A late in life letter of Carl Jung's written to a close friend:
One doesn’t shoot at sparrows with cannons, i.e., the God-image is a representation collective which everyone knows something about.
As for the nigredo, it is certain that no one is redeemed from a sin he has not committed, and that a man who stands on a peak
cannot climb it.
The humiliation allotted to each of us is implicit in his character.
If he seeks his wholeness seriously, he will step unawares into the hole destined for him, and out of this darkness the light will rise.
But the light cannot be enlightened.
If anyone feels he is in the light, I would never talk him into the darkness, for with his light he would seek and find something black which is not him at all.
The light cannot see its own peculiar blackness.
But if it dims, and he follows his twilight as he followed his light, then he will get into the night that is his.
If the light does not dim he would be a fool not to abide in it.
[NOTE: Click on images to enlarge & read/see better]
C. G. Jung
We do not mourn that we see through a glass darkly,
we now rejoice in the dark loveliness of the glass. - John Dominic Crossan
[SEE REPRISE NOTE (SO MARKED AS SUCH) BELOW WHAT IS HERE BELOW]
Some Jung, some clarity, about human shadow, the individual's need to address it within and its mitigating effect upon the mindless herd of humans mostly driven by the unconscious which they mistake as their own egoic direction and will. Jung (and Auden echoes too) says that all us we are lived by the archetypes and not how we perceive (and want) it to be, masters of our own fate, captains of our own soul. Auden declares that "we are lived by forces greater than ourselves."
HALP!
Moi in tweed upon Keene mountain driveway
March 18, 2020, just 6 days into March 13th
declaration of warrentine, I man, quarantine.
Both screen grabs, bad as they are, but appropriately dark and brown paged, and blurr-ish are fitting for thoughts just below, just spun out, not thought out and "essay-ish", but impromptus as steroids kick in (hyper-ng me up much but hopefully not too hyper'-bole). Read the quotes above and then then jump in of this paragraph as a picking up where they leave off or ongoingly ON ON ON AHEAD -
so, the
"Also dot dot dot" :
Also . . . "the melting pot" image (springs to mind) used to describe the USA and democracy is image of, evocation of, the archemical vessal or "retort" in which utterly disparate elements are cooked as in a pressure cooker to alchemize such contrarieties of either/or (two year old child thinkin) but, rather, hard thing, into side-by-side complementaries. The goal is not to turn the many into homogenized monocular-visioned mass mind people. (such attempts now via MAGA insisting "all hail (hell) the Cyclopian State, born of One-Eyed Epimetheus, brother to Prometheus, the fore seer, he who seeis ahead. Epimetheus literally means "looks backward/behind - thus one eyed, concrete, no capacity for nuance, subtleties or even glare-ities but only let's go backward, let's regress and call it (call it "mind-fucking") backwards and pretend it is progress.
The goal of alchemy is to turn the rough, devalued, lowest elements, shite, iron, primal stuff, shadow into gold. The entire project depends utterly on the strength of the vessel to contain the "storm" ongoing in the "pot"/the "vessel"/the "container". It is NEVER a finished project....it is an ongoing process individually and collectively (each our work contributes to the process).
Thus there always was and ever shall be "shadow" work. individually and collectively. Thus Jung's ample writings about the shadow urging one and all toward the highly volatile AND creative task of the "confrontation with the unconscious, the apparent and not apparent opposites, an innate confliction (is that a word?) that perpetually stirs the alchemical pot - thus Jungian and other approaches toward shadow work, to CONSCIOUSLY work in in ourselves (all the while seeing it outside of ourselves in those "others" who carry our shadow) while understanding that shadow will not disappear or turn into all Light and Transcendence away from just what is - nature and reality - that fantasy of transcendence, understandable, and also part of consciousness, is best (in my lived experience and engagement) understood as the basis of all Creativity (cousin of which is de- and re- creation/creativity). Scoff if ye must (hopefully in an educated way aka having read Freud!) but read Sigmund Freud's book, Civilization and It's Discontents. Then read Jung's amplification from Freud in his writings about civilization and its mys- (as in mystery, mystic) and myth- (as in symbolic images, stories, et. al) regarding the depth dimensions of the psyche that are below the surface of ego awareness but do emerge and mug, and guide, and steer and veer in endless ways into (O Prometheus) creative/destructive/reborn enumerate variations for as is said, "Nature abhors a vacuum". As does, O Epimetheus, a melting pot.
First screen-grab is from Jung. Second one is from Charles E. Winquist's essay, The Epistemology of Darkness, re: the postmodern quest deriving from "we see through a glass darkly (Saint Paul's poetic observation)" to what Winquist creatively lends to us all via John Dominic Crossan's that "we now rejoice in the dark loveliness of the glass".
Joan. Sculpted decades ago. Now bedecks the deck
in all weather. New snow upon earlier layers.
Mytho- and theo- poetics more than capable at such "seeing" in order to cypher the dark vales of human and creation's passages.
Some, two, Robert Duncan poems circling "dark seeing" which of course cannot evade or ignore light:
Just Seeing Sept. 27, 1980
takes over everywhere before names
this taking over of sand hillock and slope
as naming takes over as seeing takes over
this green spreading upreaching thick
fingers from their green light branching
into deep rose, into ruddy profusions
takes over from the grey ash dead colonies
lovely the debris the profusion the waste
here — over there too — the flowering begins
the sea pink-before-scarlet openings
when the sun comes thru cloud cover
there will be bees, the mass will be busy
coming to fruit — but lovely this grey
light — the deeper grey of the old colonies
burnd by the sun — the living thick
members taking over thriving
where a secret water runs
they spread out to ripen
[10.]
