Dream:

One thing we ought never forget:
almost half our life is passed
in a more or less unconscious state.
The dream is specifically
the utterance of the unconscious.
~ CGJUNG CW16

I was at the gynecologist's in a dentist chair, and the doctor said he had to do a hysterectomy. Taking out a long pair of pliers, he warned me (nicely, jovial, matter-of-fact) that it would hurt. I panicked. Begged for pain pill. He said I could have 'something light.' Best he could do. I had on a red tank top, nothing else, and this was obviously a giving birth thing. (I used to teach Lamaze.) Here comes pain, but grin and breathe! No choice. Birth in reverse maybe, and a sort of rape. At any rate, as he starts, I'm aware that Robert Lovelace is there on my right side! He's furious. Is going to kill the doctor! I'm helpless, speechless, and -- maybe in league with him.....? I think so, but am also horrified. Killing? I'm afraid. I see his things (Lovelace) on the sofa by him. Handwritten papers, letters or manuscript, and beneath it, a large ugly exacto knife! He's just waiting.... it's going to happen... I can't stop him...

I wake up. With a horrible pain in my low guts.

But the loss of the uterus -- menopause? -- I was thinking it's a time of female power, too, the day before.

Letting go of that earth mother life. What do I (we, as woman) birth now?

So why Lovelace? The tale of Clarissa captured me (as it did for 150+ years all of Europe let's not forget ) because I see Richardson beginning to tell again in the West a tale of self, Tao, as we crest the age of enlightenment. (New crest here.) It takes until DHLawrence to begin to tell its deep roots; there begins a resolution. But is Clary soul/unconscious, Lovelace body/consciousness? Could say art & science re creation. Or dream and hypotheses/ or even calculation/ cognition. Beloved and Lover. But this LOver, like the old Gnostic demiurge Yaldabaoth, has no idea, but maybe a sneaking suspicion (because he is conflicted -- which is the whole tale...) that he is the alchemist inside the pelican, beaker, cauldron, and on stage, too. Master and homunculus. He is acting on himself. Imprisoned, raped as he rapes; part of the creation, both creator and creation at once. The position of the artist.

So the dream? Eros is creation moving thru us, matter and soul, divine and mundane. A state of tension: Torque. Pliers. Blade. Is this--the act of destruction if creativity is taken out, away from me?

Only if I think that...

He--the animus--comes to save me with this realization that he stands by me, with me? He's the Red Knight of alchemy. My telling him that the murder, stopping the act isn't necessary? My conflict with wanting it? He needs to realize, too. He's the same tormented god that stands in my doorway.

The only thing that resolves this is compassion. Sympathy for him. Having faith in myself and life and creation and the work. The trust of quiet destiny.

Deborah

Maureen writes:

Your dentist/gyno dream haunts me. The guy with pliers reminds me of Blake's Urizen, the coldly analytic Logos looking down on the World with measuring callipers. Also Bluebeard, the pointy beard like a knife (Jung mentions this somewhere). And women's UFO abduction dreams in which they're usually being operated on to remove, or implant a foetus. Yet it's also an initiation, a kind of tantric dismemberment forcing creative energy upward, from biologic (spleen/sexual chakra) to its higher octave (throat/creative expression). Oops, forgot it was your dream.
 

(note: As more of a supermarket-pantheist and old-timey style Greek of an Oscar Wilde/Thomas Jefferson/Thomas Hardy variety, it's harder to see my dreams in terms of Christian imagery. But, as Jung has it, dreams draw archetypal elements from the collective unconscious, as well as from one's present culture and disposition. There's also a generational difference between myself and C.; we'll each wear different blinders, carry different flashlights. So all in all, her approach helps to open me:) 

from C, 11/5/03 11:31 AM

Well, here's my interpretation of the dream.

You do not say when you had the dream (first one).

Dentist chair suggests that the work was going to be done on your mouth or its contents.. Pliers also more indicative of pulling teeth than extracting the usual baby.

So let's say this oral surgeon (!) is going to do some procedure that involves your mouth - voice - lungs perhaps - perhaps all the chakras above the uterus. Had you already had hysterectomy when you had this dream?

Remember that I'm the one who believes we can have orgasms in this very area as well as the genital and anal kind. No reason you can't have 'em all at the same time for that matter. My budgie Johnny used to have oral orgasms sing and sing and fluff his feathers and look daft with joy and music.

Giving birth, yes, yes, yes, of the animus, who only goes negative when feeling trapped, overlooked, unrecognized, unvalued, overvalued, isolated. The animus is part of the Self. The animus is the spirit, and I'd like for a moment\ to leave out the standard version of its being the masculine in a woman. It is Self, spirit, breath, life, singing, communication.

Birth in reverse maybe, yes. Wait for it.

A sort of rape. (A sort of not-rape too.)

Robert Lovelace appears right after you mention birth and rape and LaMaze. On your right side. He's furious. Is going to kill the doctor....

Behold, you have just given birth, from your mouth and throat and lungs and Self Robert Lovelace, a separate individual, who has a right I think to protest a bit at this sudden banishment from his privileged seat in the Garden of your heart.

At right side. In the place of Jesus. And there he shall sit at the right hand of .......

Mother almighty. Okay, goddess-Mary, you have just given birth to a new babe, a new ugly/beautiful Savior, who has a critical role to play in the new myth. It's been coming all these years. You may let him visit as Negative Animus but you never need to feel the least qualm about kicking him out if he's doing something kickable like telling you you're unloved or unlovable.

Exacto knife he never uses. (just a jackknife has Macheath dear.) You are in league with him and have been all along -- nobody's been killed though here. It's time for you and him to be separate beings -- peers.

DID YOU KNOW THAT PSYCHE HAS A KNIFE WITH HER WHEN SHE TAKES THE LAMP TO LOOK AT EROS? I HAVEN'T CHECKED THIS BUT NEUMANN MADE QUITE A POINT OF IT.

You don't need to let go of the earth mother life, you can play it or not play it as the script develops. I only said goddess-Mary above because of the right hand of God. the Father. As above so Below.

you were not helpless at all, any more than Psyche was helpless when Eros came to rescue her. it's the end of the all or nothing stage. you feel completely weak and then pretty soon something has shifted in the paradigm that is your life and the lives of those around you.

the lord bless thee and keep thee and the lady too.

this is very rough but the essential thoughts are there among the weeds. you'll know what's for you and what is not.

xxxxx C




(carolynn and Lily concur)

from Deborah November 06, 2003 9:32 AM

It's one thing to read Jung, the lexicon etc., the myths. Quite another thing to realize what it means because it's been your footsteps, your own shadow and light.

>>You do not say when you had the dream (first one).>> 

I looked back. sept 4 2000.

Had you already had hysterectomy when you had this dream?>>

No. Didn't know I would be having one!

>>Remember that I'm the one who believes we can have orgasms in this very area as well as the genital and anal kind.

women are so whole body anyway.

>>Giving birth, yes, yes, yes, of the animus, who only goes negative when feeling trapped, overlooked, unrecognized, unvalued, overvalued, isolated. The animus is part of the Self. The animus is the spirit, and I'd like for a moment\ to leave out the standard version of its being the masculine in a woman. It is Self, spirit, breath, life, singing, communication.

Birth in reverse maybe, yes. Wait for it.

A sort of rape. (A sort of not-rape too.)

Robert Lovelace appears right after you mention birth and rape and LaMaze. On your right side. He's furious. Is going to kill the doctor....

Behold, you have just given birth, from your mouth and throat and lungs and Self Robert Lovelace, a separate individual, who has a right I think to protest a bit at this sudden banishment from his privileged seat in the Garden of your heart.>>

Lovelace says at one point, “Can you expect to narrow and confine such a passion as mine?”

