ANCESTRAL GNOSIS
Procreation * Life * Death * Healing * Transformation
Insight * Natural Patterns * Cosmic Construction * MindBodySpirit * Many & One
"Am I a combination of the lives of these ancestors and do I embody these lives again? --Jung, memories, Dreams, Reflections
Later, in his essay Extending the Family (1985), [James] Hillman wrote: "The ancient home gave plenty of space to the invisibles that live in a family, propitiating and domesticating its daimones, which it acknowledged as rightfully belonging." He went on to add: "With the passing of time a sense of its power grows within one's psyche, like the movements of its skeleton inside one's flesh, which keeps one in servitude to patterns entombed in our closest attitudes and habits. From this interior family we are never free. This service keeps us bonded to the ancestors."
The East is absolutely convinced that we actually lived former lives but such assertions are open to doubt. We call the same thing hereditary tendencies, our disposition, certain things run in the family, etc. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Page 56.
I can talk with some authority, as I am in my 84th and still in
passably good form and-looking back, as you probably do on
this day of celebration and congratulation-! see following behind
myself the long chain of 5 children, 19 grandchildren, and about
8 or 9 great-grandchildren.
(The latter number is not quite safe as at frequent intervals a new
one drops from heaven.)
Mature youth begins, as one says, at seventy and it is in certain
respects not so nice and in others more beautiful than childhood.
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 462-463
Procreation * Life * Death * Healing * Transformation
Insight * Natural Patterns * Cosmic Construction * MindBodySpirit * Many & One
"Am I a combination of the lives of these ancestors and do I embody these lives again? --Jung, memories, Dreams, Reflections
Later, in his essay Extending the Family (1985), [James] Hillman wrote: "The ancient home gave plenty of space to the invisibles that live in a family, propitiating and domesticating its daimones, which it acknowledged as rightfully belonging." He went on to add: "With the passing of time a sense of its power grows within one's psyche, like the movements of its skeleton inside one's flesh, which keeps one in servitude to patterns entombed in our closest attitudes and habits. From this interior family we are never free. This service keeps us bonded to the ancestors."
The East is absolutely convinced that we actually lived former lives but such assertions are open to doubt. We call the same thing hereditary tendencies, our disposition, certain things run in the family, etc. ~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture 13Jan1939, Page 56.
I can talk with some authority, as I am in my 84th and still in
passably good form and-looking back, as you probably do on
this day of celebration and congratulation-! see following behind
myself the long chain of 5 children, 19 grandchildren, and about
8 or 9 great-grandchildren.
(The latter number is not quite safe as at frequent intervals a new
one drops from heaven.)
Mature youth begins, as one says, at seventy and it is in certain
respects not so nice and in others more beautiful than childhood.
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 462-463
OUR INVISIBLE FAMILY
PREMIS
It's All Relative
Together the patient and I address ourselves to the 2,000,000-year-old man that is in all of us.
In the last analysis, most of our difficulties come from losing contact with our instincts, with the age-old unforgotten wisdom stored up in us. ~Carl Jung, NY Times, Oct. 4, 1936.
"It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live according to nature."
--Marcus Aurelius [my 61st great grandfather]
"It is only possible to live as we should
if we live according to our own nature."
~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, 7 June 1935.
The symbol is the word that goes out of the mouth, that one that does not simply speak, but that rises out of the depths of the self as a word of power and great need and places itself unexpectedly on the tongue.
It is an astonishing and perhaps seemingly irrational word, but one recognizes it as a symbol since it is alien to the conscious mind.
If one accepts the symbol, it is as if a door opens leading into a new room whose existence one previously did not know.
But if one does not accept the symbol, it is as if one carelessly went past this door; and since this was the only door leading to the inner chambers, one must pass outside into the streets again, exposed to everything external.
But the soul suffers great need, since outer freedom is of no use to it.
Salvation is a long road that leads through many gates.
These gates are symbols.
Each new gate is at first invisible; indeed it seems at first that it must be created, for it exists only if one has dug up the spring’s root, the symbol. ~Jung, Red Book, Page 311.
I wait, secretly anxious.
I see a tree arise from the sea.
Its crown reaches to Heaven and its roots reach down into Hell. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 300.
Original Awareness
Our antic biophysical background has been easier to ascertain than the physics of the soul, though many have tried in the field of Consciousness Studies. Some suggest quantum and even subquantal descriptions of primordial consciousness, which could be described as identical with or inherent in matter.
Consciousness does not mean individual awareness but a larger concept that includes the personal unconscious and collective mind, conscious and unconscious. In the most inclusive sense it is cosmic consciousness. The mind's nature is primordial awareness, practiced by mystics and sages from time immemorial.
New archaeological finds have helped us discover human hybrid interbreeding among the archaic and extinct hominins. Genome analysis suggests there was cross-species interbreeding between modern humans, Neanderthals, Denisovans and additional unknown archaic populations, perhaps as far back as Homo Erectus.
We are in no way separate from Nature and our nature is archetypal. We discover how to orient ourselves in the tidal pathways of the unconscious. We see that our shadows and strengths fall into archetypal patterns -- the timeless parts of ourselves we act out unconsciously. Our genealogical maps help us find our way into the deep unconscious and our greatest possible treasure -- our inner gold.
Self-Awareness
We are always telling and remembering and forgetting our stories and those of our near and distant families. Primary in that telling is the tale of from whom we descend through archetypal process and relationship. The primary issues are ‘to be or not be’ and ‘to belong or not to belong.' Our inherent way of expressing is our flow state, our gift, and fulfillment of our personal myth.
We need to both identify and integrate our ancestral legacy in our trials of descent. Without it we may remain stuck in the wasteland of alienation, dissociation, and existential crisis rather than integrating our heritage and history. We can find our missing qualities in our genealogy.
To figure out what is happening in the present, we need to figure out something of the past. However, we imagine so many things to be true and so many to be false, we simply don't know what is 'real' or not. Life comes from your imagination and what you imagine to be real.
Those who have not done their own genealogies think some of the claims about conventional genealogical results are utterly fallacious. But if you draw your own lines past a certain era, you find the rumors are indeed 'true,' no matter what that means in terms of symbolic and psychological realities. Naturally, such lines are not literally so.
Our society is oriented primarily around father and mother, patriarch and matriarch --the King or Queen archetype and basis of unconscious tensions and hidden value judgments. They give life to the archetypal Child, the new consciousness, creativity, and archetypal Seeker. When two people really unite, their inner and outer worlds merge, whether in gnosis or shared folly.
We come upon our ancestors unawares as we 'dig up' our connections with them. If we aren't forewarned we may be shocked to find royals in our lines. The King or Queen can bless us, knight us, and make us feel special and a valuable part of the whole as no other archetype can. This may change our sense of self-identity forever. It can bring new insight, understanding, and comprehension, but may also lead to emotional flooding and an invasion of the unconscious as ego inflation.
We proceed along quite normally, logging commoner and noble spouses and their ancestors, then suddenly the atmosphere changes. Geography moves to imaginal landscapes.
Genealogy is a place of exchange not only with ancestors, but between humans and a variety of supernatural creatures of mixed human and legendary lineage. Such creatures inherit different nature's from their parents. They still draw their identity from the family unit.
Such supernatural tales have their liminal settings, mythical characters, inter-species romances, and close family connections. The otherworld and the ordinary intermingle. This is the gloss of imaginal vision that co-exists with ordinary reality -- our desires, phantasms, and projections.
But it is not the family ties nor the romantic fairy tale appeal of such inclusions but their psychic necessity that makes them a legitimate part of our pedigree -- even if disowned, repressed, or 'fictionalized' by modern genealogical corrective trends. We enter the underworld when we cross the threshold dividing the rational and historical from the irrational and legendary.
We find curious hybrids, from fairies to godforms with supernatural romances, curses, and royal marriages in liminal spaces beyond mortal ken. Sometimes such creatures with their disturbing transformations enter a lineage as the result of a familial curse.
It is transmitted to descendants in repeating cycles of suffering, heartbreak, betrayals, separation, mourning, and death. This raises the specter that such demonic behavior is related to medieval descriptions of mental illness and mood disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar, narcissism, or borderline issues.
Some genealogists want to expunge supernatural characters and liminal settings from the World Tree, but we do so at our peril -- cutting of psyche from its own imaginal roots. Naturally, to claim we literally descend from pixies, elves, fairies, dragons, serpents, gods or goddesses sounds preposterous, and must be contextualized as imaginal.
The irreconcilable dual nature of human and bestial ancestry demands we work that out for ourselves, so it not turn monstrous. Ours is a very complicated and nuanced family full of by-gone cultural dreams that still inhabit and inform our films and literature.
http://scholarlycommons.obu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1073&context=honors_theses
Family Wisdom
Our original awareness of ourselves is that of a family member, born of our ancestors through our parents into the House of our descent. We carry the First-Person perspective (self, body, self-reference) even though we may be the last of our line. But we can hardly claim self-knowledge if we remain unconscious of our unseen forebears from both a genealogical and symbolic approach. Along with our strengths we pass on our human weaknesses.
We may have different intentions as we begin our genealogical work, but despite our approach transgenerational EFFECTS will begin emerging spontaneously as a natural consequence of stirring the unconscious. Real time effects, seen and unforeseen always trump original intentions or will which has nothing to do with it.
Unconscious forces may amplify or draw attention to dynamics already in action -- chaotic relationships, addictive patterns, psychophysical symptoms, etc. as well as unconscious determinism and mythic dynamics. We may or may not notice similar patterns in our close ancestors, such as star-crossed lovers or maternal fusion/absent father.
How could we have something so life-changing, so valuable within and not even realize we have it? The persistent state of unconsciousness keeps them secret, keeps them hidden from us. These spontaneous effects contain elements of transgenerational family problems and its inherent wisdom and healing potential. They remain an integral part of our lives through their effects on our psychophysical being -- avoidance, repression, denial, stress, blame, discomfort. Are we stuck or just ancestrally challenged?
How You Came To Be
We each have a way we put together the fragments that make up our lives — their flotsam and jetsam, highs and lows, meaningful and slight details, shrieking and weeping, big and small news, reminders of the family's past, with events and how they impact us. Who welcomed death when it came? But linear time is a persistent illusion -- a cultural artifact.
We could imagine switching off the default mode network so the brain itself receives a denser spectrum of consciousness. The unconscious or ancestral field is actually just such a vast spectrum of information that we’re just not seeing, but it is always there. Each and every ancestor is there if we but tune into their essence, their nature, and their relationships -- not in a supernatural but an informational way.
The inner forms the outer, pulsating out in manifestation. Primordial awareness is an externalization of our existing internal patterns. The ancient Greeks perceived immersive time and linear perspective somewhat differently, seeing the past before them and the future behind. The past was ahead of them -- already manifested -- where they had eyes to see, not a by-gone event buried in the past. In symbol and myth the past is not the past.
So, through genealogy we can see and face the past head on. Without knowing who we are, we remain somewhat blind looking either forward or back. The ancients moved into the future facing the past, not the unknown future which cannot be seen. The future was behind, enveloping them, manifesting through them, stalking them relentlessly like death.
The anxieties of heredity mirror the fears and conflicts of society at any given time. Stains from the past raise questions about intergenerational or collective responsibility. Are we somehow marked by ancient violence, deprivation, or abundance? How does each generation shape and alter that story, hereditary character, and moral inheritance?
Transferred Guilt
Ancestral Fault? Original sin? Missing the mark? The concept of inherited guilt and delayed punishment is archaic, appearing in the Torah, Bible, and Greek tragedy. Divine punishment of innocent descendants is an interaction of human action and divine order. Deferred punishment implies its inevitability. The perverted family is doomed to pass on its toxic inheritance until or unless someone takes on the great work of raising the pattern to consciousness.
Are we liable for the personal errors and transgressions of our ancestors? Do the gods hold us accountable? They play a leading role in the sense that Jung mentions, that the gods have become diseases. Doesn't each generation suffer in succession with or without family misfortune? Does our past mean moral debt, culpability, menace, shame, dishonor, grief, and distress? What is the hereditary character of human unhappiness and in what way is it 'divine punishment'? How can we "face it"?
Legacy of Misfortune
How and where do we hold the pain of the old transgressions? That anguish of the past has a remarkable grip on contemporary society as systemic crisis and inherited liability. Are some houses accursed? Any family 'curse' -- originating in a prayer for vengeance -- is more likely to mean inherited guilt, genetic corruption, or persistent unexplained adversity. Disaster, calamity, and ruin can also strike blindly.
Ancestral fault is a core idea of Greek literature. 'The guiltless will pay for the deeds later: either the man's children, or his descendants thereafter', said Solon in the sixth century BC, a statement echoed throughout the rest of antiquity. This notion lies at the heart of ancient Greek thinking on theodicy, inheritance and privilege, the meaning of suffering, the links between wealth and morality, individual responsibility, the bonds that unite generations and the grand movements of history. From Homer to Proclus, it played a major role in some of the most critical and pressing reflections of Greek culture on divinity, society and knowledge. The burning modern preoccupation with collective responsibility across generations has a long, deep antecedent in classical Greek literature and its reception. (Gagne)
Why do we even endorse our belief in ancestral fault?
Probably because it appeals individually and collectively as an explanation for misfortune as punishment. Perhaps it gives meaning to adversity -- vague traces in distant historical records or dramatic tragedies. Besides its social functions, the cultural notion of ancestral fault also has its own coherent and inconsistent poetics -- how the idea is presented and what role it plays as we mine and reconstruct it.
As we write our genealogical story, we turn to the past even as the past returns to us. Facing it squarely, we are in the present, facing the past, while the unseen future, being unknown, is behind us. It depends if we are looking at event time or narrative time -- relative conceptualizations.
Physicist John Wheeler suggested reality grows out of the act of observation, and thus consciousness itself is "participatory." He also considered information the most fundamental building block of reality. He thought the universe should be seen as a self-synthesized information system: a self-excited circuit that is developing through a (closed loop) cycle.
His experiments led to the idea that human observers may not only determine the present, but also may influence the past. According to Wheeler, ultimate mutability is the central feature of physics, and the meaning of reality can only be established if there is a universal knowledge field, that transcends physical past, present and future.
("The Universe as a Cyclic Organized Information System:
John Wheeler’s World Revisited", Dirk K.F. Meijer)
Future Behind, Past In-Front
Time metaphor is a spatial (spatio-temporal) language. Marshall McLuhan said, "We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future." He reiterated the ancient Greek perspective. They stood in the present moment with the past receding away from them back toward the Golden Age as their point of reference, rather than the future. So, sequence is a relative position along a path -- a relationship of figure to Ground (the moment of utterance). Ego may play the role of Ground in directionality, but it is the directionless unconscious that is the primordial Ground.
What Is Unconscious Remains Timeless
In ancient Greece, Plato and Aristotle agreed that the past is eternal. Ancestral fault included inherited guilt and divine punishment. The Greek word for 'revealed' actually means 'reappear,' like rivers and streams that flow underground and spring forth again. The course remains invisible until it reappears to sight.
Only the ideology of progress flipped the magnetic poles of our psyches. The past is no reliable guide to a future that is the main locus of our attention. We need to rethink how we construct our stories of duration and how we conceive our relationship to it. Stories anchor the present and seem to give our preferred futures some substance and pull.
Time doesn't only belong to events, because psychological time is open and all events are real. In the epistemic modality, there is no past or future but possibility, necessity, and evidentiality. Only our expression of past tense creates evidential markers.
Temporality is a modality. What time we are present in depends on which world we are in. That is, in the genealogical domain our world is now as it was in 50 BCE, a product of linguistic relativity and tenseless language. In Kabbalah, “time” is a paradox and an illusion. Both the future and the past are recognized to be simultaneously present.
This purposefully fissured quality opens us to the heights and depths of our being, light and dark, accessible and opaque, concrete and abstract. Such stories may be drizzled in sadness and despair, while others remain profoundly unconscious until we find and walk through the threshold of our genealogy.
Our own family tree and our unique descent from the roots of mankind reveals the instinct, opinion, and knowledge of original thought. Rational comes from 'ratio' - from relationship. The bones of our mother are the stones of the Earth. The body of the Earth and her water is our water, our body, as primordial as it ever was.
PREMIS
It's All Relative
Together the patient and I address ourselves to the 2,000,000-year-old man that is in all of us.
In the last analysis, most of our difficulties come from losing contact with our instincts, with the age-old unforgotten wisdom stored up in us. ~Carl Jung, NY Times, Oct. 4, 1936.
"It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live according to nature."
--Marcus Aurelius [my 61st great grandfather]
"It is only possible to live as we should
if we live according to our own nature."
~Carl Jung, ETH Lecture, 7 June 1935.
The symbol is the word that goes out of the mouth, that one that does not simply speak, but that rises out of the depths of the self as a word of power and great need and places itself unexpectedly on the tongue.
It is an astonishing and perhaps seemingly irrational word, but one recognizes it as a symbol since it is alien to the conscious mind.
If one accepts the symbol, it is as if a door opens leading into a new room whose existence one previously did not know.
But if one does not accept the symbol, it is as if one carelessly went past this door; and since this was the only door leading to the inner chambers, one must pass outside into the streets again, exposed to everything external.
But the soul suffers great need, since outer freedom is of no use to it.
Salvation is a long road that leads through many gates.
These gates are symbols.
Each new gate is at first invisible; indeed it seems at first that it must be created, for it exists only if one has dug up the spring’s root, the symbol. ~Jung, Red Book, Page 311.
I wait, secretly anxious.
I see a tree arise from the sea.
Its crown reaches to Heaven and its roots reach down into Hell. ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 300.
Original Awareness
Our antic biophysical background has been easier to ascertain than the physics of the soul, though many have tried in the field of Consciousness Studies. Some suggest quantum and even subquantal descriptions of primordial consciousness, which could be described as identical with or inherent in matter.
Consciousness does not mean individual awareness but a larger concept that includes the personal unconscious and collective mind, conscious and unconscious. In the most inclusive sense it is cosmic consciousness. The mind's nature is primordial awareness, practiced by mystics and sages from time immemorial.
New archaeological finds have helped us discover human hybrid interbreeding among the archaic and extinct hominins. Genome analysis suggests there was cross-species interbreeding between modern humans, Neanderthals, Denisovans and additional unknown archaic populations, perhaps as far back as Homo Erectus.
We are in no way separate from Nature and our nature is archetypal. We discover how to orient ourselves in the tidal pathways of the unconscious. We see that our shadows and strengths fall into archetypal patterns -- the timeless parts of ourselves we act out unconsciously. Our genealogical maps help us find our way into the deep unconscious and our greatest possible treasure -- our inner gold.
Self-Awareness
We are always telling and remembering and forgetting our stories and those of our near and distant families. Primary in that telling is the tale of from whom we descend through archetypal process and relationship. The primary issues are ‘to be or not be’ and ‘to belong or not to belong.' Our inherent way of expressing is our flow state, our gift, and fulfillment of our personal myth.
We need to both identify and integrate our ancestral legacy in our trials of descent. Without it we may remain stuck in the wasteland of alienation, dissociation, and existential crisis rather than integrating our heritage and history. We can find our missing qualities in our genealogy.
To figure out what is happening in the present, we need to figure out something of the past. However, we imagine so many things to be true and so many to be false, we simply don't know what is 'real' or not. Life comes from your imagination and what you imagine to be real.
Those who have not done their own genealogies think some of the claims about conventional genealogical results are utterly fallacious. But if you draw your own lines past a certain era, you find the rumors are indeed 'true,' no matter what that means in terms of symbolic and psychological realities. Naturally, such lines are not literally so.
Our society is oriented primarily around father and mother, patriarch and matriarch --the King or Queen archetype and basis of unconscious tensions and hidden value judgments. They give life to the archetypal Child, the new consciousness, creativity, and archetypal Seeker. When two people really unite, their inner and outer worlds merge, whether in gnosis or shared folly.
We come upon our ancestors unawares as we 'dig up' our connections with them. If we aren't forewarned we may be shocked to find royals in our lines. The King or Queen can bless us, knight us, and make us feel special and a valuable part of the whole as no other archetype can. This may change our sense of self-identity forever. It can bring new insight, understanding, and comprehension, but may also lead to emotional flooding and an invasion of the unconscious as ego inflation.
We proceed along quite normally, logging commoner and noble spouses and their ancestors, then suddenly the atmosphere changes. Geography moves to imaginal landscapes.
Genealogy is a place of exchange not only with ancestors, but between humans and a variety of supernatural creatures of mixed human and legendary lineage. Such creatures inherit different nature's from their parents. They still draw their identity from the family unit.
Such supernatural tales have their liminal settings, mythical characters, inter-species romances, and close family connections. The otherworld and the ordinary intermingle. This is the gloss of imaginal vision that co-exists with ordinary reality -- our desires, phantasms, and projections.
But it is not the family ties nor the romantic fairy tale appeal of such inclusions but their psychic necessity that makes them a legitimate part of our pedigree -- even if disowned, repressed, or 'fictionalized' by modern genealogical corrective trends. We enter the underworld when we cross the threshold dividing the rational and historical from the irrational and legendary.
We find curious hybrids, from fairies to godforms with supernatural romances, curses, and royal marriages in liminal spaces beyond mortal ken. Sometimes such creatures with their disturbing transformations enter a lineage as the result of a familial curse.
It is transmitted to descendants in repeating cycles of suffering, heartbreak, betrayals, separation, mourning, and death. This raises the specter that such demonic behavior is related to medieval descriptions of mental illness and mood disorders, such as schizophrenia, bipolar, narcissism, or borderline issues.
Some genealogists want to expunge supernatural characters and liminal settings from the World Tree, but we do so at our peril -- cutting of psyche from its own imaginal roots. Naturally, to claim we literally descend from pixies, elves, fairies, dragons, serpents, gods or goddesses sounds preposterous, and must be contextualized as imaginal.
The irreconcilable dual nature of human and bestial ancestry demands we work that out for ourselves, so it not turn monstrous. Ours is a very complicated and nuanced family full of by-gone cultural dreams that still inhabit and inform our films and literature.
http://scholarlycommons.obu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1073&context=honors_theses
Family Wisdom
Our original awareness of ourselves is that of a family member, born of our ancestors through our parents into the House of our descent. We carry the First-Person perspective (self, body, self-reference) even though we may be the last of our line. But we can hardly claim self-knowledge if we remain unconscious of our unseen forebears from both a genealogical and symbolic approach. Along with our strengths we pass on our human weaknesses.
We may have different intentions as we begin our genealogical work, but despite our approach transgenerational EFFECTS will begin emerging spontaneously as a natural consequence of stirring the unconscious. Real time effects, seen and unforeseen always trump original intentions or will which has nothing to do with it.
Unconscious forces may amplify or draw attention to dynamics already in action -- chaotic relationships, addictive patterns, psychophysical symptoms, etc. as well as unconscious determinism and mythic dynamics. We may or may not notice similar patterns in our close ancestors, such as star-crossed lovers or maternal fusion/absent father.
How could we have something so life-changing, so valuable within and not even realize we have it? The persistent state of unconsciousness keeps them secret, keeps them hidden from us. These spontaneous effects contain elements of transgenerational family problems and its inherent wisdom and healing potential. They remain an integral part of our lives through their effects on our psychophysical being -- avoidance, repression, denial, stress, blame, discomfort. Are we stuck or just ancestrally challenged?
How You Came To Be
We each have a way we put together the fragments that make up our lives — their flotsam and jetsam, highs and lows, meaningful and slight details, shrieking and weeping, big and small news, reminders of the family's past, with events and how they impact us. Who welcomed death when it came? But linear time is a persistent illusion -- a cultural artifact.
We could imagine switching off the default mode network so the brain itself receives a denser spectrum of consciousness. The unconscious or ancestral field is actually just such a vast spectrum of information that we’re just not seeing, but it is always there. Each and every ancestor is there if we but tune into their essence, their nature, and their relationships -- not in a supernatural but an informational way.
The inner forms the outer, pulsating out in manifestation. Primordial awareness is an externalization of our existing internal patterns. The ancient Greeks perceived immersive time and linear perspective somewhat differently, seeing the past before them and the future behind. The past was ahead of them -- already manifested -- where they had eyes to see, not a by-gone event buried in the past. In symbol and myth the past is not the past.
So, through genealogy we can see and face the past head on. Without knowing who we are, we remain somewhat blind looking either forward or back. The ancients moved into the future facing the past, not the unknown future which cannot be seen. The future was behind, enveloping them, manifesting through them, stalking them relentlessly like death.
The anxieties of heredity mirror the fears and conflicts of society at any given time. Stains from the past raise questions about intergenerational or collective responsibility. Are we somehow marked by ancient violence, deprivation, or abundance? How does each generation shape and alter that story, hereditary character, and moral inheritance?
Transferred Guilt
Ancestral Fault? Original sin? Missing the mark? The concept of inherited guilt and delayed punishment is archaic, appearing in the Torah, Bible, and Greek tragedy. Divine punishment of innocent descendants is an interaction of human action and divine order. Deferred punishment implies its inevitability. The perverted family is doomed to pass on its toxic inheritance until or unless someone takes on the great work of raising the pattern to consciousness.
Are we liable for the personal errors and transgressions of our ancestors? Do the gods hold us accountable? They play a leading role in the sense that Jung mentions, that the gods have become diseases. Doesn't each generation suffer in succession with or without family misfortune? Does our past mean moral debt, culpability, menace, shame, dishonor, grief, and distress? What is the hereditary character of human unhappiness and in what way is it 'divine punishment'? How can we "face it"?
Legacy of Misfortune
How and where do we hold the pain of the old transgressions? That anguish of the past has a remarkable grip on contemporary society as systemic crisis and inherited liability. Are some houses accursed? Any family 'curse' -- originating in a prayer for vengeance -- is more likely to mean inherited guilt, genetic corruption, or persistent unexplained adversity. Disaster, calamity, and ruin can also strike blindly.
Ancestral fault is a core idea of Greek literature. 'The guiltless will pay for the deeds later: either the man's children, or his descendants thereafter', said Solon in the sixth century BC, a statement echoed throughout the rest of antiquity. This notion lies at the heart of ancient Greek thinking on theodicy, inheritance and privilege, the meaning of suffering, the links between wealth and morality, individual responsibility, the bonds that unite generations and the grand movements of history. From Homer to Proclus, it played a major role in some of the most critical and pressing reflections of Greek culture on divinity, society and knowledge. The burning modern preoccupation with collective responsibility across generations has a long, deep antecedent in classical Greek literature and its reception. (Gagne)
Why do we even endorse our belief in ancestral fault?
Probably because it appeals individually and collectively as an explanation for misfortune as punishment. Perhaps it gives meaning to adversity -- vague traces in distant historical records or dramatic tragedies. Besides its social functions, the cultural notion of ancestral fault also has its own coherent and inconsistent poetics -- how the idea is presented and what role it plays as we mine and reconstruct it.
As we write our genealogical story, we turn to the past even as the past returns to us. Facing it squarely, we are in the present, facing the past, while the unseen future, being unknown, is behind us. It depends if we are looking at event time or narrative time -- relative conceptualizations.
Physicist John Wheeler suggested reality grows out of the act of observation, and thus consciousness itself is "participatory." He also considered information the most fundamental building block of reality. He thought the universe should be seen as a self-synthesized information system: a self-excited circuit that is developing through a (closed loop) cycle.
His experiments led to the idea that human observers may not only determine the present, but also may influence the past. According to Wheeler, ultimate mutability is the central feature of physics, and the meaning of reality can only be established if there is a universal knowledge field, that transcends physical past, present and future.
("The Universe as a Cyclic Organized Information System:
John Wheeler’s World Revisited", Dirk K.F. Meijer)
Future Behind, Past In-Front
Time metaphor is a spatial (spatio-temporal) language. Marshall McLuhan said, "We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future." He reiterated the ancient Greek perspective. They stood in the present moment with the past receding away from them back toward the Golden Age as their point of reference, rather than the future. So, sequence is a relative position along a path -- a relationship of figure to Ground (the moment of utterance). Ego may play the role of Ground in directionality, but it is the directionless unconscious that is the primordial Ground.
What Is Unconscious Remains Timeless
In ancient Greece, Plato and Aristotle agreed that the past is eternal. Ancestral fault included inherited guilt and divine punishment. The Greek word for 'revealed' actually means 'reappear,' like rivers and streams that flow underground and spring forth again. The course remains invisible until it reappears to sight.
Only the ideology of progress flipped the magnetic poles of our psyches. The past is no reliable guide to a future that is the main locus of our attention. We need to rethink how we construct our stories of duration and how we conceive our relationship to it. Stories anchor the present and seem to give our preferred futures some substance and pull.
Time doesn't only belong to events, because psychological time is open and all events are real. In the epistemic modality, there is no past or future but possibility, necessity, and evidentiality. Only our expression of past tense creates evidential markers.
Temporality is a modality. What time we are present in depends on which world we are in. That is, in the genealogical domain our world is now as it was in 50 BCE, a product of linguistic relativity and tenseless language. In Kabbalah, “time” is a paradox and an illusion. Both the future and the past are recognized to be simultaneously present.
This purposefully fissured quality opens us to the heights and depths of our being, light and dark, accessible and opaque, concrete and abstract. Such stories may be drizzled in sadness and despair, while others remain profoundly unconscious until we find and walk through the threshold of our genealogy.
Our own family tree and our unique descent from the roots of mankind reveals the instinct, opinion, and knowledge of original thought. Rational comes from 'ratio' - from relationship. The bones of our mother are the stones of the Earth. The body of the Earth and her water is our water, our body, as primordial as it ever was.
HOW DID YOU EVER GET HERE?
10,000 Paths to the Passed
Each of our ancestors is a gate to our Inner Sanctum, to our soul. Genealogy is the relational mode of understanding. The tale of our genesis is our prima materia and our ultima materia, the unknown and self-knowledge.
In the beginning everything is chaotic, fluid, co-mingled, and undifferentiated. Its alchemical symbol is a 3-headed serpent or dragon, of Sulpher, Mercury, and Salt. This represents the dance of Sun and Moon, King and Queen, the archetypal superpatterns of male and female, and their material offspring. We spring from the soul and remain the child of our ancestors.
In every adult there lurks a child--an eternal child, something that is always becoming, is never completed, and calls for unceasing care, attention, and education. That is the part of the personality which wants to develop and become whole. -C. G. Jung CW 17: 286
First matter gives universe its properties. It organizes into the Elements, (fire, water, air, and earth), which are the building blocks of words, thought-ideas or archetypes. It is liminal, between manifest and unmanifest. It is the spiritualized essence or soul of substance: identity, form, and function oscillating between creation and destruction.
We must go a bit deeper and realize that with the instinct of creation is always connected a destructive something; the creation in its own essence is also destructive. You see that quite clearly in the moment when you check the creative impulse; nothing is more poisonous to the nervous system than a disregarded or checked creative impulse. It even destroys people's organic health. It is dangerous because there is that extraordinary destructive quality in the creative thing. Just because it is the deepest instinct, the deeper power in man, a power which is beyond conscious control, and because it is on the other side the function which creates the greatest value, it is most dangerous to interfere with it.
~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 654.
The main difficulty here is that the eternal ideas have been dragged down from their "supracelestial place" into the biological sphere, and this is somewhat confusing for the trained philosopher and may even come to him as a shock. (Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 559-560).
"The transformation of Mercurius, as prima materia, in the heated, sealed vessel is comparable to cooking the basic instinctive drives in their own affect until their essential fantasy content becomes conscious."
“Instead of arguing with the drives which carry us away, we prefer to cook them and . ask then what they want. . . . That can be discovered by active imagination, or through experimenting in reality, but always with the introverted attitude of observing objectively what the drive really wants.” (Marie von Franz, Alchemy, p. 129)
It is often suggested the prima materia is found in "feces" or lead which is alchemical code for matter or the physical body and what gets shoved down into the unconscious. The first matter is cyclic, contains all the elements, and is the source of the Philosopher's Stone -- the egg or light of Nature; Anima Mundi or Soul of the World.
The alchemical motto Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultuum Lapidem means “Visit the innermost parts of the earth; by setting things right (‘rectifying’), you will find the hidden Stone.”
Jung more or less identified the unconscious with the autonomic nervous system. Such sympathetic identification is integral, interiorized or internalized knowing instead of conceptual knowing: unmediated, direct perception by the body and the emotions and the intellect -- the soul. Emotions are part of the reasoning process itself -- bodily intelligence.
This psychophysical mimesis, or power of imitation, is direct experience by total submergence of the unconscious tendencies of the ancestors. So, we can visit the interior of our own earth, our physical body for the treasure of embedded ancestral memories it has hidden for good or ill.
Disorientation & Suffering.
Like any Great Work, Jung suggests that the opus consists of three parts: insight, endurance, and action. Psychology is needed only in the first part, but in the second and third parts moral strength plays the predominant role.
Working through the invisible loyalties of the family system is just the beginning of our journey back through time, the unconscious, and our genetic history. Epigenetics demonstrates that we inherit our parents' trauma and family secrets. Children of survivors may be born less able to metabolize stress, more susceptible to PTSD, a vulnerability expressed in their molecules, neurons, cells, and genes.
Vicarious Traumatization Burden
Traumas are events that induce intense fear, helplessness, or horror. Dysregulation induced by that trauma becomes a body’s default state in PTSD. Trigger a person with PTSD, and the heart pounds faster, startle reflex is exaggerated, we sweat and the mind races. The amygdala, which detects threats and releases the emotions associated with memories, whirs in overdrive. Meanwhile, hormones and neurotransmitters don’t always flow as they should, leaving the immune system underregulated.
The result can be the kind of over-inflammation associated with chronic disease, including arthritis, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Moreover, agitated nervous systems release adrenaline and catecholamines, both involved in the fight or flight response, unleashing a cascade of events that reinforces the effects of traumatic memories on the brain. This may partially explain why intrusive memories and flashbacks plague people with PTSD. Also, extreme stress and PTSD shorten telomeres—the DNA caps at the end of a chromosome that govern the pace of aging.
Genes & Memes
The dragon's egg of the primordial unconscious or archetypal container signifies the eternal cycle of life, primordial unconsciousness, the unity of opposing forces. Jung said there is no consciousness without discrimination of opposites.
To be whole is to be full of contradictions. The unity never becomes apparent because the opposites within us operate and mingle in various ways and it is their interaction that makes the whole man. The complete human being, the hermaphrodite, is never visible. He is indescribable, always a mystical experience. (Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung - Ostrowski,)
So, the ultima materia means the total recapitulation of the species evolution beginning with conception moved by telos. Julian Huxley argued that evolution moved to the psychosocial realm and DNA was replaced by memory and language inside minds that could understand it, giving evolution a purpose.
The brain is the Tree of Life. If our reptilian brain and brain stem is our internal Tree of Life, then the higher brain and limbic system (with the amygdala) is our Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil. Wisdom of the divine becomes wisdom of the self -- the seed of cosmic consciousness and Immortal Mind. In Hermetic doctrine, a circular relationship exists between mankind and the divine. The cosmos mirrors mankind's need for self-knowledge through recognition.
Serpent's Breath
The serpent in that Tree is its numinous voice, with its active dynamic kundalini -- the Serpent Power, the Secret Fire, the life force or basic animating principle -- the quintessence of matter. Never calling it evil, Genesis 3:1 says, "Now the Serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made."
Our serpentine lines of ancestral descent recursively bite their own tails in the primordial archetype of the Orobouros. “"All human things are a circle” was inscribed on the temple at Athens.
The Hermetic "Holy Grail" was a circular crater or bowl of regeneration described in the fourth treatise of the Corpus Hermeticum. It was a font of immersion symbolizing the constant decay and renewal of all things, present in all Nature. The genealogical Holy Grail is found in royal lines that include the Arthurian legends then trace back to roots in various gods and goddesses.
For the gods, time is primordial and unstructured; for mankind it is historical and linear. In the unconscious if there is any notion of time at all, it is circular, arranging events so they return eternally and can be re-entered through myth, symbol, and ritual with no distinction between self and environment.
Grail symbolism encompasses the womb that always makes children, the horn and cup that serve drink, and the cauldron and bowl that give food. The quest for the Grail comes from these primal facts of life.
The holy bowl -- the cranium, where heaven meets earth -- is where individual souls mix with universal mind in a metaphor of immersive experience, The immersive baptism of wisdom or gnosis means 'living water' that springs up in creativity and illumination -- "the drink of the soul by the sweet stream of wisdom (Sophia)."
What Are They Remembering For Us?
Our history is our collective transgenerational memory. No people can successfully live outside of their memory. Jung tells us that, "Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force." (MDR, Page 277). The past plays one of the most critical roles in Western civilization. but it is so embedded, so obvious that it becomes invisible. The past remains with us as experiences change sperm and eggs.
Genes aren't the cause of most disease; the cause of most disease alters genetic expression. Epigenetics is revealing the biological transmission of molecular memory -- that we can pass down altered responses, emotional trauma, agitated nervous systems, under-regulated immune systems, chronic over-inflammation, and somatic disorders.
Biological Legacy
Ancestral behavior can also mutate single genes. Everybody has a different level of tolerance for alcohol, but some people act very strangely, exhibiting reckless, impulsive, violent, or even dangerous behavior on alcohol. Finnish researchers found that a fairly common mutation in serotonin 2B receptor gene can render some prone to impulsive behavior by nature, sober or under the influence of alcohol. They struggle with self-control or mood disorders.
“One of our main findings was that the HTR2B Q20* predicted alcohol-related risk-behaviors. The HTR2B Q20* carriers demonstrated aggressive out-bursts, got into fights and behaved in an impulsive manner under the influence of alcohol. They were also arrested for driving while under the influence of alcohol more often than the controls."
“The HTR2B Q20* carriers were not alcoholics per se, as measured by average alcohol consumption, and were not diagnosed as alcoholics, but they had a tendency to lose behavioral control while under the influence of alcohol.”
http://www.sciencealert.com/common-genetic-mutation-linked-to-reckless-drunken-behaviour?utm_source=Article&utm_medium=Website&utm_campaign=InArticleReadMore
All cells have a genetic code with information to produce certain proteins to carry out vital processes. Chemical switches can turn genes on or off, or crank them up or down, so the cells know which proteins to produce and in what quantities. These switches or epigenetic tags are altered by environment, bad habits, and experience, passed on to their offspring, and their offspring's offspring.
