Revelations; bibliomancy for a new year

images copyright d sinclair 2007, from 'Negredo Journal'

"..we find the Senex in our solitary taking account, sorting through, figuring out; alone behind the wheel on the way to work; head under the shower, under the dryer; alone at the kitchen table looking down into black coffee, in bed staring into night - the Senex mind tying together the unraveled fringes of the day, making order...here is our melancholy trying to make knowledge, trying to see through, but the truth is that the melancholy is the knowledge; the poison is the antidote. This would be the Senex's most destructive insight; our Senex order rests on Senex madness. Our order is itself a madness.." (Hillman)

I'm going to come right out and say it, because I know of at least one person who'll ask me about this; yes, I have been a mad, lonely ol' bag of late, and this all makes perfect sense to me.

I believed that the Mercury archetype makes madness - the Trickster that sends us all a bit batty with ideas and stories and magic. I blamed my slippery-quick mind for soaking up ideas and confusing me - no besieging me - with constant dialogue and argument. I thought I had a brilliant but unruly child in me, who wants wants wants. So many questions, twice as many answers. Too much!

But lately came the revelation that its the Saturn/Senex part of the Senex/Puer syzygy that's the real pain-maker. Its the Big Daddy Ego that gives form to the spirited, tricky, mercurial wisps of thought. All the stories in the world cannot be real without the Saturnine 'fixing' of them.

What I mean is that its now apparent that its the threshold dweller; the terminating, opening-and-closing, border-guarding, ancient in me - Death itself, my own inner Reaper, that takes those thought-threads and makes them, holding them in. All thoughts are of no consequence until the Ego turns them to bones and stones and walls.

And so this is good news - because the message is finally getting through that this part of me is necessary and as loveable as any other. In a monotheistic conceptual universe I may be tempted to solar heroics and 'shining the light of consciousness' upon my Ego's bone-making, but instead I am going to love and honour all of it like I would my own mother.

bibliomancy for christmas

from "A Blue Fire", selected writings from James Hillman.

"That we cannot settle the money issue in analysis shows money to be one main way the mothering imagination keeps our souls fantasising. So, to conclude with my part of this panel, Soul and Money: yes, soul and money; we cannot have either without the other. To find the soul of modern man or woman, begin by searching into those irreducible embarrassing facts of the money complex, that crazy crab scuttling across the floors of silent seas." (Soul and Money, 35-38)

nostalgia

my brother Matt, my younger sister Alexandra and me, with my shameful secret, (I'm a born blonde) taken around winter 1972.

forgiveness

I am complete.

transition over|negredo to albedo|the dream-pelican|saved me|pulled me from the sea|pierced her own breast|fed me with her own blood|then became a dragon|and carried me to shore|

(which, it turned out, was never far away at all)

All the birds|hung in the air|silent and still|waiting|watching the miracle unfold.

I'm complete!

transition

".the blue transit between black and white is like that sadness which emerges from despair as it proceeds towards reflection.."

nigredo

bibliomancy for a Jupiter-Pluto conjunction

this is taken from 'Fire in the Stone, the Alchemy of Desire':

"I see our task now to be that of looking yet again to our own shadows. Though I would not encourage us simply to get on the bandwagon of the collective, victim-identified child, I also do not believe we can ignore its psychological reality. When we look simply at the shadow of this child, it is easy to dismiss it. What we really need is an awareness of the shadow of shadow awareness."

(Patricia Berry - Reductionism/Finalism and the Child)

time flies

Flies are so annoying too.

The week has been spent - wastefully - in arguments with the reality of my situation followed by defeat (rather than surrender). Reality always wins, no doubt about it. Things are the way they are, and to want them to be any other way right now is the path to insanity.

But I promised I'd write more about the witch archetype and here I am, on a Sunday afternoon, to make good on that (as an aside, today has been a good day - on a quest to change one little thing at a time I went to a different cafe to write my morning pages and had a chance encounter with a man who was my lover a few years back - Jim if you are reading this, seeing you today made me smile, so thanks. Yes, one small change does the trick.)

So - I'm picking up the broom again.

First of all, I want to make the distinction between my use of the word 'witch' and the practice of Wicca or any other earth-based (or hearth based - or even kitchen-based) spiritual discipline (yes I know I make jokes about brooms!). They are obviously related, but I make no value judgement on these.

Second, where I use the word shadow, likewise I am not making a value judgement - I'm using it as Jung and the alchemical psychologists do, to point towards some thing's counterpart. But its not necessarily its opposite - more like a flip side to a coin, part of the whole - but not necessarily comprised of 'half' or even 'equal'. But more about that later.

There are so many aspects to the Witch archetype, I can really only touch the surface of it. Marion Woodman has written a great deal about Her, mostly in relation to eating disorders, through the filter of her training and experience in Jungian analysis. From Woodman's books the Still Unravished Bride, The Pregnant Virgin, and Addiction to Perfection, I learned a great deal about where the world's fear and loathing of Mother stems from.

And, although Marion Woodman and I don't see eye to eye about attaching the word 'evil' to Witch, or the ideological argument that Witch is the angry, wronged-by-patriarchy Medusa and must be 'overcome' or 'slain' by a Hero, she is right about this: Witch energy is the energy of the primal, dark, unknowable annihilating Earth. She is the beginning - the Magna Mater at her scariest. She is scarcity, drought, flood, disaster, dream-crocodiles and spiders. She must be drowned, burned, chased out by Light.

