Here please allow me to introduce a fascinating book by a great Psychologist and Jungian analyst Jeffrey Raff PhD; Let’s have a look at the feminine aspect of the Divine 🤗🙏💖

Author of the acclaimed Jung and the Alchemical Imagination, Jeffrey Raff continues his teachings in psychoidal alchemy with an in-depth look at the feminine aspect of the divine. Sophia is, in the esoteric teachings, the embodiment of Wisdom, the matrix from which God arose, and God’s heavenly consort and mirror. But, as Raff explains, she suffered a fall from this exalted state, corresponding to the obscuration of the feminine archetype in the patriarchal world. Without Sophia, God is not whole. It is our task to work with imagination to reunite Sophia and God. Raff explains the difference between fantasy, a product of the ego, and imagination, which comes from the soul. More importantly, he brings Sophia to life through a vivid analysis of an 800-year-old text,* The Aurora Consurgens*, as well as his personal experience with Sophia and active imagination. This process empowers us to become whole and realize our innate drive to unite with the divine.  via Introduction: The Wedding of Sophia The Divine Feminine in Psychoidal Alchemy by Jeffrey Raff series Jung on the Hudson Books

with a little help by C.G. Jung: Healing Descent https://www.facebook.com/CarlJungIndividuation/?__tn__=%2CdkCH-R-R&eid=ARBY8hIPDjOEsDT4mpUxeM3zyUcpHX_lJi2SHTAR7Hi99ZztubdzXiHnEBhPb4v0NUAMibSxvYlbBB_q&hc_ref=ARRX0JOoYaXOWrr7z_wfjhVHHOaX8rk59x8x48RsRd2hgOk6L2AmmpmysHscL7AIjKs&fref=nf&hc_location=group

And with my best thanks to the main admin; Craig Nelson 🙏💖

“I love them that love me”, Sophia, goddess of the collective unconscious, goddess of the lumen naturae; (‘For starting is a commitment & broken commitments are never healthy’):
“Here it is Sophia speaking as she promises to love any who come to her in love, and the ‘proof of love is the display of the work.’ Those who love do the work. Those who do the work do so for love. Anyone who has even imagined working with [inner] figures or penetrating the mysteries of union with such figures knows that success requires not only grace, but also the greatest of efforts. Thomas also quotes King Alphonsus, who said, ‘This is a true friend who deserteth thee not when all the world faileth thee.’ Such is the devotion required of us when we do [inner] alchemy, for as I have shown, there are few in our world who take spirit seriously, and even fewer who love and work with figures of the [inner world]. As Sophia earlier complained, all desert her and the wisdom of the world denies the existence of Wisdom itself, so that it takes a brave soul to buck collective opinion and do this work. Moreover, it takes sacrifice, for not only does the work require time and energy, it demands that the alchemist forbear control and learn to let the visionary world direct his or her every step. The alchemist does not control the process, nor can he or she direct it to his or her own goals. Instead, God and Sophia have their own agenda: union with each other, and nothing less than that suffices. If necessary, the alchemist must give up his or her own plans and ambitions to seek the goal of the coniunctio: ‘All that a man hath will he give for his soul, that is for this stone.’ This is not a work for the weak-willed or the faint of heart; we must be willing to give up everything for the sake of the Stone or we shall most likely fail. It is very popular these days to emphasize the need for grace, and it is true that we need the help of the inner.. entities to perform this work. Yet, as Sophia said, those that love her, she loves, and love is in the work. We must win the love of Sophia and of the [inner partner] by doing the necessary work, for though they both love from the beginning, they neither can nor will give themselves away cheaply. In my years of teaching, I have witnessed many students drop out and give up the work when the going got tough. Somehow they, and many like them, assume that good intention is the same as accomplishment, or that the spirits owe them something. The work is hard, the rewards are great, but only love supplies the courage and the dedication to see the work through the difficult times. As Thomas concludes, ‘For he who soweth sparingly shall also reap sparingly; and he who is not a partaker of the sufferings shall not be of the consolation.’”
Jeffery Raff, Wedding of Sophia
(I replaced with ‘inner’ Raff’s use of the term ‘psychoidal’ or ‘ally’, only because those terms are an education unto themselves. By those terms Raff refers to the highest levels achieved in Alchemy, that of the relationship with the ‘outer Stone’, one that truly exists, but outside the psyche, a quasi spiritual/physical entity similar to an angel or Carlos Castaneda’s “Don Juan”.)