>>At right side. In the place of Jesus. And there he shall sit at the right hand of .......>>

And don't forget the Orphic mysteries, as cribbed and recited in the creed: "He descended into hell. The third day He arose again from the dead." All that has to be in the "Christ" symbol or I can't connect to that mythos at all. It is, after all, 'his' true story, the historical, archetypal source for Christ. Even Augustine (the source of so many distortions) couldn't grasp/accept until he heard metaphorically the symbols that point to archetype.

I have to intellectualize to accept ~(+/-) the "divine" on that matrix level--but it's the personality rebirthed through art, speaking through the mask, that makes me connect.

Never did eye see the sun unless it had first become sunlike... —Plotinus

(and that works both ways.)

That is the Lovelace/Clarissa fascination. A long long book you fall asleep with, that lets you live in it fully, exploring that line between conscious and unconscious. 

>>Mother almighty. Okay, goddess-Mary, you have just given birth to a new babe, a new ugly/beautiful Savior, who has a critical role to play in the new myth. It's been coming all these years. You may let him visit as Negative Animus but you never need to feel the least qualm about kicking him out if he's doing something kickable like telling you you're unloved or unlovable.>>

I always stood up to my dad. Now I wish I'd not taken sides so firmly. He was so alone.

>>Exacto knife he never uses. (just a jackknife has Macheath dear.) You are in league with him and have been all along -- nobody's been killed though here. It's time for you and him to be separate beings -- peers.

DID YOU KNOW THAT PSYCHE HAS A KNIFE WITH HER WHEN SHE TAKES THE LAMP TO LOOK AT EROS? I HAVEN'T CHECKED THIS BUT NEUMANN MADE QUITE A POINT OF IT.>>

Suicidal psyche. How I wonder did this myth evolve into that? Metaphor... We die until we see we're immortal? Psyche's stubborn insistence on seeing Eros isn't resolved until *she becomes a deity as well.* That is, the higher mysteries absorbed, the lower mysteries understood as steps to get there. All are precious... if I can still use that word. :)

>>You don't need to let go of the earth mother life, you can play it or not play it as the script develops. I only said goddess-Mary above because of the right hand of God. the Father. As above so Below.>>

The historian reminds me: the Holy Ghost was feminine in the original Greek.

"it's the end of the all or nothing stage." Yes. And that's getting out from behind ego's shadow, the thing blocking your view. I have to stand as centered as I can.

>>this is very rough but the essential thoughts are there among the weeds. you'll know what's for you and what is not.

Thank you much--and the other two Graces.

x's
Deborah
 

from C 11/6/03 10:09 AM

Can you remember any more about the dentist-doctor fellow? He is definitely a positive animus figure -- if only in the dream. He prepares you for the operation -- tells you it's going to hurt, allows mild amelioration (is that a word?) -- and in fact it hurts only before (in fear) and after (I could go into a theory of why the lower gut but I'm going to leave that - maybe he was hiding in utero or in gut, you have compassionate guts! )

Anyway, the minute you connect this operation about to happen painfully with birth, lo! Poor displaced Loveless (he's not and never was, as we know to our peril) is there at your right side. So the operation is essentially in the imagination.

All the worst things are in the imagination. And the best. And all the art to come.

I just read my Brittanica on Apuleius. Not enough there but he wrote quite a lot of things that seem to be still around. I wonder who reads them.

I've never liked the fellow -- something nasty and smirking in his tone -- apparently this is quite a common reaction. His affectation, etc.

Still I forgive him everything for writing that story (or writing it down).

I meant to say: negative animus is hard to pin down -- he is liable to form alliances with the Shadow, the Devil, the negative anima, the negative mother, etc. etc. etc. and poor you don't know what's going on. In actual Jungian analysis you sort of go through these archetypes as they become focused through dream images -- and as you work with them you sort of project them "out there" as separate entities, and you wind up with something like -- something very like -- a whole deck of Tarot cards with whom you can work because you have some "distance" from them.

Enough -- too much -- for now.

C

ao writes:

>>U have a neg animus, lovey!>>

You mean--Heathcliff? He doesn't come so often. Now it's more that nice Mr. Lovelace.

>>Wh I learned fr astrol: 5th house rules kids n creative works. kids are body, works , soul. Once they are out in the manifest world they have TO BE LET GO! n form their own independ relationships, just as our kids do. That has helped me enormously in deal w/rejections of all kinds. 5th house rules what we GIVE, so no strings. Try thinking that way n it will save u fr the Diet of Worms!>>

>>5th h is nat house of Leo ruled by Sun n Sun nev takes back its rays n wh u think ab it, our inner Sun DIVINE Guest, is source of all our true gifts anyway. Sticky ego gets in way........>>

That is great wisdom, dovie.

love

ao

Deborah on 11/6/03 10:22 AM

Will think on the dream doctor. Positive? I liked him not. He was crafty. He was patriarchal putting-one-over.

(O my negative animus...)

Lovelace distinctly at my right. (And I'm so bad at orienting by direction consciously. And thoughts, words, numbers flip over for me like fish.) I must turn clockwise to face him. The priest circumambulating at the sacrifice...

But the examination, the exploration, exposing and taking out (alchemy's dissolve!) the figures... then taking them back in consciousness (coagulate!) ----- is that not what we do when we write? what art 'does'?

Sometimes I feel like I'm exorcising something for a whole generation. Gut pain. Yes, this is a real exorcism, isn't it?

x's

Deb

from C November 06, 2003 11:04 AM

What doctors and dentists might be involved -- Hippocrates -- Esclapius -- Hephaestos (craft) -- Mercury -- (I had all my fillings replaced)? Not confined to the Greeks though I always return to them.

Of course it's what we do when we write. And paint. And read. And play.

You're exorcising something for a hell of a lot more than a whole generation, Madam. All the generations since Genesis 1. You're not doing it alone, though it may feel that way. That's one of the things about research and hot trails, it's so exciting.

What else were you doing arouond the time of the dream? Also: nine months before?

I'm excited by the fact that it's Clarissa and Lovelace who are the foundation in so many ways of the novel. And something I read in Brittanica: that Apuleius's GOLDEN ASS or METAMORPHESES is 'the earliest Latin novel extant in its entirety."...."which secured for him an especial influence on modern fiction after the Renaissance." The Psyche myth seems to be his own -- but we know it partly for the lover-in-the-dark theme (EAST O'THE SUN AND WEST O'THE MOON, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST). I think we're drawn to this theme partly because it speaks to every woman -- or says something so true about love and faith and the relationship between the sexes -- and partly because it's time to become a little more conscious, and the novel is our medium or one of them. We're lucky to be living in the era of Metafiction or Postmodernism or whatever they're calling it this week.

And like all forms of becoming conscious, the attitude you have toward the work is part of the work. Both cause and result. A process, and a philosophy. For all seasons. Evolving.

C

from Deborah November 07, 2003 4:16 PM

C wrote: >>You're exorcising something for a hell of a lot more than a whole generation, Madam. All the generations since Genesis 1. You're not doing it alone, though it may feel that way. That's one of the things about research and hot trails, it's so exciting.>>

Yes--it's the work of our age, and as you say, we're all at it. Exceptin' mebbe Jerry Falwell.

Through pedantry denies,
It's plain the Bible means
That Solomon grew wise
While talking with his queens.
--Yeats

(Negative animus does go back aways, don't it? )

>>I'm excited by the fact that it's Clarissa and Lovelace who are the foundation in so many ways of the novel.>>

The Birth of Tragedy. Your friend Surette.

