The Gift of Magic

No one can really possess a symbolic object since the prime function of symbolism is not accumulation and retention, but communication by way of exchange.

~ de Riencourt, Amaury. Woman and Power in History .

~ Honeyglen Publishing Limited. Kindle Edition.

A reading and understanding from both of Carl Jung’s Red and Black Books…

A journey after reading a random pick from Jung’s Black Books. During these disturbing times I often seek council with these living books of wonder.

While reaching from Jung’s Red Book a note fell to the ground and it said,

“The Gift of Magic.”

I was following through with Jung’s commentary after reading his Black Book. I was amazed by the depth of the commentary which is about Magic.

I am surprised by the beauty of these living books. I started to read all the commentary pertaining to this random subject in his Red Book. It is a story which answered many things for me while also somehow including my life. Reading the references and commentary is the best.

Jung Black Books: Random pick of paragraph from [v.4]

S. Are you sending me away?

I. I’m sending you away. You must not be far from me. But give to me out of your fullness, not your longing.

I cannot satisfy your poverty just as you cannot still my longing. If your harvest is rich, send me some fruit from your garden. If you suffer from abundance, I will drink from the brimming horn of your joy.

I know that will be a balm for me. I can satisfy myself only at the table of the satisfied, not the meager crumbs of those who yearn and desire. I will not steal my payment.

– Pg. 253 [v.4] (126/127).

126. The subject of this sentence was replaced by “We fetched.” (ibid)

127. For Jung’s commentary on this entry, see LN {Red Book}, pg. 439-40.

Red Book.

“Well, all you will do is laugh anyway. So why should I tell you anything? It would be if everything were buried with me. It can always be rediscovered later. It will never be lost to humanity since magic is reborn with each and every one of us.”

– Pg. 313

“You know, the wisdom of things to come; there fore you are old, oh so very ancient, and just as you tower above me in years, so you tower above the present in futurity and the length of your past is immeasurable. You are legendary and unreachable. You were and will be, returning periodically.

Your wisdom is invisible, your truth is unknowable, entirely untrue in any given age and yet true in all eternity, but you pour out living waters from which the flowers of your garden bloom, a starry water, a dew of the night.

– 148/149 pg. 316

“What do you need. You need men for the sake of small things, since everything greater and the greatest thing is in you. Christ spoiled men, since he taught them that they can be saved only by one, named him, the Son of God, and ever since men have been demanding the greater things from others, especially their salvation; and if a sheep gets lost somewhere, it accuses the shepherd.

You are a man, and you prove that men are not sheep, since you look after the greatest in yourself and hence fructifying water-flows into you garden from inexhaustibly jugs.”

…

I will continue to study this yet this is enough for now.

Something’s a foot and I am not talking a rabbit charm!

I am on a journey with Rabbit or Hare. She appeared last night on the kitchen table. A large shadow in her shape.

“Light in the darkness, concealed wisdom, arcane information, intuition and the Goddess”
~ The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Signs and Symbols / Adele Nozedar

Earlier, I remember looking up into the night sky to see the Pleiades above the house. I saw the waxing crescent in place blocking me from seeing the seven sisters. I looked again to see a night star next to the moon. It was not a planet. I checked my sky map. The brilliance with a foggy haze made the night seem altered in some mystical way.

So close to Easter I am a little amazed Hare came to visit. I cleaned my kitchen table off and put up my happy bunny on the table. I will make this Hare’s place! Honoring the presence of this shape shifting, sometime androgynous, multiple symbolic and multi-geophysical spirit.

Three Hares joined at the ears and running in a circle. terriwindling.com

I am waiting to see what story she is sharing with me. A newness, a new awareness comes forth. This is good news.

A note!!! I had a picture with my kitty and a Easter Lily . I took it down and got rid of the flower . I did not know !

“All parts of the Easter lily plant are poisonous – the petals, the leaves, the stem and even the pollen. Cats that ingest as few as one or two leaves, or even a small amount of pollen while grooming their fur, can suffer severe kidney failure.” I did not know ? Never had an issue but out it goes.

How to Anchor This Energy in Your Psyche?

I examined the natal planetary positions for many other similarly Promethean figures. For example, I checked at once the case of Percy Bysshe Shelley, since he was so explicitly associated—even identified—with Prometheus, his Prometheus Unbound being the preeminent work on that figure in modern literature. If the thesis that Uranus was actually Prometheus had any validity, the birth chart of Shelley would provide the most obvious test case. I found that, in fact, Shelley was born with the Sun and Uranus in close conjunction.
Tarnas, Richard. Prometheus the Awakener (pp. 23-24). Spring Publications, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

I am enrolled in Zodiac Art Boost Seminar taught by Mat Gleason ~ Coagula Curatorial.

Meeting artists is kind of thrilling, and I am learning from them. I hope good feelings all around are happening.

