#133. Beyond Religion and Psychology-- To Nature

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

ARCHIVE. For a list of all my published posts: 

http://www.sammackintosh.blogspot.com/

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Blog entries beginning with #101 are not essays but minimally-edited notes and reviews from the files I've collected over the last few decades. I no longer have the time and energy needed to sort out and put together into decent essay-form the many varied ideas in these files, but I would like to share them with all who are interested.

If you have questions and think I might help, you're welcome to send me a note: sam@macspeno.com

Post #133 is a collection of notes and comments on a 1990 book by Robert Aziz, "C.G. Jung's Psychology of Religion and Synchronicity."

===

In his 1937 lectures at Yale, C. G. Jung talked about the “need to move beyond established religion and accept the challenge of immediate experience.”

As Aziz puts it, we need “to enter into a ritual with the sacred circle of the psyche.” By “ritual” here Aziz does not mean a ceremony but rather what we would call today a religious practice or a spiritual discipline.

His main point is extremely significant: that while Jung in 1937 saw the “ritual of immediate experience” taking place via direct encounter with the unconscious, today we see it as taking place via direct encounter with the external world as well, "with nature as a whole, in its entirety.”

---

Aziz says that Jung’s own inner journey was the means for opening up a new route to the outer world and that this is his deepest personal meaning. It is what Jung himself did “on behalf of all and for all.”

Jung's work with archetypes and his discovery of the active imagination process, for example, are obviously important. But what is of the greatest significance, says Aziz, is that Jung discovered how we can be, once again-- since the beginnings, thousands of years ago, of patriarchal dualism at the end of the Neolithic age-- rightly related to the external world of matter.

Aziz quotes Marie-Louise von Franz, with regard to philosophical and religious dualism, to the effect that the synchronistic phenomena uncovered by Jung provide empirical evidence for the non-duality of body and soul.

Aziz notes that we get this full picture of Jung’s life and work not from his formal writings so much as in letters, comments, and activities with his clients.

What it comes down to is that each of us must be a facilitator of the unfoldment of the events in nature.

---

For a religious person in the 20th century, the transition from institutional religiousness to ritual attention to the contents of the unconscious has been a big step.

Yet we need to go further: we must learn as well to be always and everywhere attentive to the flow of nature in the external world. As von Franz puts it, "to be attentive to the Tao in all its wholeness."

This is a real breakthrough.

It clearly ties Jungian perspectives with ecological consciousness and environmental awareness, and it verifies the tribal and specifically Native American perception of our need to be one with all nature, with “All my relations.”

---

A second important point Aziz makes is that Jung is able to provide an explanation of the mechanism by which an individual, being faithful to the individuation process in himself, is in fact able to have an effect for good on the whole of reality.

Jung says, "When an archetype, which is universal-- i.e., identical with itself always and anywhere-- is properly dealt with in one place only, it is influenced as a whole-- i.e., simultaneously and everywhere.”

Jung is saying that once changed in any one place, via the individuation process in a single individual, an archetype is changed permanently "always and everywhere." (And so there would seem to be a kind of natural selection mechanism at work for the evolution of archetypes!)

---

From Aziz's work, all that Jung has said about the significance of the individual for the salvation of the world is even more clear. And Aziz takes us further.

While the section dealing with the solitary individual's effects the whole, for example, is especially fruitful, it also helps us understand how a small group like a drumming group, or a larger group like an Orthodox Church parish-- groups which seemingly have no effect whatsoever on the mindset of Western culture as a whole-- can, by faithfully doing their thing, indeed “make a difference” in the renewal of society.

Aziz's point here is that we are not alone in our individuation process. We become who and what we are only with the aid of what he calls our "soul family," that gathering of kindred spirits around us which, he says, "is not created by accident or mere ego-motivation,” yet is “one of the great mysteries of the individuation process.”

---

Another major point in the book is that Aziz identifies individuation and the shamanic vocation.

He quotes von Franz to the effect that “The shaman is the most individuated, i.e., most conscious person of the group to which he belongs.”

