PART IV
FACING YOUR SOUL
FACING YOUR SOUL
"A continuous tradition - values, opinions, judgments, evaluations, conclusions and so on - a continuous tradition which conditions the brain and that continuity is in time, a duration and so in that duration, in that continuity, the brain has found security. You following this? Watch it yourself, sir, because this is your life, for god's sake, not my life. Watch it yourself. So in this continuity it has found an immense sense of being safe, because the brain can only function when it is completely safe; either safe in a belief, safe in an illusion, safe in certain kinds of knowledge. This is what is happening to us. So the brain needs security. That is clear. You can watch it yourself, your own operation of thought, the movement of thought. Any disturbance in that continuity, either the brain becomes neurotic, when it is profoundly shaken - trauma as it is called; or when there is a great challenge and when it cannot respond properly, then as it cannot respond properly, it finds its continuity in which it has sought in security is disturbed."
~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
Binary Ancestor Designation System
The logic of Nature is a natural discrete binary system of consistent generativity -- bifurcating arborescence. Relations identified by the terminology may form a system of relationships. ... of symbols (the generating elements).
Without pedigree collapse, a person's ancestor tree is a binary tree, formed by the person, the parents (2), the grandparents (4), great-grandparents (8), and so on. However, the number of individuals in such a tree grows exponentially and will eventually become impossibly high. For example, a single individual alive today would, over 30 generations going back to the High Middle Ages, have or roughly a billion ancestors, more than the total world population at the time.
This apparent paradox is explained by shared ancestors, referred to as pedigree collapse. Instead of consisting of all unique individuals, a tree may have multiple places occupied by a single individual. This typically happens when the parents of an ancestor are related to each other (sometimes unbeknownst to themselves). For example, the offspring of two first cousins has at most only six great-grandparents instead of the normal eight. In some cultures, cousins and other relations were permitted, encouraged or required to marry. This may have been to keep kin bonds, wealth and property within a family (endogamy) or simply because there was a limited number of potential marriage partners available. Among royalty, the frequent requirement to only marry other royals resulted in a reduced gene pool in which most individuals were the result of extensive pedigree collapse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogical_numbering_systems
http://web.stanford.edu/~andrsn/ahnenbin.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_tree
Sometimes the experience of the void is around a relatively limited aspect of the psyche but at other times the void seems much more global and threatens to engulf the entire personality; the whole individual psyche then seems threatened by the possibility of dissolution into nothingness.
~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
Binary Ancestor Designation System
The logic of Nature is a natural discrete binary system of consistent generativity -- bifurcating arborescence. Relations identified by the terminology may form a system of relationships. ... of symbols (the generating elements).
Without pedigree collapse, a person's ancestor tree is a binary tree, formed by the person, the parents (2), the grandparents (4), great-grandparents (8), and so on. However, the number of individuals in such a tree grows exponentially and will eventually become impossibly high. For example, a single individual alive today would, over 30 generations going back to the High Middle Ages, have or roughly a billion ancestors, more than the total world population at the time.
This apparent paradox is explained by shared ancestors, referred to as pedigree collapse. Instead of consisting of all unique individuals, a tree may have multiple places occupied by a single individual. This typically happens when the parents of an ancestor are related to each other (sometimes unbeknownst to themselves). For example, the offspring of two first cousins has at most only six great-grandparents instead of the normal eight. In some cultures, cousins and other relations were permitted, encouraged or required to marry. This may have been to keep kin bonds, wealth and property within a family (endogamy) or simply because there was a limited number of potential marriage partners available. Among royalty, the frequent requirement to only marry other royals resulted in a reduced gene pool in which most individuals were the result of extensive pedigree collapse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogical_numbering_systems
http://web.stanford.edu/~andrsn/ahnenbin.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_tree
Sometimes the experience of the void is around a relatively limited aspect of the psyche but at other times the void seems much more global and threatens to engulf the entire personality; the whole individual psyche then seems threatened by the possibility of dissolution into nothingness.
from The Dreaming of the Bones (1919) by W.B. Yeats
Young Man. I have heard of angry ghosts
Who wander in a wilful solitude.
Young Girl. These have no thought but love; nor any joy
But that upon the instant when their penance
Draws to its height, and when two hearts are wrung
Nearest to breaking, if hearts of shadows break,
His eyes can mix with hers; nor any pang
That is so bitter as that double glance,
Being accursed.
