer of pretense, we can begin to become familiar with the person we truly are.

Animaterial Intercommunication

noreply@blogger.com (Zeteticus (Mark Dotson)) — Sun, 12 May 2013 00:24:00 +0000

The Artist's Garden at Giverny by Claude Monet

Plants have scientifically been show to draw alternative sources of energy from other plants. Plants influence each other in many ways and they communicate through “nanomechanical oscillations” vibrations on the tiniest atomic or molecular scale or as close as you can get to telepathic communication (From the article, How Plants Help Each Other Grow By Near-Telepathic Communication, Michael Forrester.

Science is beginning to recognize the conjunctive, interactive, and participative nature of the universe. This is no surprise to we who have long held an animaterial point of view. The above article describes experiments which are simply more tangible evidence to the fact that Nature is connected down to the tiniest atomic particle. As I've said before, the phrase, "inanimate object," is an oxymoron. All things are animated, or are permeated with Soul.

This same Soul is the best hope mankind possesses. The sooner we accept our reality and our destiny, the sooner our world will improve. As with all things in the universe (The Hermetic maxim, As above, so below), we can apply the truths we are learning about plants to humankind. Read the article above and think of how these interactions should be functioning among all of us.

This process of coming into a deeper relationship with life is a process of coming into relationship with the ‘deep truth’. It is inter-relationship that is both with ourselves and with the world around us. It is a discovery, an immanent turn, available to those who have searched and found their ‘individuality’. It is a shift of focus from individuation to interrelation: from me to we. And thus immanence is love, but not libidinal love as desire. Instead, it is divine love, love for life, and love for being (Jung, The Deep Truth, by Dr. Jennifer Lilla).

May we seek the deep truth.

Ego And The Underworld

noreply@blogger.com (Zeteticus (Mark Dotson)) — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 15:02:00 +0000

Night, by Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, Public Domain

"Entering the underworld" refers to a transition from the material to the psychical point of view (James Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld, p. 51).

A great deal of our lives are spent walking in the light of the dayworld, where we identify with the Ego. The Ego is necessary to our survival in waking life. We function in the world of space and time via the Ego. It is three-dimensional, Apollonian, and Herculean. It is our waking Ego. This self, however, has a very special companion. The waking-Ego is shadowed by our dream-Ego, the person we identify with in our dreams. The dream-Ego is a shadow-Ego, or so we say. Is there any reason, short of our dayworld bias, that causes us to think of our waking-Ego as a more genuine self, and the shadow-Ego as the lesser, more inferior self? Is this dayworld merely the shadow of the underworld and our waking-Ego the shadow of our underworld-Ego? In my opinion, these two modes of presence, dayworld and underworld, shadow each other perfectly. Because we are so thoroughly identified with our dayworld-Ego, we critically need to become more familiar with our underworld-Ego by journeying down into Hades, boarding Charon's ferry, and making our way across the Styx, past Cerberus, and into the realm of the Dead.

The underworld is the realm of the Dead because Death is the ultimate unconsciousness. Those who die do not cease to be; we in the dayworld simply become unconscious of them. They will always exist. We may not be aware of them, but this doesn't preclude their existence. What is most crucial is that the underworld is the realm of Soul. The more we become familiar with it, the more Soul we accumulate. Soul and Death are intertwined like the serpents on the caduceus. Nightly, we travel downward, where we play out stories that are as old as the human species. Instead of trying to grab the shadowy figures we meet and drag them back up into the light of the dayworld (by trying to interpret our dreams so they make some kind of sense), it is in our best interest to remain there with them for a time and learn what they have to say. As we learn to recognize the archetypal motifs in our dreams, we come to know that life and death, dayworld and underworld, are two sides of the same coin. This is underworld epistemology.

The shadows of our dayworld Egos are very valuable. We tend to think of Hades in terms of a miserable Christian Hell, but it is not that at all. Hades is as much the god of wealth and plenty as he is the god of the realm of the dead. He is often depicted holding the cornucopia, or Horn of Plenty, symbolizing nourishment and abundance. This displays the value of shades in the underworld, the same shades we come in contact with every night. These figures are considered gods in many cultures. Our shadow-Egos are interpreted by these cultures as gods.

The dayworld Ego loves literalizations and ratiocinations; it loves to disparage imagination, intuition, and myth. The underworld-Ego thrives on metaphor, darkness, mystery, and perplexity. When you meet someone who tries to be totally logical and rational all the time, you can bet that person has not accumulated much Soul, if any.

When we make our nightly sojourn to the underworld, something happens to us. There is a benevolent process in the psyche that does something beyond our rational understanding. Perhaps it prepares us for the final journey to the underworld. It is a mystery. But we know something occurs. There is definitely an intermingling of consciousness and unconsciousness, as if small fissures open from below and vapors of underworld knowledge emanate upward. The dayworld-Ego, then, becomes cognizant of it. In this way, the two Egos intermingle and Soul accumulates little by little.

What Is The Underworld?

noreply@blogger.com (Zeteticus (Mark Dotson)) — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 23:02:00 +0000

Gate of Hell, by William Blake

Through Me Pass into the Painful City,
Through Me Pass into Eternal Grief,
Through Me Pass among the Lost People.
Justice Moved My Master-Builder:
Heavenly Power First Fashioned Me With Highest Wisdom and with Primal Love.
Before Me Nothing Was Created
That Was Not Eternal, and I Last Eternally.
All Hope Abandon, You Who Enter Here (Dante's Inferno, Canto III 1-9).

These words, inscribed above the archway of the portal to Hell in Dante's Inferno are filled with gravitas, ring ominous, and seemingly warn of impending doom for the traveler who enters therein. This portal, however, leads to the greatest adventure ever undertaken by humans, the descent into Soul.

According to Aristotle, Heraclitus took Soul to be his first principle (De Anima, a2, 405a25). This means Heraclitus may have been the first depth psychologist, at least that we know of in our Western tradition. The main point is that Heraclitus emphasized the importance of the depth of existence by positing Soul as his archon, or first principle. He was the first thinker in the West that we know of to do so. Taking this into consideration, one must read his fragments with a downward gaze, peering through the entrance to Hades, and down into the Underworld.

in Fragment 54, Heraclitus states

The unseen harmony is better than the visible.

And in Fragment 123, he says

Nature loves to hide.

James Hillman discusses this idea of the hidden in his book, The Dream And The Underworld. Soul forever pursues the hidden, the invisible connections of existence. As we delve ever deeper for hidden connections (Truth), Soul grows stronger, deeper, and we more soulful.

...we may realize that the depth dimension is the only one that can penetrate to what is hidden; and since only what is hidden is true nature of all things, including nature itself, then only the way of soul can lead to true insight (p. 26).
So, depth = truth

and

Soul = depth

therefore

Soul = truth

Hillman suggests that Heraclitus, by implying such equations, foresaw the importance of an ontological and psychological hermeneutic, which has proven to be crucial to the work of Heidegger, Henry Corbin, and Hillman himself. Since, as Heraclitus believed, there is no end to depth (Fr. 45), all things inevitably become Soul (Fr. 36).

Pursuing depth will always lead one to the Underworld, ruled by Hades. The Ruler of the Dead is quite an interesting fellow. For instance, did you know that Hades is the god of the hidden wealth of the earth? One of the common names associated with Hades is Pluto, which is derived from ploutos, meaning "wealth." Hades is god of all precious minerals and metals that are mined from the depths of the earth, for

The entire bulk and substance of the earth, was dedicated to father Dis [Haides] (that is, Dives, ‘the rich’, and so in Greek Plouton), because all things fall back into the earth and also arise from the earth. - Cicero, De Natura Deorum 2.26
He is also responsible for the fertility of crops, since it was Spring when he released Persephone, the goddess of Spring's bounty.

Furthermore, Hades is known as the god of funeral rites and mourning.

Of Haides it is said that he laid down the rules which are concerned with burials and funerals and the honours which are paid to the dead, no concern having been given to the dead before this time; and this is why tradition tells us that Haides is lord of the dead, since there were assigned to him in ancient times the first offices in such matters and the concern for them." - Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 5.69.5

The Underworld is the place of the dead, so Soul and death are intimately connected, since Soul always seeks the depths of the Underworld. We must not assume that Hades is an eschatological world, where souls go after death. The Underworld is a psychological reality in our lives right now. We travel there every night in our dreams. The Underworld is a shadow of our normal world of consciousness. It is very much with us constantly in our daily lives; it is simply hidden, since "nature loves to hide."

Hillman says, "all soul processes, everything in the psyche, moves toward Hades" (ibid., p. 30). We are "dying out of life" (ibid.). We spiral out of life into the deep places of the earth. We move from the visible to the invisible; from the shallows to the depths of Soul. This is not referring to literal death! We are dealing in metaphors. What is the deepest, most hidden thing we know of? Of course, it is death. We live daily with the angst of knowing the certitude of its arrival. Death is invisible, but ever present.

Hillman has an interesting idea about the words on the archway of the portal to the Underworld.What is the hope we must abandon at the entrance to the Underworld?

