bibliomancy for the new moon (solar) eclipse in aquarius...

"...the vision of soul given by anima is more than just one more perspective. The call of soul convinces; it is a seduction into psychological faith, a faith in images and the thought of the heart, into an animation of the world. Anima attaches and involves. She makes us fall into love. We cannot remain the detached observer looking through a lens. In fact, she probably doesn't partake in optical metaphors at all. Instead, she is continually weaving, stewing, and enchanting consciousness into passionate attachments away from the vantage point of a perspective..."

(James Hillman, Anima)

memories...

'heron now' ds '08

"Perhaps this intimacy between calling and fate is why we avoid the daemon and the theory that upholds its importance. We mostly invent, and prefer, theories that tie us tightly to parental powers, encumber us with sociological conditioning and genetic determinants; thereby we escape the fact that these deep influences on our fates don't hold a candle to the power of death...." (James Hillman, The Soul's Code)

(*archetypal psychologists hold that memories are fictions, flights of fantasy...)

the most important thing you need to learn about soul mate love, part one

'who?' (all rights reserved danae sinclair 2008)

Actually, when I say you I really mean me - this is about the most important thing I have to learn.

After all, how can anyone else tell you what you should and shouldn't know about love and relationships? Its your life, your destiny and your call.


But having pursued relationships all the way around the world and back again and made it my life's purpose to find my soul mate - I feel I can pass on some of what I've got the gist of so far.

Like, for instance, there is no model for relationships that works for everyone, but there's only one love.

The prevailing attitude, conversely, is monotheistic in its approach to relationships but consists of many ways of measuring love. Romance, it seems to me, is a religion of false idols.

What I mean is that from my observations people are unrealistically expected to conform to certain patterns of behaviour - there are rules about courtship; ideas about 'fidelity' that inform our decisions about 'suitability' and 'commitment'.

There's a tendency to compartmentalise and label our relationships - this one is friendship, that one partnership, another parent-child love, pet-owner affection and so on.

The thing that we are led to believe we really want is that One Magnificent Love, the special Soul Mate, a total and deep immersion in another. Completion. Forever.

"I love you but I'm not in love with you" is what we hear when the heart won't open - when there's some magical ingredient missing from the coupling; "the chemistry's just not there".

The romantic narrative is supposed to go a certain way and if it doesn't its a dud. "He's just not that into you" is how it goes these days.

But apparently the real question is - are you that into you?

Is it fair to expect from someone else to give us what we cannot or will not give ourselves? Hand in hand with romantic love comes 'self esteem' - we must first love ourselves before someone really great can get anything from us.

Low self esteem means we have crappy 'destructive' relationships and high self esteem gets us better (constructive?) ones. There's that hierarchy again; measuring and defining.

Where does all the dogma come from?

Robert A Johnson, in his work on the psychology of romantic love, explains how we in the west have come to muddle human relationships and spiritual discipline - how the urge to merge with the divine and the need for companionship have become fused and distorted.

Somewhere along the line Eros has been caught and caged like a budgerigar. We've literalised love between people just as we've literalised every other mystery and made it into a religion.

Maybe I'm wrong. I'm willing to be, because there's a part of me that still wishes for it to be true - the fairy tale and happily ever after.

Meanwhile, though, what is true of my experience is that all relationships are soul mate relationships.

By this I mean that its the nature of love to call to the soul - 'Eros always leads to Psyche' as alchemy teaches. Likewise, soul draws love to itself and in many forms, without judgement or restriction.

I find the notion of 'self esteem' to be dubious - it seems to be an ego created illusion about 'how I should be', holding oneself separate from others.

Which brings me to this - the most important thing to learn about soul mate love; there's only one soul, its the soul of all of us. So, as Deepak Chopra puts it, 'through the mirror of relationships I find my non-local self'.

In other words, in every 'other' that we relate to we discover a part of our ourselves.

So what's not to love? Therein lies the rub - this means we must unlearn all we know about relating, to drop our ideas of what it all means and be willing to live without judgement or measurement, with forgiveness and with a fearless heart.

This can happen, moment by moment, if we allow it to.

Well, I never said it was an easy lesson.

bibliomancy for a festival

"I termed this the forepleasure principle. This refers to laughter in anticipation of joking, laughter that there is a joke going on or laughter just for its own sake." (Hillman, Cookbook, p80)

Its so darn hot outside that even all the festivities going on in town won't move me from my cool quiet cave.