Aziz describes the shaman as being distinguished by two main traits: an intense intuitive capacity for ecstatic states, and the ability to guide others.

He says that “the shaman suffers from the plight of his people” and that the individuating individual, like a shaman, deals with the archetypal spirit powers that the community needs.

It's not a surprise to see shamanism and the individuation process equated, but it's nice to have it spelled out so clearly.

---

With regard to this shamanic ritual "of immediate experience,” which today must take place via direct encounter with both the unconscious and "with nature as a whole," Aziz quotes von Franz again. She describes a contemporary religious person as one who is constantly trying to get a feeling for the rightness of whatever he/she is doing.

Such persons are constantly “looking for some sign from the Self," constantly "paying constant attention to the Tao."

He notes that prayer is efficacious "only when one is 'in the Tao.'”

---

As Karl Rahner says, “The great question of our day is not whether God exists but whether we are willing to make the effort to be sensitive and responsive to the Mystery which is always and everywhere giving itself to us.”

Von Franz’s words help us to see that it is precisely by constantly paying attention, by constantly looking at our feelings and constantly watching for external signs, that we can “always and everywhere" be "sensitive and responsive” to the Great Mystery.

Such attentiveness is what defines a contemporary “religious person.”

---

The religious person in the 20th century has been called to make the transition from institutional religiousness to ritual attention to the contents of the unconscious. A big step, indeed!

And now there is a need to go further: we must learn as well to be always and everywhere attentive to the flow of nature in the external world around us.

And beyond that, says Aziz, there is one more thing to take into account: we especially must be attentive to the compensatory contents of both the unconscious and of external nature. Only by such a sensitivity to the compensatory contents of the "within" and the "without" of things will we be able to live in balance and harmony with all things.

---

Aziz notes that we are “in harmony with the forces of nature only when we consciously give up the ambition to be in control of them.”

This is precisely the same point Allan Chinen makes in Beyond the Hero with regard to the need for an adult male to be in right relation with the feminine. If a man is to move beyond the hero stage of patriarchy, he must give up his need, based on fear, to intimidate and control women.

It probably works the same way with all those things, besides women, usually considered evil by patriarchal dualism: matter, nature and the body-- and of course the unconscious.

---

“Harmony” means not needing to dominate them, precisely because one doesn't fear them. This seems to be a major insight because, I think, it is so simple.

To be "in harmony” means having such self-regard that you can treat others-- whether women and children, or your own body, or the natural world of matter, and even the unconscious-- with equality.

We can only be in balance with something if we are not afraid of it. Once again, what it seems to come down to is the gospel counsel, "Fear not."

===

Personal reflections

1. For several years now I have understood my present stage of development to be one of "not doing, but being."

Not, especially, writing or teaching in those areas that I gave a dozen years of my life to, starting back in the 80's. I am only to guard the center and keep the sacred fire. (More recently I have added the phrase “fast, abstain and exercise;” meaning daily exercise, little wine, and nothing to eat in the evenings.)

It is extremely difficult not to be concerned with doing, probably the most difficult thing I've yet been called to do in my life. Aziz’s explanations make it all somewhat easier to take.

-

2. Aziz says that just as "the shaman suffers from the plight of his people," so the individuating individual has to deal with the archetypal spirit powers that his community needs. Clearly my focus has been on living an authentic spiritual life independently of the confines of the religious institution. And dealing with a major related issue, the loss of sacred manhood and its healing recovery and affirmation.

I understand sacred manhood to be the embodiment of that masculine principle at the heart of the universe which is co-eternal-with-the-feminine and with which it unites in a harmonious balance of opposites for the fullness of epiphany of the Great Mystery.

      

For me, the deep masculine is especially imaged and personified as the Holy Male Ancestors, and in a less personal form, as the sacred fire.

I understand that when the archetype of the sacred masculine is embraced and ‘owned’ by me, it is permanently affected "always and anywhere," and that this is my uniquely personal contribution to the renewal and transfiguration of the world.

