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Now
We Know
The
grieving figure of Psyche in the myth of Eros and Psyche
is an image of a young woman who came upon the fact that
she loved intensely, and that nothing would soothe her until
she was reunited with Eros, her husband and true love. She
was separated from him after loving him unknowingly:
she did not know his identity. When her curiosity had been
piqued by her two (wicked) sisters, she was not prepared
for the truth: that instead of with some toothy monster,
she lay in bed with a god. He was no less than Eros himself,
son of Venus. Humiliatingly, Psyche had to seek from his
Mother Venus, the favor of his love. That Venus was a terror.
Four difficult labors of love were required to satisfy Psyche's
offense at having first been rescued by her son, alive--the
opposite of the fate planned by Venus. Eros' transgression
and the rare beauty of the young girl were the crimes of
love, the original hubris against the goddess of Love.
Their
crime? Innocence.
It is
too rarely that we remember that Venus is not just a powder-puff
mother of some pudgey cupid, but a Divine Force of Nature--our
attitude toward Desire--from whom we ask (pagans that we
are!) and hope for the possibility of loving. That is, if
Venus could only be pleased.
We too
seek love's fulfillment. Since 9/11, we find ourselves in
Psyche's shoes. Grief and anger, despair and grotesque reminders
of the fragility of life are the ground of this story.
The
Eros and Psyche myth permits a mythological route through
the difficulty of this time in our history. The mythic dimensions
of Love are rarely mentioned. Instead our modern times refer
us to popular books from which to glean insights about our
love life. These books, even though insightful and well-meaning,
do not compete with the power of Death to reach us even
in the depths of pain, despair and grief, a connection to
the soul which enables love to grow later again.
Venus
as Love Goddess is variously portrayed by men or women.
The "Boy Toy," is a Venus invention. Britney Spears
seems to have borrowed Venus' hip riding "girdle of
Love," that accessory of magnetized, aroused love energy,
now on video and DVD. The fact is, our vision of this mythic
dimension is so cramped and small that we wonder at the
great longevity or even the relevance of Venus in our times.
She has been replaced by another starlet and Psyche, forgotten.
But this is the moment for the next suffering mortal to
rise to the occasion, upstage the goddess and in turn, return
to humanity once more.
Ride,
Momma Ride
Venus'
most sacred domain over the affairs of lovers maintains
that the starlet of our movie (ourselves) shall be dominated
or killed by her own Dream Lover, almost like Psyche herself.
What's more, the murder will occur within the much ignored
area of our personal psyche, our Mythic self or place. Astrology
recognizes this mythic "place without place, time without
time." It is the deepest part of our identity, and
relates to our lives in a manner still left unexplained.
Astrology is a mystery as big as life itself.
It is
the work of the astrologer to locate the towering, domineering
Venus who brings us unconsciously to her power struggles
and frequent ensnarements, the "troubles" of the
heart. Venus herself does not take lightly her replacement
by any embodiment of her sacred seat (both literally and
figuratively, here). She is the one who may command from
on high, who may address us as peons. She may control us
(she often does) through our desires, whether for addictions,
relationships or compulsions. But, she is a force of which
we are usually unconscious. So, we writhe in place until
we "wake up."
Venus
forces us to recognize her through her son Eros. His principle
is pleasure, and the soothing of the senses in the deeply
moving experiences of life. He will be our Dream Lover.
We will learn to love the love (Venus) and love the erotic
(Eros) through their companioned (we are joined, but by
some "monster") and terrifying tortures.
An ancient
amulet* once portrayed Venus as a wanton bare-back riding
Psyche like a horse. You can imagine Psyche's hair being
pulled like the reins which torture us, controlled by this
tyrant goddess. Eros in the meanwhile floats somewhere in
the middle of space beneath Psyche and holds a torch to
her genitals.
If we
visualize Psyche's story as our own, (that includes anyone,
any gender) we could map our way through the traps set by
the wicked mother of our lover. She who could hope to ensnare
us again, with greater entanglements, would be seen for
what she is: an autonomic function of the Psyche--as yet
unrecognized. The more Psyche (we) struggles, sobs and writhes
in pain, the more Eros must flame us with his tortures of
longing. We burn, baby burn. Practically on a spike are
we, ridden and roasted--and the ride is not over yet. But
awareness of the big players, and the grand script offers
hope.