Writer's Week - meh. Who needs it, I can read all about it in the next newsletter - its an outdoor event for lawd's sake. The Fringe Festival - even that Garden of Unearthly Delights, as tempting as sitting in a gigantic tent (read; heat trap) full of sweating, smelly humanity. Ick.

Oh what a downer, Dan.

Well, OK - we just had that lovely new moon which in other times and places was a celebration of Bacchus or Dionysus, that dastardly son of Zeus and God of all earthly pleasures. It kinda calls for a more indulgent and joyous tone, doesn't it? At least a little dirtier and sweatier - in a good way?

It occurs to me that Bacchanalia never took place during a heat wave. But its easy enough to imagine that honouring the divine patron of bad behaviour could take place around, say, a log fire, involve plenty of good wine (perhaps warmed up, accompanied by good cheese) and lewd gossip.

A bit like a typical girls night in? In fact the festival was just for women, and held in secret - and considering Bacchus' (or Dionysus, if you prefer) phallic nature, no doubt it was always an occasion for mirth, although not very 'spiritual'.

Which brings us back to the business at hand. Humour, wit and laughter.

Perhaps with the sun in Pisces and Jupiter ruling the sky its time to turn to all things, er Jovial - but this week I've found myself explaining my need to laugh at most inappropriate things.

And I do - during sex, for one thing. Not entirely conducive to successful intercourse, but dammit its so funny. Manly parts are comedic, adorably so, and all that bouncing around, well you get the picture.

I also find the subject of death lacking in gravity (where does this comes from?) as well as giving birth. Yes, I did crack up during labour all five times and I have witnesses.

I laugh so hard at the Rigger's dumb filthy jokes I'm left dizzy. When my sister and I get together we're known to collapse in a single pile over nothing - limbs weak to the point we can't get up and braying uncontrollably for minutes beyond the joke. Then we laugh some more because we're such a sight.

My mother and I wheeze and hold our sides in supermarkets over her batty misuse of language, trying not to make a sound, heaving even harder standing there with legs crossed in front of the incontinence products.

Upon news of small misfortunes and minor tragedies I attempt to keep a straight face, knowing as I do that I'm expected to at least chuckle - and of course the pressure to maintain seriousness is usually cause enough for you know what.

See? Not funny, any of it. Not intelligent either.

It seems that there's another humour not dependent on wit or words - about something more than the mind and making connections. It comes from a different place entirely. And its Not Allowed.

There are, of course, officially sanctioned occasions for community practice of transgressive humour, within bounds. There are days for mischief and upsetting the order of things - to mock life and death; festivals, carnivals, Mardi Gras. We have gross humour movies, television and such.

We can watch, we can enjoy other's enactment. One doesn't see huge wooden statues of Priapus these days though - the dirtier fun side of life doesn't belong in daily ritual. We prefer things clean, antibacterial and white.

Perhaps a soulful existence - one that is not polytheistic and honours all our parts (and when I use the word honour I'm really talking about acceptance and love) means letting ourselves be inappropriate and disorderly every day. Maybe its a deep human need to get base, grotty, gross and stupid from time to time - intoxicated? I think so.

Alright, pass me that bottle of red.

bibliomancy for a lunar eclipse

"...for Eskimos, when one falls ill, one takes a new name, a new diseased personality. To get over a disease, one must quite literally 'get over' it by transcending, that is, by dying. The only hope for cure lies in the death of the ill personality. Health requires death.." (HILLMAN)

bibliomancy for venus-jupiter

"...there are tales within tales that do not further the plot, showing that psychic history goes on in many places at once - meanwhile, back at the farm, in another part of the forest - and in many figures at once... other personages of the story are as interesting as the main character, just as the other figures within our our dreams and fantasies often bear more upon our fates than does our ego.." (Hillman)

"those in literature see the psychology in fiction.. its our turn to see the fiction in pyschology..." (HILLMAN)

Jupiter and Venus together are supposed to bring about love-bliss; tomorrow's conjunction is apparently great for lovers, would-be lovers and all things beautiful, in big ways.

Here in South Australia the weather is set to be hot during the day, promising one of those lovely balmy summer's evenings that are perfect for walking hand in hand on the beach, for dining al fresco and general blissful canoodling.