Again, we can follow Heraclitus (fr. 27): "When men die, there awaits them what they neither expect nor even imagine." The word translated here as "expect" is related in Greek to "hope" (elpis), so that the specific hope that is abandoned (Dante, Inferno 3) on entering the underworld perspective is the fantasy of daylife expectations and flesh-and-blood illusions. Souls in Hades are "incurable" said Plato. There is no alteration to be hoped for. Such hope would be to hope for the wrong thing (ibid. p. 43).

Hillman is here referring to the Jungian hope of wholeness, Jung's process of individuation, where all disparate elements of the Soul are gathered into a unified central Self. The Underworld entities, spoken of in Greek mythology, are always plural. The Underworld is a place of myriad figures. Even individual dead persons were not referred to as singular (ibid. p. 41) in mythological writings.

It is also important to remember that our dreams are very closely related to death and the Underworld, for they have their origin in the realm of Hades. Memento mori.

Monadic Soul

noreply@blogger.com (Zeteticus (Mark Dotson)) — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 22:11:00 +0000


Cyclops, by Odilon Redon

As early as the Presocratic philosophers, the idea of non-reducible, indivisible units had been expressed as monads. For Pythagoras, it was the "all-including ONE" (Manly P. Hall). The universe is also a monad, but all the individual parts are as well. For Plato, the monads were likened to the Ideas. So, it is directly in line with this tradition to suggest that monads are indeed archetypal images, and therefore irreducible, and that everything derives from them.

It is fitting to match god with the monad, since god is in a seminal way (spermatikos) all beings in nature, as the monad is [potentially all things] in number; for things which appear in actuality to be extreme opposites, in absolutely every mode of opposition, are potentially contained within it, just as we saw, throughout the Introduction to the Arithmetic, that the monad took on every form, by a certain ineffable nature...The monad is absolutely the most authoritative of all things, like a pure light, sunlike and governing, (hegemonikos), so that it may resemble god in these respects, and above all in being a source of friendship and union for things multifarious most diverse, as god has harmonized and unified this universe from things similarly opposed (Nicomachus, qtd. by Charles H. Kahn, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans: A Brief History, p. 116-117).

I propose that these Pythagorean monads that I refer to as images, as in archetypal images, are the bases for, not only all empirical experiences, but any and all experiences we have in this life. I would equate the archetypes, as in Jung's archetypes of the collective unconscious, with monads and atoms (not the physical balls of matter we are so familiar with, but atoms in the ancient sense, as being indivisible and irreducible). These are the gods of Greek mythology.

What are archetypes images of? Of this we can only say, "All Monads are mirrors of the Universe. " (Galileo, Giordano Bruno, and Goethe, A Lecture given by Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, Architektenhaus, January 26, 1911). This was also the opinion of Giordano Bruno. Steiner goes on to explain that,

Such a Monad is the human soul, and they are many. Indeed, the human body itself is composed of many Monads, not of one. If we understand the truth about the physical body according to the ideas of Giordano Bruno, we shall not see the fleshly human body, but a system of Monads; these Monads cannot be clearly seen, just as we cannot distinguish the separate midges in a swarm; the chief Monad is the human soul. When the human soul comes into existence at birth, so said Giordano Bruno, the other Monads which belong to the soul collect together and, by this, the existence of the Chief-Monad, of the Soul Monad, is made possible (ibid).

Fascinating, no? So, now we know, according to Bruno, the so-called Chief-Monad is the Soul in each of us. Not only are the archetypes monads, but Soul is Monad. I don't really care for Steiner's hierarchical emphasis, as in "Chief-Monad," but I understand what he is trying to say. The main point in all of this is to link Soul to the ancient idea of monad. This was the view of the Pythagoreans. They believed all things emanated from the monad. An idea that has endured for over two millenia deserves to be reexamined.

A Tripartite Anthropology

noreply@blogger.com (Zeteticus (Mark Dotson)) — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 22:10:00 +0000

Har and Heva bathing, Mnetha looking on, by William Blake

Man has no Body distinct from his Soul for that call'd Body is a portion of Soul discern'd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age (William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell).

Human being is tripartite in nature, but it is just an illusion of our language, a convenience of Western thought and communication that has evolved in the Western psyche, having become archetypal. When we discuss our nature, the Western tendency is to dissect and analyze our subject, so we speak of the tripartite nature of humans. In all reality, Body, Soul, and Spirit are actually one.

In the passage above, Blake prefers to discuss only Body and Soul, but stresses that they are indistinct. He calls Body "a portion of Soul discerned by the five senses." Perhaps he does not discuss Spirit because of the overemphasis that has been placed on Spirit in the West for many centuries. Western culture is primarily a Spirit-seeking society, even though many would deny this. We have been obsessed with Spirit for a long, long time. Spirit is ubiquitous in our culture. It is the driving force behind many Western standbys, like capitalism, technology, industry, religion, and even some mysticism and new age teachings. Anytime you hear someone talking about transcendence, you can bet Spirit is close by. Spirit is overemphasized at the expense of Soul. Many have forgotten about Soul, since it is much messier and less glamorous. We would rather soar in the heavens than slog through the morasses and quagmires of Soul. I believe Blake recognized what the overemphasis of Spirit had done to his world.

Spirit, however, is also a portion of Soul. Soul is actually the Mediatrix, the in-between of Spirit and Body. Speaking of Neoplatonism, James Hillman writes,

This tradition holds to the notion of soul as a first principle, placing this soul as a tertium between the perspectives of body (matter, nature, empirics) and of mind (spirit, logic, idea). Soul as tertium, the perspective between others and from which others may be viewed, has been described as Hermetic consciousness (Lopez-Pedraza 1977), as "esse in anima" (Jung [1921], CW 6, §66, §77), as the position of the mundus imaginalis by Corbin, and by Neoplatonic writers on the intermediaries or figures of the metaxy (Archetypal Psychology, p. 5).

Western thinking has been primarily focused on Body and Spirit alone, matter and mind in the Cartesian manner. This sort of dualism goes back much further, to perhaps the 9th century, at the Eighth General Council of Constantinople. In Canon 11, the council ruled that,

...the Old and New Testaments teach that man has one rational and intellectual soul, and this is the teaching also of all the fathers and doctors of the Church... (Medieval Sourcebook:
Eighth Ecumenical Council: Constantinople IV 869-70).

Basically, the Church said that only the rational mind is the Soul, but it is really an element of Spirit, thus leaving human being with only Body and Spirit. This is a gross misunderstanding. The rational mind originates with Spirit. Spirit has been the driving force behind Western progress ever since. The constant need for ascent and transcendence is the classic archetypal motif of Spirit. Spirit soars into the very upper regions of the atmosphere. It is most at home in very high places, where the air is thin and light, where one can sit atop and apart from the world and be superior to it. Spirit is cold, since the higher one ascends, the lower the temperature and the thinner the air. There is a snowy whiteness about spirit that makes it chilly and vapid, if taken to extremes. When you hear someone refer to "spiritual detachment," you'll know that the archetype of spirit is present.

Spirit is a valid, necessary human experience. A problem arises, however, when it is pursued to the exclusion of Soul. Spirit is height, but Soul is depth. What would we be like without depth? We would be cold, inanimate automatons, going around making positive affirmations, bathing in the light and rejecting the darkness. Spirit seeks intelligence, while Soul seeks imagination. We need both, of course, but we must never overemphasize one over the other. So many problems in our world have been caused by just this.

Even though there are three valid archetypal images of the human makeup, when all is said and done, all three are one, as are all things in our universe. All is animaterial, the intermingling of Body, Soul, and Spirit into one animaterial whole. Three in One, in all things, according to their various modes of presence. Humans have one mode of presence; animals another; and even stones have their mode of presence. In all things, however, human and otherwise, Soul is the tertium.

Animatter Is Equilibrium

noreply@blogger.com (Zeteticus (Mark Dotson)) — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 23:42:00 +0000

Public Domain painting for NASA, by Donald David

This post is dedicated to Giordano Bruno

If we were conscious of the spirit of the age, we should know why we are so inclined to account for everything on physical grounds; we should know that it is because, up till now, too much was accounted for in terms of spirit. This realization would at once make us critical of our bias. We would say: most likely we are now making exactly the same mistake on the other side. We delude ourselves with the thought that we know much more about matter than about a "metaphysical" mind or spirit, and so we overestimate material causation and believe that it alone affords us a true explanation of life. But matter is just as inscrutable as mind. As to the ultimate things we can know nothing, and only when we admit this do we return to a state of equilibrium. This is in no sense to deny the close connection of psychic happenings with the physiological structure of the brain, with the glands and the body in general. We still remain deeply convinced of the fact that the contents of consciousness are to a large extent determined by our sense-perceptions. We cannot fail to recognize that unalterable characteristics of a physical as well as a psychic nature are unconsciously ingrained in us by heredity, and we are profoundly impressed by the power of the instincts which can inhibit or reinforce or otherwise modify even the most spiritual contents. Indeed, we must admit that as to cause, purpose, and meaning the human psyche, wherever we touch it, is first and foremost a faithful reflection of everything we call material, empirical, and mundane. And finally, in face of all these admissions, we must ask ourselves if the psyche is not after all a secondary manifestation-an epiphenomenon-and completely dependent on the physical substrate. Our practical reasonableness and worldly-mindedness prompt us to say yes to this question, and it is only our doubts as to the omnipotence of matter that might lead us to examine in a critical way this verdict of science upon the human psyche (C.G Jung, CW, Vol. 8, §657).