Young Man. But what is this strange penance--
That when their eyes have met can wring them most?
Young Girl. Though eyes can meet, their lips can never meet.
Young Man. And yet it seems they wander side by side.
But doubtless you would say that when lips meet
And have not living nerves, it is no meeting.
Young Girl. Although they have no blood, or living nerves,
Who once lay warm and live the live-long night
In one another’s arms, and know their part
In life, being now but of the people of dreams,
Is a dream’s part; although they are but shadows,
Hovering between a thorn-tree and a stone,
Who have heaped up night on wingéd night; although
No shade however harried and consumed
Who change his own calamity for theirs,
Their manner of life were blessed could their lips
A moment meet; but when he has bent his head
Close to her head, or hand would slip in hand,
The memory of their crime flows up between
And drives them apart.
Young Man. I have heard of angry ghosts
Who wander in a wilful solitude.
Young Girl. These have no thought but love; nor any joy
But that upon the instant when their penance
Draws to its height, and when two hearts are wrung
Nearest to breaking, if hearts of shadows break,
His eyes can mix with hers; nor any pang
That is so bitter as that double glance,
Being accursed.
Young Man. But what is this strange penance--
That when their eyes have met can wring them most?
Young Girl. Though eyes can meet, their lips can never meet.
Young Man. And yet it seems they wander side by side.
But doubtless you would say that when lips meet
And have not living nerves, it is no meeting.
Young Girl. Although they have no blood, or living nerves,
Who once lay warm and live the live-long night
In one another’s arms, and know their part
In life, being now but of the people of dreams,
Is a dream’s part; although they are but shadows,
Hovering between a thorn-tree and a stone,
Who have heaped up night on wingéd night; although
No shade however harried and consumed
Who change his own calamity for theirs,
Their manner of life were blessed could their lips
A moment meet; but when he has bent his head
Close to her head, or hand would slip in hand,
The memory of their crime flows up between
And drives them apart.
Archai (Greek, noun, plural)
Universal principles, original forms; the fundamental essences and primordial forces that animate the cosmos. Archai derives from the Greek word, arkhe, meaning beginning. In archetypal psychology, the root metaphors of psychological function.
"By soul I mean, first of all, a perspective rather than a substance, a viewpoint toward things rather than a thing in itself. This perspective is reflective; it mediates events and makes differences between ourselves and everything that happens. Between us and events, between the doer and the deed, there is a reflective moment—and soul-making mean differentiating this middle ground . . .First, “soul” refers to the deepening of events into experiences; second, the significance soul makes possible, whether in love or in religious concern, derives from its special relation with death. And third, by “soul” I mean the imaginative possibilities of our natures, the experiencing through reflective speculation, dream, image, and fantasy—that mode which recognizes all realities as primarily symbolic or metaphorical." (Hillman, Re-visioning Psychology, x.)
GENEALOGY FACTS & FICTIONS
Most people are nothing special, except perhaps to those close to them. Descent is one of the Mysteries of everyday life. What 'matters' about our past is more than only the biology of our descent, though this is the premis of genealogy. We are not only related to each other in family and in social relationships, but are related to all nature.
Among genealogists the battle still rages, whether to cut off once and for all disputed, fictitious, and legendary lineage, or to allow its traditional use to remain, even though some may be misled in their own minds by mythological material. Their issue, on shared trees, is having to repeat the same corrections over and again, especially in the medieval era. Fake lines to royalty that arise in the 1800's are also common, so they get re-added as often as they are removed. The same mistakes are copied over and over.
Who's Genealogy Is It?
In the medieval and ancient lines the whole research landscape changes. Monks in early Christian eras invented genealogies taking the lines of kings back to Adam. If the kings were no longer descended from the indigenous gods, then they must be somehow descendants of figures from the Bible, from Troy, and from Rome.
Then, starting in the 1200s and reaching a peak in the 1600s, royal propagandists were competing to collect every old tradition and invent new ones if necessary to enhance the prestige of royal and noble families.
The French kings, for example, produced the Grandes Chroniques de France that claimed to show they were the heirs of a small band of Trojan refugees who established the Frankish people. Not to be outdone, Habsburgs followed a conscious policy for centuries of creating propaganda to show they were the heirs of the Trojan hero Aeneas through Julius Caesar. The idea that Julius Caesar was descended from Aeneas is just a much earlier, Roman example of the same kind of propaganda.