Hm. How lovely for those with someone whose hands will be held and those canoodling lovers. I for one say yes to those, absolutely, but for this transit, I need another paradigm for expressing the energies of such magnificent love.

So, there are lovers strolling the beach, eyes locked in restaurants and cuddling up in cinemas; there are couples everywhere - but meanwhile, here in a house in the suburbs, is a woman who is learning for the first time what it is to love, and there isn't a man in the frame.

What does it mean? How will it happen? Is this story told from her own point of view or is there an omniscient narrator?

How many ways can the fiction of love be told?

I guess we shall have to wait and see.

bibliomancy for pluto's ingress to capricorn

"...given this unconscious paranoia, there will be a need for a projected fantasised enemy and fantastical defences against the fantasised enemy. Situations will always be valued by constructs of strength and weakness, winning and losing. Demand for unconditional surrender and the fear of it will be paramount, Treaties based on compromise will be all but impossible to negotiate. .." (Hillman, 'paranoia' p49)

For the first time one of my 'bibiomancies' actually comes across as prophecy. Its a bit dire, but then again we are talking about Pluto here. Planet or not, the Lord of the Underworld isn't exactly subtle.

And speaking of that - the downgrading of Pluto from planet to dwarf or whatever - doesn't it seem like a sign of the times? Come to think of it, not only does this world seem to want to diminish the devil, hell, evil and darkness aka shadow, it appears to do so in line with the public declaration of the Sun as being dangerous, risky, something we must protect ourselves against. A backlash against God/dess and downplaying the power of His/Her counterpart... interesting.

So, paranoia - well, this isn't exactly news, afterall we are in the midst of a 'war on terror' which pivots upon the assumption that there is a threat. We have 'baddies' so we can feel 'good'... there's someone out there threatening our 'freedom' and we must seek it out at all costs, invade a few countries if we must, and damn the consequences. We will reign down terror until all the Terrorists die. Insane.

Well, that's a macrocosmic viewpoint - what about the microcosmic events of our everyday lives? How many times do we demonise the 'other' in our midst?

"You must be wrong so that I can be right" is a common standpoint, as if there isn't room enough for rightness or wrongness on both sides. As if only one way is the way that's acceptable. Monotheistic. Dualistic (is that the correct term?).

And, as there is no outer event that is not also inner - on macro and microcosmic levels - we are only harming ourselves - our 'earth' or matter - the stuff we are made of - has got to suffer.

If Pluto into Capricorn means that we can finally own the terror, fear, paranoia and fantasies of 'other', then maybe the planet (this one, the one we live on) has a chance.

bibliomancy for a full moon in leo

"..so the first basic characteristic of the coeur de lion is that thought does not appear as thought because it emanates like the sun into the world and remains disguised in that conformity with its motion.." (Hillman, Thought of the Heart)

Last night Jodi gave me a roar, and this morning I thought of lions, forgetting about tonight's full moon in Leo.

Its not unusual for me to think of lions - they are potent symbols and often used in alchemy - red, green, pointing to desire, to the work of making gold.

They remind me that Venus and the Sun are not so very far apart, of the tarot card, Strength (also called Force) in which a pregnant woman gently holds the mouth of the beast.

Something else that Hillman writes stays with me - that the dry desert of the heart is the birth place of lion cubs - stillborn - needing to be roared into life.

Perhaps I love this image - of cubs being roared into being inside my heart - because of the promise it holds, awakening the poetic, beautiful animal side of love.

None of the transcendental, 'spiritual' models of love hold me like this. To me there must be sulphur - desire - and salt - experience, for love to be made whole.

But this passage seems to say that heart-love is like the sun, that hearts-thoughts and imaginings are akin to consciousness, solar, central and essential to the point of taken-for-granted-ness.

It makes me wonder what else the heart has to say other than what is always there, circulating, beating out its rythym and keeping the body alive.

Are lion cubs, deserts, romantic poetic images the thoughts of the heart or just ideas about the heart?

bibliomancy for mars retrograde

"...building the psychic vessel of containment, which is another way of speaking of soul-making, seems to require bleeding and leaking as its pre-condition. Why else go through that work unless we are driven by the despair, of our un-stoppered condition? The shift from anima-mess to anima-vessel shows in various ways; as a shift from weakness and suffering to humility and sensitivity; from bitterness and complaint to a taste for salt and blood; from a focus upon the emotional pain of the wound - its causes, perimeters, cures - to its imaginal depths..." (Hillman, The Wound and the Eye)

I've been sitting with this passage for a few days (hence, no blog entry), waiting - allowing - some understanding and inspiration to present itself.