I have the Robert Graves translation of Golden Ass.... when Psyche's throwing herself off cliffs, I guess it doesn't strike me as suicide, because I think of the orphics throwing themselves down Etna. I guess I automatically (machine that I am) think it's a metaphor, the same way I look at the whole myth. But how did the ancient see it? I think all of life was a symbol, lived symbolically, for them. We've simply become so conscious, so awake, so enlightened, that we insist this glare is reality.

>>And like all forms of becoming conscious, the attitude you have toward the work is part of the work. Both cause and result. A process, and a philosophy. For all seasons. Evolving.>>

Beautiful, C. Thanks for this. Helps me step back.

And here's the next stage. Occurs to me the doctor is our Carl Gustav archetype* -- and he's smiling at me as he opens me. Dammitall--birthing, the knife, the erotic trickster Lovelace! What a fool I am! This is the stuff of Artemis. Dark-side-of-the-moon goddess, goddess of the hunt and goddess of childbirth. And a virgin. Twin sister of Apollo.

Throw that in the cauldron. Simmer on low heat...

The hunter, the tooth; the lover, the kiss.  Penetrator and Beloved. The softness of the dead. The warm, wet head of the newborn against my thigh.

x's
Deborah 

****
**
*

Follow up

"...transference as an instrument in treating neurosis. The analyst's entry into the patient's fantasies serves to bring up these fantasies from the unconscious, and to free the attached libido...."
 

21 Oct. 04

Tonight, I open up Estes, and she says:

What are the soul's needs? They lie in two realms: nature and creativity. In
these realms lives Na' ashjeii, Spider Woman, the great creation spirit of
Dineh. She gifts her people with protection. Her purview, among others is
teaching the love of beauty.

The soul's needs are found in the hovel of those three old (or young,
depending on what day it is) sisters -- Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos --who
make the red thread, meaning the passion, of a woman's life, tying them off
as each is completed and the next begun. They are found in the woods of the
huntress spirits, Diana and Artemis, both of whom are wolf women who
represent the ability to hunt, track, and recover various aspects of the
psyche.

****

And so this dream was a process I now come to the end of. A life change dream. The old dies, the new opens. I claim my animus as separate and as also myself. We run.

***

That I am I.

That my soul is a dark forest.

That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest. That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back.

That I must have the courage to let them come and go.

That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women.

There is my creed. He who runs may read. He who prefers to crawl, or go by gasoline, can call it rot.    ~DHLawrence

***

(wolf howl)

***

***

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

from alice:

Some insights:

1. The abstract principle of the feminine is yin. Receptivity, containing/pouring forth [duality].

2. This universal was considered divine n personified as "Goddess"

3. The duality implicit in the process allows for many many archetypal aspects of YIN. Thus developed an incredible variety of named deities in all cultures. The important thing to remember is that polytheism is not worship of many gods/goddesses but recognition of the different aspects of YIN n YANG. YANG/YIN are the primal coniunctio of Sun/Moon [Self/ego; who we really are/who we think we are.

4. Thus every woman alive is a personification of 'goddess' n every man's anima likewise.
In tantra in India, sacred lovemaking, sex, involves the man seeing his partner as 'goddess'.[ I have a lovely painted cloth hanging, bought in Nepal of Krishna n the Gopi maidens, which my darling Walter called K n the Goofy Maidens! Myth: K. appeared to a group of shepherdesses in the moonlight. Each woke the next morning convinced that K had made love to her alone! Taken symb n applied to the psyche that makes a lovely truth - the inner coniunctio w/the Beloved Divine Guest!]

5. The number 3 n 3x3=9 are implicit in maiden, woman, crone. 9 mos gestation for a baby. Aries, spring equinox, Easter, to Capricorn, winter solstice, = 9 mos. Cap=earth sign ruled by Saturn=FORM. [3 Graces, Furies, Fates = fem.]

6. All the great primal goddesses - Isis, Astarte, Shin, Kali, Gaea have positive n negative, creative/destructive sides. Enormous power assoc w/nature herself. We witness this as I write n u read.Rememb they are personifications!!

7. The Mother Goddesses represent Mother Nature (Earth} which gives FORM to the Sun [Spirit's] Life, Light, Love creativity. Science, w/its loss of the sense of the sacred, misses out on pointing out the awe we shld have for the cosmos in wh we live!

8. In the body of ev woman, astrol. u have 3 major containers: breasts [nourishing],stomach [transforming], womb [giv form to life]. All 3 are ruled by the Moon, n sign Cancer, the Mother. The Age of Cancer, circa 8000-6000 BC was the Age of the Mother Goddess worship acc to archeology.

9. The archetypal contents [complexes] of psyche [Jung] match the planets in the cht.

10. Sun/Moon = +/-
Venus/Mars = -/+
Jupiter/Saturn = +/-
Uranus/Neptune= -/+

note: + = yang; - = yin

Mercury [Hermes] is hermaphroditic, neutral. Picture shoelaces as caduceus, Merc's staff. Merc=psychopomp = going up symb; Trickster going down. Merc is passepartout, communicating as thought.
Pluto is so far out it seems transpersonal n waiting for a partner to be discov. Will comment another time.

11. Pos. Moon = wife/mother; neg. = witch
Pos. Venus= love, beauty; neg. bitch. [N.B. Aphrodite, godd of love/war!} Libra, 7th house: partner/open enemy.
neg. Venus, bitch Process is relating.

12. Jung wrote of Eve, Helen, Mary, and Sophia as diff levels of feminine archetypes.

Roger Woolger n Jean Shinola Boden, both J analysts, have writt extensively on the goddess in every woman n implicitly in anima prjection.

Astrol: Moon is matrix of ego cosciousness. It is a satellite not a planet. Goes ar 12 signs in each cht ev moonth, reflecting Sun [Div. Guest; Self] . Rules tides n menstrual cycle n growth - physical/psychol.] Giving opportunity to reflect [inner Sun] Spirit in our daily life.

------------------------------------------------------------
Enough! Phew! For more, read my Jungian Symbolism in Astrology.

The Kingdom of Heaven is truly within!

love

ao

The old Jinn is always getting out of the bottle. And what a brilliant myth that was, Aladdin. What a projection for our own bottling up the "deity" (by that I mean the mystery, the source of things) so we can hold it in our mind, "capture it" --- for as soon as we do, it's lost to us. Isn't that what alice just said:

>>Problems arise the minute the personifications obscure the archetypal processes they represent. Always unveil the 'goddes' n think what processes they represent. Literalism is the demon at work - neg Saturn rules concretization!>>

x's

deborah

ao writes:

on jung-l, referring to Jung's exper wh he had his heart attack in the 60's. See MDR.

In a message dated 8/20/04 5:48:47 AM Pacific Daylight Time, jung-l writes:

was wondering what your impression of this was or, if it is not
getting too personal, did you have any kind of similar experience ? I
am asking this only because i sensed from your post that you have a
fearless relation towards death. I apologize if this question went
over the limit.

Well, I never thought I wld be asked such a quest but since you have, I might as well tell u that on Oct 9, 1949, I almost died fr a severe hemorrhage during a miscarriage. Liver size clots, agonizing pain as all the ligaments to the uterus were being strained. A spec nurse came in the room, she was emaciated, huge eyes, n I thought she was death coming for me. I turned my face to the wall n knew that I must turn n greet her, terrif as I was. So I did n she gave me a beautiful smile. Then up to op room, lost so much blood I lost almost all bloodpressure. I found myself in outer space, looking back at the earth ab the size of a dime. Found myself in a black as black cloud n a voice called out: "Can u love ENOUGH??? I felt that the entire world depended on my answer and I shouted Y-E-S! Y-E-S! The cloud dissolved n I saw the stars.