Still, radical amputation is a non-issue in Jungian work, which approaches mythic material with an "as if" on a regular basis. No one is confused there about the imaginal nature or depictions of mythic material and narrative. In many genealogy sites, such lines questioned by 'realists' are clearly marked as such. There will also, as well, always be fantasy-prone individuals who will believe what they wish to believe about such subjects.
Genealogy is a systems concept of emergence -- our emergence. It is a creative process within a formal system -- an ecology of ancestors we foster and conserve, not merely a causal chain of linear descent. We create most of what we think of as reality through the stories we tell, even in science. Lately, scandals in science and medicine suggest as much as half of the published studies are erroneous, and yet are disseminated and allowed to influence public opinion and behavior.
Even profiles that contain only names and dates are still story telling. They say, "I come from people who lived here and went there." They connect into history. And history can be scholarly history, which depends on evaluation of sources and the creation of logical arguments, or it can be family history, which depends on the stories being passed down through the generations, or it can be even older oral history, which existed before writing, and eventually made it into manuscripts and then into print.
Though the lines often blur, a generic distinction is the source of such stories. Biases in story telling needs arise in relation to genealogy and the World Tree:
we need to see how we might be connected to history, or we need to know that we are special somehow, or we need to be able to see a path that connects us to our gods. All such stories are "real," since they are valued and retold, giving people a picture of who they think or imagine they are.
"Imagined" Family
But, none of them are "real," in that even with as much good evidence as we can muster, good solid scholarly sources have their own biases, and will have included some things and left others out. The self-narrative of individuals is notoriously unreliable, and second- or third-hand evaluations probably moreso, despite well-meaning research. In genealogy as in life we mostly relate to our illusions of family, rather than a fixed reality, at best based on skimpy information.
With any sort of balance or psychological perspective it is easy enough to recognize when we step from the ordinary world into that imaginal world, which is more than illusion or fiction, if less than or merely different from hard fact. Some of our heritage comes from specific places and people while the deeper parts come from the Far Country. By "traveling" in such foreign territory we learn other kinds of things about ourselves and our origins.
"Foreign Countries"
For example, in Masonry “Foreign Countries” do not mean the various geographical and political divisions of the Old World, nor a realm of external feats. “Foreign Countries” is used as a symbol. Like all symbols, it has more than one interpretation; but, unlike many, none of these is very difficult to trace or understand.
Through such travels we gain a new perspective on our origins, life, love, and ourselves. When we visit such 'foreign lands' we must use the laws of that land as well as customs and traditions - deciding what is right and what is wrong. In this regard a Jungian approach offers the most leeway without succumbing to literalisms or fantasy-based illusions.
Like genealogy, Freemasonry itself is a “foreign country” in which the initiate will travel; a world as different from the familiar workaday world as France is different from England, or Belgium from Greece. The standards are different. Surely such a land is a “foreign country” to the stranger within its borders; and the visitor must study it, learn its language and its customs, in order to enjoy and explore it.
Professional genealogists trying to revision traditional practice need not shepherd the public like over-protective parents. The fantasy of professional genealogy as some sort of factual reality is erroneous in itself. It remains an aid to learning, discovery, or problem-solving by experiment and trial-and-error methods.
Reconciling Pedigrees
Sure, we can rely on the data, but only to a certain limited extent. A quick review of more recent census data shows it is riddled with multiple incorrect spellings and data recording, just for starters. If you can get a line back to the early-1800s you have a good chance of connecting to extant research, especially American colonial lines.
Further back, most family lines disappear by 1500 or so, and there are no proven lines from before around 700. Statistically, our descent from Charlemagne is (virtually) certain, but the details of who, how, where, etc. could be laughably wrong or contain gaps.
All family trees go back as far as anyone else's whether you know it or not. You are real and so are your ancestors, even if they are hiding. Hidden ancestors are as real as you are in this process of "Hide and Seek." Our job is to effectively release the hidden information and forms, even where 'inaccurate' information proliferates as much as reliable data. Cliches, such as "Like father, like son" are necessarily abbreviated 'truths' that stand up to scrutiny in some instances and utterly fail in others.
