extramundane very… : situated in or relating to a region beyond the material world. Essence, feelings beyond the mundane… “It trusts solitude. It enjoys silence. And it rises with an agreeable determination to the challenge of tension, cries and no-win dilemma” ~ James Hillman
Corpus Hermeticum “Isis teaching with Hermes Trismegistus at her right hand and Moses at her left. ” (fresco, Renaissance, Vatican, 1493) ~ Pinturicchio, Classical and the Christian.
Io: Leaping in torments of hunger I come With a furious rush, the victim Of the cunning and jealousy of Hera Suffers what I suffer? ~But mark out clearly The Fate that will be mine in time To come; what remedy, what medicine for ill? Tell me, if you know them: Speak to the virgin who wanders in misery?
~ Prometheus Bound: 600 ~ Aeschylus
“According to a legend preserved in Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound, the tormented nymph Io, when released from Argus by Hermis, fled, in the form of a cow, to Egypt; and there, according to a later legend, recovering her human form, gave birth to a son identified as Serapis, and Io became known as the goddess Isis.” Pg. 250-251, Goddesses~ Joseph Campbell
A weird thing happened while I was watching the Alfred Hitchcock Hour last night. I watched The Photographer and the Undertaker (1965) episode, which I realized I had viewed before, but today it had a new meaning. As I watched the show, I also researched Jack Cassidy. He is the main character of the episode, a original Mad Man character actor. Jack was married to actress Shirley Jones.
After their divorce, he seemed to melt down into alcoholism and mental health issues. I am saddened by my research because to me he always seems like a sharp, upbeat, and intelligent swinger. He has a deep history in music and a brilliant acting career. It is his demise that shocked me.
Shirley Jones & Jack Cassidy
In this episode, or story, Cassidy’s character is a photographer who gets wise to a scheme. Where he is the focus of a hit man. He is scheduled to be killed. Cassidy turns it around and catches the hit man at his own game and kills him instead. To cover the evidence, he burns his darkroom down. In the news it is confirmed the next day. The photographer was burned to death. Cassidy’s character collects the money from the man who hired the hit man and assumes a new life. A great story with some ironic twists and turns.
As I was watching the story unfold, I was thinking how clever Cassidy’s character was, and how he cheated death, something hit me hard. As I watched the flames burn the dark room and the hit man…. I realized something. At that moment I read something profound. Ten years later, in real life, this is how Jack Cassidy dies (1976).
“Cassidy returned to his apartment alone, by which time he was drunk, as he had consumed alcohol at various bars across West Hollywood that evening. In the early morning hours of December 12, Cassidy lit a cigarette and fell asleep on his Naugahyde couch. [11] He then dropped the cigarette, which ignited the couch. The flames quickly spread throughout the apartment and the building. [4] At 6:15 a.m., the blaze was discovered by Deputy Sheriff Jon Dimeter, who evacuated the building and entered Cassidy’s apartment. A charred corpse was found in the doorway of the apartment.”
Wikipedia Note for Jack Cassidy
I felt a terror overcome me. What a strange revelation to perceive. I quickly said a prayer for the man. Last night he whispered a short story in my heart of his ironic demise.
Simple traditions or rituals mean a damn lot to me! My first apple scented candle of the great transformation, from summer to autumn, is one of those specially ritualistic times! Glade is the best product, I have found, in regards to price and smell! Today is all about magic and it all starts with this nimbus light and remarkable smell of a colorful glass candle…as experienced so many times before ! A reflection on the past, present and the future ! So damn delightful.
I tend to remember where a quote is in a book. If the quote inspires me it stays with me. One such quote is from one of two books that I have. Books about St. Francis of Assisi. He always fascinates me. In his time when religion, war and profits of the rich accelerated, here comes a man who shuns them all.
He then turns to a mystical place free of these things. He brings ritual and nature back to the people. He brings back simple rituals mixed with ancient days of a golden race long gone by.
In one these books I remember a journey Francis takes to Rome. On the way there he sleeps under the Egyptian sphinx. Much of the sphinx is still covered with sand. He reflects under the uncovered head of the sphinx. The night is silent and mystical. The stars and the moon are in the heavens.