Venus
performs as a Force Majeure, the union or separation of
our loved ones is in her domain, according to the astrologer.
How to make ourselves wake to the fact of her powers and
gain her favor in a conscious procedure is how we also Kill
the Dream Lover (title of my work-in-progress) and also
arrive at--a bit tattered, but still able--greater loving.
Shadow
and Evil in 2001: Saturn and Pluto oppose each other
The
issues of Shadow versus Evil are symbolized by the opposition:
their dinstinctions blur because of their proximity to each
other in this opposition between Shadow (Saturn domination)
and evil (Pluto hidden). In a collective experience because
of an antique evil newly risen once more in a millennium
year, was perhaps constellated as Nostradamus predicted,
in the eclipse of August 1999.
The
moment of the 09/11 was not hit by the forces of terror
because we are dealing with Karma and must bear our just
desserts. It is a mistake to cast the evil event as
a "correction" for our behaviors--I will leave
the guilt mongering to the professionals like Osama bin
Laden.
Why
not just say, "Had you not had a cigarette ten years
ago, you might have been breathing better today." no
matter how much petroleum from Saudi Arabia we consume,
it is a decision made individually but forced by market
economics and the competition with the "Jones'"
who seem to have all the markers of success about them,
including cars. If there is a residue of Shadow and Evil,
it may be that we have not collectively looked at Islam,
we have not been touched by the gripping scenes of Belfast
or Gaza. We've long stood at the edges portrayed in our
homes by mass media, never really being with the women of
Afghanistan, subject of forlorn emails.
Here
in the unconscious Venus folds her arms and crosses her
brow.
Our
desires don't mean anything to her. And if we do not seek
to ask for her blessings (cut some flowers and bring them
into the house today!) then she will get our attention some
other way. She can be desireable, but she is also a terror.As
the Karmic Lesson may be viewed, we must also protect ourselves
against the unthinkable: it doesn't make sense to try to
turn the event into something Karmic when in fact this event
is caused by no less than evil. It is astrologers who are
in the vantage position to teach our clients and list subscribers
about the difference. If we can keep these two separated
with a clean slice between them we begin also to understand
how complicated and subtle these ways of understanding consciousness.
And like Psyche, we face:
The
Labors of Love:
1. We
must first, sort the seeds, identify the dead, organize
and allow Nature herself to enable us to restore order.
2. We
must climb to the highest peak of the source of the river
of Death to recover the clear spring waters of our True
Feelings.
3. We
must go carefully into the deserts of Pakistan and
Afghanistan to avoid the rams which conspire to crush
us, waiting for the "afternoon" (or the cold of winter
which will surely slow them down) opportunity when the Rams
are exhausted from the "heat" and there we may
gather our golden fleece, our "reward" as a sacrifice to
love.
4. We
must carry to the Goddess of Love her beauty potion
from Persephone's own dressing table.
On each
of these labors Psyche suffered. She grieved. Her life was
just a thin thread, one barely worth living but she arrived
at each labor with a more intense resolve borne of her grief.
She got her strength from it. Nature responded; Nature
elsewise known as "the Unconscious." Her body
was weighted down with the reality of being in the body,
in the flesh; life itself would weigh us down in need of
nightly "restauration" of our material proof of
aliveness. It is the body itself, the weight of "the
matter" which on the moment of complete surrender allows
fate to return to us what might be in store, and no effort
on our part is required, thus we may "sleep,"
and the work goes on.
It is
that resolve which makes us respond to what the CNN announcer
Aarron Brown termed, "The New Normal," on the Day of Terror
and its aftermath. There is no more returning from the Underworld,
we too are denizens of this graveyard of the ancestors,
and must pay respects to those that have died and to the
fact of life's shortness.
