Copyright ©
2004 by William R. Mistele. All rights
reserved.
In this essay I respond to a
question from a friend about the nature of patriarchy and matriarchy. I do not know what the young lady means by patriarchy
and matriarchy but I do have some thoughts on the nature of male and female
paths of growth.
And I could only really comment on
Patriarchy and Matriarchy after reviewing the different archetypal paths of
growth for men versus women and then correlating these to ancient and modern
societies. I have not done that in this
brief essay.
The electric and magnetic fluids are
technical terms relating to the hermetic magical tradition of Franz
Bardon. Bardon makes a big deal about
them in terms of mastering them in the body and in using them for practical
magical purposes. That is, to be a
magician, you have to master both fluids in order to create new things.
The Electric and Magnetic Fluids in
Magic
From a magical point of view,
two of the most dynamic energies of transformation in the universe are the
electric and the magnetic fluids. These
are not the same as the electricity and magnetism in nature but are roughly
analogous to them.
These fluids arise out of the four elements,
earth, water, air, and fire. These
elements and fluids are equally active within the human body and particularly
in sexuality and attraction between the genders. They can be pursued on physical, emotional,
mental, and spiritual levels.
The Electric Fluid
In brief, the electric fluid
is hot, burning, expansive, dynamic, intense, powerful, and explosive in
sensation. It has the capacity to
produce great light. In psychological
terms, it is commanding, full of faith and conviction. It reaches for sovereign power seeking
absolute control. It annihilates and
destroys obstacles that stand in its way.
In more spiritual terms, it seeks to
manifest its vision using all the previous qualities—with certainty, with
dynamic will and expansive power, with implacable dedication and electrifying
conviction. An example in the earthzone
is the spirit referred to as Anamil in Aries or for
that matter the archangel Michael. For
both of these spirits, there are no problems that exist on earth that can not
be solved. (See my story St. Columba for an example of Michael’s
direct, masculine form of activity in history.)
You could say that independence, strength,
courage, conviction, faith, will, determination, dedication, self-reliance,
self-mastery, uprightness, clarity, order, adaptability, practicality,
planning, productivity, excitement, exhilaration, creativity, and vision are
qualities that are present when the electrical fluid is operating
successfully.
In my other essay, Christianity and Judaism, I give the example of the “dark vision”
that came to Abraham about his descendents suffering in
Had these individuals possessed sufficient
will and conviction they might very well have done whatever was necessary to
avoid the destruction they intuited. But they did not. Their electric fluid, their faith and
conviction, their will and decisiveness lacked both strength and quality
necessary to prevent the disasters that followed their inaction.
Obviously, the electric fluid can be done
in a positive or negative way. In the I-Ching, the great yang is describe
as the most creative of all things. The
prefect expression of its nature is the easy that it might overcome the
difficult. In other words, you take a
great task, project, or purpose and break it down into its steps and parts and
master them one by one.
A great father systematically and
persistently teaches his children in a simple but continuous manner so that
when they are older they are fully equipped and prepared to face the challenges
of life. He foresees the ends and
objectives in advance, makes plans, and persists in carrying through with them so
that the most difficult of problems can be solved. A father’s great accomplishment is in
preparing his children to undergo the great transitions of life in a smooth and
harmonious manner.
Once the decision is made to build a
What you do want is a commander in chief
(Eisenhower) who knows that he is completely responsible for the outcome, who
is willing to assume great risk, to act decisively, and yet who is willing to
resign his commission should the invasion fail.
The electric fluid can be very destructive
as well. As such, its
burning and consuming power acts to dominate the wills of others. It tortures and torments, hazes and
subjugates. It absorbs others’ wills
into itself. It utilizes every means
possible to corrupt, divide, undermine, and enslave others to its
purposes.
An example of the electric fluid operating
in a negative patriarchy is when the man in charge hazes those under him. One way he does this is to ask that they do
something completely absurd that they know he knows is absurd. Doing this task degrades them but nonetheless
doing it with full devotion is a test of their complete loyalty and
obedience.
In
For the negative electrical fluid, the
light is there but it lacks purity and clarity--the vision is distorted and
twisted. The faith and conviction are
there but are often expressed in a degraded form such as through arrogance and
self-righteousness.
The positive electrical (or patriarchal
for that matter) is seen in George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Gandhi—all
acting to revolutionize society in a more just and inclusive manner. The negative is seen in Napoleon, Stalin, and
bin Laden—all grasping after power in a regressive and exclusive manner. But in either the positive or negative forms,
the electric fluid is willing to put itself at complete risk to accomplish its
mission and manifest its vision.
The Magnetic Fluid
The magnetic fluid, by
contrast, is cool, contracting, soothing, and attractive. It is nurturing, and supportive. It contains within itself so as to shelter
and protect. Instead of intense and
explosive, it is rhythmic, receptive, and gentle.
In psychological terms, it is empathic,
sensitive and responsive. It draws
together, bonds, joins, and unites. It
accepts and affirms. In spiritual terms,
it reaches towards an all-encompassing, all-embracing love.
Again, in the I-Ching
the great Yin is the most receptive of all things. The perfect expression of its nature is the
simple that it might overcome what obstructs.
The yin in this case is known for its devotion. It is the mother whose love is always there,
whose support is always felt and present.
There is no end to its nurturing capacity physically, emotionally,
mentally, and spiritually.
The Great Yin conveys an inner feeling of
affirmation, of support and love. This
devotion or conveyance of love serves to unite the individual from within no
matter how dissecting and dividing, conflicting and stressful the circumstances
of the individual’s path in life. This
is a feminine, a mother’s set of qualities and powers describe by King Wu in
ancient times in
An example in the realm of hermetic magic
and Quabbalah is the archangel Gabriel presiding over the lunar sphere for whom
there is no dream that can not be made real, no vision that will not manifest
in the fullness of time in accordance with the strength and purity of the
desire within your heart.
Gabriel can embrace any true desire because
his vision encompasses all of history.
He exists in a state of timelessness, outside of time. Or, as the poet puts it, “What the heart sees
never die;” there are “worlds enough” for all dreams to be fulfilled. Gabriel affirms dreams and visions. He finds a time and place and a way and means
(a means for sheltering, nurturing, and protecting) for the seed of light to
manifest in history in spite of all opposing forces that seek to twist its
message and destroy its vision.
Let me depart for a brief moment into the
world of imagination, pure fantasy, or for those who are psychic and not
dependent solely on
words and imagery—the astral plane of the undines. In this realm of nature, an undine/mermaid
such as Isaphil is
“receptive, receiving, open, perfectly reflecting the sources of life that
sustain your being and flow through your dreams. Amplifying them, weaving them together, she
draws upon them, calls them down so they become more real. Through her caress, her touch, her words, her
light--cool, soft, shining light--she revives and renews you. Peaceful, shimmering happiness, total
contentment, she is a well overflowing with life.”
“These ecstatic delights exist within the sensation of touch--the magnetic embrace water reveals. It is all around you in every moment in the
air you breathe. It is in your blood,
your body's cells. It is in the rain,
the rivers, and the sea. In every moment
it is there singing to all of us.”
Or
consider another undine, Istiphul, who one day asked
me, “Where
can an undine go to share with a human soul these things?
The dark depths of the ocean trench,
The slippery touch of the jellyfish and the
nautilus,
The caress of arctic cold,
Or the warmth of curling up on a tropical
beach
Of a woman walking out of the sea naked and
free
Drops of water anointing
her skin.
Let me
review briefly one time when I called to Istiphul:
“She appears at first dimly. But as I
focus my mind, she takes on a clear form.
She walks through the water and comes right to my side.
“With Istiphul
near, I become acutely aware of tiny currents crisscrossing at the edges of the
mirror like surface just where water begins to fold around a rock. As the water dips and turns around my ankle,
I sense how the stream's bubbling ripples are like the hands of a dancer
telling a story as they turn in countless swirls and curves. I hear too many streams across these islands
as if they are suddenly near. Their
sounds breathe and sigh, caressed by air, hiding in sand, seeping beneath
rocks, falling in space, and circling in mountain pools. Drifting downstream to the sea, these waters
laugh like young girls carrying baskets of fresh fruit to a celebration. Istiphul sits beside me on the same rock, her bare feet dangling in the
stream.
“I say to her, ‘Tell me of the mysteries
of love and your own secret desires.
Show me too the mysteries of myself.’
“Istiphul
touches my left forearm with her right hand and I feel as if she touches every
nerve in my body. Every aspect of my
self is drawn together by her touch. The
sensation in her fingers pulses through me with an invitation to let go as
strong as the brash, swift grasp of a riptide or an undertow.
“With Istiphul,
I feel something I have never felt with any woman. Istiphul is here
next to me with a hundred per cent of herself.
She is joined with me--she feels everything I feel. Every thought and perception she feels as
well.
“She knows where my eyes fall as I gaze
into the distance--she is pure sensual, spiritual being. There is no intrusion of thoughts, words, or
ideas to confuse our connection.
Everything I am is within her heart.
“I reflect again on her touch. Her hand on my arm--what can it be to feel another is completely one with me, sharing all I
feel and perceive? Her touch annihilates
loneliness. Like Caesar, she commands an
empire, but hers is of the heart.”
Well enough. Undines—the nature spirits who dwell within the water
element—are the most enchanting of beings.
And these two in particular are masters of the magnetic fluid.