I see this as a very important passage of Jung's writing. He is commenting on the emphasis of Western thought on materialism, and why we should not be surprised that it has come to be this way. For centuries, during the Middle Ages, the balances were tilted in favor of spirit, to the exclusion of matter. The message Jung is conveying here is that reality is inscrutable, mysterious. We go through periods of compensation after experiencing extreme views, such as materialism. We go from one extreme to the other trying to untangle the web of truth, but both poles are deeply enigmatic. And of the ultimate things, like God, we can know nothing. When thinkers admit these truths, perhaps then equilibrium can be found. This current age of post-materialism I have deemed the Epoch of Soul, since the metaxical nature of Soul is equilibrium. This period has already dawned. We are gradually edging into balance.

The following is not a reductionist statement by Jung when he tells us that the psyche itself is a "secondary manifestation-an epiphenomenon...completely dependent on the physical substrate." Jung, unlike James Hillman, makes a distinction between psyche and soul. In one passage, he says,

I have been compelled, in my investigations into the structure of the unconscious, to make a conceptual distinction between soul and psyche. By psyche, I understand the totality of all psychic processes, conscious as well as unconscious. By soul, on the other hand, I understand a clearly demarcated functional complex that can best be described as a "personality". (Psychological Types, Collected Works, Volume 6).

So, in essence, the Anima and Animus archetypes are what Jung means by "soul." Psyche is the entire sphere of psychic activity. James Hillman does not differentiate between the two, but uses them interchangeably as "a deliberately ambiguous concept resisting all definition in the same manner as do all ultimate symbols which provide the root metaphors for the systems of human thought" (Suicide and the Soul, p. 46).

A conceptual outlook concerning these matters can quickly lead us into a trap. Our language limits us when discussing such things. Jung clearly believed the psyche, with its archetypes, was very closely tied to physical matter. His writings concerning the archetypes make it clear that he considered them the psychic correlates of biological instincts. Above, he says, "We cannot fail to recognize that unalterable characteristics of a physical as well as a psychic nature are unconsciously ingrained in us by heredity..." Evolution produced both our biological as well as psychic instincts (the archetypes). The only reason we speak in dualities is because of the extraordinary difficulty of writing about what I call Animatter. Actually, the process of evolution produced human-being-theres, in the sense of Heidegger's Dasein. These being-theres are animaterial, interrelated creatures that possess several modes of presence, one of which happens to be physical, one of which happens to be psychic. I close with this passage from Jung:

Since psyche and matter are contained in one and the same world, and moreover are in continuous contact with one another and ultimately rest on irrepresentable, transcendental factors, it is not only possible but fairly probable, even, that psyche and matter are two different aspects of one and the same thing (CW, Vol. 8, §418).

Images Are Prior To Experience

noreply@blogger.com (Zeteticus (Mark Dotson)) — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 19:16:00 +0000

Odysseus in front of Scylla and Charybdis, by
Johann Heinrich Füssli

In the beginning is the image; first imagination then perception; first fantasy then reality...Man is primarily an imagemaker and our psychic substance consists of images; our being is imaginal being, an existence in imagination. We are indeed such stuff as dreams are made on (James Hillman, Re-Visioning Psychology, p. 23).

Prior to our perceiving anything in this world, there are images that create our reality. Jung said, "The psyche creates reality every day." Our consciousness is totally dependent upon this vast storehouse of images we call Soul. Soul is Image and Image is Soul. The only way we experience anything in this world is because of our ability to imagine. We imagine and create constantly. Our consciousness would not exist without images. Images are the irreducible elements inherent in all animatter. At bottom, all is Image.

British philosopher, John Locke, claimed we are, at birth, a tabula rasa, a blank slate. He meant we are born without any innate psychological content. Locke proposed that all knowledge derives from empirical experience and perception. This is an egregious error. We are all born with a foundation of archetypal, imaginal content that is innate to our species.

Carl Jung claimed the archetypes are much like instincts. According to Jung, the archetypes are analogous to human instincts in that they are images of the instincts. They are inborn and unlearned, just like instincts. And just as instincts evolve from repeated experiences of a species, so have the archetypes evolved in the human species from repeated inner experiences. For example, the archetype of the hero, which Joseph Campbell spent considerable time writing about, is a process that is seen in all cultures, and which seems to have evolved as a means of overcoming what we call schizophrenia. According to Campbell (who is quoting a Dr. John Perry), the way a schizophrenic loses touch with reality and turns inward corresponds to the mythical journey of the hero, who

ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder; fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won; the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow men (Joseph Campbell. Myths to Live By, p. 209).

In the human experience, there arises an image in the imagination, one that is distinct from a daydream type of image (Henry Corbin would call a daydream image imaginary.) The image arises from unconsciousness to our conscious awareness. Many times, the images become metaphors in myth and literature, or are brought to life in works of art, or make their way into our moods and impulses. These images come to light in personified form as the heroes and villains of myths and legends. They also come to life through us, sometimes possessing our personalities. I am thinking here of someone like Adolf Hitler, who I believe was in the grip of a collective Shadow archetype.

Hillman says, "To live psychologically means to imagine things" (ibid.). Images are ordered by the archetypes. At their behest, images travel down particular, patterned pathways, motifs and mythologems. These ancient Gods constellate around certain mythemes, from which the world's great stories, fables, and sagas have been created.

Our lives are living metaphors. We all have a story. We all have a vault of images from which our particular world is fashioned. Our story is created by the archetypes, but it is up to us to bring it into manifestation. In order to do so, we must ponder the images, our personal dreams and imaginings, and act on them until they attain plasticity.

The Aphroditic Soul

noreply@blogger.com (Zeteticus (Mark Dotson)) — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 20:30:00 +0000

Geburt der Venus, by Odilon Redon

...beauty is an ontological necessity, grounding the sensate particularity of the world. Without Aphrodite, the world of particulars becomes atomic particles. Life’s detailed variety is called chaos, multiplicity, amorphous matter, statistical data. Such is the world of sense without Aphrodite. Then sense must be made of appearance by abstract philosophical means - which distorts philosophy itself from its true base (The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World, by James Hillman, p.45).

The old proverb, "Beauty is only skin deep," attributed to Sir Thomas Overbury (1581-1613), is far from the truth. Sir Thomas was only thinking of carnal allurements when he coined this phrase. True beauty, as I stated earlier, is an essential characteristic of Soul. Without it, there is no Soul in this universe, nor any other. Western thinking, over the centuries, has stripped Beauty of its true value and meaning. By Sir Thomas' day, it meant no more than a pretty lady, a handsome gentleman, or some superficial material object.

Whenever Soul is presented to the senses, be it through a walk in the forest, a lovely sunset, or the smell after a Spring rain, the Goddess, Aphrodite, is unveiled to us. The truth we learn when experiences like these occur is that Soul is Aphroditic in nature. We usually think of Aphrodite as the Goddess of love and beauty; that is true, but what did the Greeks think and believe about Her? How did they understand Her gifts to the world?

Aphrodite was born, of course, when Cronus castrated Uranus and threw his genitals into the sea. Aphrodite emerged from the sea foam that formed around them. One of her names is, Anadiomeni, "one who emerges." This sense of emergence is quite important in understanding the nature of Soul and its accompanying Beauty.

James Hillman writes,

In pursuing what we mean by beauty we are obstructed by the word beauty itself. It strikes the ear as so effete, so ineffectual, lovely and etheric, so far removed from the soul’s desperate concerns. Again we see how our notions are determined by archetypal patterns, as if beauty had become relegated only to Apollo, the examination of invisible forms like music, belonging to collectors and subject to disputes in journals of aesthetics. Or, beauty has been given over wholly to the soft hands of Adonis and Paris, beauty as violets, mutilation and death. In Plato and Plotinus, however, beauty does not have this glabrous, passive and ungenerative sense at all, and it is rarely brought into relation with art. In fact beauty is not ‘beautiful’ and Socrates’ person is witness. Rather, the beautiful in Platonic thought can only be understood if we can enter an Aphroditic cosmos and this in turn means penetrating into the ancient notion of aisthesis (sense-perception) from which aesthetics derives (ibid., p. 41-42).

I don't know about you, but I want to enter this "Aphroditic cosmos." It is not far off somewhere in another world; it is right here, where we are! We just need to learn to open ourselves to the Aphroditic experience, the emerging and unconcealing of Her beauty in her role as Anima Mundi. I believe this level of experience occurs when Soul mediates sensory data via the Imagination, transforming the experience into a powerful noumenal encounter with the Gods. How difficult it is to put these things into words!