The next thing, I heard myself crying "Am I BAAAACK?" n the anesthesiologist said I was. They had pulled that big light down to 6" above me n hotwater bottles all around to keep me warm. Wh I was touched it felt as if I were cov w/ two feet of dry leaves. I opened my eyes n saw that my husb n mother were sitting close. Old Dr. Sullivan, who had been roused to save my life, then ordered hot sweet tea wh I drank in as life. Still do.

I finally went back to room n the 'death nurse' spent the entire night pushing air bubbles up the transfusion tube. Her love was enormous. The extraord thing was that I felt so STRONG that I cld lift the entire city of Paris!:] but I was so weak I cld not move any part of my body but my fingertips. I remember thinking I shld never forget that our strength is not physical! N I felt as if life, like a photo negative, was reversed - all the things I thought important, were not, n that I was to discov wh really mattered.

Three days later, they told me that my dear nurse had died!

It took me over a year n a half to regain strength - already had 2 wee ones, b 1947, 48 to care for. Lost handsful of hair.Prolapsed womb etc. Finally in '52, Beth was born n gynocol told me that in such a case hormones might put things back in order. They did.

About 10 yrs ago, I read that Emerson also went into outer space n looked back at small earth during a near death exper. So wh I read that Jung sev yrs later had the same exper I was greatly comforted. Prob other peop have as well.

Wh man went to the moon n we saw all those pics of stars etc. it all looked familiar!

------------

Wh I was 8, I spent a summer month w/my Grandma King in a rented house in Dublin, NH. I tried plowing w/a pencil attached by string to a kitten! Kit ran under house n almost strangled. Rescued. Scolded that the kit cld have died! No idea ab death but nxt day came across dead caterpillar. Buried it. Spent 3 nights terrified ab death. Then next morning reasoned that if ALL creatures die, it must be natural, if natural must be OK.

So went into frnt study n sat n made a deal w/God! If I served him as best as I cld, wld he give me a happy death?

Now comes the synchronicity! About 12 yrs ago, W n I, were invit to visit my cousin George n wife in Dublin NH. They had rented a house n gave dir.....it was the same house!!! So I was able to go into that same room n remind the 'powers that be' of the deal! [Tentatively, to be sure........not cert at all if I have done enough at my end.]

---------------------------

I will tell u ab Aberduffy Day [viz. BEEJUM BOOK] - 25 yrs ago I loved a dear, dear frnd, 10 yrs older, n I dreamt we were saying goodbye thru a chainlink fence, fingers touching. I was in tears knowing I wld nev see him again. [I haven't.] "Don't cry," he said. We will meet ag on Aberduffy Day."

Well, I was convinced that a festival A.D. must exist! So researched thoroughly, no luck. Know a few Gaelic roots n fig out Aber=river; duffy comes fr dubh=black. Black river=Styx, i.e. death!! So, celebrating Aberduffy Day sounds a lot nicer than dying. Hope u agree.

In The Beejum Book, Mr. Rathbone celebrates his. He was real n lived in the same hotel in Rome that we did. He ws Basil R's uncle. Very old but treated me, a 6/7 yr-old like an equal. I adored him.

Anyway, this is why I am cheerful ab my own demise. I am CERTAIN that it's easier than being born, n that my first reaction will be 'oh, how could I have forgotten!':] Like stage fright, wh u step on the stage a bubble of strength n instructions is released. I know, kind of, that I have done this before. As Jung said in the BBC interview, 'I'm not going anywhere, part of me has always been there.' [unus mundus].

God bless him!

phew!

love

ao

ps Don't mind the idea of being a flake a bit!:)

Ou sont les neiges d'antan? - Francois Villon

[Where are the snows of long ago?]
 

Deborah to our dear Anand:

I look back on the dreams I've had and see it's been a series. 1)The hand from the clouds was classic initiation (trickster included), followed closely by 2) snakes coming up from underneath me in bed. 3)The famous Dr. Jesus / Sacred Marriage dream. 4)The trek along a river, carrying a bundle of supplies on my head: I'm in a long train of people. I stop and let them go on without me. As I sit down, something stings me. Like the hand from the cloud in the first dream, I FELT this when I awoke. (The hand I felt all day.) 5)The dream of working my way across a bridge full of rushing water... riding on the back of some great creature, mike and shadowcatcher and someone else on foot beside me. I climb down from the creature and get into the water -- strong current! -- with them. They're frightened for me -- but I go on ahead just fine through all that fast rushing water -- and as the bridge turns down at its end, I see a city there... 6)Then--snake in the doorway (always doorways!), yellow or green -- I lean down to greet it eye to eye, afraid (again, others around me afraid for me), but it doesn't bite me; it changes color (yellow to green or other way around), and I wrap it in my shirt and carry it off with me. Cahoots! 7)The Apollo with the wound on his leg dream: this is the mark of Dionysos' birth. He's come to make love with me, a ritual--all very serious work, you see. 8) The dream of walking -- so many dreams in the full moon, like the ones I've always had -- a temple, flying on a book (magnificent! fearless!), a crone to teach me -- as a child. My whole life. But I'm walking in the neighborhood at night as I often did in my 5 years the Midwest, and where a great tall clump of ornamental wheat grass was, there was also an old red neck man harping on some lady, his wife. I lie down by the wheat and he comes over and tries to reach up my skirt. I see that he is the Christian fundamentalist Yahweh, and that he is just an old man. 9) Yahweh younger, crying at my door. (This one I can make peace with.)

I gave Elliott my reoccurring childhood dream from when I was 4-5, splitting off from the unconscious:

Dreaming restlessly, he was in a bleak swamp, in a rudderless boat on the current of a dark river. The boat’s hull was transparent, and he saw he was floating above submerged bodies that were carried along with him. Under him. They looked at him with gray, stillborn eyes, and he could hear the low murmur of their dream.

When I saw LOTR, the Towers, it quite freaked me out. Been there, Frodo!

What will the next dream be? Now I'm much more taken with day and awake, with the sun and Dionysos there sublimed into this place of ivy. We wait. We hold on.

Keep the faith... and let the dreams steep... it's been years for me to begin to see a pattern and I am / was not perched on the precipice as you were, releasing a great great energy as you transform.

x's

*******

4 sept 04 This needs adding. I wrote Suzanne:

Message 16570 of 16586 (dear god.)

Saturday, May 15, 2004 11:15 AM

Great Moyer's last night. Peter Singer talked about THE PRESIDENT OF GOOD AND EVIL: THE ETHICS OF GEORGE W. BUSH. His assessment of Bush at Kohlberg's law and order level says it all. This is getting stuck on the metaphor, stuck in the first hallway on the mystery ride to Hades, the crater; keeping to the cave.

nice link for LAWRENCE KOHLBERG'S STAGES OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT http://www.nd.edu/~rbarger/kohlberg.html

"You think that treasures should be buried? That is the opinion of avaricious men. For what is the use of hidden music? Mysteries are always mysteries, so long as they are not conveyed to profane ears." ~Celio Calcagnini

I loved it in WILDE, the scene where they enacted his telling those salt of the earth miners about Benvenuto Cellini. He trusted people to get it. Trusted too hard and deep, and they killed him just like they killed Socrates. That was part of his plan, too.

Looks like literalists control all the major powers now. Always have. The mystics and adepts and seekers and compassionate ones putter along peripatetically, not into power. The compassionate ones of great courage teach. And so make themselves expendable...

It's all there, this troubled business of the bully: Humans literally laying with him birth Minotaurs, beasts that enslave kingdoms, children for generations. O lord of deep compassion, speak to us -- how to use heart and art and any trick you can think of to help us out of this maze.