We could say that peace,
repose, calmness, happiness, contentment, serenity, tranquility, well-being,
delight, kindness, gentleness, affection, empathy, tenderness, sensuality,
pleasure, bliss, ecstasy, compassion, and love are qualities that are present
when the magnetic fluid is operating successfully.
The electrical fluid is fairly pronounced
in our society through the vast complex industrial, scientific, and
technological and research establishments.
These are not in any way matched by a magnetic fluid which has yet to
convey to us an inner peace with the universe, a “peace that passes all
understanding,” or a level of empathy and feeling that are able to communicate
heart to heart between anyone on the planet.
We have been able to produce hydrogen
fusion with temperatures hotter than the sun.
But we are not yet able to contain this fusion with a magnetic “jar”
which would then replace eighty per cent of the needs for fossil fuel on
earth. In technology, psychology, and in
spirituality, the magnetic fluid is far less understood than the electric
fluid.
We have seen the negative masculine (or
electric fluid) in Hitler, in Stalin, in Julius Caesar, in Alexander the Great,
in the great burning of the Counter Reformation, the excesses and exploitation
of capitalism, the exploitation of nature, the possibility of nuclear
annihilation as well as in the subjugation of women in so many ways. The abuses of the masculine or the electrical
fluid are obvious. The electric fluid
and its activities, for better or worse, are usually out in the open for all to
see. They usually involve some form of
action, preparation for, or plan of action.
The electrical fluid empowering the human
race with the active powers of and over nature have developed in history
leading as I have mentioned to achievements in science, industry, and
technology. The history of warfare is in
part a history of mastering the electric fluid (will, order, power) in a
destructive manner.
So what is the negative side of the
magnetic fluid? The electrical
fluid—hot, burning, intense, penetrating, and exploding--will attack you from
without. The magnetic fluid—cool,
soothing, releasing, receiving, and imploding--will attack you from
within.
A positive magnetic field can get inside
you and draw you together with its attracting force of love and affection. The negative magnetic field can also get
inside you but it pulls you apart reversing itself into a repelling force of
hate and hostility. In some
relationships, the partners are so involved that they can not break the
connection when they split up. But they
can reverse the polarity from love to hate in order to complete the separation.
In brief, the negative aspect of the
magnetic fluid is that it absorbs and contains without releasing or giving
birth. It shelters without enabling
growth. Instead of healing, it poisons. Instead of nurturing, it denies.
“Beware of sweetness” said the poet, for
you know not whether it will refresh and make you more alive or whether, like
cocaine and heroin, its “high” is subtly designed to drag you down into the
depths.
The negative paralyzes, seduces, wastes,
and numbs consciousness. It induces
insanity—that is, it destroys consciousness with guilt, shame, fear, terror,
illusions, delusions, obsessions, fascinations, depressions, nightmares, and
false visions.
The electrical fluid will draft you to
fight for a war machine. The magnetic
fluid will get you hooked on drugs or overcome with emotional defects so that
you are equally without will, drawn away from life and creativity.
In the I-Ching,
the Great Yin, mother, or magnetic fluid offers an individual continuous
support that nurtures and serves to integrate the inner self of the individual
though his or her entire course in life.
The negative magnetic fluid, by contrast, acts to undermine, dissolve,
and reabsorb into itself the inner life of the individual throughout his or her
entire life.
It is like an undertow, a whirlpool, or a
riptide subjecting the individual’s conscious identity to a force that acts to
dissolve its integrity. It sucks
consciousness out and down into a sea of the unconscious in which the
individual experience no longer has meaning.
It destroys the individual vitality and poisoning his or her
motivation.
But whether positive or negative,
whether life giving or life destroying, the magnetic fluid is the guardian that
reveals the deepest feelings and the mysteries at the core of the self.
Among the Archetypes
According to one perspective,
Western civilization has pursued the electrical/masculine side of culture and
consciousness. In doing so, it has
actively sought to suppress or destroy the feminine side. The electrical fluid has ascended at the cost
of the magnetic.
About thirty years ago, I did some research
on this topic which I will review briefly here since it relates to a discussion
of the magnetic fluid. A magician has to
develop and balance equally both masculine and feminine fluids in his body and
in his consciousness in order to work creatively. In a sense, then, this discussion is also
about magical equilibrium, about the nature of spiritual growth, and the
dynamics of a spiritual quest especially from the feminine side in relation to
an archetypal point of view.
In a nutshell, as I
understand Carl Jung (see Symbols of
Transformation) and Eric Neumann (see The
Great Mother and Amour and Psyche)
on archetypes, and Joseph Campbell (for example, Myths to Live By) on the hero’s quest, for a male or a female to
come into full spiritual maturity and psychological self-understanding, the
individual must have a full fledged encounter with the good and bad as well as
the very good—the inspiring/ecstatic—and the very bad—the malicious/evil
aspects of both the masculine and the feminine archetypes.
Obviously, in each age and in each society,
different archetypes will be in prominence, that is, active in the society and
under conscious review and discussion. Equally, various archetypes will be
latent or hidden and out of consciousness or passed over and mostly forgotten
by the society and the individual.
But the full power of the
archetypes, the various range and powers of transformation for the positive and
destruction for the negative are always there regardless of whether individuals
or societies recognize them. In
other words, as the actor John Travolta said in one movie, “Assumptions are the
mother of fuckups.” Never underestimate
the power in the full positive and the full negative of the masculine and
feminine mysteries. They will fall on
you when you least expect it and devour you.
Four Archetypes of the
Feminine
In a nutshell, there are four
main feminine archetypes. (This perspective
comes in part from a seminar by the American poet, Robert Bly,
who lectured at the
Like a mandala,
two positive and the two negative poles sit opposite each other representing
four different aspects of life. Each
embodies a different quality and vibration of the magnetic fluid. These four archetypes embody great magnetic
fields of force. By moving among them
and through dramatic encounters with them, an individual generates great light
and attains the very heights to which consciousness is capable.
First is the good mother. She is the mother Mary or the woman who loves
you throughout your entire life. She is
receptive, nurturing, tender, kind, and generous. If you want to participate in society and accomplish
your work in life, you need to make peace with her. Without her you simply do not have the energy
to follow through in accomplishing something that is of enduring value to
yourself or to others. She is happy to
see you succeed in life following the path you find within your heart.
A spirit in the lunar sphere said to me one
day that “the greatest wealth on earth is a woman who loves a man with all of
her heart.” Do not ever underestimate
the good mother’s power and influence.
She is the womb from which we are born and the peace we hope to have in
the moment we die. She is the one who
comes to greet us when we have passed beyond and she was there all along when
we take our first step, when we graduate from school, and when we wed.
Have you ever felt really happy? I mean as if happiness is woven into your
every breath and heartbeat making you feel fully
alive? Have you ever felt a well-being
in which you can sense that every thing good in life will come to you
naturally? These are qualities and
powers of this positive magnetic fluid operating within your soul. This is light from the archetype of the good
mother shining upon your life.
Opposite the good mother is
the stone mother. Her essence is that she makes you numb. She slows you down and gets you into
ruts. She gets you to conform. This is because the only way she can feel
close to you is if you think, do, and feel as she does. She is the superego, the accepted values and
mores of a society. She is very
traditional and hates anything new.
All individuals who seek to be accepted by
and validated in other peoples’ eyes are the children of the stone mother. They are unable to grow because they are
bound to conformity. When they attain success, wealth, and fame, they are
slaves to what they have gained.
Most spiritual quests begin by leaving behind
the stone mother. To quest for
self-knowledge, you have to cross over the boundary separating the known from
the unknown. The stone mother already
knows who you are. She knows where your nitch in life is and where you belong.
Leaving her behind is a shocking experience
because to do so you awaken to new perceptions and feelings that she does not
understand (and no one around you understands).
But the stone mother is willing to accept you, support you, and
sacrifice for you. Who are you to cast
such aspersion on all that she has given you, all she has done to make you who
you are?
The minister, the priest, and the rabbi are
her servants. They guard the boundaries
leading into the unknown. The stone
mother is the guardian and custodian of life’s limitations. She knows that if you leave her behind you
will face naked and alone the full onslaught of the mysteries that society has
not prepared you for. You had better
find a new cloak and spiritual identity for your soul if you wish to venture
beyond her protection.
In summary, her numbness, her safe
harbors, reassurances, and her insane complacency protect against all the fears
and terrors that society does not yet understand. Her warning? Don’t venture beyond my sphere of influence
or you will be destroyed.
Well, for that matter, you can remain under
her protection and you are just as easily destroyed. In homage to the stone mother from my poem, Women and the Sea,
One night, alone in a small
craft,
The sky was overcast
I could hear the waves
breaking not far off
Against a rocky shore hidden
in darkness
But I could not turn out to
sea
The waves were too great
When the wave’s crest broke
Over the stern I took on
water
And so sailing only by sound
I listened to the waves
Bearing off when the breaking
crest
Was too near
Until two hours later
I sailed past the tip of the
island.
I know women like that:
Shoals hidden in darkness
Uncharted, unmapped,
Places where dreams are
shattered
And lives are shipwrecked
And to survive them
You must make darkness your
friend.
And even when you are ashore,
When you think you are safe
and sound
When your feet are really on
solid ground
It is still like visiting
I have floated naked in that
mountain pool
At dawn as the sun’s golden,
molten breath
Caressed the rocky heights
The water so cold yet
inviting
So exciting, yielding all of
its being to my touch
Like lips which finally
surrender a kiss
But then later on when I had
left
Falling rocks kill others right
where I stood
That place, though sacred, is
also a trap
I know women like that—
They can be incredibly sweet
and kind
And then turn and stone you
to death
Like their worst enemy from
another lifetime.