Sperm and eggs carry genetic memories of parents' health well before conception. Even what grandparents ate and the father's behavior long before conception can influence the child's health in a range from mood disorders to mental illness. They inherit parents' psychic burdens, anxiety, low impulse control. Older people can unconsciously externalizes their traumatized self onto a developing child’s personality. The physical transmission of the horrors of the past is “embodied history.”
Transgenerational trauma is transferred from the first generation of trauma survivors to the second and further generations of offspring of the survivors by complex post-traumatic stress disorder mechanisms. Epigenetics changes the way instructions in the genetic code were translated and carried out by the body.
We are more than our transgenerational wounds. Our essence transcends our identification with history. In healing we are not alone, we trust a path to greater freedom, and feel our relationship to the suffering of our family lineage. We feel lighter when we release the burdens of our own trauma or family history. We can make wider choices and expand our sense of belonging in the world.
The Spent Breath of Millions
We all carry and relive the primordial psyche which is reliving the soul of our ancestors. They may be gone, but primordial psyche remains alive within us, and available for interaction. Some live closer to it than others, but we all have creative, rational, and intuitive faculties. These are rooted in this primordial ground, an unalterable level of creative imagination, primordial unity, and instinctive participation mystique. As Jung says, "But in these days we live by our brains alone and ignore the very definite laws of our body and the instinctive world." (Letters Vol. II, Page 567)
Perhaps the ancestors inform us in their own way. Intuition is information that is received by the mind. But for that information to be useful, it must be analyzed and purposefully acted upon. When integrated we act on those intuitive impulses with wise judgment and confidence. Creative ideas then take shape in manifest form.
Primordial Psyche
Our genealogical lines may all look like good little soldiers lined up in neat succession. But they also have complex, nonlinear and cyclic dimensions among the patterns we can discern. This is the realm of the imaginal -- primordial images or instinctual energy which nevertheless have objective effects.
We consciously and unconsciously mourn the loss of the sacred in our lives to the abyss of evolution and our primordial relationship with Mother Earth. We've forgotten our connection to the dark animal orobouric Great Mother. Mother Nature may be the oldest motif but it is the underlying pattern of symbol-formation that is inherited.
Archetypes & Instincts
That something missing in the lives of so many people isn't found in another's form, it's found in the dark of the unconscious. In Jungian thought, when we search for our "other half" and perhaps for our ancestors, too, we actually seek the integration of the elements of the unconscious psyche. “It is always important to have something to bring into a relationship, and solitude is often the means by which you acquire it” (Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 610, Letters Vol. II.)
As Jung notes, "Whether he understands them or not, man must remain conscious of the world of the archetypes, because in it he is still a part of nature and is connected to his own roots." (Symbols of Transformation, Page 23).
If I speak of the collective unconscious I don't assume it as a principle, I only give a name to the totality of observable facts, i.e., archetypes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 567
The main difficulty here is that the eternal ideas have been dragged down from their "supracelestial place" into the biological sphere, and this is somewhat confusing for the trained philosopher and may even come to him as a shock. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 559-560
The Platonic "Idea" is in this case no longer intellectual but a psychic, instinctual pattern. Instinctual patterns can be found in human beings too. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 559-560
"Self-reflection, or - what comes to the same thing - the urge to individuation, gathers together what is scattered and multifarious and exalts it to the original of the One, the Primordial Man. In this way our existence as separate beings, our former ego nature, is abolished, the circle of consciousness is widened, and because the paradoxes have been made conscious, the sources of conflict are dried up." ("Transformation Symbolism in the Mass", CW 11, para. 401).
Inherent Nature of Man
Jung thought the "primordial images" are those expressed in the earliest life-history of the human species. They grow out of the rudimentary nature of the psyche in its pre-conscious form. These basic layers of the psyche spontaneously recur in modern psychic phenomena in ever-new forms that vary around certain deeply rooted motifs at the base of consciousness. The generic structural nature of the psyche is unrestricted to collective or group phenomena.
Water is the cosmogonic element by which the self sinks into involuntary immersion in the dimensional abysses. Our pre-historical ancestors have sunk in the Atlantis of the waters of the unconscious. This may be more than symbolic as we now know humanity has gone through a few local and global catastrophic events.
Supervolcanoes, repeated glaciation, meteor, and comet falls, massive sea-rise, and climate change are only preserved in myth and legend, leading to speculation that we have a species-wide amnesia. We have only recently found that our genome contains contributions from at least three other species -- Neanderthal, Denisovan, and another as-yet-unknown hominid.
Life is a thread interwoven with hidden archetypes which remain entangled in our eternal present. We're already in our phenomenological graves. If we can embrace the ancient soul of our ancestors soulfully and creatively, we may engage and fall in love with the sacred again. Wisdom is recognizing patterns in life.
In our own genealogy, we begin to reveal a pattern in which we can locate a felt sense of understanding, a resonance that speaks to us within a myth or traces the path of a wounding through therapy. We can followed the thread of understanding using dreamwork, ritual, or other depth psychological methods, or experience the numinous on some unalterable level that changes us forever.
Genealogy can be our approach and return to the sacred. To understand the living we commune with the dead. We approach the phenomena of the psyche as we do the phenomena of nature. We've unwittingly buried with our ancestors any symbolic or revelatory meaning that would otherwise push its way through from the unconscious.
Modern life has short-circuited our connection with the primeval unconscious resulting in an intolerable rift -- psychic dissociation. This division separates us from the sacred, limiting our capacity to navigate divine corridors of the numinous, relegating us to lives of estrangement, isolation, and alienation.
Potentiality of Meaning
Genealogy makes us think about the nature of time and space, our own deepest nature, and cosmos -- and our relationship to it. Entering our genealogy with a sensitivity to the phenomena that might arise means we are more attuned, more likely to notice when they arise within us and what they call forth.
Genealogy becomes our altar to the sacred -- to the Great
Mystery that surrounds ideas of primordial mind, ancestral and shamanic wisdom, visionary transpersonal experiences, and other numinosum. As we become more keenly attuned to the psychophysical sensations of arising emotions, we become more keenly attuned to our ancestry, wholeness, and deep history. At the informational level, our bones are their bones, our nerve pathways are their nerves, our blood is their blood.
Information Storage & Retrieval
Akash and the Akashic Records have been linked to primordial informational fields. Even Tesla says, “All perceptible matter comes from a primary substance, or tenuity beyond conception, filling all space, the Akasha or luminiferous ether, which is acted upon by the life giving Prana or creative force, calling into existence, in never ending cycles, all things and phenomena.” (Man’s Greatest Achievement, 1907)
Radical new proposals from physics are arising for vectors of information. Ervin Laszlo has linked it with psi phenomena and an integral theory recognizing the self-organizing interconnection of all things. He bootstraps from the Sanskrit, calling non-local interaction the Akasha Paradigm -- an entangled self-actualizing cosmos not limited to the here and now. We can connect and feel into each other. Laszlo shows the cosmos of the Akasha to be a self-actualizing, self-organizing whole. Each part is in coherence with all others and all parts together create the conditions for the emergence of life and consciousness. (2007; 2014).
http://manifestdestinytriforce.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-akashic-records-what-are-they-do.html
Igor V. Limar (2012) proposes linking synchronicity, correlated mental processes, and quantum entanglement. Mental processes of two different persons correlate not just when the subjects are located at a distance from each other, but also when both persons are alternately (and sequentially, one after the other) located in the same point of space. In this case, there is a time gap between manifestation of mental process in one person and manifestation of mental process in the other person.
NeuroQuantology, Sept. 2012, Vol. 10, Issue 3, Page 489-491.
"A Version of Jung’s Synchronicity in the Event of Correlation of Mental Processes in the Past and the Future: Possible Role of Quantum Entanglement in Quantum Vacuum"
http://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/journal/article/view/477/535
Approaching the Ancestors
We begin our genealogy knowing there is an art of approaching. We may yearn for that which we cannot name; we may find unspeakable secrets. Jung spoke of it poetically, "Take pains to waken the dead. Dig deep mines and throw in sacrificial gifts, so that they reach the dead. Reflect in good heart upon evil, this is the way to the ascent. But before the ascent, everything is night and Hell." (Liber Novus, Page 244).
When you step into your own Hell, never think that you come like one suffering in beauty; or as a proud pariah, but you come like a stupid and curious fool and gaze in wonder at the scraps that have fallen from your table. (Liber Novus, Page 262).
But the deepest Hell is when you realize that Hell is also no Hell, but a cheerful Heaven, not a Heaven in itself, but in this respect a Heaven, and in that respect a Hell. (Liber Novus, Page 244).
Our approach is framed with emotionally dependent perspectives, psychophysical reactions, and perceptual filters.
We become absorbed by the emotions we are feeling. Shifts in neurohormone levels affect our consciousness. They may manifest as interference patterns, psychosomatics or what might be called soma-signficance. Sometimes we "carry on" the maladies of our parents or grandparents within ourselves long after their passing. More than genetic or epigenetic inheritance, perhaps that is one way of keeping them with us.
Soma-Significance
Our bodies are simply connected with an intuitive sense of meaning, in all its implications and possibilities. Our structure encodes the recent and deep past. The physical and its significance are in no way separate but two aspects of a non-dual reality. So, some arising emotions may 'belong' to us while others arise from an empathic identification with our ancestors, or even fusions of their energies. They may appear in the pre-sensory, sensory elements and images in our dreams.
Proprioception is how we perceive ourselves physically -- our own individual orientation, moment to moment. It is how we grasp or sense of the relative position of neighboring parts of the body and strength of effort being employed in movement.
Sensory information contributes to the sense of position of self and movement.
Expressing emotions amplifies them. So we can also unlock significance by moving intuitively, by "letting go," and seeing how that feels and what it brings up. That movement itself is a primal image that communicates information not only to our senses but our entire being. It helps us sense stimuli arising within the body regarding position, motion, and equilibrium.
Contemplation of our family tree provokes reflection on our destiny. We look to the beginning to reveal the end, since like a hologram or fractal each part reveals the whole. The initial condition is archetypal. This alchemy of multigenerational marriage bridges has come down to us in the present -- as our unique embodied being. Jung cautions that, "Individuals who believe they are masters of their fate are as a rule the slaves of destiny." (Letters Vol. II, P. 520-523)
Connection to Source is the basis of creation, which manifests something unique from formless nothing. In our mundane existence we can lose sight of the wonder of life. Genealogy manifests the marriage of matter and psyche. Our family tree is a forest doubling in numbers each generation we go back.
Those who have passed are often passed over. Recognizing them, we recognize the reality of the psyche. We contain multitudes. By the medieval period, they number in the thousands, and tens and hundreds of thousands. They outnumber themselves, leading to the phenomenon of 'pedigree collapse,' when ancestors repeat in multiple lines of our descent. Collectively, they are nevertheless our particular way of descending into the cosmos and life and carrying it forward.
Increasing knowledge of self can come by knowing the Others within and renewing ruptured relationships. We can draw an analogy between the ascending and descending pathways of our psychobiology and genealogy. Emotions have bodily effects.
"Threshold events" occur when information that was formerly profoundly unconscious arises within our somatic, emotional, mental, or spiritual perceptions. Once we can locate sensations in the body, we can get a metaphor for what that experience is "like," engaging our imaginal faculty.
Multiple streams of consciousness can participate in one perspective that frees us of our amnesia. Somato-sensory pathways are information channels. The somatosensory system is the part of the sensory system concerned with the conscious perception of touch, pressure, pain, temperature, position, movement, and vibration, which arise from the muscles, joints, skin, and fascia. Self-organizing systems of mind-body communication across all levels from the cellular-genetic to the psychosocial and behavioral affect our psychobiology and natural or spontaneous healing.
It isn't about belief but directing our awareness to a different transderivational level of the system. Richness of interactions allows systems as a whole to undergo spontaneous self-organization and reorganization at all levels. We emphasize the need to deal with illness at formative levels, i.e., at the organism's initial conditions -- perinatal states, as suggested by Grof, Tart, and Mindell. At subtle levels outer structure is only a passing reflection of this continuing deep inner evolution.
An incoming communication we cannot make any sense of whatsoever is an integral part of processing language, and of attaching meaning to communication. How we ask the question determines the information we get. For example, we can create association rather than dissociation.
One approach is to drop into the body and get a sensation for where a feeling is, following it around, if necessary. Sensory responses are evoked potentials. When we detect a response we have a place to begin noticing, remembering, and processing. At the threshold level we have a 50-50 chance of detecting our response as attention or distraction. We may feel it weakly or even wonder if we felt it at all. This way we can reactivate pretty much any feeling we've ever had or that lives in us with a new level of sensation and connection in the present. We become aware of issues by their somatic, energetic, and emotional components.
"Here, here's where we live
Here is a sea, my family
We'll always be young as we've ever been
Death will not part us again nearer to heaven than
10,000 ancestors who dream of me
Well I hear you dreaming of me
Yeah sometimes, dream of me!"
The Albatross, (Rickie Lee Jones/Leo Kottke/John Leftwich)
Exploring the unconscious through genealogy or psychogenealogy is a healing process, an uplifting engagement that is foundational to self-realization. We are no longer relegated to a single contemporary place and time. The ancestors remained an important part of daily life not so long ago, and remain so for many indigenous societies.
We Are Highly Improbable
Scientists have calculated that each unique individual is highly improbable -- apparently a rather miraculous 400 trillion to one chance. The odds of us existing, 1:400 trillion, are virtually zero. Conversely, by the 40th generation we have over a trillion ancestors. We have to consider the odds of our parents meeting relative to the number of people on Earth. Then consider the odds of contact leading further in competition with all the others we meet.
The probability dwindles of a long-term relationship and reproduction, the right sperm and egg combining, and finally the probabilities of each of our trillion+ ancestors successfully mating with all the variables of genetics that make up the chain of those all those ancestors -- the Tree of Life of perfect eternal fruits. Jung notes obviously that, "Living matter is a mystery which is beyond our understanding, if only for the reason that we ourselves consist of living matter."
You are a virtual miracle, which is simply an event so improbable it is unlikely to occur. So each life is unique and precious to the nth degree as the result of the cumulative process of increasing information. Even Jung might be challenged to call it a fortuitous series of synchronicities. We are an emergent phenomenon. There are mere chance occurrences as well as synchronicity. So, another model is self-organizing chaos in multiple systems.
Field, Form & Fate
Self-organization is the structure of creation -- a process where pattern emerges at the global (collective) level through interactions among the components of the system at the individual level. These interactions explicitly specify the global pattern. We are self-similar to our predecessors and all their reiterations. In the vernacular of chaos theory, we are “strange attractors” or patterns of order within chaos, which never exactly repeat themselves. An observer can never predict exactly what will happen, yet we display a quality of orderliness which hints at underlying “laws not yet discovered.”
As times change so do our metaphors, psychological and otherwise. Self-organization, chaos, and complexity are the basis of the new biology, but it strains the imagination to consider it operating transgenerationally. We might consider the overall effect as a transgenerational field effect -- a relationship of archetypal fields within fields. Memories are accumulating affecting the soul.
Yet here we are, unpredictable though it may be. Souls extend from other souls. Order emerges at the edge of chaos and we are that leading edge of our descent. Our life somehow dances into being. And this is precisely the Mystery of our being, formed by historical, psychosocial, and genetic forces. We are active psychophysical elements of the entire creation. Information and spiritual knowledge is accumulating if we know how to listen deeply with a close attunement to our ancestral and generational themes.
Generational Archetypes
Everything we do starts with feeling and feeling starts in the family. Authors William Strauss and Neil Howe created the Strauss-Howe generational theory. It identifies a recurring generational cycle in the last five centuries of Anglo-American history. It can be explained by four generational archetypes that repeat sequentially in a fixed pattern every 80-100 years. This is the unfixed length of a long human life the ancients called a “saeculum," which can be divided into four "seasons" of approximately 22 years each; these seasons represent youth, rising adulthood, midlife, and elderhood.
Basically, this sociological generational theory describes how the era a person was born into affects the development of their view of the world. Our value systems are shaped in the first decade or so of our lives, by our families, our friends, our communities, significant events and the general era in which we are born.
All cultures are shared unconscious fantasies about how to live life. Traditional cultures viewed time as cyclical, much as the waxing and waning of the moon, the rising and setting of the sun, the birth and death of living creatures, the planting and harvesting of crops, and the seasons of the year. The idea of sacred time as an eternal round and the symbol of the ring or wheel are cross-cultural symbols. There is a repeating cycle in historical generational values. Each 20-year long generation faces similar issues and experiences.
http://www.tomorrowtoday.uk.com/articles/article001_intro_gens.htm
Beyond the modern pop nomenclature of Greatest Generation, Boomers, and Gens X, Y, Millennials, and Post-Millennials ("Homeland Generation"), their 1997 book The Fourth Turning, expands the theory focusing on a pulsating fourfold cycle of generational types and recurring mood eras in American history. Graeme Codrington summarizes the repeating cycle.
Social Cycle Theory
[Each] 80 year period of human history, we start with a crisis period, when society has to stop and deal with an issue that actually changes institutions and structures. Children born during such a time grow up to be like the Silent generation of today. This is followed by an outer directed and driven period of rebuilding, with grand visions and big dreams, giving rise to a Boomer-like generation. This idealistic world cannot be sustained, however, and a period of disillusionment and breaking down follows, with society being reconfigured and adjusted. The children of this era grow up to be like Generation X is today. This era is followed by an inner-directed era, where leaders, institutions and society itself focuses on consolidating and building new foundations, rebuilding institutions and protecting the young. This era gives rise to the type of people who are from the GI generation and the Millennial generation today. Finally, this inner-directed focus cannot be maintained, and a crisis occurs, sparking a new cycle.
If this is correct, then generational theorists are expecting a major crisis to hit global society in the next few years. This is something that will cause society to stop, reconsider and reconstitute itself. http://www.tomorrowtoday.uk.com/articles/article001_intro_gens.htm
While they focus on the history of the United States, including the Colonial era and British antecedents, they also find similar generational trends around the globe from the late Medieval period. They have defined generational archetypes in cohort groups that express the zeitgeist of their times. While such attributions are arguable they can provide a touchstone for certain eras and their collective culture.
http://www.lifecourse.com/about/method/generational-archetypes.html
They group four generations into a series of 80-year cyclic 'turnings' that include an initial 'high', followed by 'awakening,' unraveling,' and 'crisis.' Their archetypes include 'prophet,' 'nomad,' 'hero,' and 'artist' generations. We can think of such themes as collective dreams. Repeating cycles are a common theme for both individuals and whole generations.
As is the generation of leaves, so to of men:
At one time the wind shakes the leaves to the ground
but then the flourishing woods
Gives birth, and the season of spring comes
into existence;
So it is with the generations of men, which
alternately come forth and pass away.
– Homer, The Illiad, Book Six
We might benefit from the generational method in formulating our own Big Picture, as well as broad-stroke insights for our own generation within the pattern. The theory contends that each new generation entering a specific lifestage will redefine that lifestage and change it either subtly or dramatically. As generations clash there is a collision of values, expectations, ambitions, attitudes and behaviors -- the generation gap.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory
Self-Generating Creativity
Prima materia is the "beginning of all," "the abyss," the primary chaotic earth, or principle of existence in general. In his 1941 ETH lecture, Jung describes how many philosophers have sought information about the prima materia from inhabitants of Hades, or in the "habitation of souls." This is the realm of psychic dark matter, what is hidden from view.
This "land of the dead" is also known as "the egg," "Adam's Earth," "Mercurial serpent," "winged dragon," and the "entrance to the West,” "the root of itself," the dark sky of night, the non-created, or eternity. Or, as Jung states, in Liber Novus, "Hell is when the depths come to you with all that you no longer are or are not yet capable of." (Page 244).
Prima materia is also called a neglected, rejected, and abandoned "orphan." The original "chaos" or "sea" constitutes all matter. Such self-organizing complexity is the beginning and end of transformation and renewal. This is the creative process Jung spoke about.
…a creative process, so far as we are able to follow it at all, consists in the unconscious activation of an archetypal image, and in elaborating and shaping this image into the finished work by giving it shape, the artist translates it into the language of the present and so makes it possible for us to find our way back to the deepest springs of life (CW 15, P. 82)
Edinger (1978) compares the problem of discovering the prima materia to the problem of finding what to work on in psychotherapy. He gives some hints:
(1) It is ubiquitous, to be found everywhere, before the eyes of all. This means that psychotherapeutic material likewise is everywhere, in all the ordinary, everyday occurrences of life. Moods and petty personal reactions of all kinds are suitable matter to be worked on by the therapeutic process.
(2) Although of great inward value, the primal materia is vile in outer appearance and therefore despised, rejected or thrown on the dung heap. The prima materia is treated like the suffering servant in Isaiah. Psychologically, this means that the primal materia is found in the shadow, that part of the personality which is considered most despicable. Those aspects of ourselves most painful and most humiliating are the very ones to be brought forward and worked on.
(3) It appears as multiplicity, "has as many names as there are things," but at the same time is one. This feature corresponds to the fact that initially psychotherapy makes one aware of his/her fragmented, disjointed condition. Very gradually these warring fragments are discovered to be differing aspects of ones underlying unity. It is as though one sees the fingers of a hand touching a table at first only in two dimensions, as separate unconnected fingers. With three-dimensional vision, the fingers are seen as part of a larger unity, the hand.
(4) The prima materia is undifferentiated, without definite boundaries, limits or form. This corresponds to a certain experience of the unconscious which exposes the ego to the infinite. ...It may evoke the terror of dissolution or the awe of eternity. It provides a glimpse of the pleroma. ...the chaos prior to the operation of the World-creating Logos. It is the fear of the boundless that often leads one to be content with the ego-limits he has rather than risk falling into the infinite by attempting to enlarge them.
The different operations to transform the prima materia follow as the natural consequences of finding the material to work on. The imagery associated with these operations is profuse and draws from ancestors (genetic memory), myth, religion and folklore. The symbols for all these imagery-systems comes from the collective unconscious.
Dying to be Heard
Jung implies we cannot get rid of the unconscious and its intuitions, which are rooted in our instinctual, reflexive, and parasympathic systems. But we can go from being 'herd' to being heard. We can engage in intentional multisensory dialogue with our depths. It arises from the primordial ground of the subquantal level of every quantum particle of our being. Jung likened Hades to a black hole without an outlet.
When we enter our genealogy we enter the realm of the dead, so we must find a way to reconcile that metaphor and our surrender to the process. Jung cautions, "Under certain conditions living people can descend into Hades, but it does not agree with them. One must really be dead to go there, for it is the dark land where the dead are imprisoned; and this is a place from which this marvellous substance comes." (ETH, Pages 215-223.)
In Arcadia, the ancients sought out the Necromanteion or "Oracle of Death" where they communed with their dead ancestors in a psychoactive ritual. Though there were many oracles of the dead, the Necromanteion of Ephyra was the most important. Herodotus recounts that Periander, sent emissaries in the 6th century BC to ask questions of his dead wife, Melissa. In his nekyia, Odysseus enters Hades through the Necromanteion.
We can listen to the voice that has no words --the voice of the silence. We're all connected via the interactive sea of energy that connects us to everyone and everything in our world. It seems Hades presides over our descents and perhaps our descendancy. According to Jung, "To journey to Hell means to become Hell oneself. It is all frightfully muddled and interwoven." (Liber Novus, Page 240.)
Caves always had their own gods. The underworld with its narrow jagged gaps is essential to many spiritual worldviews. We can imagine that a notion of hell arose early in mankind's emerging consciousness somewhere between the darkness of imagination and physical mazes of deep caverns that seem like uterine spaces or living, breathing internal cavities that snake for miles. Caves -- the original temples -- were worshipped and feared as the center of the earth with miles of crumbling tunnels and steep precipitous drop offs multiple-stories deep.
Mankind has journeyed deep into them and used these dark and treacherous labyrinths that tortured and twisting passages with seemingly bottomless pits, to live, to hide, to explore, and to worship with pilgrimage, art, and rituals. But all who descend into the underworld do so at their own risk. Initiatory passageways and vertical shafts have dangerous hand and footholds etched in lava and ice, and studded with magical curtains, spires, crystals and inscriptions.
In some sense, hell was our ancient dwelling place to which we returned upon death -- a metaphorical regression to the primal epoch. With its flickering fires, smoky caverns, and hidden dangers the cave gave rise to mythic and archetypal recollections and dreams of ancestral spirits. The dreamworld became a stone cold abyss and the primordial underworld was born.
The first proto-images appeared in cave art. Men and women impulsively desired to participate in the potential transforming powers of the "insides." Hades, the devouring one, could be contacted in the dark cavern of fathomless psychic force. The dismal labyrinthine complexity gave rise to the original trope. The soul is within, below, buried deep in self as within earth itself. This is the archetypal sleepworld of Hypnos and Thanatos.
If we accept that death is not the enemy but a doorway we can rest naturally in what is. The great invitation is to accept death. Lao Tzu invites us to give up the fight against death so existence is revealed as sublime relaxation. Each moment becomes a surrender, one of ‘touch and let go.’ We must not hide, but rather be open to all aspects of being. In sublime relaxation, shadow issues can emerge, some even hidden by our nondual language and cliches. All is grist for death’s mill.
In archetypal psychology, soul remains close to death -- disease, disorder, collapse. We die to the literal and concrete world of the senses for the sake of soul. Hillman imagined Hades right alongside daily life, the invisible made visible in psychic events, soul process, and revelatory meaning. It is the gaps between breaths. The dreamworld is also the underworld of Hades. From Hades perspective we are our images. By "letting be," we can allow dream images to speak for themselves, rather than forcing them toward interpretations for mundane life.
The underworld is the primal void -- the prima materia. Underworld is psyche. It is not a place but a hidden domain of liminal experience -- a dimension not available in itself. Our concern with Hades here regarding our ancestors is the spontaneous image-making of the soul. The 'ground' is a fathomless depth.
We experience dread and resistance when we delve too deeply inside ourselves -- this is the devouring darkness of death and desolation before rebirth. Death is at the heart of alchemy. We can understand the "death experience" metaphorically and psychologically, but we still must all confront it with naked awareness without the symbols and images born of nature's own workings.
Some families never forget who they are, while others struggle with a few fragments that don't seem to fit together. Either way it's a puzzle with some missing or damaged pieces. We must keep the big picture in mind to understand the smaller parts. We all have the ability to recognize and seize the deep sense of mystery that lives in our own lives.
Undoubtedly, there is a sacred dimension to the genealogical process, more so when we do the work ourselves. In our first attempts we cross the threshold of initiation. Jung suggests, "But if you know what the dead demand, temptation will become the wellspring of your best work, indeed of the work of salvation." (Liber Novus, Page 278, Footnote 188.)
"From the middle of life, only he who is willing to die with life remains living. Since what takes place in the secret hour of life's midday is the reversal of the parabola, the birth of death ..." ~Carl Jung; Soul and death, CW 8, §800.
History, Memories, Stories
With genealogy we dig below the basement of our personal unconscious to find what lies below that still haunts or calls for us. What has been buried in the past yet is not gone nor dormant because it is part of the our psychophysical being. Our adaptive survival styles can distort identity in adult life.
To reclaim our ancestral soul we suffer through the anguish of the unknown as well as the burdens of what we do find from which we wished to protect ourselves. There is shock trauma and developmental trauma. We find things that are great and things that are tragic. Genealogy gives and it takes.
The Trail That Never Ends
Such discoveries have been popularized by media: “Finding Your Roots”‘, "Who Do You Think You Are", “Roots of Faith Ancestry”, "Genealogy Roadshow", and others. Genealogy is touted as the second biggest hobby in America. People want to reconnect with their ancestral homeland to know where and how they lived. http://b.treelines.com/in-defense-of-genealogy-as-a-hobby/
Finding Yourself
Many feel compelled to take on the project. Online genealogy sites are some of the most popular on the web. It's a thrill extending the family heritage back a few more generations or discovering that your family is related to royalty, or allegedly to the legends of history. The progenitor of the clan lies at the root of the male line.
Bi-Lateral Descent
Our own bi-lateral descent includes both of our parents. But each female in our direct descent has her own bi-lateral lines, as well. We honor not only our paternal surname (patrilineal descent), but all those grandmothers whose families keep our lines invigorated with new blood.
New surnames enter the tree with each wife. These are not easy lines to follow, retrieve, or draw without the aid of computers. Maiden names often present brick walls difficult to push beyond. Pedigrees show both family-as-child and their families-as-parent.
Algorithm Genealogy
Rather than mere family trees, massive genealogical sites with billions of records have been likened to Amazonian forests of family connections of blood ties and marriage bridges. Genealogists who explore the family tree information, weeding out false or duplicate information, call themselves "forest rangers." When genealogies were digitally archived it became possible for algorithms to find lines of descent that included both male and female progenitors.
Thus, genealogy reclaimed the realm of the Mothers -- a return of the Feminine to genealogy where female lines are equally valued. Algorithm genealogy finds paths of mixed fathers and mothers to particular ancestors that might not otherwise be discernible. This is particularly so for ancient and legendary ancestors. Usually, the term “Descents from Antiquity” refers to modern efforts to find plausible lines of descent. However, it can also include traditional descents that have varying degrees of reliability.
Matrilineal descent is called a "mother line". An individual is considered to belong to the same descent group as her or his mother. The matriline of historical nobility was also called her or his enatic or uterine ancestry (corresponding to the patrilineal "agnatic" ancestry).
Family Relationships
Algorithms can find all family relationships. Data structure represents a genealogy or genealogies as a stand-alone date structure. Genealogy is considered as a finite, connected graph that enables storage of the minimum of family relationships and recognition of them and others like 'ancestor-descendant', 'sibs', 'twins', 'cousins', 'uncle/aunt-nephew/niece' or 'spouses'. Algorithms for genealogy retrieval are classified as vertical, lateral and parallel. In certain combinations, vertical and lateral algorithms become capable of finding any relatives, no matter if they are in a direct 'ancestor-descendant' relationship or if they have only the same ancestor(s). http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8366693
Like miners for meaning we tunnel through our history encountering riches and danger below. But genealogy also has its own myths. As we proceed, we dig deeper into our multigenerational study. Like ancient navigators, we have to course correct along the way for errors, forgeries, and fictitious ancestors. Genealogy is not a mash-up of metaphysical percepts, concepts, and pareidolia. We begin with percepts (i.e. the senses, from which we initially
know reality), not concepts (i.e. what we imagine the world to be or, commonly, wish it would become).
Re-Cording the Ties that Bind
Genealogy directly manifests the psyche as a transpersonal field that informs our personality and sustains us. Each ancestral couple embodies psychic polarities from exaltation to the conscious and unconscious suffering that brings positive developments such as enhanced empathy, wisdom, or spiritual development. Speaking of the opposites in his 1925 Seminar (p.85), Jung says, "Life is never so beautiful as when surrounded by death."
As we engage our ancestors we engage the numinous. We discover our mythic roots, the injured feminine, sacrifice, and other powerful archetypal forces of the cauldron of generativity -- the central theme of humanity. Sexuality, love, and spirituality play through the epic ancestral drama, uniting the opposites, again and again, shaping who we are and weaving patterns of conditioning and potential wholeness.
Genealogy can help us recapture that sense through creating a sacred space that allows us to reconnect in a direct way with our ancient past. Encounters with our ancestors, historical and imaginal, are encounters with soul. The imaginal becomes virtual and probabilistic vision. We don't need to split our subjective self from the the objective perception of the world. Perhaps "the view from death" enriches and enlarges the improbability of the gift of life. More than 10,000 ancestors are dreaming of you.
Feel It, Reveal It, Heal It
The emotional brain reacts the same way to objective or virtual information. In fact, the later may prompt a stronger brain response. Even when subliminal, the brain produces a global response to the unexpected, but it is more recognition than complex cognition. The neural correlates of conscious, global processing across the entire network are also generated during unconscious activity...even when something is perceived unconsciously, or subliminally, leading to activity over the entire network. We can speculate that waves of virtual particles might indeed create real effects.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28444-leading-theory-of-consciousness-rocked-by-oddball-study/
Physics is finding that the arrow of time does not seem to follow the standard laws of physics. Now, physicists are unmasking a more fundamental source for the arrow of time: Energy disperses and objects equilibrate, they say, because of the way elementary particles become intertwined when they interact — a strange effect called “quantum entanglement.”
The Crucible of Love
It is well-known to clergy and psychologists that on their deathbeds, people don't wish to discuss God or religion, but their own families. Many are not afraid to die but don't want to leave their living families. They speak and may even call out to their parents, their sons and daughters, or see lost spouses.
Or, we may call on our 'godparents,' those whom we've chosen as nurturing allies, known or unknown, for their inspiration and succor. Hillman noted as we become old we develop character which makes us fit ancestors and mentors. Soul's Code (1997)
We are born into and create our lives in families and families we create. This is where we find meaning, where our purpose becomes clear. There we experience love and first give it, and are hurt, betrayed, or rejected by caregivers and siblings. In this crucible of love we begin asking big spiritual questions to which we come back in the very end. Jung admonishes us, "My friends, it is wise to nourish the soul, otherwise you will breed dragons and devils in your heart." (The Red Book, Page 232)
Those images in the conscious mirror reflect both the material and universal soul, our spiritual essence through a "sympathy," an intelligence of spirit that reflects the animation of the material world and the union of cosmic reality.
Some confess what it feels like to know that they neglected, criticized, abandoned, or engulfed and overwhelmed their children, or that drinking destroyed their family. They lament they were physically or psychologically abusive, or failed to care for those who most needed them. It isn't difficult to understand how such behavior leaves its mark on the future. All seem to know what is missing, and what was deserved by the innocent.
On their deathbeds, people often speak of the love they felt and gave away -- or didn't receive or give, or even known how to offer unconditionally. Love may be imperfect, emotionally unavailable, or entirely missing, or full of rage and trauma -- or uncertain and ambiguous. In the end the meaning of life is concerned only with love -- lost and found. Love is what matters -- perhaps the only thing that matters in the end.
We may hope we've had a gift to give. When the love is imperfect, or a family is destructive, forgiveness can be learned. Our spiritual work as human beings is learning how to love and how to forgive. Most have a simple wish that someone will remember them fondly and that they lived and loved fully, even if they know they have not.
But it's not about fixing, or making, or doing, but being in the presence of the Mystery into which we are born and to which we return with a fully open heart. The Egyptians had a ceremony for weighing the lightness of the heart against the weight of a feather of Ma'at for balance. Thought, memory, and emotion came from the heart. Today we speak of the neurological heart-brain and gut-brain. We might imagine weighing our own hearts for such psychic and emotional balance.
Exploring our family tree helps us explore the depths of love. We never say goodbye to those we hold in our hearts. If we listen with our heart, we make a mindful journey as we wend our way along. We won't know where it is leading. As in physics, the very act of our observation disturbs and alters the whole system through our participation.
Long buried issues come up, are unburied, challenge and lay claim to us somatically, emotionally, mentally, even spiritually. Many develop self-destructive biological processes or behaviors. We may need to reconnect with Death and our own death to reorient ourselves in life and find sanctuary. Doors are opened and closed by the mysterious spirit behind life and death.
Our dreams and the body will tell us. We may come to understand that fate itself rules and as we age we have to give up our own story, our merely personal history, to find peace. We find in some sense the end is in the beginning. Even death may need to feel our love. Death becomes our medicine.
Genealogy has a dry factual basis but the imaginal dimension is also inherent in the self-unfolding dynamics. It helps us create and cultivate an imaginal sacred space where soul and spirit unfold generation after generation. It creates a wealth of energy that we find is a source of wisdom and containment. Inner guidance connects us with source. We awaken from our illusion of separateness by embracing our extended family.
We cross the threshold from the edge of the sacred, into the temenos, moving toward the numinous at the far boundaries of our mythically-rooted lines. As we stay with a family line, working our way up through the children to the parents, we get to "know" them. The sacred makes claims on us as well as offering gifts. It takes the form of personal experience.
Spontaneous fantasies with all kinds of implications will naturally arise in the genealogical process. Jung notes that such play of ideas and impression can be purposeful and valuable. Hillman says we wrestle with our spirits at night.
"The dynamic principle of fantasy is play, a characteristic also of the child, and as such it appears inconsistent with the principle of serious work. But without this playing with fantasy any creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable. It is therefore short-sighted to treat fantasy, on account of its risky or unacceptable nature, as a thing of little worth. (Psychological Types Ch. 1; Page 82).
Resonance Phenomena
Our ancestral deep field is a plenum of personalities and procreation -- a community of virtual beings and sacred space of wholeness. It pulsates with life force and the creative energy of love. We can imagine messages resonating along the many family lines -- waves of vibration that connect with the ancient past like some archaic tin-can and string 'telephone.' Such 'kindling' is an important part of our neurological process. Listening and sounding is interactive.
In The Emerald Tablet, Thoth says, "Send through thy body a wave of vibration, irregular first and regular second, repeating time after time until free. Start the wave force in thy brain center. Direct it in waves from thine head to thy foot."
The recipient then becomes a receiver and, through the process of entrainment, modulates the same frequency and the same waveform in a reversed phase. They become coupled and are no longer distinguishable from one another. In-between two physical systems, entrainment synchronizes one entity to vibrate in an identical way in metaphorical response to the Other.
"The Orphan" Soul
Nature’s ensemble of voices curiously leads to systems of increasing complexity, and hints at a collective intelligence -- the instinctual and the luminous. It may at first come as an emotional flooding or an inundation of fantasies before that massa confusa of primal material differentiates. We may experience loss and grief that things haven't worked out as we might have hoped. Powerful events can triggers such feelings.
It evokes an image of the archetypal "orphan soul" sought by alchemists to create the Philosopher's Stone. Secret fire is the "leaded" fuel that cooks under the surface from the "heat" of awareness -- that cooks it into conscious experience. This calcination is Stage 1 of our spiritual alchemy, which is followed by dissolution (solutio) and separation (coagulatio).