https://www.amazon.com/Wedding-Sophia-Feminine-Psychoidal-Alchemy/dp/0892540664

I’d call it; The Origin! When I look at this Mask, I find how real is it just to show the expression of an ancient face.

By Marie Grillot with great thanks and also sincerely to Marc Chartier

via; https://egyptophile.blogspot.com/ translated from French.

This mummy mask is made of painted wood and cardboard. It represents a character with fine features, noble appearance. A magnificent wig “on the back”, textured in relief, advantageously frames her face. The finely braided hair covers most of the forehead and leaves in a gradient towards the shoulders. Two thick strands braided in a more “loose” way are brought along the neck and fall on each side in a completely balanced way. Only the lower part of the pierced ear lobe remains visible. The hairstyle is adorned with a large floral band, which blossoms in warm brown tones drawing towards red.

The face, treated in this same colour is perfectly symmetrical and rather round. The eyebrows, very long and arched, are painted black. The almond-shaped eyes are stretched, and the iris, round and black, stands out against the white of the luminous eye. The line of the eye-shadow extends to the hair. The nose, well-drawn, is of good proportions. The mouth with hemmed lips is closed.

The neck is decorated with a magnificent ousekh (Usekh or Wesekh) necklace. It alternates a substantial number of rows – more or less wide – of blue, green, red pearls, all in a sumptuous and dazzling “roundness” of tones… It should be noted that during the Ramesside period, “the frame cardboard masks have changed: the rear panel has disappeared and the masks consist of a shell protecting only the head and a rounded and extended front panel “.

This 48 cm high mask, dating from the 19th dynasty, comes from the tomb of Sennedjem in Deir el-Medineh. This village, which in ancient times was called “Set Maât her imenty Ouaset” (the “Place of Maât (Truth) in the West of Thebes”) was founded at the beginning of the 18th dynasty under the reign of Thutmosis Iᵉʳ. Surrounded by high walls, extended and enlarged several times, notably under the reigns of Thutmosis III and the first Ramessides, it housed the community of artisans who worked on the excavation and decoration of the eternity homes of the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens. For almost 500 years, “between 40 to 120 households” lived there in stone houses covered with a palm leaf roof, also have places of worship and their own necropolis.

The tomb of Sennedjem – which will be referenced TT1 – was discovered in January 1886 by ‘gournawis’.: Indeed, “in 1886, Salam Abu Duhi, a villager from Gournah, was granted a concession in an area of ​​Deir el-Medineh close to his home. After only a few days of excavations, Salam and three of his friends made a discovery spectacular: at the bottom of a still unexplored burial well, they found a wooden door whose ancient seals were intact. Salam immediately informed Maspero, who happened to be in Luxor for his annual inspection visit. ” (Hidden treasures of Egypt, Zahi Hawass (!) ).

Gaston Maspero’s correspondence with his wife Louise (Gaston Maspero – Letters from Egypt) gives us the extraordinary “live” adventure. So the great Egyptologist wrote to her on February 2, 1886: “They come to get me to go to the mountains: a tomb that we have been working on for eight days has finally been opened. It is a virgin!