On another axis are the
ecstatic mother and the teeth mother.
The ecstatic mother gives
ecstasies, dreams, visions, and hope. It
is not her nature to offer affection and support. Do not ever ask that of her.
You most likely will not find her each
night in your bedroom or cooking breakfast in your kitchen. She will be out sailing around the world,
living up in a tree, or dancing up a storm as the sun dawns. One ecstatic mother told me she can have an
orgasm just watching the wind drip down and caress fields of golden wheat. But do not think she follows any form or
tradition. She can appear anywhere and
at any time in any women.
Perhaps in a taste of her lips you may be
offered the choice to return to the man you once were or to leave behind all
that you are to become the man you were meant to be.
And the beauty of her
naked form? Some middle aged men
possess a power and an authority greater than any pope or any rock star. This is because they are able to ask like no
one else, What is missing from life?
The ecstatic mother’s beauty, if they ever
see it, reveals a new and greater harmony that resolves all conflict, for
beauty is harmony that speaks to the depth of every passion and desire and
offers them satisfaction and completion.
Dante met her one day and in one glance as a Beatrice she granted him a
new vision of the union of heaven and earth.
Recall that the good mother revives and
animates you. She heals and nurtures
you. She satisfies and gives you that
taste of life so that from the very beginning you know instinctively the
difference between the good and the bad.
And, as I mentioned, good mother supports you when you seek to fulfill
what you find in your heart. But she
does not know what is there.
By contrast, the ecstatic mother goes right
down into the very depths of your self, into the core of your heart. And then she asks you that one question that
must be answered before you discover who you are. Or, she finds a seed of light in the dark
depths of your soul and says, “Look what I have found within you. You must nourish and bring this seed to life
if you wish to attain to your destiny.”
The woman I am writing this essay for said
to me, “I say what I mean.” But there is
more to her than what she knows. The
ecstatic mother often operates unconsciously in women. They don’t know she is there but some men
will see or feel her presence instantly.
I have met a number of these women and for
the most part our society gives them no rank or recognition. At the mere touch, one woman evokes the
presence of my guardian angel. Another
takes me immediately into the radiant sphere of the sun where I stand next to a
being who is united with God from within.
And a third woman somehow embodies the letter “J” in the JHWH that
yields the vision of all beings becoming joined as one.
Like I say, never ask the ecstatic mother
to nurture you or help you understand what she reveals in you. She probably does not have the faintest idea
of what you are talking about. But
inspire she can do. She is the taste of
bliss in Joseph Campbell’s “follow your bliss” if you want to find something
worth living for.
But you can not possess her any more than
you can possess or own an archetype. The
individual girl or woman reflects what is within your depths. It is your job to bring it to life.
The actress, Jane Fonda, married the
business tycoon Ted Turner. When asked
about her career, she replied, “With a man like Ted Turner, you don’t have any
time for your self.” Ah, but deep down
the modern woman expects the man to manage her career, to enable her to
succeed. After all, women have
sacrificed for eight thousand years for the masculine to come into its own. Now it
is pay back time.
When Jane Fonda left Ted Turner—it was
after all just a fling, something that never could have worked given its
limitations--Ted thought of committing suicide.
Here is a guy without contact with his feminine side—he is so masterful
of the outer world that he has forgotten that there is a world within, a world
of feeling and beauty. This is a world a
man can neither enter nor possess by controlling a woman any more than a woman
can come into her full maturity by devotedly supporting her dynamic and
powerful man. At least that is the
lesson in the story of Ted and Jane.
In any genuine and true initiation, the
attainment of realization, the transformation of consciousness, or the movement
from darkness into light requires discipline and preparation on your part. And then she (the ecstatic mother) comes and
takes your hand and leads you across the threshold into the circle of the
mysteries joining you to a community that is eternal and unending in its love,
light, and life.
This is not always a smooth ride as Ted
found out. Her love may tear your heart
to pieces. She may ask you to die to all that you are or to give up all that
you have for just the chance to taste her bliss, to unite with her essence. It will always be up to you to determine if
what she asks of you is worth the price.
Like I say, the ecstatic mother is not so
hot at nurturing. But she will show you
things about your self that you have never imagined.
“Except a
seed fall to the earth and die it can not bring forth new life.” This could be
the motto of the teeth mother except
she does not know about the new life, only about the death and the destruction
of consciousness. Now we come to a
great mystery, an aspect of the feminine celebrated equally in the heart of
Buddhism and Christianity but which is almost unknown in our society.
To put it simply, the teeth mother is the
guardian of enlightenment. She is right
there guarding the threshold. If you
want to become enlightened, you have to look into her eyes and pass before the
light of her face.
She is seen in the sphere of Saturn: a
realm of nightmare, horror, and domination.
Her essence is in her power of concentration. Her stare is so intense she paralyzes and
then destroys consciousness. She is
every fear and terror you have never met.
To escape from the stone mother is shocking
because of the new perceptions and feelings that break into your
awareness. Leaving the stone mother is
like being born into a new world that no one else seems to even be remotely
aware of.
To survive or escape from the teeth mother
you have to do more. It is like dying
right here amid life while you are still alive.
You to have to let go of everything—for to be enlightened is to be free
of all attachment. It is to see the
world as it is beyond all assumptions, beyond the need to even think or to have
control.
“When I attained to perfect enlightenment, I
attained to nothing at all,” said the Buddha.
To be enlightened is to be nothing, empty, more clear than a mirror that
perfectly reflects without disturbing what appears within it.
The teeth mother is like Kalachakra,
the wrathful side of compassion who annihilates any form of attachment. The teeth mother will only be satisfied with
the full death and destruction of your consciousness. And so her power of
concentration—she gazes into the depths of your self searching for anything
that you use to define who you are.
If you are Abraham, she requires the life of
your son. If you are Jesus, she will only be satisfied with your death in order
to put an end to your teaching on earth.
If you are Orpheus, she requires not one glance on your part to see if
your beloved remains with you as you cross over the threshold between the
living and the dead. You can not turn
from you path until your beloved speaks and says, “I am here.” (The Greeks were very clear on this point: to
find love, you have to endure an indeterminate time of complete uncertainty and
unknowing. If you grasp for love or flee
from it, it will not appear to you.)
In the movie, Jacob’s Ladder, a dying man on an
operating table dreams he has returned from
Before Buddha was enlightened, Kama, the Lord of the demons, came to tempt him. In Hinduism, the demons arose from the tears
of Shiva when his beloved, the Queen of the universe, Maya, abandoned him. To love Maya for Shiva was to be united with
the universe. And then that
connectedness, the inner unity, is gone.
The teeth mother is the dark night of the
soul. I explored this somewhat in my
story about St. Columba. She is absolute
despair. The mystery the Christians may
never comprehend is the “why hast thou forsaken me?” of Christ on the
cross. What is required from Christ are
absolute faith and trust even in the moment of abandonment and at the point of
death. You have to let go of everything,
even you knowledge of who God is or how He is supposed to act, if you wish to
get by the teeth mother.
For me, the great feminine is the empty
void that embraces all the stars and galaxies.
It embraces the universe. It is
that open, empty, void, and receptive. It is through its support that life
appears on every world.
Similarly, Prajnaparamita
is the mother of the Buddhas. Her name means emptiness. Hers is the Heart Sutra: “….form does not
differ from emptiness and emptiness does not differ from form….” Tibetan Buddhists at least in their
iconography like to put the teeth and the ecstatic mothers together. Parjnaparamita as
well as Vishvamati are the consorts of Kalachakra. To gaze
upon Vishvamati “is to experience bliss.” Amid the mandala of Kakachakra that uses
time to annihilate all form is the presence of a transcendent bliss that is the
light of pure consciousness.
In my story, Balaam, the Gentile Prophet, Balaam masters the masculine
mysteries. And this mastery gives him power
over the nations. But God requires
something more of him. God asks Balaam
to unite with the great feminine. But
Balaam says,
If this love touched me for even an instant
There would be nothing left
Neither dust nor breath
If I tasted this bliss
I would cease to exist
No man on earth can endure
or offer the love you seek.
And in my poem, Moses and Aaron, Moses makes a similar
complaint to God. God asks Moses to
reveal to mankind a temple not made of hands but rather one in which He is free
to appear within Moses’ own body. And
this temple was to have four gates being the four elements, one of which is
water:
God said next:
Build the third gate to the
West
This gate shall open to the
Mystery of Water
Let those who Dare enter here
This is where empathy
equally
Sees the world as it is
And as it can be in a dream
Those willing to risk all
to find what they seek
As the Lover seeks his
Beloved
They shall be as fountains
Overflowing with streams of
living water
Their hearts shall contain
Eternity
That sea which has no
shores
Whose winds are bliss
Whose waves are ecstasy
And in whose depths are
Divine dreams and visions
And Moses said:
Across the reaches of the
desert
Across the waves of rolling
sand
Is found an occasional
oasis
The waters that flow
through the soul
Often turn bitter or dry up
Love is so rare and
precious men die for its touch
How can you ask for so
much?
Is there no end to Your
Divine Yearning?
Would You
make the entire planet
Into a
school for prophets and seers?