All this seems to be extremely important and healthy stuff.

I note that my present earth name, Hoc'oka, does not name myself as a safe place, but honors the whole cosmos as the hoc'oka of transformation.

While it doesn't fit anywhere, I need to record a quote from Jung on page 169-170 of Aziz's book that grabbed me: "Whether we are talking about doctor and patient, shaman and petitioner, analyst and client, teacher and student, you can exert no influence if you are not susceptible to influence.”

Note that, here, as ever the concern is with being "of influence."(!)

---

3. Another book I read recently, Mitakuye Oyasin: "We Are All Related" by A. C. Ross (1989, Bear [Kyle, SD]), is said to be "a holistic approach toward white and native American cultures," and an exploration "of the similarities between Jungian psychology and thought."

It is described by the publishers as "A controversial and original treatment of comparative culture studies.” That puts it mildly. It is, in fact, for the most part pretty goofy New Age stuff.

But the author keeps saying, “and that’s what Native Americans think, too.” And I'm thinking that for the most part, he’s right.

      

An insight from the book: the author talks a lot about Atlantis and Wu (the Pacific Ocean counterpart of Atlantis); I can see that to many people this would not sound any sillier than my talking about a vision quest or the sweat lodge rites.

      

What stayed with me most is Ross' comment that "the "best way to help the world be in balance is to help people who have the same kind of problems you do."

I keep asking, what kind of problem(s) do I have? And keep coming up with the same answer as above: How is "being, not doing" of use? And how, especially, am I to contribute to the healing recovery and affirmation of sacred manhood-- without doing?

Aziz's book really is helpful.

+++

#113. Native American Stories

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
ARCHIVE. For a list of all my published posts: 
http://www.sammackintosh.blogspot.com/
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This is the 13th in the series of blog entries I began with #101-- a collection of notes and essays (and lots of book reviews, I'm just realizing) from my files all dealing in one way or another with the emerging new religious consciousness. They are mostly things I've written over the last decade or two to clarify my own thoughts but which I would like to make available for anyone who might be interested.

Post #113 contains notes, made in May/June, 1995, on three books dealing with important Native American perspectives.

If you have questions and think I might be of help, you're welcome to send me a note: sam@macpeno.com

===

Songs from the Mountain, by Djohariah Toor; St Martin’s Press, 1994

This is not-- at all-- the “worst kind of New Age junk” it at first appears it's going to be. It’s a good book-- a fine example of the contemporary spiritual search at its best.

The author is feminist without being anti-male. She has a Catholic background: she's comfortable, at least, quoting Hildegard, Eckhart and Merton. She also has a Jungian perspective: she is at home with those I think of as “classic” Jungian authors-- such as Sheila Moon (of the Navajo Emergence Myth) and Marie-Louise von Franz. And she has great respect for Native American practices.

The essence of the book is stories-- of her clients and from her own experience-- which demonstrate the integrative healing power of medicine wheel teachings, the sweat lodge and vision quest.

She’s family therapist, so most of what’s here is recovery-oriented.

It’s introductory without being elementary and totally avoids the usual New Age references to chakras and vibes and past lives, etc. I think that this kind of thing is just what large numbers of persons with a background in Western spirituality might be looking for.

===

The Grandfathers Speak: Native American Folk Tales of the Lenape People, by Hitakonan U’Laxk (Tree Beard). Interlink Book, 1994.

I found the Lenape creation story, about the powers of the four directions, especially stimulating. Summary and reflections...

In the beginning there was only the creator and nothing else. He had a great dream-vision. Creation is its realization. First created are the four Keepers of Creation, powerful, co-creative spirit beings, the Guardians of the Gates....

These four Keepers create the earth, sun, moon and stars. And they, in turn, come together to bring forth life: energy comes from the male sun, fertility from the female moon, growth and healing from Mother Earth. (What the apparently male stars contribute isn’t mentioned.) Consistent with what was said about the Keepers (see below), North gives solid form, East gives life and Spirit, South gives inner fire and Spirit, and West gives its waters (to be life’s blood).