Of course, my first instinctive reaction is the same final conclusion arrived at after weighing up, sorting through and putting aside various other 'more sensible' ideas.

Its this; having 'revisioned' the dirt and mess in my life, both the actual physical clutter of this existence, and the inner trash that refuses to be cleared - the stuff I have because I need it - I've been looking at why I need it.

The urge toward solar heroics dies hard, even in the dark.

Finding Aphrodite and Psyche

'african venus; d sinclair '06

"..can we realise that we are each, in soul, children of Aphrodite, that the soul is a therapeutes, as was Psyche, in the temple of Venus - that is where it is in devotion - the soul is born in beauty and feeds on beauty, requires beauty for its life...

...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." (hillman, thought of the heart, p39)


Actually, I'm not all that sure that Aphrodite or Psyche can be 'found'. Not that its impossible to know them, only that the 'searching' may be fruitless - because they're experiences of the senses and the emotional body, and in as much perhaps only need to be recognised as and when they arise.

When we feel something and the thought 'beautiful' surfaces, where is it is any of it surfacing from, but within? Aphrodite is surely a necessary part of our inner workings, as much as is needed in the outer, physical cosmos.

Thomas Moore writes about Aphrodite 'rising from the sea' as per her creation myth - and this is very apt. Beauty originates from the unknown depths; rises through the body, catches in the throat, takes away breath, and puts a blindfold on one's other faculties.


Oh, I'm just musing - waxing poetic. There's no better subject to do it on.

Yes, Aphrodite is more than Beauty, but as a starting place, we can't do better. If there were a map of the human cosmos, Beauty might be found were land meets water, and the unconscious meets lived experience. Beyond there is Pleasure and then Desire, past mountains where warm breezes blow and earth's fires burn with melted ores spill over into green forests.

I have to believe that until we can get in touch with our inner beauty, our inner Aphrodite, we are closed off to a whole realm of sense and taste - and life. The beach will be closed, so to speak, forget the volcanic springs, the river mouth, the forest.

I took life drawing classes at the School of Art; enrolled in the course without really thinking about it and realised with horror on the first day that life drawing involves drawing naked people. Naked people!

For an ex ballet dancer the idea of physical 'imperfection' (that is, anything less than the ideal ballet dancer's body) is hard to, er, well, stomach.

After a while it became clear to me the 'imperfect' bodies - people - had a beauty of their own that had nothing to do with any ideals of mine. It's as though looking without ego - and nothing is better for stripping away ego than doing something so new, in the presence of a naked person no less - gives a new perspective on form.

Hillman calls for us all to practice that which the classical texts call notitia - seeing and imagining through the heart. Its about looking - really looking - and seeing things, not our ideas of things. Its allowing without describing.

Its like seeing through childs eyes - before Old Mother Bone Maker comes along and names everything, defining and setting in stone the world around us. Before being taught that this is 'self' and this is 'other' - when, without knowing what things are, everything is amazing and interesting, and there's no difference between 'it' and 'me'.

Its an old cliche; beauty is in the eye of the beholder - but its the eyes of soul that are calling it, because like calls unto like. This is a truth that takes practice to realise.

memories like mould

"...Aphrodite is the 'psyche tou kosmou' or soul in all things... if we would recuperate the lost soul, which is after all the aim of all depth psychologies, we must recover our lost aesthetic reactions, our sense of beauty.." (Hillman, Thought of the Heart, p41)


There's not much traffic to this blog at the moment, and life elsewhere has gone very, very quiet too. After a week or so of intense heat, the air is cooler and the days are clear and calm. The children seem more centered, less demanding and we're in the house simply going about our business, with no plans.

Today is the darkest phase of the moon before renewing again this evening in the vicinity of the sky we call Capricorn (but that is only metaphoric - the moon is still in her wobbly orbit around the earth).