And God replied:
Every breath is a path of
Love
Every tear, drop of blood,
every raindrop
Proclaims this secret: the
path leading between opposites
In each moment My Love is
everywhere
Sustaining the universe
And everything within it
Dare to enter here!
After being prodded by Aaron,
Moses goes on to ask God to reveal His
feminine side. And after God does Moses
says, “Oh God, let me now die. For who can endure such Joy?” And God replies, “Only those
who Love.”
And while I am tooting my own
horn, also in my book Mystical Fables,
a mythical king named Sustarna says,
“The path to self-knowledge
is full of obstacles and barriers. There
are places within the soul where men may not go. The waters are too deep. The flow is too pure. If a man dares enter the feminine mysteries
he will drown.
“And there are places within the spirit
where women may not enter: beyond the worlds of form opposites are overcome and
the Bliss that exists there is infinite.
If a woman dares to enter these masculine mysteries she will be burnt to
a crisp. The light is that bright.
“But if a man could so enter and survive
the Earth's womb, to dissolve within that dark place and not lose his
masculinity; if a woman could journey into the heart of the sun and survive its
fires and its light without loss of her femininity, then the their spirits
would no longer be subject to gender limitations--
“They would have cast off their mortality
and put on immortality. Such individuals
are then appointed as the guides and Guardians of the Earth and of
evolution. They become the creators of
new worlds.”
In other words, these four
archetypes are not separate. You want
the perfection of the ecstatic mother, be prepared to endure the nothingness and
annihilation of the teeth mother. You
want the ability of the good mother to really heal, to find and reunite what is
lost as
The Myth of Eros and
Psyche
Now the nature of mythology,
like a good symbol, is that its meaning is constantly subject to new
interpretation. A good symbol must
contain imagery sufficiently primal that it can speak to the deepest part of
our selves. And at the same time it must
be sufficiently vague or open-ended that each person and age can use it to see
themselves in a new way.
In this essay, I am, as do all writers,
taking liberties with the story. I am
bringing my own background as a spiritual anthropologist and magician to it. The story speaks to me and at this point I am
still only at the beginning of my understanding of it just as I am only at the
beginning of my understanding of women.
Psyche (the word means
“soul) is an extremely beautiful woman in ancient
Psyche’s father visits Apollo’s Oracle in
This is Eros, the son of Aphrodite, but no
one seems to know that yet. Eros a tyrant? You
bet. Like Kama,
the god of love in Hindu mythology, Eros has power over all the gods and
goddesses to cause them to fall in love.
Even Apollo, the god of wisdom, is subject to Eros.
In the Jewish tradition, Solomon was given
such wisdom that God proclaimed him the wisest in the history of world—no one
past, present, or future would be wiser than him. But in the end, Solomon lost favor with God
by becoming “enamored” with women who lead him to worship in their pagan
temples. Wisdom is no match for Eros.
But abandon Psyche on a cliff for a
monster? Not a very nice way to treat a beautiful women.
But in that age of the world it was understood that beauty is
dangerous.
(Well, think about Helen, the most
beautiful women in her time and the Trojan War.
Maybe the Oracle was trying to avoid another war.) But there is another side as well. Beauty can speak of a new harmony, one so
great even the order of the gods may be forced to change to comply with its
vision.
After a funeral and funeral procession to
the top of the hill, Psyche is abandoned.
Her family considers her now dead.
End of story? No. Eros, the son of Aphrodite/Venus, notices
this young woman abandoned and alone.
After all, he has had to put up with the constant ranting and
complaining of his mother about her competition with a mortal woman. And now Aphrodite assigns Eros the task of
humiliating Psyche by causing her to fall in love with someone utterly ugly.
On the other hand, maybe Eros had twisted
the arm of the Oracle to slant the response to his advantage. Maybe the Oracle only meant to say, “She
shall not wed a mortal” and Eros threw in the bit about abandoning her on a
cliff so he could take her without anyone noticing. There is a Zephyr, a spirit of the wind, who
has a brief cameo part here by carrying Psyche down from the cliff into a
valley.
Eros flies down to Psyche and steals her
away to a magical castle where she has servants and attendants and wealth
beyond imagining. There is one
condition. She must not look upon his
face. Eros intends to remain
invisible. Word might get out and then
his very jealous and very powerful mother would be very upset. Maybe she would do a little investigating
into how the Oracle, well, you get the idea.
Eros sleeps with Psyche and the love is
fabulous and all would be content. (see my poem, The Song
of Psyche at the end of this essay). And what the world does not know won’t
hurt them.
But Psyche makes her first choice in this
dazzling story line. Out of loneliness,
she persuades Eros to allow her sisters a visit. To them she can reveal that she is not only
still alive. In fact, it is not a
monster who met her but a fabulously skilled and wealthy lover.
Well, it does not take any imagination to
figure the outcome. Some sisters are
very jealous and with a sister as beautiful as Psyche, well, the jealousy gets
carried away. In other words, if you are
woman in love, deep, passionate love, watch out. If you have something others do not have, it
creates a great dissatisfaction in their lives.
The sisters tell psyche, “No, it is a
monster with whom you are sleeping. That
is why he will not permit you to gaze upon him.
This is what you must do. Light a
lamp in the middle of the night and stab him while he is fast asleep.”
Psyche falls prey to this wicked advice.
Sisterhood is not always in the best interest of every sister. She lights the lamp but swoons out of passion
and delight when she sees that it is the god Eros with whom she has been
sleeping.
The lamp slips from her hand the hot oil
spills out upon the naked form of Eros.
Ouch. Wounded he takes flight and
the magical castle disappears.
You want to wound a man? Take a really good look at him. You will see how fragile, vulnerable,
incomplete, and unfinished is his soul. A woman’s gaze can reveal how he is only a
shadow of what he is meant to be.
After all, in this case, Eros has been
running this little affair with a mortal in secrecy in order to avoid his
mother’s wrath. He is still under his
mother’s domination. The keys to his
soul are hidden under his mother’s pillow and he lacks the will to take them.
Well, here we have it: a
mortal women with unusual psychic power causes disturbance not only in
her society but she attracts the attention of a great feminine archetype. Aphrodite is after all the goddess of
love. You would think this is all
positive. But it is not so. These goddesses are often mixtures of
positive and negative as are human women.
Aphrodite back in Greek time believes in and
inspires love. But she does not believe in personal love. The gender roles are fixed. Men only fall in love with women out of
lust. Men are not capable of rising to a
higher level than that. Men are the
patriarch and when does the patriarch ever really love a woman?
Eros proclaims to his mother his love of
Psyche. But hey kid, your name means
lust. Get over it. You don’t love her. You lust after her. End of discussion and anyway she is a mortal
and you are a god. The two are not meant
to consort with each other.
Psyche is really down in the dumps
now. Not only is she abandoned out in
the wilderness but, according to one version, she finds she is also pregnant.
Woe and despair. Aphrodite is not about
to have a grand child from a mortal women.
That’s too much to ask. Surely
Aphrodite will now seek to kill Psyche.
But Psyche encounters the god Pan out in the
grasslands. Pan, the goat footed god,
with his pan flute, knows much about natural desire and lust. (When it comes to this goat footed god, think
Hugh Heffner—Playboy founder--as a reflection of Pan in our time). Pan in effect says to Psyche, Don’t be
afraid. Everything in the universe and
in nature has its place. Pray to Eros.
And a little later, Psyche chances upon an
abandoned temple which she cleans up and makes beautiful. This is the
In this case, throw your self on
Aphrodite’s mercy. If nothing else, she
will feel she has to offer you something in order for her to save face—I mean,
she is the goddess of love and you are in love with her son and her son got it
on with you. Isn’t that how things are
supposed to work in the house of love?
Psyche does this. She goes to the
And so now we have what is perhaps the one
genuine myth of feminine growth that has survived Christianity’s attempts to
destroy all knowledge of the feminine mysteries and paths of transformation.
Let me say at the outset that Psyche’s task
is indeed daunting. She has not only to
gain the support of the power invested matriarch. She has also an equally daunting task of
freeing her lover from his narcissistic and impulsive nature as well as from
his subjugation to his mother. Her lover
is a slave as well to the matriarchy—to the way the world is, to what is
expected--to everything has its role and its proper
place.
Are psyche’s sisters going to help her?
No. Psyche’s sisters were glad when they
thought she was dead. The sisterhood,
the sweet “accepting” sisters are now completely out of the picture.
In a nutshell, the first test involves the sphere of the
instincts. Different seeds are scattered
on the ground and Psyche must separate them into their different groups. The clock
is running. She despairs. The task is impossible.
But the ants come to her rescue. The ants appreciate past deeds are now return
the favor. The ants are the instinctual
sphere. They like order and they are
ruled by a queen. The queen has absolute
control over her realm.
And so the first task for a woman to attain
maturity is to put her world together in a way that feels right. It is something she feels with her body and
through her instinctual desire drawing upon her connection to nature.
This is not a masculine action. This is not a rational or intellectual
action. But it does involve a great deal
of will arising from within her. And so
she passes the first test.
A few possible anecdotes. A woman psychologist gets pregnant and has
children. She says, Nothing
prepares you for this. Your day is constant chaos. You are pulled in every which way and never
seem to have time for yourself.
This woman’s descent into the realm of
the instincts was in conflict with the entire basis of her rational identity.
A woman I know has a mother who is
schizophrenic. The mother has five
separate personalities. This daughter
has met only two of these five personalities.