Plants appear first, then animals. Humans come last. When Grandmother Moon becomes lonely, she is given the Thunder being for a mate; a set of twins-- one male, one female-- is born.

-

COSMIC VIEWS. With the mention of the moon’s need for company and the newborn human pair’s dual sexuality, the whole myth seems to shift its focus onto the issue of the union of opposites. It explicitly states, for example, that the humans are whole only when the two sexes are together, and thus implies that there are opposites, both poles of which are equally good.

But the myth also introduces “evil” as the opposite of good itself, although the evils named-- darkness, thorns on berry bushes, biting insects and poison snakes-- are neither moral nor ontological evils (in the old Catholic terminology); they are more in the nature of inconveniences and unpleasantries.

Then, out of nowhere, there is mention of Toad, the Water Keeper; this spirit seems to be an aspect of the Keeper of the West, specifically in terms of control over rain. It also has its opposite: the horned serpent, which tries to take over its job. (There is no mention of the fact that the horned/feathered serpent is, in myths generally, itself considered to be a union of opposites.) Here, he is labeled “evil” and is subdued, although not vanquished, by the Thunder Being (the moon’s mate). The rains continue out of control and the waters continue to rise until everything is wiped away, as in Noah’s Flood.

-

HUMAN/CULTURAL VIEWS. Reality is saved only by the intervention of the culture hero, called here Nanapush. He restores the world, with the help of the animals-- especially muskrat (who brings dirt from the previous world) and turtle (whose back serves as the platform for the new earth, Turtle Island). Turtle is rewarded by being made the Native American Hermes, the spirit of communications. (It’s our old friend Micamac, from the Shaking Tent ceremony, but the Lenape call him Taxkwax).

The reestablishment of the earth following the Flood is the occasion for the world’s first ceremony of thanks-giving. It is conducted by Nanabush; there are no humans left and no new ones created yet.

Nanabush seems to be an only-positive culture hero, with nothing of a trickster’s grossness or deceit about him. He is called wise, gifted, strong, pure....

Humans are re-created when the female earth gives birth to a male human/tree which, when he/it bends over and kisses the earth, gives rise to a female human. The new humans’ food comes from the plants and animals; birds give music; butterflies give delight; dogs give their faithfulness and love. Bear gives himself as food during the hard time of winter, and so special rites of thanksgiving for Bear and the other game animals are held.

Nanabush teaches the people practical crafts, qualities of leadership, defense, an ethical way of life, hunting skills, agricultural skills, cooking and food preservation, and “religious” ways: medicine bundles for calling on spirit-helpers in times of need, sacred ceremonies, healing rites, and the importance of the vision quest. When Nanabush has completed his work he retires to the North, where he enjoys the peaceful silence and quiet contentment. In winter he hibernates, like Bear, but before he does, he smokes his pipe. We see his smoke as thick fog on autumn mornings.

-

KEEPERS OF THE FOUR DIRECTIONS. The four First-created Keepers of Creation are powerful, co-creative spirit beings, the "Guardians of the Gates."

• The Guardian Keeper of the NORTH controls the power of ROCK. To Creator's vision it gives solidity and physical form. To us it gives wintertime ice, snow and cold; it also brings forth our bodies, the rocks, the trees and all things visible, matter.

• The Guardian Keeper of the EAST controls the power of AIR. To Creator's vision it gives breath and mind and growth. To us it gives springtime, warmth, birth and new beginnings. It also brings forth our inner fire, the winds; it gives creativity, knowledge, music and songs.

• The Guardian Keeper of the SOUTH controls the power of FIRE. To Creator's vision it gives Spirit and life. It us it gives summer, warmth, growth and maturity; and it gives fire to the sun.

