I have been reading a lot of Erich Neumann lately, with one detour to take a look at the old Russian folk tale, Vassilissa, as told by Clarissa Pinkola Estes in "Women who run with the wolves."

Neumann, in "The Great Mother", (that is in Great Mother in the sense of the fecundating as well as destroying Mother like Kali of India, or the Baba Yaga of Russia), talks about the Malekula people of Melanesia. He says this:

'All life in Malekula is filled with the endeavor to overcome the downward pull of psychic gravity, through a persistent ritual ascent. Whether or not this process has been successful is manifested in the "journey of the dead"...In this journey the dead man encounters the devouring monster and finds out whether or not he can stand up to it.

All initiations---those of primitive peoples as well as those described in the Egyptian or Tibetan Book of the Dead; those of the mystery cults, Gnosis, or the sacramental religions--aim to safeguard the individual against the annihilating power of the grave, of the devouring Feminine. Whether this Feminine is represented as grave or underworld, as hell or Maya, as 'heimarmene' or fate, as monster or witch, serpent or darkness, does not matter here. Death is in every case extinction of the individual and of consciousness as light; survival consists in proving that one belongs not to the darkness but to the world of the light.' (Neumann, The Great Mother, p. 175).

Then in "Fear of the Feminine" Neumann says:

'At this mid-point or later...what is life and what is death become almost inscrutable and indistinguishable for the ego. For as the ego, afraid of transformation, clings rigidly to the 'old life,' this very same, hotly defended 'old life' turns out to be death, and the death of the ego brought about through transformation proves to be life. In the unwillingness to let go of the old, fear arises, depression arises, for the new forces rise up that want access to life and that press against the entrenched ego. But if the ego surrenders its defensive position and throws itself heroically into the jaws of the dragon of death--into the night sea journey of the sun hero--death proves itself to be life, and surrender of what one had held fast becomes a new way of living and of overcoming fear.'

'The great, and to some extent ultimate task posed here is that of understanding fear in all of its forms as an instrument of the Self. Fear of the unknown and of all that is ego-alien turns out to be fear of the unknown aspects of 'one-Self' and of 'one-Self' as the unknown. In this sense the transformation process of becoming one Self again and again embraces new unknowns, indeed, ever new worlds of fear-inspiring unknowns.'

For Neumann the battle is always one of separation from the great maternal womb, representing by Mother Earth, that would take you back in, in Death, so provide fertilizer for the crops to grow, and your Heroic desire, to overcome the "Terrible Mother" in initiation, overcome "fears of the Dragon" and embrace the Light of Life. It is like the battle, Freud talked about between Eros and Thanatos, the Life sustaining, libido, life force that wants to live an abundant life, and the Death force that wants to draw us back down. This is the battle.

For women, the battle is the same, though the references in so much literature is male oriented. In "Women who run with the wolves", Clarissa Pinkola Estes discusses a series of tales that speak to initiation for women.

In Vassilissa, the girl must separate from a 'step-family' that would suck her in, and suffocate her, to differentiate herself as a woman. Her good mother dies at the beginning and gives her a magic doll (of intuition). Her distant father remarries a widow with two daughters, and in their typical fairy-tale way they persecute Vassilissa for her beauty and want her to die. So they plot to extinguish the family fire, and send Vassilissa to the old witch, the Baba Yaga, in the dark forest to get some new fire. They assume she will die, being eaten by wolves, or by the Baba Yaga herself. But Vassilissa, with the help of her good mother's magic doll, reaches the Baba Yaga's hut and, again with the powers of her doll, of her Intuition, goes through a series of the Witch's trials, and learns to discriminate and differentiate, and the Baba Yaga rewards her, by Not eating her, and gives her the Fire (a Skull with fiery eye sockets on a pole), that eventually incinerates her wicked step mother and sisters, and gives her an independent life. ( Great story - you should actually read it - I've abbreviated too much here;)

So it seems that its not just about overcoming a witch, or a dragon, in trial by overcoming your fear, but by also taking in the power of the witch or the dragon as you go on into life.

But its also about overcoming the < Mother Complex > which is about getting all of the narcissistic good stuff I was supposed to get as a baby/child but didn't, so now its hard to be initiated into life. I'd rather get drunk, shop, stoned, party, wallow in sexual promiscuity, and leech off of other people. These are ways of self-destructing back into the great maw, the great womb. Initiation is about taking on the fears of breaking out of those molds, giving up the old infantile narcissism.

