Anthropologists describe a condition among "primitive" peoples called "loss of soul." In this condition a man is out of himself, unable to find either the outer connection between humans or the inner connection to himself. He is unable to take part in his society, its rituals, and traditions. They are dead to him, he to them. His connection to family, totem, nature, is gone. Until he regains his soul he Is not a true human. He is “not there." It is as if he had never been initiated, been given a name, come into real being. His soul may not only be lost; it may also be possessed, bewitched, ill, transposed into an object, animal, place, or another person. Without this soul, he has lost the sense of belonging and the sense of being in communion with the powers and the gods. They no longer reach him; he cannot pray, nor sacrifice, nor dance. His personal myth and his connection to the larger myth of his people, as raison d'être, is lost. Yet he is not sick with disease, nor is he out of his mind. He has simply lost his soul. He may even die. We become lonely. Other relevant parallels with ourselves today need not be spelled out.
One day in Burghölzli, the famous institute in Zurich where the words schizophrenia and complex were born, I watched a woman being interviewed. She sat in a wheelchair because she was elderlyand feeble. She said that she was dead for she had lost her heart. The psychiatrist asked her to place her hand over her breast to feel her heart beating: it must still be there if she could feel its beat. "That," she said, "is not my real heart." She and the psychiatrist looked at each other. There was nothing more to say. Like the primitive who has lost his soul, she had lost the loving courageous connection to life--and that is the real heart, not the ticker which can as well pulsate isolated in a glass bottle. This is a different view of reality from the usual one. It is so radically different that it forms part of the syndrome of insanity. But one can have as much understanding for the woman in her psychotic depersonalization as for the view of reality of the man attempting to convince her that her heart was indeed still there. Despite the elaborate and moneyed systems of medical research and the advertisements of the health and recreation industries to prove that the real is the physical and that loss of heart and loss of soul are only in the mind, I believe the "primitive" and the woman in the hospital: we can and do lose our souls. I believe with Jung that each of us is “modern man in search of a soul."
Because symptoms lead to soul, the cure of symptoms may also cure away soul, get rid of just what is beginning to show, at first tortured and crying for help, comfort, and love, but which is the soul in the neurosis trying to make itself heard, trying to impress the stupid and stubborn mind--that impotent mule which insists on going its unchanging obstinate way. The right reaction to a symptom may as well be a welcoming rather than laments and demands for remedies, for the symptom is the first herald of an awakening psyche which will not tolerate any more abuse. Through the symptom the psyche demands attention. Attention means attending to, tending, a certain tender care of, as well as waiting, pausing, listen ing. It takes a span of time and a tension of patience. Precisely what each symptom needs is time and tender care and attention. Just this same attitude is what the soul needs in order to be felt and heard.
So it is often little wonder that it takes a breakdown, an actual illness, for someone to report the most extraordinary experiences of, for instance, a new sense of time, of patience and waiting, and in the language of religious experience, of coming to the center, coming to oneself, letting go and coming home. The alchemists had an excellent image for the transformation of suffering and symptom into a value of the soul. A goal of the alchemical process was the pearl of great price. The pearl starts off as a bit of grit, a neurotic symptom or complaint, a bothersome irritant in one's secret inside flesh, which no defensive shell can protect oneself from. This is coated over, worked at day in day out, until the grit one day is a pearl; yet it still must be fished up from the depths and pried loose. Then when the grit is redeemed, it is worn. It must be worn on the warm skin to keep its luster: the redeemed complex which once caused suffering is exposed to public view as a virtue. The esoteric treasure gained through occult work becomes an exoteric splendor. To get rid of the symptom means to get rid of the chance to gain what may one day be of greatest value, even if at first an unbearable irritant, lowly, and disguised.
Crossing to Avalon, Jean Shinoda BolenWilliam Styron , Darkness Visible Dante’s Inferno
🌱Viriditas🌱
My bedtime reading a reminder of the lush greening and the moisture of aliveness. Venus in the glory of bountiful natural juiciness of expression in abundant hues of green. Taurean fertility and adoration of the sensual world that saturates and quickens the blood. The Power of the Greening. That which is alive is wet, is moist, and as Time takes it’s toll, demands payment, it is in moisture, removed……Saturn is Dry. It contracts and dries things out. As moisture dries up, Life dries up. Turns to salt? Saturn is salt. Salt is wisdom. The journey from Green Venusion birth into the sensual realm of aliveness and bodily experience. Ole Saturn, through Time pulls the moisture out, condenses, constricts, makes dry and brittle and rigid. The wisdom that comes from embodiment and disembodiment in patterns and cycles of knowing and forgetting, being, and letting …be. Saturn is melancholia. The darkness that overtakes when the moisture of life has gone. The Melencholia of intense depression states, the complete loss of all the juice of living. If you know you know. Saturn is a harsh task master but always wise. If you’re worth your salt, your worth your sea as the womb space of psyches dream pulls you in.