• The Guardian Keeper of the WEST controls the power of WATER. To Creator's vision it gives water and a softening influence. It us it gives autumn, death and readies us for renewal. It also brings forth the waters, rain, our life’s blood, healing, intuition, dreams and visions, and things unseen. Aided by male Thunder, it makes the moon fertile.

-

PERSONAL REFLECTIONS. I notice how the myth distinguishes what the Keepers do for God and what they do for us. That feels similar to my mandala distinction between what I do for the Male Ancestors and what I do for those invited to the kiva. This one, who lives in a sweat lodge, is to call on precisely these Keepers of the Gates. Reflections, in the order they occur in his personal mandala:

• WEST (Water) is neither matter, mind nor energy in a physical sense, but something like a religious attitude toward reality: a trustful respect for the unconscious, a fundamental faith in the benevolence and graciousness of the universe. I identify West with the Intuitive Function, what allows us to perceive the big picture. Jung calls Intuition the transcendent function and the religious function: it puts us in touch with the biggest meanings of our lives. The fundamental trust of the West seems pretty close to Jung’s sense of Intuition.

How did the Lenape-- grandfathers of all the tribes-- know all this? (Better: How come the rest of us didn’t have the opportunity to know it until the early part of the 20th century?) Especially important is the emphasis on intuitive vision, death and renewal. “This is where it all starts.” “The end which is the beginning.”

The boy must give up being a boy if he is to become a bear/man; that giving up of who and what he is requires a fundamental trust in the mystery of the universe. To stand tall, un-smothered by the static feminine, requires the same trustful letting go.

-

• NORTH (Rock) seems to be that male form of “Earth” the Lakota calls Inyan: solid matter, physical reality. Inyan seems close what Gene Monick calls proto-phallus, the co-equal male principle of the cosmos. In Jungian typology terms, this is what we deal with via our Sensation Function. Closeness to earth, groundedness, hanging lose. I have Elk in the North, the healing function not mentioned here. But it’s always the East and North together which feels to be the source of healing power: affirming and healing aren’t all that distinct.

-

• SOUTH (Fire) is the only feminine Keeper. She seems to be “developmental energy”: inner growth and development on the human level, but also biological drives at the evolutionary level and the force that “moves the sun and stars” at a cosmic level. I remember Brant Segunda, on the weekend I spent with him in NYC many years ago, talking about a major power in the universe which the Huichols call “Grandmother Growth,” whose color was green. Clearly, this is she: an inner, Pentecostal, fire-- which blossoms into what Hildegarde calls “verdancy.” The fire isn’t green but it shows itself as green-ness. An early perception of the anima in men?

I usually identify South with the Feeling Function and with relating, with those energies-- of meaning, purpose, identity-- which are ours when we enter into right relationship with “all our relations.”

The ability to “warm up to” others is the precondition of growth and development.

-

• EAST (Air or Wind) is consciousness, “spirit” in the secular sense, the mind, mental or psychological reality; what we deal with via the Thinking Function (before it narrows itself to individual ego awareness). It's that new knowledge which the Morning Star gives, the golden dawn eagle flying on the wind, “the beginning which has no end.” And ultimately, phallic awe.

===

The Native American Sweat Lodge, History and Legends, by Joseph Bruchac. The Crossing Press, 1993.

I really enjoyed the photos in this book. There’s something delightful about seeing the many different forms the sweat lodge has taken in different cultures. Certainly the weirdest and most interesting story is the Seneca’s “The Blanket of Men’s Eyes” about two young brothers, living alone with a grandmother, but no parents, and no explanation for lack of parents. One youth injures the other during an act of disobedience. The injured/older brother has special knowledge (“Evil people lie ahead”), but is lost to those evil ones (women! females!) while the younger escapes, blinded; eventually, he marries and fathers another set of precocious males who, soon after birth, set out to avenge their father’s blindness and recover their long-lost uncle.

They bring back the uncle almost without explanation, then one of them gains entrance into the domain of the females by taking the form of a duck (that’s what it says!) and entering into a women so that she becomes pregnant with him and then almost immediately gives birth to him. He steals the magic blanket where the women keep the eyes of the men they have captured and killed. (An especially weird image! Eyes = balls?)

