On November 27, 2018   /   Creativity, Psychology and Mythology

Via & By  https://elainemansfield.com/

As I might mention; what I have learned in my life it’s been by my brother Al Fazel who was a genius and I’m gratefully thankful to him, he was an ingrained writer as our father was. they both could not do anything but to write. I say that because, as I read this as an always wonderful article by 
Elaine Mansfield a lovely friend of mine, I’d just remember of an issue which had been put in our regular discussion meeting in Iran in the ’80s by my brother and it was the mather of using Mask in our everyday life. 
He argued that we all need a mask to protect our inner secrets; even to hide our fears and weakness. It was a wonderful remembering in my life which I’d keep them in my heart and mind forever.

In 1994, our women’s mythology group created and presented a play using masks. We had explored the story of “Eros and Psyche” for a few years, so knew every detail.

I played the Goddess Aphrodite who, in this myth, is fierce, jealous, demanding, and anything but lovely.

The masks were bought or made by a member of the group who was an art teacher and character in the play. In Greek theatre, a mask used in this way is called a persona. C.G. Jung used the term persona to mean our outer personality which is like a mask compared to our inmost authentic Self.

Along with raging and beating Psyche who dared to fall in love with her son Eros, Aphrodite gave Psyche Four Labors, each more impossible than the last. Psyche faced each task with despair, but helpers arrived and each task was finished. In the process, Psyche (Soul) was initiated into the depths of Feminine Wisdom.

Working with the story brought us closer to each other and taught us new ways to approach life’s impossible challenges. That first depth immersion in mythology was an adventure and an initiation for me.

Years later, I created my own masks in Marion Woodman’s BodySoul Rhythms Workshops. I’ll call these masks unintentional because I didn’t have a specific character in mind or know what they would look like or symbolize before the process began.

In 2003, about 40 women made face moulds the first night of the week-long workshop in a downstairs room filled with art supplies. First, a thick layer of Vaseline to protect the skin and then bandage-like pieces of gauze cut in strips dipped in warm water and applied to the face in a few layers. Then lying still for 20 minutes to let the plaster dry into a hard mould before another woman eased the mask off my face. After it dried, we painted our masks with acrylic paints. (Directions for mask-making at this link.)

We had five days to create our masks while working with a mythological story, doing bodywork, dancing, and exploring dreams and Jungian ideas. The art room stayed open 24 hours a day for midnight inspirations. Some nights I worked late.

A Golden Bull with juvenile horns emerged–an image of a young and vital masculine energy in me. I cut off the bottom part of the mask under the chin to open its voice and throat. I was surprised by my Bull, but not everyone was.

“I know him,” my husband Vic said when I showed him the mask after arriving home. “I know him so well.”

Vic knew the bullish and sometimes belligerent parts of me better than anyone–including me since I’d rather deny or conceal those parts of myself. He knew my stubborn persistent intellect and desire to create and learn, a more positive aspect of this bull. Looking back, that bull was a step toward withdrawing a projection from Vic and finding my own inner masculine.

I made the third mask in a workshop in 2007. Vic had a brief respite from treatment that summer, so I signed up for a Marion Woodman workshop in Canada. Vic and I looked forward to a week apart after a year of unrelenting cancer therapy and constant togetherness.

As the women gathered to discuss a mythological story on the second morning, someone tapped me on the shoulder. “Your husband called. You need to call him back,” she said. My heart pounded. He wouldn’t call unless it was an emergency, but his message was about my mom who had lingered with Alzheimer’s for ten years. She was dying and there wasn’t time for me to get home. I’ve written about dancing my relief and grief that weekend.

Vic sat with my mom until she died. I’d pre-arranged her cremation. Everything else could wait until I returned home. My mask and need for inner nourishment felt pressing. I stayed.

I named my mask “Our Lady of Praise and Sorrow.” She weeps on one side and sings praise on the other. I said a tender goodbye to my mother in ritual and dance, but the mask took me deeper, to what I truly feared losing. I was grateful for the 41 years I’d been with Vic, supporting, growing, and trusting each other. I grieved over our future and that  word “incurable.”

When I showed my mask to Vic, he inspected every detail. “Thank you,” he said. He knew. The mask reflected grief and praise for our partnership. It spoke to a new life I’d live without him after his death. It helped me trust that I could hold on to gratitude even while I grieved.

With gratitude to the women who have gathered for over 25 years to study mythology together.

Do stories from mythology and fairy tales become guides to help you understand yourself and life’s challenges? For an article about Eros and Psyche, see Clutched: An Essential Lesson from Psyche’s Fourth Labor. Or if you want to see how knowing this story helped me understand my ferocious Mother-in-Law, see My Lover’s Mama and the Negative Mother Archetype. I’ve written many articles about working with Marion, so here’s a link to my Marion Woodman archives.