Genealogy's Shadow
Genealogists and Curators need to realize they are always and only dealing with a symbolic landscape, even though some factual hook is available. To imagine otherwise is psychological naivete. They need to realize that no matter how they approach it or annotate the lines, or discuss the medieval flaws in the system people come to genealogy for their own reasons -- no longer the legal issues of legitimacy, inheritance, or succession. We all risk inaccuracy together.
People are inclined to believe what they want to believe in terms of literalisms and metaphors for their own psychic needs. Whatever impressions we form, including those about our parents, remain mostly that. Psychological pay offs feed into self-narrative, the stories we tell ourselves, a social construct much like Jung's persona archetype.
Most of us understand the notion that history is written by 'the winners' and is riddled with propaganda and deliberate falsehood or retrofitted 'spin'. Historical accuracy outside the story is likely unattainable, much less something genealogy is capable of re/producing. Can we not logically discern, for example, that we all descend from archetypal evil, whether we find the Mark of Cain in our pedigree or not?
Archetypal Assumptions
We approach the family tree in full comprehension this is an archetypal phenomenon. The only certainty in genealogy is the archetypal imagination. Pedigree is way to help us imagine our origins. Genealogy is a template; in the beginning a tabula rasa upon which we construct a family "history." Often even the timeline is weak or ignored.
Like a Big Dream genealogy requires heuristics, any approach to problem solving, learning, or discovery that employs a practical method not guaranteed to be optimal or perfect, but sufficient for the immediate goals. Heuristics is a discovery process of gaining knowledge or some desired result by intelligent guesswork rather than by following some pre-established formula -- "trial-and-error" learning or using "a rule-of-thumb." In other words, we interpret all the data.
In certain situations it is not enough to simply cross that threshold; we must wait for the image to penetrate, work in the depths, gestate, and emerge from its own path. Such phenomena can be treated the same as all psychic phenomena.
People's capacity to tell the difference between fantasy and reality varies to the degree to which they use accurate 'reality testing' or are being sucked into the stories they are telling themselves about their family.
These include religious beliefs, 'royal' pay offs, romanticizing, feeling superior, self-delusion, and identity issues and needs. Rather than redacting the traditional lines, such issues are better dealt with individually in Transgenerational Integration.
After all, we really can think, even if not with an absolute independence from nature; but it is the duty of the psychologist to make the double statement, and while admitting man’s power of thought, to insist also on the fact that he is trapped in his own skin, and therefore always has his thinking influenced by nature in a way he cannot wholly control. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 83
We can speak of the conscious ego as the subjective personality, and of the shadow self as the objective personality. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 139
If the word is a sign, it means nothing. But if the word is a symbol, it means everything. ~Carl Jung,The Red Book, p. 310.
My soul, O most splendid one,…whither has thou gone? Return again. Awake, soul of splendor, form the slumber of drunkenness into which thou has fallen…follow me to the place of the exalted earth where thou dwellest from the beginning. ~Cited by Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, Page 83.
My soul you—are you there? I have returned, I am here again. I have shaken the dust of all the lands from my feet, and I have come to you, I am with you. After long years of long wandering, I have come to you again.
~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 232.
My soul, O most splendid one,…whither has thou gone? Return again. Awake, soul of splendor, form the slumber of drunkenness into which thou has fallen…follow me to the place of the exalted earth where thou dwellest from the beginning. ~Cited by Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, Page 83.
My soul you—are you there? I have returned, I am here again. I have shaken the dust of all the lands from my feet, and I have come to you, I am with you. After long years of long wandering, I have come to you again.
~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 232.
Jung frequently writes in the first person. We often discover, however, that the speaker is not Jung but another voice he is channeling. Students of Jung have seen this in other works, like the Seven Sermons, and it has fueled a good deal of criticism of Jung for his departure from accepted scientific method. How do you understand the function of this voice as it appears in the Red Book?
I think the term “channeling” is misleading in this context. What the text presents is a series of fantasies in which dramatic dialogues occur. Jung enters into discussion with the figures that emerge, and then attempts to draw lessons from their exchange. He viewed these characters as different aspects of his personality. The text describes his attempt to recognise and come to terms with these aspects through differentiating the voices, and eventually to integrate them.