Somehow the bones of the dead men are recovered; they are brought back to life and their sight restored in a sweat lodge where some kind of trickery is involved: one of the sons of the original younger brother pushes over a tree so it will fall onto the sweat lodge, and this trickery (if that’s what it is!-- not at all clear) is what causes the dead men-- victims of the women, who are horrible monsters-- come to life and get their balls/eyes back.

It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it feels very old and has at its center a strong feeling of male fear of women and of the feminine ability to take away a man’s power. (Just by looking!) I think the story may go back to very early agricultural times. It would be well worth dealing with in terms of active imagination, to see what might be unearthed. I’d love to have the opportunity to do it.

+++

#101. Emma Jung's "The Grail Legend"

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
ARCHIVE. For a list of all my published posts: 
http://www.sammackintosh.blogspot.com/
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

This post is being published on the day when the East Coast mega-storm, Hurricane Sandy, made landfall.

It marks the beginning of a new series of blog entries: a collection of notes and essays from my files all dealing in one way or another with the newly emerging religious consciousness. They are mostly things I've written over the last decade or so to clarify my own thoughts but which I now want to make available for anyone who might be interested.

If you have questions and think I might help, you're welcome to send me a note: sam@macspeno.com

===

BOOK REVIEW: 20 Aug 99.

AUTHOR: Jung, Emma.

TITLE: The Grail legend / by Emma Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz ; EDITION: 2nd ed.

IMPRINT: Boston : Sigo Press ; London : Coventure, 1986, c1970.

I think for me this book may equal in significance Sir James Fraser’s The Golden Bough. I’ve seen it quoted repeatedly but this is the first time I’ve had a chance to look at it. It is a very impressive accomplishment. Emma worked on it for 30 years, but it was finished only after her death in 1955 by Marie-Louise von Franz, and published in 1960. Although it is already 40 years old, and the original work on it was begun three quarters of a century ago, many people today would still find the essence of its content shocking.

Basically, what Emma did was to survey all of the available versions of the Grail stories, along with parallels in other stories from whatever sources she could find. Her intent is to interpret the stories and their variations in the light of C. G. Jung’s psychology, especially his more mature works, particularly Aion: Researches Into the Phenomenology of the Self (Volume 9 of the Collected Works), first published in 1951.

Her main point is that the emergence of the Grail stories in Europe during the 1100’s AD was a manifestation of a major problem then confronting the Christian tradition. While no new versions appeared after 1220 AD, and the stories faded during the Renaissance, they revived in the second half of the 1700’s and continue to retain their fascination for people today. They are living myths, says Emma, indicating that the thousand year old problem of Christianity has not yet been dealt with adequately. The problem which emerged in the Middle Ages is still with us, she says; indeed, she calls it “the religious problem of modern man.” In what follows, I try to use her language and style as much as possible, sometimes not very successfully.

+++++

The essence of the Grail story is that there exists a life-giving object, a dish or cup or stone, guarded by a sick king in a devastated country. To find and understand it brings salvation to king and country, self and all. “Grail” literally means something like “a serving dish containing all good things.” Finding it turns out to be a tremendously difficult task. The Grail Legend is critically important because, set as it is in the context of Judeo-Christian culture and western civilization, it is concerned with nothing less than how the Christian tradition understands the presence of God in the world.

The problem, which came to some degree of self-awareness during the Middle Ages, was how Christianity might hold on to the innumerable gains it had made in Western culture, while moving beyond its seemingly ingrained dualistic perspectives. (Dualism views matter, nature, body, feminine and unconscious as evils to be fled, and from which ultimately we need to be saved.)

The Grail stories contain bits and pieces from many sources: gospels, fairy tales, Celtic and Germanic myths, Oriental legends. The fact that pagan myths as well as early Christian apocryphal writings show up in the stories indicates that orthodox Christianity had not taken into account features that need to be included in its world view. Like Gnosticism before it, and Alchemy which comes later, the Grail legend represents an attempted reshaping and further development of the contents of Christianity.