This is what the Romantic poets discovered in their day. Read these words of Goethe and feel how Soul brings these images to life in your heart. Soul makes these images live to the point of becoming sensate, to where there is no separation between physical sense and spiritual sense:

Now I leave this little hut,
Where my beloved lives,
Walking now with veiled steps
Through the shadowy leaves.
Luna shines through bush and oak,
Zephyr proclaims her path,
And the birch trees bowing low
Shed incense on her track.
How beautiful the coolness
Of this lovely summer night!
How the soul fills with happiness
In this true place of quiet!
I can scarcely grasp the bliss!
Yet, Heaven, I would shun
A thousand nights like this,
If my darling granted one (Goethe, The Lovely Night).

This is Soul. This is Aphrodite's emergence from the world.

The Beauty Of Soul

noreply@blogger.com (Zeteticus (Mark Dotson)) — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 17:59:00 +0000

Geburt der Venus, by Lovis Corinth

Some may wonder why I spend so much time writing about Soul. I decided many years ago that Soul was the most beautiful, the most fascinating, and the most perplexing of pursuits among all human endeavors. As little free time as most people have, including myself, I want to spend it, for these reasons, thinking and writing of Soul. What better path to travel than the vortical highway that is the Soul, for along the way there are many wondrous things to see and learn. As James Hillman wrote,

...psyche is the life of our aesthetic responses, that sense of taste in relation with things, that thrill or pain, disgust or expansion of breast: these primordial aesthetic reactions of the heart are soul itself speaking (The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World, p. 39).

In a nutshell, Soul is Beauty. The man who most likely was responsible for initiating the European Renaissance, Francesco Petrarca (20 July 1304 – 19 July 1374), better known as Petrarch, fell in love with Soul on April 6, 1327, when his eyes fell upon a beautiful young girl named Laura:

It was on that day when the sun's ray
was darkened in pity for its Maker,
that I was captured, and did not defend myself,
because your lovely eyes had bound me, Lady (The Canzoniere)

Petrarch never had a relationship with this young woman, but he carried her in his heart the remainder of his days. In her, he realized the beauty and truth of Soul. This is, of course, what Jung called the anima archetype, that unconscious feminine Person that men possess within them.

There are many examples of this in literature. Some of the most famous are Dante and Beatrice, Arthur and Guinevere, and Tristan and Isolde. These stories relate the relationship of man with the Soul. The Soul is, indeed, beautiful beyond comprehension, but it is also dangerous and powerful, not something to be taken lightly. One feels sometimes as if one were standing at the precipice of a bottomless abyss. There are the deepest dangers there. But, if we remain in harmony with Soul, She will always comfort us, even if we do happen to plunge downward occasionally.

Soul is essentially aesthetic in nature. All of the beauty we experience in life derives from Soul. If one does not recognize this source of Beauty, one cannot realize the fulness of Soul. Remember Aphrodite. Remember that "Beauty is the manifest anima mundi" (James Hillman).

Beauty is not an abstraction, as is much of Aesthetics in academic Philosophy. Beauty is actually sensate, perceptible, and is revelatory. Beauty is a revealing, a theophany of the Gods in all their splendor. Beauty is in the Greek sense, aisthesis. The image is not transcendent or immanent within the object at hand, but lucidly perceptible. This is one very essential characteristic of Soul.

This discussion reminds me of my Heidegger studies, particularly his revival of truth as unconcealment (aletheia) and his idea of ready-to-hand. This also corresponds nicely with something zoologist and anthropologist, Adolf Portmann (1897-1982), said,

Visible appearance itself must be understood above all in the widest sense as ’self-presentation’ of the protoplasmic individual. Not only are optical, acoustic, and olfactory features of the individual in a state of rest part of this self-presentation, but so are its movements, its forms of expression, all of its manifestations in space and time… The taking into account of self-presentation as a primary property of life justifies by itself a complete and autonomous theory of forms.… Beings in relationship with the world are not just living machines which live in function of their activities and metabolism. They are above all beings which display themselves in their singularity without this self-presentation being primarily related to sense organs. (Adolf Portmann on the New Biology, by Gianna Maria Gatti (translated by Alan N. Shapiro).

The idea of self-presentation seems related to the Greek idea of aletheia in its sense of self-presenting reality as theophany. Such is the nature of Soul.

By the way, Portmann was one of the founding lecturers, along with C.G. Jung, at the Eranos conferences in Switzerland.

This is a fruitful line of discussion which I will undoubtedly continue to pursue.

Musings On Metaphor And Allegory

noreply@blogger.com (Zeteticus (Mark Dotson)) — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 22:11:00 +0000

Corbin's distinction between the imaginal and the imaginary, discussed in the last article, runs parallel to the distinction between metaphor and allegory. Corbin claims that

...the general tendency is to juxtapose the real and the imaginary as if the latter were unreal, utopian, just as it is customary to confuse the symbol with allegory, or the exegesis of spiritual meaning with allegorical interpretation. Allegory, being harmless, is a cover, or rather a travesty of something that is already known or at least knowable in some other way; whereas, the appearance of an Image that can be qualified as a symbol is a primordial phenomenon (Urphaenomen). Its appearance is both unconditional and irreducible and it is something that cannot manifest itself in any other way in this world (Mundus Imaginalis, translated from French by Ruth Horine, 1972).

This German word, Urphaenomen, is an idea from Goethe that refers to an archetypal phenomenon, particularly in Nature. Much of Goethe's theory of science rests on this principle. An image as Urphaenomen is Nature (as Gestalt) revealing Herself primordially as an irreducible element of the complex whole. This order of image is a complex unveiling of truth that will always remain mysterious, for the true symbolic image possesses infinite meanings. One will never plumb the depths of the image of Soul, for instance.

These primeval symbolic images are best presented, not as allegories, but as metaphors. Metaphorical language is the language of Soul. Thus, there is a correlation between imaginal reality and metaphor, just as there is a correlation between imaginary reality and allegory. The imaginal, presented as metaphor, is much deeper and more complex in describing those aspects of reality that have infinite layers of meaning, such as the metaphor, God.

An allegory is nothing but the use of something known to represent some moral truth or trope in figurative terms, such as in the book, Pilgrim's Progress, written by John Bunyan in 1678. No new truths were revealed in this work, just the retelling of the Gospel story. In a lecture on Pilgrim's Progress, Ian Johnston of Malaspina University-College (now Vancouver Island University), comments that

Allegories need to be distinguished from symbolic stories. Both allegorical structures and symbolic structures derive their full meaning from something beyond the literal meaning of the word, event, image, or character in the fiction. That is, they both point to a range of meanings beyond themselves. The major difference is that in allegories the reference point is clear and relatively unambiguous; whereas, with symbols the range of meaning is more ambiguous and uncertain.

The metaphor is the preferred language of the unconscious because metaphors are images that catapult one beyond the literal to the Mundus Imaginalis. The unconscious speaks through imagery. This is not the imaginary kind of images, but imaginal symbols, which originate from the realm of the Imaginal.

Imagination Takes Us Beyond The Mountain Of Qaf

noreply@blogger.com (Zeteticus (Mark Dotson)) — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 19:50:00 +0000

In his classic essay, Mundus Imaginalis, Henry Corbin attempts to articulate the distinction between the imaginal and the imaginary. This distinction has been necessary for discussion since Western scholars took a turn towards Averroism in the twelfth century. At this fork in the Western philosophical road, the acceptance of aspects of Averroes' philosophy, particularly his cosmology, over that of Avicenna, led to the disparagement of imagination even down to our day and age.

There is a confusion in the West about imagination. We have been led to believe, since the twelfth century, that all things imagined are not as important as material things, or even that they are unreal. Corbin draws the distinction of 1) imaginatio vera, true Imagination, which corresponds to the Mundus Imaginalis; and 2) personal fantasies, which he calls "imaginary."

Prior to this cleavage of being, the ancient world enjoyed an undifferentiated consciousness:

The ancients--and by the ancients I mean the Greeks, the Romans, and the Graeco-Roman Christians--the ancients experienced an awareness open to what lay around them, and they experienced no sense of dichotomy between their awareness and everything else. What they found in their own minds or intellects was of like character with much of what was outside it; what they found in the world could in large part move directly into their minds and be possessed by it. There was an ontological continuity between what happened in their intellects and what happened in the kosmos or world (F. Edward Cranz, unpublished ms, The Reorientation of Western Thought c. 1100 A.D., qtd. in The World Turned Inside Out, by Tom Cheetham, pg. 120.).

Tom Cheetham comments,

And, so, thanks to our "history of being," we confound the esoteric with the subjective (and therefore the "unreal") and the exoteric with the objective (and therefore the "real") (The World Turned Inside Out, pg. 120).

Cranz sees no way back to the ancients' mode of consciousness; Corbin seems to think there is a way. He believes the Mundus Imaginalis was lost due to the decadence of Western rationalism:

Whenever imagination strays and is wasted recklessly, when it ceases to fulfill its function of perceiving and producing the symbols that lead to inner intelligence, the mundus imaginalis...may be considered to have disappeared (Mundus Imaginalis, by Henry Corbin).