It is a tomb of the XXth dynasty: the wooden door is still in place, and there have already been eleven mummies. “He continued his story on February 3:” The vault is approximately 5 m long by 3 wide. It is vaulted, with a very low vault and painted in the most vivid colours; unfortunately, the paintings and texts are only extracted from the book of the dead. It was filled to the top with coffins and objects: eight adult mummies, two children’s mummies … The mummies are superb, of a beautiful red varnish with very neat representations. ”

Finally, this “family” tomb will turn out to contain twenty bodies: “Nine of them had very beautiful anthropoid coffins, single or double, finely painted and varnished. These are Sennedjem, his wife Iyneferti, his son Khonsou and his wife Tamaket, his other children Parahotep, Taashsen, Ramose, Isis and finally, a little girl named Hathor. Rich funerary furniture accompanied them. ”

Eduard Toda y Güell, consul general of Spain in Egypt from 1884 to 1886, a friend of Maspero’s, was given the important task of clearing the grave. In the “Bulletin of the French Society of Egyptology” – 1988, Josep Padro reports: “In three days and with seven workers, (Toda) completely searched the tomb and carried out the transfer of its contents onboard the ‘Boulaq’, the vessel of the Antiquities service. Once the transfer was completed, (he) drew up an inventory of the funeral furniture on the boat, with the objects collected and the mummies before his eyes. Toda also took 15 photos himself in the tomb, with the technical assistance of Insinger, which are engraved after the plates which illustrate his memoir; and he copied and translated the hieroglyphic texts, with the help of (Urbain)Bouriant. ”

As for Gaston Maspero, he made a point of clarifying: “It goes without saying that we bought the fellahs half of their money: it cost us 46 guineas. Once we have chosen all that is good for the museum, the sale of mummies and superfluous objects will bring us at least 60 guineas, maybe eighty, who will go to the excavations of Luxor and the Sphinx. It will have been a good deal in all ways, good from the point of view scientific, since it gave us monuments of which we had no specimen, good from the financial point of view, since not only the objects will end up costing us nothing, but, that we will have earned enough money to practice new excavations. ”

This is how objects from the tomb which, in a way, “duplicated” were offered for sale. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which then constituted its collection of Egyptian antiquities, showed great interest.

So, among the artefacts that went to New York, was this mask, this Khonsu. It has since been exposed there under the reference 86.1.4.

The eternity home of Sennedjem is one of those open to the public in Deir el-Medineh. It is particularly renowned for the beauty of the colourful and particularly well-preserved scenes that adorn its walls.

Marie Grillot

Sources:

” Mummy Mask of Khonsu ” (MET)

Gaston Maspero, Letters from Egypt, correspondence with Louise Maspero, Elizabeth David, Seuil, 2003

” Deir al-Medina ” (IFAO)

Hidden Treasures of Egypt, Zahi Hawass

Pharaoh Artists Louvre, NMR, 2002

” Eduard Toda, pioneer of Spanish Egyptology “

” Eduard Toda i Güell “

” Details of two mummies from the former collection Toda “

” Deir el-Medina, Tomb TT1, Sennedjem “

Josep Padro, “the French Society of Egyptology Bulletin” – 1988, No. 113, pp. 32-45

” An Artisan’s Tomb in New Kingdom Egypt ,” Catharine H. Roehrig, Department of Egyptian Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, october 2004

” Life Along the Nile: Three Egyptians of Ancient Thebes “: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 60, no. 1 (Summer 2002), Roehrig, Catharine H. (2002)

The tomb-builders of the pharaohs , Morris Bierbrier

” Current Research in Egyptology ” 17, Julia Chyla Karolina Rosińska-Balik, Joanna Debowska-Ludwin

or; pride and prejudice

I wish you all a happy, healthy & peaceful new year at first. 🤗💖

I know this title above is from one of the greatest novels in history by Jane Austen. But I’ve dared to use it here because it is a weak point in human history.

I humbly confess that I began this 2020 with some negative feeling, though, I must say it has nothing to do with the Sylvester and celebration etc. It went all in a wonderfully calm way; I have just no new idea about the human!

I have always been a humble man and I know that I don’t know. But I think that it is the most important issue; we must be honest to our own heart and with this, we can acknowledge more and more the existence of the truth.

But as I look forward to the new year I can only see another year with all the same people drowned in their same stupidity and foolishness as the years before. Sorry for that, I never want to spoil your mood in this very beginning of the brand new year; I just wanted to open my heart.

And of course, to share this brilliant article (I’m happy there are some to write about this) with you my adorable friends.