There was a moment that this would have meant Something Very Important to me, but I'm in the process of stripping the meaning from things - this is a teaching from the Course in Miracles, and it helps with the stories that bind the mind and cause suffering. Without the story of a tree, for example, one can allow the tree to reveal its true nature. Without the story of 'me' I allow my own true nature to be known.

So the moon is dark, the moon will be new again. Yes. What am I getting at? Am I going anywhere with this? I've already written that I won't be doing any 'de-cluttering' - rather that I'm taking stock, re-visioning my clutter, my rubbish, my mess. And the memories continue to surface, and I watch, knowing I need them for something, although I don't know what yet. Maybe only this.

I do truly believe that I have everything I need, and nothing I don't. Wanting any part of my life to be any other way is to argue with reality. Reality always wins. Its exhausting to do battle with the way things are, to want what 'is not' and to deny one's own emotions.

Perhaps what it is I want from all this - what this wants from me - is to honour my Lunar nature, as an expression of my inner cosmos, even though all meaning is illusion.

In fact what I'm called to do is to honour the entire Pantheon. I want to put an end to my Solar Heroics - my questing and striving and overcoming.

As for Aphrodite - as a true child of Venus I have no trouble at all with paying homage to beauty, or so I thought. Upon presentation of the above quote this morning I questioned that. Have I turned away from beauty - from notitia, seeing with one's heart - because it has often been such a focus of mine that I've seen nothing else?

Like this - I met a man in a bar; he swaggered past me, then, turned his head and with one eyebrow raised asked 'are you bored? come with me!'.

Dirty, I thought - Beautiful, my heart insisted. A year later I found myself giving birth to his daughter, and he was elsewhere.

But things are exactly as they are; no more, no less. It may be that this is what it is to be at the darkest phase of the moon - to let go of the solar consciousness - singlemindedness - and live by lamplight, where shadows can be beautiful - to dwell in wisdom rather than understanding; to be still and watch life take shape.

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)

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.

my god, phobia

"I'm moved by another intention: to warn. And warning, too, belongs to the negredo, for it speaks with the voice of the raven, foretelling dire happenings that may result from the seduction of black."

(James Hillman)

Phobia is described by most dictionaries as any kind of fear or dread, sometimes irrational, but as mostly implying strong aversion and morbid hatred. Its a dark idea, as far as ordinary human emotion goes, but if we have it, then we need it.

A cursory glance into the etymology of the word - and I can't claim to understand any concept without knowing its origins and essence - reveals its roots, or rather wings, in phobos - flight.

This, to my mind, points towards a mythical and therefore primordial style of fear - something that defies simple rationality and goes further and higher into the realm of the Gods. Its not just 'being afraid of spiders' its a deep-seated primal and polar postion against the very 'spiderness' of life itself.

In a pantheistic world view Phobia is an archetype and part of the larger story we're all subject to in our mortal human lives. More than that, the particular form or manifestation that phobia takes brings definition and becomes a pre-condition for action, behaviour and event. Phobia is an identity or role to be played out.

Suffice to say that if Phobia is true to its own shape, then to say that someone has a phobia is allopathic and untidy - its truer to say phobia has that someone. One is phobic.

So, this archetype, this force, Phobia - a character in its own right - is lived into experience in epic journeys and returns and battles in varied ways. Perhaps as a 'shadow' persona or villain that must be violently overcome; an anti-hero who's pain has entered, like all things divine, via a wound or trauma; a beautiful but divided soul to be healed and integrated; a healer; an outcast, lone-wolf or hermit. Or as the unclaimed parts of hero's, saviours, kings and queens. Encounters with giant insects, reptilian devouring creatures, vile odours, dark green creeping decay. Episodes of falling into dangerous hidden places, being buried and confined or abandoned to the dangers of nature.

Its ancestry in flight also places phobia in the realm of air - pneuma - and comes cawing and circling from above; birds of prey; carrion scavengers; open exposure to vast empty spaces; searing light and blindness. Its pneumatic nature calls attention to its language and ability to create out of its images; warlocks and witches and their winged messengers appear; uncanny abilities of mind-reading and control; repetitive destructive thoughts and voices calling and singing for death.

Just as phobia serves the narrative, phobia is served by the narrative - the story of phobia keeps the archetype in power. A strange irony (poetry?)- while phobia is defined and contained, it breaks free, provokes adrenaline-surged slow motion corridor runnning and lung-burning screams, and no escape. It will always fly faster.