Shadows of Shadows

If you imagine someone who is brave enough to withdraw all his projections, then you get an individual who is conscious of a pretty thick shadow. Such a man has saddled himself with new problems and conflicts. He has become a serious problem to himself, as he is now unable to say that they do this or that, they are wrong, and they must be fought against. He lives in the "House of the Gathering." Such a man knows that whatever is wrong in the world is in himself, and if he only learns to deal with his own shadow he has done something real for the world. He has succeeded in shouldering at least an infinitesimal part of the gigantic, unsolved social problems of our day.
Carl Jung in Psychology and Religion (1938).

In response to yesterday's post about the need to do shadow work, one of my readers asks about how one actually does such work. It's a good question. Jung, himself, is not particularly accessible to laypersons. So where to begin? A number of years ago, several friends and I worked through Dark Moon Mysteries by Timothy Roderick and I found it a good place to start.

While I am definitely not a psychoanalyst (and don't pretend to be giving psychological advice), I have spent -- and will spend, until I die -- a good amount of time doing shadow work. Shadows, by their nature, have this conflicting desire to stay hidden and, yet, to make themselves known. So catching one in action, shining a light on it, and inviting it to come openly to the table to share what it knows, is, in my practice, at least, a big part of the work. Once aware that there's a shadow in action, most Witches and magical workers are pretty good at figuring out ways to trance, journal, do directed dreaming, do Tarot work, dance with, paint, do spell work with, and generally tease the energy bound up in a shadow out into a space where that energy can become available for productive uses.

I've found two pretty reliable clues that I've got a shadow issue. When something always bugs me inordinately, the reason is almost always bound up in a shadow. For example, having to deal with customer "service" of any sort tends to drive me completely crazy. (Comcast, I'm looking at you. But I'm also looking at the IT folks at work, the receptionist at the dishwasher-repair shop, the person who invented "Press 1 if you want to . . . .", and, well, you know.) Lots of people get frustrated when dealing with this stuff, but they don't get almost hysterical and obsess about it. I do. All that excessive-to-the-actual-cause energy is coming from somewhere. In my case, I think it comes from a shadow issue bound up with feeling that I may be powerless and that I won't be able to get the help that I need. There've certainly been incidents in my life that I can point to that seem likely to have caused more suffering over this issue than I was able to effectively process at the time, which is often what causes a shadow.

My experience is that it's often a lot easier to sense when someone else has a shadow issue than it is to identify our own. But sometimes learning to see when others may be tripping over their own shadows can help me to realize how to look for my own. When I see someone who gets really worked up over some issue in ways that don't make sense, I wonder if there aren't shadow issues involved. The classic case is someone who gets hysterical over gay marriage. It's odd; other people getting married would seem to hardly impact you. What is it that makes you get so upset about it? What need gets served by trying to control that aspect of others' lives? What is it about sex, marriage, family, homosexuality, etc. that triggers such a strong over-reaction? Because none of the "reasons" offered -- it will destroy "traditional" marriage, it's bad for "the children," it will lead to polygamy, incest, etc. -- make any sense.

And that's the second sign, to me, that I'm probably dealing with one of my shadows: when the "reasons" that I give myself for why I just can't [do X, get over issue Y, face problem Z] simply don't make much sense, when I step back and cross examine them like the lawyer I am.

How do you do shadow work? What resources have you found useful? Do you agree with Vaughan-Lee about the need for shadow work?

Picture found here.

Shadow Work

Deep in the Cellars of the Tower

Maybe it's the slowly-growing light. Maybe it's the mystically epic winds that have been blowing new ideas all over my snug little cottage. Maybe it's the way that the still-long-dark nights dance in my consciousness, but, whatever the reason, my dreams lately have been far more capable of making an impression than normal.

A few nights ago, I dreamt that my mother and my sister-the-antagonist were teaching G/Son an evilly racist form of Asatru (and, believe me, neither of them ever even imagined anything such as Asatru) devoted to Horus (I know. What can I say? It was a dream). In particular, they were teaching him a set of movements designed to mimic water-birds and to invoke some (in my dream) particularly racist form of Horus/Asatru worship. I was almost beside myself with anger, and I called them out on their behavior. I stormed outside to the front of my childhood home, where they had hooked my car up to their dilapidated car in an attempt to repair theirs. There was a license plate removed from their car (that I can almost see, but can't remember) that held the entire message of the dream. I got in my car and drove off, unhooking my car from theirs, and lecturing the First Ex-Mr. Hecate about just how angry I was. I always pay attention to the dreams where I tell him that.