He wonders on the mystery of life and the sphinx. The words from the book are well written. I captured the image from this book. I can not seem to find the book though.
Today I am reading another book by Joseph Campbell and he also reflects on the sphinx. An in-depth perspective new to me.
Limestone votive stela of Ptah from Memphis (E13579). Dynasty 19 (1292-1190 B.C.).
These two images of the sphinx, with the information provided, seem very interesting to me. A conclusion only leads me to more study and insight as we move forward into Autumn.
The Saturn-Neptune Conjunction in Each Sign (2025-2026)
“Now the people from all times have been aware of the movements of the planets, in particular the sun and moon, but now they relate these movements to a mathematical system. I think this is probably the most important transformation of the notion of the universe in the history of human consciousness.”
~ pg 72 Goddesses, Mysteries of the Feminine Divine by Joseph Campbell
It is a given that the Planets have a way that is unique on to them and if you follow their stories, or not, that is ok by me. I can’t help but listen to their stories and their “angle of the dangle,” because it is kind of hard not to notice their patterns! Since the beginning of civilization there has been a vast number of studies about the planets.
It is quite amazing to me that so much knowledge and wisdom is associated with the planets. I am not an expert on the subject, but I am an ‘intuitive’! I understand nature. I understand that the planets play a part in the big picture.
It is a civilization “individuation process” on a big scale. Yet, as subtle as a butterfly in one’s backyard, or the understanding of the sorrowful feelings of a child when they first learn that bullies suck! The same difference is the key to understanding their stories. This is a humanities’ story too.
Today I focus on all this hullabaloo over Saturn square Neptune.
I have found a perfect song for Neptune and another for Saturn, which expresses my inward feelings about these two-character building planets. It is the blending in me that I enjoy. Sometimes I stress over the shadows that Neptune and Saturn manifest in their creative dark stories. Yet, I say hello Saturn and Hello Neptune. And so, their story continues….and so too it is humanity here to acknowledge their existence. We listen to their patterns, mathematical system, and stories.
“The Cambion… Nimue herself and Merlin all are “denizens of another reality.” How can we humans begin to understand them. Why do we make them evil? Instead, I will enjoy their stories and not judge them. Life is just that, a mystery… like the denizens.”
-Jacques Vallee
Walking in the early morning has become a new routine for me, though I typically prefer evening walks to enjoy the night sky. Today, I had an amusing encounter with a local squirrel by the olive tree in front of my house.
Then half up the olive tree turned round looking straight into my eyes. The squirrel’s eyes are a dark black brown with a reflective glimmering. A squirrel moves like a humming bird…deliberate movement, fast then still and focused.
The squirrel moving away, then came back to look closely into my eyes again! About three feet between us was the distance we shared. This lasted about ten minutes.
I mumbled conversation as the squirrel responded with a deep vibrating sound from within its flexible body, while showing off its gorgeous tail! I would like to think; I am still a bit on the wild side too. I have let myself become too damn domesticated over the years. It is nice to know that I have not lost my touch with nature!
This magic, also taught by Merlin the Magician, helps me to appreciate my little wild connection. I feel that nature still knows my name, as it did when I was young!
I have taken my pearl watercolor and moved the painting into the living room near to the right of my hearth. Today I was reading some interesting words that brought to life this image. It is amazing to me that sometimes one is inspired to create an image from a narrative and finds this image in another narrative. They built upon each other bringing both narratives together with even greater meaning because both are weaving together. Forming an alchemical experience in me. As well as all of us… a path to peace maybe?
‘This is a more ambiguous but possibly more productive way of looking at matter and may be applied to Taurus and the second house. Following this thread is unquestionably like plunging into a labyrinth for what eventually emerges is that the second house has nothing to do with objects at all. The “pearl of great price” appears to lie at the heart of the labyrinth, but the persistence of a Taurean is required to reach it. The placement to find this central and unalterable value whose definition cannot be properly articulated but whose reality, to the man who has subjectively experienced it, is not to be questioned.’