And these old patterns also cause compulsions, that are autonomous, that must be overcome as well. In another old Baba Yaga story, the story of Ivan and the Maiden Czar or King (told in Marion Woodman and Robert Bly's -- The Maiden King ) the Baba Yaga is very concerned about whether the hero can accept that some comes by compulsion and some by free will, and the initiate must be able to discern the difference.

As I get on down to the end of this year, past Solstice, with the imagery of SunReturn, rebirth and all that jazz, I have to think once again about this concept of Individuation. What the hell is Individuation anyway and am I doing It? Hmmm...

James Hollis gives us a clue with these Gremlins. One is called the Gremlin of Lethargy and the other is the Gremlin of Fear. Says Hollis, these two park their butts at the end of our beds every morning as we awake. They would rather we regress back to the womb of the Mother than venture forth to find what we are here for.

Grinning Lethargy would possess the soul, with the seduction to comfort, and grinning Fear paralyzes us with the gaze of Medusa, causing us to run for the safe harbor. Each would have us join the collective cow-herd, and take it easy -- join the big corporation with the promotion possibilities and the dental benefits. Join the PTSA and the Rotary club...hang at the Mall... It does not make any difference how much progress we made the previous day, the Gremlins are there grinning anew each morning. It takes libidinal energy, the sting of Eros, the heroic quest to break them down and move into real Life.

The heroic move towards Individuation is often thought narcissistic, or self-serving, but Hollis and Jung suggest that to move away from the our collective role towards Individuation requires a Ransom, something to give back to the collective. That is why we are alive.

Jung said,

"Individuation cuts one off from personal conformity, and hence from collectivity. That is the guilt which the individuant leaves behind him for the world, that is the guilt which he must endeavor to redeem. He must offer a ransom in place of himself...offer values which are an equivalent substitute for his absence in the collective personal sphere." (The Symbolic Life, CW 18, para 1095).

As Hollis say, you then become "a treasure to the Tribe".

But there is the allure of the Gremlins, Lethargy and Fear, towards regression. Why should I be so special? It reminds me of the scene in The Last Temptation of Christ, where Christ wants to be a regular dude, but a big Eagle keeps clawing at his head, moving him towards sacrifice.

Old systems of Initiation in the most mystical depths of religion (e.g. the Eleusian mysteries), countered that force. They "sought to create an autonomous consciousness by weaning mankind away from the sleep of childhood." (Jung: Symbols of Transformation, CW 5, Para 553). Adult initiation is about moving past lethargy and fear, moving out of the womb.

So Individuation is about moving away from the expectations of family and friends (the collective) - moving away from the safe harbor of the big organization that would suck you up for its own uses, promising a few benefits along the way... Its NOT about being a regular dude...

Damn its difficult to move it that direction, but I guess there is no Life without it...

Says Marion Woodman ("Emergence of the Feminine", In Betwixt & Between: Patterns of masculine and feminine initiation)

Once they have contacted their own Goddess energy, women are not satisfied in a relationship with a son-husband; consequently, their relationships undergo the fire of transformation with all the physical suffering and spiritual torment that transformation entails. Their male partners are forced into a choice: either to end the relationship and look again for an unconscious woman, or to open themselves to their own femininity and mature masculinity. Either way, the transitions in attitudes and behavior that are necessitated by the birth of a newly conscious femininity are precarious and challenging, demanding the finest honing of sensitivity and perception in both partners.

In the uncharted sea of re-emerging energies, there is one, huge, unmarked, undersurface rock that well-intentioned, conscientious explorers often strike. In their delight in experiencing their instinctual energy, they are indeed remembering the power of the Great Earth Mother. But if, in their 'hubris', they take that power as their own, and fail to recognize it as an impersonal authority flowing through them, then their ego becomes inflated because the Great Mother is in control. Far from being ignored, abused and left for dead, she suddenly turns her head, and, if she appears in her destructive, Kali aspect, women almost inevitably contact an inundation of transpersonal rage and revenge against men, probably the accumulation of centuries of repression.

Its intensity can erupt like a fountain of black poison. Caught by this Kali energy, respectable matrons may suddenly be transformed into screaming 'maenads' out for blood. If they are at all conscious, however, they recognize that their ferocity is more than personal. As individuals they do not hate the individual men in their lives. They do not really think that all the male sex is a conglomerate of insensitive baby boys who have no understanding of mature relationship. Rather, they move into their own strong ego position, take cognizance of their own personal feelings as distinct from archetypal rage, and instead of attacking men, they help them to contact their own inner femininity in genuine relationship.