Then, last night, the serious winds woke me up and made me realize how cold and bitter it was outside and how safe and warm I was inside. Maybe it was that I'd been thinking about Thalia's gift from her sister and how much I've been thinking about gifting myself with Jung's Red Book, but something drew me off into a dream about a red-stone house beside the road with a huge round turret out front. At first, I was, in my dream, driving past the house, just admiring the turret and the ornaments set around it. Then, I realized that, from my car, I could see right into one of the 4th story windows, and I thought, "That would be my bedroom, visible to all who drove by." In a moment, like Alice through the looking glass, I was inside the windows and realized that, no, this wasn't a bedroom, it was a lovely drawing room. There was a party beginning, and many of the guests had brought with them mask-faced guards out of a chess game. I wandered in and greeted the hostess, aware that she wanted to sell the house. I wound down the steps, a bit less enchanted with each level of the underworld that I explored. Wow, her kitchen's not as good as mine, by a long shot. Her bedroom's not nearly as nice as mine. I could make this kitchen good, but when I mention to her that I'd turn that low, industrial sink into a fireplace, she says to me: "Of course, you can't." She tells me that the house is selling for "75," but I can't figure if she means $75,000, $7,500,000 or what. I exit the home at the very ground level and begin climbing back up the outside steps. I realize that there are shrubs blocking each of the steps, and I like the outside garden a lot more than I like the inside lower levels. As I decided when I bought this cottage, the outside has more potential than it shows. Sheesh.

And I wake to write down the dream and realize that I'll spend a few years figuring it out.

Do you have dreams like this in the cold wind? Do you record your dreams? What magic work do you do with them?

Picture found here.

What A Witch Does

Earlier this week, I wrote about the relationship between control over our emotions and the ability to, right to, advisability of doing magic. I've seen, and I imagine that you have, as well, people who had some native ability to direct energy but who had almost no ability to control their own emotions, their tongue, their actions. My advice: Shield. Move Quickly Towards the Door. (And of course, we're all on the journey; I've never met the completely evolved human. But it's part of my work, as a Witch, to keep working on myself and to keep searching for those who have danced a bit farther down the path so that I can learn from them. It's one reason why doing magic in a community of women is so important to me.) And epic poetry and national legends are full of stories about those who were corrupted by their native ability to do magic, those who didn't do the interior work needed to create a safe container for that power. So it's not that you can't do any magic until you've spent years doing the alchemical work of turning the impulses of a two-year-old into gold. But your ability to do effective magic and to step into your true power as a priestess, mage, magic-worker, Witch does depend on a growing ability to control yourself and your emotions.

While someone studying the art of magic might gently yet thoroughly become aware of each potential stumbling block that remains in [her] soul, the [W]itch within all of us may not learn how to do this with such discipline or studied attention. [Hopefully, the passage of time and] the roads of experience . . . with luck and a fair wind, allow us as women to know ourselves better, acknowledging and accepting who it is [that] we are. We grow more emotionally intelligent: the ability to identify an emotional energy when it is triggered, with a sense of where and why it was sourced, allows the [W]itch to understand its force, its reason, its craving and direction.

Emma Restall Orr in Kissing the Hag: The Dark Goddess and the Unacceptable Nature of Women.

I owe my friend S., one of the most intent-upon-knowing-herself people I've ever met, for my real introduction to Jungian concepts, including shadow and projection. There are dozens of books, courses, psychotherapists out there that can help each of us to identify -- and learn to dance with -- our own shadows, to show us when that inexplicably strong reaction we have to something that someone else does is really projection (our own shadows' way of saying: "Hello! I'm still here and I'd still prefer to remain hidden, even though I also long to be known. Look! Over there! Someone else doing [insert reflection of shadow]! Go get them!" It's often some of the most valuable information we ever get -- if we learn how to use it.) Learning to, in Restall Orr's words, "identify an emotional energy when it is triggered, with a sense of where and why it was sourced," is one of the most important ways that a Witch acquires control over herself. Shadow work with a good psychotherapist can help, as can dream work, daily practice, journaling, art, meditative dance or other exercise, working in community. How are you working on this? What has worked for you in the past? What shadow within you keeps distracting you from your true work as a Witch? How would sitting down and having dinner, doing ritual with, making love to that shadow enhance your work as a Witch? When do you lose control?