Let my verse be high and dry until
your mind flows in its own waters.
Let my rimes flow then into a rivering
until the feeling fires I mean
the whole to shine! It is a song of praise
in which the wound into its river runs
and winding shines from time to time,
dark and daylight glimmering
with hints of an ever happening rime.
It is a painting of the ephemeral
where what we took to be water glares
and in the heart of a solar mirror flares.
(1980)
Totem birch on the Keene, NY property.
Took this photo 2 days ago (3/11.
REPRISE from last year. NOTE of IMPORT (at least to me) is that on this day, March 13, 2020, New York State was officially declared "closed" "shut down" as covid19 had by then and was to rapidly alter life as was lived and known around the world. AND it was on that day that as such an announcement was made on the car radio we were pulling into the long mountainous driveway to a friend's mountain home for 10 days spring break which turned out to be, for me, 9 months of "warrentine", for my friends, they never left the mountain but for moving out of Long Island to the home here.
So 5 years ago, around 3 pm EST in Keene, NY, my life changed.
And here I am again, 2025, March 13, back on or beneath the mountain, long shadow over the vale where the house sits, strong espresso at (my) hand, some Jung, poets, priests, monks and such, to read/ponder/debate with, my odd assortment of books stacked as company, too (the better company most often) - and, once again, as during my 9 months 2020 listening to at least one Bach sacred cantata a day until I had heard the entire recorded LOT of them on the Musical Heritage Society record label "Archiv".
My favorite one of the lot, the title, too, speaks to my pulling into greater arrival in my almost 73 years that Ich Hade Gunug - It Is Enough. Yes.
Ian Bostridge's masterful version of the aria:
**
A poem from a few years back, pre-covid - November 2018:
Distant Cousins, They're Dead Now Too - Views From Ropsend
"My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt." - Doestoevsky
Distant cousin,
We're made more close by
sorrow. Time's a borrowed
longing, reaches us each to
each - or yours to mine, for
nowhere now we are but
within, perhaps, merely a
conceit but, I in you and
you in vague, yes, me, a
guess, a venality, vanity
being a human trait common,
quite. It is still a trace to
be, to convene congenially.
I now confess:
I preach too much,
from high horse be-
sotted try to sing
a'stammer with all of
England's Pilgrim-more
behind beneath me us
who would be poets.
It is tone that can home
or disperse us, skin or
spooks thinner than thin,
reflections on walls or con-
fused for traffic or meteors
periferal. Didactic, pro-
lific, heiractic much. Ig-
noring transparency's bend,
Let excursus end.
Pretend or pray such
extends us into more
than infirm materiality
but let it rest, or give,
if rest can be given,
riven from wrested
Pleiades retread Maidens.
For now, let's, craven.
Encompassed much verily,
God damn the West, its deity.
Come cauterize come
correct, impress of self,
homo erect us bears
on what's for other fools
now to court, stalk, woo.
To palmer instead Word-
ward, on tinted oars
bend, or pleining sails
snail-pace skies turn
away day from sun
toward Polaris or
Ursas Major/Minor
two, close each
to each, (they)
almost would
reach but for each
a leg in stellar traps
so endless beeward
they wheel they
limp simple enough
bearing in mind
to suffer redundant
motion, helps to
know as all natural
things do no matter
where placed in
curved Space that
night skies every-
where indeed are
a sad
sad zoo.
They're dead now too,
the Bears,
& most seen stars,
a chorus of ill sorts,
to keep time out of
habit and rhyme as
a kind of home to dwell,
(in no where do I)
but liminal bring
them with, bearing
in mind, to say with
or without impunity,
Goddamn the West, its deity.
We're made more close by
sorrow. Time's a borrowed
longing, reaches us each to
each - or yours to mine, for
nowhere now we are but
within, perhaps, merely a
conceit but, I in you and
you in vague, yes, me, a
guess, a venality, vanity
being a human trait common,
quite. It is still a trace to
be, to convene congenially.
I now confess:
I preach too much,
from high horse be-
sotted try to sing
a'stammer with all of
England's Pilgrim-more
behind beneath me us
who would be poets.
It is tone that can home
or disperse us, skin or
spooks thinner than thin,
reflections on walls or con-
fused for traffic or meteors
periferal. Didactic, pro-
lific, heiractic much. Ig-
noring transparency's bend,
Let excursus end.
Pretend or pray such
extends us into more
than infirm materiality
but let it rest, or give,
if rest can be given,
riven from wrested
Pleiades retread Maidens.
For now, let's, craven.
Encompassed much verily,
God damn the West, its deity.
Come cauterize come
correct, impress of self,
homo erect us bears
on what's for other fools
now to court, stalk, woo.
To palmer instead Word-
ward, on tinted oars
bend, or pleining sails
snail-pace skies turn
away day from sun
toward Polaris or
Ursas Major/Minor
two, close each
to each, (they)
almost would
reach but for each
a leg in stellar traps
so endless beeward
they wheel they
limp simple enough
bearing in mind
to suffer redundant
motion, helps to
know as all natural
things do no matter
where placed in
curved Space that
night skies every-
where indeed are
a sad
sad zoo.
They're dead now too,
the Bears,
& most seen stars,
a chorus of ill sorts,
to keep time out of
habit and rhyme as
a kind of home to dwell,
(in no where do I)
but liminal bring
them with, bearing
in mind, to say with
or without impunity,
Goddamn the West, its deity.
And yet, and yet:
"The centripetal force on our planet is still
fearfully strong . . . I know I shall fall on the
ground and kiss those stones." - Dostoevsky
No comments:
Post a Comment