Pg. 40 – 41. Saturn A New Look at an Old Devil / Liz Green.
The Pearl by Hudley
Original post.
Now having passed over this lake in this way, we first went through a narrow arm, into the right seas, where all the sirens, nymphs, and sea-goddesses were waiting for us; wherefore they immediately dispatched a sea nymph to us to deliver their present and offering of honor to the Wedding. It was a costly, great, set, round and oriental pearl, the like of which has never been seen, neither in our world nor yet in the new world.
~ Pg. 62 The Fifth Day the Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz
A watercolor inspired by a strange story. Haunting me in a symbolic world. As a woman I tend to go wandering for things to help my psyche. A feminine soul to be precise. So often in this world today everything is based on the male soul or male journey.
Even in my beloved Red Book by Carl Jung I always remember to participate as a stranger in his world; it is a journey of a male. I must hold the hand of my own animus too when I take these symbolic journeys. I feel it is important for women to know this and do this.
“Animus is the archetype of reason and spirit in women. This is the male aspect of the female psyche, as the anima is the female aspect of male psyche.”
While reading from The Red Book a few days ago I came across the Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. I know the book and have studied it. Yes, I understand what Jung is saying but it does not appeal to my sensibility. So, I went looking, is there an Imitation of the Goddess?
I have come to see that the journey of Christ is a patriarchal one. I respect this yet have reached a point where I must refrain from this. What came to my mind today is this small watercolor I did years ago. The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz has a wonderful image that I grasped and is very friendly to my female sensibility,
“where all the sirens, nymphs, and sea-goddesses were waiting for us.”
Which is why I often capture art before I fully understand its meaning. Today I do. I hope I can inspire other females to take such a journey like mine and help their psyches!
A feminine soul to be precise. I know this story holds both something for animus and anima. It indeed symbolically speaks of a wedding or bringing together of both the animus and anima within each of us. It is bringing together opposites.
The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz begins with a lovely image. A star above two figures; a male ~ the sun and a female ~ the moon. This may be uniting both together with the bird of peace, the place where one may find the Holy Grail.
I believe it to be found within our individual hearts. It is another lovely image to ponder.
Coniunctio
Reflection/ Notes
Jung’s alchemical studies were derived, in part, from the works of Gerhard Dorn, a 16th-century alchemist. In “The Conjunction,” Jung Wrote, “Dorn’s caelum, which corresponds to the stone, was on the one hand a liquid (blue) that could be poured out of a bottle and on the other the Microcosm itself.
For the psychologist it is the self-man as he is, and the indescribable and superempirical totality of the same man.” (CW 14:765) In Jung’s same essay published in Mysterium Coniunctionis, Jung describes caelum as a heavenly substance containing all distinct forms and simultaneously the ultimate universal form; it symbolized a prefiguration of the soul. Jung also associated caelum with the blue center of Eastern mandalas. (CW 14:757)
The caelum and its function in alchemy, as inviting as they are, provide an avenue for further study. Jung further contended in the same essay, “Man himself is partly empirical, partly transcendental; he too is a (stone that is no stone). A “stone that is not stone” reflects Jung’s earlier experience with active imagination (also called trancing), where he (Jung) is sitting on me (stone).
From this perspective the pearl held within the black stone as the archetypal equivalent of a “stone that is not stone.” The human parallel implies that consciousness lies within the human body and that ‘the human heart is more than a blood pump.’ Like the pearl encased in stone, the heart is at the center of consciousness, which emanates from the divine.
~ Unveiling Sophia/ Heart Wisdom In An Age Of Technology by Anne Elizabeth Taylor
The Easter Bunny is older than Christianity ; it is the Moon-hare sacred to the Goddess in both eastern and western nations.
Recalling the myths of Hathor-Astarte who laid the Golden Egg of the Sun.