Restall Orr explains that emotion:

doesn't overwhelm [a Witch] or take the ground from beneath her, but instead she contains it without a struggle, pausing to consider the wisdom of any action she might take, pausing until her view is extended in every direction. Nor does holding the emotion for a moment, a day, a year, dissipate that energy; when she is ready, the [W]itch has the ability to direct that emotional energy, with all its force intact, in a perfect vibrant stream of creativity.

It takes practice.

Id.

LOL. Yeah, it takes practice.

May my practice be in the service of the Goddess. May your practice be blessed.

What Kind Of Blog Are You?

Turns out, I blog mostly from my Moon Sign, Taurus, and partly from my Rising Sing, Geminii.

Who knew?

Those fish, the ones who swim in the opposite directions, they must not show up here, too often.

Hat tip to my beloved friend, E.


Picture found here.

The Original Clap Harder!

Wow. I swear that if Atrios has the stupidest trolls on the internets (and, it's true, he does), then I have the smartest and most creative readers.

In response to my query about the meanings behind the story of Peter Pan and Wendy, Mahud has written a really fascinating post about similar myths. Reading his discussion, I had another of those "duh" moments: crocodile=dragon. Female. Watery. Wants to bite the man's "hand" off. Vaginia dentata.

Ina suggests that, rather than a fantasy about how men can avoid growing up, the story is really about how girls can make life work in a patriarchy. And, reminds me of some S.J. Tucker songs.

First Star on the Left and Straight on Till Morning

So tonight, I was reading Peter Pan to G/Son.

G/Son, who asks "Why" so many times a day that no one, not even a genius w an abacus, can count how many times said:

Nonna, why Peter Pan haz a short sword and Captain Hook haz a long sword?

I threw off a quick, smart-ass answer about Freud and youth and old age and heh, heh, the old man has the long sword but the young man makes better use of his short sword, but I walked away wondering:

What IS that story about? It's more than just the tale of a puer. And Wendy, forced into the role of both madonna and whore, all the while having to mediate between youth and adulthood -- who's SHE in that story?

And the crocodile, who's the hand-devouring, time-sensitive crocodile; who's that? And, most of all, why is the Nana a big dog?

Picture found here.

Dream Work

Last night, I had a horrible, horrible dream about my father.

I had a, to put it mildly, conflicted relationship with my father, but, in this dream, he was far crueler and far more hateful, on a v visceral level, than my waking father, who was, trust me, no prince, ever was. And all day, kind of the way that your tongue does with a loose tooth, my mind kept coming back to that dream.

I don't think that our dreams lie to us, but I also just don't believe that my father was, really, as hateful as he was in my dream. In the waking world, he was full of floating anger that would suddenly burst, like a hot, red, angry boil, exploding unexpectedly, all over everything, poisoning the entire world of our family, of my childhood, of his surroundings. Yet he believed that he loved me and he could, either when it didn't matter at all or when it mattered v, v much, be at the v least the sort of worthy sparring partner who does you the honor of recognizing your worth. A few times, he was even the guy who had my back.

And, yet, our dreams don't lie to us.

I learned two relevant things in Reclaiming classes. The first was how to go back into my dreams, even much later (and it will be a while before I go back into this one), and work out a different ending. I won't try to change what my father did or said or expressed. I will change what I did in response.

The second was that doing shadow work on ourselves is one of the best gifts that we can give to our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. (All tied up with that ugly dream, I kept reflecting on ways that I'd failed Son, difficult situations that I'd put him in, things that I'd have done differently, had I been older, smarter, better off financially, more evolved.) Shadows live for generations and all the energy that we can suck out of them is that much less energy they have to suck the light out of our children's lives (and the lives of our children's children's children).

One of the overwhelming themes of my childhood was: not enough. Don't ask for anything because there's not enough, and even if there were more, there wouldn't be enough for so many children, you and all of your brothers and sisters. It's rude to ask for what you want because the person you're asking will have to say no and feel ashamed and you could avoid all of that by simply never asking for anything. It's your asking that causes the shame. It's wrong, rude, unkind of you to ask for what you want.

And, you know, fuck that shit.