We begin in a state of disintegration, of insensibility, and gradually reach greater awareness. We all have a bit of the disillusioned orphan in us. Some have living parents who were never available or are now emotionally unavailable. We may be alienated but long to belong or connect in a meaningful way. Perhaps we resonate with other orphans in our lines.
The experience of "adult orphans" is often underplayed as we consider the death of our parents 'normal' in adulthood, but it is a condition worthy of attention, and genealogy is one way to address it, to deepen it, to deal with abandonment and loss. Jung says, "When one lives for a long time in great solitude, the silence or the darkness becomes visibly, audibly, and tangibly alive, and the unknown in oneself steps up in an unknown guide."
This is no seance, spiritualism, hallucination, or lunacy, and should not be approached as such. It is not supernatural. This is an involuntary flood of charged emotions arising from the unconscious. Often double binds and hyperarousal lead to emotional flooding -- that ocean of emotion. Much of the trauma is held in the body in structure, soft tissue, and symptoms.
It's All Relative
For example, we may have internalized the traits of one parent, as well as the other parent's loathing of those qualities. If you are overloaded you may feel swamped. You may dream of tsunamis. Such feelings are linked to helplessness, frustration, anger, feeling trapped, remorse, guilt, and self-hate.
Orphans have to learn to not be loyal to their suffering, the abandonment, trauma, and betrayal. But we must be willing to accept our grief and loneliness and let go. It's not just your pain or hurt, but the hurt of humanity in this vastness. We can learn mercy and forgiveness, within our Tree and for ourselves. We may transform from hating and being incensed, to the sweet fragrance of an incense tree that perfumes our sacred space.
Follow the Pain & Fear Deeper
Pain also leads us into liminal space. We can view it as an acronym for "pay attention; integrate now." When we surrender control, something genuinely new can happen. We see beyond our self-interest and security issues. The liminal opens a space for alternative consciousness to emerge.
Furio Jesi suggests the mask of pain and despair counterfeits the reality of death. He cites Dionysus as the God of pain because loss of the past is painful when the truth of the past is not mentioned. Primordial initiation was about the experience of death and rebirth -- change from one state to another, from one Time to another. The death that precedes rebirth is the abandonment of the past, but rebirth includes everything from the past that was and is alive that we don't remember.
Furio Jesi, Mythological material. Myth and anthropology in Central European culture, Einaudi , Turin 1979.
House-Burial
Some cultures wanted their dead so close to home and family, they buried them under their house. In the Neolithic era, the dead "slept" beneath the floor where their kindred continued their activities. The Greeks and Minoans interred loved ones, especially children, in jars buried in the floor. The Dravidians buried the dead in the house so their spirits could be more easily reborn as children of the same family. Poverty is another reason of under home burials.
The Cherokee buried their dead in the floor directly under the place where the person died. Some cultures later removed the bones and venerated them in the house. Sometimes only the soul of the dead is returned to the house after burial elsewhere. We likely wouldn't do so, but if we don't have an urn, we might have file boxes of photos and genealogical research "buried" in the basement or elsewhere, symbolically echoing the ancient sentiment of "housing" the dead. We may house skeletons in the basement of our subconscious.
Even grieving can be a sacred space -- a Grail space where magic can happen. We cannot get rid of the pain until we discern what it has to teach us. Much of our understandable anger is actually disguised and denied sadness, a depression.
We can learn self-compassion to carry our pain more graciously. Meditative dialogues and co-meditation with the ancestors become possible. As we penetrate the unknown we have to tolerate not knowing and maintain trust in the process and sea of people.
We are never experts in this task, as Confucious reminds us: "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance." In 2009, China acknowledged a new Confucianism by publishing the genealogy of the 800-year-old Kong family on a computer database at China's National Library in Beijing.
China is trying to revive its traditional culture, including genealogy. "The Chinese have always been interested in their past -- worship of ancestors is worship of origins." (Heinz 1999:225). Kong Ming, a 33-year-old businessman from Shanghai, began researching his family in 1998. His elderly grandfather dug up the coffin in which he had hidden the family records to escape persecution during the Cultural Revolution. Heinz, Carolyn Brown, Asian Cultural Traditions (Waveland Press, Inc., 1999).
Tian, commonly translated as Heaven or Sky, but philologically meaning the Great One, the Great Whole, is a key concept in Confucianism. "Forming one body with the universe" is a neo-Confucian ideal. As we work, formlessness congeals into form. We arose from that. Such a healing space is naturally therapeutic and traditionally described as "the center of the world."
In our case this archetypal center is the Tree of Life that connects heaven and earth. It realigns us with the Cosmos with a new perspective -- a much larger story. Our personal family tree merges with the collective World Tree. We repeat the cycle of discovering and adding ancestors and the images and symbolism of their lives. We get out of it the transformed energy we put into the process.
In Letters, Vol. I, Jung suggests, "The community is nothing without the individual and if a community consists of individuals that do not fulfill their individual telos, then the community has no telos or a very wrong one" (p. 464). The only thing we need to know is ourselves, the greatest secret, the greatest gnosis.
Pleroma
In Liber Novus, (Pg. 274, Fn 75), Jung notes that life is an energetic process with its own goal. "But every energetic process is in principle irreversible and therefore unequivocally directed toward a goal, and the goal is the state of rest ..." Jung's plenum is a field of universal potential, unbound luminosity and infinite awareness. Space isn't an empty vacuum but characterized as a fullness and creative flow.
Science tells us the ultimate state of rest is the virtual vacuum of absolute space, the Zero Point, zero-phase geometry. It is the groundstate of being and has been likened to the Akashic Field and universal memory by Ervin Lazlo (2007).
This subquantum coherent field is pure information. Rather than linear lines of ancestors, we might think of them metaphorically as superpositions of our deep ancestry -- a superwave "reaching over" with interference peaks, information states with entangled and partly coherent stimulated emissions.
Jung called it the Pleroma, after the Gnostics. The non-dual is beyond all distinctions, a field that is the only reality. "Emptiness is Form, Form is Emptiness." In it thinking and being cease, because the eternal is without qualities. There is no one in it because they would be differentiated from the Pleroma, according to the Red Book. We must watch out for what we believe, but we can entertain many notions.
All These Paths Lead to You
The call to adventure is the call to the future and interiority. Genealogy makes it graphically obvious that many paths lead to the central experience and facilitate the other paths that lead there.
An underground stream runs through the hidden ground of our being. We can meander through the furthest reaches of the transpersonal imagination, purposefully seeking that which remains as-yet-unknown in the depths. It is just a matter of being present with our experience, open to what is found along the way, be it answers or ambiguity.
Mankind has wandered in the fields of reality seeking its true nature since the dawn of time. A fiercely lived life is an artform -- illumination in action, based on discipline, practice and service. The specific “Art” is alchemical, a merger of inner and outer reality in One World. Jung said, "To live what is right and to let what is false die, that is the art of life." (Liber Novus, Pg 274, Footnote 75).
Rootedness
Conscious experiences belong to slipstreams of consciousness, and these streams are part of nature’s process. They can be described in physical and psychological terms as our sacred journey.
Experience is a process rooted in the stream of consciousness and happens “to” a person in that stream of consciousness. Each person is an aspect of nature’s process whose stream can flow forth like a fountainhead to quench and nourish many over the course of time.
Whose Trauma Is It?
Whether your genealogical methods are clinical or intuitive, you face your lineage as an individual. Each ancestor relationship you form is special to you because intuition is never completely conscious. Regardless of our style of genealogy practice, we need to approach recovery of our deep identity with a sense of balance. We want to recover our ancestors, not reinvent them. We want to recontextualize them and reinvigorate that spirit. At some point all family lines fade into historical amnesia.
Trauma can be physical or psycho-emotional impact. We may seek specific trauma recovery while a variety of behavioral, emotional and physical conditions are rooted in unresolved traumatic experiences, whether in real-time crisis or post-event disorder. Anger and hate may be there but so is our inner guidance system, the capacity to love and accept.
Transgenerational Inheritance
Our inheritance from ancestors is both good and burdensome. Their issues become our issues through genetics, epigenetics, and shared trauma. Not only our emotions, but what we eat and breath affect the genes of our descendants. The environment affects up- and down-regulation of gene expression and disease development.
Upregulation and downregulation can also happen as a response to toxins or hormones. An example of upregulation in pregnancy is hormones that cause cells in the uterus to become more sensitive to oxytocin.
Transgenerational integration suggests that trauma can become displaced in time, leading to symptoms and repetition compulsion. Freud saw repetitious compulsions or symptoms as a way of “working through” or exorcising the pain of traumatic events and thoughts. But it is also re-traumatizing. Working through requires some degree of re-living of events as we re-enliven emotional and mental patterns.
Metaphors Be With You
However, we can safely use metaphors rather than the historical dimension. How we know what we know is expressed naturally in metaphor. Images arise as self-generating metaphors -- what is happening and what it's like. Thus, we can dig up our buried sorrow, or release bottled-up anger.
We can express our experiences symbolically. Metaphoric expressions are tied to our unconscious or implicit experiences. They are inherent to our language. Metaphor functions like dreams and symptoms that simultaneously express material from different dynamic, structural, and topographical psychic levels.
With metaphor we can link our experiences across diverse times and situations. Change the root, change the reaction. We treat the figurative language as real. The figures of the subconscious pictures or constructs are treated as real. Resistance is also information from which a metaphor can emerge. Such metaphors are naturally healing.
Lacan reversed Freud's conception: Symptoms help us reorganize our life so we continue to derive a secret enjoyment from something that, on a conscious level, we want to be rid of. We may not really enjoy it, but what is "familiar" from family life, even chaos, is often more comfortable than what is healthy.
Trauma Crosses Generations
Trauma in one generation can be transmitted consciously and unconsciously to later generations. For example, three or more generations can share similar traumas, such as early loss of a parent, and/or early loss of a spouse. They may all share multi-generational denial, repression, triggers, PTSD, unresolved grief and attendant depression.
The contradiction between conscious aversion and unconscious enjoyment actually warps our symbolic-imaginary spacetime, causing the strange tail-chasing, repetitive “orbiting” behavior of all neuroses and obsessive behavior. Our miseries or dreary compulsions conceal,
preserve, and protect a vital and enlivening unconscious dimension. Genealogy and therapy help us unbury these toxic attachments from our genetic tree. Expressive therapies address intergenerational trauma and psychophysical conditions.
There are numerous changes at the physical, neurobiological, emotional, and spiritual levels. There are phases of response after trauma. We can map traumas across our own lives and related others in a timeline revealing personal challenges and stress triggers. For self-care and self-regulation we can make a stress management plan. Some might choose to use expressive or genogram techniques for trauma integration.
Often it is necessary to clarify a vague content by giving it a visible form. This can be done by drawing, painting, or modeling. Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.” (Jung, CW 16, Para 181)
Cross Time Communication
Paradoxically, our most personal past is a telos. This emergent aim or purpose pulls us forward into our deep past through a process in the present. In genealogy, it is one thing to know what to look for and another to know where to look. The red thread passes through the eye of the cosmic needle.
Like Aboriginal song-lines from the Dreamtime, our genealogical lines reveal place names with their own stories. We have to sense our way along, to navigate through the terrain of the unconscious. Such dreaming-tracks cut through the wilderness of the unknown. We catch the rhythm and 'observe' the landscape. By such a path, through sacred movement of the soul we discover our Self, a dynamic emancipation of our life energies and self-actualization.
"Our concepts of space and time have only approximate validity, and there is therefore a wide field for minor and major deviations.
In view of all this, I lend an attentive ear to the strange myths of the psyche, and take a careful look at the varied events that come my way, regardless of whether or not they fit in with my theoretical postulates." (Jung, MDR, Pg. 300)
Reassume the Past
Our ancestors embody our innate unconscious metaphors and archetypal autonomy. Archetypes give form to chaos and intuition. Jung said, "An archetypal content expresses itself, first and foremost, in metaphors." In this sense, genealogy has a transcendent function, concerning the meaning of being in time -- psyche's innate purposiveness, aesthetics, and biocultural evolution.
False Trails
We must watch our conditioned responses directly. As we engage in this Great Work, we encounter merge issues, dead ends, and false trails. We cannot rewrite the past. We must be willing the surrender understanding we thought we had found if it proves fallacious.
We must frame and reframe our pictures of the past as it grows and changes each time we access our genealogy, each time we contemplate it within. In that process we will make many concretizations and assumptions, commit cultural errors, and encounter lacuna we cannot fill with any evidence. The gap in time is also a gulf in mores and ways of life, so be careful making anachronistic personal judgments from today's standpoint.
Hypnoidal Dynamics
We all have our own wounds and our ancestors did, too. The wound healing cycle is an instrument of recovery. Pathological traumatic stress (PTSD) has hypnoidal dynamics indicating unresolved trauma. Fostering resilience with direct suggestion, metaphor, and transpersonal methods that bring healing from beyond the self is another long-term recovery tool. Analytical methods help internal conflict resolution and transformation. Bio-energetics and hands on methods help the physical and energy body.
Because the brain accepts the imaginal as real, changes take place at a physical and mental level. Looking at what lies ahead becomes part of our noncausal interpretation of the past, an emotional movement from darkness to light. We live nested in two levels of personal and transpersonal being. We should be watchful for our own projections and distortions.
We must bear in mind that we do not make projections, rather they happen to us. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 563.
Of course you really don't make projections: they are; it is a mistake when one speaks of making a projection, because in that moment it is no longer a projection, but your own property. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1493.
Ghosts and Spirits. These phenomena are projections from the background of the psyche, autonomous inner images of a subjective nature, obeying no conscious intention, but coming and going at their own volition. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 40
Those wounds teach us something about ourselves that effects a holistic re-patterning. Going through our wound means realizing we will never again be the same once we emerge from this initiatory process. All forms are dissolved in the underground stream, the rushing stream of consciousness, in a baptism or healing immersion in the vast ocean of deep consciousness. We ride the dragon on the backs of our ancestors to the realm of the Unborn, returning to the pure creative energy of the cosmic womb for the mystery of alchemical rebirth.
Going through our wound is a genuine (ego) death experience, as our old self "dies" in the process, while a new, more expansive and empowered human potential is born. Thus, the Grail is not only about birth, it is about catalyzing transformational rebirth into a nonlinear, nonlocal expanded sense of self beyond mere ego inflation. Self-actualization or self-realization implies the stabilizing or grounding of the spiritual fruits of inner exploration. This is gnosis.
Marie-Louise Von Franz, said "the wounded healer IS the archetype of the Self (our wholeness, the God within) and is at the bottom of all genuine healing procedures," resulting in a more open-ended and expansive sense of who we think we are, and who we imagine others are in relation to us. The wound is not only a personal experience, but a doorway, a hyper-dimensional portal into the transpersonal / archetypal realm, which is a higher order (in terms of freedom) of our being.
Self-Compassion
Both future and past operate in the present, symbolizing our as-yet-unlived life potential, including extension into eternity. Anticipation fuels the process, but everything cannot happen at once as we need time to digest it. We tend to overlook the infinitely vast scale of time at every moment. Genealogy helps us keep such insights in sight by softening the boundaries of birth and death in our narrative, exposing us experientially to the unbound sweep of deep time.
We are neither gods nor demons, and neither were our ancestors though we are all filled by archetypal potentials, their archetypal pathologies, and symptoms. Our collective unconscious -- the primary phenomena -- informs the experience of being. Suffering merges with hopeful transcendence. Instead of dissociating, we experience it by creatively collapsing the future-past timeline, reflectively and reflexively interpreting that experience. We remember the past but not the future because of a buildup of correlations between interacting particles. From some perspective there is a single psyche and a single subject that is not acquired through personal experience.
Archetypal Merger
All individual lives are simultaneously participating in the collective unconscious, as graphically depicted in our genealogical charts. Jung links the realization of withinness with the image of the World Mother, Mother Bride, rebirth, and the archetype of vision of what is waiting to be seen and known -- a symbolic within. Our revelations express the aims and instincts of the soul which invites us into the sacred marriage with psychic life. Our story is a living symbol of eternal mystery, personal and collective.
We participate in that Royal Marriage, the telos of Jungian work, when we lovingly hold those opposites, all those couples that metaphorically and literally express the union of personal and archetypal mediators, anima and animus. Authentic and genuine relationship is complimentary.
Genealogy is thus another way to experience and integrate the concept that psyche is matter, and matter is psyche. What is-is, and it is divine. Jung says, "In this deification mystery you make yourself into the vessel, and are a vessel of creation in which the opposites reconcile." As St. Augustine said, "For it is secretly, and in the hidden depths of the spirit, that the soul of man is joined to the word of God, so that they are two in one flesh." This is the marriage of heaven and earth, the eternal and transient.
The divine is a divine couple, the father and mother of souls, who give birth to the divine child in the depth of winter. Jung speaks of the path of soul as a phenomenological path -- the soul lives and knows. This is Gnosis. It is a psychic fact we are born in the divine world to the divine couple. The divine is within the unconscious but autonomous. It gives birth to the divine child, to possibility, the potential of the soul. Our spiritual task is to protect the child.
Sacred Marriage, Sacred Feminine
Perhaps the archetypal appeal of sacred marriage -- the union of alchemical opposites, hierosgamos, or Mysterium Coniunctionis -- is one reason many people become fascinated with royal lines almost to the exclusion of others. Yet it is only the royal lines that have epic historical scope and are hypothetically traceable back to ancient times.
Spiritual marriage recalls the union of archetypal figures in the rebirth mysteries of antiquity.. These are ancient rites of fertility, regeneration, and psychophysical transformation, an archetypal drive inherent in our nature and a primordial mystery of sexuality.
Myths come to life in ways that resonate with our own lives. According to Jung, the deeper mystery of the unifying myth represents the psychological process of "individuation," the "inner marriage" of the opposites within the psyche - masculine/feminine, conscious/unconscious, divine/human - giving birth to the archetype of wholeness.
Naming Our Ancestors
When writing appeared in the 2nd and 3rd millennium BC, “a new concept of creation enters religious thinking: Nothing exists unless it has a name. The name means existence.” “Naming has profound significance in the Old Mesopotamian belief system. The name reveals the essence of the bearer; it also carries magic power . . . What is important to observe here is that the concept of creation has changed, at a certain period in history from being merely the acting out of the mystic force of female fertility to being a conscious act of creation ” by merely expressing “the name”. (Gerda Lerner, 1986)
As preparation for eternity, the ancient Egyptians made a priority not only of preserving the body but also preserving the name of the deceased. The body, a combination of the non-physical ka, ba, name and shadow, was thought to make a person complete in this life and in the next.
So, perhaps in this archaic sense, we complete our ancestors as we recollect and re-member them. Just as archaeologists can only tell so much from digging up artifacts and interpreting archival material, psychologists and genealogists can do no more.
Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood? --Jung
10,000 Paths to the Passed
Each of our ancestors is a gate to our Inner Sanctum, to our soul. Genealogy is the relational mode of understanding. The tale of our genesis is our prima materia and our ultima materia, the unknown and self-knowledge.
In the beginning everything is chaotic, fluid, co-mingled, and undifferentiated. Its alchemical symbol is a 3-headed serpent or dragon, of Sulpher, Mercury, and Salt. This represents the dance of Sun and Moon, King and Queen, the archetypal superpatterns of male and female, and their material offspring. We spring from the soul and remain the child of our ancestors.
In every adult there lurks a child--an eternal child, something that is always becoming, is never completed, and calls for unceasing care, attention, and education. That is the part of the personality which wants to develop and become whole. -C. G. Jung CW 17: 286
First matter gives universe its properties. It organizes into the Elements, (fire, water, air, and earth), which are the building blocks of words, thought-ideas or archetypes. It is liminal, between manifest and unmanifest. It is the spiritualized essence or soul of substance: identity, form, and function oscillating between creation and destruction.
We must go a bit deeper and realize that with the instinct of creation is always connected a destructive something; the creation in its own essence is also destructive. You see that quite clearly in the moment when you check the creative impulse; nothing is more poisonous to the nervous system than a disregarded or checked creative impulse. It even destroys people's organic health. It is dangerous because there is that extraordinary destructive quality in the creative thing. Just because it is the deepest instinct, the deeper power in man, a power which is beyond conscious control, and because it is on the other side the function which creates the greatest value, it is most dangerous to interfere with it.
~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 654.
The main difficulty here is that the eternal ideas have been dragged down from their "supracelestial place" into the biological sphere, and this is somewhat confusing for the trained philosopher and may even come to him as a shock. (Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 559-560).
"The transformation of Mercurius, as prima materia, in the heated, sealed vessel is comparable to cooking the basic instinctive drives in their own affect until their essential fantasy content becomes conscious."
“Instead of arguing with the drives which carry us away, we prefer to cook them and . ask then what they want. . . . That can be discovered by active imagination, or through experimenting in reality, but always with the introverted attitude of observing objectively what the drive really wants.” (Marie von Franz, Alchemy, p. 129)
It is often suggested the prima materia is found in "feces" or lead which is alchemical code for matter or the physical body and what gets shoved down into the unconscious. The first matter is cyclic, contains all the elements, and is the source of the Philosopher's Stone -- the egg or light of Nature; Anima Mundi or Soul of the World.
The alchemical motto Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultuum Lapidem means “Visit the innermost parts of the earth; by setting things right (‘rectifying’), you will find the hidden Stone.”
Jung more or less identified the unconscious with the autonomic nervous system. Such sympathetic identification is integral, interiorized or internalized knowing instead of conceptual knowing: unmediated, direct perception by the body and the emotions and the intellect -- the soul. Emotions are part of the reasoning process itself -- bodily intelligence.
This psychophysical mimesis, or power of imitation, is direct experience by total submergence of the unconscious tendencies of the ancestors. So, we can visit the interior of our own earth, our physical body for the treasure of embedded ancestral memories it has hidden for good or ill.
Disorientation & Suffering.
Like any Great Work, Jung suggests that the opus consists of three parts: insight, endurance, and action. Psychology is needed only in the first part, but in the second and third parts moral strength plays the predominant role.
Working through the invisible loyalties of the family system is just the beginning of our journey back through time, the unconscious, and our genetic history. Epigenetics demonstrates that we inherit our parents' trauma and family secrets. Children of survivors may be born less able to metabolize stress, more susceptible to PTSD, a vulnerability expressed in their molecules, neurons, cells, and genes.
Vicarious Traumatization Burden
Traumas are events that induce intense fear, helplessness, or horror. Dysregulation induced by that trauma becomes a body’s default state in PTSD. Trigger a person with PTSD, and the heart pounds faster, startle reflex is exaggerated, we sweat and the mind races. The amygdala, which detects threats and releases the emotions associated with memories, whirs in overdrive. Meanwhile, hormones and neurotransmitters don’t always flow as they should, leaving the immune system underregulated.
The result can be the kind of over-inflammation associated with chronic disease, including arthritis, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Moreover, agitated nervous systems release adrenaline and catecholamines, both involved in the fight or flight response, unleashing a cascade of events that reinforces the effects of traumatic memories on the brain. This may partially explain why intrusive memories and flashbacks plague people with PTSD. Also, extreme stress and PTSD shorten telomeres—the DNA caps at the end of a chromosome that govern the pace of aging.
Genes & Memes
The dragon's egg of the primordial unconscious or archetypal container signifies the eternal cycle of life, primordial unconsciousness, the unity of opposing forces. Jung said there is no consciousness without discrimination of opposites.
To be whole is to be full of contradictions. The unity never becomes apparent because the opposites within us operate and mingle in various ways and it is their interaction that makes the whole man. The complete human being, the hermaphrodite, is never visible. He is indescribable, always a mystical experience. (Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung - Ostrowski,)
So, the ultima materia means the total recapitulation of the species evolution beginning with conception moved by telos. Julian Huxley argued that evolution moved to the psychosocial realm and DNA was replaced by memory and language inside minds that could understand it, giving evolution a purpose.
The brain is the Tree of Life. If our reptilian brain and brain stem is our internal Tree of Life, then the higher brain and limbic system (with the amygdala) is our Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil. Wisdom of the divine becomes wisdom of the self -- the seed of cosmic consciousness and Immortal Mind. In Hermetic doctrine, a circular relationship exists between mankind and the divine. The cosmos mirrors mankind's need for self-knowledge through recognition.
Serpent's Breath
The serpent in that Tree is its numinous voice, with its active dynamic kundalini -- the Serpent Power, the Secret Fire, the life force or basic animating principle -- the quintessence of matter. Never calling it evil, Genesis 3:1 says, "Now the Serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made."
Our serpentine lines of ancestral descent recursively bite their own tails in the primordial archetype of the Orobouros. “"All human things are a circle” was inscribed on the temple at Athens.
The Hermetic "Holy Grail" was a circular crater or bowl of regeneration described in the fourth treatise of the Corpus Hermeticum. It was a font of immersion symbolizing the constant decay and renewal of all things, present in all Nature. The genealogical Holy Grail is found in royal lines that include the Arthurian legends then trace back to roots in various gods and goddesses.
For the gods, time is primordial and unstructured; for mankind it is historical and linear. In the unconscious if there is any notion of time at all, it is circular, arranging events so they return eternally and can be re-entered through myth, symbol, and ritual with no distinction between self and environment.
Grail symbolism encompasses the womb that always makes children, the horn and cup that serve drink, and the cauldron and bowl that give food. The quest for the Grail comes from these primal facts of life.
The holy bowl -- the cranium, where heaven meets earth -- is where individual souls mix with universal mind in a metaphor of immersive experience, The immersive baptism of wisdom or gnosis means 'living water' that springs up in creativity and illumination -- "the drink of the soul by the sweet stream of wisdom (Sophia)."
What Are They Remembering For Us?
Our history is our collective transgenerational memory. No people can successfully live outside of their memory. Jung tells us that, "Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force." (MDR, Page 277). The past plays one of the most critical roles in Western civilization. but it is so embedded, so obvious that it becomes invisible. The past remains with us as experiences change sperm and eggs.
Genes aren't the cause of most disease; the cause of most disease alters genetic expression. Epigenetics is revealing the biological transmission of molecular memory -- that we can pass down altered responses, emotional trauma, agitated nervous systems, under-regulated immune systems, chronic over-inflammation, and somatic disorders.
Biological Legacy
Ancestral behavior can also mutate single genes. Everybody has a different level of tolerance for alcohol, but some people act very strangely, exhibiting reckless, impulsive, violent, or even dangerous behavior on alcohol. Finnish researchers found that a fairly common mutation in serotonin 2B receptor gene can render some prone to impulsive behavior by nature, sober or under the influence of alcohol. They struggle with self-control or mood disorders.
“One of our main findings was that the HTR2B Q20* predicted alcohol-related risk-behaviors. The HTR2B Q20* carriers demonstrated aggressive out-bursts, got into fights and behaved in an impulsive manner under the influence of alcohol. They were also arrested for driving while under the influence of alcohol more often than the controls."
“The HTR2B Q20* carriers were not alcoholics per se, as measured by average alcohol consumption, and were not diagnosed as alcoholics, but they had a tendency to lose behavioral control while under the influence of alcohol.”
http://www.sciencealert.com/common-genetic-mutation-linked-to-reckless-drunken-behaviour?utm_source=Article&utm_medium=Website&utm_campaign=InArticleReadMore
All cells have a genetic code with information to produce certain proteins to carry out vital processes. Chemical switches can turn genes on or off, or crank them up or down, so the cells know which proteins to produce and in what quantities. These switches or epigenetic tags are altered by environment, bad habits, and experience, passed on to their offspring, and their offspring's offspring.
Sperm and eggs carry genetic memories of parents' health well before conception. Even what grandparents ate and the father's behavior long before conception can influence the child's health in a range from mood disorders to mental illness. They inherit parents' psychic burdens, anxiety, low impulse control. Older people can unconsciously externalizes their traumatized self onto a developing child’s personality. The physical transmission of the horrors of the past is “embodied history.”
Transgenerational trauma is transferred from the first generation of trauma survivors to the second and further generations of offspring of the survivors by complex post-traumatic stress disorder mechanisms. Epigenetics changes the way instructions in the genetic code were translated and carried out by the body.
We are more than our transgenerational wounds. Our essence transcends our identification with history. In healing we are not alone, we trust a path to greater freedom, and feel our relationship to the suffering of our family lineage. We feel lighter when we release the burdens of our own trauma or family history. We can make wider choices and expand our sense of belonging in the world.
The Spent Breath of Millions
We all carry and relive the primordial psyche which is reliving the soul of our ancestors. They may be gone, but primordial psyche remains alive within us, and available for interaction. Some live closer to it than others, but we all have creative, rational, and intuitive faculties. These are rooted in this primordial ground, an unalterable level of creative imagination, primordial unity, and instinctive participation mystique. As Jung says, "But in these days we live by our brains alone and ignore the very definite laws of our body and the instinctive world." (Letters Vol. II, Page 567)
Perhaps the ancestors inform us in their own way. Intuition is information that is received by the mind. But for that information to be useful, it must be analyzed and purposefully acted upon. When integrated we act on those intuitive impulses with wise judgment and confidence. Creative ideas then take shape in manifest form.
Primordial Psyche
Our genealogical lines may all look like good little soldiers lined up in neat succession. But they also have complex, nonlinear and cyclic dimensions among the patterns we can discern. This is the realm of the imaginal -- primordial images or instinctual energy which nevertheless have objective effects.
We consciously and unconsciously mourn the loss of the sacred in our lives to the abyss of evolution and our primordial relationship with Mother Earth. We've forgotten our connection to the dark animal orobouric Great Mother. Mother Nature may be the oldest motif but it is the underlying pattern of symbol-formation that is inherited.
Archetypes & Instincts
That something missing in the lives of so many people isn't found in another's form, it's found in the dark of the unconscious. In Jungian thought, when we search for our "other half" and perhaps for our ancestors, too, we actually seek the integration of the elements of the unconscious psyche. “It is always important to have something to bring into a relationship, and solitude is often the means by which you acquire it” (Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 610, Letters Vol. II.)
As Jung notes, "Whether he understands them or not, man must remain conscious of the world of the archetypes, because in it he is still a part of nature and is connected to his own roots." (Symbols of Transformation, Page 23).
If I speak of the collective unconscious I don't assume it as a principle, I only give a name to the totality of observable facts, i.e., archetypes. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 567
The main difficulty here is that the eternal ideas have been dragged down from their "supracelestial place" into the biological sphere, and this is somewhat confusing for the trained philosopher and may even come to him as a shock. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 559-560
The Platonic "Idea" is in this case no longer intellectual but a psychic, instinctual pattern. Instinctual patterns can be found in human beings too. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 559-560
"Self-reflection, or - what comes to the same thing - the urge to individuation, gathers together what is scattered and multifarious and exalts it to the original of the One, the Primordial Man. In this way our existence as separate beings, our former ego nature, is abolished, the circle of consciousness is widened, and because the paradoxes have been made conscious, the sources of conflict are dried up." ("Transformation Symbolism in the Mass", CW 11, para. 401).
Inherent Nature of Man
Jung thought the "primordial images" are those expressed in the earliest life-history of the human species. They grow out of the rudimentary nature of the psyche in its pre-conscious form. These basic layers of the psyche spontaneously recur in modern psychic phenomena in ever-new forms that vary around certain deeply rooted motifs at the base of consciousness. The generic structural nature of the psyche is unrestricted to collective or group phenomena.
Water is the cosmogonic element by which the self sinks into involuntary immersion in the dimensional abysses. Our pre-historical ancestors have sunk in the Atlantis of the waters of the unconscious. This may be more than symbolic as we now know humanity has gone through a few local and global catastrophic events.
Supervolcanoes, repeated glaciation, meteor, and comet falls, massive sea-rise, and climate change are only preserved in myth and legend, leading to speculation that we have a species-wide amnesia. We have only recently found that our genome contains contributions from at least three other species -- Neanderthal, Denisovan, and another as-yet-unknown hominid.
Life is a thread interwoven with hidden archetypes which remain entangled in our eternal present. We're already in our phenomenological graves. If we can embrace the ancient soul of our ancestors soulfully and creatively, we may engage and fall in love with the sacred again. Wisdom is recognizing patterns in life.
In our own genealogy, we begin to reveal a pattern in which we can locate a felt sense of understanding, a resonance that speaks to us within a myth or traces the path of a wounding through therapy. We can followed the thread of understanding using dreamwork, ritual, or other depth psychological methods, or experience the numinous on some unalterable level that changes us forever.
Genealogy can be our approach and return to the sacred. To understand the living we commune with the dead. We approach the phenomena of the psyche as we do the phenomena of nature. We've unwittingly buried with our ancestors any symbolic or revelatory meaning that would otherwise push its way through from the unconscious.
Modern life has short-circuited our connection with the primeval unconscious resulting in an intolerable rift -- psychic dissociation. This division separates us from the sacred, limiting our capacity to navigate divine corridors of the numinous, relegating us to lives of estrangement, isolation, and alienation.
Potentiality of Meaning
Genealogy makes us think about the nature of time and space, our own deepest nature, and cosmos -- and our relationship to it. Entering our genealogy with a sensitivity to the phenomena that might arise means we are more attuned, more likely to notice when they arise within us and what they call forth.
Genealogy becomes our altar to the sacred -- to the Great
Mystery that surrounds ideas of primordial mind, ancestral and shamanic wisdom, visionary transpersonal experiences, and other numinosum. As we become more keenly attuned to the psychophysical sensations of arising emotions, we become more keenly attuned to our ancestry, wholeness, and deep history. At the informational level, our bones are their bones, our nerve pathways are their nerves, our blood is their blood.
Information Storage & Retrieval
Akash and the Akashic Records have been linked to primordial informational fields. Even Tesla says, “All perceptible matter comes from a primary substance, or tenuity beyond conception, filling all space, the Akasha or luminiferous ether, which is acted upon by the life giving Prana or creative force, calling into existence, in never ending cycles, all things and phenomena.” (Man’s Greatest Achievement, 1907)
Radical new proposals from physics are arising for vectors of information. Ervin Laszlo has linked it with psi phenomena and an integral theory recognizing the self-organizing interconnection of all things. He bootstraps from the Sanskrit, calling non-local interaction the Akasha Paradigm -- an entangled self-actualizing cosmos not limited to the here and now. We can connect and feel into each other. Laszlo shows the cosmos of the Akasha to be a self-actualizing, self-organizing whole. Each part is in coherence with all others and all parts together create the conditions for the emergence of life and consciousness. (2007; 2014).
http://manifestdestinytriforce.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-akashic-records-what-are-they-do.html
Igor V. Limar (2012) proposes linking synchronicity, correlated mental processes, and quantum entanglement. Mental processes of two different persons correlate not just when the subjects are located at a distance from each other, but also when both persons are alternately (and sequentially, one after the other) located in the same point of space. In this case, there is a time gap between manifestation of mental process in one person and manifestation of mental process in the other person.
NeuroQuantology, Sept. 2012, Vol. 10, Issue 3, Page 489-491.
"A Version of Jung’s Synchronicity in the Event of Correlation of Mental Processes in the Past and the Future: Possible Role of Quantum Entanglement in Quantum Vacuum"
http://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/journal/article/view/477/535
Approaching the Ancestors
We begin our genealogy knowing there is an art of approaching. We may yearn for that which we cannot name; we may find unspeakable secrets. Jung spoke of it poetically, "Take pains to waken the dead. Dig deep mines and throw in sacrificial gifts, so that they reach the dead. Reflect in good heart upon evil, this is the way to the ascent. But before the ascent, everything is night and Hell." (Liber Novus, Page 244).
When you step into your own Hell, never think that you come like one suffering in beauty; or as a proud pariah, but you come like a stupid and curious fool and gaze in wonder at the scraps that have fallen from your table. (Liber Novus, Page 262).
But the deepest Hell is when you realize that Hell is also no Hell, but a cheerful Heaven, not a Heaven in itself, but in this respect a Heaven, and in that respect a Hell. (Liber Novus, Page 244).
Our approach is framed with emotionally dependent perspectives, psychophysical reactions, and perceptual filters.
We become absorbed by the emotions we are feeling. Shifts in neurohormone levels affect our consciousness. They may manifest as interference patterns, psychosomatics or what might be called soma-signficance. Sometimes we "carry on" the maladies of our parents or grandparents within ourselves long after their passing. More than genetic or epigenetic inheritance, perhaps that is one way of keeping them with us.
Soma-Significance
Our bodies are simply connected with an intuitive sense of meaning, in all its implications and possibilities. Our structure encodes the recent and deep past. The physical and its significance are in no way separate but two aspects of a non-dual reality. So, some arising emotions may 'belong' to us while others arise from an empathic identification with our ancestors, or even fusions of their energies. They may appear in the pre-sensory, sensory elements and images in our dreams.
Proprioception is how we perceive ourselves physically -- our own individual orientation, moment to moment. It is how we grasp or sense of the relative position of neighboring parts of the body and strength of effort being employed in movement.
Sensory information contributes to the sense of position of self and movement.
Expressing emotions amplifies them. So we can also unlock significance by moving intuitively, by "letting go," and seeing how that feels and what it brings up. That movement itself is a primal image that communicates information not only to our senses but our entire being. It helps us sense stimuli arising within the body regarding position, motion, and equilibrium.
Contemplation of our family tree provokes reflection on our destiny. We look to the beginning to reveal the end, since like a hologram or fractal each part reveals the whole. The initial condition is archetypal. This alchemy of multigenerational marriage bridges has come down to us in the present -- as our unique embodied being. Jung cautions that, "Individuals who believe they are masters of their fate are as a rule the slaves of destiny." (Letters Vol. II, P. 520-523)
Connection to Source is the basis of creation, which manifests something unique from formless nothing. In our mundane existence we can lose sight of the wonder of life. Genealogy manifests the marriage of matter and psyche. Our family tree is a forest doubling in numbers each generation we go back.