This realm of the Eighth Clime, as it is described in Islam, is lost to our current mode of consciousness, that of empiricism and ratiocination. The good news, however, is that our Western mode of consciousness is changing, is returning to an ontology that recognizes a reality more encompassing than simply things perceived by the physical senses. I personally feel the work of thinkers like C.G. Jung, James Hillman, Henry Corbin, and many others have led us back to the fork in the road and have enabled us to retrace our steps, thus bringing us to a better understanding of the role of human imagination in our lives. I prefer to think we already have recovered that path and are currently on a journey beyond the mountain of Qaf.

Is Consciousness The Same As Soul?

noreply@blogger.com (Zeteticus (Mark Dotson)) — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 14:52:00 +0000

Plate from The Song of Los, by William Blake

Is Soul the same as consciousness? No. What is consciousness? It is the state of being aware. Soul encompasses both unconsciousness and consciousness. What is the origin of consciousness? How do we become aware of unconscious things? First of all, we must not reify consciousness. It is a state, not a Being in and of itself. It is a quality of Being. Many times, we tend to talk about "the unconscious" and "consciousness" as if we were referring to Beings. They are not. Rather, they are qualities of Beings. The avoidance of anthropomorphism is the best route to take when thinking along these lines. On the other hand, the unconscious is populated with living Persons who should be taken very seriously. This is where Soul becomes crucial.

For many years, it has been very common to hear talk of "Souls" being immaterial, as if a Soul were a wispy spirit floating about. There is nothing that is immaterial. These people have a confused idea of Soul. It is quite common in new age parlance to identify the "spiritual life" and "consciousness" with archetypal ideas of Soul and depth psychology, in general. Granted, Spirit is a very important idea, but it is not the same idea as Soul. There is a clear distinction between these ideas (for that is what they are), which you can read about in my article, Distinguishing Between Soul and Spirit. They are perspectives on life, not entities that float around and clothe themselves with suits of flesh.

I made a statement in the previous paragraph that I should further explicate. I said, "There is nothing that is immaterial." No, I am not a positivist or hyper-materialist. I adhere to a philosophy known as Animaterialism. According to Animaterialism, all matter is Soul and Soul is matter. Soul is not an invisible phantom living on the inside of matter. This is dualism. I am affirming the monistic unity of matter and Soul. The phrase, "inanimate object" is an oxymoron. There is nothing inanimate because all things are Soul-Matter, or, as I call it, Animatter, one reality.

The Catholic Encyclopedia claims this kind of monism as a reduction of Soul to matter. Actually, the Roman Church, following Aristotle, maintains that matter represents decay and imperfection, while the Soul represents life, energy, and perfection. Perhaps this is where people confuse Spirit and Soul; Spirit is more acquainted with light, energy, and perfection, while Soul is sometimes associated with darkness, decay, and imperfection. Soul lives close to the Earth, with all its imperfections and entanglements of everyday existence, while Spirit wants to soar into the heavens and be perfected. Matter is not death, as the Church seems to think. Matter is just as much life as is Soul. This idea of matter being evil, having its origin in negative Gnosticism, is what caused acts of self-flagellation and other strange practices by members of the Catholic Church. Viewing matter as evil is simply bizarre, in my opinion. This is why our planet has been treated harshly by Western culture. In their eyes, since matter is viewed as evil, it is something to be subdued and ruled with an iron fist.

Human existence is not a neat little tripartite box of body, soul, and spirit that we can precisely define. A human is more of a polytheistic amalgam of images and ideas. We are many persons in the same animaterial locale we call a body. Every one of our atoms is teeming with Soul, both consciousness and unconsciousness. We are of divine design and divine origin. Our land of origin is a mystery that we will not know about until we experience death. In dreams, we have a foretaste.

It is image that gives birth to matter. All material things are provided their form by the Cosmic Mind, which in my thinking, is the fusion of the Anima Mundi and the Spiritus Mundi. In our Universe, there is, for want of a better word, a Force that creates and continuously brings into being new forms of matter. At this point, I'm not sure if this Force is part of our universe, which would make my philosophy pantheism, or whether it is paradoxically separate, which I suppose would be a form of panentheism. I dislike labels like these, however. I simply write what I see in my imagination.

The Underground River

noreply@blogger.com (Zeteticus (Mark Dotson)) — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 14:05:00 +0000

Our little terranean Egos are perched high above an immense underground river. Few realize the mighty current that flows beneath us. Most of us in the West have lost our Souls because we have forgotten this river. The river of which I write feeds into the ancient ocean of unconsciousness, bearing along all possible images of creation. Images are the irreducible element of human being. It is not subatomic particles, as scientists believe, but images that drive life in our universe.

Our very essence is governed by the subterranean river of imagination. The current of images that flow in this river directly influences our daily lives. The systolic and diastolic of Soul are managed by how we interact with it. If we pretend it is not there, it's raging torrent will engulf us. If we interact with it on a regular basis, it will enrich our lives beyond our wildest dreams. It is truly a river of life, but it can also be a river of death.

Many are terrified of the river . A few hearty individuals will be quite comfortable swimming in it. Those who are most at home possess shamanistic gifts. These persons spend their lives navigating the river. Shamans regularly swim in the river of imagination. Of the shaman, Mircea Eliade writes,

He commands the techniques of ecstasy - that is, because his soul can safely abandon his body and roam at vast distances, can penetrate the underworld and rise to the sky. Through his own ecstatic experience he knows the roads of the extraterrestrial regions. He can go below and above because he has already been there. The danger of losing his way in these forbidden regions is still great; but sanctified by his initiation and furnished with his guardian spirit, a shaman is the only human being able to challenge the danger and venture into a mystical geography" (Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy).

The subterranean river of images is an integral part of the "mystical geography." As rivers on the surface wander through many different topographies, so this river meanders through the topographies of the Underworld before emptying into the Great Mother, the ocean of the unconscious. As it moves along, it gathers more and more images along the way. Sometimes, images are washed up along the banks. These are images which are no longer viable for human experience and must needs be discarded. Heraclitus said no one cannot enter into the same river twice. The flow is constantly changing. If we refuse to at least wade in its shallow places, we will be cut off from the flow of images. Our dreams are our built-in way of wading in the shallows. If we desire to venture further into the current, something like active imagination would be required.

Rivers are usually seen as boundaries. The river of imagination is no different. It is the boundary between soulfulness and soullessness. If we regularly wash ourselves in this river, our Souls will be nourished and properly cared for. If we ignore it, our Souls will wither away to the point of non-existence. Having dreams is not sufficient for the Soul's nourishment, although it does help somewhat. If we want to partake of what the river of imagination has to offer us, we must choose to participate in its imagery.

Cronus Swallows His Children

noreply@blogger.com (Zeteticus (Mark Dotson)) — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 15:34:00 +0000

Saturn, Jupiter's father, devours one of his sons, Neptune, by Peter Paul Rubens

Cronus was the youngest of the twelve Titans, the offspring of Gaia and Uranus. Cronus took his own sister, Rhea, also a Titan, as his wife. The union of Cronus and Rhea was a very special one. They produced several of the most powerful gods in the Greek pantheon: Demeter, Hades, Hera, Hestia, Poseidon and Zeus. Hesiod tells us in The Theogony that Cronus was very cunning. He was the most terrible of all the Titans (ll. 116-138). Cronus hated his father, Uranus, because he was cruel to his children. Cronus' mother, Gaia, pleaded with her sons to punish Uranus for his evil ways. Cronus was the only one willing to do the deed. She fashioned a sickle with jagged teeth, made from grey flint and gave it to Cronus. When Uranus came to lay with Gaia that night, Cronus emasculated him with the adamantine sickle and threw his members into the sea.

Cronus and his wife, Rhea, became the most powerful gods at this time, beginning what is known as The Golden Age in Greek mythology, a primordial era of peace and prosperity. At some point, it was prophesied by Gaia and Uranus that one of Cronus' children would overthrow him. To prevent this, Cronus swallowed each of his children at the time of their birth. When it was time for Zeus to be born, Rhea devised a plan to deceive Cronus and save her son from being devoured. Rhea gave birth to Zeus on the island of Crete. She gave Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, which is known as the Omphalos Stone, and kept Zeus hidden from his father in a cave. Thinking it was his son, Cronus swallowed the stone.

When Zeus was fully grown, his grandmother, Gaia, gave him an emetic that Zeus administered to Cronus, causing all the children he had swallowed to be vomited from him. The Omphalos Stone was also spewed forth. Zeus placed this stone at "Pytho under the glens of Mount Parnassus to be a sign to mortal men" (Wikipedia). Finally, Zeus and his siblings overthrew the Titans and became the supreme gods.

The myth of Cronus swallowing his children speaks to the idea of wholeness, integration, oneness, etc. It is the nature of the psyche to be multifarious, being composed of many forces and powers we call archetypes. Movements toward oneness, such as Jung's ideas of integration and individuation, are allusions to the myth of Cronus swallowing his children. Jung's idea of integration seems influenced by Christian monotheism, which also attempts to swallow all others in a quest for the One God. In the psyche, the many powers must cease their individuality and be integrated into a supreme Self in the fully-individuated human being. There is no room for the variegated powers and forces to manifest themselves as themselves.