Many
armchair psychologists and their partners, the Monday Morning
Quarterback, have proclaimed that the 9/11 act of evil is
connected to the concept of our country's "Shadow." This
dark material represents that portion of the psyche which
resides in the national trash heap of rejected consciousness.
But this is sloppy brushstroke which makes indistinct comparisons
based on a lack of understanding of what was meant by CG
Jung.
Shadow
as a concept, or the collective unconscious are still largely
misunderstood. By maintaining a foggy, badly defined term
of both, we are all the more capable of becoming each other's
tar babies: Israel's Palestine, and Palestine's Israel;
they infect each other with more resistance, more raw feelings,
more blame, all in the name of confusing these two different
realities of the unconscious. It fails to first route it
out of each individual portion of unconsciousness.
This
in the formerly happy land of Pepsi-Cola, wiggly Britney
or Michael Jackson, and eternal youth. As Americans, our
grief and horror makes us wince! National grieving was inconceivable
before the disaster though many a widow from the Viet Nam
era individually sought help from her community. But that
disaster had failed to "legitimize" grief. At
one time, grieving was something to be done in private,
hidden from anyone. In the New Normal, we wail like any
other primitive soul on the planet, pounding the earth and
grimacing and we don't know or care if anyone sees us.
We are
still too fresh from this wound to have yet recreated our
new more strongly intimate community in the "New Normal."
We are all the newest widows (and widowers) of what we will
recall as "the olden days," the previously peaceful
era. No longer is it possible to just rationalize a death,
think away a grief, eulogize and then party. It was as if
grieving were something to be cast off as soon as possible,
like a used tissue summarily rejected.
In Mexico
the songs of the Mariachi's and the style of the Nortena's
feature howling men who whine and yodel their grief, chanting
in dissonance, "Ay, corazon de mi vida, Ay que pena,
Ayyyy...." (ouch, heart of my life, ouch, what pain,
ouch) for all the pain that there is to sing about and to
grieve. When Americans hear this "moaning" we
can't help but laugh! It's too melodramatic. Not so in
the New Normal.
We may
learn to grieve, we may learn to stop saying, "Smile, you
look so pretty when you smile," instead of asking just what
we are feeling. Addiction to happiness, the Up Generation
and all the accentuation on the ever-positive was out of
proportion anyway.
The
New Normal is about the reality of Death, the reality of
Evil, and the need we have for fellowship. The New Normal
is about coming to know (then forgiving) the Shadow stuff
more readily. The New Normal binds us in determination to
face the specter of Evil with a concentration and attitude
of respect for its spontaneous appearance in our lives.
It does not mean we tolerate it. It means we stand up
to it.
We have
examined it within our hearts and know on which side we
battle. That clarity readies us for battle, stills our heart
and intensifies the moment. The guile, the deal-making motive
if it has been burnt out, allows a clear heart free of barriers
It permits instinct to steer more clearly than the intellect.
We individualize.
The
New Normal means we allow our welling feelings to establish
the standard, not the amount of money we make or the success
of our new record, book or movie. In the New Normal we no
longer equate success and happiness to a scale measured
in dollars. In the land of Death we have seen there is no
use for Mastercharge, no need for valet parking, no requisite
"happy hour."
In the
New Normal, there are no smug reactions for being "against
the Evil-Doers." No one sends out the scapegoats with
the chill ostracism: "Let's just leave these sad people
to their own devices. They bother me anyway."
In
the New Normal we grieve the brutality which has caught
us so unawares.
It follows
that all of us have some Shadow Material to deal
with here, and that the USA is not the only super power
with heavy karma on its plate. The dialogue of "mirroring"
the universal language of relating to the Shadow, as translated
into politics, is needed.
When
someone with a plateful of Karma is plain murdered, does
that mean that the person "attracted" the event?
Not
necessarily. Sometimes Evil Happens. Watch those power plays.
Take a look in Venus'
mirror, then "talk Peace." Only then, act,
work, support, and live with the tension of peace.
©2001
Claire-France Perez
(written
November 2001, updated 03/19/02)
Footnotes:
*From
an image described in Charles Poncé's, Working
the Soul, Reflections on Jungian Psychology, 1988 North
Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California
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