Those who have passed are often passed over. Recognizing them, we recognize the reality of the psyche. We contain multitudes. By the medieval period, they number in the thousands, and tens and hundreds of thousands. They outnumber themselves, leading to the phenomenon of 'pedigree collapse,' when ancestors repeat in multiple lines of our descent. Collectively, they are nevertheless our particular way of descending into the cosmos and life and carrying it forward.
Increasing knowledge of self can come by knowing the Others within and renewing ruptured relationships. We can draw an analogy between the ascending and descending pathways of our psychobiology and genealogy. Emotions have bodily effects.
"Threshold events" occur when information that was formerly profoundly unconscious arises within our somatic, emotional, mental, or spiritual perceptions. Once we can locate sensations in the body, we can get a metaphor for what that experience is "like," engaging our imaginal faculty.
Multiple streams of consciousness can participate in one perspective that frees us of our amnesia. Somato-sensory pathways are information channels. The somatosensory system is the part of the sensory system concerned with the conscious perception of touch, pressure, pain, temperature, position, movement, and vibration, which arise from the muscles, joints, skin, and fascia. Self-organizing systems of mind-body communication across all levels from the cellular-genetic to the psychosocial and behavioral affect our psychobiology and natural or spontaneous healing.
It isn't about belief but directing our awareness to a different transderivational level of the system. Richness of interactions allows systems as a whole to undergo spontaneous self-organization and reorganization at all levels. We emphasize the need to deal with illness at formative levels, i.e., at the organism's initial conditions -- perinatal states, as suggested by Grof, Tart, and Mindell. At subtle levels outer structure is only a passing reflection of this continuing deep inner evolution.
An incoming communication we cannot make any sense of whatsoever is an integral part of processing language, and of attaching meaning to communication. How we ask the question determines the information we get. For example, we can create association rather than dissociation.
One approach is to drop into the body and get a sensation for where a feeling is, following it around, if necessary. Sensory responses are evoked potentials. When we detect a response we have a place to begin noticing, remembering, and processing. At the threshold level we have a 50-50 chance of detecting our response as attention or distraction. We may feel it weakly or even wonder if we felt it at all. This way we can reactivate pretty much any feeling we've ever had or that lives in us with a new level of sensation and connection in the present. We become aware of issues by their somatic, energetic, and emotional components.
"Here, here's where we live
Here is a sea, my family
We'll always be young as we've ever been
Death will not part us again nearer to heaven than
10,000 ancestors who dream of me
Well I hear you dreaming of me
Yeah sometimes, dream of me!"
The Albatross, (Rickie Lee Jones/Leo Kottke/John Leftwich)
Exploring the unconscious through genealogy or psychogenealogy is a healing process, an uplifting engagement that is foundational to self-realization. We are no longer relegated to a single contemporary place and time. The ancestors remained an important part of daily life not so long ago, and remain so for many indigenous societies.
We Are Highly Improbable
Scientists have calculated that each unique individual is highly improbable -- apparently a rather miraculous 400 trillion to one chance. The odds of us existing, 1:400 trillion, are virtually zero. Conversely, by the 40th generation we have over a trillion ancestors. We have to consider the odds of our parents meeting relative to the number of people on Earth. Then consider the odds of contact leading further in competition with all the others we meet.
The probability dwindles of a long-term relationship and reproduction, the right sperm and egg combining, and finally the probabilities of each of our trillion+ ancestors successfully mating with all the variables of genetics that make up the chain of those all those ancestors -- the Tree of Life of perfect eternal fruits. Jung notes obviously that, "Living matter is a mystery which is beyond our understanding, if only for the reason that we ourselves consist of living matter."
You are a virtual miracle, which is simply an event so improbable it is unlikely to occur. So each life is unique and precious to the nth degree as the result of the cumulative process of increasing information. Even Jung might be challenged to call it a fortuitous series of synchronicities. We are an emergent phenomenon. There are mere chance occurrences as well as synchronicity. So, another model is self-organizing chaos in multiple systems.
Field, Form & Fate
Self-organization is the structure of creation -- a process where pattern emerges at the global (collective) level through interactions among the components of the system at the individual level. These interactions explicitly specify the global pattern. We are self-similar to our predecessors and all their reiterations. In the vernacular of chaos theory, we are “strange attractors” or patterns of order within chaos, which never exactly repeat themselves. An observer can never predict exactly what will happen, yet we display a quality of orderliness which hints at underlying “laws not yet discovered.”
As times change so do our metaphors, psychological and otherwise. Self-organization, chaos, and complexity are the basis of the new biology, but it strains the imagination to consider it operating transgenerationally. We might consider the overall effect as a transgenerational field effect -- a relationship of archetypal fields within fields. Memories are accumulating affecting the soul.
Yet here we are, unpredictable though it may be. Souls extend from other souls. Order emerges at the edge of chaos and we are that leading edge of our descent. Our life somehow dances into being. And this is precisely the Mystery of our being, formed by historical, psychosocial, and genetic forces. We are active psychophysical elements of the entire creation. Information and spiritual knowledge is accumulating if we know how to listen deeply with a close attunement to our ancestral and generational themes.
Generational Archetypes
Everything we do starts with feeling and feeling starts in the family. Authors William Strauss and Neil Howe created the Strauss-Howe generational theory. It identifies a recurring generational cycle in the last five centuries of Anglo-American history. It can be explained by four generational archetypes that repeat sequentially in a fixed pattern every 80-100 years. This is the unfixed length of a long human life the ancients called a “saeculum," which can be divided into four "seasons" of approximately 22 years each; these seasons represent youth, rising adulthood, midlife, and elderhood.
Basically, this sociological generational theory describes how the era a person was born into affects the development of their view of the world. Our value systems are shaped in the first decade or so of our lives, by our families, our friends, our communities, significant events and the general era in which we are born.
All cultures are shared unconscious fantasies about how to live life. Traditional cultures viewed time as cyclical, much as the waxing and waning of the moon, the rising and setting of the sun, the birth and death of living creatures, the planting and harvesting of crops, and the seasons of the year. The idea of sacred time as an eternal round and the symbol of the ring or wheel are cross-cultural symbols. There is a repeating cycle in historical generational values. Each 20-year long generation faces similar issues and experiences.
http://www.tomorrowtoday.uk.com/articles/article001_intro_gens.htm
Beyond the modern pop nomenclature of Greatest Generation, Boomers, and Gens X, Y, Millennials, and Post-Millennials ("Homeland Generation"), their 1997 book The Fourth Turning, expands the theory focusing on a pulsating fourfold cycle of generational types and recurring mood eras in American history. Graeme Codrington summarizes the repeating cycle.
Social Cycle Theory
[Each] 80 year period of human history, we start with a crisis period, when society has to stop and deal with an issue that actually changes institutions and structures. Children born during such a time grow up to be like the Silent generation of today. This is followed by an outer directed and driven period of rebuilding, with grand visions and big dreams, giving rise to a Boomer-like generation. This idealistic world cannot be sustained, however, and a period of disillusionment and breaking down follows, with society being reconfigured and adjusted. The children of this era grow up to be like Generation X is today. This era is followed by an inner-directed era, where leaders, institutions and society itself focuses on consolidating and building new foundations, rebuilding institutions and protecting the young. This era gives rise to the type of people who are from the GI generation and the Millennial generation today. Finally, this inner-directed focus cannot be maintained, and a crisis occurs, sparking a new cycle.
If this is correct, then generational theorists are expecting a major crisis to hit global society in the next few years. This is something that will cause society to stop, reconsider and reconstitute itself. http://www.tomorrowtoday.uk.com/articles/article001_intro_gens.htm
While they focus on the history of the United States, including the Colonial era and British antecedents, they also find similar generational trends around the globe from the late Medieval period. They have defined generational archetypes in cohort groups that express the zeitgeist of their times. While such attributions are arguable they can provide a touchstone for certain eras and their collective culture.
http://www.lifecourse.com/about/method/generational-archetypes.html
They group four generations into a series of 80-year cyclic 'turnings' that include an initial 'high', followed by 'awakening,' unraveling,' and 'crisis.' Their archetypes include 'prophet,' 'nomad,' 'hero,' and 'artist' generations. We can think of such themes as collective dreams. Repeating cycles are a common theme for both individuals and whole generations.
As is the generation of leaves, so to of men:
At one time the wind shakes the leaves to the ground
but then the flourishing woods
Gives birth, and the season of spring comes
into existence;
So it is with the generations of men, which
alternately come forth and pass away.
– Homer, The Illiad, Book Six
We might benefit from the generational method in formulating our own Big Picture, as well as broad-stroke insights for our own generation within the pattern. The theory contends that each new generation entering a specific lifestage will redefine that lifestage and change it either subtly or dramatically. As generations clash there is a collision of values, expectations, ambitions, attitudes and behaviors -- the generation gap.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory
Self-Generating Creativity
Prima materia is the "beginning of all," "the abyss," the primary chaotic earth, or principle of existence in general. In his 1941 ETH lecture, Jung describes how many philosophers have sought information about the prima materia from inhabitants of Hades, or in the "habitation of souls." This is the realm of psychic dark matter, what is hidden from view.
This "land of the dead" is also known as "the egg," "Adam's Earth," "Mercurial serpent," "winged dragon," and the "entrance to the West,” "the root of itself," the dark sky of night, the non-created, or eternity. Or, as Jung states, in Liber Novus, "Hell is when the depths come to you with all that you no longer are or are not yet capable of." (Page 244).
Prima materia is also called a neglected, rejected, and abandoned "orphan." The original "chaos" or "sea" constitutes all matter. Such self-organizing complexity is the beginning and end of transformation and renewal. This is the creative process Jung spoke about.
…a creative process, so far as we are able to follow it at all, consists in the unconscious activation of an archetypal image, and in elaborating and shaping this image into the finished work by giving it shape, the artist translates it into the language of the present and so makes it possible for us to find our way back to the deepest springs of life (CW 15, P. 82)
Edinger (1978) compares the problem of discovering the prima materia to the problem of finding what to work on in psychotherapy. He gives some hints:
(1) It is ubiquitous, to be found everywhere, before the eyes of all. This means that psychotherapeutic material likewise is everywhere, in all the ordinary, everyday occurrences of life. Moods and petty personal reactions of all kinds are suitable matter to be worked on by the therapeutic process.
(2) Although of great inward value, the primal materia is vile in outer appearance and therefore despised, rejected or thrown on the dung heap. The prima materia is treated like the suffering servant in Isaiah. Psychologically, this means that the primal materia is found in the shadow, that part of the personality which is considered most despicable. Those aspects of ourselves most painful and most humiliating are the very ones to be brought forward and worked on.
(3) It appears as multiplicity, "has as many names as there are things," but at the same time is one. This feature corresponds to the fact that initially psychotherapy makes one aware of his/her fragmented, disjointed condition. Very gradually these warring fragments are discovered to be differing aspects of ones underlying unity. It is as though one sees the fingers of a hand touching a table at first only in two dimensions, as separate unconnected fingers. With three-dimensional vision, the fingers are seen as part of a larger unity, the hand.
(4) The prima materia is undifferentiated, without definite boundaries, limits or form. This corresponds to a certain experience of the unconscious which exposes the ego to the infinite. ...It may evoke the terror of dissolution or the awe of eternity. It provides a glimpse of the pleroma. ...the chaos prior to the operation of the World-creating Logos. It is the fear of the boundless that often leads one to be content with the ego-limits he has rather than risk falling into the infinite by attempting to enlarge them.
The different operations to transform the prima materia follow as the natural consequences of finding the material to work on. The imagery associated with these operations is profuse and draws from ancestors (genetic memory), myth, religion and folklore. The symbols for all these imagery-systems comes from the collective unconscious.
Dying to be Heard
Jung implies we cannot get rid of the unconscious and its intuitions, which are rooted in our instinctual, reflexive, and parasympathic systems. But we can go from being 'herd' to being heard. We can engage in intentional multisensory dialogue with our depths. It arises from the primordial ground of the subquantal level of every quantum particle of our being. Jung likened Hades to a black hole without an outlet.
When we enter our genealogy we enter the realm of the dead, so we must find a way to reconcile that metaphor and our surrender to the process. Jung cautions, "Under certain conditions living people can descend into Hades, but it does not agree with them. One must really be dead to go there, for it is the dark land where the dead are imprisoned; and this is a place from which this marvellous substance comes." (ETH, Pages 215-223.)
In Arcadia, the ancients sought out the Necromanteion or "Oracle of Death" where they communed with their dead ancestors in a psychoactive ritual. Though there were many oracles of the dead, the Necromanteion of Ephyra was the most important. Herodotus recounts that Periander, sent emissaries in the 6th century BC to ask questions of his dead wife, Melissa. In his nekyia, Odysseus enters Hades through the Necromanteion.
We can listen to the voice that has no words --the voice of the silence. We're all connected via the interactive sea of energy that connects us to everyone and everything in our world. It seems Hades presides over our descents and perhaps our descendancy. According to Jung, "To journey to Hell means to become Hell oneself. It is all frightfully muddled and interwoven." (Liber Novus, Page 240.)
Caves always had their own gods. The underworld with its narrow jagged gaps is essential to many spiritual worldviews. We can imagine that a notion of hell arose early in mankind's emerging consciousness somewhere between the darkness of imagination and physical mazes of deep caverns that seem like uterine spaces or living, breathing internal cavities that snake for miles. Caves -- the original temples -- were worshipped and feared as the center of the earth with miles of crumbling tunnels and steep precipitous drop offs multiple-stories deep.
Mankind has journeyed deep into them and used these dark and treacherous labyrinths that tortured and twisting passages with seemingly bottomless pits, to live, to hide, to explore, and to worship with pilgrimage, art, and rituals. But all who descend into the underworld do so at their own risk. Initiatory passageways and vertical shafts have dangerous hand and footholds etched in lava and ice, and studded with magical curtains, spires, crystals and inscriptions.
In some sense, hell was our ancient dwelling place to which we returned upon death -- a metaphorical regression to the primal epoch. With its flickering fires, smoky caverns, and hidden dangers the cave gave rise to mythic and archetypal recollections and dreams of ancestral spirits. The dreamworld became a stone cold abyss and the primordial underworld was born.
The first proto-images appeared in cave art. Men and women impulsively desired to participate in the potential transforming powers of the "insides." Hades, the devouring one, could be contacted in the dark cavern of fathomless psychic force. The dismal labyrinthine complexity gave rise to the original trope. The soul is within, below, buried deep in self as within earth itself. This is the archetypal sleepworld of Hypnos and Thanatos.
If we accept that death is not the enemy but a doorway we can rest naturally in what is. The great invitation is to accept death. Lao Tzu invites us to give up the fight against death so existence is revealed as sublime relaxation. Each moment becomes a surrender, one of ‘touch and let go.’ We must not hide, but rather be open to all aspects of being. In sublime relaxation, shadow issues can emerge, some even hidden by our nondual language and cliches. All is grist for death’s mill.
In archetypal psychology, soul remains close to death -- disease, disorder, collapse. We die to the literal and concrete world of the senses for the sake of soul. Hillman imagined Hades right alongside daily life, the invisible made visible in psychic events, soul process, and revelatory meaning. It is the gaps between breaths. The dreamworld is also the underworld of Hades. From Hades perspective we are our images. By "letting be," we can allow dream images to speak for themselves, rather than forcing them toward interpretations for mundane life.
The underworld is the primal void -- the prima materia. Underworld is psyche. It is not a place but a hidden domain of liminal experience -- a dimension not available in itself. Our concern with Hades here regarding our ancestors is the spontaneous image-making of the soul. The 'ground' is a fathomless depth.
We experience dread and resistance when we delve too deeply inside ourselves -- this is the devouring darkness of death and desolation before rebirth. Death is at the heart of alchemy. We can understand the "death experience" metaphorically and psychologically, but we still must all confront it with naked awareness without the symbols and images born of nature's own workings.
Some families never forget who they are, while others struggle with a few fragments that don't seem to fit together. Either way it's a puzzle with some missing or damaged pieces. We must keep the big picture in mind to understand the smaller parts. We all have the ability to recognize and seize the deep sense of mystery that lives in our own lives.
Undoubtedly, there is a sacred dimension to the genealogical process, more so when we do the work ourselves. In our first attempts we cross the threshold of initiation. Jung suggests, "But if you know what the dead demand, temptation will become the wellspring of your best work, indeed of the work of salvation." (Liber Novus, Page 278, Footnote 188.)
"From the middle of life, only he who is willing to die with life remains living. Since what takes place in the secret hour of life's midday is the reversal of the parabola, the birth of death ..." ~Carl Jung; Soul and death, CW 8, §800.
History, Memories, Stories
With genealogy we dig below the basement of our personal unconscious to find what lies below that still haunts or calls for us. What has been buried in the past yet is not gone nor dormant because it is part of the our psychophysical being. Our adaptive survival styles can distort identity in adult life.
To reclaim our ancestral soul we suffer through the anguish of the unknown as well as the burdens of what we do find from which we wished to protect ourselves. There is shock trauma and developmental trauma. We find things that are great and things that are tragic. Genealogy gives and it takes.
The Trail That Never Ends
Such discoveries have been popularized by media: “Finding Your Roots”‘, "Who Do You Think You Are", “Roots of Faith Ancestry”, "Genealogy Roadshow", and others. Genealogy is touted as the second biggest hobby in America. People want to reconnect with their ancestral homeland to know where and how they lived. http://b.treelines.com/in-defense-of-genealogy-as-a-hobby/
Finding Yourself
Many feel compelled to take on the project. Online genealogy sites are some of the most popular on the web. It's a thrill extending the family heritage back a few more generations or discovering that your family is related to royalty, or allegedly to the legends of history. The progenitor of the clan lies at the root of the male line.
Bi-Lateral Descent
Our own bi-lateral descent includes both of our parents. But each female in our direct descent has her own bi-lateral lines, as well. We honor not only our paternal surname (patrilineal descent), but all those grandmothers whose families keep our lines invigorated with new blood.
New surnames enter the tree with each wife. These are not easy lines to follow, retrieve, or draw without the aid of computers. Maiden names often present brick walls difficult to push beyond. Pedigrees show both family-as-child and their families-as-parent.
Algorithm Genealogy
Rather than mere family trees, massive genealogical sites with billions of records have been likened to Amazonian forests of family connections of blood ties and marriage bridges. Genealogists who explore the family tree information, weeding out false or duplicate information, call themselves "forest rangers." When genealogies were digitally archived it became possible for algorithms to find lines of descent that included both male and female progenitors.
Thus, genealogy reclaimed the realm of the Mothers -- a return of the Feminine to genealogy where female lines are equally valued. Algorithm genealogy finds paths of mixed fathers and mothers to particular ancestors that might not otherwise be discernible. This is particularly so for ancient and legendary ancestors. Usually, the term “Descents from Antiquity” refers to modern efforts to find plausible lines of descent. However, it can also include traditional descents that have varying degrees of reliability.
Matrilineal descent is called a "mother line". An individual is considered to belong to the same descent group as her or his mother. The matriline of historical nobility was also called her or his enatic or uterine ancestry (corresponding to the patrilineal "agnatic" ancestry).
Family Relationships
Algorithms can find all family relationships. Data structure represents a genealogy or genealogies as a stand-alone date structure. Genealogy is considered as a finite, connected graph that enables storage of the minimum of family relationships and recognition of them and others like 'ancestor-descendant', 'sibs', 'twins', 'cousins', 'uncle/aunt-nephew/niece' or 'spouses'. Algorithms for genealogy retrieval are classified as vertical, lateral and parallel. In certain combinations, vertical and lateral algorithms become capable of finding any relatives, no matter if they are in a direct 'ancestor-descendant' relationship or if they have only the same ancestor(s). http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8366693
Like miners for meaning we tunnel through our history encountering riches and danger below. But genealogy also has its own myths. As we proceed, we dig deeper into our multigenerational study. Like ancient navigators, we have to course correct along the way for errors, forgeries, and fictitious ancestors. Genealogy is not a mash-up of metaphysical percepts, concepts, and pareidolia. We begin with percepts (i.e. the senses, from which we initially
know reality), not concepts (i.e. what we imagine the world to be or, commonly, wish it would become).
Re-Cording the Ties that Bind
Genealogy directly manifests the psyche as a transpersonal field that informs our personality and sustains us. Each ancestral couple embodies psychic polarities from exaltation to the conscious and unconscious suffering that brings positive developments such as enhanced empathy, wisdom, or spiritual development. Speaking of the opposites in his 1925 Seminar (p.85), Jung says, "Life is never so beautiful as when surrounded by death."
As we engage our ancestors we engage the numinous. We discover our mythic roots, the injured feminine, sacrifice, and other powerful archetypal forces of the cauldron of generativity -- the central theme of humanity. Sexuality, love, and spirituality play through the epic ancestral drama, uniting the opposites, again and again, shaping who we are and weaving patterns of conditioning and potential wholeness.
Genealogy can help us recapture that sense through creating a sacred space that allows us to reconnect in a direct way with our ancient past. Encounters with our ancestors, historical and imaginal, are encounters with soul. The imaginal becomes virtual and probabilistic vision. We don't need to split our subjective self from the the objective perception of the world. Perhaps "the view from death" enriches and enlarges the improbability of the gift of life. More than 10,000 ancestors are dreaming of you.
Feel It, Reveal It, Heal It
The emotional brain reacts the same way to objective or virtual information. In fact, the later may prompt a stronger brain response. Even when subliminal, the brain produces a global response to the unexpected, but it is more recognition than complex cognition. The neural correlates of conscious, global processing across the entire network are also generated during unconscious activity...even when something is perceived unconsciously, or subliminally, leading to activity over the entire network. We can speculate that waves of virtual particles might indeed create real effects.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28444-leading-theory-of-consciousness-rocked-by-oddball-study/
Physics is finding that the arrow of time does not seem to follow the standard laws of physics. Now, physicists are unmasking a more fundamental source for the arrow of time: Energy disperses and objects equilibrate, they say, because of the way elementary particles become intertwined when they interact — a strange effect called “quantum entanglement.”
The Crucible of Love
It is well-known to clergy and psychologists that on their deathbeds, people don't wish to discuss God or religion, but their own families. Many are not afraid to die but don't want to leave their living families. They speak and may even call out to their parents, their sons and daughters, or see lost spouses.
Or, we may call on our 'godparents,' those whom we've chosen as nurturing allies, known or unknown, for their inspiration and succor. Hillman noted as we become old we develop character which makes us fit ancestors and mentors. Soul's Code (1997)
We are born into and create our lives in families and families we create. This is where we find meaning, where our purpose becomes clear. There we experience love and first give it, and are hurt, betrayed, or rejected by caregivers and siblings. In this crucible of love we begin asking big spiritual questions to which we come back in the very end. Jung admonishes us, "My friends, it is wise to nourish the soul, otherwise you will breed dragons and devils in your heart." (The Red Book, Page 232)
Those images in the conscious mirror reflect both the material and universal soul, our spiritual essence through a "sympathy," an intelligence of spirit that reflects the animation of the material world and the union of cosmic reality.
Some confess what it feels like to know that they neglected, criticized, abandoned, or engulfed and overwhelmed their children, or that drinking destroyed their family. They lament they were physically or psychologically abusive, or failed to care for those who most needed them. It isn't difficult to understand how such behavior leaves its mark on the future. All seem to know what is missing, and what was deserved by the innocent.
On their deathbeds, people often speak of the love they felt and gave away -- or didn't receive or give, or even known how to offer unconditionally. Love may be imperfect, emotionally unavailable, or entirely missing, or full of rage and trauma -- or uncertain and ambiguous. In the end the meaning of life is concerned only with love -- lost and found. Love is what matters -- perhaps the only thing that matters in the end.
We may hope we've had a gift to give. When the love is imperfect, or a family is destructive, forgiveness can be learned. Our spiritual work as human beings is learning how to love and how to forgive. Most have a simple wish that someone will remember them fondly and that they lived and loved fully, even if they know they have not.
But it's not about fixing, or making, or doing, but being in the presence of the Mystery into which we are born and to which we return with a fully open heart. The Egyptians had a ceremony for weighing the lightness of the heart against the weight of a feather of Ma'at for balance. Thought, memory, and emotion came from the heart. Today we speak of the neurological heart-brain and gut-brain. We might imagine weighing our own hearts for such psychic and emotional balance.
Exploring our family tree helps us explore the depths of love. We never say goodbye to those we hold in our hearts. If we listen with our heart, we make a mindful journey as we wend our way along. We won't know where it is leading. As in physics, the very act of our observation disturbs and alters the whole system through our participation.
Long buried issues come up, are unburied, challenge and lay claim to us somatically, emotionally, mentally, even spiritually. Many develop self-destructive biological processes or behaviors. We may need to reconnect with Death and our own death to reorient ourselves in life and find sanctuary. Doors are opened and closed by the mysterious spirit behind life and death.
Our dreams and the body will tell us. We may come to understand that fate itself rules and as we age we have to give up our own story, our merely personal history, to find peace. We find in some sense the end is in the beginning. Even death may need to feel our love. Death becomes our medicine.
Genealogy has a dry factual basis but the imaginal dimension is also inherent in the self-unfolding dynamics. It helps us create and cultivate an imaginal sacred space where soul and spirit unfold generation after generation. It creates a wealth of energy that we find is a source of wisdom and containment. Inner guidance connects us with source. We awaken from our illusion of separateness by embracing our extended family.
We cross the threshold from the edge of the sacred, into the temenos, moving toward the numinous at the far boundaries of our mythically-rooted lines. As we stay with a family line, working our way up through the children to the parents, we get to "know" them. The sacred makes claims on us as well as offering gifts. It takes the form of personal experience.
Spontaneous fantasies with all kinds of implications will naturally arise in the genealogical process. Jung notes that such play of ideas and impression can be purposeful and valuable. Hillman says we wrestle with our spirits at night.
"The dynamic principle of fantasy is play, a characteristic also of the child, and as such it appears inconsistent with the principle of serious work. But without this playing with fantasy any creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable. It is therefore short-sighted to treat fantasy, on account of its risky or unacceptable nature, as a thing of little worth. (Psychological Types Ch. 1; Page 82).
Resonance Phenomena
Our ancestral deep field is a plenum of personalities and procreation -- a community of virtual beings and sacred space of wholeness. It pulsates with life force and the creative energy of love. We can imagine messages resonating along the many family lines -- waves of vibration that connect with the ancient past like some archaic tin-can and string 'telephone.' Such 'kindling' is an important part of our neurological process. Listening and sounding is interactive.
In The Emerald Tablet, Thoth says, "Send through thy body a wave of vibration, irregular first and regular second, repeating time after time until free. Start the wave force in thy brain center. Direct it in waves from thine head to thy foot."
The recipient then becomes a receiver and, through the process of entrainment, modulates the same frequency and the same waveform in a reversed phase. They become coupled and are no longer distinguishable from one another. In-between two physical systems, entrainment synchronizes one entity to vibrate in an identical way in metaphorical response to the Other.
"The Orphan" Soul
Nature’s ensemble of voices curiously leads to systems of increasing complexity, and hints at a collective intelligence -- the instinctual and the luminous. It may at first come as an emotional flooding or an inundation of fantasies before that massa confusa of primal material differentiates. We may experience loss and grief that things haven't worked out as we might have hoped. Powerful events can triggers such feelings.
It evokes an image of the archetypal "orphan soul" sought by alchemists to create the Philosopher's Stone. Secret fire is the "leaded" fuel that cooks under the surface from the "heat" of awareness -- that cooks it into conscious experience. This calcination is Stage 1 of our spiritual alchemy, which is followed by dissolution (solutio) and separation (coagulatio).
We begin in a state of disintegration, of insensibility, and gradually reach greater awareness. We all have a bit of the disillusioned orphan in us. Some have living parents who were never available or are now emotionally unavailable. We may be alienated but long to belong or connect in a meaningful way. Perhaps we resonate with other orphans in our lines.
The experience of "adult orphans" is often underplayed as we consider the death of our parents 'normal' in adulthood, but it is a condition worthy of attention, and genealogy is one way to address it, to deepen it, to deal with abandonment and loss. Jung says, "When one lives for a long time in great solitude, the silence or the darkness becomes visibly, audibly, and tangibly alive, and the unknown in oneself steps up in an unknown guide."
This is no seance, spiritualism, hallucination, or lunacy, and should not be approached as such. It is not supernatural. This is an involuntary flood of charged emotions arising from the unconscious. Often double binds and hyperarousal lead to emotional flooding -- that ocean of emotion. Much of the trauma is held in the body in structure, soft tissue, and symptoms.
It's All Relative
For example, we may have internalized the traits of one parent, as well as the other parent's loathing of those qualities. If you are overloaded you may feel swamped. You may dream of tsunamis. Such feelings are linked to helplessness, frustration, anger, feeling trapped, remorse, guilt, and self-hate.
Orphans have to learn to not be loyal to their suffering, the abandonment, trauma, and betrayal. But we must be willing to accept our grief and loneliness and let go. It's not just your pain or hurt, but the hurt of humanity in this vastness. We can learn mercy and forgiveness, within our Tree and for ourselves. We may transform from hating and being incensed, to the sweet fragrance of an incense tree that perfumes our sacred space.
Follow the Pain & Fear Deeper
Pain also leads us into liminal space. We can view it as an acronym for "pay attention; integrate now." When we surrender control, something genuinely new can happen. We see beyond our self-interest and security issues. The liminal opens a space for alternative consciousness to emerge.
Furio Jesi suggests the mask of pain and despair counterfeits the reality of death. He cites Dionysus as the God of pain because loss of the past is painful when the truth of the past is not mentioned. Primordial initiation was about the experience of death and rebirth -- change from one state to another, from one Time to another. The death that precedes rebirth is the abandonment of the past, but rebirth includes everything from the past that was and is alive that we don't remember.
Furio Jesi, Mythological material. Myth and anthropology in Central European culture, Einaudi , Turin 1979.
House-Burial
Some cultures wanted their dead so close to home and family, they buried them under their house. In the Neolithic era, the dead "slept" beneath the floor where their kindred continued their activities. The Greeks and Minoans interred loved ones, especially children, in jars buried in the floor. The Dravidians buried the dead in the house so their spirits could be more easily reborn as children of the same family. Poverty is another reason of under home burials.
The Cherokee buried their dead in the floor directly under the place where the person died. Some cultures later removed the bones and venerated them in the house. Sometimes only the soul of the dead is returned to the house after burial elsewhere. We likely wouldn't do so, but if we don't have an urn, we might have file boxes of photos and genealogical research "buried" in the basement or elsewhere, symbolically echoing the ancient sentiment of "housing" the dead. We may house skeletons in the basement of our subconscious.
Even grieving can be a sacred space -- a Grail space where magic can happen. We cannot get rid of the pain until we discern what it has to teach us. Much of our understandable anger is actually disguised and denied sadness, a depression.
We can learn self-compassion to carry our pain more graciously. Meditative dialogues and co-meditation with the ancestors become possible. As we penetrate the unknown we have to tolerate not knowing and maintain trust in the process and sea of people.
We are never experts in this task, as Confucious reminds us: "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance." In 2009, China acknowledged a new Confucianism by publishing the genealogy of the 800-year-old Kong family on a computer database at China's National Library in Beijing.
China is trying to revive its traditional culture, including genealogy. "The Chinese have always been interested in their past -- worship of ancestors is worship of origins." (Heinz 1999:225). Kong Ming, a 33-year-old businessman from Shanghai, began researching his family in 1998. His elderly grandfather dug up the coffin in which he had hidden the family records to escape persecution during the Cultural Revolution. Heinz, Carolyn Brown, Asian Cultural Traditions (Waveland Press, Inc., 1999).
Tian, commonly translated as Heaven or Sky, but philologically meaning the Great One, the Great Whole, is a key concept in Confucianism. "Forming one body with the universe" is a neo-Confucian ideal. As we work, formlessness congeals into form. We arose from that. Such a healing space is naturally therapeutic and traditionally described as "the center of the world."
In our case this archetypal center is the Tree of Life that connects heaven and earth. It realigns us with the Cosmos with a new perspective -- a much larger story. Our personal family tree merges with the collective World Tree. We repeat the cycle of discovering and adding ancestors and the images and symbolism of their lives. We get out of it the transformed energy we put into the process.
In Letters, Vol. I, Jung suggests, "The community is nothing without the individual and if a community consists of individuals that do not fulfill their individual telos, then the community has no telos or a very wrong one" (p. 464). The only thing we need to know is ourselves, the greatest secret, the greatest gnosis.
Pleroma
In Liber Novus, (Pg. 274, Fn 75), Jung notes that life is an energetic process with its own goal. "But every energetic process is in principle irreversible and therefore unequivocally directed toward a goal, and the goal is the state of rest ..." Jung's plenum is a field of universal potential, unbound luminosity and infinite awareness. Space isn't an empty vacuum but characterized as a fullness and creative flow.
Science tells us the ultimate state of rest is the virtual vacuum of absolute space, the Zero Point, zero-phase geometry. It is the groundstate of being and has been likened to the Akashic Field and universal memory by Ervin Lazlo (2007).
This subquantum coherent field is pure information. Rather than linear lines of ancestors, we might think of them metaphorically as superpositions of our deep ancestry -- a superwave "reaching over" with interference peaks, information states with entangled and partly coherent stimulated emissions.
Jung called it the Pleroma, after the Gnostics. The non-dual is beyond all distinctions, a field that is the only reality. "Emptiness is Form, Form is Emptiness." In it thinking and being cease, because the eternal is without qualities. There is no one in it because they would be differentiated from the Pleroma, according to the Red Book. We must watch out for what we believe, but we can entertain many notions.
All These Paths Lead to You
The call to adventure is the call to the future and interiority. Genealogy makes it graphically obvious that many paths lead to the central experience and facilitate the other paths that lead there.
An underground stream runs through the hidden ground of our being. We can meander through the furthest reaches of the transpersonal imagination, purposefully seeking that which remains as-yet-unknown in the depths. It is just a matter of being present with our experience, open to what is found along the way, be it answers or ambiguity.
Mankind has wandered in the fields of reality seeking its true nature since the dawn of time. A fiercely lived life is an artform -- illumination in action, based on discipline, practice and service. The specific “Art” is alchemical, a merger of inner and outer reality in One World. Jung said, "To live what is right and to let what is false die, that is the art of life." (Liber Novus, Pg 274, Footnote 75).
Rootedness
Conscious experiences belong to slipstreams of consciousness, and these streams are part of nature’s process. They can be described in physical and psychological terms as our sacred journey.
Experience is a process rooted in the stream of consciousness and happens “to” a person in that stream of consciousness. Each person is an aspect of nature’s process whose stream can flow forth like a fountainhead to quench and nourish many over the course of time.
Whose Trauma Is It?
Whether your genealogical methods are clinical or intuitive, you face your lineage as an individual. Each ancestor relationship you form is special to you because intuition is never completely conscious. Regardless of our style of genealogy practice, we need to approach recovery of our deep identity with a sense of balance. We want to recover our ancestors, not reinvent them. We want to recontextualize them and reinvigorate that spirit. At some point all family lines fade into historical amnesia.
Trauma can be physical or psycho-emotional impact. We may seek specific trauma recovery while a variety of behavioral, emotional and physical conditions are rooted in unresolved traumatic experiences, whether in real-time crisis or post-event disorder. Anger and hate may be there but so is our inner guidance system, the capacity to love and accept.
Transgenerational Inheritance
Our inheritance from ancestors is both good and burdensome. Their issues become our issues through genetics, epigenetics, and shared trauma. Not only our emotions, but what we eat and breath affect the genes of our descendants. The environment affects up- and down-regulation of gene expression and disease development.
Upregulation and downregulation can also happen as a response to toxins or hormones. An example of upregulation in pregnancy is hormones that cause cells in the uterus to become more sensitive to oxytocin.
Transgenerational integration suggests that trauma can become displaced in time, leading to symptoms and repetition compulsion. Freud saw repetitious compulsions or symptoms as a way of “working through” or exorcising the pain of traumatic events and thoughts. But it is also re-traumatizing. Working through requires some degree of re-living of events as we re-enliven emotional and mental patterns.
Metaphors Be With You
However, we can safely use metaphors rather than the historical dimension. How we know what we know is expressed naturally in metaphor. Images arise as self-generating metaphors -- what is happening and what it's like. Thus, we can dig up our buried sorrow, or release bottled-up anger.
We can express our experiences symbolically. Metaphoric expressions are tied to our unconscious or implicit experiences. They are inherent to our language. Metaphor functions like dreams and symptoms that simultaneously express material from different dynamic, structural, and topographical psychic levels.
With metaphor we can link our experiences across diverse times and situations. Change the root, change the reaction. We treat the figurative language as real. The figures of the subconscious pictures or constructs are treated as real. Resistance is also information from which a metaphor can emerge. Such metaphors are naturally healing.
Lacan reversed Freud's conception: Symptoms help us reorganize our life so we continue to derive a secret enjoyment from something that, on a conscious level, we want to be rid of. We may not really enjoy it, but what is "familiar" from family life, even chaos, is often more comfortable than what is healthy.
Trauma Crosses Generations
Trauma in one generation can be transmitted consciously and unconsciously to later generations. For example, three or more generations can share similar traumas, such as early loss of a parent, and/or early loss of a spouse. They may all share multi-generational denial, repression, triggers, PTSD, unresolved grief and attendant depression.
The contradiction between conscious aversion and unconscious enjoyment actually warps our symbolic-imaginary spacetime, causing the strange tail-chasing, repetitive “orbiting” behavior of all neuroses and obsessive behavior. Our miseries or dreary compulsions conceal,
preserve, and protect a vital and enlivening unconscious dimension. Genealogy and therapy help us unbury these toxic attachments from our genetic tree. Expressive therapies address intergenerational trauma and psychophysical conditions.
There are numerous changes at the physical, neurobiological, emotional, and spiritual levels. There are phases of response after trauma. We can map traumas across our own lives and related others in a timeline revealing personal challenges and stress triggers. For self-care and self-regulation we can make a stress management plan. Some might choose to use expressive or genogram techniques for trauma integration.