Went to bed with these contemplations. But never slept. So eventually re/lit my candles, and grabbed a book that had been in que. William Styron ‘Darkness Visible’ about his descent into Melencholia and Madness. Saturns initiation. If you know you know. Read the whole thing before falling sleep. The journey of Saturns slow wicking off moisture from the body and mind and heart. The seemingly inexplicable dance with the leaden realm that makes the Viriditas ever so sweeter when the waters return. Saturn and Venus and their dance.
I went into a laughing fit that lasted probably ten minutes, towards the end of Styrons book. One single paragraph seemed to me so hilarious…..he spoke so articulately sardonic and it was so metaphoric of how little the ‘system’ understands the ramifications of Madness of Melancholia when Saturns slow shrivel has dried up every last bit of wetness from the soul. (See photo of the excerpt).
“Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, Ché la diritta via era smarrita” ~Dante
I awoke to the sound of the pouring rain outside, could feel the earths reception of these heavenly waters as a tonic for her thirst. Ah. The greening. And the wet juiciness of life. The green hue that surrounds my house a reminder of the love for living that Saturns dark lessons make New and make pertinent. Knowing the hot dry temperatures coming up in the next week, I felt myself relax into this rainy downpour that quenches the parched earth.
I catch myself in a sideways glance…. Heard the hoarse whisper of the apocalypse The naked mystery of the lord of the dance Snake charmed ministry in swiveled hips… Was beyond Time in Sine-Wave Brine Baffled by Breath and Trapped in Mind By Maters milky metered rhyme His Pattern scattered in points and line… Sin descended in tender twists He hid the fire in fountains of mist Shed the blood as the milky kiss His beloved entangled in silky bliss Scales in harmony ascend the ladder To shatter the mirror of mind in matter find the secret of carbons atoms The Judas kiss from master Saturn Snake dance sways hypnotic trance Within breaking clay and bone But hybrid eyes hide the glance Born from maze of silicone Again and again the cord unwinds Is torn from tethered trinity born from wombs of eyes and minds Without the measure of infinity A sword that splinters sacred words Skin deep scars that sing The broken spokes and spoken chords Poison every human being… Enters every pore and wound Into every fractal womb Everything is born to bloom…. …………..Time and Space the sacred Loom. 3-10-2024 (First word in each line makes a fractal of my rhyme)
We come from the land of dimpled smiles, the bridge between worlds, the tethers that tear at scar tissue and rip open wounds, so the tribe can be fed with the stories that wake their Souls. We talked often of this role, the single handed need to make everyone else’s Pain go away, be all things to all people, be the shoulder that bears the weight of all grief and fear. We made the journey over and over, from one world to the next. Your now my ally in the unseen. You’ve told me the nature of the twisted web, from your perspective at the fountainhead…. And I give my word that I shall speak it so that the demons can be free.
There is no monopoly on grief, we all carry a piece of each other, different than anyone else has, a part of a mystery, a magical thread, that no one else can see. In Life, you were pulled and unraveled by all The grasping fingers that rip at the covers, skinned by kith and kin over and over….in Death, the Same ……the same fragmentation , no one can live up to that projection, no one can carry that , not even Saturn or The sweet soul of Capricornian love of Other. I’ll meet you there, where there is no tugging. Where nothing is wanted from you, needed from you, asked of you, blamed on you, taken from you, or hidden from you…/ I’ll meet you there in the Nether, and we will tell The story as seen from inside the center of the Web. My friend, my Soul Brother, we’ve traipsed thru time together, for aeons, and I thank you for what you have blessed me with, by your sweet smile and the kindness and love you poured out. No strings attached, was our love and care, and perhaps that is the only place where real Sight can dare to stare into the eyes of Truth.
In the in Between Before the dream Overtook me... That effervescent beam that clings Like dew to my Mindscreen After the dark night has risen Like yeast inside of me Shone Daimonic face The trickster dressed in lace And leather And choking on feathers From my Flock Mocked me Pointed to the clock And shook me from complacency The Red Tale of Fires embrace Rose like dawn And threatened my Face With scabs of disGrace from legions Spawn Fighting for ascendancy As I silenced the grim Grip Of their insistent Whims And kept right on The same old track Of dependency Ignoring the tortured truth That swarmed my limbs And swore to remain imprisoned Within... Spoken to me in a cross Between Whisper and Scream As I lay Trapped in stasis Peering at faces Whose skin peeled like panic From the ancient Dream... ...Worry of whether I'm worthy of the flame Grateful for the shocks And the shards and the pain That lodge within The neural Stains And strains of my heaving Heart... "Stop Showing off... And Make Real Art" ....and in a flash The great Rash of Impulsive Inaction Flickered in the Smile Of the Vixen who agreed To stop feeding On my flesh If I vowed To rise from the bowels Of this Blessed Test Of Will And say Goodbye To Patterns that Shatter The Sanctity of Time Trapped within loops Of Mind... As I Bleed within Mother Matter in Fractal Flowers that Unfold In Sacred Sines.