Schizophrenics are usually devoid of empathy. They have no feelings to share.
Yet the daughter is perhaps the nicest, most
natural person I have ever met. With a mother like that and no father present,
the daughter ended up raising her younger siblings. To do this she had to draw upon her natural,
instinctive abilities. She became the
mother and so developed nurturing and protective abilities far in excess of her
peers.
This young woman’s confrontation with the
stone mother, the mother who is numb and devoid of feeling, produced in herself
the opposite—the good mother—her body emits love and affection without need of
conscious commitment.
The second test is gather some golden
fleece. These rams with the golden fleece as a matter of fact are quite hostile. They will kill you if they see you.
Psyche
again despairs. The task is
impossible. One interpretation is that
Psyche is asked to go bring back some of that bright shiny stuff that men have,
that radiant charisma and confidence they possess when they are at the height
of their powers.
We are still dealing with animal nature here,
but a very powerful
and enchanted animal—the power of masculinity in its natural
glory and strength.
Psyche gets a tip from the water
nymphs. The power of masculine
consciousness vanishes when it slips into the waters of sleep. Wait until the
sun is high and the rams are drawn to the shade and fall asleep. They you can sneak into their domain and
gather the fleece from the thorny brush that has caught some of the wool.
There you have it. For a woman to grow, she has to find a way to
enter the realm and acquire the skills of men without being attacked by their
hostility. My niece went to
And she was.
One of the other male trainees tried to rape her. She stopped the guy by pointing out that she
knew how to gut him with a small blade.
He did not take her up on her bluff.
Her employer failed to even record her complaint. A few years later, Dean Witter lost in a
class action suit over the firm’s discrimination against women.
Another niece was making more money than her
boss because she was being paid on commission for her sales. The vice president of her company used to
have dinner with her twice a year to get her ideas.
One day he called her and asked to take her
out to dinner again. She answered that
she no longer worked for the company. Her
boss put her on a salary knowing she would quit. The boss preferred she quit rather than make
so much money for the corporation if it meant she would outshine him.
My mother raced sailboats and she was
better than all the other skippers who were men. The consequence was that the men sold their
sailboats and bought boats in other classes in order to avoid being beat by a
woman.
My one cousin, by the way, was Miss
I was so young and innocent back then that
the drama of the situation escaped me. I
was trying to answer a question from her young son who was in the back seat,
“If we are dead after we die, what are we before we
are bone?” Technically speaking, that is a Zen question. Both of these women, I would mention in
passing, have tried hard to form alliances with the masculine in a world that
looks with both favor and hostility upon their beauty.
These days in the
But in this story at this point the
application is more encompassing. The question is how do you
deal with powerful and instinctual hostility to your attempting to accomplish a
task, a task that involves learning the skills or acquiring the abilities of
those who are hostile to you.
And answer is that you wait until that
moment when they become passive and calm. You find a time when the hostility is
diminished, the guard is down, and the watch is asleep. And then in safety you quietly go in and
learn what you need to know or take what you need to succeed.
Colleges are often like this. They can be cold and incredibly hostile. But there are genuine teachers if you can
find them and learn from them under the right conditions.
As I mentioned elsewhere, I used to sneak
into the French philosopher’s class at the
The third test is more mystical and involves the patriarchy yet also an
animal. Psyche must take a flask and
fill it with water from the river
The river flows from a great tower down into
the depths and it is completely inaccessible, beyond the reach of the
living.
Psyche gains the help of a father figure,
patriarch of patriachs—Zeus himself. Well, the word has gotten out. What else do they have to do on
I mean they assassinated Julius Caesar
because of his affair with Cleopatra.
How could Zeus not take sides when Eros had
sought out such a beautiful woman? It
might have been Zeus in fact who eloped with Psyche if Hera
was not still on his back over an affair that produced Hercules.
What is
this test and how does Psyche manage to play a part in it? The river
Lust ends when you come to death and
perhaps for Aphrodite so does love.
Aphrodite is asking Psyche if she can freely go right up to the boundary
where lust and love come to an end and bring back something that shows she was
there.
Aphrodite is saying, “This is my
boundary. I know my place. Do you have my range?” Water is a symbol of life but this water is
different. It separates the living and
the dead. It draws you down into a place
from which there is no return. And the
great patriarch, Zeus, he has made it the boundary of our world. You will be stealing from him as well.
Or put simply, go bring me back an
experience that shows that you see as I see and that you feel as I feel that
all love and desire come to an end. See
if you can manage this and having done so still want to love my son. Get real girl, life has its limitations.
But Zeus does not see it that way. I imagine it happened like this. Zeus came in disguise to Psyche as he often
does when he moves among mortals. And he
asked her, Tell me young woman, what do you really
want?
And Psyche replies, “I have made love with a
god. I have felt him within my
body. And I love him with all of my
heart, more than life itself.”
And Zeus thought right then and there that
this was something he himself had never experienced—such profound love. Zeus had always been struck by one of Eros’
damn arrows of lust and then fallen upon a mortal woman without regard for her
well-being or her part in the affair.
The results of these unions have been the stuff of mythology. But again what Psyche is offering is more
than Zeus had ever imagined. Zeus smiled
to himself. He liked this girl and he
began to think about how to use her to modify Eros’ wanton and careless
archery.
And then Zeus recalled when Aphrodite first
appeared on earth. Zeus had castrated Uranus, the god of time, and his genitals
had fallen into the ocean which gave birth to Aphrodite. Her beauty was overwhelming and she was so
new and unexpected. But this Psyche, she
too is altogether new and utterly unexpected.
More beauty than a god had thought to ask from life.
And so I suspect Zeus began plotting how to
make Psyche a permanent addition to the celestial kingdom. It would not be easy. A lot of boundaries would have to be
redrawn. A lot of favors called in. A few behind the scenes bribes or arms
twisted through subtle persuasion. But
it could be done.
For this beauty is not in her form but it
arises form the depths of her heart. “I
see it so clearly” said Zeus to himself “as I see the constellations—Orion,
Gemini, Chiron—and the others I have placed in the sky.”
What is her test
and her response? In my version, Zeus
asks, What do you want? And Psyche replies, “I choose to love without
fear of loss even if it means in the giving that I experience becoming nothing.
I choose to love in a way that is more than desire and lust with a love that is
heart to heart, with a love that is so deep there is no fear within it.”
If the stone mother rules a kingdom she
rules it using fear. No matter how bad things are, there is something worse
waiting for you if you risk change. If
the teeth mother rules a kingdom she rules it because you are either something
or you are nothing. And no one chooses
to be nothing.
Psyche in her love stepped across the
boundaries guarding both their kingdoms.
Not an easy thing to do. Like I
say, this story ended long ago for the jealous sisters. It ended when Psyche gazed upon her lover and
wounded him in the process.
Relationships can not endure seeing each
other as we really are. The man has run off
and the woman has been disowned, dispossessed, and worse. End of story for the socially minded, upward
mobile sisters. They do not want to know
about a love so deep that society and religion have no ability to support much
less understand it.
Feelings are only meant to run so deep and
no further. If you get carried away, the
magnetic forces may pull you down and out into a sea of the unknown. There is nothing there you can hang on
to. No life preserver or life
raft. You are on your own.
This
all could have gone another way. Psyche
could have said to Aphrodite at the beginning of the third test, “Look, I will
make you a deal which we can bind to secrecy.
I will abort the child. I’ll deny
I had an affair with your son. And for
the rest of my life I will hate men for their deceit, their fickle natures, and
for their lack of loyalty. Just let me live.
I want my life back again.”
And Aphrodite noticing the eagle hovering
over the trees in the distance might have thought to herself that this girl
takes after her my own heart. She
understands exactly what life is about—that love is suffering as well as
pleasure, that it is betrayal as well as union.
And Aphrodite could with feigned sadness explain to the other goddesses,
“She could not fulfill a few simple requests.”
End of discussion. But not in this myth and not with this woman.
For the fourth test Psyche must travel much
further this time—beyond the river Styx right into the heart of Hades and
return with a vial of beauty kept by Persephone, the Queen of the Dead.
“Orpheus, sweet Orpheus,” said Aphrodite to
herself, “He tried to pull off this journey for Eurydice, entering the land of
the dead to bring her back to the land of the living. But at the very end his love was lost. Could it have been otherwise?
“I remember his song so well, so divine and
yet so mortal it swayed even Pluto to grant him his request with one little
condition—he had to dwell in a state of complete uncertainty until a woman
called out to him, ‘I am here.’ But in
this task, he failed. We still play that
song of Orpheus here on
So Aphrodite gives Psyche a small box to
take with her to the underworld for the elixir from Persephone. There are a few more characters we meet:
Cerberus, three headed demon dog and Charon, the
ferryman across the river
There might be a little celestial intrigue
going on here. Aphrodite thinks that
Psyche will not make it to the
And Aphrodite, of course, does not want
Psyche to fulfill this task. And so
Aphrodite has asked for something impossible—that the Queen of the Dead give to
Psyche as the messenger for Aphrodite the elixir of eternal beauty, an elixir
that is best hidden and protected within the depths of this land of death.
Let’s consider these dynamics.
Persephone is the daughter of Demeter/Ceres,
the goddess of the earth and of Zeus.