Often it is necessary to clarify a vague content by giving it a visible form. This can be done by drawing, painting, or modeling. Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.” (Jung, CW 16, Para 181)
Cross Time Communication
Paradoxically, our most personal past is a telos. This emergent aim or purpose pulls us forward into our deep past through a process in the present. In genealogy, it is one thing to know what to look for and another to know where to look. The red thread passes through the eye of the cosmic needle.
Like Aboriginal song-lines from the Dreamtime, our genealogical lines reveal place names with their own stories. We have to sense our way along, to navigate through the terrain of the unconscious. Such dreaming-tracks cut through the wilderness of the unknown. We catch the rhythm and 'observe' the landscape. By such a path, through sacred movement of the soul we discover our Self, a dynamic emancipation of our life energies and self-actualization.
"Our concepts of space and time have only approximate validity, and there is therefore a wide field for minor and major deviations.
In view of all this, I lend an attentive ear to the strange myths of the psyche, and take a careful look at the varied events that come my way, regardless of whether or not they fit in with my theoretical postulates." (Jung, MDR, Pg. 300)
Reassume the Past
Our ancestors embody our innate unconscious metaphors and archetypal autonomy. Archetypes give form to chaos and intuition. Jung said, "An archetypal content expresses itself, first and foremost, in metaphors." In this sense, genealogy has a transcendent function, concerning the meaning of being in time -- psyche's innate purposiveness, aesthetics, and biocultural evolution.
False Trails
We must watch our conditioned responses directly. As we engage in this Great Work, we encounter merge issues, dead ends, and false trails. We cannot rewrite the past. We must be willing the surrender understanding we thought we had found if it proves fallacious.
We must frame and reframe our pictures of the past as it grows and changes each time we access our genealogy, each time we contemplate it within. In that process we will make many concretizations and assumptions, commit cultural errors, and encounter lacuna we cannot fill with any evidence. The gap in time is also a gulf in mores and ways of life, so be careful making anachronistic personal judgments from today's standpoint.
Hypnoidal Dynamics
We all have our own wounds and our ancestors did, too. The wound healing cycle is an instrument of recovery. Pathological traumatic stress (PTSD) has hypnoidal dynamics indicating unresolved trauma. Fostering resilience with direct suggestion, metaphor, and transpersonal methods that bring healing from beyond the self is another long-term recovery tool. Analytical methods help internal conflict resolution and transformation. Bio-energetics and hands on methods help the physical and energy body.
Because the brain accepts the imaginal as real, changes take place at a physical and mental level. Looking at what lies ahead becomes part of our noncausal interpretation of the past, an emotional movement from darkness to light. We live nested in two levels of personal and transpersonal being. We should be watchful for our own projections and distortions.
We must bear in mind that we do not make projections, rather they happen to us. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 563.
Of course you really don't make projections: they are; it is a mistake when one speaks of making a projection, because in that moment it is no longer a projection, but your own property. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Page 1493.
Ghosts and Spirits. These phenomena are projections from the background of the psyche, autonomous inner images of a subjective nature, obeying no conscious intention, but coming and going at their own volition. ~Carl Jung, Modern Psychology, Vol. 1, Page 40
Those wounds teach us something about ourselves that effects a holistic re-patterning. Going through our wound means realizing we will never again be the same once we emerge from this initiatory process. All forms are dissolved in the underground stream, the rushing stream of consciousness, in a baptism or healing immersion in the vast ocean of deep consciousness. We ride the dragon on the backs of our ancestors to the realm of the Unborn, returning to the pure creative energy of the cosmic womb for the mystery of alchemical rebirth.
Going through our wound is a genuine (ego) death experience, as our old self "dies" in the process, while a new, more expansive and empowered human potential is born. Thus, the Grail is not only about birth, it is about catalyzing transformational rebirth into a nonlinear, nonlocal expanded sense of self beyond mere ego inflation. Self-actualization or self-realization implies the stabilizing or grounding of the spiritual fruits of inner exploration. This is gnosis.
Marie-Louise Von Franz, said "the wounded healer IS the archetype of the Self (our wholeness, the God within) and is at the bottom of all genuine healing procedures," resulting in a more open-ended and expansive sense of who we think we are, and who we imagine others are in relation to us. The wound is not only a personal experience, but a doorway, a hyper-dimensional portal into the transpersonal / archetypal realm, which is a higher order (in terms of freedom) of our being.
Self-Compassion
Both future and past operate in the present, symbolizing our as-yet-unlived life potential, including extension into eternity. Anticipation fuels the process, but everything cannot happen at once as we need time to digest it. We tend to overlook the infinitely vast scale of time at every moment. Genealogy helps us keep such insights in sight by softening the boundaries of birth and death in our narrative, exposing us experientially to the unbound sweep of deep time.
We are neither gods nor demons, and neither were our ancestors though we are all filled by archetypal potentials, their archetypal pathologies, and symptoms. Our collective unconscious -- the primary phenomena -- informs the experience of being. Suffering merges with hopeful transcendence. Instead of dissociating, we experience it by creatively collapsing the future-past timeline, reflectively and reflexively interpreting that experience. We remember the past but not the future because of a buildup of correlations between interacting particles. From some perspective there is a single psyche and a single subject that is not acquired through personal experience.
Archetypal Merger
All individual lives are simultaneously participating in the collective unconscious, as graphically depicted in our genealogical charts. Jung links the realization of withinness with the image of the World Mother, Mother Bride, rebirth, and the archetype of vision of what is waiting to be seen and known -- a symbolic within. Our revelations express the aims and instincts of the soul which invites us into the sacred marriage with psychic life. Our story is a living symbol of eternal mystery, personal and collective.
We participate in that Royal Marriage, the telos of Jungian work, when we lovingly hold those opposites, all those couples that metaphorically and literally express the union of personal and archetypal mediators, anima and animus. Authentic and genuine relationship is complimentary.
Genealogy is thus another way to experience and integrate the concept that psyche is matter, and matter is psyche. What is-is, and it is divine. Jung says, "In this deification mystery you make yourself into the vessel, and are a vessel of creation in which the opposites reconcile." As St. Augustine said, "For it is secretly, and in the hidden depths of the spirit, that the soul of man is joined to the word of God, so that they are two in one flesh." This is the marriage of heaven and earth, the eternal and transient.
The divine is a divine couple, the father and mother of souls, who give birth to the divine child in the depth of winter. Jung speaks of the path of soul as a phenomenological path -- the soul lives and knows. This is Gnosis. It is a psychic fact we are born in the divine world to the divine couple. The divine is within the unconscious but autonomous. It gives birth to the divine child, to possibility, the potential of the soul. Our spiritual task is to protect the child.
Sacred Marriage, Sacred Feminine
Perhaps the archetypal appeal of sacred marriage -- the union of alchemical opposites, hierosgamos, or Mysterium Coniunctionis -- is one reason many people become fascinated with royal lines almost to the exclusion of others. Yet it is only the royal lines that have epic historical scope and are hypothetically traceable back to ancient times.
Spiritual marriage recalls the union of archetypal figures in the rebirth mysteries of antiquity.. These are ancient rites of fertility, regeneration, and psychophysical transformation, an archetypal drive inherent in our nature and a primordial mystery of sexuality.
Myths come to life in ways that resonate with our own lives. According to Jung, the deeper mystery of the unifying myth represents the psychological process of "individuation," the "inner marriage" of the opposites within the psyche - masculine/feminine, conscious/unconscious, divine/human - giving birth to the archetype of wholeness.
Naming Our Ancestors
When writing appeared in the 2nd and 3rd millennium BC, “a new concept of creation enters religious thinking: Nothing exists unless it has a name. The name means existence.” “Naming has profound significance in the Old Mesopotamian belief system. The name reveals the essence of the bearer; it also carries magic power . . . What is important to observe here is that the concept of creation has changed, at a certain period in history from being merely the acting out of the mystic force of female fertility to being a conscious act of creation ” by merely expressing “the name”. (Gerda Lerner, 1986)
As preparation for eternity, the ancient Egyptians made a priority not only of preserving the body but also preserving the name of the deceased. The body, a combination of the non-physical ka, ba, name and shadow, was thought to make a person complete in this life and in the next.
So, perhaps in this archaic sense, we complete our ancestors as we recollect and re-member them. Just as archaeologists can only tell so much from digging up artifacts and interpreting archival material, psychologists and genealogists can do no more.
Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood? --Jung
The Western Lands, William Burroughs
The “Western Lands” of the book’s title come from Egyptian mythology about the afterlife. Supposedly, beyond the Land of the Dead, lies a heavenly Elysium: the Western Lands.
The “Western Lands” of the book’s title come from Egyptian mythology about the afterlife. Supposedly, beyond the Land of the Dead, lies a heavenly Elysium: the Western Lands.
All the Bodies of Adam & Eve
It is human consciousness itself that is the GREAT ARTIFACT OF MAN [Emphasis added]. The making and shaping of consciousness from moment to moment is the supreme artistic task of all individuals. --Marshall McLuhan
It is human consciousness itself that is the GREAT ARTIFACT OF MAN [Emphasis added]. The making and shaping of consciousness from moment to moment is the supreme artistic task of all individuals. --Marshall McLuhan
"Fragment of Nightfall" ~ Ilya Zomb
Throughout history the pomegranate fruit, with innumerable seeds, is identified with the female beginning and fertility -- a universal symbol of regeneration, self renewal, and victory over death. Its flowers are a symbol of love and the fruit - of noble birth and fertility...the vegetative form of the bloodline, whose animal icon is the dragon. Pomegranates, Upon the tree of life hung fruit, “palmettes, pinecones, or pomegranates.”, represents the seeds of life. They are ritually consumed on Rosh Hashana because the pomegranate, with its numerous seeds, symbolizes fruitfulness. Pomegranates also symbolize the mystical experience of entering the "garden of pomegranates", celebrating the royal wedding of Tiphareth and Malkuth. The shape of the shape of the pomegranate influenced that of the royal scepter and [along with the date palm crown] the crown of European kings.
Carl Jung saw a garden of pomegranates when he was near to death:
“I myself was, so it seemed, in the Pardes Rimmonim, the garden of pomegranates, and the wedding of Tifereth with Malchuth was taking place. Or else I was Rabbi Simon ben Jochai, whose wedding in the afterlife was being celebrated. It was the mystic marriage as it appears in the Cabbalistic tradition. I cannot tell you how wonderful it was. I could only think continually, “Now this is the garden of pomegranates! Now this is the marriage of Malchuth with Tifereth!” I do not know exactly what part I played in it. At bottom it was I myself: I was the marriage. And my beatitude was that of a blissful wedding.” (Jung, 1961, p. 294)
Throughout history the pomegranate fruit, with innumerable seeds, is identified with the female beginning and fertility -- a universal symbol of regeneration, self renewal, and victory over death. Its flowers are a symbol of love and the fruit - of noble birth and fertility...the vegetative form of the bloodline, whose animal icon is the dragon. Pomegranates, Upon the tree of life hung fruit, “palmettes, pinecones, or pomegranates.”, represents the seeds of life. They are ritually consumed on Rosh Hashana because the pomegranate, with its numerous seeds, symbolizes fruitfulness. Pomegranates also symbolize the mystical experience of entering the "garden of pomegranates", celebrating the royal wedding of Tiphareth and Malkuth. The shape of the shape of the pomegranate influenced that of the royal scepter and [along with the date palm crown] the crown of European kings.
Carl Jung saw a garden of pomegranates when he was near to death:
“I myself was, so it seemed, in the Pardes Rimmonim, the garden of pomegranates, and the wedding of Tifereth with Malchuth was taking place. Or else I was Rabbi Simon ben Jochai, whose wedding in the afterlife was being celebrated. It was the mystic marriage as it appears in the Cabbalistic tradition. I cannot tell you how wonderful it was. I could only think continually, “Now this is the garden of pomegranates! Now this is the marriage of Malchuth with Tifereth!” I do not know exactly what part I played in it. At bottom it was I myself: I was the marriage. And my beatitude was that of a blissful wedding.” (Jung, 1961, p. 294)
TRANSGENERATIONAL GENEALOGY
The Argument:
After the deconstruction of the postmodern era, we need a reconstruction from the ground up -- a post-postmodern coagulatio to match that solutio. We know the whole circular alchemical opus is contained in the formula "dissolve and coagulate." The desire for meaning coagulates. In coagulatio the self-conscious ego and the transpersonal Self meet and interact. There is really no substitute for drawing one's own lines, engaging, and 'grounding' them with psychogenealogy.
A sense of metaphor is a gnosis rooted in alchemy. Our old self image dissolves as we embrace our larger being. The conscious standpoint expands in self-actualizing to accommodate a proliferation of transpersonal projections emerging from the unconscious together. They exponentially strengthen and enlarge the essence of the contracted ego.
When we form inner relationships we render a transpersonal force personal by incorporating it into our manifest world. They begin to take on form and substance for us. The concretization of psychic forces of coagulatio grounds our self-actualization -- actualizing psychic energies. We bring them back to earth as a living part of our psychophysical nature. All standard procedures of family therapy can be used to amplify the process -- psychodrama, family sculpting, empty chair, roundtables, genogram, etc.
Molecular Memories
Coagulation incites the dreambody to action, churning up the deeper dynamics which are drawn into the imaginal world, into the realm of symbols and archetypes. They manifest there as a whole continuum of dreams, emergent memories, art, and hypnagogic images.
Trends and patterns become evident as the raw prima materia cooks. Arousing our empathy and resistance, what was unconscious or elusive gains solidity. What escaped you before becomes crucial. Family logic and repeating patterns emerge. We imitate or create. Ancestors, with their accomplishments, secrets and shame, begin to take their places as part of our natural world. Image becomes manifestation in a grounded multisensory moment.
A Life of Their Own
Our descent into our genealogy may be shallow or steep, depending on our focus, rate, and capacity to integrate the genealogical material. There are major and minor inroads through which we will travel again and again. Losing and finding repeats in unending cycles. Something we thought we 'got' may later be amplified beyond our previous conception. Or, we suppress or 'forget' important points we once knew about our ancestors and ourselves. Each ancestor becomes a stepping stone. We consolidate and move deeper.
We may realize we've embraced some illusions or that emancipation, amalgamation, and transfiguration cannot be grounded. Dig deeper. Like Orpheus, our extended family narrative is a story of love, loss, descent, failure to restore what has been lost, dismemberment, and transformation. Opening to the ancestors we embrace the individuation process with open arms.
"This is how madness begins, this is madness ... You cannot get conscious of these unconscious facts without giving yourself to them. If you can overcome your fear of the unconscious and can let yourself go down, then these facts take on a life of their own." (Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Pg. 253. Fn. 211)
Heart-Caves
We make the descent into the heart-caves of our ancestors. Joseph Campbell said, "The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek." In MDR, Jung (pg. 88) echoes a similar statement, "My own understanding is the sole treasure I possess, and the greatest. Though infinitely small and fragile in comparison with the powers of darkness, it is still a light, my only light."
We may or may not carry certain ancestral DNA, but we are still psychophysically entangled with them whether it is deliberate or not, open to interaction or not, 'mutual unconscious' or not. We are seemingly knotted together with some ancestors, through our dysfunctions and unconscious style of perception. If the symptom ties together the Real, Imaginary, and Symbolic it is beyond meaning. This might shake up our psychogenealogical assumptions and reinvigorate our practice. Glimmerings of the whole is all that can be expected. Our genealogy grows its own self, like a plant.
Lacan's debatable theory of phenomenological experience
describes mirroring as a stage with a significant symbolic dimension -- a field of radical alterity. Within our genealogical work, we can produce subjective changes at the symbolic level, resulting in imaginal and real effects. Whether such theoretical claims are true or false, changes in subjective attitudes, (including those involving our ancestors), lead to real world changes (natural consequences) in behavior, emotions, thoughts, and spirit.
For Lacan, the symptom (sinthome) is not a call for interpretation, but a preferred mode of "enjoying the unconscious." For example, depression may be an appropriate response to the world we live in, not something to medicate away. We gain personal and historical perspective seeing how our ancestors responded to the unknowns and challenges in their own lives. We don't need answers to the wrong questions but a tolerance for ambiguity, uncertainty, not-knowing and tolerating the terror of not having answers.
Hillman says, it may be easier to talk about these ideas as archetypes, the soul’s relation with death, with body, the world, other souls, love, beauty, sickness, family, ancestors, power, history, time. The gods return to us as archetypes. This may be a move beyond the Collective Unconscious to the World Unconscious.
This can be backed up by Hillman's soul-making approach that a singular interpretation of a dream stops the process cold, in a perhaps erroneous, if resonant idea of what it means. For Hillman, dreams are underworldly (from the viewpoint of death/the dead) commentaries on or critiques of our waking life. We don't need to determine how our dreams help us achieve our goals, as much as discover what the dream-self thinks of those goals.
Hillman refuses to make meaning of dreams, preferring to follow the uncertainty. There is no attempt at a cure or even enrichment. In genealogy the mythic root informs us about human behavior. This happens naturally, unconsciously and doesn't need to be driven by a therapeutic or self-development agenda. It's not about the past, present, or future but about the soul-world. In the Red Book, Jung says, "Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without your understanding their language."
Hillman locates dreams in the mysterious and hidden House of Hades (Pluto), a journey through the Underworld much like Orpheus. He deals with the dream in relation to the soul and death. He considers them messengers of the Underworld and of soul that first dissolve and then transform us. There is inherent multiplicity of perspectives and meaning in the images themselves, rather than a single truth. It is the soul that takes on meaning, rather than an image that reveals meaning to the ego or narrative. The dream remains alive.
We sense that dreams mean well for us, back us up and urge us on, understand us more deeply than we understand ourselves, expand our sensuousness and spirit, continually make up new things to give us … It is like the love of an old man, the usual personal content of love voided by coming death, yet still intense, playful, and tenderly, carefully close.
— James Hillman, The Dream And The Underworld
We might draw an analogy between dreams and our ancestral phenomenology. Awake or asleep, it is the dreaming that is important. If we dream of the ancestors, they may dream of us right back - perhaps, poetically they dream unceasingly. In some sense we are that dream. This catalytic process may be more than a metaphor -- some sort of psychic synchronization or interwovenness, resonance, empathy, intersubjectivity, transference of unconscious material, or even mystic unity.
Modus Vivendi
As in life, when we interact with someone, we effect each other by sharing certain unconscious contents. We may or may not attribute it to the other, but we transcend our individual self with a bridge to the universal, the dynamic tension of opposites -- conscious/ unconscious, body and mind, self and world. The sense of separate selves dissolves in that solutio. The drop merges in the ocean of consciousness.
In the weird world of quantum physics, two linked particles can share a single fate, even when they’re miles apart. Two physicists have mathematically described how this spooky 'entanglement' effect could also bind particles across time. “You can send your quantum state into the future without traversing the middle time,” says lead author S. Jay Olson of Australia’s University of Queensland. Curiously, they plan to use it to encrypt messages.
The metadata coded in our genealogy and genetics can supply such information hidden in the cognitive and emotional unconscious as wave, structure, embodied memory, lineage, and collective wisdom. The body remembers everything. Genetics has even revealed seemingly improbable tales where a biological mother or father does not test positive as the parent of their known biological children.
Unknown to anyone they absorbed a twin in the womb who's DNA is found in their offspring, rather than their own. The parent has two sets of DNA. These chimeras with a vanishing twin, also known as fetal resorption, were undetectable and unimaginable in the last decade.
Even the DNA of former lovers whose cells have colonized another can show up in otherwise unrelated children. Identical and fraternal twins can become chimeras, trading chromosomes in the womb, including from another gender. A sense of destiny may reveal previously unintegrated reality potentials -- a glimpse of the ground or absolute field of being.
Attitudes and beliefs about genealogy are related to general beliefs and spirituality. Naturally, some will approach the psychogenealogical aspects with more purposiveness than others. Thus, it is one thing to a Mormon and another to a Jungian, genealogical societies, new ager, heritage group member, or bloodline zealot. There are religious factors, generational divides, scientific understanding, gender, and ethnicity.
In breezy noetic terms, we could call genealogy a transformative technology for hacking consciousness...but it hacks us back! High-tech tools help us expedite the research and discovery process. Though they take the Spirit World literally, Mormons imagine that dead family members are already doing missionary work "on the other side of the veil." And we participate in that work on "this side of the veil" through genealogy and other means.
Significant knowledge can enlighten our whole being. We can participate with it or remain unconscious of it. Jung said that "Dissolving an image means that you become that image." Jung noted that we are losing contact with our instincts, with the age-old forgotten wisdom stored up in us. The creative force and renewal of cycles are universal. Few forces are as strong in the psyche as genetics, sex and death. Ancestor veneration was one of the first primordial sacred notions to emerge in human culture.
The World Tree is the global genealogical tree. Shamanic initiation requires multiple ascents and descents of the World Tree, a central axis that provides access to the other realms. Each time we gain greater consciousness of the unified reality of the transcendent dimension.
Unified experience relies on the brain's ability to fuse together (or integrate) all that incoming sensory information as a whole. In everyday life, we each must make a descent in order to gain experience, encounter deeper aspects of ourselves, and emerge again, transformed, in the experiential process of initiation.
The Argument:
After the deconstruction of the postmodern era, we need a reconstruction from the ground up -- a post-postmodern coagulatio to match that solutio. We know the whole circular alchemical opus is contained in the formula "dissolve and coagulate." The desire for meaning coagulates. In coagulatio the self-conscious ego and the transpersonal Self meet and interact. There is really no substitute for drawing one's own lines, engaging, and 'grounding' them with psychogenealogy.
A sense of metaphor is a gnosis rooted in alchemy. Our old self image dissolves as we embrace our larger being. The conscious standpoint expands in self-actualizing to accommodate a proliferation of transpersonal projections emerging from the unconscious together. They exponentially strengthen and enlarge the essence of the contracted ego.
When we form inner relationships we render a transpersonal force personal by incorporating it into our manifest world. They begin to take on form and substance for us. The concretization of psychic forces of coagulatio grounds our self-actualization -- actualizing psychic energies. We bring them back to earth as a living part of our psychophysical nature. All standard procedures of family therapy can be used to amplify the process -- psychodrama, family sculpting, empty chair, roundtables, genogram, etc.
Molecular Memories
Coagulation incites the dreambody to action, churning up the deeper dynamics which are drawn into the imaginal world, into the realm of symbols and archetypes. They manifest there as a whole continuum of dreams, emergent memories, art, and hypnagogic images.
Trends and patterns become evident as the raw prima materia cooks. Arousing our empathy and resistance, what was unconscious or elusive gains solidity. What escaped you before becomes crucial. Family logic and repeating patterns emerge. We imitate or create. Ancestors, with their accomplishments, secrets and shame, begin to take their places as part of our natural world. Image becomes manifestation in a grounded multisensory moment.
A Life of Their Own
Our descent into our genealogy may be shallow or steep, depending on our focus, rate, and capacity to integrate the genealogical material. There are major and minor inroads through which we will travel again and again. Losing and finding repeats in unending cycles. Something we thought we 'got' may later be amplified beyond our previous conception. Or, we suppress or 'forget' important points we once knew about our ancestors and ourselves. Each ancestor becomes a stepping stone. We consolidate and move deeper.
We may realize we've embraced some illusions or that emancipation, amalgamation, and transfiguration cannot be grounded. Dig deeper. Like Orpheus, our extended family narrative is a story of love, loss, descent, failure to restore what has been lost, dismemberment, and transformation. Opening to the ancestors we embrace the individuation process with open arms.
"This is how madness begins, this is madness ... You cannot get conscious of these unconscious facts without giving yourself to them. If you can overcome your fear of the unconscious and can let yourself go down, then these facts take on a life of their own." (Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Pg. 253. Fn. 211)
Heart-Caves
We make the descent into the heart-caves of our ancestors. Joseph Campbell said, "The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek." In MDR, Jung (pg. 88) echoes a similar statement, "My own understanding is the sole treasure I possess, and the greatest. Though infinitely small and fragile in comparison with the powers of darkness, it is still a light, my only light."
We may or may not carry certain ancestral DNA, but we are still psychophysically entangled with them whether it is deliberate or not, open to interaction or not, 'mutual unconscious' or not. We are seemingly knotted together with some ancestors, through our dysfunctions and unconscious style of perception. If the symptom ties together the Real, Imaginary, and Symbolic it is beyond meaning. This might shake up our psychogenealogical assumptions and reinvigorate our practice. Glimmerings of the whole is all that can be expected. Our genealogy grows its own self, like a plant.
Lacan's debatable theory of phenomenological experience
describes mirroring as a stage with a significant symbolic dimension -- a field of radical alterity. Within our genealogical work, we can produce subjective changes at the symbolic level, resulting in imaginal and real effects. Whether such theoretical claims are true or false, changes in subjective attitudes, (including those involving our ancestors), lead to real world changes (natural consequences) in behavior, emotions, thoughts, and spirit.
For Lacan, the symptom (sinthome) is not a call for interpretation, but a preferred mode of "enjoying the unconscious." For example, depression may be an appropriate response to the world we live in, not something to medicate away. We gain personal and historical perspective seeing how our ancestors responded to the unknowns and challenges in their own lives. We don't need answers to the wrong questions but a tolerance for ambiguity, uncertainty, not-knowing and tolerating the terror of not having answers.
Hillman says, it may be easier to talk about these ideas as archetypes, the soul’s relation with death, with body, the world, other souls, love, beauty, sickness, family, ancestors, power, history, time. The gods return to us as archetypes. This may be a move beyond the Collective Unconscious to the World Unconscious.
This can be backed up by Hillman's soul-making approach that a singular interpretation of a dream stops the process cold, in a perhaps erroneous, if resonant idea of what it means. For Hillman, dreams are underworldly (from the viewpoint of death/the dead) commentaries on or critiques of our waking life. We don't need to determine how our dreams help us achieve our goals, as much as discover what the dream-self thinks of those goals.
Hillman refuses to make meaning of dreams, preferring to follow the uncertainty. There is no attempt at a cure or even enrichment. In genealogy the mythic root informs us about human behavior. This happens naturally, unconsciously and doesn't need to be driven by a therapeutic or self-development agenda. It's not about the past, present, or future but about the soul-world. In the Red Book, Jung says, "Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without your understanding their language."
Hillman locates dreams in the mysterious and hidden House of Hades (Pluto), a journey through the Underworld much like Orpheus. He deals with the dream in relation to the soul and death. He considers them messengers of the Underworld and of soul that first dissolve and then transform us. There is inherent multiplicity of perspectives and meaning in the images themselves, rather than a single truth. It is the soul that takes on meaning, rather than an image that reveals meaning to the ego or narrative. The dream remains alive.
We sense that dreams mean well for us, back us up and urge us on, understand us more deeply than we understand ourselves, expand our sensuousness and spirit, continually make up new things to give us … It is like the love of an old man, the usual personal content of love voided by coming death, yet still intense, playful, and tenderly, carefully close.
— James Hillman, The Dream And The Underworld
We might draw an analogy between dreams and our ancestral phenomenology. Awake or asleep, it is the dreaming that is important. If we dream of the ancestors, they may dream of us right back - perhaps, poetically they dream unceasingly. In some sense we are that dream. This catalytic process may be more than a metaphor -- some sort of psychic synchronization or interwovenness, resonance, empathy, intersubjectivity, transference of unconscious material, or even mystic unity.
Modus Vivendi
As in life, when we interact with someone, we effect each other by sharing certain unconscious contents. We may or may not attribute it to the other, but we transcend our individual self with a bridge to the universal, the dynamic tension of opposites -- conscious/ unconscious, body and mind, self and world. The sense of separate selves dissolves in that solutio. The drop merges in the ocean of consciousness.
In the weird world of quantum physics, two linked particles can share a single fate, even when they’re miles apart. Two physicists have mathematically described how this spooky 'entanglement' effect could also bind particles across time. “You can send your quantum state into the future without traversing the middle time,” says lead author S. Jay Olson of Australia’s University of Queensland. Curiously, they plan to use it to encrypt messages.
The metadata coded in our genealogy and genetics can supply such information hidden in the cognitive and emotional unconscious as wave, structure, embodied memory, lineage, and collective wisdom. The body remembers everything. Genetics has even revealed seemingly improbable tales where a biological mother or father does not test positive as the parent of their known biological children.
Unknown to anyone they absorbed a twin in the womb who's DNA is found in their offspring, rather than their own. The parent has two sets of DNA. These chimeras with a vanishing twin, also known as fetal resorption, were undetectable and unimaginable in the last decade.
Even the DNA of former lovers whose cells have colonized another can show up in otherwise unrelated children. Identical and fraternal twins can become chimeras, trading chromosomes in the womb, including from another gender. A sense of destiny may reveal previously unintegrated reality potentials -- a glimpse of the ground or absolute field of being.
Attitudes and beliefs about genealogy are related to general beliefs and spirituality. Naturally, some will approach the psychogenealogical aspects with more purposiveness than others. Thus, it is one thing to a Mormon and another to a Jungian, genealogical societies, new ager, heritage group member, or bloodline zealot. There are religious factors, generational divides, scientific understanding, gender, and ethnicity.
In breezy noetic terms, we could call genealogy a transformative technology for hacking consciousness...but it hacks us back! High-tech tools help us expedite the research and discovery process. Though they take the Spirit World literally, Mormons imagine that dead family members are already doing missionary work "on the other side of the veil." And we participate in that work on "this side of the veil" through genealogy and other means.
Significant knowledge can enlighten our whole being. We can participate with it or remain unconscious of it. Jung said that "Dissolving an image means that you become that image." Jung noted that we are losing contact with our instincts, with the age-old forgotten wisdom stored up in us. The creative force and renewal of cycles are universal. Few forces are as strong in the psyche as genetics, sex and death. Ancestor veneration was one of the first primordial sacred notions to emerge in human culture.
The World Tree is the global genealogical tree. Shamanic initiation requires multiple ascents and descents of the World Tree, a central axis that provides access to the other realms. Each time we gain greater consciousness of the unified reality of the transcendent dimension.
Unified experience relies on the brain's ability to fuse together (or integrate) all that incoming sensory information as a whole. In everyday life, we each must make a descent in order to gain experience, encounter deeper aspects of ourselves, and emerge again, transformed, in the experiential process of initiation.
The Conclusion:
Not one title of Christian law is abrogated, but instead we are adding a new one: accepting the lament of the dead. ~Jung, Liber Novus, Page 298, Footnote 187.
One creates inner freedom only through the symbol.
~Carl Jung,The Red Book , Page. 311.
Obviously, all genealogy is transgenerational. So long as our ancestry remains unconscious, we are marginalizing Nature and our nature. Yet, nature encompasses us. Jung notes that dreams are pure nature. He was concerned for our culture if we lost our roots. The same holds true at the personal level. Joseph Campbell declares, "The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are." “A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living.”
Genealogy can be approached as a clinical science but remains more of an art -- a hermeneutic art, a shamanic art or self-initiation, as well as the art of relationship. We thread our way through a labyrinth of light and dark characters. Our charts are catacombs of our forebearers. We might have a different attitude to our lines in the process of discovery than we do once we have fully traced our descent from antiquity.
Subliminal Psychology
Our noble lineage becomes a royal road to ancient ancestors. But such a labyrinth of projections in the charts of a fantasist can produce self-delusion or over-heated zealotry. In the chart of a realist it may remain cold facts. Fabulists embellish, while pragmatists may be dry or stale.
A middle way might be both enlivened and informed. Jung urged, "For the understanding of the unconscious we must see our thoughts as events, as phenomena." (Liber Novus, p. 249) Genealogy mediates between the conscious and unconscious as we struggle to reveal what has so long been hidden. We also gain a reflective vantage point between ourselves and events we perceive. We allow the transcendent function to mold and re-shape us.
He [Philemon] confronted me in an objective manner, and I understood that there is something in me which can say things that I do not know and do not intend, things which may even be directed against me. (Jung, MDR, Page 183)
We Re-Collect
While some people may deeply pursue formal therapy, complex genogram relationships, or workshops, the vast majority will not. Those genealogical explorers will experience a spectrum of spontaneous effects, developing their own theories, interpretations, and directions from their ancestral encounters and revelations, conflated with their own beliefs. It may be, as Jung suggests, that through dreams the ancestors compensate our ego attitudes. Even then, we make subjective and objective observations and interpretations. In the blink of an eye, we can change our feelings about culture and human nature.
How little must the root-ancestors of each of our hoary lines have imagined in their own day for their millions of descendants? Even our "dead end" ancestors had antecedents; we just cannot know them, at least not through history. Genetic genealogy tells us our ancient tribes and ancestral lands, but not the names of any of them or their families. But seeds of knowledge in the head blossom in the fertile soil of the heart. We are formed directly from within.
Our Genesis
Genealogy used to be largely a quest for the father's direct line. But with today's algorithms we can find numerous distaff lines back through the ancestral field into the Heart of the Feminine and our mitochondrial inheritance, shared genetically by all genders. This type of DNA, stored in the cell's "batteries," is inherited from the mother, more or less unchanged. Like Y-DNA, distinct mtDNA lineages, are known as "haplogroups".
Often these matriarchal lines reach further back in time than the paternal line. This is the realm of the mothers and their families brought to the tree -- our gateway into the unconscious. We descend from it, and like Faust, into initiation in this womb of potentiality from which the world is continuously born as the creative flow of the unconscious.
The Distaff Line is an old Craft term, the Mother's Line, as opposed to the Father's Line (called the Spear Line). The Matrilineal bloodline contains the spiritual, true essence of a person's "self", by which the spirits of the departed leave the Unseen world and re-enter into their families on earth. The Old Dame, as the Mother of Creation and the Supreme Being, and the Spinner of Fate, holds the "Distaff" by which she Spins the threads of creation. Since all ‘lines’ or threads begin with her and return to her, the Mother's Line is called the "Distaff Line." Mitochondrial DNA remains strong, persisting in the cells of both sexes longer than nuclear DNA.
The ancients often incorporated images of death in their funeral rites, on mummy cases, the walls of tombs, and death masks. Some might find death photos macabre and yet they are simply a final remembrance of the beloved, which can help us personify that relative.
Imagistically, the dead continue their very long journey in the afterlife. The unconscious believes in the afterlife. Their events become our meaningful experiences -- their actions our ideas and reflections, insights alive with creativity and fantasy. Our persistent search for Who? leads us down and back. Each one strikes a different part of us. From this churning, this dialectical tension, creativity emerges -- a myriad of intoxicating things, including the archetypal images of immortality.
Psychological effects of the genealogical pursuit will be different for everyone, with certain commonalities, such as symptoms, identification, projection, participation mystique, etc.
Without guidelines much of this natural personal process remains unconscious and can be problematical -- individually, in the family, and in genealogical and heritage groups. At a cultural level, we also assimilate the shock of a personal descent from historical figures -- the historical burden. Myths have a vital meaning, linking us with psychic processes and experiences "beyond consciousness in the dark hinterland of the psyche," as Jung notes (CW 9ii, Pg. 154). The collective is mythic and archetypal, while the cosmological is integrative.
The deeper we work into the World Tree the more widely shared the ancestry becomes. Chances are that most individuals seeking their ancestry will not seek treatment but can benefit from a contextualization of those experiences. We can jump to wrong conclusions from too little information. It happens to our beliefs and our cognitive interpretations.
They also will not stop at the Fourth Generation. What distinguishes de facto Transgenerational Genealogy from conventional or Jungian approaches is plunging deeper into the Medieval, legendary, and mythic layers of one's pedigree, rather than just the first few generations. But we can not concentrate only on the royal lines, because many other descents far out number them. Genetically, they have no priority; we may carry none of their genes.
Mythic Genealogy
Emerging from pre-conscious psyche, myths are our deep background and connect us with our instincts. Myth bridges conscious and unconscious cognition with an archaic quality and networks of symbols and imagery. It represents the meaning of being. They help us interpret the world. We need myth because it speaks emotionally of and to the soul, giving meaning to loss and suffering. It may be a painful struggle that reminds us we are very much alive. For example, in Wotan we find the ecstatic experience of fighting as well as the ecstatic joy of death.
English kings claimed descent from Wotan or Odin. Medieval monks pushed Woden’s ancestry back to Troy, then connected the Trojans to the Jewish scriptures and the lost tribe of Dan. They linked the Franks to the kings of Troy and the Merovingian descent from the family of Jesus. The Chronicle of Fredegar (7th century) mentions the legend. It was elaborated in the Liber historiae Francorum (probably 727). Such legends grew over time.
Our genealogy shows us how these stories migrated between cultures over time. We can imagine our descent from Aphrodite herself. Descending through Macedonians and Ptolemaic Egyptians, then Spanish and English nobility, she would be somewhere around a 100th great-grandmother. A pedigree prepared for Philip II of Spain traces his paternal descent from Hercules Lybius, said to have been a son of Dodanim / Rodanim, who is said to have been a great grandson of Noah (Genesis 10:4, 1 Chronicles 1:7).
The confabulations of the Welsh royals made them descendants of Joseph of Arimathea. They included a legendary cycle of Fisher Kings, and culminated in the Grail Cycle and stories of King Arthur's court and the magic of Avalon. Given the right gateway ancestors and royal lineage, all of these lines will show up in the standard genealogies of millions of people.
Many accept their fabulous descent from antiquity as literally true, while scholars know it to be false. But neither view is accurate. Even though confabulated at some point for political purposes, such mythical genealogies linking man to the divine are actually traditional, and considered 'best practice' for eras of history.
Even 'fictious' genealogies and medieval forgeries have a place in our lines, if only to show us how these connections used to be made. Medieval genealogies connecting ancient kings to Adam are pure invention. In the Historia Brittonum, the Welsh monk Nennius (9th century) grafted northern Europeans onto the classical tradition by making them not only descended from Noah, but the brothers of Romulus, legendary founder of Rome.
Modern genealogists want to cut "fictitious" connections, but myth is the DNA of our psyche. That is like killing the root of the tree. This is genealogy without proof, so it must be mythic. How about the mighty Zeus himself, king of the gods? With over 200 offspring, divine and demigods, there are many lines of potential descent. Or, the venerable Isis? She may be 100 - 150 generations back.