When Cronus swallowed his children, they were in a dark place, comparable to the unconscious. When monotheistic movements swallow all other gods, they are banished to the darkness of unconsciousness, where, if continually suppressed, they eventually rear their heads as complexes and diseases.

We are creatures imbued with many powers within us. If we ignore them, we fall into great peril. Let us not be like Cronus.

A Critique Of Centering

noreply@blogger.com (Zeteticus (Mark Dotson)) — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 18:27:00 +0000

We hear much about so-called centering prayer, centering meditation, the centering of the Self, etc. These kinds of discussions would also include mandalas, of which C.G. Jung was so fond of, a form of spiritual and ritual art that Jung borrowed from Hinduism and Buddhism, and appropriated for his psychological ideas. Here is his own description of their meaning for him:

My mandalas were cryptograms concerning the state of the self which was presented to me anew each day…I guarded them like precious pearls….It became increasingly plain to me that the mandala is the center. It is the exponent of all paths. It is the path to the center, to individuation (Memories, Dreams and Reflections, p. 196).

Also, he did not believe the path to individuation was a linear one.

I began to understand that the goal of psychic development is the self. There is no linear evolution; there is only a circumambulation of the self (ibid.)

The idea of a psychological center bothers me. I am a firm believer in the Hermetic Principle of Correspondence, as above, so below. We humans are many Microcosms, each one corresponding to the Macrocosm, the cosmos, and the more subtle worlds of Being. Just using the example of the cosmos and our own microcosm, what we learn about stars, planets, galaxies, moons, etc. corresponds to the particular Soul that we are. There are many Persons within us, just as there are many stars and planets in the heavens. I don't see a center, but many centers, centers within centers, ad infinitum.

There is much agreement that our Universe is acentric. So, applying the Principle of Correspondence, we are also acentric. This is why Jung's theory bothers me. If we are acentric, there is no single Self at the center of our Being, which we are moving toward.

I believe the centering idea stems from the Western overemphasis on monotheism, of which I have written about in The Death of Monotheism. There has been a notion is scholarly religious circles that monotheism is the end-product of thousands of years of religious evolution. In other words, polytheism would rank as a primitive form of thought. But is that really the case in Nature, since our Principle of Correspondence would apply to all avenues of human thinking? Jung himself demonstrated the multifariousness of the human psyche, giving individuality to all the archetypes.

Jung's insistence on integration of the various personalities into a lone Self is very bothersome to me. All these archetypes have many things to contribute to us; we should not be waiting on their annihilation, when they are to be assimilated into a singular centricity. The wonders of Nature do not seem to be not moving toward a singularity, why should we? As above, so below.

Happy Holidays!

noreply@blogger.com (Zeteticus (Mark Dotson)) — Mon, 24 Dec 2012 18:24:00 +0000

I would like to wish all my readers much happiness this holiday season. Have a very Happy New Year too!

Yule Lads in Dimmuborgir, Photo by lusinemarg

The Crumbling Of Christianity

noreply@blogger.com (Zeteticus (Mark Dotson)) — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 02:34:00 +0000

Destruction of Pompeii, by
Ivan Aivazovsky (1817–1900)

Let us face the truth: the Christian myth, if not already dead, is dying quickly. The symbols of the religion that once captured the hearts and minds of people everywhere have lost their power in our world. Many people I know are Christian in name only; their lives do not reflect the faith that once shook the Roman Empire to its roots. There are a few that still display the love for others that Christ taught, but these are rare individuals, indeed.

It didn't take Christianity but a few hundred years to begin laying the foundation for its own demise. The emphasis on apologetics, the dogmatic decrees of the first Church councils, and the politicization of the Church by the Emperor Theodosius I, in 380 A.D. made the young religion rigid and imperious, taking on many of the traits of the empire for which it became the official belief system.

A phenomenological look at the symbolic efficacy of Christianity in its infancy shows that it was empowered by archetypal forces that only occur to such an extent at the dawning of a new epoch in human history. The story had been told many times before. We have heard the similarities with other religions of the virgin birth, the dying-and-rising god, the many similarities with the Egyptian god, Horus, etc. All such tales possess amazing archetypal energy. That is why we still discuss them thousands of years after their creation. There is still residual archetypal power remaining in them, albeit quite diminished (If you're interested in reviewing the similarities of Christianity with other religions, check out the first Zeitgeist film).

The more Christianity became rationalized, rigid, and literalized, the less Soul it possessed. Its once-powerful archetypal symbols were dilapidated. Its adherents became more and more vulnerable to the onslaught of unconscious forces, which will destroy the person who walks through life unshielded from them in any way. We see this almost daily in our era, a true sign that our society has lost the archetypal protection we once enjoyed. That is why Joseph Campbell taught us to find our own myth, for this is what mitigates the terrible abyss of unconsciousness that we are all potentially susceptible to. Christianity was supposed to have prevented this, but a myth without the power of its symbols is no longer viable and must either be revamped or abandoned.

There was a chance for Christianity to regain its lost vigor during the Renaissance. The rediscovery of the culture of ancient Greece brought about lost ideas of polytheism, art, religion, and democracy, that, if these had been incorporated into the Christian milieu, would have reinvigorated its dying symbols. Credit must be given to thinkers, such as Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Giordano Bruno, et al. Bruno went to his death attempting to revitalize Christianity with fresh ideas and new symbolic vigor. Church officials wanted him dead, probably because they feared his revolutionary ideas would influence the masses to such an extent that the Church would lose its political power.

Today, Christianity lies broken and fragmented in thousands of different forms. Its once powerful story of humans gaining salvation is marred by all conceivable forms of absurdity. Some believe the end of the world is nigh, and that a figure called the Antichrist will soon rise up and enslave us all; some believe that the King James translation of the Bible is the only translation sanctioned by God; some believe a city of gold, the New Jerusalem, will descend bodily from heaven and land on the surface of the earth, as if this golden city were some kind of interdimensional spaceship; and the Roman Church has been disfigured by scandals of pedophiles in its ranks. I could go on and on. The idiocy is beyond belief. While the world yearns for a new set of efficacious symbols that will transform our lives, Christianity continues to fall by the wayside on the road of human history.

It may be possible to revamp the old religion, but many of its metaphors seem lifeless at this point. I am fond of some forms of Christian mysticism, however. Mystics like Meister Eckhart, Teresa of Avila, and Jacob Boehme wrote some incredible things. The problem was, these types of thinkers were always on the fringes of the Church, always in danger of being ostracized or excommunicated for their beliefs and practices.

The Epoch of Soul may bring a new form of religion. I don't know. Perhaps the masses will finally come to the realization that one's own myth in life is meaningful, powerful, and can bring us all together, once and for all.

World Of The Fifth Sun

noreply@blogger.com (Zeteticus (Mark Dotson)) — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 02:58:00 +0000

Photo by Theilr

The solstice of 2012 is nearly upon us. We have heard all the theories about what will take place. I find many of them to be ridiculous. Those who are viewing this event mythologically will, I believe, be profoundly blessed. There is an amazing story being told here by the Anima Mundi. The prophecies of the Maya were not meant to be taken literally! But that's just like our rationally bent culture, to take a beautiful myth and turn it into bits of scientific data.

All the dying-and-rising-god myths have been based on what occurs during the Winter solstice. For millennia, it has been a profound time of reflection and meaning. This particular solstice is special. According to Mayan elder and priest, Carlos Barrios,

Mayan Day-keepers view the Dec. 21, 2012 date as a rebirth, the start of the World of the Fifth Sun. It will be the start of a new era resulting from and signified by the solar meridian crossing the galactic equator and the Earth aligning itself with the center of the galaxy (What the Mayan Elders are Saying About 2012).

This particular kind of solstice only occurs every 26,000 years. In my view, this coming Friday will be the beginning of a new epoch for humanity, one which will bring us to greater consciousness and greater clarity concerning our mission here on this planet. It will be what the Mayans call the World of the Fifth Sun.

The Suffering Of The World Soul

noreply@blogger.com (Zeteticus (Mark Dotson)) — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 01:32:00 +0000

Weeping Woman, by Vincent Van Gogh

Too many people have been analyzing their pasts, their childhoods, their memories, their parents, and realizing that it doesn't do anything-or that it doesn't do enough (James Hillman).

For many years, we who have wanted more of life than football games and the latest reality TV show have been focused on our own, for want of a better nomenclative, "spiritual development." Certainly, there is a place for that in life, but there comes a time when our focus must be shifted to a higher priority. Our world is in dire straits. Our people, the people of our planet, are aching for a new paradigm. The higher priority of which I speak is caring for the Soul of the planet, the Anima Mundi.