There are some Wakings that come like storms Electro-swarms in magnetic forms Dancing On the tips of Hathor’s Horns The Temple Priestess ReBorn WideEyed and Me-oh-my How Time Flies inside the Mind Wandering Womb releasing Blind sides of Ancient crimes Buried within these patient Tombs There are some Wakings that scream like pain Neurolinguistic nails impaled in veins Bleeding And Seeding Stories in silent Shame The Holy Harlot Risen OpenHearted as freedom Parts The Seas of Self and Dwells in the Art Of Body’s Bliss Burning The rotting dross from the Fixed Cross As the Flame is taught to rekindle the Kiss As Magdalenes Grail Returns Opens the Urn Blood flooding in rivers of nerves As the Impaled Heart And Mind Are Healed and Heard…. The Chironic Wound sutured With the Salve of Spoken Words As Pluto and Venus Sharing the Shroud Awake and merge…. Heiros Gamos Blessed and Bound In Sacred Sound Dance In Red Velvet Underground As New Life Stirs.
I slipped through a crack in the sky Tripped right over my own silly I And plummeted Through the atmosphere Of dancing atomsHere Mapping tears as Phos Fears Wrath and mirrors Refracting Errors As Eros Arrows begin to fly Aimed at Body as Blind Mind tries To hold on Hold out Hold still as Tempest rages about Weightless Images in cages Break the lock And find their way out, in… Eyes of Mages and Pupils And Sages Wake with the shock Of the skin As it begins to peel Away from the clock tocking within The rhythm of Opening And closing Pounding it’s poultice and pouring Its Salve at ions Dreaming As men And women Dressed as Time Spiral path in precious Flesh Dancing thru the Annals of Spine My oh my The journey tries my Patience As I Let Go, satiated by the Doctors Cosmic Order….the Flow Aeons of tight fisted History I now come to Grips With… I hit the Smooth surface Of my Mothers Womb…. Taste the salty brine and prepare To slip through SineWave Lips Soft as sultry hips that shimmy And shimmer as Soul unfolds in bloom A Sacred Intention to Serve This Body of Being As I am Birthed from the Dark Deep See Into the Light of a New Me that Bleeds Stories and Deeds filled with the Perfume Of the Divine embrace Shiva and Shaktis infinite Delight Making Love from the Loom Of Time and Space.
As I woke in the middle of the night, tangled in hypnagogic bleed-throughs as Previous Me~s in Cyclic read-throughs…. I came back over and over again to myself being Drawn-and-Quartered…. As well as ‘DisMembered’ ….and variations of such….As the crowd looked on. Literally Pulled Apart. I’ve been doing intense Somatic Trauma Work lately ( again) as my inner Blueprint is pushed by the transiting Planetary Gods into Letting Go… Letting Go of the Stories deep within my Cell.ves that keep my body and mind in a State of PulledApartNess. Stuck in the Kinetic Underworld where I’ve locked away Memories so disIntegrating for so many lifetimes and fractal LandMines… that this Entire Incarnations Intention is bound up with Putting MySelfs Back ToGather aGain.
As I tossed and turned unable to fall back into Dream, my mind kept ruminating in my wrists, and the pain, of all my joints and connective tissue, a lifelong issue of Hypermobility and mutation of CollagenCreating which means all my joints sublux constantly, slip in and out, trying to DrawAndQuarter me over and over again til I finally look deeply enough to ConnectTheIssues of these Fascial Tissues and Put mySelfs Back ( literally) together again
My flexibility a gift and a curse… my joints held together by pure force of Muscular Will… which equates to constant muscular tension and alignment issues….when I stop doing the bodywork I need to do, every day, to keep myself Flowing and functional…. I pay. The Deep Trauma Memories stored inSide, are now asking to fully reLease. And bleed throughs of All kinds of Tangled Lives and Times are Arising. Deep, Intense Self Trigger Point work is my Grace…. Going into the pain and buried strains…. Seeking it out, and pressuring with pulsation to Let Go. It’s a religious experience for me, sometimes 5 hours at a time of Trance Trigger Descent, to complete the whole body, entering hallways and mazes of Soul, the Underworld where Fragments of My Being are Held….
All these things passing thru me in the middle of the night, and I realize I need to look at my last nodal cycle transit… 19 years ago… when Ketu last passed over my Sun/Uranus(trauma) conjunction in the first house( body) ….and I suddenly jump up, and go to my journals. So many transits affecting me in this very moment, all Related to a LettingGo of some serious Stuff.
I grab a journal somewhat at random.
It’s the exact time period I was thinking about. Haven’t looked through it in a long time. Opened it up, and the first page Felt like a message I coded to myself years ago, for this very moment of reMembering. Literally. putting my Members back together. Gathering my Appendages and reSeaming myself. To stop the Somatic Pulling apart, the Center Won’t Hold, as long as these memories are buried.
Drawn and Quartered. In front of the Crowd. Among other things. ‘Yet for a time my hands were crippled’ . The panic ( ah, the God Pan when he is not Faced and Fluidly Friended) of my wrists subluxing completely and losing my ability to create.
The following photos are from the Journal, and my Soul insisted on my reading it at that very moment. In Pans Night.
BlissNinja 