I've come to understand Eros and Psyche in my bones. It's not about love and sex and male and female--not about those mere conditions. Psyche is soul, is all, and psyche's function is to become the sacred marriage of realizing deity: consciousness as the deity in the heart, ego and Self always marrying and marrying and marrying. But the earthly Venus is misogynized Hesiodically (vbg) into the cruel mother-in-law of impossible tasks... no mortal will ever be good enough for her offspring! But they proceed because Eros loves the Soul and the Soul loves love, which is the deity, the source of all, the One, eternity, the Forms... so many symbols for things that aren't and can never be literal; the vanishing evanescence, that impossible-to-grasp inkling, the realization of deity. And that's the reason Psyche can't see her immortal lover: she's material, flesh and blood, and to look on him will only destroy his mystery, his godhood. (It's the old seeing the Buddha on the road. You know what to do if you're wise.)

Yet--Soul's literal grubbing siblings (women of course) tempt her to sneak a peek at her lover... and she gives in, seeking his literality, wanting to capture and hold his mystery. She lights the lamp, spills the flame, and in a flash, he's gone. (Just as with Orpheus looking back... or rather it's the tale told in opposites... same conclusion.) And she doesn't make love with him again until she becomes a goddess herself.

All the those tasks.... what are they about? They enact the initiate working her weary way through the mysteries to become an adept--which is simply letting go of the literal, and seeing the deity in all.

The Sacred Marriage isn't only about Union, dark and light; or union / incarnation, realizing your own Self. It's about finding the Self in another. And going on and finding the Self in all.

Make love, not war. We can do this.

x's

deb 

C's discovery in the first Chartres labyrinth at the first Jean
Houston conference: The way in is the way out.

We are never alone.

C

Saturday, May 15, 2004 1:14 PM

Eros, mediator of the Forms and their creations, is of Eternity, timeless time, and its material dependent, time itself. As for death, we find a connecting metaphor as Eros was used in the Anthesteria...

When the divine fields of motley flowers
Into the shady grove receive with open arms
The Bacchic dances performed by tender virgins...

The divine fields, the shores of Okeanos where Persephone was picking flowers... you can extrapolate the Bacchic Anthesteria festival and its mystery-wedding from this:

A happy and unique find is a krater in the Naples Museum, because the painting is clarified by an inscription. A winged youth throws a colorful embroidered ball to a hesitant woman. Looking outward but at the same time inward, she is resting one hand on a stele which bears the inscription. This stele is a horos, a boundary stone, and here it probably marks the boundary of the hesitant woman's home country, which she, wearing no ornament and lightly clad, must now leave. She does not reach for the ball, but looks with her shadow of a sly smile at the messenger who has thrown it to her. She will go. On the other side stands a woman with a grave expectant face, holding out to her a mirror and a tainia, a festive ribbon. The woman who thus hesitates is not a hetaira; she is a bride-to-be, but one who already knows. She would prefer not to travel this road.

Who the winged youth is and what the ball means we are told in a well-known poem by Anakreon:

Eros with the golden curls
Throws me the purple ball
And calls me to play with
The girl with the bright colored sandals.

It is Eros--golden curled in Anakreon, here dark-haired--who summons the girl to the game of love with the ball. The ball is an erotic message. Whence and wither? Eros is only the intermediary. What the hesitant woman thinks we are told on the inscription on the boundary stone: "They have thrown me the ball" --"they" in the plural, not any definite individual, even if the bridegroom is waiting in the background. The plural does not befit the language of ancient erotic poetry, but it does that of sepulchral epigrams: "The goddess of fate . . . led me down to Hades." Ordinarily they sent a messenger to act as guide, in this case, Eros. Often it was Hermes, the guide of souls. The woman to whom the daimon of love has been sent as messenger and guide hesitates to accept death fully, though it has already taken possession of her. She is unwilling, but she goes nevertheless to the great erotic adventure. For such was death in the atmosphere of the Anthesteria. Eros with the ball is an aspect of death.

~from The Greek Dionysian Religion of Late Antiquity in Kerenyi's
DIONYSOS 365-367)

Solipsistic.

sol·ip·sism:  n. Philosophy. 1. The theory that the self is the only thing that can be known and verified. 2. The theory or view that the self is the only reality. [Latin s½lus, alone; see s(w)e- below + Latin ipse, self + -ism.] --sol"ip·sist n. --sol"ip·sis"tic adj.

Just change self to Self. That's the difficulty, the journey. the path, the reason for the trip to hell... far as I can tell.

x's

deb

From: anand
Date: Sat May 15, 2004 2:55 pm
Subject: Re:  [Negative-Capability]

Yes, but timing is everything. Let us not come down too hard on the woman who hesitates-- a common error in our analysis. The waiting builds up the charge, if you will. There will be no distance between her and the act of crossing, when she acts from a bountiful knowing (Then the ego is swept along). Her knowing is not yet bountiful. Eros must reveal more.

We must yield to fate but not easily.

You know, the mind's timing is always awry. What if we made love only when the making-love impulse was bountiful in us, and not because the mind tells one to "grab" the opportunity presented by the lovely, willing woman? (Pure tantra.) What if we wrote to neg-cap only when that impulse was bountiful and spilled over, etc. What if we ate and slept and drank in such accord?

What is frustrating is that this requires a great deal of attention / energy, and the "I" is fearful of losing control. Yet the current state of affairs is also unsatisfactory-- the woman knows she needs to journey across.

Love,
- Anand

From: phoebe
Date: Sat May 15, 2004 6:37 pm
Subject: colored balls are flying
In a message dated 5/15/04 4:00:15 PM, anand writes:

<< Yet the current state of affairs is also unsatisfactory-- the woman knows she needs to journey across. >>

Yes, there is a need. I've been thinking about this, watching you two throw colored balls at each other. Thinking two things:

One, the hesitancy must be there because to cross over and surrender to love has and will always have immense complications for the woman. Not just the possibility of pregnacy, but (probably unacknowledged in the conscious mind) the willing damage of a closed and protected system.

Two, I think the story is the same but the stakes are slightly different in the modern world, at least in the West. The hesitant virgin has more choices. The step cannot be retracted, nor can she return to the same spot from which she stepped; but she may choose not to stay, and she may choose to wander around a bit. It is not the same absolute step that a virgin in Athens in 431 BCE would have taken.

xx
ph
 

From: "dmc" 
Date: Sun May 16, 2004 2:59 pm
Subject: Re: colored balls are flying
 

I see the tossing the ball, eros and death -- not in real or sexual terms but as soul and love / death, the force that moves all, that spawns in all times at once from the Void.

Experiencing those gradients, creating them, the pain and grief and joy of change. Life. We come to gain and lose everything. What a game! (And all of it just so the seeker can seek...) Then it's back to the bliss of death. The ONE... The union of unions.

...and ultimately back again on the wheel.

But it's myth, it's primal, this wonderful call to play. Beyond one sex or the other.

The Anthesteria --the on-line is excellent.

http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/BA/JO-Anth.html

So is Kerenyi's DIONYSOS. It's fascinating! The marriage there, the king's wife married to the god. It reflects the social order, as do all myths in their time. But the real myth goes beyond all that to air earth water fire and what moves them. I suppose it's the literal and their deep inherent mystery that we wonder at and can't keep hold of that first spawned them, then living the mystery thru ritual we find it eventually slips always again and we have to tell the story all over, all over in our own words in every age... to get back to that first grasping. It's always cupid and psyche, over and over.

Hence, C's play. And a marriage of east and west. (Or rather, it's rediscovery.)