Persephone was a very beautiful woman abducted by Pluto and taken away
to his kingdom of the dead. Now as
relations go, in ancient
I sometimes ask women whom I meet, What is the best thing that has ever happened to you in
life? And if they have a daughter they
almost always answer, “Giving birth to a daughter.” So far no woman has said, “Giving birth to a
son.”
Demeter was so upset at the loss of her
daughter that winter covered the whole earth.
In order to preserve the world, Zeus sent Mercury to negotiate a deal
between Pluto and Demeter. The arrangement?
Pluto would get Persephone for three months of each year.
Thus the seasons arose: winter when
Persephone was gone and Demeter mourned her absence and at the other pole
summer when Persephone returned to her mother, mother nature at its
happiest. Mercury coaxed Demeter with
the words, “In this way, all the world will share in
your joy as well as in your grief and so you will not bear this suffering
alone.”
The name Persephone, by the way, means
something like “she who destroys the light” because of her abduction into the
underworld the light recedes in winter.
“In a dark time, the eye begins to see” (Theodore Roethke)
and the heart begins to consider what really matters. In Persephone, divinity and the limitations
of mortality—wrapped about with death and darkness-- are combined.
Persephone, for her part, developed a sympathy for Pluto, for indeed she was the only presence
in all of his kingdom that could touch his heart with life. So listening to Psyche’s request, Persephone
could not help thinking, “Aphrodite has two springs which yield the waters of
bitterness and of joy. But my well
contains the elixir of eternal beauty.”
If I give this gift to Psyche to return to Aphrodite, I give Psyche a
choice when no one else has.”
Yet Persephone gives the elixir to Psyche
with this warning, “Only death knows the
secret to eternal beauty, and the elixir I have placed in this box carries that
mystery. Do not open it.” Such
beauty/harmony is too strong for a mortal to bear or else too dangerous.
Jim Morrison, Jimmy Hendrix, and Janis
Joplin—great singers—they all got stuck in the door that leads between human
and divine inspiration. On the one side
of the door is life and on the other side is death. And being stuck, death came up and took hold
of them.
You want the embrace of the ecstatic
mother? Watch out. The teeth mother is waiting in the wings for
the opportunity to come and claim you as her own.
In the more masculine “Hero’s Quest” the
male hero has to enter the underworld and discover a treasure of immense
value. But if he fails to bring the
treasure back to the world of the living and share it with mankind his entire
quest in invalidated—it is null and void.
The tree rock stars I mentioned above were
able to share the wealth of inspiration they had found for a few brief years of
their lives and then they were gone.
That elixir of eternal beauty that inspired them
belonged more to the realm of the dead than their electrical intensity--that
desires to be fully alive and fully operational within the land of the living.
Let’s do a little more reality check on
this mythology stuff. Can I put this in
ordinary terms, I mean, where is the magnetic fluid here in action and what
does it mean?
Well, consider that song, Candle in the Wind, written originally
by Elton John for Marilyn Monroe with a phrase in it altered when he sang it
live on TV at Princess Diana’s funeral.
Maybe a billion people listened live to that song on TV and at least a
hundred million of them were in tears before its end.
You see, part of a woman’s path of growth
lies in her ability to effect eros, the primitive and
primal instinct that bonds human beings together. Where was eros in
Prince Charles when he married Diana?
And where was eros in Arthur Miller who divorced Marilyn
Monroe? What was the erotic intent in
President Kennedy and his brother Robert Kennedy who had occasion to sleep with
Marilyn? Did they do so with any soul or
did they have sex with her playing the role of tyrants which is the way Eros
would go? And by messing with Marilyn did they invite their own deaths as
karmic retribution?
You see, we have kings and queens and a
Kennedy reflecting a lost Camelot and women of surpassing beauty. The archetypes are still in play on the
public stage and the powers of the magnetic are just as dynamic.
The Princess complained to her husband
about his affair with Camilla Parker Bowles and Charles replied, “Its my birthright to fool around….I refuse to be the only
prince of Wales who never had a mistress.”
The Princess complained to the Queen and the Queen said, “I don’t know
what you should do. Charles is
hopeless.”
Aphrodite could not have expressed her
scorn about male fidelity any better.
Diana had no means, no method to get the “lower” energy in her royal
husband’s body up into his heart so that they could share “soulful love.” Eros/Charles was still slave to the
Queen/matriarchy/social conformity.
The only problem with Charles is that he
failed to understand the “modern woman.”
If he can fool around, then so can she and so questions arise about the
legitimacy of the heirs to the English throne.
Later on, it would take the prime minister,
Tony Blair, wearing the guise of Hermes, to explain to the royal family, “Get
your sweet asses over here to Diana’s funeral and pretend that you are in
mourning. Otherwise, you will have a
popular uprising.” The Royal Family,
with intent or not, had just killed Psyche (soulful love) and in this day and
age that is a great crime.
So what Princess Diana did while she was
still alive was to take her “love,” her soulful empathy and share it with the
people of England and the children of the world through her social giving. For example, acting against the status quo,
she sought to ban anti personal mines in all wars around the world. So many children are maimed or die each year
stumbling upon mines left over from wars long gone.
But this is very dangerous situation for a
Princess to be in—without allies personal or impersonal to offer her advice and
support. And so she was captured by the
underworld and Orpheus/Elton John was left to mourn her loss.
And Marilyn Monroe too, you know the
conspiracy theories, well, my mother tells them to me every so often. The attorney general, Robert Kennedy, was
tape recording Jimmy Hoffa’s private conversations in order to put him in jail.
So Hoffa tape recorded the Kennedy’s affair with Marilyn.
Marilyn made the mistake one day of
standing up and saying publicly, “I’m going to marry the president.” Wrong thing to say—like walking in the
morning out into the pasture of the sheep with the golden
fleece. When Marilyn was
photographed one day with the wind blowing up her skirt at a photo shoot, her
husband, the playwright Arthur Miller, could no longer handle it. He could not bear a woman whose eroticism
extended past the bedroom door.
Marilyn’s gift was that she possessed a
telepathic capacity to send images and feeling of what it is like to unite both
the desire for love of a woman and the desire for gratification of a man—the
two made one. She was decades ahead of
her time.
Both Diana and Marilyn were in the same
position: deep personal need and vulnerability in a very hostile, demanding
external world which saw them as a direct threat to the status quo—to the
military, to the political, to the patriarchy and matriarchy as well. Marilyn was perhaps the most beautiful woman
of her century and Diana the most popular but both died violently under
questionable circumstances and were lost to the world.
Part of the mystery of a woman’s growth is
to feel with your body, to extend further and use the power of water/feeling to
sense and perceive hostility as well as tranquility in the world so you can
gain what you require. And extending
your feeling even further and deeper, asking the question, “What do you really
want?” so much so that you want it with all of your heart.
And finally, there is a turning within, not
as a withdrawal or as a narcissistic search for self-gratification, but to find
a beauty, a harmony that embraces all opposites, including the hearts of
others. This too is a feeling and a
passion that when joined are so potent that they work upon and within other’s
hearts.
In terms of the magnetic fluid, you begin
sensing the magnetic (contracting/attracting, life giving, nurturing) aspects
of your own body. You proceed
further upgrading and deepening the magnetic fluid by sensing the life within
others as well—their desires, their hostilities, and their beauty.
And then you go further. You sense that
which brings forth life within all of us—the rhythms and seasons of life—their
tides, their currents, their movements, and their depths. Finally you sense the magnetism, the forces
of life that exist purely within the realms of spirit. Your feeling/magnetism explores the invisible
worlds, their mysteries and beauty as well.
I do not know a lot of women who do
this—who feel with their bodies and also with the full power of their
hearts. Not an easy thing to do. To feel in this way to this extent is to
cross the boundaries of the world and to confront death as well.
In this myth, unlike so many others, it is
the woman who acts to transform the world and to “rescue” the boy and turn him
into a man. And in this myth, unlike so
many others, the power of feeling and the mystery of beauty—both the outer form
and the inner—are held in one woman’s hands.
If Diana and Marilyn had been Psyche and
found answers to that question, “What do you really want?” and paid the price
for it, then we might all be living in a different world.
Getting back to our story,
why would Persephone possess the elixir of eternal beauty? The answer is that
this elixir is the perfection of nature’s energies—the entire mineral, plant,
and animal kingdoms refine, combined, fused, and united. It is the life animating the form of all
things fused into an essence that is beyond all form.
To work this process within yourself, you
must first embrace and penetrate and then let go of the outer world so that an
inner union and unity can be created.
Psychologically, this act of introversion is death. The unprepared can not endure it. Modern psychology has not the faintest
conception of it though they like to write about it a lot.
Psyche’s coma was a mortal being turning so
deeply within that her five senses lost their contact with the external
world. The heavens and the earth, the
gods and the mortals await the outcome and the result of this act—for it is the
turning within through which you recreate yourself.
For Psyche, “Before I can truly love with
all my heart, I must become love—I have to discover its source and find this
source within myself.” Unlike with all
her other tests, there are no gods, demigods, animals, sisters or oracles to
advise Psyche with this act. It arises
from her heart. It is her
own choice. No one saw it coming
because no one could imagine her doing it at this point when she is on the
verge of success—of completing Aphrodite’s four tests.
But love has its own requirements that the
matriarchy/Aphrodite can not understand.
I can just hear the Queen of England saying, “Why is Diana doing all
this social work? Is she just after
personal glory?” No, she actually cares
about other people’s suffering because she has been through so much herself.
As I mention elsewhere, Robert McKee was
asked, “Is Michelle Pfeiffer beautiful?”