While the attainments of Christian consciousness have been great, they have been made at the “expense of a deadening and violation of nature and a tremendous loss of soul” (Emma is quoting C. G. here). The neglected feminine, for example, needs to be attended and the imbalance rectified. Perhaps most disturbing to conventional orthodoxy is the implication that the doctrine of the incarnation has been inadequately understood. There is an aspect of the Self which is not activated by Christ’s incarnation, so that the incarnation of God has to be extended to every single human being.

+++++

Percy’s story is the familiar one of a simpleton, usually the youngest brother, who goes on to do great things. Percy is fatherless; he grows up in the forest, alone with his mother. A chance encounter with knights drives him to King Author’s court, where he becomes a knight and sets out on the quest for the Holy Grail. He eventually arrives at the Grail Castle, but in his encounter with the Grail he fails miserably.

While being trained as a knight, Percy had been tutored not to question anything. “Don’t rock the boat, don’t stir up things:” the usual counsels of conventional thought promoted by the rule of the fathers. “Stay in your place, don’t go beyond the boundaries.” In other words, “Remain unconscious!”

While Adam and Eve sinned by eating of the Tree of Knowledge, Percy sinned by not eating the apple. His tutor had instructed him to not ask questions, and it is precisely this conventional advice that needs to be overcome by expanding consciousness. Only then will Percy come into relationship with his ancestral roots and his inner anima whose receptivity allows a passive seeing of inner images. But in this first encounter with the Grail, Percy chooses to remain unconscious and thus loses his opportunity to save the sick king, re-enliven the wasted land, find his true Self, and bring all things into a unity.

He leaves the Grail Castle and wanders. He doesn’t enter a church for five years, symbolizing (says Emma) a loss of soul, loss of contact with the unconscious. When, after many years, he eventually finds the Grail again, this time he speaks up, asking the appropriate questions. “What is this all about? What’s the Grail for?”

Emma says that the Grail questions have only one known literary parallel: the youngest child’s questions at the Passover Seder. These questions are an initiation rite involving a “handing over” (by one generation) and a “taking over” (by another) of one’s ancestral heritage, and thus they constitute an incremental step in cultural evolution. Only when Percy asks the ritual questions does he come into relationship with his ancestral roots and acquire the treasures of his tribe. His “uncle,” for example, is Joseph of Arimathea, who was entrusted with the Holy Grail by Jesus himself.

While Christianity has made great gains in its task of overcoming the more elementary forms of instinctuality of the pagan past, it is also in need of further development. By taking into himself what is proclaimed, Percy personally adds to the cultural development of the world. When he becomes the Grail king, he thereby activates the world’s evolution in the form of Christianity’s continual development beyond its present rejection of matter, nature, body, feminine and unconscious. The world still awaits the completion of the Christian task.

These are big ideas, and the Middle Ages couldn’t handle them. So the legend says that after Percy becomes the Grail King, he eventually retires to the wilderness as a hermit, taking the Grail with him. And when he dies, it vanishes, returning back into the unconscious. Emma says explicitly, “The Grail should not have been taken into the wilderness hermitage, it should have been brought to the Round Table.” The Round Table, she says, symbolizes totality and synthesis and the human effort towards it.

In one version of the story a further step is taken. In this version, Percy has a pagan half-brother whom he must acknowledge and be reconciled with, before he can become the Grail King. This version ends with the marriage of Percy to his beloved White Flower, and the marriage of his pagan-half brother to the Grail-Bearer; thus the story ends with an image of wholeness, the marriage quaternity.

+++++

Drawings in Gnostic and Alchemical texts show a baby at the top of the Tree of Knowledge. As with the image of the woman giving birth in the Book of Revelations, this is an intimation of the birth of new redeemer.