I am about to approach Uranus Square Uranus February 21, 2021- April 7, 2021. As so defined,

“You are being asked to claim some of the glorious wildness that can come only with the perspective of age. Time to drop the last stitch of the world’s phony clothes…”

I saw that Mat was offering the Seminar. I have known him for years and he has always been supportive of myself. So, I took a bold jump and enrolled, returning my support of his creative endeavors. Now I am delighted and challenged. I am being drawn back to my interests of Astrology, art and building community again.

I have shied away from Zoom meetings in groups. It is so intimate and up front. I also took the seminar as a move towards socializing again. As an introvert it is easy for me to get lost in music, books, old films and interpreting my dreams.

Here is a classroom assignment that was asked of us. An Astrological Self Portrait of our favorite artists associated with planets in our solar system.

Sun- Me, Mercury- William Blake, Venus- Dionysus, Moon- Bees, Mars- Mad Magazine, Jupiter- Hildegard of Bingen,
Saturn- Gahan Wilson, Uranus- Praying Mantis, Neptune- Fennel Wand, Pluto- Nature ( Pluto loves Persephone)

And so I see Uranus and Prometheus…. has been my secret friend of liberation all along. As well as Praying Mantis… and the Fennel Wand…god news.

Coagula SIte

https://coagulacuratorial.com/

a niche for the conscious feminine

“But now women need to create structures in their lives and in society which ensure a niche for the conscious feminine. It is time to explode the fallacy that men and women are the same. Being equal does not mean having to be similar. Perhaps the time has come when we can afford to be different yet equal.”

–Rescuing the Feminine. The problems of the Animus in Women by Jasbinder Garnermann.

Existentialism and turning 60…

“…individual’s starting point is characterized by what has been called “the existential attitude,” or a sense of disorientation, confusion, or dread in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd. Many existentialists have also regarded traditional systematic or academic philosophies, in both style and content, as too abstract and remote from concrete human experience.”

Ageing and turning 60 is an interesting time. I am reflecting over my life. The metaphor of fitting jigsaw pieces together is the best one that can describe my experience now. I now understand the meaning of existentialism. I thought I had an idea of what it meant. Not until now do I know it truly. It is a jolting reality. The now observing the past is how one can see existentialism alive!

As a child I remember waking up at night with a strange sensation that lasted only a few moments. A surrounding feeling that came to mind. One that I could not touch, access with words, or edify. It was a feeling deep in my teeth of something other. It would go away quickly. I had that same feeling through my growing up. I always knew when the other feeling was approaching. The other feeling went away as I grew up.

K -12, my whole education experience I was asleep. I realize this now. Existentialism is based on contrary things. Conflict or mindfulness to the absurd world we live in. When I look back at myself, I was experiencing or having an existential experience my whole young life. I was in a shadow world of social pressures and abstract ideals that where strange to me.

Only waking up occasionally to the wind on the hills or the rain while walking home. Playing in green fields with my friends. The smell of the earth and the feel of pepper trees on my skin. The aroma of the eucalyptus tree.

I went through the motions at school. I did not study or bring books home, and if I did, I don’t remember them much. I do remember reading the little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis, the King James Christian Bible, and Seven Arrow by Hyemeyohsts Storm. (Native American Myth,) Sherlock Holmes appealed to me. Also, songs on the radio are moments or awareness.

I was in trauma while I was growing up too! I was living in a home with an alcoholic parent and experienced love but also emotional abuse as a regular part of my life.

My point being I was not awake to my human experience until I started waking up later in my teens by the jolt of consensual sex, youthful love, and punk music.

I remember at 18 or so there were times that a light would come on and everything seemed more intense. One time out to dinner with my parents it seemed that the restaurant light above us turned on brighter. I was in an intense illumination. Then the light went out. This is when I was experiencing an awakening an existential conflicting experience.

When I entered the punk rock world in Los Angeles, I experienced this existential conflicting experience increasingly. The people and music really stirred me up. I awoke to the absurdity of life in a good way. I found my mind, voice, and soul all aligned. I began to acquire knowledge easily. I read ecstatically. I found out that I had an engaging and intellectual mind that had not been touched by the k-12 academia that tried to teach me.

I don’t think we can continue to live in an existential conflicting reality. Yet in these such moments when the existential happens. This is where we can find our authentic self. I am incredibly grateful!!

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“…child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim believed that fairy tales help children cope with their existential anxieties and dilemmas.”

Sunday Random pick…Mysterium Coniunctionis

I looked over. A book was yelling at me to take it and open it up. I did not want to do it. I did it. I randomly did what it desired… for me…to see…

Wild Purple Thistle watercolor by Hudley

“This investigation was rounded out by the Mysterium Coniunctionis, in which I once again took up the problem of the transference, but primarily followed my original intention of representing the whole range of alchemy as a kind of psychology of alchemy, or as an alchemical basis for depth psychology.

In Mysterium Coniunctionis my psychology was at last given its place in reality and established upon its historical foundations. Thus my task was finished, my work done, and now it can stand. The moment I touched bottom, I reached the bounds of scientific understanding, the transcendental, the nature of the archetype per se, concerning which no further scientific statements can be made. ”
Pg. 221, Memories, Dreams, Reflections , C. G. Jung.