We have seen the end result of a positivistic, myth-denying, sacrilegious mindset that allows bankers to run roughshod over those less fortunate; that encourages corporations to advertise to the point of brainwashing people into endless buying of nonsensical products; that influences people to bring assault rifles to public places in the hope of massacring as many as possible. Our society has become psychotic. Our culture should be uprooted and plowed under, so that a new one can take its place, albeit gradually. Of course, we should not hope for a Utopia, for that will never come to pass. We must not be naive. With the eyes of Imagination, however, we can see a time when better lives and a better planet is possible.

Robert Sardello wrote:

The individual presented himself in the therapy room of the nineteenth century, and during the twentieth the patient suffering breakdown is the world itself . . . The new symptoms are fragmentation, specialization, expertise, depression, inflation, loss of energy, jargoneze, and violence. Our buildings are anorexic, our business paranoid, our technology manic.

Since the advent of modern depth psychology, individuals have been focusing mostly on their own journey of the Soul, which is perfectly fine, as long as one remembers there is a greater good, i.e. the psychic health of the World Soul. Of course, caring for one's individual Soul contributes to the health of the World Soul. We simply must be cognizant of this fact and not fall under the illusion that our own well-being is primary. Remember the words of alchemist and philosopher Michael Sendivogius:

Maior autem animae pars extra corpus est ( The greater part of Soul is outside the body)

The evil and ugliness we see in our world are psychopathologizations of the Anima Mundi, symptoms that provide clues as to Her psychic state of affairs. Traditionally, patients were treated with forms of inter-subjective therapies, and even group-related therapies, but the world remained external to these. Many patients have made tremendous progress. Millions are in better shape today than possibly anytime in history. Certainly, there are many troubled people out there, and many who purposely choose to follow evil. For the most part, however, humans have achieved astounding and wonderful things in the past few hundred years. It is now time to shift our focus to healing our world. In this, we heal ourselves. The separateness of objective and subjective notions will fall by the wayside. Dualistic ideas like the so-called mind/body split will vanish as we begin to see that our Universe is interconnected and interrelational.

Musings On The Sandy Hook Shootings

noreply@blogger.com (Zeteticus (Mark Dotson)) — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 03:10:00 +0000

Photo by Jiri Hodan

First of all, let me say I am awash in grief over this incident. My heart goes out to the parents of these precious children.

Every time a mass shooting occurs, the cause-and-effect people come out of the woodwork. Some say it's because of violent video games; some say it is due to violence in movies; and some claim all we need to do is ban the sale of firearms. I think it goes much deeper than any of these, much deeper than anything rational. There is no direct cause for something this heinous in the human experience. Such acts result from a very long process of deanimization of our culture. By the term, "deanimization," I mean the removal of Soul from the human experience.

The following quote from C.G Jung, which I used in my article, The Loss of Myth, applies to this situation:

. . .the individual who wishes to have an answer to the problem of evil, as it is posed today, has need, first and foremost of self-knowledge, that is, the utmost possible knowledge of his own wholeness. He must know relentlessly how much good he can do, and what crimes he is capable of, and must beware of regarding the one as real and the other as illusion. Both are elements within his nature, and both are bound to come to light in him, should he wish — as he ought — to live without self deception or self-delusion (C.G. Jung, MDR, pg 330).

These shootings we have seen for a number of years are not effects of direct causes. They are, rather, pathological symptoms of our culture.

I proposed in the aforementioned article that those who have not erected sufficiently protective mythical and symbolic barriers are more prone to allowing the tsunami of unconscious forces, which include some very evil phenomena, to wash over us. This is what religion once accomplished for Western culture, but no longer does, since it has adopted most of the thought-patterns of those who attempt to banish symbols and myths from the minds of all of us. I am referring here to fundamentalists of all religions, who hold the world's most powerful and cathartic symbologies and mythologies in utter contempt. I am also referring to those adherents of scientism, who see no worth in things of the Soul at all. They have made a Faustian deal, where Soul has been given in exchange for scientific and materialistic knowledge.

Notice I used the word, "allowing" in the above paragraph. There is a choice involved here. One can very consciously give oneself over to the left-hand path. One decides to be a follower of evil. Once open to these forces, one's actions are not one's own. Evil is not simply the Augustinian privatio boni, the privation of good; evil is a very real phenomenon. The adherents of scientism will never explain it rationally.

Just as Perseus used Athena's polished shield to view Medusa's hideous reflection without being turned to stone, so we reflect upon images and symbols to better understand the evil within us, without giving ourselves over to it. This is the purpose of the Shadow archetype, in Jungian terms. We are protected by the myths; they have a mitigating effect on the power of the unconscious forces. We live without them to our demise.

I don't know the circumstances of the shooter's life. He was obviously insane. But how many insane people became that way because of a privation of Soul? How many became that way because they chose to follow evil? It is a deep mystery why someone follows after darkness to the exclusion of light.

Our culture has failed miserably. We must realize, and soon, what we're doing and correct it. We must restore the things of Soul to our society. We must reconnect with the Sacred. We must, once again, emphasize the importance of what we once called a "classical education," where Classics studies and the Humanities were primary. We once studied the myths of our culture and had them ingrained into us. Now, we are inculcated with math and science so that corporations can make more profit from us.

This evening, my prayers and thoughts are with the families of the victims of this most heinous act. May your hearts be filled with the peace that passes all understanding.

The Gods Are Calling

noreply@blogger.com (Zeteticus (Mark Dotson)) — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 00:47:00 +0000

Margarita and Woland, by Julia Dolgorukova

It is possible that the day in which we live is the most crucial in human history. At no other time has mankind faced the complex issues our generation does. No other period had the ability to bless or destroy the entire populous, as we do today. This planet could either be a wholesome hospitable world for all, or a torturous hell for many. This is not a new message. Many have warned us before.

I am of the mind that the Soul of the World has been working towards this moment for millenia. I am not saying the universe is deterministic, that the Anima Mundi has everything planned out. I see history as being both free and determined, a synthesized modus operandi that supersedes these categories.

She operates as we operate, for She is our Collective Soul. She moves through the Earth via the Gods, or, as Jungians tend to call them, the "archetypes of the collective unconscious." Remember, Soul is composed of both conscious and unconscious. Jung mostly discussed the individual side of things, but he was aware of the collective aspect of Soul, as well. The Gods carry out the imagined Reality of the Anima Mundi throughout the planet. Indeed, there is both a personal and collective manifestation of this. I am mostly interested in the collective phenomenon of Soul.

For thousands of years, the Gods have either been largely ignored or downright forgotten. Much of our lack of consciousness involves our forgetfulness. We have pushed the Gods aside in favor of science, technology, capitalism, and political power. This seems to be nearing an end. Things are changing, gradually, but noticeably. The Gods are calling to us. Their voices grow louder everyday, as we move forward in the stream of Time. All one need do is watch the evening news and you will see evidence for this. The collective archetypes manifest themselves daily. The Gods demand to be heard. We cannot continue to collectively repress them without our having to face dire consequences. Just as we, to our dismay, individually repress things within our own Soul, we can repress things collectively. As above, so below.

Sadly, the archetypal Shadow has reared its head yesterday, in the form of one who totally identified himself with this dark god. Just as the individual Shadow needs to be dealt with, so does our collective Shadow. We must not continue to ignore these events!

Let us take a moment to remind ourselves that the Anima Mundi and her Gods are not literal Beings, as we usually tend to anthropomorphize such powerful images.

Let us imagine the anima mundi neither above the world encircling it as a divine and remote emanation of spirit, a world of powers, archetypes, and principles transcendent to things, nor within the material world as its unifying panpsychic life-principle. Rather let us imagine the anima mundi as that particular soul-spark, the seminal image, which offers itself through each thing in its visible form. Then anima mundi indicates the animated possibilities presented by each event, as it is, its sensuous presentation as face bespeaking its interior image--in short, its availability to imagination, its presence as a psychic reality. Not only animals and plants ensouled as in the Romantic vision, but soul is given with each thing; God-given things of nature and man-made things of the street (James Hillman, “Anima Mundi," Spring, 1982).

The repression of the Gods came about because of a radical shift toward monotheism that began to gradually occur in ancient Greece, possibly with Xenophanes of Colophon. In his poetry, he criticized Homer and Hesiod for belief in a pantheon of Gods. Of course, monotheism was already prevalent in Zoroastrianism and Judaism prior to this. The Greek religion, from what we know, however, was polytheistic. It was only with Xenophanes, and later Parmenides, that this began to change. By the time of Plato, the Gods had become abstracted as he searched for the absolute Good and the absolute Truth. Plato was beginning to move toward a monotheistic approach that would come to dominate all of Western society.

I believe the era of the rebirth of the Gods began when Nietzsche declared, in The Gay Science:

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it (Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 125, tr. Walter Kaufmann)?

At this point, a paradigm shift occurred. The collective Soul was changing, as She heard the lamentations of the long forgotten Deities. These types of changes do not happen overnight. Time is the handmaiden of Soul. I believe that Nietzsche's Daimon knew exactly how to inspire the great man to write these words that signalled a new day on the Earth. May we heed those long forgotten voices and revivify our world and our people.