We find myth not only at the root of our ancient lines but in each and every life between, in the roles and archetypal patterns that constitute our direct heritage. Jung suggests the dynamic is the same whether we think of them as instincts or gods and goddesses. We can re-enchant our world by saying a prayer to the lords and ladies, by whatever names they wish to be known. In a prayer to all our relations, invisible spirits are made visible. Eternal being lies within each and every one of us.
Grail Bearers
The Holy Grail and the Blood Royal are twin myths. In that myth Arthur is the product of sorcery and rape yet rises to the highest station. Bron and the Fisher Kings link the Grail to the vales of Avalon and the Hidden Stream of the Merovingian Franks.
We must be careful not to misconstrue the Grail for our own purposes, from a medieval retrieval, to spiritual literalism, to reactionary ideologies. We can't take it literally, realizing the genealogies are made up. We certainly can't return to either the politics or religion of a legendary era or new age revisionist theories like "the evil Archons" and proliferating self-styled incarnations of Mary Magdalene. We retain a psychological approach to the subject.
"We have to finish it. We have to carry it on. Even though we don't talk about grails and castles and enchanted maidens, still it is our myth to be completed in our lives. The myth has taken us to exactly the point where modern people are now. Collectively speaking we are stuck at the point where the French poem ends. So if you want a quest, if you want something meaningful for your life, pick up the grail myth where it now lies in you." (Robert Johnson)
When he first finds the Grail Castle, Perceval fails to ask the crucial questions about the origins of evil, the king's wound, and the Grail's meaning. He does get another chance to find wholeness -- to redeem the divine in matter. That doesn't mean he had a cognition of the whole but it is said to be so. Emma Jung and M-L von Franz describe how The Grail is brought to the Old Grail King; the goal of the quest is death to the old king, who 'dies' to the dominant collective consciousness of the day with its one-sided god image and is restored.
Encountering the Grail is an emotional readiness for reflective experience and to receive numinous experience. With the secret words spoken and Perceval’s royal ancestry revealed, the Grail is placed in his care. The Grail disappeared with his death, went back into concealment in the unconscious of each living person, available as an inner guide, the voice of the divine, inviting each of us to our individual completeness.
The genealogical Quest for the Grail shares something in common with the quest for the Philosopher's Stone, which forms itself. The magic of genealogy as the magic of the Stone is in the seeking after it. The Grail is our own transformation.
We are filled by the Grail when we point ourselves toward it. The Grail serves the whole community.
The Philosopher's Stone declares,
"My light, exceeds every light, and my good things are better than all other good things. I give freely and reward the intelligent with joy and gladness, glory, riches, delights; and them that "seek" after me I make to know and understand, and to posses divine things." --Golden Tractates of Hermes
In the search for the stone, it is the work that counts. One should not worry too much about the right way. The right way with the wrong person will never succeed. The wrong way with the right person will eventually right itself, for the stone is found at the crossroads of Heaven and Earth. Those who seek the Stone with true heart, shall be found by the Stone itself.
As someone's descendant we answer the call. Like the Fisher King, we seek the Salmon of Knowledge. The transgenerational group is integrated within the individual. Much of the effect is intrinsic. For Jung, fantasy is an integrative function.
Imaginative expressions of hidden forces appear spontaneously as the direct expression of psychic life, creative and imaginative activity inherent in each and every moment. We meet each wondrous, wild moment by relating to it, not controlling it. We really can't separate the past from the present.
Relationship is created and recreated from what has been and what is yet to be. Our challenge is to claim a place for our own imagination and intellect. We learn to see and bear the pain of seeing and suffering. Healing and wounding alternate in a rhythm echoing a sense of transience and death.
"You will feel me with you even from the Land of the Dead."
Our lineage is our own, personal Mystery Play. You can only enter into your own mysteries. We can allow the phenomena to speak - the multitude of personalities to speak, to be personified. Images are also voices -- messages from the dead. We need a sense of the ancestors. For most, that sense may be more poetic than clinical...the poetry of everyday life as it stretches back into the mists before time.
From the earliest societies to contemporary civilizations, genealogical methods have traced ancestries back to gods, animal totems, and legendary heroes. Originally the oral history narratives of clan or tribe bequeathed the lineage. In ancient Sumeria, Babylon, Egypt, India and China, kings and heads of state claimed their rights to the throne through genealogy. Royal totems include dragon, eagle, lion, wolf, serpent, boar, etc.
The Old Testament recounts the "begats" of Adam, Noah and Abraham, and later the royal bloodline of the House of David. Muslims trace their descent from Muhammed, while the Greeks and Romans and Vikings linked their heritage to the gods. The importance of ancestry to soul appears in Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian genealogies. In Germanic folklore the soul was considered, in certain respects, something inherited.
What is the power of the individual against the voice of the whole people in him? ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 365.
There is essentially no difference between doing genealogy or psychogenealogy, except perhaps the addition of a few evocative techniques. We don't just study it, but interact with it -- with the ancestors. It may be less what we think about it and more its effect on us. Information is naturally excited in the genealogical process as images, sensations, intuitions, synchronicities, insights, and more.
But psychogenealogy attempts to find workable answers when elements embedded in the family memory are now limiting an individual in a particular way.
Individual and collective consciousness is shaped in crucial ways by cognition of collective family experiences. What tends to get passed on is the overwhelming, unbearable, unthinkable. Much of history has been lost, distorted, or blotted out. We can focus on genetics, culture, spirit, and emotion as keys to the ancestral door. We can break our identification with a traumatic or unresolved past and still honor and consciously grieve our ancestors.
Genealogy is a tool for family therapy and self-knowledge. We carry secret stories from before our lifetime. The entire family tree is both a trauma archive and a resource for healing. Yet children raised in difficult circumstances often show enhanced mental flexibility. Much of what is unconscious to us is revealed in our lines. We still have to amplify, work with, interpret, and integrate that information.
We can reframe our relationship with pain, fear, and grief at the familial and ancestral level. Current research on well-being describes two perspectives: the hedonic approach, which focuses on happiness and defines well-being in terms of pleasure attainment and pain avoidance; and the eudaimonic approach, which focuses on meaning and self-realization and defines well-being in terms of the degree to which a person is fully functioning. The later may be more important. Composed of the words "eu" ("good") and "daimōn" ("spirit") it fits the ancestral theme.
This spirit is an autonomous psychic happening, a hush that follows the storm, a reconciling light in the darkness of man’s mind, secretly bringing order into the chaos of his soul. ~Carl Jung; CW 11; Paragraph 260.
This is part of the Genealogical Journey.
In this way we follow Nature and our nature back to our Origin.
We can pursue both a psychological and genealogical approach to wisdom. Realizations and self-actualization arise naturally in the process of compiling such a genealogy, as we recall exactly who we are, thereby approaching our wholeness...
for a 21st century Renaissance.
Spiritually, genealogy can strengthen our faith in the ancestors. We may find spiritual meaning in reconstructions of suppressed ancient religions or eclectic practices. In conducting Celtic genealogical research we rediscover the folk stories of our ancestors or the ancient deities once worshipped in other lands. The precise meaning and value of the old gods and goddesses will vary between listeners, but some find spiritual meaning in reclaiming ancient mysteries nearly lost to the modern ages.
Subjective mental life is a primary metaphor of
subjective Experience;
Primary Metaphor Becomes Embodied
and maps across generations.
The Grounding of the Whole is the grounding of its parts.
We reason with such metaphors.
(Lakoff & Johnson)
This argument against expunging legend and myth
from traditional genealogy practice is simple:
What happens outside us in these days is the image that the peoples live in events, to bequeath this image immemorially to far-off times so that they might learn from it for their own way; just as we learned from the images that the ancients had lived before us in events. ~Carl Jung, The Red book, Page 239.
"But if the believer without religion now thinks that he has got rid of mythology he is deceiving himself: he cannot get by without "myth."
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488
Psychology Today: Why do people spend decades tracing their lineages? Thinking about one's ancestors provides comfort, improves one's ability to deal with challenges and actually boosts cognitive performance, new research shows.
In a simple experiment, researchers asked people to think about their ancestors (or something else) and then measured their beliefs about their own performance on several cognitive tests. People who had been made to think about their ancestors expected to do better on the tests.
But did they actually do better? Yes. Researchers Peter Fischer, Anne Sauer, Claudia Vogrincic and Silke Weisweiler found that people who had recently thought about their ancestors actually did better on cognitive tests of intelligence than people who had been made to think of other things.
Therapeutic Initiation
Inner Voices: Reverence Toward the Souls of the Ancestors
"Take pains to waken the dead. Dig deep mines and throw in sacrificial gifts, so that they reach the dead. Reflect in good heart upon evil, this is the way to the ascent. But before the ascent, everything is night and Hell." ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 244.
Psychologically this means that the souls of the ancestors (potential factors, qualities, talents, possibilities, and so on, which we have inherited from all the lines of our ancestry) are waiting in the unconscious, and are ready at any time to begin a new growth.
~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 230.
These are, so to speak, the re-animated souls of the ancestors which have been lying dormant in the unconscious, and the alchemists call these units or souls the sleepers or the dead in Hades who are resurrected by the "holy waters" (that is the miraculous water of alchemy, the fertilizing Mercury). ~Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 230.
Learning Objectives:
To understand the significance of our genealogy as more than
a metaphor for the cyclical unfolding of our life story
To understand the timing of transgenerational patterns throughout
different eras of history, and times of transition
To apply the timing of great cycles to our genealogy and life events
and reflect on the unfolding of our goals
If his individual experience is a living thing, it will share the quality of all life, which does not stagnate but, being in continual flux, brings ever new aspects to light.
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488
History often reveals who underwent trauma:
wars; plague; torture; physical and mental abuse; abandonment; disowning; miscarriage; stillbirth; orphaning; kidnapping; birth trauma and defects; neglect; arson; homelessness; migration; toxic caregivers; suicide; murder; terror; spiritual abuse; divorce or never marrying; family secrets; attachment disorder; banishing; grief; dependence; incest; rape; affairs, separation; isolation; "mystery ancestors"; addictions; exhaustion; hypochondria; obsession; paranoia; personality disorder; schizophrenia; depression; emotional numbness; heresy; chronic anxiety; crime; social, financial, legal, displacement; zealotry; excommunication; poverty; famine; humiliation; internment; fanaticism; bigotry; cults; expulsion; eviction; slavery; betrayal; genocide; revenge; anger; execution; molestation; extortion; conquering;
natural disasters; catastrophes, cataclysm; cultural and ethical issues, forced migration, etc.
Not one title of Christian law is abrogated, but instead we are adding a new one: accepting the lament of the dead. ~Jung, Liber Novus, Page 298, Footnote 187.
One creates inner freedom only through the symbol.
~Carl Jung,The Red Book , Page. 311.
Obviously, all genealogy is transgenerational. So long as our ancestry remains unconscious, we are marginalizing Nature and our nature. Yet, nature encompasses us. Jung notes that dreams are pure nature. He was concerned for our culture if we lost our roots. The same holds true at the personal level. Joseph Campbell declares, "The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are." “A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living.”
Genealogy can be approached as a clinical science but remains more of an art -- a hermeneutic art, a shamanic art or self-initiation, as well as the art of relationship. We thread our way through a labyrinth of light and dark characters. Our charts are catacombs of our forebearers. We might have a different attitude to our lines in the process of discovery than we do once we have fully traced our descent from antiquity.
Subliminal Psychology
Our noble lineage becomes a royal road to ancient ancestors. But such a labyrinth of projections in the charts of a fantasist can produce self-delusion or over-heated zealotry. In the chart of a realist it may remain cold facts. Fabulists embellish, while pragmatists may be dry or stale.
A middle way might be both enlivened and informed. Jung urged, "For the understanding of the unconscious we must see our thoughts as events, as phenomena." (Liber Novus, p. 249) Genealogy mediates between the conscious and unconscious as we struggle to reveal what has so long been hidden. We also gain a reflective vantage point between ourselves and events we perceive. We allow the transcendent function to mold and re-shape us.
He [Philemon] confronted me in an objective manner, and I understood that there is something in me which can say things that I do not know and do not intend, things which may even be directed against me. (Jung, MDR, Page 183)
We Re-Collect
While some people may deeply pursue formal therapy, complex genogram relationships, or workshops, the vast majority will not. Those genealogical explorers will experience a spectrum of spontaneous effects, developing their own theories, interpretations, and directions from their ancestral encounters and revelations, conflated with their own beliefs. It may be, as Jung suggests, that through dreams the ancestors compensate our ego attitudes. Even then, we make subjective and objective observations and interpretations. In the blink of an eye, we can change our feelings about culture and human nature.
How little must the root-ancestors of each of our hoary lines have imagined in their own day for their millions of descendants? Even our "dead end" ancestors had antecedents; we just cannot know them, at least not through history. Genetic genealogy tells us our ancient tribes and ancestral lands, but not the names of any of them or their families. But seeds of knowledge in the head blossom in the fertile soil of the heart. We are formed directly from within.
Our Genesis
Genealogy used to be largely a quest for the father's direct line. But with today's algorithms we can find numerous distaff lines back through the ancestral field into the Heart of the Feminine and our mitochondrial inheritance, shared genetically by all genders. This type of DNA, stored in the cell's "batteries," is inherited from the mother, more or less unchanged. Like Y-DNA, distinct mtDNA lineages, are known as "haplogroups".
Often these matriarchal lines reach further back in time than the paternal line. This is the realm of the mothers and their families brought to the tree -- our gateway into the unconscious. We descend from it, and like Faust, into initiation in this womb of potentiality from which the world is continuously born as the creative flow of the unconscious.
The Distaff Line is an old Craft term, the Mother's Line, as opposed to the Father's Line (called the Spear Line). The Matrilineal bloodline contains the spiritual, true essence of a person's "self", by which the spirits of the departed leave the Unseen world and re-enter into their families on earth. The Old Dame, as the Mother of Creation and the Supreme Being, and the Spinner of Fate, holds the "Distaff" by which she Spins the threads of creation. Since all ‘lines’ or threads begin with her and return to her, the Mother's Line is called the "Distaff Line." Mitochondrial DNA remains strong, persisting in the cells of both sexes longer than nuclear DNA.
The ancients often incorporated images of death in their funeral rites, on mummy cases, the walls of tombs, and death masks. Some might find death photos macabre and yet they are simply a final remembrance of the beloved, which can help us personify that relative.
Imagistically, the dead continue their very long journey in the afterlife. The unconscious believes in the afterlife. Their events become our meaningful experiences -- their actions our ideas and reflections, insights alive with creativity and fantasy. Our persistent search for Who? leads us down and back. Each one strikes a different part of us. From this churning, this dialectical tension, creativity emerges -- a myriad of intoxicating things, including the archetypal images of immortality.
Psychological effects of the genealogical pursuit will be different for everyone, with certain commonalities, such as symptoms, identification, projection, participation mystique, etc.
Without guidelines much of this natural personal process remains unconscious and can be problematical -- individually, in the family, and in genealogical and heritage groups. At a cultural level, we also assimilate the shock of a personal descent from historical figures -- the historical burden. Myths have a vital meaning, linking us with psychic processes and experiences "beyond consciousness in the dark hinterland of the psyche," as Jung notes (CW 9ii, Pg. 154). The collective is mythic and archetypal, while the cosmological is integrative.
The deeper we work into the World Tree the more widely shared the ancestry becomes. Chances are that most individuals seeking their ancestry will not seek treatment but can benefit from a contextualization of those experiences. We can jump to wrong conclusions from too little information. It happens to our beliefs and our cognitive interpretations.
They also will not stop at the Fourth Generation. What distinguishes de facto Transgenerational Genealogy from conventional or Jungian approaches is plunging deeper into the Medieval, legendary, and mythic layers of one's pedigree, rather than just the first few generations. But we can not concentrate only on the royal lines, because many other descents far out number them. Genetically, they have no priority; we may carry none of their genes.
Mythic Genealogy
Emerging from pre-conscious psyche, myths are our deep background and connect us with our instincts. Myth bridges conscious and unconscious cognition with an archaic quality and networks of symbols and imagery. It represents the meaning of being. They help us interpret the world. We need myth because it speaks emotionally of and to the soul, giving meaning to loss and suffering. It may be a painful struggle that reminds us we are very much alive. For example, in Wotan we find the ecstatic experience of fighting as well as the ecstatic joy of death.
English kings claimed descent from Wotan or Odin. Medieval monks pushed Woden’s ancestry back to Troy, then connected the Trojans to the Jewish scriptures and the lost tribe of Dan. They linked the Franks to the kings of Troy and the Merovingian descent from the family of Jesus. The Chronicle of Fredegar (7th century) mentions the legend. It was elaborated in the Liber historiae Francorum (probably 727). Such legends grew over time.
Our genealogy shows us how these stories migrated between cultures over time. We can imagine our descent from Aphrodite herself. Descending through Macedonians and Ptolemaic Egyptians, then Spanish and English nobility, she would be somewhere around a 100th great-grandmother. A pedigree prepared for Philip II of Spain traces his paternal descent from Hercules Lybius, said to have been a son of Dodanim / Rodanim, who is said to have been a great grandson of Noah (Genesis 10:4, 1 Chronicles 1:7).
The confabulations of the Welsh royals made them descendants of Joseph of Arimathea. They included a legendary cycle of Fisher Kings, and culminated in the Grail Cycle and stories of King Arthur's court and the magic of Avalon. Given the right gateway ancestors and royal lineage, all of these lines will show up in the standard genealogies of millions of people.
Many accept their fabulous descent from antiquity as literally true, while scholars know it to be false. But neither view is accurate. Even though confabulated at some point for political purposes, such mythical genealogies linking man to the divine are actually traditional, and considered 'best practice' for eras of history.
Even 'fictious' genealogies and medieval forgeries have a place in our lines, if only to show us how these connections used to be made. Medieval genealogies connecting ancient kings to Adam are pure invention. In the Historia Brittonum, the Welsh monk Nennius (9th century) grafted northern Europeans onto the classical tradition by making them not only descended from Noah, but the brothers of Romulus, legendary founder of Rome.
Modern genealogists want to cut "fictitious" connections, but myth is the DNA of our psyche. That is like killing the root of the tree. This is genealogy without proof, so it must be mythic. How about the mighty Zeus himself, king of the gods? With over 200 offspring, divine and demigods, there are many lines of potential descent. Or, the venerable Isis? She may be 100 - 150 generations back.
We find myth not only at the root of our ancient lines but in each and every life between, in the roles and archetypal patterns that constitute our direct heritage. Jung suggests the dynamic is the same whether we think of them as instincts or gods and goddesses. We can re-enchant our world by saying a prayer to the lords and ladies, by whatever names they wish to be known. In a prayer to all our relations, invisible spirits are made visible. Eternal being lies within each and every one of us.
Grail Bearers
The Holy Grail and the Blood Royal are twin myths. In that myth Arthur is the product of sorcery and rape yet rises to the highest station. Bron and the Fisher Kings link the Grail to the vales of Avalon and the Hidden Stream of the Merovingian Franks.
We must be careful not to misconstrue the Grail for our own purposes, from a medieval retrieval, to spiritual literalism, to reactionary ideologies. We can't take it literally, realizing the genealogies are made up. We certainly can't return to either the politics or religion of a legendary era or new age revisionist theories like "the evil Archons" and proliferating self-styled incarnations of Mary Magdalene. We retain a psychological approach to the subject.
"We have to finish it. We have to carry it on. Even though we don't talk about grails and castles and enchanted maidens, still it is our myth to be completed in our lives. The myth has taken us to exactly the point where modern people are now. Collectively speaking we are stuck at the point where the French poem ends. So if you want a quest, if you want something meaningful for your life, pick up the grail myth where it now lies in you." (Robert Johnson)
When he first finds the Grail Castle, Perceval fails to ask the crucial questions about the origins of evil, the king's wound, and the Grail's meaning. He does get another chance to find wholeness -- to redeem the divine in matter. That doesn't mean he had a cognition of the whole but it is said to be so. Emma Jung and M-L von Franz describe how The Grail is brought to the Old Grail King; the goal of the quest is death to the old king, who 'dies' to the dominant collective consciousness of the day with its one-sided god image and is restored.
Encountering the Grail is an emotional readiness for reflective experience and to receive numinous experience. With the secret words spoken and Perceval’s royal ancestry revealed, the Grail is placed in his care. The Grail disappeared with his death, went back into concealment in the unconscious of each living person, available as an inner guide, the voice of the divine, inviting each of us to our individual completeness.
The genealogical Quest for the Grail shares something in common with the quest for the Philosopher's Stone, which forms itself. The magic of genealogy as the magic of the Stone is in the seeking after it. The Grail is our own transformation.
We are filled by the Grail when we point ourselves toward it. The Grail serves the whole community.
The Philosopher's Stone declares,
"My light, exceeds every light, and my good things are better than all other good things. I give freely and reward the intelligent with joy and gladness, glory, riches, delights; and them that "seek" after me I make to know and understand, and to posses divine things." --Golden Tractates of Hermes
In the search for the stone, it is the work that counts. One should not worry too much about the right way. The right way with the wrong person will never succeed. The wrong way with the right person will eventually right itself, for the stone is found at the crossroads of Heaven and Earth. Those who seek the Stone with true heart, shall be found by the Stone itself.
As someone's descendant we answer the call. Like the Fisher King, we seek the Salmon of Knowledge. The transgenerational group is integrated within the individual. Much of the effect is intrinsic. For Jung, fantasy is an integrative function.
Imaginative expressions of hidden forces appear spontaneously as the direct expression of psychic life, creative and imaginative activity inherent in each and every moment. We meet each wondrous, wild moment by relating to it, not controlling it. We really can't separate the past from the present.
Relationship is created and recreated from what has been and what is yet to be. Our challenge is to claim a place for our own imagination and intellect. We learn to see and bear the pain of seeing and suffering. Healing and wounding alternate in a rhythm echoing a sense of transience and death.
"You will feel me with you even from the Land of the Dead."
Our lineage is our own, personal Mystery Play. You can only enter into your own mysteries. We can allow the phenomena to speak - the multitude of personalities to speak, to be personified. Images are also voices -- messages from the dead. We need a sense of the ancestors. For most, that sense may be more poetic than clinical...the poetry of everyday life as it stretches back into the mists before time.
From the earliest societies to contemporary civilizations, genealogical methods have traced ancestries back to gods, animal totems, and legendary heroes. Originally the oral history narratives of clan or tribe bequeathed the lineage. In ancient Sumeria, Babylon, Egypt, India and China, kings and heads of state claimed their rights to the throne through genealogy. Royal totems include dragon, eagle, lion, wolf, serpent, boar, etc.
The Old Testament recounts the "begats" of Adam, Noah and Abraham, and later the royal bloodline of the House of David. Muslims trace their descent from Muhammed, while the Greeks and Romans and Vikings linked their heritage to the gods. The importance of ancestry to soul appears in Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian genealogies. In Germanic folklore the soul was considered, in certain respects, something inherited.
What is the power of the individual against the voice of the whole people in him? ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 365.
There is essentially no difference between doing genealogy or psychogenealogy, except perhaps the addition of a few evocative techniques. We don't just study it, but interact with it -- with the ancestors. It may be less what we think about it and more its effect on us. Information is naturally excited in the genealogical process as images, sensations, intuitions, synchronicities, insights, and more.
But psychogenealogy attempts to find workable answers when elements embedded in the family memory are now limiting an individual in a particular way.
Individual and collective consciousness is shaped in crucial ways by cognition of collective family experiences. What tends to get passed on is the overwhelming, unbearable, unthinkable. Much of history has been lost, distorted, or blotted out. We can focus on genetics, culture, spirit, and emotion as keys to the ancestral door. We can break our identification with a traumatic or unresolved past and still honor and consciously grieve our ancestors.
Genealogy is a tool for family therapy and self-knowledge. We carry secret stories from before our lifetime. The entire family tree is both a trauma archive and a resource for healing. Yet children raised in difficult circumstances often show enhanced mental flexibility. Much of what is unconscious to us is revealed in our lines. We still have to amplify, work with, interpret, and integrate that information.
We can reframe our relationship with pain, fear, and grief at the familial and ancestral level. Current research on well-being describes two perspectives: the hedonic approach, which focuses on happiness and defines well-being in terms of pleasure attainment and pain avoidance; and the eudaimonic approach, which focuses on meaning and self-realization and defines well-being in terms of the degree to which a person is fully functioning. The later may be more important. Composed of the words "eu" ("good") and "daimōn" ("spirit") it fits the ancestral theme.
This spirit is an autonomous psychic happening, a hush that follows the storm, a reconciling light in the darkness of man’s mind, secretly bringing order into the chaos of his soul. ~Carl Jung; CW 11; Paragraph 260.
This is part of the Genealogical Journey.
In this way we follow Nature and our nature back to our Origin.
We can pursue both a psychological and genealogical approach to wisdom. Realizations and self-actualization arise naturally in the process of compiling such a genealogy, as we recall exactly who we are, thereby approaching our wholeness...
for a 21st century Renaissance.
Spiritually, genealogy can strengthen our faith in the ancestors. We may find spiritual meaning in reconstructions of suppressed ancient religions or eclectic practices. In conducting Celtic genealogical research we rediscover the folk stories of our ancestors or the ancient deities once worshipped in other lands. The precise meaning and value of the old gods and goddesses will vary between listeners, but some find spiritual meaning in reclaiming ancient mysteries nearly lost to the modern ages.
Subjective mental life is a primary metaphor of
subjective Experience;
Primary Metaphor Becomes Embodied
and maps across generations.
The Grounding of the Whole is the grounding of its parts.
We reason with such metaphors.
(Lakoff & Johnson)
This argument against expunging legend and myth
from traditional genealogy practice is simple:
What happens outside us in these days is the image that the peoples live in events, to bequeath this image immemorially to far-off times so that they might learn from it for their own way; just as we learned from the images that the ancients had lived before us in events. ~Carl Jung, The Red book, Page 239.
"But if the believer without religion now thinks that he has got rid of mythology he is deceiving himself: he cannot get by without "myth."
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488
Psychology Today: Why do people spend decades tracing their lineages? Thinking about one's ancestors provides comfort, improves one's ability to deal with challenges and actually boosts cognitive performance, new research shows.
In a simple experiment, researchers asked people to think about their ancestors (or something else) and then measured their beliefs about their own performance on several cognitive tests. People who had been made to think about their ancestors expected to do better on the tests.
But did they actually do better? Yes. Researchers Peter Fischer, Anne Sauer, Claudia Vogrincic and Silke Weisweiler found that people who had recently thought about their ancestors actually did better on cognitive tests of intelligence than people who had been made to think of other things.
Therapeutic Initiation
Inner Voices: Reverence Toward the Souls of the Ancestors
"Take pains to waken the dead. Dig deep mines and throw in sacrificial gifts, so that they reach the dead. Reflect in good heart upon evil, this is the way to the ascent. But before the ascent, everything is night and Hell." ~Carl Jung, Liber Novus, Page 244.
Psychologically this means that the souls of the ancestors (potential factors, qualities, talents, possibilities, and so on, which we have inherited from all the lines of our ancestry) are waiting in the unconscious, and are ready at any time to begin a new growth.
~Carl Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 230.
These are, so to speak, the re-animated souls of the ancestors which have been lying dormant in the unconscious, and the alchemists call these units or souls the sleepers or the dead in Hades who are resurrected by the "holy waters" (that is the miraculous water of alchemy, the fertilizing Mercury). ~Jung, ETH, Alchemy, Page 230.
Learning Objectives:
To understand the significance of our genealogy as more than
a metaphor for the cyclical unfolding of our life story
To understand the timing of transgenerational patterns throughout
different eras of history, and times of transition
To apply the timing of great cycles to our genealogy and life events
and reflect on the unfolding of our goals
If his individual experience is a living thing, it will share the quality of all life, which does not stagnate but, being in continual flux, brings ever new aspects to light.
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488
History often reveals who underwent trauma:
wars; plague; torture; physical and mental abuse; abandonment; disowning; miscarriage; stillbirth; orphaning; kidnapping; birth trauma and defects; neglect; arson; homelessness; migration; toxic caregivers; suicide; murder; terror; spiritual abuse; divorce or never marrying; family secrets; attachment disorder; banishing; grief; dependence; incest; rape; affairs, separation; isolation; "mystery ancestors"; addictions; exhaustion; hypochondria; obsession; paranoia; personality disorder; schizophrenia; depression; emotional numbness; heresy; chronic anxiety; crime; social, financial, legal, displacement; zealotry; excommunication; poverty; famine; humiliation; internment; fanaticism; bigotry; cults; expulsion; eviction; slavery; betrayal; genocide; revenge; anger; execution; molestation; extortion; conquering;
natural disasters; catastrophes, cataclysm; cultural and ethical issues, forced migration, etc.
David Ho, Looking Inward
The growing one is the TREE OF LIFE. It greens by heaping up growing living matter. ~Diahmon, Liber Novus, Page 351.
Sometimes a tree tells you more than can be read in books.
~ C.G. Jung; Letters Volume 1; Page 179.
Jung spoke of the '2 million year old man' within us all. But Genus homo is as much as 3 million years old, with ancient patterns including hunting strategies, mating patterns, intergroup relations. Genetics has shown that modern man is a hybrid of at least three species. Some ethnic groups include 4-5% Neanderthal or Denisovan.
We continue to change.
Genome researchers at the University of Chicago have identified more than 700 regions in human DNA where apparently strong selection has occurred, driving the spread of genes linked to a broad range of characteristics.
"These are very recent events—within the past ten thousand years," said Jonathan Pritchard, a geneticist whose laboratory team conducted the study.
The results suggest that humans in different regions have continued to adapt in numerous ways to both environmental changes and cultural innovations.” (2006)
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/03/0308_060308_evolution.html
"In alchemy, Mercurius is symbolized by the tree as well as the dragon. He is notoriously "duplex", is both masculine and feminine, and is made one in the hierosgamos of the chymical wedding." [Collected Works vol 13, par 315].
But for him who has seen the chaos, there is no more hiding, because he knows that the bottom sways and knows what this swaying means.
He has seen the order and the disorder of the endless, he knows the unlawful laws.
He knows the sea and can never forget it.
The chaos is terrible: days full of lead, nights full of horror. . .
I know that chaos must come over men, and that the hands of those who unknowingly and unsuspectingly break through the thin walls that separate us from the sea are busy. For this is our way, our truth, and our life.
~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 299.
Genealogy is our map of the unconscious -- the Land of the Dead. The Red Thread, the thread of destiny, connects to the Source. It shows us the way, igniting imagination with the alchemy of 'seeing', awakening the soul. The red threads of your blood link you and your Tree to the World Tree, your history to world history and mythology. The bloodline is also called the "underground stream". The Red Thread is a transmission of cultural influences of ancestors.
Walking the Labyrinth of our lines is a deeply meditative process that arouses spirit, intuition and gnosis from a deep sleep. It is a way of soul retrieval, uniting personal and collective unconscious. It is a process of digging through the past, overturning old notions. Even history looks different from inside your bloodlines. You can easily observe your great-grandparents intermarrying over vast distances. They may move in a single generation from eastern to western Europe, for example, or across Europe from the Near East, or change their religion and ethnic identity. Nothing lives as long as deep memory.
A transference in the clinical sense does not always need a personal relationship as a bridge, but can take place via a book, a piece of hearsay, or a legend.
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 504-506
Healing & Renewal
Jungian psychotherapist, Thierry Gaillard of Geneva, Switzerland developed a school of thought around Transgenerational Integration and Transgenerational Knowledge. It "reconnects us to some traditional cultures, actual and ancient, referring to the presence of ancestors, rites of passage, memory of origins (family and community ties), shamanic ancestors' therapies, etc." He published two anthologies in French on Transgenerational Integration in real family histories and the lives of celebrities, and anticipates a third bilingual volume on shamanic roots.
http://www.thierry-gaillard.com/ Ecodition (www.ecodition.net)
Gaillard suggests, "The recall and acknowledgment of shamanic practices, ancestral values, provides strong roots for transgenerational integration, showing us more about the unwritten laws that operate in the background." One of his books describing ancestral syndromes is Oedipus Reborn and Rooted in the Present, which unpacks the often-overlooked rebirth of Oedipus. He describes the new perspectives of the transgenerational view:
What happens with the "transgenerational" is quite unique in the history of science. Indeed, references to transgenerational arise throughout the clinical field (psychosomatic medicine, epigenetics, family therapy and social issues, anthropology, psychotherapy and personal development) as to force us to go beyond the boundaries of these disciplines. Transgenerational dynamics challenges our usual space-time criteria to return us to the origins. In many ways, the breakthrough of transgenerational issues resembles the quantum revolution in the world of physics. And we are only at the beginning of this new field that allows us to bridge contemporary issues with ancestral and shamanistic practices.
This new perspective also helps reconnecting us to what was lost and forgotten in the history of mankind. In particular we can benefit again from the rich traditions of ancient symbols, myths, which we had forgotten the operative or therapeutic value. With their references to transgenerational dynamics , traditional societies and ancient cultures find additional legitimacy. Blacklisted with the birth of our new civilization, almost 2,400 years ago in Athens, they may well return to their former glory.
While my own work in this area and "transgenerational epigenetics" developed independently, it resonates deeply with these ideas of combining personal, familial, and collective talents to transform our destiny by analyzing and integrating familial patterns. If we are fortunate, our living elders describe both the factual and imaginal family to us directly.
Like a dream, this remembrance is a jumping off point for further self-exploration. While working the fractal nature of the family system, we insist on the particularity or specificity of any individual's life story and the singularity of historical situations.
Such techniques are thresholds that act as Doors to the Dead, which shamanic societies have always found powerful. Our ancestors are a natural part of the universal mindfield and the personal mindfield we embody. Epigenetics supports this view that non-physical changes in DNA expression -- turning genes on and off -- can change the whole system.
Metagenealogy
Metageneology (Jodorowsky & Costa) provides a rather exhaustive methodology for recognizing and overcoming ancestral patterns of influence. Such exercises "uncover your family’s psychological heritage, heal negative patterns of behavior and illness in your family tree, and [reveal] your true self." They explain, "we are the product of two forces: repetition of familial patterns from the past and creation of new ideas from the Universal Consciousness of the future."
This work is limited largely to your four preceding generations. They also include the influences of those family members from whom you do not descend -- siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins, for example. While they provide some useful exercises, visualizations and meditations, my own philosophy of treatment is that the working material should be emergent, rather than introjected. Emergence exposes what is concealed and embodied within. It maintains a congruence that imported material or images may not have with the individual. Genealogy can be approached as an artform -- a curatorial project.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Thierry-Gaillard/e/B004MZJIS4
Sometimes a tree tells you more than can be read in books.
~ C.G. Jung; Letters Volume 1; Page 179.
Jung spoke of the '2 million year old man' within us all. But Genus homo is as much as 3 million years old, with ancient patterns including hunting strategies, mating patterns, intergroup relations. Genetics has shown that modern man is a hybrid of at least three species. Some ethnic groups include 4-5% Neanderthal or Denisovan.
We continue to change.
Genome researchers at the University of Chicago have identified more than 700 regions in human DNA where apparently strong selection has occurred, driving the spread of genes linked to a broad range of characteristics.
"These are very recent events—within the past ten thousand years," said Jonathan Pritchard, a geneticist whose laboratory team conducted the study.
The results suggest that humans in different regions have continued to adapt in numerous ways to both environmental changes and cultural innovations.” (2006)
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/03/0308_060308_evolution.html
"In alchemy, Mercurius is symbolized by the tree as well as the dragon. He is notoriously "duplex", is both masculine and feminine, and is made one in the hierosgamos of the chymical wedding." [Collected Works vol 13, par 315].
But for him who has seen the chaos, there is no more hiding, because he knows that the bottom sways and knows what this swaying means.
He has seen the order and the disorder of the endless, he knows the unlawful laws.
He knows the sea and can never forget it.
The chaos is terrible: days full of lead, nights full of horror. . .
I know that chaos must come over men, and that the hands of those who unknowingly and unsuspectingly break through the thin walls that separate us from the sea are busy. For this is our way, our truth, and our life.
~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 299.
Genealogy is our map of the unconscious -- the Land of the Dead. The Red Thread, the thread of destiny, connects to the Source. It shows us the way, igniting imagination with the alchemy of 'seeing', awakening the soul. The red threads of your blood link you and your Tree to the World Tree, your history to world history and mythology. The bloodline is also called the "underground stream". The Red Thread is a transmission of cultural influences of ancestors.
Walking the Labyrinth of our lines is a deeply meditative process that arouses spirit, intuition and gnosis from a deep sleep. It is a way of soul retrieval, uniting personal and collective unconscious. It is a process of digging through the past, overturning old notions. Even history looks different from inside your bloodlines. You can easily observe your great-grandparents intermarrying over vast distances. They may move in a single generation from eastern to western Europe, for example, or across Europe from the Near East, or change their religion and ethnic identity. Nothing lives as long as deep memory.
A transference in the clinical sense does not always need a personal relationship as a bridge, but can take place via a book, a piece of hearsay, or a legend.
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 504-506
Healing & Renewal
Jungian psychotherapist, Thierry Gaillard of Geneva, Switzerland developed a school of thought around Transgenerational Integration and Transgenerational Knowledge. It "reconnects us to some traditional cultures, actual and ancient, referring to the presence of ancestors, rites of passage, memory of origins (family and community ties), shamanic ancestors' therapies, etc." He published two anthologies in French on Transgenerational Integration in real family histories and the lives of celebrities, and anticipates a third bilingual volume on shamanic roots.
http://www.thierry-gaillard.com/ Ecodition (www.ecodition.net)
Gaillard suggests, "The recall and acknowledgment of shamanic practices, ancestral values, provides strong roots for transgenerational integration, showing us more about the unwritten laws that operate in the background." One of his books describing ancestral syndromes is Oedipus Reborn and Rooted in the Present, which unpacks the often-overlooked rebirth of Oedipus. He describes the new perspectives of the transgenerational view:
What happens with the "transgenerational" is quite unique in the history of science. Indeed, references to transgenerational arise throughout the clinical field (psychosomatic medicine, epigenetics, family therapy and social issues, anthropology, psychotherapy and personal development) as to force us to go beyond the boundaries of these disciplines. Transgenerational dynamics challenges our usual space-time criteria to return us to the origins. In many ways, the breakthrough of transgenerational issues resembles the quantum revolution in the world of physics. And we are only at the beginning of this new field that allows us to bridge contemporary issues with ancestral and shamanistic practices.