Waiting and hoping for a resolution.💖🙏🤗🙏💖

Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. – C.G. Jung

https://www.culturecollective.org/beyond/

Oh, of course; Pierre my hero 😊🤗🙏❤❤

My dear friends, as I use and abuse 😉 my free time on Saturdays, trying to do my lovely work; writing, to tell you the story of a permanent fight for freedom which has been going on in certain countries since eternal date.

Actually a wonderful genius friend of mine (as I’m proud to mention it) yassy https://yassy66.wordpress.com/ brought me to this idea, or better to say she had thrown me in my past when I was in Iran and working as Journalist and an actor in theaters.

That is the question; where are the flowers gone?

It is surely not a usual knowing in the western countries in which, the human rights have been “at least” written and mentioned in their constitution, having any full comprehensive idea about what really happened to the people in the countries with a dictatorship regimes, and especially the thinker ones, the chosen ones?!

I can still remember about the Shah’s regime how my father was under observation because of his favour for Mosaddegh (the Prime minster in the ’50s who stood against the young Shah’s favorite’s position. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Mosaddegh

And also about the so-called Tehran Spring in 1979 during the revolution. In that time my brother and me, we were working with the newspapers, he was writing and I was photographing.

It was a wonderful time in my life, you might not believe it; full of enthusiasm and excitement and creations.

In this time, thanks to the (at least) short time of freedom, we have known many artists in different categories, like movies. One of them was Costa Gavras, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa-Gavras

A wonderful director and a great creator, and when we have watched his works, we have just thought; look! the bloody regime showed already the situation on our streets in a movie. It’s because, the Gavras’s movies based on the countries which were under pressure, as we felt in Iran exactly the same. But they never understood this and we have enjoyed it at least in the way of having sympathy.

Here I’d like to share with you my friends, two of his masterworks, of course with the music work of another master; Mikis Theodorakis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikis_Theodorakis which goes under the skin I bet!

The first one which we had seen in the movie was the film; Z https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_(1969_film) and it describes exactly the situation in Iran on the very same date. We were the freedom seekers and the opposites were the regime’s hiring legionnaires.

I tell you; it will never be the same when, you have once experienced it.

now let’s enjoy the scene of the Master-works.

The interesting issue in the both movies Yves Montand plays the first role, once as a good man and the next as a bad man 😉 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yves_Montand

at least but not last; there are always a sad final for the all stories. ❤ ❤

Quote; The regimes come and go, but the police stays for ever…

There’s hardly any doubt that these masters of satire are known for many. Their works were not only comedies for making the people laugh, but they have also lessons in their humourful satires which we’d learn a lot by them. like this scene;

I love them! And I love how they take their memorial ceremonies on each lost friends, like Graham Chapman who left the group and this Earth after singing this song; Christmas in Heaven in the movie; Meaning of Life. (in heaven every day is Christmas) 🙏💖

via; http://www.openculture.com/

The British comedian Graham Chapman delighted in offending people. As a writer and actor with the legendary Monty Python troupe, he pushed against the boundaries of propriety and good taste. When his writing partner John Cleese proposed doing a sketch on a disgruntled man returning a defective toaster to a shop, Chapman thought: Broken toaster? Why not a dead parrot? And in one particularly outrageous sketch written by Chapman and Cleese in 1970,  Chapman plays an undertaker and Cleese plays a customer who has just rung a bell at the front desk:

“What can I do for you, squire?” says Chapman.

“Um, well, I wonder if you can help me,” says Cleese. “You see, my mother has just died.”

“Ah, well, we can ‘elp you. We deal with stiffs,” says Chapman. “There are three things we can do with your mother. We can burn her, bury her, or dump her.”

“Dump her?”

“Dump her in the Thames.”

“What?”

“Oh, did you like her?”

“Yes!”

“Oh well, we won’t dump her, then,” says Chapman. “Well, what do you think? We can bury her or burn her.”

“Which would you recommend?”

“Well, they’re both nasty.”

From there, Chapman goes on to explain in the most graphic detail the unpleasant aspects of either choice before offering another option: cannibalism. At that point (in keeping with the script) outraged members of the studio audience rush onto the stage and put a stop to the sketch.