Initially, this exercise was an attempt to study what in 1912 he had described as fantasy or undirected thinking, in contrast to directed thinking. At this time in psychology, self-experimentation was widespread, and introspection was one of the most common methods, though coming under increasing contestation. So in this regard, there was no major departure from the self-investigative procedures prevalent in psychology. At the same time, Jung certainly didn’t envisage the resulting work to be scientific: I think it could best be described as a work of psychology cast in a literary and prophetic form.
http://harpers.org/blog/2009/10/inside-jungs-_red-book_-six-questions-for-sonu-shamdasani/
I think the term “channeling” is misleading in this context. What the text presents is a series of fantasies in which dramatic dialogues occur. Jung enters into discussion with the figures that emerge, and then attempts to draw lessons from their exchange. He viewed these characters as different aspects of his personality. The text describes his attempt to recognise and come to terms with these aspects through differentiating the voices, and eventually to integrate them.
Initially, this exercise was an attempt to study what in 1912 he had described as fantasy or undirected thinking, in contrast to directed thinking. At this time in psychology, self-experimentation was widespread, and introspection was one of the most common methods, though coming under increasing contestation. So in this regard, there was no major departure from the self-investigative procedures prevalent in psychology. At the same time, Jung certainly didn’t envisage the resulting work to be scientific: I think it could best be described as a work of psychology cast in a literary and prophetic form.
http://harpers.org/blog/2009/10/inside-jungs-_red-book_-six-questions-for-sonu-shamdasani/
The lamentations of the dead filled the air at the time, and their misery became so loud that even the living were saddened, and became tired and sick of life and yearned to die to this world already in their living bodies.
And thus you too lead the dead to their completion with your work of salvation. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 278, Footnote 188.
And thus you too lead the dead to their completion with your work of salvation. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 278, Footnote 188.
"As truths are the fictions of the rational, so fictions are the truths of the imaginal." (James Hillman)
“To be sane, we must recognise our beliefs as fictions.” (James Hillman)
The spirit of this time of course allowed me to believe in my reason.
He let me see myself in the image of a leader with ripe thoughts.
But the spirit of the depths teaches me that I am a servant, in fact the servant of a child: This dictum was repugnant to me and I hated it.
But I had to recognize and accept that my soul is a child and that my God in my soul is a child. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 234.
"Death is significant for soul because possibility (and hence imagination) derives from an existential recognition of one's finitude: what is finite can imagine possibilities, some of which will be realized, others of which (owing to death) will not" (James Hillman, 1992)
...our lives are formed by a particular image, just as the oak’s destiny is contained in the tiny acorn...
By means of personifications my sense of person becomes more vivid for I carry with me at all times the protection of my daimones: the images of dead people who mattered to me, of ancestral figures of my stock, cultural and historical persons of renown and people of fable who provide exemplary images, a wealth of guardians. They guard my fate, guide it, probably are it. "Perhaps--who knows," writes Jung, "these eternal images are what men mean by fate." We need this help, for who can carry his fate alone? (James Hillman)
“To be sane, we must recognise our beliefs as fictions.” (James Hillman)
The spirit of this time of course allowed me to believe in my reason.
He let me see myself in the image of a leader with ripe thoughts.
But the spirit of the depths teaches me that I am a servant, in fact the servant of a child: This dictum was repugnant to me and I hated it.
But I had to recognize and accept that my soul is a child and that my God in my soul is a child. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 234.
"Death is significant for soul because possibility (and hence imagination) derives from an existential recognition of one's finitude: what is finite can imagine possibilities, some of which will be realized, others of which (owing to death) will not" (James Hillman, 1992)
...our lives are formed by a particular image, just as the oak’s destiny is contained in the tiny acorn...