This new perspective also helps reconnecting us to what was lost and forgotten in the history of mankind. In particular we can benefit again from the rich traditions of ancient symbols, myths, which we had forgotten the operative or therapeutic value. With their references to transgenerational dynamics , traditional societies and ancient cultures find additional legitimacy. Blacklisted with the birth of our new civilization, almost 2,400 years ago in Athens, they may well return to their former glory.
While my own work in this area and "transgenerational epigenetics" developed independently, it resonates deeply with these ideas of combining personal, familial, and collective talents to transform our destiny by analyzing and integrating familial patterns. If we are fortunate, our living elders describe both the factual and imaginal family to us directly.
Like a dream, this remembrance is a jumping off point for further self-exploration. While working the fractal nature of the family system, we insist on the particularity or specificity of any individual's life story and the singularity of historical situations.
Such techniques are thresholds that act as Doors to the Dead, which shamanic societies have always found powerful. Our ancestors are a natural part of the universal mindfield and the personal mindfield we embody. Epigenetics supports this view that non-physical changes in DNA expression -- turning genes on and off -- can change the whole system.
Metagenealogy
Metageneology (Jodorowsky & Costa) provides a rather exhaustive methodology for recognizing and overcoming ancestral patterns of influence. Such exercises "uncover your family’s psychological heritage, heal negative patterns of behavior and illness in your family tree, and [reveal] your true self." They explain, "we are the product of two forces: repetition of familial patterns from the past and creation of new ideas from the Universal Consciousness of the future."
This work is limited largely to your four preceding generations. They also include the influences of those family members from whom you do not descend -- siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins, for example. While they provide some useful exercises, visualizations and meditations, my own philosophy of treatment is that the working material should be emergent, rather than introjected. Emergence exposes what is concealed and embodied within. It maintains a congruence that imported material or images may not have with the individual. Genealogy can be approached as an artform -- a curatorial project.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Thierry-Gaillard/e/B004MZJIS4
Berthold Furtmeyer: Baum des Todes und des Lebens, Tree of Death and Life– c. 1481
The image above by Berthold Furtmeyer (1481) is titled the Tree of Death and Life. This image illustrates the paradox and ambi-valence in the mother archetype. Anne Baring describes the scene of the image:
“The faces of the two women are identical, and their heads incline away from the central point of the tree in antithetical relationship: Eve, predictably naked, offering to humanity the apple of death, which she is passing on from the serpent; and Mary, predictably clothed, offering the redeeming apple of life. The position of the serpent arising from the not-to-be seen phallus of Adam is presumably less than coincidental. On Eve’s side of the tree lies the grinning skull, while Death waits for her on the right, and on Mary’s side of the tree – the Life side – the cross with the crucified Christ poised as on a branch, himself the fruit of her miraculously intact womb.”
The tree of life represents our common genealogy, reflecting the interrelatedness of all life and our common descent. Jung says:
“The tree of life may have been, in the first instance, a fruit-bearing genealogical tree, and hence a kind of tribal mother” (CW 5, para 321).
The tree of life is a “mother symbol” (Jung, CW 5, para 321). The Tree of Death and Life illustrates the paradox inherent in the imagery of the “mother symbol.” The mother’s fruit is the image of paradox: the fruit of death and the fruit of redemption come from the same mother tree. Eve, the mother of our fallen state offers the fruit of death. Mary, the mother of redemption offers the fruit of new life, of rebirth into spiritual reality. Death in life; Life in death. In archetypal terms, spiritual reality is symbolic reality. Christ is the image of re-birth into symbolic life. Jung says:
“Christ’s redemptive death on the cross was understood as a “baptism,” that is to say, as rebirth through the second mother, symbolized by the tree of death… The dual-mother motif suggests the idea of a dual birth. One of the mothers is the real, human mother, the other is the symbolical mother” (CW 5 para 494-495, emphasis added).
The tree of life is there not only in the beginning of life, as the Fall, but in the end as well, as Revelation (from Latin revelatio, from revelare, to ‘lay bare’). She sets the bounds of biblical time. Revelations 22 tells us that leaves from the tree of life will heal all nations:
“the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:1-2).
Images of the tree of life offer rich symbolism, telling a story of integration through symbolic development. Symbolic development emerges as the capacity to metabolize and contain the paradox and bi-valences inherent to the life of the soul. Both the mother of the Fall and the mother of Redemption pick fruit from the same tree– a form of the archetypal ‘mother of all,’ present in the beginning and in the end. The tree of life, as archetypal mother symbol, represents the numinous frontiers of psychic life. Archetypal relations engender symbolic development; relations between a knower and an inarticulable unknown (mother) engender symbolic development. This symbolic development of the soul is imagined in archetypal forms of the soul’s transformation. The tree of life proffers both the fruit of our fall into a world yet to be symbolized, as well as the fruit of our redemption through the process of symbolization. Tree as mother symbol is an image of the fruit bearing potential of the symbol, capable of metabolizing the great unknown, the noumenon.
http://jennalilla.com/2014/07/03/paradox-of-the-tree-of-death-and-life/
References:
The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image By Anne Baring, Jules Cashford
Symbols of Transformation (CW5) by Carl G. Jung (in US Pubic Domain, first published 1912)
The image above by Berthold Furtmeyer (1481) is titled the Tree of Death and Life. This image illustrates the paradox and ambi-valence in the mother archetype. Anne Baring describes the scene of the image:
“The faces of the two women are identical, and their heads incline away from the central point of the tree in antithetical relationship: Eve, predictably naked, offering to humanity the apple of death, which she is passing on from the serpent; and Mary, predictably clothed, offering the redeeming apple of life. The position of the serpent arising from the not-to-be seen phallus of Adam is presumably less than coincidental. On Eve’s side of the tree lies the grinning skull, while Death waits for her on the right, and on Mary’s side of the tree – the Life side – the cross with the crucified Christ poised as on a branch, himself the fruit of her miraculously intact womb.”
The tree of life represents our common genealogy, reflecting the interrelatedness of all life and our common descent. Jung says:
“The tree of life may have been, in the first instance, a fruit-bearing genealogical tree, and hence a kind of tribal mother” (CW 5, para 321).
The tree of life is a “mother symbol” (Jung, CW 5, para 321). The Tree of Death and Life illustrates the paradox inherent in the imagery of the “mother symbol.” The mother’s fruit is the image of paradox: the fruit of death and the fruit of redemption come from the same mother tree. Eve, the mother of our fallen state offers the fruit of death. Mary, the mother of redemption offers the fruit of new life, of rebirth into spiritual reality. Death in life; Life in death. In archetypal terms, spiritual reality is symbolic reality. Christ is the image of re-birth into symbolic life. Jung says:
“Christ’s redemptive death on the cross was understood as a “baptism,” that is to say, as rebirth through the second mother, symbolized by the tree of death… The dual-mother motif suggests the idea of a dual birth. One of the mothers is the real, human mother, the other is the symbolical mother” (CW 5 para 494-495, emphasis added).
The tree of life is there not only in the beginning of life, as the Fall, but in the end as well, as Revelation (from Latin revelatio, from revelare, to ‘lay bare’). She sets the bounds of biblical time. Revelations 22 tells us that leaves from the tree of life will heal all nations:
“the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:1-2).
Images of the tree of life offer rich symbolism, telling a story of integration through symbolic development. Symbolic development emerges as the capacity to metabolize and contain the paradox and bi-valences inherent to the life of the soul. Both the mother of the Fall and the mother of Redemption pick fruit from the same tree– a form of the archetypal ‘mother of all,’ present in the beginning and in the end. The tree of life, as archetypal mother symbol, represents the numinous frontiers of psychic life. Archetypal relations engender symbolic development; relations between a knower and an inarticulable unknown (mother) engender symbolic development. This symbolic development of the soul is imagined in archetypal forms of the soul’s transformation. The tree of life proffers both the fruit of our fall into a world yet to be symbolized, as well as the fruit of our redemption through the process of symbolization. Tree as mother symbol is an image of the fruit bearing potential of the symbol, capable of metabolizing the great unknown, the noumenon.
http://jennalilla.com/2014/07/03/paradox-of-the-tree-of-death-and-life/
References:
The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image By Anne Baring, Jules Cashford
Symbols of Transformation (CW5) by Carl G. Jung (in US Pubic Domain, first published 1912)
Each reflection always returns us to ourselves, what we think or say of others,
always and unequivocally speaks about us ...
always and unequivocally speaks about us ...
"The soul enters again by the same door through which it was exiled." --James Hillman
Our souls as well as our bodies are composed of individual elements which were all already present in the ranks of our ancestors. The "newness" in the individual psyche is an endlessly varied recombination of age-old components. Body and soul therefore have an intensely historical character and find no proper place in what is new, in things that have just come into being. That is to say, our ancestral components are only partly at home in such things.
We are very far from having finished completely with the Middle Ages, classical antiquity, and primitivity, as our modern psyches pretend.
Nevertheless, we have plunged down a cataract of progress which sweeps us on into the future with ever wilder violence the farther it takes us from our roots. Once the past has been breached, it is usually annihilated, and there is no stopping the forward motion.
But it is precisely the loss of connection with the past, our up-rootedness, which has given rise to the "discontents" of civilization and to such a flurry and haste that we live more in the future and its chimerical promises of a golden age than in the present, with which our whole evolutionary background has not yet caught up.
We rush impetuously into novelty, driven by a mounting sense of insufficiency, dissatisfaction, and restlessness. We no longer live on what we have, but on promises, no longer in the light of the present day, but in the darkness of the future, which, we expect, will at last bring the proper sunrise. We refuse to recognize that everything better is purchased at the price of something worse; that, for example, the hope of greater freedom is canceled out by increased enslavement to the state, not to speak of the terrible perils to which the most brilliant discoveries of science expose us.
The less we understand of what our fathers and forefathers sought, the less we understand ourselves, and thus we help with all our might to rob the individual of his roots and his guiding instincts, so that he becomes a particle in the mass, ruled only by what Nietzsche called the spirit of gravity. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections
Michael Cheval
“Identification with the group is a simple and easy path to follow, but the group experience goes no deeper than the level of one’s own mind in that state. It does work a change in you, but the change does not last. On the contrary, you must have continual recourse to mass intoxication in order to consolidate the experience and your belief in it. But as soon as you are removed from the crowd, you are a different person again and unable to reproduce the previous state of mind. The mass is swayed by participation mystique, which is nothing other than unconscious identity.” (Jung, CW 9i, par 226)
GROUPS & ARCHAIC IDENTITY
Jung defined projection as an initial objectified representation of the contents of the unconscious beyond the states of so-called "participation mystique" (mystical participation) and "archaic identity," and he showed how the individual can be led to see through the illusions of projection and yet, at the same time, to experience symbolic life.
As early as his psychiatric studies written between 1900 and 1908, and also in his thesis, "Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena," which he defended in 1902, Jung was investigating the internal coherence and meaning of representational systems that were largely being ignored by his contemporaries. His conception of "highly charged emotional complexes" (gefühlbetonte Komplexe) and his contact with Sigmund Freud led him to analyze, in his "Psychology of the Unconscious. A Study of the Transformation and Symbolism of the Libido. A Contribution to the History of Thought" (1911-1912), the poems and fantasies of a young woman by comparing them to a whole series of myths and rites that stage the difficult process of detachment from one's original attachments and inclusions. Jung's subsequent elaboration of his theory of projection was based on the analysis of states of participation mystique (he borrowed this French expression from the anthropologist Lucien LévyBruhl) or "archaic identity."
In the states of participation mystique and archaic identity there is no differentiation between object and subject and no distinction between lived experience and what the subject believes he or she perceives about the world. However, projection, which is more specific, enables the subject to apprehend and potentially recognize contents that are still unconscious. Thus, analysis of the religions of our ancestors, the literature and iconography of alchemy and, more generally, the arts, as well as the fantasmatic universe of a given group or individual from the perspective of modern psychology can be quite valuable.
In fact, the Jungian Shadow, Anima, Animus, and Self, before being recognized as presences or inner agencies, are ordinarily projected onto typical figures or acquaintances of the subject, in the same way as they are projected onto the analyst in the transference relationship. The recognition and withdrawal of projections usually provokes a state of disenchantment or, conversely, elation and inflation of the ego; however, these processes can also open the way to a practice of the symbolic life and of human relations without too much alienation or mystification, especially through the experience and analysis of the transference.
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/projection-and-participation-mystique-analytical-psychology#ixzz2yRb0q2r5
GROUPS & ARCHAIC IDENTITY
Jung defined projection as an initial objectified representation of the contents of the unconscious beyond the states of so-called "participation mystique" (mystical participation) and "archaic identity," and he showed how the individual can be led to see through the illusions of projection and yet, at the same time, to experience symbolic life.
As early as his psychiatric studies written between 1900 and 1908, and also in his thesis, "Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena," which he defended in 1902, Jung was investigating the internal coherence and meaning of representational systems that were largely being ignored by his contemporaries. His conception of "highly charged emotional complexes" (gefühlbetonte Komplexe) and his contact with Sigmund Freud led him to analyze, in his "Psychology of the Unconscious. A Study of the Transformation and Symbolism of the Libido. A Contribution to the History of Thought" (1911-1912), the poems and fantasies of a young woman by comparing them to a whole series of myths and rites that stage the difficult process of detachment from one's original attachments and inclusions. Jung's subsequent elaboration of his theory of projection was based on the analysis of states of participation mystique (he borrowed this French expression from the anthropologist Lucien LévyBruhl) or "archaic identity."
In the states of participation mystique and archaic identity there is no differentiation between object and subject and no distinction between lived experience and what the subject believes he or she perceives about the world. However, projection, which is more specific, enables the subject to apprehend and potentially recognize contents that are still unconscious. Thus, analysis of the religions of our ancestors, the literature and iconography of alchemy and, more generally, the arts, as well as the fantasmatic universe of a given group or individual from the perspective of modern psychology can be quite valuable.
In fact, the Jungian Shadow, Anima, Animus, and Self, before being recognized as presences or inner agencies, are ordinarily projected onto typical figures or acquaintances of the subject, in the same way as they are projected onto the analyst in the transference relationship. The recognition and withdrawal of projections usually provokes a state of disenchantment or, conversely, elation and inflation of the ego; however, these processes can also open the way to a practice of the symbolic life and of human relations without too much alienation or mystification, especially through the experience and analysis of the transference.
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/projection-and-participation-mystique-analytical-psychology#ixzz2yRb0q2r5
Domesday Book
Preface
Facing Your Ancestors
GENEALOGY IS A WAY OF KNOWING
Your Pedigree is Your Own Book of the Dead
What I mean by this is that every epoch of our biological life has a numinous character: birth, puberty, marriage, illness, death, etc.
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 208-210.
The shadow is the block which separates us most effectively
from the divine voice. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 544-546
"My fantasies, my symptoms put me in my place. It is no longer to know at which place I belong - at which God - but at what place I belong, on which altar I give myself, my myth by which suffering is transformed into devotion. "- James Hillman
The old myth, which always holds within it something yet older and more aboriginal, remains the same, this being an essential quality of all forms of religion; it only undergoes a new interpretation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488
Descent From Antiquity
Families are bound together eternally. The power of genealogy is the power of story. This is the story of the family and the diverse characters that populate the many branches of our family tree. These are stories that matter, that preceded your corporeal existence. This story reveals how things came to be as they are -- as you are.
Genealogy is a story we tell ourselves about ourselves. The stories of our ancestors open us to deeper experience. Our personal story is embedded in our larger inherited story and culture. Genealogy helps us connect more deeply with our unique story and meaning in life beyond a personal story. It is a mythic archaeology that connects us with that which has given us shape, opening a path to transformation.
Genealogy is the narrative of a pre-modern world. It has traditional roots in the ancient theogeny of gods and goddesses, divine-king lists and The Bible. Ancestral gods and ancestral religions developed over eons and are as old as particular branches of mankind -- gods of the blood. Astrologically determined gods and goddesses can often be found at the roots of dynastic houses. Royal houses claimed power through descent from ancestral gods.
Gods are difficult to destroy or conceal. Fictitious lines of descent blend indistinguishably with medieval forgeries. Some divinities may originally have been historical persons or war-chiefs, now lost to the mists of pre-history. Seedlines codify ancient ethnic identity and empires. Later, royals added them to their lines to bolster their claims to divine rule and the founding of thrones. Though not factual, traditional genealogy was a geographical and spiritual compass.
When Rome Christianized in the fourth century, it cut off the mythic corpus, and demoted gods to human status and allegories. The medieval period filled the gap with tales of the Holy Grail. The pagan content of mythology was codified in the mid-fourteenth century in Boccassio's Genealogy. Later, the Carolingians used such works to justify their right to rule, also citing the spurious Donation of Constantine, which the Church used to justify the appointment of rulers.
Traditional genealogy considered these mythological inclusions best-practice, yet it may be more of a psychic than historical "fact" -- the product of a collision between pagan and Christian societies and their reconciliation. Historical time required a linear descent, even if it masked pagan roots at the theological fringe. Even if medieval genealogies connecting ancient kings to Adam are pure invention, they retain certain psychic values that are part of the archaeology of the collective unconscious.
The Tree of Life
Our personal genealogy is a process of self-discovery and self-knowledge with its own procedures and measures of 'truth.' It seems ironic that technology is allowing us to retrieve such essential aspects of our own humanity. Curiously, genealogy is the second most popular online subject, second only to sex, much like sex precedes procreation.
Your family tree is an encyclopedia of human nature. Genealogy doesn't give our lives context; it is the context and material ground of our existence. The Tree of Life carries the evolution of the world, gives life to the universe, and understanding or consciousness. Life originates from and disappears back into the Tree. The Kabbalistic Tree of Life is a symbol of the process of creation and inner wholeness.
Jung said (CW5, para321) that, "The tree of life may have been, in the first instance, a fruit-bearing genealogical tree, and hence a kind of tribal mother." It was a central symbol of spiritual unity, wisdom, beauty, love, strength, and the power of the Universe rooted in the divine. Nietzsche pointed out that as with both people and trees, "The more one seeks to rise into height and light, the more vigorously do one's roots struggle earthward, downward into the dark, the the deep -- into evil."
The tree is an early symbol of spiritual development and our own immortal character, the living structure of our inner self -- transcendence to lofty heights. Below the surface, the subtext remains, "Who is this person having these experiences?" We are literally and symbolically the "fruit" of the Tree of Life. We need a powerful new story for our relationship with the Earth: we are, indeed, part of nature and not separate from it in any way. Genealogy helps ground us in this paradigm and helps develop our sense of deep time and rootedness in contemporary life with a global perspective.
The World Tree
Within 5-7 generations our family tree meets up and merges with the World Tree. This is especially true for American Colonial descent, where the progenitors and their droplines are well-known. Once you research back to your Gateway Ancestors who immigrated, you can easily find the lines that connect back as far as professional genealogists have determined and merge even further with fictional, legendary and mythological characters.
Outside of genealogy, the World Tree is often related to shamanism. As a link to ancestral spirits, it is an integral part of the shamanic cosmology. By our 13th Marriage Bridge we find ourselves in Medieval Times and common pool of noble ancestry. The World Tree is also a bridge that connects heaven, earth and underworld. When a shaman "climbs the tree," he or she ascends into the Upper World and the creative sources of power -- to the gods, to the zenith of heaven. The philosophical tree represents a sublimation of our spirit. The shaman receives intercessory messages.
In some ways the World Tree is identical with the shaman. Creatures can appear in the Tree, including snakes, birds, goats, and other totems and signs. The World Tree is a tree of initiation, ordeals, astral or mystic flight, vision quest, and fate or destiny. The shaman mediates between humanity and the spirit world, and in a simpler way, the genealogist performs a similar symbolic service, especially when interpreting a pedigree. To be cut off from the sacred tree is to be cut off from the spirit world, a condition which is likened to 'illness' and requires healing for loss of soul.
The serpents in our Tree are the individual lines of descent from various common ancestors. They lead us to question who and what we are, what we know, and what we thought we knew about our roots. They offer us Knowledge. They are part of the larger truth -- that we are born and we die -- and we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. Yet, Jung said we fear our serpent as we fear the numinosum. He concludes, "All we have to give the world and God is ourselves as we are."
Good and evil unite in the growth of the Tree. It combines masculine phallic representations with feminine nurture and growth. We are the serpent of wisdom, the union of good and evil, in our own Tree. Genealogy is a ritual in which we climb up and down through the branches of our tree in deep remembrance, an exercise in 'time travel' that expands our consciousness.
Mircea Eliade and Joseph Campbell wrote exhaustively on this Tree as the center of the world, a vertical World Axis or dimension that symbolizes the capacity for non-ordinary experience, including shamanic trance that reinforces community links with cosmic consciousness. The Sacred Tree as such a center is potentially everywhere. The drum, like the heartbeat of the community is a means of climbing the tree and contacting the spirits. Campbell called the cosmic tree a wish-fulfilling, fruitful symbol of fertility, regeneration, and immortality.
Continuity
We need to know that we have a history of continuity that is profound. Our bloodline is our connection to Creation. We follow the steps created by the bodies and minds of the past. Our artform goes back to antiquity and is the measure of man. In this way we penetrate our own unknown origins and the culture of our ancestors. We think, feel, remember, and imagine. Memory is a form of imagination.
As existentially powerful as science or religion, genealogy can expand our worldview and help us weave our own coherent narrative. It helps us unravel our emotional inheritance. Sometimes what the forebearers did somehow becomes our story. We can re-imagine the whole planet as our ancestral lands. It helps us grasp how we are holistically embedded in a vast seamless web of life, a world alive with cosmic spirit, as counterpoint to death, tragedy, destruction, and despair.
Interpretation
Reading our genealogical lines is ultimately a heuristic process -- one requiring deep research and circumspect interpretation. But, connecting with the vitality of our lineage -- the living sap of the Tree -- elevates the mind and sublimes the thought. It is less about a "me generation" story than a grand "story of us" that ranges beyond illusions of time, space, and ego. We can cultivate the Elysian Fields of our ancestors to good effect. Thus, genealogy can be a transformative art. The Grail is a Mystery and the search for it a Quest for self-actualization, a way of initiation.
If we are too literal about it, we see only a string of corpses. But if we truly assimilate our heritage, we alter it creatively and give life to it through our individual understanding. We can bring our genealogy into meaningful dialogue with artistic and cultural disciplines. Genealogy is arguably one of the most "grounding" activities in which we can participate. From this fertile ground springs the acorn of the soul. It's an old Platonic and Jungian idea that the soul picks the father and mother of the child...and thereby the direct ancestors.
Deliteralization
The ancestors are the symbolic and material ground of our being. Psyche is not in us; we are in it which is everywhere. Jung pointed out in Letters Vol. II that without psyche we can neither know nor believe. We learn to center, reflect, and listen to voices within. The Great Work of genealogy is a small price to pay for turning the unconscious lead of uprootedness into the psychological gold of knowing one's true origins.
We live in relative autonomy but remain enmeshed in the epigenetic memories of our particular family. Our rich descent is about NOW, as much or more than it is about what has gone before. Our personal mythology is shaped in our formative years. The ancient myths live on in the stories we tell about our own lives. The old gods are there in spirit in our triumphs and struggles. Myths pertain to the primordial gods and goddesses, while legend is about historical human heroes.
Our life stories are personal myths that emulate the characters and themes found in old myths. We act on mythic archetypes without knowing we are doing it. We choose our identity as well as the shape and direction of our lives through such such scripts. When we resonate with our ancestors, it helps us make sense of our own lives.
We are cast in the natural form and and semblance of those who came before us. We must each answer the call of the Ancestors to the adventure of self-discovery in our own way. Group approaches generally devolve into the lowest common denominator, as Jung describes. We can approach our lineage in the spirit of individuation. In the genealogical matrix of personalities, each ancestor has a potential effect on our consciousness. Naturally, that potential will not be realized in full because many of our ancestral lines will stub out sooner or later in the dead ends of unknown individuals and lost family lines.
The Royal We
Because they were recorded better for historical and other reasons, noble and royal lines are more available. Anyone tracing to royal roots will meet and share the same medieval pool of progenitors -- the "usual suspects." It is only natural to identify with some more than others, depending on how we resonate with their stories, for good or evil. In Letters Vol. II, Jung said, "We think it is enough to discover new things, but we don't realize that knowing more demands a corresponding development of morality."
We may find ourselves in a participation mystique, or project our feelings onto them, or even become 'possessed' or fascinated by certain individuals and their qualities or deeds. For example, The Da Vinci Code fad has produced a group of fantasists riveted to alternative stories of Mary Magdalene and Jesus, while ignoring even their most recent ancestors, who are probably as, or more influential psychologically-speaking. In the worst cases such unconscious identification can lead to dissociation, 'possession,' and dysfunctionality. In an ideal world, genealogy supports maintaining our basic integrity, giving new meaning to "knowing who we are," and how deeply we are tied to self, world, and others.
Some people even develop compensatory personas based solely on such spurious connections. Our interpretations of our genealogy may lead to a lowering (abaissment) of consciousness, while others expand awareness. But we cannot retrieve the worldviews of pre-literate, agrarian or feudal societies to solve today's problems of the information age and global society. The problem compounds when we try to grasp the functional realities of ancient civilizations and cultures. What we do experience is our fantasy images of what those individuals and times might have been like. Images are the basic experience of psyche. These images are our prima materia.
Personal Mythology
In The Interior Dialogue (2009), Stanley Krippner describes personal mythology as "... an approach to personal transformation using the development of participants' personal stories about existential human issues for self healing and personal growth. There are also cultural, institutional, ethnic, and familial myths which influence our personal myths.
We use our stories as personal myths. Often they can be found through our dreams, where we are often informed long before we know intellectually. There are four factors that influence personal myths: biology, culture, interpersonal experiences, and transpersonal experiences and how to work with them. By identifying, evaluating, and transforming dysfunctional myths, beliefs, and worldviews, and working with them you can transform them."
We live in a time of many competing mythologies. Genealogy can help us clarify personal, characterological, and familial issues. Our genealogy becomes a psychologically constructed reality. We have no real experience of ancestral habits of thought and expression nor by-gone eras of strife, order and disorder. Sentimentality, nostalgia, and confabulation are poor substitutes. Others spout idiosyncratic doctrines or cliche prophecies based on their so-called supernatural connections. Such raw mythologizing is a far cry from the aesthetic pursuit of personal mythology, as described by Krippner, and others.
Your Genealogical exploration is an archetypal Journey during which you travel back into the worlds inhabited by your ancestors. Some people are rationally motivated to find and preserve their lineage for the family. Others are emotionally driven by conscious and unconscious needs. Those who take a religious approach will emphasize legendary 'holy blood' aspects. Those who are fascinated with myths and tales may embrace them as 'real.'
We can often not put a face to our ancestors, but we can give them back their names, and thus FACE our ancestors in the most direct way possible, with honor and respect.
We create our own ultimate narrative of our genealogical story based on our self-image, beliefs and worldview. Because the 'spiritual' romantics embrace connections others consider 'false' or non-historical, the rationalist genealogists have moved toward removing or cutting off lines they consider 'fictional'. But they cannot cut off the deep root of the collective unconscious for which these ancient ideas are 'real.' For example, immortality may not be 'real', but our unconscious behaves as if it is so. The unconscious believes in immortality, even if we don't.
There is a simple solution to this polarization. Taking a psychological approach to the family and world tree de-literalizes the legendary and mythic lines. We can simply retain their fructifying and life-giving potential without making them into unsupportable 'facts.' Jung said, "mythological motifs are 'facts;' they never change; only theories change," (Letters II, p. 191). We can't deny their existence by pruning them from the World Tree.
Archetypal psychology has worked with such material to provide a viable model for approaching the integration of these ancient figures into our conscious lives. If we apply the methods, we cannot fail to discover archetypal motifs. It isn't a system as much as a way of "seeing through."
If we apply depth psychology methods conscientiously, we can avoid most of the literalization, projection, and ego inflation that affects many amateur genealogists who fail to comprehend the material in a way that reflects best-practice. Instead our approach to the "as if" real portions of the pedigree is poetic and deliteralized, and doesn't seek to retrieve the past as much as live more fully with it. We can "evoke" and "constellate" such material within the hermetically sealed process of Jungian Genealogy.
In one sense, all these lives are yours, but not in the individual new age sense of past lives. You will meet characters of all psychological types, and perhaps re-member your passed lives: villains and heroes, the famous and infamous, saints and sinners, priests and warriors, fair maidens, bastards and bold knights, kings and queens, genius and psychopaths, and a host of supporting ancestors. And they will all be your gr-grandparents.
We may judge, deny, or reject some ancestors while having an instinctive rapport with others. They help us reveal our shadow traits as well as self-actualizing capacities. In most cases they lived in a far more challenging world in which to survive, much less thrive. Their lives can inform and inspire us. The trail back through history can be followed in our lines of descent. History becomes personal. Your sense of time, depth, and intimacy expands. Our whole being, our whole body is an intergenerational as well as personal memory down to the cellular, genetic, and epigenetic level.
If to 'worship' is to show honor or give devotional attention or adoring regard, then in genealogy we can 'worship' our ancestors, without taking that too literally. We can respect, honor, and attend without being consumed in the labyrinthine matrix of the dead or in their many conflicts, infidelities, and vile deeds. We can view the sketchier, legendary parts of our pedigree with an imaginal eye.
Deities and Demigods
This is not concretized personal genealogy, over burdened by the literalized personal conflicts and traumas of the family system. Neither a lie nor a fantasy, it is our underlying archetypal genealogy, without the suffocating pressures of personal genealogy. This allows psychic movement within the archetypal possibilities and situations behind their images. Are Uranus, Aphrodite, Hercules, Isis, and Odin really our "ancestors"? Such deities and demigods represent our transpersonal potential. Are they really in our blood, or the roots of the psyche?
This is the traditional way of showing forth the ancient shared connection with our common roots -- with the collective unconscious, including the gods and goddesses that appear at the foundation of our genealogies. We learn the family trees of godforms in school, but not their specific relationships to our drop lines. Many of the deities are related in more than one way. Stories of gods and creation are not just about the past. They are about us now.
Ancestral Braiding
Our ancestral lines braid together through marriages and migration. Our histories are woven together in cross-cousin and foreign marriage bridges. Long royal genealogies include nearly every war and clash of cultures throughout history. You will have progenitors on both sides of many battles. There will be persecutors and victims, even genocides. While bordering on factual our historical gleanings may or may not be accurate.
We may find it hard to absorb that whole timeline of human turmoil at such a personal level. It takes time to digest and integrate as the actual stories of your ancestors, especially when they fade into myth and legend. They may not be historical facts, but psyche has its own facts and effects on our beliefs and behaviors. Genealogy reflects the psychic facts of our protracted existence. Psychic realities are expressions of soul cultivated by imagination.
Tracing one's lines becomes a meditational activity. Finding the homes and stories of ancestors helps us flesh them out and imaginally travel back to their times and places. Many of these simple tasks have the ritualistic effect of helping us grow closer to the ancestors -- to those whose names we can now readily recite and place.
One's entire pedigree symbolizes the totality of the Self and its transcendent nature. But no one can integrate the wholeness of the entire self because that would limit it. Jung said, "in reality its experience is unlimited and endless." Biologically, we do not contain or express the genes of all of our ancestors, and our specific combination that does manifest is what makes us unique individuals.
Ritual, Dreams, and Imagination
We can expand our awareness further with 'dream genealogy.' Jung said, "In the deepest sense, we all dream not of ourselves, but out of what lies between us and the other." We can gather information about our ancestors in our reveries, dreams and shamanic journeys. 'Big dreams' can reveal elusive family history. By entering the world of the ancestors, we tap our deep unconscious, collective memories, intuition, vision, and wisdom. Lucid Dreaming and Dream Walking have been used by some to open ancestral connections.
Rituals, such as a simple ancestral altar, to more elaborate enactments or recitals are an option. More than faith, habit or even magic, Jung saw rites as psychologically effective symbolic acts, "giving expression to the archetypal expectation of the unconscious." "Rites give satisfaction to the collective and numinous aspects of the moment, beyond their purely personal significance." (Letters II, p.208-210) Acts of imagination can also be seen as rituals that enrich our perceptions.
We can edit or amend our family story as we gain a more accurate understanding our lines and the past. We are a ripple on the ocean of this past experience. We can move systematically back in time or take quantum leaps into other realities. Other optional methods include hypnosis or even word association. Those with "Second Sight" will draw from those experiences while others try to foster that ability. Perhaps one of the most productive techniques we can use is the dialogical method, such as that outlined by Ira Progoff in his works on journaling.
Some seek answers to questions, while others seek only the Mystery in the darkness. We connect with something greater than ourselves, finding more than we know. Art integrates the material and spiritual. Artistic expression in all forms is another way to let the ancestors in, to give them a voice or presence -- to receive a blessing or healing. Genealogy is an evolving construction of our inner reality.
***********************
References
Cosmic Tree/World Tree http://jungiangenealogy.weebly.com/cosmic-tree.html
http://www.lib.jmu.edu/genealogy/
Facing Your Ancestors
GENEALOGY IS A WAY OF KNOWING
Your Pedigree is Your Own Book of the Dead
What I mean by this is that every epoch of our biological life has a numinous character: birth, puberty, marriage, illness, death, etc.
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 208-210.
The shadow is the block which separates us most effectively
from the divine voice. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 544-546
"My fantasies, my symptoms put me in my place. It is no longer to know at which place I belong - at which God - but at what place I belong, on which altar I give myself, my myth by which suffering is transformed into devotion. "- James Hillman
The old myth, which always holds within it something yet older and more aboriginal, remains the same, this being an essential quality of all forms of religion; it only undergoes a new interpretation. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 482-488
Descent From Antiquity
Families are bound together eternally. The power of genealogy is the power of story. This is the story of the family and the diverse characters that populate the many branches of our family tree. These are stories that matter, that preceded your corporeal existence. This story reveals how things came to be as they are -- as you are.
Genealogy is a story we tell ourselves about ourselves. The stories of our ancestors open us to deeper experience. Our personal story is embedded in our larger inherited story and culture. Genealogy helps us connect more deeply with our unique story and meaning in life beyond a personal story. It is a mythic archaeology that connects us with that which has given us shape, opening a path to transformation.
Genealogy is the narrative of a pre-modern world. It has traditional roots in the ancient theogeny of gods and goddesses, divine-king lists and The Bible. Ancestral gods and ancestral religions developed over eons and are as old as particular branches of mankind -- gods of the blood. Astrologically determined gods and goddesses can often be found at the roots of dynastic houses. Royal houses claimed power through descent from ancestral gods.
Gods are difficult to destroy or conceal. Fictitious lines of descent blend indistinguishably with medieval forgeries. Some divinities may originally have been historical persons or war-chiefs, now lost to the mists of pre-history. Seedlines codify ancient ethnic identity and empires. Later, royals added them to their lines to bolster their claims to divine rule and the founding of thrones. Though not factual, traditional genealogy was a geographical and spiritual compass.
When Rome Christianized in the fourth century, it cut off the mythic corpus, and demoted gods to human status and allegories. The medieval period filled the gap with tales of the Holy Grail. The pagan content of mythology was codified in the mid-fourteenth century in Boccassio's Genealogy. Later, the Carolingians used such works to justify their right to rule, also citing the spurious Donation of Constantine, which the Church used to justify the appointment of rulers.
Traditional genealogy considered these mythological inclusions best-practice, yet it may be more of a psychic than historical "fact" -- the product of a collision between pagan and Christian societies and their reconciliation. Historical time required a linear descent, even if it masked pagan roots at the theological fringe. Even if medieval genealogies connecting ancient kings to Adam are pure invention, they retain certain psychic values that are part of the archaeology of the collective unconscious.
The Tree of Life
Our personal genealogy is a process of self-discovery and self-knowledge with its own procedures and measures of 'truth.' It seems ironic that technology is allowing us to retrieve such essential aspects of our own humanity. Curiously, genealogy is the second most popular online subject, second only to sex, much like sex precedes procreation.
Your family tree is an encyclopedia of human nature. Genealogy doesn't give our lives context; it is the context and material ground of our existence. The Tree of Life carries the evolution of the world, gives life to the universe, and understanding or consciousness. Life originates from and disappears back into the Tree. The Kabbalistic Tree of Life is a symbol of the process of creation and inner wholeness.
Jung said (CW5, para321) that, "The tree of life may have been, in the first instance, a fruit-bearing genealogical tree, and hence a kind of tribal mother." It was a central symbol of spiritual unity, wisdom, beauty, love, strength, and the power of the Universe rooted in the divine. Nietzsche pointed out that as with both people and trees, "The more one seeks to rise into height and light, the more vigorously do one's roots struggle earthward, downward into the dark, the the deep -- into evil."
The tree is an early symbol of spiritual development and our own immortal character, the living structure of our inner self -- transcendence to lofty heights. Below the surface, the subtext remains, "Who is this person having these experiences?" We are literally and symbolically the "fruit" of the Tree of Life. We need a powerful new story for our relationship with the Earth: we are, indeed, part of nature and not separate from it in any way. Genealogy helps ground us in this paradigm and helps develop our sense of deep time and rootedness in contemporary life with a global perspective.
The World Tree
Within 5-7 generations our family tree meets up and merges with the World Tree. This is especially true for American Colonial descent, where the progenitors and their droplines are well-known. Once you research back to your Gateway Ancestors who immigrated, you can easily find the lines that connect back as far as professional genealogists have determined and merge even further with fictional, legendary and mythological characters.