So the plan of salvation continues beyond Christ, and salvation as communal redemption from the world of evil is reevaluated. Originally, the attainment of consciousness was perceived as sin and guilt. Now it becomes no longer an offense but, in fact, the necessary task of humanity. Christ’s work of redemption continues in every single human individual.

In one version of the story, the Fisher King has a brother who is killed by an invisible figure (“the Christian shadow,” says Emma). The murder weapon breaks into fragments and a careless handling of the pieces result in the Grail King’s injury. While forcefully removing a fragment of the sword from his dead brother’s body, he gets “nicked in the nuts.” (Not Emma’s words).

The wounded Grail King, she says, symbolizes the individual suffering from the unresolved Christian conflict. A groin injury is a fitting symbol of the rejection of matter, nature, body, feminine and unconscious. And healing can only happen with an understanding of the divine reality of evil.

The basic Christian problem, which cannot be avoided, is that the Trinity lacks a “fourth.” And whether this trinitarian fourth is called evil or Satan or the Holy Grail or the Virgin Mary, it doesn't matter, says Emma. The problem remains, because the fourth is, in fact, the individual.

It is the baby at the top of the Tree of Knowledge who sends Percy to the Sorrowful Mountain, where he ties his horse to a pillar which has been set up by Merlin. It is the axis mundi. The mountain is called sorrowful because of the great effort required by the individuation process.

Christianity looks to the marriage of the Lamb, the wedding feast of Christ and his Church. Emma talks about members of the church almost in terms of participation mystique: In her mind there is little individuation evidenced on the part of church members. But in this new development, mirrored in Alchemy and the eremitical movement at this time, it is not Christ and the Church who get married but individuals. Salvation happens only via the unflinching efforts of individual human beings.

Again, the Middle Ages couldn’t handle much of this, and so they created a empty seat at the Round Table: the Perilous Seat, the legends call it, and claim it once to belong to Judas. I acknowledge that it came as a surprise to me that the Grail Legends’ solution to the unsolvable problem of the fourth turns out to be our old friend, Merlin the Magician!

+++++

Merlin is a druid, bard, see-more, shaman, trickster, unifier of opposites. Elias is a Jewish counterpart. The function of this kind of cosmic personality is to open up a direct and personal approach to the unconscious. The shaman/bard/trickster/prophet tries to live according to the spirits (the unconscious), and becomes thereby a source of spiritual life for his surroundings.

The decisive factor in Merlin’s life is his painstaking attentiveness to the divine reality of the unconscious, which was, thereby, enabled to manifest through him. He incarnates something of the Mystery in himself. It was Merlin who instigated Percy’s quest, and who leads Percy to the task of embodying the new totality.

In one version of the story, Merlin can’t stand the “continuous strife of men” and retires to the forest. But becoming a "hermit” won’t do. The third kingdom, the Kingdom of the Holy Spirit, can only come about with the union of opposites, and this cannot be realized by a renunciation of the world and life. It can only be realized by the world being impregnated by the Spirit.

Emma notes that those who are chosen to help serve the realization of the totality of God are also assaulted by God’s dark aspects. She lists Jacob, who had to wrestle with the angel; Job, who was subjected to inhuman treatment by God; Joseph of Arimathea, who spent forty years in prison in faithfulness to his task of guarding the Grail; and the Grail King himself.

We humans bring about the transfiguration of the world. Science, which evolved from Alchemy, is the greatest intervention ever in the cosmic order. It is dangerous because of human drives toward power and pleasure. Thus in some versions of the Grail story, Merlin surrenders to the opposing power, Eros, while in others he totally renounces even Eros.

Besides the marriage quaternity, two other significant images of totality are the stone from which Merlin continues to speak, and of course the Round Table itself. Thus, says Emma, the most remote of goals, the Self, is expressed by the very oldest and simplest of archetypal images, the circle. She ends with the comment that while the western world still today has only infantile and primitive understanding of the shadow and feminine and the psyche in general, her husband’s discoveries make it available to all.

 ++++     ++++     ++++

sam@macspeno.com