By means of personifications my sense of person becomes more vivid for I carry with me at all times the protection of my daimones: the images of dead people who mattered to me, of ancestral figures of my stock, cultural and historical persons of renown and people of fable who provide exemplary images, a wealth of guardians. They guard my fate, guide it, probably are it. "Perhaps--who knows," writes Jung, "these eternal images are what men mean by fate." We need this help, for who can carry his fate alone? (James Hillman)
IV. Facing Your Soul:
Who Am I? And What Does It All Mean?; Soul Guides & Ghostly Lovers;
Meta-Genesis; What Will You Preserve?; The Family Initiatory Vessel; Legends & Lineage; The Trail of the Grail; Grail-Carriers; How Did They Live?; Consanguinity;
Holy Blood, Holy Trail; Roots & Gnosis; Descent From Antiquity; Bare Bones; The Tree of Voices; Tree of Golden Light; Presence of the Past; Bones of Contention; Spiritual Genealogy; Walking Your Genealogical Labyrinth; Subjective Genealogy;
Who Am I? And What Does It All Mean?; Soul Guides & Ghostly Lovers;
Meta-Genesis; What Will You Preserve?; The Family Initiatory Vessel; Legends & Lineage; The Trail of the Grail; Grail-Carriers; How Did They Live?; Consanguinity;
Holy Blood, Holy Trail; Roots & Gnosis; Descent From Antiquity; Bare Bones; The Tree of Voices; Tree of Golden Light; Presence of the Past; Bones of Contention; Spiritual Genealogy; Walking Your Genealogical Labyrinth; Subjective Genealogy;
"The gift of an image is that it provides a place to watch your soul." (James Hillman) - photo: Salvador Dalí, Metamorphosis of Narcissus,1937.
"Each life is formed by its unique image, an image that is the essence of that life and calls it to a destiny. As the force of fate, this image acts as a personal daimon, an accompanying guide who remembers your calling." (James Hillman)
Who Am I?
Individuation does not only mean that man has become truly human as distinct from animal, but that he is to become partially divine as well. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 312-316.
We have become participants of the divine life and we have to assume a new responsibility, viz. the continuation of the divine self-realization, which expresses itself in the task of our individuation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 312-316.
"My experience is that I can feel that I'm in the Grail Castle when I'm living with people I love, doing what I love. I get that sense of being fulfilled. But, by god, it doesn't take much to make me feel I've lost the Castle, it's gone. One way to lose the Grail is to go to a cocktail party. That's my idea of not being there at all.
"My sense of it is that you have to keep working to get there. It may take a little while. Even when you have gotten there, it's easy to get flipped out, because the world has things it wants you to do and you have decided not to do what the world wants. The problem is to find a field of action to give you that inner satisfaction so that you're not thrown out."
--Joseph Campbell, in A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living (p. 76)
The fact is that real poets create out of an inner vision which, being timeless, also unveils the future, if not in actualities at least symbolically. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 386-387
And What Does It All Mean?;
Soul Guides & Ghostly Lovers;
Meta-Genesis;
What Will You Preserve?;
The Family Initiatory Vessel;
Legends & Lineage;
The Trail of the Grail;
Grail-Carriers;
How Did They Live?;
Consanguinity;
Holy Blood, Holy Trail;
Roots & Gnosis;
Descent From Antiquity;
Bare Bones; The Tree of Voices;
Tree of Golden Light;
Presence of the Past;
Bones of Contention;
Spiritual Genealogy;
Walking Your Genealogical Labyrinth;
Subjective Genealogy;
Individuation does not only mean that man has become truly human as distinct from animal, but that he is to become partially divine as well. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 312-316.
We have become participants of the divine life and we have to assume a new responsibility, viz. the continuation of the divine self-realization, which expresses itself in the task of our individuation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 312-316.
"My experience is that I can feel that I'm in the Grail Castle when I'm living with people I love, doing what I love. I get that sense of being fulfilled. But, by god, it doesn't take much to make me feel I've lost the Castle, it's gone. One way to lose the Grail is to go to a cocktail party. That's my idea of not being there at all.
"My sense of it is that you have to keep working to get there. It may take a little while. Even when you have gotten there, it's easy to get flipped out, because the world has things it wants you to do and you have decided not to do what the world wants. The problem is to find a field of action to give you that inner satisfaction so that you're not thrown out."
--Joseph Campbell, in A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living (p. 76)
The fact is that real poets create out of an inner vision which, being timeless, also unveils the future, if not in actualities at least symbolically. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 386-387
And What Does It All Mean?;
Soul Guides & Ghostly Lovers;
Meta-Genesis;
What Will You Preserve?;
The Family Initiatory Vessel;
Legends & Lineage;
The Trail of the Grail;
Grail-Carriers;
How Did They Live?;
Consanguinity;
Holy Blood, Holy Trail;
Roots & Gnosis;
Descent From Antiquity;
Bare Bones; The Tree of Voices;
Tree of Golden Light;
Presence of the Past;
Bones of Contention;
Spiritual Genealogy;
Walking Your Genealogical Labyrinth;
Subjective Genealogy;
‘William Blake’ collage by Chekoullage