More, Witch is our deepest connection to the Great Mother, the First Mother, the first cell to come into being, the first thing to crawl out of the primordial soup - she is the primordial soup. Mother, Mater, Matter, Mer - the things we can see and touch, the sea, the ground beneath our feet. Witch is the part of Mother that shows us the decay that matter (that is, our flesh and blood) is subject to.

That's why we are scared - inherent in 'Mother' is death. Implied by nurturing and abundance is abandonment and not enough.

In her guise as Medusa, Witch is said to turn us to stone. 'Immobilised by fear' is a term we are all familiar with. Unable to move, we small humans are vulnerable to time, nature and death.

Our inner Hero holds up a mirror to Medusa and she is stopped. We cheat time and death with our solar ways - our heroics and Resurrections. Christ is risen - we are immortal because of it. Ding Dong the Witch is Dead, we will all live, free from evil. The separation of Spirit and Matter, religious ideal of transcendence from the wicked flesh, Oedipal capitalism (there isn't enough! We must grab our share! We must do anything to get our share! We must get what we can from the Earth - now!) , Patriarchy and the Problem of Mother (what I call mother-rage) are not separate issues.

OK, its a bit much to take in, and I'm in danger of turning this into a rant. There is so much more to add - but this is what I'd condense it down to, for now; Its not Witch or Mother, its both, and until these split-apart aspects can be recognised as inherent in each other and to each other, we will remain divided as humans and as a planet. Heroically overcoming the Witch is the same as overcoming Mother. Slay her, put away Mama. Cheat death, beat the price rises, and Mother earth - and Mum in the kitchen - will suffer.

If there is still a Mother Earth left for us after our infantile tantrums about how there isn't enough of Her to go around.

bibliomancy for space clearing

"...we take it for granted that the language of true imagination is made up of symbols, which partake of both the perceptions and experiences of the already lived life and the emergent capacities of imagination..."

(SHERRY SALMAN, "TRUE IMAGINATION" SPRING 74)

As within, so without. Tuesdays are always high energy days for me, even with Mars Retrograde in Cancer (as the warrior of the sky is now). Having realised I'm a bit clogged creatively, I've decided that some serious space clearing is called for - the children's rooms in particular (not that I'll go anywhere near the room of my fourteen year old!).

Space clearing always brings about miracles for me, so here goes.

some sun days

Today was warm and overcast - which is how I like it best. The sun and I don't really get along on account of my freckle-and-burn prone skin.

I don't enjoy Sundays, either. Perhaps because of some deep childhood scarring from endless hours in church and bible class, and the subsequent very bad lunch (my poor mum just couldn't get it right). Probably not though.

I've come to the conclusion lately that my discomfort on Sundays is because it occurs to me every weekend that the world is doing its Sunday thing, and I'm here alone as usual.

Oh, not alone alone, I'm here with all my children, like that old woman who lived in the shoe (hey! I'm kidding - do I look like an old lady??)

What is it with the idea that there is an entire universe out there partaking of wonderful Sunday activities that I'm forbidden to enjoy?

I guess its a family day and I feel less than a family, somehow.

I didn't suffer quite so much from my Sunday Syndrome so much before I had the baby - the older girls stay with their dad every other weekend so I had a taste of 'single life' all over again.

Well, I admit that for about the first two years of that fortnightly 'single life' I thrashed about in my house not really knowing what to do with myself - often with a splitting headache, worrying myself sick about just about everything.

Then I got a clue and started getting out in the world on my weekends off and found it to be just as I'd left it when I buried myself in mother-country. Quite amazing really.

Yes, I found that I could be a person again when I didn't have the kids with me. Don't get me wrong - I do love being their Mama, but as I recently told one of the Dads, there's nothing anyone can do 24/7 without it getting to them eventually. Well, OK we have to breathe.

So I loved going out and meeting new people and getting other perspectives on life. I tend toward introspection a lot, so unless I force myself to look outwards, there's only this as a means to be part of a community.

Now of course, having done it again (oops.), I'm back to mother country, serious introspection, and a limited perspective on the world.

I don't even read the newspaper or watch the news.

So on Sundays I drive myself and my children a little bats by grumping around the house, furiously doing housework (resenting all these extra bits and pieces left behind by various and sundry guests), imagining that there are happy people 'out there' living the life I want.

I refuse requests to go to the beach (because I don't have the money), I refuse requests to go to parties (because I also refuse to buy presents for children from families that have so much more than we do) and I generally refuse to do anything fun.

I'm a big Sunday Bummer. Silly isn't it?


Carrying on like this is just giving into a myth - a story - about 'normal'. Its a story about how we 'should' live. We 'should' do things in a particular order. We 'should' behave in certain ways and as such, be rewarded in specific ways too. And I feel so far outside the parameters of normal right now.

I know I'm being a terrible witch-brat when I behave like this. I'm watching myself and saying 'Dan - snap out of it!' and yet I cannot shake off the feeling that I've been duped out of something, alternating with the self-bashing about how I've brought this dissatisfaction upon myself.

On a good Sunday I'll meditate lots, go for a walk to the park with the children, cook something nice and we'll all watch something on the box in the evening. I'm still blocking out the world, but my inner sanctum is happy enough.

I tell myself that yes, its impossible to do anything but breathe for every minute of everyday - but for now I will just have to make parenting these children as effortless as breathing. And a lot of the time it is.

But I'm so grateful for Mondays.