That Lerner essay--he spoke to this so well. http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/index.cfm/action/tikkun/issue/tik0405/article/040511a.html

********************************************

 Jumping in to catch and toss:

I asked: "intelligible" is like conscious? consciousness? (as opposed to subliminable. :)

Mike: *I've always understood it as 'susceptible to recognition by the awareness'. Something like 'discernable', but using the mind-sense as opposed to any o the others.

Dick Shinnery*

deb: Ah. Like -- the thing possesses the consciousness. The understanding (hanging over you). It gives it to you.

Hm.

Stillpoint. The most distant north where east and west are one, near where the heavens plunge into the underworld and the sun sinks into the depths of night. The place of inversion and paradox. The source.

(the sun sinks into the depths of night... apollo shares his power with night.)

My mind keeps twisting around eros and psyche into apollo and persephone/night. An inversion. Greeks always hiding things in inversion.

eros the movement itself.

And the flaying of Marsyas. The piping contest makes sense. Pan is imitating the chariot of the sun in its courses. To confuse true longing's sound with that of the mere romping wild lawlessness of unbridled libido --- or no -- libido in service of want (our friend Hope as pure attachment) but not the true nature of longing, is truly a bad imitation.

I do have such sympathy with satyrs. But they're teachers, after all.

x's deb

C wrote: Gas (word) derives from Chaos which derives from Indo-European root meaning to gape or yell.

Same root for chasm. 

Ah! Etna. The mixing bowl, etc. Down to the light in the darkness.

Gape -- opening, or yell.... do you hear the sound of pipes?

Our looking down long noses at Chaos as disorder. Pick up this room, it's a pigsty!

That old inversion at work. Night and her peace, aligned with the stillpoint. Source of law and justice. By the gods, how inversion has raped her of her place and meaning.

That nice page on boxing pandora: [ http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~loxias/pandora.htm  ] They must have really feared what women symbolized. It all seems to dance around this "lost" thing.

I was just telling Liz she needs to go on the excavations. She needs to touch these things for their intuition, their "Intelligibility," (the lost foundation of magic; all that keeps us from connecting).

x's
 

nother topic but great link: Go to http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/czionism.html  and take the off ramp: "watch the video" 

Tuesday, June 29, 2004 11:50 AM

Phoebe:

Good day to all.

xx
ph
www.phoebewray.net
Coming:
Novella, Sailor of Kannar, Scrybe Press chapbook, late summer 2004
Short story, The Visitor, Fables.org, autumn issue 2004
Novel, Jemma7729: Inappropriate Behavior, EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy
Books, 2005

______________________________

deb:

_______________________________

_________________________________________

In a message dated 6/29/04 12:23:36 PM, deb writes:

<< basement full of hungry 13 year old boys... >>

tigers prowling ....

In a message dated 6/29/04 1:21:41 PM, deb writes:

<< It's not just a people who evolve the consciousness. It's all species... a
cosmos full, at least. That business about man having dominion over the
earth? A misunderstanding. It meant a responsibility. >>

I was immediately struck by a wonderful memory that lives behind my eyes, complete with the feel of the cold wind. Driving in New Mexico on an Interstate in the beginning of a blizzard, with huge trucks rolled and jack-knifed along the road every quarter mile, like tossed away toys. Could barely see. Put the window down to get a shock of air.

Overlooking the divided lanes and the carnage was the foothill of a mountain. Sitting at the tree-line, watching the road: a solitary coyote. I swear our eyes met. That somehow I zoomed in and he zoomed in (was too big for a female) and I shared his vision. Clearly the coyote drew some amusement from watching the two-foots and their stinking noise cower before the storm.

xx ph

www.phoebewray.net Coming:
Novella, Sailor of Kannar, Scrybe Press chapbook, late summer 2004
Short story, The Visitor, Fables.org, autumn issue 2004
Novel, Jemma7729: Inappropriate Behavior, EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy
Books, 2005

Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 07:54:06 -0400
From: C
Subject: Gardner on ethics of writing

John Gardner, THE ART OF FICTION

(in the next-to-last paragraph, just before the Exercises)

To write with taste , in the highest sense, is to write with the assumption that one out of a hundred people who read one's work may be dying, or have some loved one dying; to write so that no one commits suicide, no one despairs; to write, as Shakespeare wrote, so that people understand, sympathize, see the universality of pain and feel strengthened, if not directly encouraged to live on. This is not to say, of course, that the writer who has no personal experience with pain and terror should try to write about pain and terror, or that one should never write lightly, humorously; it is only to say that every writer should be aware that he might be read by the desperate, by people who might be persuaded toward life or death. It does not mean, either, that writers should write moralistically, like preachers. And above all it does not mean that writers should lie. It means only that they should think, always, what harm they might inadvertently do and not do it. If there is good to be said, the writer should remember to say it. If there is bad to be said, he should say it in a way that reflects the truth that, though we see the evil, we choose to continue among the living.

________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 09:08:00 EDT
From: phoebe
Subject: Gardner on ethics of writing+ a dream

Good words. Something to think about. Thanks.

Now, really weird dream last night in which I tried, cleverly, to get around a chain-link fence (baby moose stuck behind one in Wellesley on 6 o'clock news) and through a gate which was guarded, playfully, by numbers. The numbers were shape-shifters--mathematical shapes of triangles, rulers, compasses etc. Numbers and I were laughing, and I didn't really NEED to get though the gate. I seemed to be teasing the numbers and somehow they waggled ah-ah-AH! shards of air at me. "No, you can't come through. You know that." And more laughter.

The shapes I can connect to a nifty mathematical set I bought yesterday to send to my foster child in Senegal for her birthday, coming up soon. It's in a tin box and has plastic fulfillments of all the shapes I saw in my dreams--but what's the gate? I'm not especially mathematically challenged. In fact, of late, I've been doing sums in my head or on paper instead of using my calculator for the exercise. "My" kid wrote in her last letter that she is doing well in school and especially likes dancing and mathematics, hence the present.

So what do you Jungians make of that one? It was a fun dream and put a pot on my back-burner brain-cooker for a story.

Strange happening this morning. I woke up and couldn't find Sinjin. I pull the stair door to (odd turn of phrase, that) at night so he doesn't fall down the stairs, but apparently the cats had opened it a bit and I found him wandering around in the downstairs kitchen. He had gone down on his own and didn't fall. I would have heard that. He has fallen twice and he screams. It's a good thing that he did it, that he had the energy; a bad thing because he was lucky, not competent.

Beautiful day. Keep on mending AO.

xx
ph

________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 09:21:13 -0400
From: C
Subject: Re: Gardner on ethics of writing+ a dream

Great dream. Numbers order, "science," left brain? Any associations with
"chain" "link"? Threshold guardians - hmmmm. Starting gate-racetrack?

________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 14:54:48 -0000
From: anand
Subject: Re: Gardner on ethics of writing+ a dream

Ph:

Stumped. Just throwing out some ideas here for you to pick and choose. As C suggests, something to do with the thinking function (Abstract; visuo-spatial)?

Depending on your type: If thinking is not your dominant function, then it's proposing a more playful approach? If thinking is, then a suggestion to lighten up perhaps, or spend less time in the abstract.

Sometimes, the mood/atmosphere is the most important part of the dream-- enjoy the playfulness. (Message to lighten up delivered lightly. Mood is the message.)

All these shapes encircled within the fence. What would happen if they came out, or you invited them out, instead of your going in?

Actually, this would be the perfect segue into active imagination.

Wonderful dream!

- Anand

________________________________________________________________________ Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 11:03:37 -0400 From: deb
Subject: Re: Gardner on ethics of writing+ a dream

Your dream. Now that I'm through wondering at it, I find I am awed. Was reading yesterday about a book and thinking I should read it: Count Down by Steve Olson.