Today, G/Son and I went to the park. We rode the train that G/Son adores. And then, we got off the train and we got directly back in line, and we rode the train again. And then, we rode the horse on the carousel with a blue blanket and a brown saddle. And then, we rode that horse again. I simply cannot tell you how v foreign, not to mention terrifying, such a practice would have been to my childhood. And then, we went to the nature center and we spent as long as we wanted looking at the turtles and snakes and bees and playing computer games sorting animals into classes. It's perhaps no random thing at all that I've always adored Auntie Mame's assertion that life's a banquet and some poor suckers are starving to death. And G/Son and I can ride that train all freaking day if that's what we want to do. And that's what we did and that's what we'll do again, any time we want.

The other thing we did this weekend was to "play trick or treat." We made a paper bag with a pumpkin on it and G/Son came to my porch door and said, "Trick or Treat!" and I put three M&Ms into the bag, making sure to include at least one blue M&M (the best kind) in each bunch. And then, we did it again. And again. And, well, you get the idea. G/Son definitely did. There's probably a thousand things I love about Halloween, but one of the things that I love about it is the idea that you ask, outright, for something and you get it. You hold out your empty bag and people fill it full of wonderful things. (Maybe I also love the safety that comes from the fact that it isn't really "you" asking; it's the butterfly or the princess or Malificent or, well, anyone but "you.")

Sigh.

This post rambles all over hell and gone, as my G/ma used to say, doesn't it? Is it self-indulgent? Maybe I'll delete it in the morning. But, for tonight, what shadow are you trying to purge before it goes any further in your line? What do you do with dreams that break your heart? What is it that you love about Halloween?

Picture found here.

Dying In The Dark Of The Year

It may be only me, but I think that a huge part of being a witch is confronting, meeting, teasing out, having conversations with, engaging, dancing with, negotiating with, and making love to your Shadows. Reading Jung is, for me, reading religion. My brilliant friend S., before she moved (reluctantly, Goddess, how reluctantly) to California, used to really help me to confront my Shadow. But this time of year is, I think, perfect for -- this time of year demands! -- confronting, engaging, meeting, staring at your Shadow. Right now, the winds are so strong here in Northern Virginia, that they are literally sucking at and pulling at my windows, trying to open them, trying to get inside and make me face what the cold and dark mean to me.

Well, the cold and dark mean to me precisely what I imagine they meant to my Swedish many-times-great Grandmothers: wildness, ecstasy, purity, and, death. I know in my bones that more than a few of my foremothers died due to cold, died trying to fend cold-hunger-crazed wolves from the cave, died coughing and hungry in the long starlit nights, died asleep and bleeding in the deep, dark cold of winter. But I also know in my bones how many of my grandmothers thrilled to those incredibly clear stars on these bone-chilling evenings, how many of my grandmothers laughed wildly skiing, skating, sledding over the frozen snow (solidified emotion), found ecstasy in the Aurora Borealis, danced under the light of the full moon on snow, made love under the long dark skies, conceived brave sons and daughters in the ice cold. That second group of grandmothers came to my aid when I was doing chemo; nothing made me feel better that winter than ice cold air, gulped as if it were, as it, indeed was, a restorative. I gulped it in like a life-giving elixir, the colder, the better.

And, as my v. brilliant friend E. recently remarked to me, "Well, this is the time of year for dying." S.'s beloved father died a few days ago, causing her to re-confront some of her own Shadows. My wonderful friend, R., aka the best cook in the world, called me last night to talk about a mutual friend, a witch, who is facing Death, that Shadow of all Shadows, and worrying herself beyond reason over its possible arrival. Then, we talked about the Day of the Dead ritual that she led this Fall. Thorn is confronting the death of a dearly-beloved cat. And, today, I was confronted at work with a colleague whose parents are dying, will he or nill he.

There are two things that we witches could do a better job of: helping young witches to access their religion and helping old witches to die. Odd, how we've got the middle part more or less figured out, but, the beginnings and the endings, not so much. Vague notions of the Summerlands. Vague notions of reincarnation. Occasionally, a real attempt to help a beloved elder cross over. This is not how a real religion deals with death. Here, in the long winter nights, I am calling for us to do a better job.




*****************

Art found here.

Jung's Hotel By Nancy A. Henry

Here in the nightstand drawer
no Gideon's Bible, but
The Golden Bough.

Oh Carl! The curtains
wear Mandalas,
the Peyote tea's the finest.

In the bathroom
with its tiled echoes
and metaphoric plumbing
our reflections come back to us
mask-like, above a sink
that is a vortex of all
the mythic rivers of the dreamworld.