And McKee replied, “Michelle Pfeiffer is proof of the existence of God.”
I kind of prefer Monica Bellucci.
Mel Gibson cast Monica as Mary Magdeline in his movie The
Passion of the Christ. This
completely ruined the movie for me because when she entered a scene I could
care less about Christ’s suffering. Her
beauty stole the show. But then again
the most beautiful thing I have ever seen is M100, a spiral galaxy. Gazing at its photo of red, blue, and white
stars on the web I feel like I could count at least a billion of its hundreds
of billion stars.
The thing for me about M100 is that for all
its massive beauty and stars it seems to arise out of the emptiness of the
void. The two, form and formless, are
joined.
Psyche has paused right amid her journey
between Aphrodite and Persephone—goddesses of the living and the dead. Psyche carries an elixir that is too valuable
to give to Aphrodite—Aphrodite is unworthy of it. But Psyche steals it as a thief taking what
does not belong to her or perhaps it really does.
If we could join for a moment these two
goddesses into one, they might say with one voice to Psyche, “If you want to
unite with Eros, to wed and become one with him (Eros--the essence of masculine
eroticism, vitality, and exhilaration), then you must first become
nothingness—a receptivity so great it can contain his fiery power over all the
gods and goddesses without denying who he is and at the same time without
annihilating yourself.”
And then there is the question of Zeus
again, What do you really want Psyche? “I want the union of mortal with immortal, of
heaven with earth, of a beauty so deep and rich it transcends both life and
death. I want to be able to look at a
man and feel that his innermost desires I understand—because I see that what he
is is also part of my self.” And why do you want to do this Psyche? “To make the world new.”
In brief, Psyche drinks the elixir and falls
into a coma. This is the second time she
“dies” to the world just prior to meeting Eros.
The first time she is abandoned on a cliff and Eros comes to her in
disguise without her active choice.
In
this scene, again Psyche “dies” but this time consciously through choice and
design and again Eros flies down to her and revives her. Zeus grants her the ambrosia of the gods and
recognizes her as a member of
And Aphrodite, how does she take all of
this? Well, I will tell you. Aphrodite always liked sacrifice, for both
springs of joy and bitterness are part of Aphrodite’s
art. And Psyche was willing to risk the
sacrifice of her self for love. Now that
act can reach even the heart of a future mother-in-law’s matriarchal heart.
In the end, Eros is no longer so whimsical
and wild with his arrows of lust and thus is no longer “the terrible tyrant
whose jurisdiction extends from heaven to hell” becoming instead bound with his
passion to a soulful love.
Summary
This story runs counter to
Jung’s view of a woman’s path of growth as well as to modern feminism. For Jung, a woman’s path of growth involves
being out in the world and learning to do more of what men do. In short, women have to learn to think
clearly, objectively, see the world as it is, and (considering feminism) jump
right in and do all that men do. For
Jung, it is men who have to learn to feel and turn within.
If Princess Diana had been more of a
feminist following a Jungian path, she would have developed her role in the
world by becoming more masculine, more aggressive and assertive. The Queen would not have liked it nor Charles
but then again no one would have thought about killing her over it and millions
would not have wept at her funeral.
Diana would then have sat on the boards of
the military/industrial complex producing land mines more cost
effectively. She would studied
accounting and demanded better oversight of
And Marilyn Monroe would have said, “Screw
President Kennedy and Bobby as well. I
am going to be CEO of my own corporation.”
Marilyn would have then taken her career into her hands by running her
own Playboy and Playgirl and Playcouple enterprises
interviewing and hiring the most beautiful women and men in the country. Marilyn would have had extensive layouts in
her magazines of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Conley, Michael Douglas and Catherine
Zeta-Jones romancing it up in scanty clothes.
But at the same time Marilyn would have
been the one to create a National Federal of Models and Strippers so that they
were provided with health insurance, day/night care for their children, and
retirement benefits. I notice that none of
the supermodels with their agencies and lines of makeup and clothes have
bothered to take any interest in their sisters’ plight.
The National Organization of Women (NOW)
along with their affiliate organization—the Southern Baptists--would not have been
happy with Marilyn for doing these things.
But they would not have thought about killing her for it or at least it
would not have been a necessity.
But these admirable paths of female growth
in modern times are not what Psyche does.
Psyche does get out into the world meeting remarkable figures but hers
is a path of love. Or, as the
Psyche’s path through the outer and inner
worlds with all their conflicts is a direct result of her desire to love. Psyche changes herself from within and the
heavens and the earth, Eros, Zeus, the matriarchy and the patriarchy can not
help responding to her lead. In fact,
the entire power structure both of the visible and invisible worlds is modified
by the choices Psyche makes.
What
then of our electric and magnetic fluids?
The male and female have different routes no doubt to coming into full
spiritual maturity. But it is in their
joining that is the source of true creativity.
Again, Eros, the electric fluid, is
transformed by the upgrade in the quality of the magnetic fluid that embraces
him. Psyche replaces Aphrodite as his
conscience and consort.
Psyche, the magnetic fluid, is transformed
by continuous expansion of her depths and her wisdom through the
intensification of her magnetism. This
comes through experience and assistance from both magnetic and electric
elements: ants, water nymphs, an eagle, goddesses of love and of the dead, the
goddess of the earth as well as the elixir of eternal beauty bound within the
mystery of death.
What do I want? I want to join with my opposite to celebrate
the mystery and the beauty I see everywhere around me. The union of the electric and magnetic occurs
in every act of love between a man and a woman.
In the aura of the planet Venus exists masterful teachers of beauty, art, and love. One of their highest realizations is that if
you really become one with another person through love, then in this act you
become one with all living beings.
The personal—hey, let’s jump in bed
together—and the cosmic impersonal—love underlines everything that exists—these
two spheres of perception, desire, and action intersect when you love another
with all of your heart. Psyche (soul) is
the sacred chalice in which this mystery is celebrated.
Approaching such a mystery requires a lot
of hard work, for Psyche does a lot of hard work. And it takes a lot of experience. Psyche has her experience with the flattery
of men and then the passion of Eros in the beginning. But she goes on to fly between and through
the four great feminine archetypes as well as the various aspects of the
masculine archetypes in her journey.
In this myth, Eros flies down and “rescues”
Psyche from her coma. But it is really
not a rescue as I see it. I have met a
number of lovers who can sense and feel what is going on with each other
through the day. I often ask them to keep a journal so that others might
understand such experience. But they
feel that writing about it would make them feel different or else more
vulnerable.
Nonetheless, lovers forge an inner
connection to each other. In part, love
is about creating special and unique experiences through which two individuals
can celebrate their inner union with each other. But there is also a “magical space” lovers
create in which they exist within each other in a soulful place of
oneness.
This is a genuine psychic and spiritual
phenomenon. For the record, I am saying
it is possible to observe where couples are in Psyche’s Journey toward uniting
with her opposite. And from what I can
tell this journey is full of woe as well as wonder.
When Eros rescues Psyche, he is responding
to her need because at this point he genuinely feels that her needs are also
his own. It is Psyche who pulled this
off. It is Psyche who, with a power of
beauty that can command the living and the dead, transforms the whimsical,
fleeting, and overpowering erotic impulse of her lover into something far more
potent and enduring.
So my little word to the feminists here is
to quote Robert McKee: “Feminism is a good thing. But it kills romance.” Justice and equality are ideals every
generation must strive to attain. But
never underestimate archetypes, the deep powers hidden in yourself, where it is
the “the quality of your intent” and your spiritual will that lead to
freedom. That is, there really is a
spiritual world and the struggle for power for its own sake is being like the
jealous sisters who have no idea of what they are dealing with. In the original
myth, the jealous sisters destroy themselves through their own illusions due to
their presumptions about the nature of Eros.
In the hermetic magician Franz Bardon’s basic practice, a beginning magician arrives at
the point where he can condense the electric and magnetic fluids from out of
the universe using his body as a vehicle.
The electric fluid is condensed into a small ball and then completely
surrounded by the magnetic fluid.
Together these two fluids become highly receptive to imagery and thought
placed within them. And they are
astonishingly dynamic in producing effects, in manifesting the imagery and
thought they contain.
But this is not enough. This electro-magnetic “volt” must be placed
within akasha: a state of mind of perfect emptiness
penetrating through space and time. From
this place beyond the worlds of form, the volt operates to influence the
mental, astral, and physical worlds, mind, feeling, and body to bring about its
spiritual intent.
In
1979, I placed such a volt in a small horse shoe magnet which was then
connected to a spirit referred to as Cigila in the
earthzone. Cigila
presides over divine missions. Shortly
later, I received a dream in which a high spirit of the earthzone contacted me
with a “mission” that became part of my primary work in life.
Franz Bardon says that sex contains the
“highest magic on earth.” But this magic is well-guarded. To abuse such magical
wisdom through sex or equally in a magical “volt” is like getting hit in the
head with a hammer.
To create you have to be well-acquainted
with how to use your tools and supervise the entire process of your creation
from conception to manifestation. And as
with any act of love, the goal in part is to become one with your opposite in
order to make the world new. If you lose
sight of the future you are trying to create you become trapped in a part of
the past your forebears had thought to escape.
That ancient master of water, Lao Tzu, wrote
something to the effect (and this is my taking liberty with another writer’s
translation) in the Tao Te Ching. This is
one description of the result of the electric and the magnetic fluids in
cooperation or if you will of Psyche’s path of growth that helped transform the
Greek pantheon as well as our world.