El Desdichado

Je suis le ténébreux,- le Veuf, - l'inconsolé,
Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie:
Ma seule étoile est morte, et mon luth constellé
Porte le soleil noir de la Mélancolie.

Dans la nuit du Tombeau, Toi qui m'as consolé,
Rends-moi le Pausilippe et la mer d'Italie,
La fleur qui plaisait tant à mon coeur désolé,
Et la treille où le Pampre à la rose s'allie.

Suis-je Amour ou Phoebus ?.... Lusignan ou Biron ?
Mon front est rouge encor du baiser de la Reine ;
J'ai rêvé dans la grotte où nage la Sirène...

Et j'ai deux fois vainqueur traversé l'Achéron :
Modulant tour à tour sur la lyre d'Orphée
Les soupirs de la Sainte et les cris de la Fée.

El Desdichado

I am the dark one, widower, inconsolable
The Prince of Aquitaine, his tower destroyed
My heart dead, my Lute spangled with stars
Bearing the Black Sun of Melancholy.

In the night of the Tomb, you who consoled me,
Returned Mount Posilipo to me, and the sea of Italy
The flower my desolate heart adored
And the trellis where the vine fuses with the rose

Am I Amor or Phoebus?....Lusignan or Biron?
My forehead still red, from the kiss of the Queen
I dreamed in the grotto where the Mermaid swims

Two times victorious, I have crossed Acheron
Modulating, turn by turn, on the lyre of Orpheus
The moans of the Saint and the Screams of the Fairy..


Gerard de Nerval

I've been reading James Hillman's, -- Pan and the Nightmare --, and it finally dawned on me why it was that I had a full blown panic attack in a restaurant in Carpinteria, California just before going into a weekend of classes in the Spring of 2006! This had always mystified me. It had been a rough year, that first year of grad school, studying psychology – high anxiety, worries about finances and this crazy, reckless road I seemed be catapulting down.

Hillman says that --any complex that brings on panic is the -via regia- for dismantling paranoid defenses.-- We all have paranoid defenses until we are stripped bare and exposed. And, in fact we can unconsciously bring this on ourselves – the unconscious pushing us towards growth.

Some of my classmates that day had been fretting and stewing, discussing all of the elaborate ways they were employing to make sure everything came together financially, and were also worried about getting into some agency somewhere, so that we could do the hands-on training to be therapists that we would have to do later that year. These were their paranoid defenses in the face of anxiety inducing tasks. My paranoid defenses were down – I didn't care and I had no protection.

Around that time I had a dream where I am on a ship just waking up. I am in bed with a woman, and we look up to see all of my classmates dressed in yellow rain slickers against a coming storm. One looks down on me and says, -- we will draw their attention if we look at him. -- I feel like I've missed some drill where we were supposed to get ready. Then I see a flaming airplane in the sky and another airplane towing a massive bucket of water that douses the first airplane's fire. Then I see a ship ramming our ship on the perpendicular, near the bow. I wonder if we are alright.

The dream was really a nightmare and left me feeling exposed. The fretful and paranoiac conversations of my classmates that day also left me feeling exposed and I had a panic attack.

Hillman describes this as -- a therapeutic way of fear. It leads out of the city walls into the open country, Pan's country -- The way of nature.

The point of all this is that there is a continuum between paranoid defenses and panic. We all create elaborate ego defenses, city walls, to keep ourselves protected – safe but suffocating jobs, shrinking away from risky ventures, etc.. We have them because we are paranoid and fearful of the consequences of falling from grace. But Hillman echoes Jung's strong belief that fear is a path to follow towards wholeness. He does not mean the fear of the Dragon that causes the Hero to vanquish it. Hillmans says rather, -- fear, like love, can become a call into consciousness; one meets the unconcious, the unknown, the numinous, the uncontrollable by keeping in touch with fear, which elevates the blind instinctual panic of the sheep into the knowing, cunning, fearful awe of the shepherd –

I had been taking tremendous risks, highly leveraging myself, stripping off all defenses. Strangely enough, I could not have grown one wit, without enduring the panic and fear that resulted for a time. Now I have different fears, but I try to face them as an interesting challange... and with that cunning...with that cunning fearful awe!