The ancients so grounded in numbers, and thinking this morning that they saw them as Forms. Not of or in the mind, but recollections of the true state.

Shaping matter. Numbers do that in a big direct way. As in:

the spatial arrangement of something as distinct from its substance; "geometry is the mathematical science of shape"

Akin to love and creation, conceptually. Important things, and I am so distanced from them. My passion for them is only superstitious.

But back to your dream. Jung is more concrete than I am. I catch too much on the wrapping paper and stuffing, so C et al will do a better job. But these numbers seem like Threshold Guardians. Tricksters, keeping you out.

The gates. Well, gates are my thing. The gates of the underworld, the journey to the origin, the places you speak to beings that give you real knowledge. And: There's an animal on the other side of the gates. A moose is a very hardheaded soul, and a tough survivor and not always kind. But I keep thinking of you childhood longing to speak to animals. To speak THEIR language. Could this be about that essential problem? It seems to define your life. Wonderful life it is...

Thinking on it.

Also--I CANNOT hold members in my head. Never could. Must have a pencil to do math or remember numbers -- thought I remember birthdays and things because I place them in TIME. Time I remember. Was good at math when it came to abstractions... could get excited at the middleschool idea of bases, and the meaning of the ways quantities can be dividend and married. Rounding and moving bricks of quantity: that I can do. And as I say, I was a whiz chem student, both organic and inorganic. I could orient and dimensional analyze until the cows came home, but not without a calculator. Mind trick games? Word games? I *hate* games. Thy make my eyes cross. They belong to other people, they are so distinctly their conundrum. But problem solving in real life? I'm a good person to have on the ship.

Thus -- numbers are emotional things. Have personalities and POWER.

I have never really made good friends with them.

In your dream, they guard your gate, they consciously try to distract you from the task of getting through. Yep, Threshold Guardians.

And they are obstacles, all right, for all of us. They reveal only a peek of nature, and are thus really distortions. Meaning, logic, reasons? Those are human concerns. The rest of Nature knows better than to bother with such petty mindgames. Nature is about getting the job done, growing the crystal in a great sigh of ahHA. Yet -- because nature is truly a fractal thing, also thinking its way around things rather than showing off (numbers and mathematics are always bragging) -- numbers don't really fit it. Numbers only play at fitting it. They make bangs and pops and booms that boys play with. They can mix animals up now, map things in a coarse way, thinking how good they are.

No, it wasn't numbers that sailed the great ships. It was the stars.

But this is a gate of language, too. Language which is about cognitive structures, living growing maps of meaning.

It's also life in all its brash what-it-IS that you seek to get to.

And oh--how we could go on about gates.

Basically, *you* have to steep it. Dreams speak a funny language, meanings that rub up against each other in odd unmeaning ways.

x's

_____________________________

Wed, 30 Jun 2004 11:41:16 -0400
From: C
Subject: Re: Re: Gardner on ethics of writing+ a dream

on 6/30/04 10:54 AM, anand wrote:

> Ph:
> > Stumped. Just throwing out some ideas here for you to pick and > choose. As C suggests, something to do with the thinking > function (Abstract; visuo-spatial)? etc.>>

Phoebe knows these guys. I'm not at all sure it isn't Phoebe who's the Threshold Guardian. Does the "Thresh" of Threshold come from the same root (ah) as Trees? Or is a threshold more like a haystack? Threshing machines... Oh Farmer Oak where are you when we need you? That Deborah is lusting around after you I expect., with her eyes crossed fetchingly.

________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 15:57:12 -0000 From: anandk
Subject: Re: Gardner on ethics of writing+ a dream

"eyes crossed fetchingly"

:-)))

Bit much, don't you think? Hard to imagine this, even with a cast
featuring Deb the siren.

- Anand

________________________________________________________________________ Message: 20 Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 12:19:29 EDT
From: phoebe
subject: Re: Gardner on ethics of writing+ a dream


In a message dated 6/30/04 11:07:05 AM, deb writes:

<< Basically, *you* have to steep it. Dreams speak a funny language, meanings that rub up against each other in odd unmeaning ways. >>

It's the way dreams take concrete recent memories (the chain-link fence and the moose in Wellseley) and mess with them that usually leads me to something. This was a vivid dream, and I realized that the fence was around the meadow from the previous night, where I saw the mountain lions. A part of that field, at least. I didn't see the fence the first time because the moose had not arrived. I saw stone fences and off to the right, a wooded area, which now has a chain-link fence. It's a short fence, not a lengthy one. Bigger than a cage but not keeping anything in nor holding anything out -- which is, I suppose, why the trickster guardians are there. Monitoring passages. Lions and tigers and moose oh my. The moose didn't make it to my dream, but the fence that was in the news report did. The moose was protected by the fence in the news report -- it kept it off the roadway.

It's a nice story, actually. A young moose -- only 400-500 pounds -- wandering around in Wellseley, and police and animal folks trying to catch it. People got involved, too. Small for a moose, but big enough to hurt someone, esp kids, so there was a pursuit. Then the villagers were saying, poor thing is probably scared or looking for its mama etc etc, being nice and wary but not fearful. Traffic was stopped on Route (a BIG deal in late afternoon) so the moose could cross the road.

It found a little pond and took a swim, with people hanging back, curious but trying not to scare it. Animal folk had their tranquilizer guns ready but didn't want to use them. Finally baby moose wandered off into a big woodland. Police said: it's not going to hurt anyone there, and set up a neighborhood watch just to monitor, but as of now, it hasn't reappeared. Probably meandering on down towards Worcester.

I was thrilled that everyone showed such restraint and friendliness. Guess that's why I borrowed the fence.

Happy story.

In a message dated 6/30/04 11:43:19 AM, cbishop@interlog.com writes:

<< Does the "Thresh" of Threshold come from the same root (ah) as Trees? Or is a threshold more like a haystack? Threshing machines >>

Nope, comes from Latin and Old Lithuian meaning to beat ... as grain. The first dancing places were often the threshing grounds. Perfect for busy feet -- round and hard-packed earth in a place where the wind blew.

xx ph

Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 19:57:10 EDT From: IonaDove Finished gorgeous, moving bk FATHER JOE by Tony Hendra.

New aha! for me: I always thought that it was 'laborare et orare' work and pray. FJ ""s 'laborare est orare = work IS prayer, so whatever we do, fr humblest to noblest work = prayer!

This is like disvov a huge hidden bankacct! if we make this connection conscious, all falls into place.

Wantd to share this.

Much love ao ________________________________________________________________________  Thu, 1 Jul 2004 12:58:05 -0400

From: deb

C writes: >>Phoebe knows these guys. I'm not at all sure it isn't Phoebe who's the Threshold Guardian. Does the "Thresh" of Threshold come from the same root (ah) as Trees? Or is a threshold more like a haystack? Threshing machines... Oh Farmer Oak where are you when we need you? That Deborah is lusting around after you I expect., with her eyes crossed fetchingly.>>

Oh yeah. Good thinking!

More on threshold... and I keep thinking of gates, the stone lintel, the sound of pipes as the door swings open.

thresh·old (thrµsh"½ld", -h½ld") n. 1. A piece of wood or stone placed beneath a door; a doorsill. 2. An entrance or a doorway. 3. The place or point of beginning; the outset. 4. A point separating conditions that will produce a given effect from conditions of a higher or lower degree that will not produce the effect, as the intensity below which a stimulus is of sufficient strength to produce sensation or elicit a response: a low threshold of pain. [Middle English thresshold, from Old English therscold, threscold. See ter.-1 below.]