May it be an evening star Shines down upon you May it be when darkness falls Your heart will be true You walk a lonely road Oh, how far you are from home
Mornië utúlië ((darkness has come)) Believe and you will find your way Mornië alantië ((darkness has fallen)) A promise lives within you now
May it be the shadows call Will fly away May it be your journey on To light the day When the night is overcome You may rise to find the sun
Mornië utúlië ((darkness has come)) Believe and you will find your way Mornië alantië ((darkness has fallen)) A promise lives within you now
A promise lives within you now
Enya:May It Be Lyrics
Quote Pg. 267 The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. pictures taken from Yahoo images online sources.
Renewal of hope. Feeling connected with cosmic or universal energies. As Above, So Below. Opening your eyes to the highest potential or your situation. Getting in touch with your own creative powers. Self-esteem. Far-reaching effects. Receiving recognition for your abilities. “Doing your own thing,” no matter what.
A Matter of Life and Death (1946) Conductor 71, professor Snape in Harry Potter 7, and President Obama recently came together for me via a tear. A film, a book and a real life happening. It could be life imitating art or art imitating life. All three made an impression of me within the last couple months.
It was a tear in a film that was captured by a character from a woman in love. He put the tear on his rose and inspired a lawyer in heaven to win a case for a man in love.
It was in a book where a dying man gave a tear to someone to show his love for another. To save and share a memory.
It was a real life tear that the President shed today, a tear for lost children due to a terrible act of violence.
All three came together for me today. It is a synchronicity experience in a symbolic tear and a real tear that to me represents a subjective feeling part of my human soul and conscience.
To cry for love, grief, joy or saddens inspired by the art of a writer or real life person is a worthy experience. I was touched by a film, book and the act of a real person and I feel that for me it is wonderful that I can have art imitate life, or life imitate art in my own inward experience.
In one of my first college English classes I was taught that the objective and the subjective can cross over as in a metaphor yet more often as a simile.
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate”
Sonnet 18 Shakespeare
It may be existential and philosophical to be inspired by a book or a film, and real life tear expressed freely and sincerely shared with the world.
Why a tear comes to mean something to me is amazing. Why it clicked together in my mind and caught the attention of my heart who can say. Yet I know poets and writers ponder on many things… and I am sure I am not the first to wonder about a tear romantically, lovingly, or sadly. Be it form a book, a film or real life experience.
Feeling as powerful as an active volcano of accomplishment.
Women gathered on the hill. Standing on the grass and dirt. They were silent in the breeze. Waiting. Dressing in gold, red and brown flowing dresses. A cotton scarf placed around her head. Thin material with sequins and graceful threads wrapped around a mummy enfolded.
“Into the tomb I must now go?
The fear of such a place she thought,
“Will they put me there. Alone there I will be. What, will they forget me too?”
A whisper in her ear spoke,
“No you will not go there. You have suffered enough.”
“Without the awareness of the archetypal in the behavior which gives meaning to the madness, there is nothing left but the secular nomina of psychiatry and comparative sociology”
~James Hillman
Watercolor by Hudley
If one is caught in the ‘worlds woe’ and madness remember the above quote. And try to find out what it means. For me Stella by Starlight is a wonderful representation of something beholding to my soul. An awareness of the numinous of the archetypal. It brings down my blood pressure and turns up the mystery of creative juices. Lifting me to a safe place of love, romance, and goodness.
My parents’ generation was so romantic. I learned to dance while watching my parents dance to this type of music. My dad told me when he first felt something special for my mom at a college dance. She put her face close to his. He felt the warmth of her face upon his.
Stella by Starlight is one of those songs that soothes one with the romance for life and its mystery, by JackieGleason & His Orchestra !
Questioning change and our contemporary world… I feel is a healthy thing to do. It may not be part of the Status quo to see through the eyes of my two friends here, but it is wonderfully real and takes me to many a dark midnight, lit by their friendly fires of wisdom.
Unknown to one another Goethe and Blake meet in anathematizing Newton.
~ Great Writings of Goethe, Stephen Spender
Night Thoughts;
You I pity, twice unhappy stars, Being lovely, blessed with bright effulgence, Gladly shedding light for ships in danger, Yet by gods and mortals unrewarded: Love you cannot, never yet knew love! But incessantly eternal hours Move your ranks through vast celestial spaces. O, what distant journeys you’ve completed Since, reposing in my loved one’s arms, You and midnight wholly I forgot.