A feminine soul to be precise

3/10/2023

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 the 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 to found within our heart. It is another lovely image to ponder.

Coniunctio

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Reflection/ Notes

Jung’s alchemical studies were derived, in part, from the works of Gerhard Dorn, a 16^th-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

glorious shameless orgy

Spring Equinox

The story of Persephone eating pomegranate seeds was related like a fairy tale in place of the original myth; Ovid speaks once of three, once of seven, pomegranate seeds and related that the tree grew in the garden of the king of the underworld.
Pg.134, A Hermetical Essay on the Mysteries, Eleusis ~ Carl Kerenyl

Dandelions in my garden By Hudley March 2016

Last autumn I cleared a patch of earth until it was hard dirt. It stayed this way through the California drought of 2015-16. I was feeling like the dirt; barren, hopeless, and death lingered by grief as a dark hopeless shadow. The underworld loomed close. It was winter. I then focused on my studies of the Eleusinian mysteries, Persephone’s mythology and now Aeschylus’s play Prometheus Bound. Through years of study the time was just right for profound understanding to came quickly.

“ambrosia” and “ichor” and “moly”… in my garden. ` x Prometheus Bound

Now this patch of earth is a glorious shameless orgy of life. The simple saying “life, death and rebirth” shines in my soul. Nature shows us the holy grail within: as Persephone reaching for the dead symbolizing the bridge of rebirth, and as Prometheus bringer of fire gifting humanity the dreams of “dim hopes.”

Fennel Reed from the Santa Monica Mountains CA

Because I granted mortal
men prerogative;
I sought the source
of fire by
stealth and carried it
Within a hollow fennel reed.
My gift to man
Has taught him every skill and
been his great resource.
Such is the crime for which
I pay the penalty,
Spread-eagle, pinned in chains
beneath the open sky.

108-113 Prometheus Bound ~ Aeschylus

Her Bidding…

Adelaide's Flower Watercolor by Hudley — Mom’s rose by Hudley

Walking through the fear of standing tall is how karma kicked me in the butt. Now I can do it. She did not want me to stop writing, or painting or being strong!

A few years ago, before my parents passed, we tried to get them to use cell phones and computers. The best we could do is for mom. She snuck upstairs where the computer was hidden from Dad, he did not like computers, and she played poker on the computer, and the game Hearts too. She had to adjust her time so as not to interfere with her attention given to Dad. He was demanding of her time that way.

Maybe she found this fun freedom when Dad was watching Golf on TV or some other annoying sport. Maybe it is because he went to the store to get some groceries? You bet Mom had her earphones on listening to the radio. Listening to her Dodgers when the season and clandestine entertainment permitted.

Now I am talking about dreams again. Sometimes it is not all Jungian archetypical stuff!! Mom walks her drama in my dreams; pointing to things I must deal with. I will do my best to understand her. Yet as we have both learned, foresight does not help… it only prepares us for the future; we cannot effect a change.

Now that I have done your bidding maybe a bright flower in my path through synchronicity …would be nice about now.

Just hanging around the fire with Coyote, Bear, Buffalo, and Eagle…

Is the smoke appeasing you? I hope so. I am still grieving.

… onto the game of Hearts.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=snuck

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/phobia-shmobia/

Wheat And Moon

vincent-van-gogh-landscape-with-wheat-sheaves-and-rising-moon — Vincent Van Gogh ` Wheat and Moon

” …The moon in this case is not a primum movems (first moving one); she suffers just like man or plant. It is rather a question of some occurrence in our cosmos which mythology expresses equally in the symbol of the moon, the woman, and the grain. In so doing it speaks of the one under the image of the other. for this it is particularly fond of the Kore figure.” –
PG. 130 , Kore essays On A Science Of Mythology C. J. Jung and C. Kerenyi

I am amazed how ancient cultures and Gods, and especially Goddesses are connected to the earth and sky, the harvest of grains, or caves and trees, forests, and fog! Myths, stories and ancient rituals are now magnified on programs like Ancient Aliens, Monsters in America and A Haunting ! We have become so disassociated with magic and lore, that were once very much a part of our ancient ancestors, it is now exploited as strange, weird or crazy.

Yet paradoxically these supernatural legends, myths and the strange earth are all part of us! It is good, natural and part of us all!

As the math equations that morph into divine intelligence, or as electricity is powered by communicating aliens or the dead! Dreams can move through us and our new Gods of computers and hand help devices! Masses of gamers across the country… or around the world… merging with strange battles from the earth, chemicals and unknown alchemists. Technological caves and dust mites are our human wheat field. I just don’t know.

I am jealous of how close ancient people were to the earth, sky and grain of the earth. A simple strand of wheat, like gold, holding a ritual of initiation! Something our current world knows very little about! Yet the image is held frozen as an image or seed unbroken by wisdom!