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WORD HISTORY: Perhaps the tradition of carrying the bride over the threshold is dying out, but knowledge of the custom persists, leading one to wonder about the -hold or the thresh- in the word threshold. Scholars are still wondering about the last part of the word, but the thresh- can be explained. It is related to the word thresh, which refers to an agricultural process. This process of beating the stems and husks of grain or cereal plants to separate the grain or seeds from the straw was at one time done with the feet of oxen or human beings. Thus, the Germanic word ·therskan, or by the switching of sounds called metathesis, ·threskan, meant "thresh" and "tread." This association with the feet is probably retained in Old English therscold or threscold (Modern English threshold), "sill of a door (over which one treads)."

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ter.-1. Important derivatives are: trite, detriment, thrash, thresh, threshold, turn, contour, return, drill1, throw, thread, trauma, truant. ter.-1. To rub, turn; with some derivatives referring to twisting, boring, drilling, and piercing; and others referring to the rubbing of cereal grain to remove the husks, and thence to the process of threshing either by the trampling of oxen or by flailing with flails. Variant *tr¶-, contracted from *tre.-. I. Full-grade form *ter(.)-. 1.a. TRITE, TRITURATE; ATTRITION, CONTRITE, DETRIMENT, from Latin terere (past participle trºtus), to rub away, thresh, tread, wear out; b. TEREDO, from Greek ter¶d½n, a kind of biting worm. 2. Suffixed form *ter-et-. TERETE, from Latin teres (stem teret-), rounded, smooth. 3. Suffixed form *ter-sko-. a. (THRASH), THRESH, from Old English therscan, to thresh; b. THRESHOLD, from Old English therscold, threscold, sill of a door (over which one treads; second element obscure). Both a and b from Germanic *therskan, *threskan, to thresh, tread. II. O-grade form *tor(.)-. 1. TOREUTICS, from Greek toreus, a boring tool. 2. Suffixed form *tor(.)-mo-, hole. DERMA2, from Old High German darm, gut, from Germanic *tharma-. 3. Suffixed form *tor(.)-no-. TURN; (ATTORN), CONTOUR, (DETOUR), (RETURN), from Greek tornos, tool for drawing a circle, circle, lathe. III. Zero-grade form *tr-. DRILL1, from Middle Dutch drillen, to drill, from Germanic *thr-. IV. Variant form *tr¶- (< *tre.-). 1. THROW, from Old English thr³wan, to turn, twist, from Germanic *thr¶w-. 2. Suffixed form *tr¶-tu-. THREAD, from Old English thrÆd, thread, from Germanic *thr¶du-, twisted yarn. 3. Suffixed form *tr¶-mö (< *tre.- or *t-.-). MONOTREME, TREMATODE, from Greek tr¶ma, perforation. 4. Suffixed form *tr¶-ti- (< *tre.- or *t-.-). ATRESIA, from Greek tr¶sis, perforation. V. Extended form *trº- (< *tri.-). 1. Probably suffixed form *trº-½n-. SEPTENTRION, from Latin tri½, plow ox. 2. Suffixed form *trº-dhlo-. TRIBULATION, from Latin trºbulum, a threshing sledge. VI. Various extended forms 1. Forms *tr½-, *trau-. TRAUMA, from Greek trauma, hurt, wound. 2. Form *trºb-. DIATRIBE, TRIBOELECTRICITY, TRIBOLOGY, TRYPSIN, from Greek tribein, to rub, thresh, pound, wear out. 3. Form *tr½g-, *trag-. a. TROGON, TROUT, from Greek tr½gein, to gnaw; b. DREDGE2, from Greek trag¶ma, sweetmeat. 4. Form *trup-. TREPAN1; TRYPANOSOME, from Greek trup¶, hole. 5. Possible form *tr¿g-. TRUANT, from Old French truant, beggar. [Pokorny 3. ter- 1071.]

 anand says:

<<"eyes crossed fetchingly" :-)))

Bit much, don't you think? Hard to imagine this, even with a cast featuring Deb the siren.>>

Lo? Right this way... a bit to the left, yes... closer, closer...

It's strabismus. Clever, you folk.

ao writes: >> I always thought that it was 'laborare et orare' work and pray. FJ ""s 'laborare est orare = work IS prayer, so whatever we do, fr humblest to noblest work = prayer! >>

And if that isn't discovering and practicing the old 'finding the sacred in the commonplace', I don't know what is! Temple is everywhere, every breath a prayer. We just have to recollect...

Very much the theme of Rossetti's Hand and Soul. William Sharp / Fiona makes the point in his bio of DGR. Will scan if/when I can find...

Offering up the pain (and wishing I spoke Italian)...

ph writes:

>> This ceremony is important for contemporary followers of the ancient religion because it is quite literally a union of the opposite yet complimentary creative forces of the universe. Through this ritual these forces are drawn down from the most sublime levels of existence to the temporal physical world. Thus with this a transformation occurs putting the participants in touch with spiritual forces that normally are beyond the limits of conscious awareness.>>

Lovely.

Also the symbolism of the journey to the gates of night, that place of the paradox, the meetings of opposites, the source, the stillpoint. "Incubation" taking you there, the "dark places" -- one of the original meditations.

x's

________________________________________________________________________  Thu, 1 Jul 2004 13:22:15 EDT

From: phoebe Subject: threshold

<< WORD HISTORY: Perhaps the tradition of carrying the bride over the threshold is dying out, but knowledge of the custom persists, leading one to wonder about the -hold or the thresh- in the word threshold. >>

The definition that makes sense to me is that the floors of houses were covered in vegetable material, thresh leavings mostly, and as people walked on them, they tended to spill out the doors. So, a board was laid to hold the thresh inside. Hence, threshold.

xx ph

Date: Thu, 1 Jul 2004 15:14:41 -0400 From: deb

Re: threshold

Makes perfect sense. But I love all the dancing back and forth, in and out. Words are like ants, carrying huge amounts for long distances, running in packs along crevices, journeying, always at work, driven by hidden forces. Logos! And they like picnics. x's

see Jung's letters

"To look with the eyes and see with the heart is the secret of the Philosopher's Stone." ~Petrus Bonus

From Phoebe Saturday, November 15, 2003 7:33 AM

[Negative-Capability] Egyptian eros

Poem from the New Kingdom, Egypt. ca 1580-1085, mostly centered in Thebes.

I just chanced to be happening by

In the neighbourhood where he lives

His door, as I hoped, was open:

And I spied on my secret love

How tall he stood by his mother

Brothers and sisters little around him

Love steals the heart of a poor thing like me

Pointing her toes down his street

And how gentle my young love looked

(there’s none like him)

Character spotless they say……

Out of the edge of my eye

I caught him look at me as I passed

Alone by myself at last

I could almost cry with delight!

Now, just a word with you, love

That’s what I’ve wanted since I first saw you

If only Mother knew of my longing

(and let it occur to her soon)

O golden Lady descend for me

Plant him square in her heart

Then I’d run to my love, kiss him hard

Right in front of his crew

I’d drip no tears of shame or shyness

Just because people were there

But proud I’d be at their taking it in

(let them drown their eyes in my loving you)

if you only acknowledge you know me

(Oh tell all Egypt you love me)

Then I’d make solemn announcement

Every day holy to Hathor

And we two, love, would worship together,

Kneel, a matched pair, to the Goddess.

Oh, how my heart pounds (try to be circumspect!)

Eager to get myself out!

Let me drink in the shape of my love

Tall in the shuddering night.

From the Songs of the Great Hearts Ease – New Kingdom

letters drawn and quartered from negative capability list

"Where love reigns, there is no will to power; and where the will to power is paramount, love is lacking. The one is but the shadow of the other..." —CGJung, The Problem of the Attitude-Type, CW7 

CLARISSA is released!

*clarissa graphics from the dvd.