One who has the wings of a man
And the wings of a woman
also
Is in himself
a womb of the world
And being a womb of the
world
He continuously, endlessly
gives birth.
One who preferring light
prefers darkness also
Is in himself
an image of the world
And being an image of the
world
Continuously, endlessly is
the dwelling place of creation.
One who is the highest of men
And the humblest also
Is in himself
a valley of the world
And being a valley of the
world
He continuously, endlessly
conducts the one source
From which vessels may be
usefully filled.
Such are destined to be the
guides and guardians of mankind.
What follows are a poem, my
homage to Psyche which I wrote a decade ago. This is followed by a short piece
called Orion involving three
goddesses and the Goddess of the Earth which I wrote for my book, Mystical Fables. Whether one “believes” in gods or goddesses,
etc. or not, their influences are still operating quite nicely inside of
us. (The layout of the poem is by
Darren.)
The Song of Psyche
He comes to me at night
But though he is invisible
My every need is met
I have minstrels and bards
Attendants, jesters, and noble
knights
Who keep me company
But my sisters so jealous say
“Look upon his face
Every relationship must withstand
the light,
Men are not gods
They are puppy dogs.”
They tell me:
“Light an oil lamp
And stab him in his sleep.”
They think it is a monster
Who holds me in his keep.
I share with my Beloved their
words
He says—“Love such as ours
Is in-between mortals and gods
And I have not been fair with
you,
But I fear the Goddess of Love
Will test you
And seek your life
If you should learn my name
Or see my face this night.
But before you decide,
Let us once more embrace
To cherish this moment forever
For love annihilates time
And all barriers separating human
and divine
Melt within its fires.”
Surely, my Beloved is Love Divine
I become the Earth
And he becomes the Sky
A lotus of silvery light
Blossoms in the night
And I its perfume,
Its fragrance,
With this love, this song,
I fertilize the stars
As I hold him in my arms.
Within my belly
A pool, cool and magnetic,
Captures the moon’s light
As my hands slide
Slippery and moist
Over every inch of his body
May this night have no end
I rise again
His lips, his tongue
The tides of my desire respond
I am the rain falling upon
leaves, trees,
Slipping through mountain
meadows, ravines,
To fall into the streams
Suddenly, throbbing for release,
Saturated, overflowing with
burning need
Hurling through my body a
flashflood
I explode over falls
Pools deep and serene
Can not contain me
His body
An electrical storm within my
dreams
Lights the darkness where I
wander
My hunger now whirls and turns
At his touch
His lips devour me,
Were I to join with the sea
Were I to contain the stars in my
embrace
I would still trade my freedom to
see his face
Darkness can not bind a love such
as this
No god or goddess can constrain this
bliss.
My Beloved,
You are the spark at the center
of my being
At your touch
I become the whirlwind upon the
seas
And this blossom of lunar light
Within my belly
Its petals open to embrace your
heart,
More enduring than any
constellation
Our love is a pathway to
Eternity.
Light born from fire
I clasp you tighter
My breasts burn at your touch,
My tenderness
Soft and soothing
Caressing
Drops of honey
This nectar an elixir
An intoxication without end
I drink your lips
The wine of passion
I savor, I sip,
I rise again upon your love
The ache taking flight
The cold shivering shining with
light
I drop my head back
I draw closer, I press down
I dissolve into a place
Thoughts may not enter
But here you are joined with me
forever
I no longer know who I am
Except a path of love that has no
end
And I will travel it—
I meet the Queen of Death,
Darkness, and Night
Spellbound, enthralled
She offers me her gift of
immortality
To celebrate our love—
My Beloved,
Every desire and need
Every path and destiny
Return again to be revived
To savor the light within your
eyes
To taste the Joy within your
heart
To drink the beauty of this night
As I hold you in my arms.
Orion
With their legs dangling in
a pool on
As you recall, the three goddesses bound
themselves to arbitration relying on a royal shepherd, a mortal, Paris, to
decide the issue. Each goddesses offered
Great poets such as Homer appear once or
twice every thousand years. The cycle
renews itself and the ground is now fertile for another voice, one more
powerful than all others before. After
all, the goddesses are bored with war.
These days they think of themselves as the mistresses of human passion,
that is to say, of our character, fate, and destiny.
That's right, even goddesses can fall
victim to human reason and mortal philosophy--it happened one day around that
pool in the sky as they sat reading from the Great Books collection
written by human beings. After having
enough of Sophocles and Ovid, they began to read what Carl Jung had written
about each of them. Beware. When vanity and reason collide, vanity has
the advantage.
But there is one other Presence here and
the three goddesses are not aware of Her. She is the Goddess of the Earth. And She also grants
a gift of passion after Her own heart to the one whom the three goddesses would
torment, tease, and confuse to settle their dispute. Let's listen in now on a recording I made of
the conversation.
Aphrodite: I say let us turn again to a
mortal to determine who is more powerful.
Athena: That did not work last time. Mortals are whimsical and their desires rule
over them. Their judgment is worthless
in my opinion.
Diana: Yes, but there is an option. This time, instead of choosing a mortal among
the living, let us create a mortal after our own image.
Athena: You mean a woman with three distinct
personalities or with three separate sources of inspiration like unto the Wiccans with their threefold goddesses?
Diana: No. It has to be a man and our
powers will dwell within him as three separate passions.
Aphrodite: I begin to see your plan. No external gift to bribe him. His choice will be based on his own
instincts. His body and soul will be the
battleground this time around.
Diana: In this way, we shall see which
passion is dominant. By his choice and
the way his life unfolds, we shall know beyond all doubt whose inspiration has
the greater clout.
The three goddesses bargained and
strategically designed every facet of his incarnation. After a long period of negotiation, after
inspecting every detail of their creation, they finally gazed upon a human
being born in modern times. But this was
all preliminary. Now the time has come
for the three to slip inside this man's soul their individual ecstasies--the
essence of their inspiration.
Aphrodite, with a smile of guile as sweet
as Spring, Beltane, heartbreak, and desire, leaned
over him as he slept. She planted a kiss
upon his lips. What poet has metaphors for this?
In that touch was lust as intoxicating as
the DNA molecule's craving to divide and to reunite, tinged with an endless
hunger for gratification--amid a sea of bliss suddenly the terror of whirling
toward birth, the pain of gasping for the first breath, and the warm comfort of
arms, chest, and breasts. Aphrodite was
waging that the needs of the organism for satisfaction are power enough to
define and to bind the essence of love, the source of all inspiration.
Aphrodite then spoke: I have made him a
Satyr both animal and divine and this is right for it is my design. Lust shall rise like lava spewing from a
cinder cone. It shall flow molten and
hot through his body like the fire in a lava tube. His desire shall teach him that only I can
satisfy.
Athena: Not so. My light shall chart his
course in life.
Athena then placed her hand on his forehead
and spoke: By the power of wisdom burning eternal and bright, without beginning
or end, this quest shall determine the path of his life, this ideal shall he
make real--the highest love permitted to mortals shall he reveal. He shall be not a Satyr but a centaur as wise
as Chiron who gave his life that a god, Prometheus, might attain freedom. Heart to heart, soul to soul--my blessing and
wisdom shall he know.
At this point, you might wonder what is
left to our huntress, Diana. What sensuality, touch, or words could she speak
that would weigh the scales to the end she seeks? Well, let us listen in as she
speaks.
Diana: I pity you two. You Aphrodite are so vain to imagine that
lust can substitute for trust, that primal desire is the source of the heart’s
fire. And you Athena envision dreams so
noble and refined that men must sacrifice joy and the need to hold, caress, and
touch in order to pass from mortal to divine.
Then Diana place
both her hands upon his heart and said: I place within you my wild purity more
hungry than lust and more necessary than any vision quest. The forests shall you know. The trees will share with you their dreams
and the secrets of their souls. But this
is not all.
The light of the moon
and also its darkness ebb and flow through your soul. The tides, the songs of the seas, and the
turning of the seasons will confide in you their mysteries. You shall partake of the highest dreams and
yet as flesh to flesh express my love--wild, pure, and free, for I take
satisfaction in the hunt and also the flesh of game I claim.
In the end after a lifetime of wandering,
you shall be neither satyr nor centaur but like unto Orion in the sky above
transformed from mortality into immortality by virtue of your honor and your
nobility.
As if this is not enough contrary passions
to rage for domination in one soul, as I mentioned,
the Goddess of the Earth appeared after the other three had gone. She touched him also. She sang to him.
And then She spoke and said, “Earth, air,
fire, and water shall you know--you will taste and partake of their essence
that you might dream my dreams like no other before--you shall know my
innermost desires.
“But
before you can wield this power, before you can champion my cause, you must
know my silence as old as the world and my tenderness that nourishes all life
on earth. The needs of the body you
shall gratify in due season. The ideals
of the spirit shall you cherish and pursue.
And the wild purity of forest and ocean this too shall be within
you. But in the end your Muse will guide
you and the Song of the Universe you shall sing, for My
beauty is upon you. I have spoken
it. It shall be so
“Yet even I demand a price for what I
give. Thus My
curse and My blessing entwine: each year after reaching manhood you shall fall
in love with a different woman. Eternal,
unrelenting craving shall rage unabated until you come to see the most obvious
of all the mysteries and what it is that you seek: that I Myself
reside within the eyes of every woman.”