The New Myth of Global Individuation

noreply@blogger.com (Zeteticus (Mark Dotson)) — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 04:02:00 +0000

History and anthropology teach us that a human society cannot long survive unless its members are psychologically contained within a central living myth. Such a myth provides the individual with a reason for being (Edward Edinger, The Creation of Consciousness, Jung's Myth for Modern Man, 1984, p.9).

For millenia, we humans lived largely estranged from each other. Most of us were unconscious of our peers around the world. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this began to change. Gradually, the wide world became more and more accessible and its people were able to better communicate, mainly as technology grew more and more sophisticated. We could say that technology has brought about a greater collective consciousness. There is no doubt this is true. The advent of the Internet has accelerated this phenomenon. We are much more aware of each other today than at any point in history. It is an amazing time to be alive!

Our society has adopted a myth that science and technology is the path to truth and freedom. I see this as part of the destiny of planet Earth. The Anima Mundi seeks global consciousness; all individual Souls will gain awareness of each other. She is using technology to bring this about. There are those who would try and drive a wedge between science and Soul, but this is a waste of time. Science is simply another story we tell; technology is its handmaiden. These tales are used by Soul just as effectively as the Greek myths of long ago were used to lay the foundation of Western culture.

This movement toward global consciousness began in the nineteenth century when the telegraph was invented. In a book entitled, The Victorian Internet, author Tom Standage argues that the real qualitative shift in global communications occurred when use of the telegraph became widespread. The ability to communicate across great distances was the greatest boon to global awareness since the invention of the printing press.The advent of the Internet was a huge quantitative shift in global communications.

We know from studying depth psychology that Soul is composed of many constituent elements, or archetypes. Most of the time, these are unconscious of one another. The World Soul is similarly composed. It is made up of all the billions of individual Souls on planet Earth. We are beginning to become more aware of each other as the distance between us diminishes daily. This is quite similar to what C.G. Jung envisioned as health for the troubled psyche, i.e. integration of the various constituent parts. He called this individuation. This is occurring on a global scale.

Everyday, we communicate with people all over the world. Bits and packets fly to and fro around the globe, fueling the evolutionary process that will eventually enable a leap of human consciousness. When we are more aware of each other, we are able to love each other. When we love each other, war will end and greed will be a thing of the past. This is the new myth we have formulated. Listen closely to the story.......

The Death Of Monotheism

noreply@blogger.com (Zeteticus (Mark Dotson)) — Sat, 08 Dec 2012 23:36:00 +0000

Sunflower head, by Takkk

In his greatest work, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed that "God is dead." This means several things. First of all, the philosophical abstraction known as "God" to institutional religion, especially Christianity, has met its demise in Western culture. Secondly, it means the dualistic metaphysic of Plato is no longer viable. It also means the point of centrality (monotheism) that once undergirded Western culture has been ripped away. After Nietzsche, because we didn't know where to turn, we were left teetering on the brink of a dark abyss, of which Soul is the bridge across.

Giordano Bruno, in the sixteenth century, showed that there is no center to the universe at all. According to the Hermetic maxim of correspondence, we can also claim that there is no center to God, the universe, or the human Soul. The concept of centrality has fallen away gradually in human thinking. After concluding there is no center to the universe, thinkers realized this was not only a physical characteristic of Nature, but of Soul as well. The idea was actually a projection of what we believed existed in God and Soul. Eventually, however, the projection was withdrawn and we were faced with the stark reality that God, Soul, and Universe are all acentric and polytheistic realities.

The multifariousness of Nature is manifested in all Her creations. The above photo is but one example. This beautiful sunflower head is metaphorical of the living Beings that compose our Souls and the World Soul. There are many such examples in Nature, if we were more aware of them.

The Copernican theory did manage to make the Sun the center of the solar system instead of the Earth, but it still required a center. Bruno opposed this and claimed that we live in an acentric universe. This is the predominant theory today. The concept of centrality is a product of a control mentality. For example, having a central figure as the head of a religion or state to promote and perpetuate control. When a center is required, there is usually a lack of freedom in religion, society, or nation.

When released from the tyrannical imperialism of monotheism by the death of God, man has the opportunity of discovering new dimensions hidden in the depths of reality's history. He may discover a new freedom to acknowledge variousness and many-sidedness. He may find, as if for the first time, a new potency to create imaginatively his hopes and desires, his laws and pleasures (David L. Miller, The New Polytheism, p. 3-4).

The proclamation of God's death paved the way for a new epoch of freedom. If centrality suggests control, acentrality suggests theological and psychological liberty. "The death of God gives rise to the rebirth of the Gods" (ibid.). We are a privileged group to live in the Epoch of Soul.

Humans have always been polytheistic in nature. The word, polytheism, is a way to explain the plurality of living Beings that compose each and every person. Make no mistake, they are real Persons. Monotheism, on the other hand, is the promotion of a single, central figure at the center of the human Microcosm, which we call the Ego. The overinflated Ego is the Minotaur at the center of the maze of existence that consumes all others that challenge his authority. It is a male character because monotheism is very much a patriarchal phenomenon.

Polytheism is just as much a social phenomenon as it is a theological phenomenon. The idea of polytheism is inherent in the democratic ideal. The implication here is that there are many voices having a say in matters, rather than what occurs in totalitarian societies. True human nature demands democracy. Because we have many Voices within us, the best form of government for humans is to include the many voices of the people. As above, so below.

Our true nature as multifaceted selves leaves no room for an autonomous, overruling entity. Our identities are not fixed because we are composed of many equally real, but distinct personalities. Variety is the spice of life!

I would like to remind my readers that Reality is paradoxical in nature and that one truth, such as the truth of our polytheistic nature, does not totally exclude what truth there is to be found in monotheism. Reality is paradoxical, meaning we can simultaneously adhere to seemingly contradictory truths and not be inconsistent. The truth of the One and the Many has long been a problem for Western philosophy. For me, it's not a problem at all because I believe one can hold such views in dialectical tension.

Most of the ideas I write in support of have long been neglected in the West. There have been overemphases on matter, the body, monotheism, spirit, etc. I try to give a voice to those truths that have been ignored for such a long time. Also, I try to reject an either/or mentality in an attempt to see Reality in synthesis.

Soul Is The Twilight Zone

noreply@blogger.com (Zeteticus (Mark Dotson)) — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 01:28:00 +0000

There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition. And, it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone (Rod Serling).

That's right, you've heard those words many times before; Rod Serling, in his unique way, providing one of the opening monologues for The Twilight Zone. It never struck me before, but these words are a wonderful description of Soul. Perhaps Mr. Serling had this in mind when he penned these words. I don't know, but there is a lot of truth packed into them.

First of all, we are quite familiar with the three dimensions of tangibility. The fourth dimension is time, and all four together are usually taken to be what physicists call "spacetime." What would a fifth dimension be like? Rod Serling tells us it is "beyond that which is known to man." This is no different than Heraclitus' attempted description of Soul:

You could not discover the limits of Soul even if you traveled by every path in order to do so; such is the depth of its meaning (qtd. in The Presocratics, by Philip Wheelwright, p. 72).

Soul is "as vast as space and as timeless as infinity." Same idea. Soul is limitless. It is the most important idea that has ever arisen in the human imagination. In this fifth dimension, time and space are totally meaningless. They are mere creations of the human mind that facilitate the framing of our experience of the three dimensions. In other words, time and space mitigate the vastness and infinite nature of Soul in order that we might live day-to-day lives and interact with this world. In this way, we see our lives as having some semblance of "normality." But, all the while, we have this churning, infinitely powerful Maelstrom at the very core of our being.

The Twilight Zone is not a physical location we can travel to via spacetime. "It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition." This is a perfect description of what Plato called The Metaxy, which I have discussed before in this forum many times, especially in my article, On The Wings Of A Dream. It is also the same as Henry Corbin's idea of Mundus Imaginalis. The Twilight Zone is Soul.

Serling's usage of the word, "twilight," in naming his show was probably not an accident. Serling was a very learned man. Undoubtedly, he knew the implications of the word. "Twilight" is half-light, half-darkness, the dusk of the day. Is it the "in-between" state, or The Metaxy. Soul is the middle-ground between light and darkness, Spirit and Matter.

He names it as "the dimension of imagination." That is Soul in a nutshell, if one could describe Soul in a nutshell.

Image is the irreducible element in experience. Conversely, the essence of experience is condensed and carried within images. According to Omer, images “both mediate and constitute experience” (2008). Images are the glue image (Soul And Soullessness, by Karen Jaenke).

Soul is imagination, a cavernous treasury—to use an image from St. Augustine—a confusion and richness, both. (James Hillman, Revisioning Psychology, 1975).

Serling says "it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge." These are excellent metaphors for light and darkness, the light of knowledge and the blackness of fear in the depths of human being. Soul is that whirling Vortex that pulls everything down into the depths and, simultaneously, raises everything up into the heavens. Soul is a metaxical tourbillion that primarily exhibits a rhizomal motion. It simultaneously expands consciousness outward and inward, away from and toward one's fellow humans.

Watch a few episodes sometimes. When you do, think about these words and see if you agree with my assessment of this wonderful emanation of the Soul of Rod Serling.