Chapman and Cleese had been close friends since their student days at Cambridge University, and when Chapman died of cancer at the age of 48 on October 4, 1989, Cleese was at his bedside. Out of respect for Chapman’s family, the members of Monty Python decided to stay away from his private funeral and avoid a media circus. Instead, they gathered for a memorial service on October 6, 1989 in the Great Hall at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London. When Cleese delivered his eulogy for Chapman, he recalled his friend’s irreverence: “Anything for him, but mindless good taste.” So Cleese did his best to make his old friend proud. His off-color but heartfelt eulogy that evening has become a part of Monty Python lore, and you can watch it above. To see a longer clip, with moving words from Michael Palin and a sing-along of “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” led by Eric Idle, watch below:

Original: http://John Cleese’s Eulogy for Monty Python’s Graham Chapman: ‘Good Riddance, the Free-Loading Bastard, I Hope He Fries’

Become like the Serpent before the devil, the quintessence of everything serpent-like, come over you!

That is the master teaching of the Master of balance; We should be aware of our dark-side, become a part of it to keep the balance there-between.

Here is a brilliant article about Dr Jung’s description of his Gnostic Ring;

by Moe | Carl Jung Archive, Meaning of Symbols

“The serpent is the age-old representative of the lower worlds, of the belly with its contents and the intestines.” – Carl Jung

This picture below is the personal ring of the Great Modern Swiss Gnostic, Carl Jung. The image on his ring is of the deity known as Chnoubis.

Jung himself describes the ring in C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters. W.McGuire and R.F.C. Hull page 468:

“It is Egyptian. Here the serpent is carved, which symbolizes Christ. Above it, the face of a woman; below the number 8, which is the symbol of the Infinite, of the Labyrinth, and the Road to the Unconscious. I have changed one or two things on the ring so that the symbol will be Christian. All these symbols are absolutely alive within me, and each one of them creates a reaction within my soul.”

A close up of his ring can be found below.

Here is a close up image of the front and back of Jung’s ring below. (Int-Private Coll._Ex-C. G. Jung_s.n.)

This image on the back appears to be of a dog.

Jung had commented on his ring in C.G. Jung, Visions;

“I have a Gnostic ring which is over two thousand years old-a symbol on the inside indicates that it is pre-Christian-and the snake engraved upon it is not hooded, it is more like the coluber natrix, the ordinary water snake which is found here as well as in more southern countries. In inland meadows it is grey, but near the water, it is a very elegant long black snake with yellow moon spots behind the ears, occasionally reaching a length of one meter fifty and quite thick.”

Karl Kerenyi said Jung, who wore the ring almost constantly for 35 years, wore it because he regarded himself as the pope of the gnostics. Barbara Hannah said he wore it to remind himself of personality number two.

“The serpent is an adversary and a symbol of enmity, but also a wise bridge that connects right and left through longing, much needed by our life.” (247)

“Why did I behave as if that serpent were my soul? Only, it seems, because my soul was a serpent…. Serpents are wise, and I wanted my serpent soul to communicate her wisdom to me.” (318) (This comment comes after a long dialogue in active imagination with a great iridescent snake coiled atop a red rock.)

“I have united with the serpent of the beyond. I have accepted everything beyond into myself.” (322)

“If I had not become like the serpent, the devil, the quintessence of everything serpentlike, would have held this bit of power over me. This would have given the devil a grip and he would have forced me to make a pact with him just as he also cunningly deceived Faust. But I forestalled him by uniting myself with the serpent, just as a man unites with a woman.” (322)

“The daimon of sexuality approaches our soul as a serpent.” (353)

Perhaps the commonest dream symbol of transcendence is the snake, as represented by the therapeutic symbol of the Roman god of medicine Aesclepius, which has survived to modern times as a sign of the medical profession. This was originally a nonpoisonous tree snake; as we see it, coiled around the staff of the healing god, it seems to embody a kind of mediation between earth and heaven. — Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, page 153

via; https://gnosticwarrior.com/