~ Goethe, Translated By Michael Hamburger.
The Death of the Virgin 1803 William Blake 1757-1827 Presented by the executors of W. Graham Robertson through the Art Fund 1949 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N05899
I take two pills as symbolic of something more…and yes, I take them whenever the two pills present their medicine to me. I have gobbled them down like a feverish child in the dark. Wondering why they are there and why they have inspired me so. In fact, I was just deep in thought wondering why I love them so. Holding nothing of my usual shyness or mistrust against them ever. But how can two symbolic pills be them?
One is William Blake, and one is Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe. One English and one German. They fill me from the inside out making; sense out of life, light out of darkness and hope out of failure.
Goethe
Blake
I am not an expert on either one. I have many books about them. I reflect on their work, and I often only need one very small pill, of either of them, to awaken my healing to something better than the mundane life I often live.
To anticipate answers in a creative spark. Their art and words open onto me as if a wonderful knowing of a strange land forgotten. They know imagination and all the powers there of.
This is the medicine in their pills to me. Their comprehensive approach to life is put forth in their creations. I will continue to take them as my extramundane pills.
What moved me this morning was the simplicity of two things. The Word and The Light. From a Jungian perspective this can be viewed objectively or subjectively.
Aurea Catena. The Golden (or Homeric) Chain in Alchemy in the series of great wise men [ women], beginning with Hermes Trismegistus, which links earth with heaven.
What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
~ Crowfoot, Blackfoot warrior and orator 1830 – 1890
“I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.”
― Helen Keller
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
~ John I King James Bible.
I awoke with this on my mind. I memorized this quote this way from my youth. I have always had a quiet understanding of things. Personal experiences and at times not so easy. Yet it is a ongoing study of culture, religion or belief systems. The secular, atheists or feminists are interesting to listen to too and learn from; which are contrasting and comparable to my own experiences of this question of The Word and the Light.
“Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all — the apathy of human beings.”
An image is manifesting in my life. The flower image of Venus. The image or pattern that the planet Venus makes while traveling around the earth. It have been studied for years and is close to one of our oldest images to be acknowledged throughout the ages of humanity and the planets.
Simple things.
Images recurring, a hair pin found on the ground under the night sky, and image in a dream with a circle drawn around the same flowering pentagram image.
Then comes the Moon, Jupiter and even some Saturn.
Hair Pin
I can focus personally on this image or collectively and it makes for something profoundly affirming to me and for others, I am sure of this.
Gorgon / Medusa figure, on a pot from the Aegean Island of Melos (4). CA. 1500 BCE. British Museum , London . ( Gimbutus 1989, p. 208, fig. 328) (3)
The Perseus story was invented to account for the appearance of Medusa’s face on Athene’s Aegis (1), inherited from the pre-Hellenic period when Athene was actually the same Goddess (also mythologized as Metis, her alleged “mother”). The Athenians pretended their municipal Goddess was the “wisdom” of Zeus, born from the head.
But older myths said Athene was born of the Tree Queens of Libya-that is, the Trippe Goddess, of who Metis-Medusa was the Destroyer aspect. A female face surrounded by serpent-hair was an ancient, widely recognized symbol of divine female wisdom, and equally of the “wise blood” that supposedly gave women divine powers. (2)
It amazed me how it does not take much digging to find the roots of things. Like how often Christianity or our patriarchal cultures cover over many beautiful myths and stories. I reach deep for these truths within and without, and all is amplified as a gift. Being a Gorgon monster is OK by me…I am in my element! Looks like I can do with a new tattoo?? Metamorphosis monster!!
Folklore, science, mythology, art, religion, archaeology, mathematics…it goes on and on in a our cyclical history. Starting with a Golden Age to the Dark Ages and to the present ascending age.
This book holds a powerhouse of information and research with a holding theory that we live in a binary solar system. Yes incredulous and far-reaching as it sounds it is a book that needs to be read.
Part of my ongoing search for the meaning of life !!