There’re many discussions about simile between Jesus and Buddha, and it’s true. there’re many points to compare. but sometimes I think that there’s also an unfair act to compare them on the history, because, in the case of Jesus, there are so may veiling by the religious actors in the history. to be honest, I think that there’re many lies about Jesus and we don’t really know how he really was. 🙂 

via 
C.G. Jung & Wholeness

by Craig Nelson with thanks 

“Jung found the Buddha to be a more ’complete human being’ than the Christ because the Buddha lived his life and took as his task the realization of the Self through understanding, whereas with the Christ this realization was more like a fate which happened to him.”
Marie Louise von Franz, Jung’s Myth in Our Time 

I should name this one as Salome 2 ! as this case fascinates me a lot; the subject of “Temptations” that’s the Wo-Mankind weak point. as I work on this for a long time. Therefore, the best lessons by master Jung. 🙂 

via https://carljungdepthpsychologysite.blog/

Author: lewislafontaine

A thinker should fear Salome, since she wants his head, especially if he is a holy man. A thinker cannot be a holy person, otherwise, he loses his head. It does not help to hide oneself in thought. There the solidification overtakes you. You must turn back to motherly forethought to obtain renewal. But forethought leads to Salome. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 248.

The prophet loved God, and this sanctified him. But Salome did not love God, and this profaned her. But the prophet did not love Salome, and this profaned him. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 248.

Salome loves me, do I love her? I hear wild music, a tambourine, a sultry moonlit night, the bloody-staring head of the holy one—fear seizes me. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 264.

So—you see: even banal reality is a redeemer. I thank you, dear friend, and I bring you greetings from Salome. ~Scholar’s Daughter to Carl Jung, The Red Book, Pages 262-3.

He [Jung] showed a diagram of a cross with Rational/Thinking (Elijah) at the top, Feeling (Salome) at the bottom, Irrational / Intuition (Superior) at the left, and Sensation / Inferior (Serpent) at the right. ~The Red Book, Page 247, Footnote 173.

Salome is hence apparently no (complete) correct embodiment of Eros, but a variety of the same. (This supposition is later confirmed.) That she is actually an incorrect allegory for Eros also stems from the fact that she is blind. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 365.

Salome is represented as the daughter of Elijah, thus expressing the order of succession. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 365.

My pleasure is dead and turned to stone because I did not love Salome. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 250, Draft, Footnote 198.

Salome’s approach and her worshipping of me is obviously that side of the inferior function which is surrounded by an aura of evil. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 253. Footnote 211.

It is strange that Salome’s garden lies so close to the dignified and mysterious hall of ideas. Does a thinker, therefore, experience awe or perhaps even fear of the idea, because of its proximity to paradise? ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 249, Draft, Footnote 178.

I see in splendour the mother of God with the child. Peter stands in front of her in admiration-then Peter alone with the key-the Pope with a triple crown-a Buddha sitting rigidly in a circle of fire-a many-armed bloody Goddess-it is Salome desperately wringing her hands-it takes hold of me, she is my own soul, and now I see Elijah in the image of the stone. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 248.

I: “How can I love you? How do you come to this question? I see only one thing, you are Salome, a tiger, your hands are stained with the blood of the holy one. How should I love you?” ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 246.

S: “You do me wrong. Elijah is my father, and he knows the deepest mysteries. The walls of his house are made of precious stones. His wells hold healing water and his eyes see the things of the future. And what wouldn’t you give for a single look into the infinite unfolding of what is to come? Are these not worth a sin for you?” ~Salome to Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 246.

E: “She loved the prophet who announced the new God to the world. She loved him, do you understand that? For she is my daughter.” ~Elijah to Carl Jung on Salome, Liber Novus, Page 246

Apart from Elijah and Salome, I found the serpent as a third principle. It is a stranger to both principles although it is associated with both. The serpent taught me the unconditional difference in essence between the two principles in me. ~Carl Jung and Elijah, Liber Novus, Page 247.

The place where Elijah and Salome live together is a dark space and a bright one. The dark space is the space of forethinking. It is dark so he who lives there requires vision. ~Carl Jung and Elijah, Liber Novus, Page 247.

A thinker who descends into his fore thinking finds his next step leading into the garden of Salome. Therefore the thinker fears his forethought, although he lives on the foundation of forethinking. The visible surface is safer than the underground. Thinking protects against the way of error, and therefore it leads to petrification. ~Carl Jung and Elijah, Liber Novus, Page 248.

A thinker should fear Salome, since she wants his head, especially if he is a holy man. A thinker cannot be a holy person, otherwise, he loses his head. It does not help to hide oneself in thought. There the solidification overtakes you. You must turn back to motherly forethought to obtain renewal. But forethought leads to Salome. ~Carl Jung and Elijah, Liber Novus, Page 248.

Because I was a thinker and caught sight of the hostile principle of pleasure from forethinking, it appeared to me as Salome. If I had been one who felt, and had groped my way toward forethinking, then it would have appeared to me as a serpent-en coiled daemon, if I had actually seen it. ~Carl Jung and Elijah, Liber Novus, Page 248.

In the garden, it had to become apparent to me that I loved Salome. This recognition struck me since I had not thought about it. What a thinker does not think he believes does not exist, and what one who feels does not feel he believes does not exist. You begin to have a presentiment of the whole when you embrace your opposite principle since the whole belongs to both principles, which grow from one root. ~Carl Jung and Elijah, Liber Novus, Page 248.

In my case, the anima contains not only Salome but some of the serpent, which is a sensation as well. ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 100

Salome’s performance was deification. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 253. Footnote 211.