Outside of genealogy, the World Tree is often related to shamanism. As a link to ancestral spirits, it is an integral part of the shamanic cosmology. By our 13th Marriage Bridge we find ourselves in Medieval Times and common pool of noble ancestry. The World Tree is also a bridge that connects heaven, earth and underworld. When a shaman "climbs the tree," he or she ascends into the Upper World and the creative sources of power -- to the gods, to the zenith of heaven. The philosophical tree represents a sublimation of our spirit. The shaman receives intercessory messages.
In some ways the World Tree is identical with the shaman. Creatures can appear in the Tree, including snakes, birds, goats, and other totems and signs. The World Tree is a tree of initiation, ordeals, astral or mystic flight, vision quest, and fate or destiny. The shaman mediates between humanity and the spirit world, and in a simpler way, the genealogist performs a similar symbolic service, especially when interpreting a pedigree. To be cut off from the sacred tree is to be cut off from the spirit world, a condition which is likened to 'illness' and requires healing for loss of soul.
The serpents in our Tree are the individual lines of descent from various common ancestors. They lead us to question who and what we are, what we know, and what we thought we knew about our roots. They offer us Knowledge. They are part of the larger truth -- that we are born and we die -- and we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. Yet, Jung said we fear our serpent as we fear the numinosum. He concludes, "All we have to give the world and God is ourselves as we are."
Good and evil unite in the growth of the Tree. It combines masculine phallic representations with feminine nurture and growth. We are the serpent of wisdom, the union of good and evil, in our own Tree. Genealogy is a ritual in which we climb up and down through the branches of our tree in deep remembrance, an exercise in 'time travel' that expands our consciousness.
Mircea Eliade and Joseph Campbell wrote exhaustively on this Tree as the center of the world, a vertical World Axis or dimension that symbolizes the capacity for non-ordinary experience, including shamanic trance that reinforces community links with cosmic consciousness. The Sacred Tree as such a center is potentially everywhere. The drum, like the heartbeat of the community is a means of climbing the tree and contacting the spirits. Campbell called the cosmic tree a wish-fulfilling, fruitful symbol of fertility, regeneration, and immortality.
Continuity
We need to know that we have a history of continuity that is profound. Our bloodline is our connection to Creation. We follow the steps created by the bodies and minds of the past. Our artform goes back to antiquity and is the measure of man. In this way we penetrate our own unknown origins and the culture of our ancestors. We think, feel, remember, and imagine. Memory is a form of imagination.
As existentially powerful as science or religion, genealogy can expand our worldview and help us weave our own coherent narrative. It helps us unravel our emotional inheritance. Sometimes what the forebearers did somehow becomes our story. We can re-imagine the whole planet as our ancestral lands. It helps us grasp how we are holistically embedded in a vast seamless web of life, a world alive with cosmic spirit, as counterpoint to death, tragedy, destruction, and despair.
Interpretation
Reading our genealogical lines is ultimately a heuristic process -- one requiring deep research and circumspect interpretation. But, connecting with the vitality of our lineage -- the living sap of the Tree -- elevates the mind and sublimes the thought. It is less about a "me generation" story than a grand "story of us" that ranges beyond illusions of time, space, and ego. We can cultivate the Elysian Fields of our ancestors to good effect. Thus, genealogy can be a transformative art. The Grail is a Mystery and the search for it a Quest for self-actualization, a way of initiation.
If we are too literal about it, we see only a string of corpses. But if we truly assimilate our heritage, we alter it creatively and give life to it through our individual understanding. We can bring our genealogy into meaningful dialogue with artistic and cultural disciplines. Genealogy is arguably one of the most "grounding" activities in which we can participate. From this fertile ground springs the acorn of the soul. It's an old Platonic and Jungian idea that the soul picks the father and mother of the child...and thereby the direct ancestors.
Deliteralization
The ancestors are the symbolic and material ground of our being. Psyche is not in us; we are in it which is everywhere. Jung pointed out in Letters Vol. II that without psyche we can neither know nor believe. We learn to center, reflect, and listen to voices within. The Great Work of genealogy is a small price to pay for turning the unconscious lead of uprootedness into the psychological gold of knowing one's true origins.
We live in relative autonomy but remain enmeshed in the epigenetic memories of our particular family. Our rich descent is about NOW, as much or more than it is about what has gone before. Our personal mythology is shaped in our formative years. The ancient myths live on in the stories we tell about our own lives. The old gods are there in spirit in our triumphs and struggles. Myths pertain to the primordial gods and goddesses, while legend is about historical human heroes.
Our life stories are personal myths that emulate the characters and themes found in old myths. We act on mythic archetypes without knowing we are doing it. We choose our identity as well as the shape and direction of our lives through such such scripts. When we resonate with our ancestors, it helps us make sense of our own lives.
We are cast in the natural form and and semblance of those who came before us. We must each answer the call of the Ancestors to the adventure of self-discovery in our own way. Group approaches generally devolve into the lowest common denominator, as Jung describes. We can approach our lineage in the spirit of individuation. In the genealogical matrix of personalities, each ancestor has a potential effect on our consciousness. Naturally, that potential will not be realized in full because many of our ancestral lines will stub out sooner or later in the dead ends of unknown individuals and lost family lines.
The Royal We
Because they were recorded better for historical and other reasons, noble and royal lines are more available. Anyone tracing to royal roots will meet and share the same medieval pool of progenitors -- the "usual suspects." It is only natural to identify with some more than others, depending on how we resonate with their stories, for good or evil. In Letters Vol. II, Jung said, "We think it is enough to discover new things, but we don't realize that knowing more demands a corresponding development of morality."
We may find ourselves in a participation mystique, or project our feelings onto them, or even become 'possessed' or fascinated by certain individuals and their qualities or deeds. For example, The Da Vinci Code fad has produced a group of fantasists riveted to alternative stories of Mary Magdalene and Jesus, while ignoring even their most recent ancestors, who are probably as, or more influential psychologically-speaking. In the worst cases such unconscious identification can lead to dissociation, 'possession,' and dysfunctionality. In an ideal world, genealogy supports maintaining our basic integrity, giving new meaning to "knowing who we are," and how deeply we are tied to self, world, and others.
Some people even develop compensatory personas based solely on such spurious connections. Our interpretations of our genealogy may lead to a lowering (abaissment) of consciousness, while others expand awareness. But we cannot retrieve the worldviews of pre-literate, agrarian or feudal societies to solve today's problems of the information age and global society. The problem compounds when we try to grasp the functional realities of ancient civilizations and cultures. What we do experience is our fantasy images of what those individuals and times might have been like. Images are the basic experience of psyche. These images are our prima materia.
Personal Mythology
In The Interior Dialogue (2009), Stanley Krippner describes personal mythology as "... an approach to personal transformation using the development of participants' personal stories about existential human issues for self healing and personal growth. There are also cultural, institutional, ethnic, and familial myths which influence our personal myths.
We use our stories as personal myths. Often they can be found through our dreams, where we are often informed long before we know intellectually. There are four factors that influence personal myths: biology, culture, interpersonal experiences, and transpersonal experiences and how to work with them. By identifying, evaluating, and transforming dysfunctional myths, beliefs, and worldviews, and working with them you can transform them."
We live in a time of many competing mythologies. Genealogy can help us clarify personal, characterological, and familial issues. Our genealogy becomes a psychologically constructed reality. We have no real experience of ancestral habits of thought and expression nor by-gone eras of strife, order and disorder. Sentimentality, nostalgia, and confabulation are poor substitutes. Others spout idiosyncratic doctrines or cliche prophecies based on their so-called supernatural connections. Such raw mythologizing is a far cry from the aesthetic pursuit of personal mythology, as described by Krippner, and others.
Your Genealogical exploration is an archetypal Journey during which you travel back into the worlds inhabited by your ancestors. Some people are rationally motivated to find and preserve their lineage for the family. Others are emotionally driven by conscious and unconscious needs. Those who take a religious approach will emphasize legendary 'holy blood' aspects. Those who are fascinated with myths and tales may embrace them as 'real.'
We can often not put a face to our ancestors, but we can give them back their names, and thus FACE our ancestors in the most direct way possible, with honor and respect.
We create our own ultimate narrative of our genealogical story based on our self-image, beliefs and worldview. Because the 'spiritual' romantics embrace connections others consider 'false' or non-historical, the rationalist genealogists have moved toward removing or cutting off lines they consider 'fictional'. But they cannot cut off the deep root of the collective unconscious for which these ancient ideas are 'real.' For example, immortality may not be 'real', but our unconscious behaves as if it is so. The unconscious believes in immortality, even if we don't.
There is a simple solution to this polarization. Taking a psychological approach to the family and world tree de-literalizes the legendary and mythic lines. We can simply retain their fructifying and life-giving potential without making them into unsupportable 'facts.' Jung said, "mythological motifs are 'facts;' they never change; only theories change," (Letters II, p. 191). We can't deny their existence by pruning them from the World Tree.
Archetypal psychology has worked with such material to provide a viable model for approaching the integration of these ancient figures into our conscious lives. If we apply the methods, we cannot fail to discover archetypal motifs. It isn't a system as much as a way of "seeing through."
If we apply depth psychology methods conscientiously, we can avoid most of the literalization, projection, and ego inflation that affects many amateur genealogists who fail to comprehend the material in a way that reflects best-practice. Instead our approach to the "as if" real portions of the pedigree is poetic and deliteralized, and doesn't seek to retrieve the past as much as live more fully with it. We can "evoke" and "constellate" such material within the hermetically sealed process of Jungian Genealogy.
In one sense, all these lives are yours, but not in the individual new age sense of past lives. You will meet characters of all psychological types, and perhaps re-member your passed lives: villains and heroes, the famous and infamous, saints and sinners, priests and warriors, fair maidens, bastards and bold knights, kings and queens, genius and psychopaths, and a host of supporting ancestors. And they will all be your gr-grandparents.
We may judge, deny, or reject some ancestors while having an instinctive rapport with others. They help us reveal our shadow traits as well as self-actualizing capacities. In most cases they lived in a far more challenging world in which to survive, much less thrive. Their lives can inform and inspire us. The trail back through history can be followed in our lines of descent. History becomes personal. Your sense of time, depth, and intimacy expands. Our whole being, our whole body is an intergenerational as well as personal memory down to the cellular, genetic, and epigenetic level.
If to 'worship' is to show honor or give devotional attention or adoring regard, then in genealogy we can 'worship' our ancestors, without taking that too literally. We can respect, honor, and attend without being consumed in the labyrinthine matrix of the dead or in their many conflicts, infidelities, and vile deeds. We can view the sketchier, legendary parts of our pedigree with an imaginal eye.
Deities and Demigods
This is not concretized personal genealogy, over burdened by the literalized personal conflicts and traumas of the family system. Neither a lie nor a fantasy, it is our underlying archetypal genealogy, without the suffocating pressures of personal genealogy. This allows psychic movement within the archetypal possibilities and situations behind their images. Are Uranus, Aphrodite, Hercules, Isis, and Odin really our "ancestors"? Such deities and demigods represent our transpersonal potential. Are they really in our blood, or the roots of the psyche?
This is the traditional way of showing forth the ancient shared connection with our common roots -- with the collective unconscious, including the gods and goddesses that appear at the foundation of our genealogies. We learn the family trees of godforms in school, but not their specific relationships to our drop lines. Many of the deities are related in more than one way. Stories of gods and creation are not just about the past. They are about us now.
Ancestral Braiding
Our ancestral lines braid together through marriages and migration. Our histories are woven together in cross-cousin and foreign marriage bridges. Long royal genealogies include nearly every war and clash of cultures throughout history. You will have progenitors on both sides of many battles. There will be persecutors and victims, even genocides. While bordering on factual our historical gleanings may or may not be accurate.
We may find it hard to absorb that whole timeline of human turmoil at such a personal level. It takes time to digest and integrate as the actual stories of your ancestors, especially when they fade into myth and legend. They may not be historical facts, but psyche has its own facts and effects on our beliefs and behaviors. Genealogy reflects the psychic facts of our protracted existence. Psychic realities are expressions of soul cultivated by imagination.
Tracing one's lines becomes a meditational activity. Finding the homes and stories of ancestors helps us flesh them out and imaginally travel back to their times and places. Many of these simple tasks have the ritualistic effect of helping us grow closer to the ancestors -- to those whose names we can now readily recite and place.
One's entire pedigree symbolizes the totality of the Self and its transcendent nature. But no one can integrate the wholeness of the entire self because that would limit it. Jung said, "in reality its experience is unlimited and endless." Biologically, we do not contain or express the genes of all of our ancestors, and our specific combination that does manifest is what makes us unique individuals.
Ritual, Dreams, and Imagination
We can expand our awareness further with 'dream genealogy.' Jung said, "In the deepest sense, we all dream not of ourselves, but out of what lies between us and the other." We can gather information about our ancestors in our reveries, dreams and shamanic journeys. 'Big dreams' can reveal elusive family history. By entering the world of the ancestors, we tap our deep unconscious, collective memories, intuition, vision, and wisdom. Lucid Dreaming and Dream Walking have been used by some to open ancestral connections.
Rituals, such as a simple ancestral altar, to more elaborate enactments or recitals are an option. More than faith, habit or even magic, Jung saw rites as psychologically effective symbolic acts, "giving expression to the archetypal expectation of the unconscious." "Rites give satisfaction to the collective and numinous aspects of the moment, beyond their purely personal significance." (Letters II, p.208-210) Acts of imagination can also be seen as rituals that enrich our perceptions.
We can edit or amend our family story as we gain a more accurate understanding our lines and the past. We are a ripple on the ocean of this past experience. We can move systematically back in time or take quantum leaps into other realities. Other optional methods include hypnosis or even word association. Those with "Second Sight" will draw from those experiences while others try to foster that ability. Perhaps one of the most productive techniques we can use is the dialogical method, such as that outlined by Ira Progoff in his works on journaling.
Some seek answers to questions, while others seek only the Mystery in the darkness. We connect with something greater than ourselves, finding more than we know. Art integrates the material and spiritual. Artistic expression in all forms is another way to let the ancestors in, to give them a voice or presence -- to receive a blessing or healing. Genealogy is an evolving construction of our inner reality.
***********************
References
Cosmic Tree/World Tree http://jungiangenealogy.weebly.com/cosmic-tree.html
http://www.lib.jmu.edu/genealogy/
But one thing you must know: the one thing I have learned is that one must live this life. This life is the way, the long sought-after way to the unfathomable, which we call divine. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 232.
"In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order." — Carl Jung
“The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer. They think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.” - Ken Kesey
The relation with transcendence is certainly a necessity for us, but gives us no power over it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 367-368
Everyone insists on his standpoint and imagines he possesses the sole truth; therefore I counsel modesty, or rather the willingness to suppose that God can express himself in different languages. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 367-368
We need the coldness of death to see clearly. Life wants to live and to die, to begin and to end. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 275.
To give birth to the ancient in a new time is creation. This is the creation of the new, and that redeems me.Salvation is the resolution of the task. The task is to give birth to the old in a new time. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 311.
IMMORTALITY ON LOAN
WE ARE NOT WHO WE THINK WE ARE
So try to live as consciously, as conscientiously, and as completely as possible and learn who you are and who or what it is that ultimately decides.
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 300-301
If you learn about yourself and if eventually you discover more or less who you are, you also learn about God, and who He is. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 300-301
You have to live thoroughly and very consciously for many years in order to understand what your will is and what Its will is. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 300-301
People who think that they know the reasons for everything are unaware of the obvious fact that the existence of the universe itself is one big unfathomable secret, and so is our human existence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 252-253.
The essential dream-image: the Man, the Tree, the Stone, looks quite inaccessible, but only to our modern consciousness which is, as a rule, unconscious of its historical roots. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 325-327.
Did you not see that when your creative force turned to the world, how the dead things moved under it and through it, how they grew and prospered, and how your thoughts flowed in rich rivers? If your creative force now turns to the place of the soul, you will see how your soul becomes green and how its field bears wonderful fruit.
~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 236.
"In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order." — Carl Jung
“The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer. They think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.” - Ken Kesey
The relation with transcendence is certainly a necessity for us, but gives us no power over it. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 367-368
Everyone insists on his standpoint and imagines he possesses the sole truth; therefore I counsel modesty, or rather the willingness to suppose that God can express himself in different languages. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 367-368
We need the coldness of death to see clearly. Life wants to live and to die, to begin and to end. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 275.
To give birth to the ancient in a new time is creation. This is the creation of the new, and that redeems me.Salvation is the resolution of the task. The task is to give birth to the old in a new time. ~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 311.
IMMORTALITY ON LOAN
WE ARE NOT WHO WE THINK WE ARE
So try to live as consciously, as conscientiously, and as completely as possible and learn who you are and who or what it is that ultimately decides.
~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 300-301
If you learn about yourself and if eventually you discover more or less who you are, you also learn about God, and who He is. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 300-301
You have to live thoroughly and very consciously for many years in order to understand what your will is and what Its will is. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 300-301
People who think that they know the reasons for everything are unaware of the obvious fact that the existence of the universe itself is one big unfathomable secret, and so is our human existence. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 252-253.
The essential dream-image: the Man, the Tree, the Stone, looks quite inaccessible, but only to our modern consciousness which is, as a rule, unconscious of its historical roots. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 325-327.
Did you not see that when your creative force turned to the world, how the dead things moved under it and through it, how they grew and prospered, and how your thoughts flowed in rich rivers? If your creative force now turns to the place of the soul, you will see how your soul becomes green and how its field bears wonderful fruit.
~Carl Jung, The Red Book, Page 236.
JUNGIAN BASICS
http://www.sofia.edu/content/transpersonal-pioneers-carl-jung
Jung on Synchronicity.
[Sadly "Synchronicity" is all too often tossed about describing events which do not adhere to the synchronistic events as used within Depth Psychology.]
Synchronicity:
A phenomenon where an event in the outside world coincides meaningfully with a psychological state of mind.
Synchronicity . . . consists of two factors: a) An unconscious image comes into consciousness either directly (i.e., literally) or indirectly (symbolized or suggested) in the form of a dream, idea, or premonition. b) An objective situation coincides with this content. The one is as puzzling as the other.["Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle," ibid., par. 858.]
Jung associated synchronistic experiences with the relativity of space and time and a degree of unconsciousness.
The very diverse and confusing aspects of these phenomena are, so far as I can see at present, completely explicable on the assumption of a psychically relative space-time continuum. As soon as a psychic content crosses the threshold of consciousness, the synchronistic marginal phenomena disappear, time and space resume their accustomed sway, and consciousness is once more isolated in its subjectivity. . . . Conversely, synchronistic phenomena can be evoked by putting the subject into an unconscious state.["On the Nature of the Psyche," CW 8, par. 440.]
Synchronicity was defined by Jung as an "acausal connecting principle," an essentially mysterious connection between the personal psyche and the material world, based on the fact that at bottom they are only different forms of energy.
It is not only possible but fairly probable, even, that psyche and matter are two different aspects of one and the same thing. The synchronicity phenomena point, it seems to me, in this direction, for they show that the nonpsychic can behave like the psychic, and vice versa, without there being any causal connection between them.[Ibid., par. 418.]
http://www.sofia.edu/content/transpersonal-pioneers-carl-jung
Jung on Synchronicity.
[Sadly "Synchronicity" is all too often tossed about describing events which do not adhere to the synchronistic events as used within Depth Psychology.]
Synchronicity:
A phenomenon where an event in the outside world coincides meaningfully with a psychological state of mind.
Synchronicity . . . consists of two factors: a) An unconscious image comes into consciousness either directly (i.e., literally) or indirectly (symbolized or suggested) in the form of a dream, idea, or premonition. b) An objective situation coincides with this content. The one is as puzzling as the other.["Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle," ibid., par. 858.]
Jung associated synchronistic experiences with the relativity of space and time and a degree of unconsciousness.
The very diverse and confusing aspects of these phenomena are, so far as I can see at present, completely explicable on the assumption of a psychically relative space-time continuum. As soon as a psychic content crosses the threshold of consciousness, the synchronistic marginal phenomena disappear, time and space resume their accustomed sway, and consciousness is once more isolated in its subjectivity. . . . Conversely, synchronistic phenomena can be evoked by putting the subject into an unconscious state.["On the Nature of the Psyche," CW 8, par. 440.]
Synchronicity was defined by Jung as an "acausal connecting principle," an essentially mysterious connection between the personal psyche and the material world, based on the fact that at bottom they are only different forms of energy.
It is not only possible but fairly probable, even, that psyche and matter are two different aspects of one and the same thing. The synchronicity phenomena point, it seems to me, in this direction, for they show that the nonpsychic can behave like the psychic, and vice versa, without there being any causal connection between them.[Ibid., par. 418.]
Projection is mistakenly attributing your own repressed thoughts onto someone else, including thoughts, feelings, motives, and attitudes. In this case, it includes unowned emotions, metaphysical speculations and pseudo-scientific worldviews. Such figures stand in place of one's own self-actualization.
Balancing Genealogical Projection & Critical Thinking
Doubt is one of the names of intelligence. Genalogical data can act like a blank canvas for psychological projections, both in a potentially informing way and a self-delusory way. Therefore, it is well for us to be consciously aware of such dynamics in the interpretation of our family tree. Naturally, our hermeneutics will have imaginal and poetic aspects, yet the documented historical aspects help us from abdicating psychological responsibility to ourselves and family.
Participation Mystique is another way that identification can make its way into our reactions and attitudes about our pedigree and ancestors. Some people, finding a royal line among the commoners in their lists, experience inflation, leading to the misconcept that they are somehow royal. Such "men who would be kind" are too numerous to mention. These individuals have failed to do the math of decendancy.
One major problem is to mistake a historical person for an archetypal force or wisdom figure. This is how history is transmogrified into mythology. In psychological projection our unconsciousness is attributed to others, and they carry that unconscious content until or unless we become aware of it as our own. All assertions of ascended masters, channeled gurus, and secret chiefs fall into this category of archetypal protectors, mentors or teachers. The historical figure carried many of these qualities, powerful in collective wisdom and knowledge of the beyond. But being dead does not make you smarter.
Projection is self-mystification, a self-induced trance state, whether the content is positive or negative. The ego splits off the unconscious content, either over-valuing or undervaluing it. When we reach our archetypal boundaries we begin projecting, sort of an adult form of "let's pretend."
Emotionally appealing truths are sandwiched into idiosyncratic notions ranging from the speculative to the fantastical, and trap many individuals like flypaper, because our minds love a good story. The brain feeds on stories, but the wrong stories just lead us down the garden path into ancient worlds that never happened, and mythic scenarios that were never meant to be taken literally.
There is no literal explanation of such recurrent themes, only their psychological appearances arising from the needs of those who weave such notions into their personal narratives. Such figures of the unconscious are naturally represented as immortal, as they are eternal archetypes in personified dress...a sort of adult "imaginary friend." This is the source of channeled wisdom and spirit possession. During his lifetime the moral rectitude of St. Germain was questioned, but in the immortal version he becomes sanitized.
Jung elaborated on such transformative wisdom figures as the archetypes of the "mana personality" and Self: the Wise Old Man and the Wise Old Woman. They can also appear as aspects of one's anima or animus. Jung even experienced one or more such characters he personified as his soul guide Philemon, who he linked back to the historical Simon Magus. But he did not take such interaction literally but rather imaginally -- an "as if real" experience he engaged with dialogue. Such figures can offer guidance and wisdom gleaned from personal and cultural experience. They can also spew faulty logic, silly notions, inferior thinking, and pseudo-scientific ideas.
A false idea can be hyped through hysteria, lack of critical judgment, and naive enthusiasm. Without critical thinking we can derail the dynamic process of self transformation, by leading us down the garden path of false beliefs. Accepting such beliefs uncritically is precisely the opposite of what Jung recommended as individuation. Such false beliefs tend to cluster around an individual's personal issues, but are mistaken for and confounded with historical, philosophical and scientific 'reality'. Much of the "self-delusion" can be linked to exposure to memes functioning as emotional strange attractors or cultural artifacts or fallout,, as well as pre- and pseudo-scientific notions of by-gone centuries, and lack of understanding of standards and discernment.
Jung's Wise Old Woman and the Wise Old Man are archetypes of the Collective Unconscious. 'The "wise old woman"...[or] helpful "old woman" is a well-known symbol in myths and fairy tales for the wisdom of the eternal female nature'. One of her current popular incarnations is Mary Magdalene, a soul-mate, or Sophia, who has captured contemporary imaginations with ideas about the divine feminine and gnosis. The 'Wise Old Man, or some other very powerful aspect of eternal masculinity' is her male counterpart.
In Jung's thought, the individuation process was marked by a sequence of archetypes, each acquiring predominance at successive stages, and so reflecting what he termed an ascending psychic scale or 'hierarchy of the unconscious'. Thus, starting with the intermediate position of 'anima or animus...just as the latter have a higher position in the hierarchy than the shadow, so wholeness lays claim to a position and a value superior' still. The Wise Old Woman and Man, as what he termed "Mana" personalities or "supraordinate" personalities, stood for that wholeness of the self: 'the mother ("Primordial Mother" and "Earth Mother") as a supraordinary personality...as the "self"'.
As von Franz cautions, 'If an individual has wrestled seriously and long enough with the anima (or animus) problem, so that he, or she, is no longer partially identified with it, the unconscious again changes its dominant character and appears in a new symbolic form representing the Self, the innermost nucleus of the personality. In the dreams of a woman this center is usually personified as a superior female figure - a priestess, sorceress, earth mother, or goddess of nature or love. In the case of a man, it manifests itself as a masculine initiator and guardian (an Indian guru), a wise old man, a spirit of nature and so forth'.
The wise old man (also called senex, sage or sophos) is an archetype as described by Carl Jung, as well as a classic literary figure, and may be seen as a stock character. The wise old man can be a profound philosopher distinguished for wisdom and sound judgment but confounded with Shadow it can be a Trickster.
This type of character is typically represented as a kind and wise, older father-type figure who uses personal knowledge of people and the world to help tell stories and offer guidance that, in a mystical way, may impress upon his audience a sense of who they are and who they might become, thereby acting as a mentor. He may occasionally appear as an absent-minded professor, appearing absent-minded due to a predilection for contemplative pursuits.
The wise old man is often seen to be in some way "foreign", that is, from a different culture, nation, or occasionally, even a different time, from those he advises. In extreme cases, he may be a liminal being, such as Merlin, who was only half human.
In medieval chivalric romance and modern fantasy literature, he is often presented as a wizard. He can also or instead be featured as a hermit. This character type often explained to the knights or heroes—particularly those searching for the Holy Grail—the significance of their encounters.
In the individuation process, the archetype of the Wise old man was late to emerge, and seen as an indication of the Self. 'If an individual has wrestled seriously enough and long enough with the anima (or animus) problem...the unconscious again changes its dominant character and appears in a new symbolic form...as a masculine initiator and guardian (an Indian guru), a wise old man, a spirit of nature, and so forth'.
As Borges contends:
No one is anyone, one single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist. Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment — the moment when a man knows forever more who he is. Doubt is one of the names of intelligence.
Subconscious Supernatural
We can be sincerely convinced of the utterly wrong. Why do we continue to accommodate the irrelevant and easily falsifiable? Are we conscientious about our own self-delusions or simply unconsciously immersed in them due to a delusional perspective on our own misguided "gnosis" and obsessions with misguided theoretical perspectives? Even conscience is no ineffable guide to inner authority. There is no shortage of new myths to capture our attention. Dreams tell us who we are, collectively and individually.
If Inner Authority is linked to authentic power and wisdom, we need to examine our personal interaction with inner wisdom figures (archetypes) and values in order to create lives of positive action that arise from deep inner wisdom. Most of us shirk such important inner work, substituting a fantasy of transformation and mindfulness. Delusional self-improvement projects are aimed at adorning the ego.
People claim to hear messages that ring in their hearts as truth, or 'resonate' with material that confirms their own tacit or recognized beliefs, but most it originates in cultural conditioning and memetic patterning. Some of it echoes parental authority. All we hold is a piece of the Mystery. Buzzwords such as True Nature, intentionality, and mis-identified integrity compound the situation. Premature spiritual fixation can just as readily be a form of transcendental escapism.
Both the strategies of "transcendence" and "reduction" are expressions of bad faith — i.e., forms of self-deception and escapism that seek to deny the realities of the human existential situation. Self-delusion may be self-evident but few give themselves a reality check on it and doing so is compounded by our own psychological blindspots. This is a form of escapism or neo-mythology.
Balancing Genealogical Projection & Critical Thinking
Doubt is one of the names of intelligence. Genalogical data can act like a blank canvas for psychological projections, both in a potentially informing way and a self-delusory way. Therefore, it is well for us to be consciously aware of such dynamics in the interpretation of our family tree. Naturally, our hermeneutics will have imaginal and poetic aspects, yet the documented historical aspects help us from abdicating psychological responsibility to ourselves and family.
Participation Mystique is another way that identification can make its way into our reactions and attitudes about our pedigree and ancestors. Some people, finding a royal line among the commoners in their lists, experience inflation, leading to the misconcept that they are somehow royal. Such "men who would be kind" are too numerous to mention. These individuals have failed to do the math of decendancy.
One major problem is to mistake a historical person for an archetypal force or wisdom figure. This is how history is transmogrified into mythology. In psychological projection our unconsciousness is attributed to others, and they carry that unconscious content until or unless we become aware of it as our own. All assertions of ascended masters, channeled gurus, and secret chiefs fall into this category of archetypal protectors, mentors or teachers. The historical figure carried many of these qualities, powerful in collective wisdom and knowledge of the beyond. But being dead does not make you smarter.
Projection is self-mystification, a self-induced trance state, whether the content is positive or negative. The ego splits off the unconscious content, either over-valuing or undervaluing it. When we reach our archetypal boundaries we begin projecting, sort of an adult form of "let's pretend."
Emotionally appealing truths are sandwiched into idiosyncratic notions ranging from the speculative to the fantastical, and trap many individuals like flypaper, because our minds love a good story. The brain feeds on stories, but the wrong stories just lead us down the garden path into ancient worlds that never happened, and mythic scenarios that were never meant to be taken literally.
There is no literal explanation of such recurrent themes, only their psychological appearances arising from the needs of those who weave such notions into their personal narratives. Such figures of the unconscious are naturally represented as immortal, as they are eternal archetypes in personified dress...a sort of adult "imaginary friend." This is the source of channeled wisdom and spirit possession. During his lifetime the moral rectitude of St. Germain was questioned, but in the immortal version he becomes sanitized.
Jung elaborated on such transformative wisdom figures as the archetypes of the "mana personality" and Self: the Wise Old Man and the Wise Old Woman. They can also appear as aspects of one's anima or animus. Jung even experienced one or more such characters he personified as his soul guide Philemon, who he linked back to the historical Simon Magus. But he did not take such interaction literally but rather imaginally -- an "as if real" experience he engaged with dialogue. Such figures can offer guidance and wisdom gleaned from personal and cultural experience. They can also spew faulty logic, silly notions, inferior thinking, and pseudo-scientific ideas.
A false idea can be hyped through hysteria, lack of critical judgment, and naive enthusiasm. Without critical thinking we can derail the dynamic process of self transformation, by leading us down the garden path of false beliefs. Accepting such beliefs uncritically is precisely the opposite of what Jung recommended as individuation. Such false beliefs tend to cluster around an individual's personal issues, but are mistaken for and confounded with historical, philosophical and scientific 'reality'. Much of the "self-delusion" can be linked to exposure to memes functioning as emotional strange attractors or cultural artifacts or fallout,, as well as pre- and pseudo-scientific notions of by-gone centuries, and lack of understanding of standards and discernment.
Jung's Wise Old Woman and the Wise Old Man are archetypes of the Collective Unconscious. 'The "wise old woman"...[or] helpful "old woman" is a well-known symbol in myths and fairy tales for the wisdom of the eternal female nature'. One of her current popular incarnations is Mary Magdalene, a soul-mate, or Sophia, who has captured contemporary imaginations with ideas about the divine feminine and gnosis. The 'Wise Old Man, or some other very powerful aspect of eternal masculinity' is her male counterpart.
In Jung's thought, the individuation process was marked by a sequence of archetypes, each acquiring predominance at successive stages, and so reflecting what he termed an ascending psychic scale or 'hierarchy of the unconscious'. Thus, starting with the intermediate position of 'anima or animus...just as the latter have a higher position in the hierarchy than the shadow, so wholeness lays claim to a position and a value superior' still. The Wise Old Woman and Man, as what he termed "Mana" personalities or "supraordinate" personalities, stood for that wholeness of the self: 'the mother ("Primordial Mother" and "Earth Mother") as a supraordinary personality...as the "self"'.
As von Franz cautions, 'If an individual has wrestled seriously and long enough with the anima (or animus) problem, so that he, or she, is no longer partially identified with it, the unconscious again changes its dominant character and appears in a new symbolic form representing the Self, the innermost nucleus of the personality. In the dreams of a woman this center is usually personified as a superior female figure - a priestess, sorceress, earth mother, or goddess of nature or love. In the case of a man, it manifests itself as a masculine initiator and guardian (an Indian guru), a wise old man, a spirit of nature and so forth'.
The wise old man (also called senex, sage or sophos) is an archetype as described by Carl Jung, as well as a classic literary figure, and may be seen as a stock character. The wise old man can be a profound philosopher distinguished for wisdom and sound judgment but confounded with Shadow it can be a Trickster.
This type of character is typically represented as a kind and wise, older father-type figure who uses personal knowledge of people and the world to help tell stories and offer guidance that, in a mystical way, may impress upon his audience a sense of who they are and who they might become, thereby acting as a mentor. He may occasionally appear as an absent-minded professor, appearing absent-minded due to a predilection for contemplative pursuits.
The wise old man is often seen to be in some way "foreign", that is, from a different culture, nation, or occasionally, even a different time, from those he advises. In extreme cases, he may be a liminal being, such as Merlin, who was only half human.
In medieval chivalric romance and modern fantasy literature, he is often presented as a wizard. He can also or instead be featured as a hermit. This character type often explained to the knights or heroes—particularly those searching for the Holy Grail—the significance of their encounters.
In the individuation process, the archetype of the Wise old man was late to emerge, and seen as an indication of the Self. 'If an individual has wrestled seriously enough and long enough with the anima (or animus) problem...the unconscious again changes its dominant character and appears in a new symbolic form...as a masculine initiator and guardian (an Indian guru), a wise old man, a spirit of nature, and so forth'.
As Borges contends:
No one is anyone, one single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist. Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment — the moment when a man knows forever more who he is. Doubt is one of the names of intelligence.
Subconscious Supernatural
We can be sincerely convinced of the utterly wrong. Why do we continue to accommodate the irrelevant and easily falsifiable? Are we conscientious about our own self-delusions or simply unconsciously immersed in them due to a delusional perspective on our own misguided "gnosis" and obsessions with misguided theoretical perspectives? Even conscience is no ineffable guide to inner authority. There is no shortage of new myths to capture our attention. Dreams tell us who we are, collectively and individually.
If Inner Authority is linked to authentic power and wisdom, we need to examine our personal interaction with inner wisdom figures (archetypes) and values in order to create lives of positive action that arise from deep inner wisdom. Most of us shirk such important inner work, substituting a fantasy of transformation and mindfulness. Delusional self-improvement projects are aimed at adorning the ego.
People claim to hear messages that ring in their hearts as truth, or 'resonate' with material that confirms their own tacit or recognized beliefs, but most it originates in cultural conditioning and memetic patterning. Some of it echoes parental authority. All we hold is a piece of the Mystery. Buzzwords such as True Nature, intentionality, and mis-identified integrity compound the situation. Premature spiritual fixation can just as readily be a form of transcendental escapism.
Both the strategies of "transcendence" and "reduction" are expressions of bad faith — i.e., forms of self-deception and escapism that seek to deny the realities of the human existential situation. Self-delusion may be self-evident but few give themselves a reality check on it and doing so is compounded by our own psychological blindspots. This is a form of escapism or neo-mythology.
Our ancestral tree may chase us through the desert of the world until we let ourselves catch up with it.
PART I
SOURCE MEMORY
Gnosis Embodies Ancestral Spiritual Wisdom
"What is real and what is not the child once knew but she's forgot."
The collective unconscious is part of the psyche which can be negatively distinguished from a personal unconscious by the fact that it does not, like the latter, owe its existence to personal experience and consequently is not a personal acquisition. While the personal unconscious is made up essentially of contents which have at one time been conscious but which have disappeared from consciousness through having been forgotten or repressed, the contents of the collective unconscious have never been individually acquired, but owe their existence exclusively to heredity. I have chosen the term ‘collective' since this part of the unconscious is not individual, but universal. And unlike the personal soul its contents and modes of behavior are relatively the same everywhere and in all individuals. It is, in other words, identical in all men and thus constitutes a common psychic substrate of a super personal nature which is present in every one of us. ~Carl Jung, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious
"All substances are part of my own consciousness.
This consciousness is vacuous, unborn, and unceasing."
Thus meditating, allow the mind to rest in the uncreated state. Like the pouring of water into water, the mind should be allowed its own easy mental posture in its natural, unmodified condition, clear and vibrant. --Leary, Metzner, Alpert; THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE
C.G. Jung: “a Secret Unrest Gnaws at the Roots of Our Being.
“Our unconscious, on the other hand, hides living water, spirit that has become nature, and that is why it is disturbed. Heaven has become for us the cosmic space of the physicists, and the divine empyrean a fair memory of things that once were. But ‘the heart glows,’ and a secret unrest gnaws at the roots of our being. Dealing with the Unconscious has become a question of life for us.” ~C.G. Jung, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, Paragraph 50.
"All substances are part of my own consciousness.
This consciousness is vacuous, unborn, and unceasing."
Thus meditating, allow the mind to rest in the uncreated state. Like the pouring of water into water, the mind should be allowed its own easy mental posture in its natural, unmodified condition, clear and vibrant. --Leary, Metzner, Alpert; THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE
C.G. Jung: “a Secret Unrest Gnaws at the Roots of Our Being.
“Our unconscious, on the other hand, hides living water, spirit that has become nature, and that is why it is disturbed. Heaven has become for us the cosmic space of the physicists, and the divine empyrean a fair memory of things that once were. But ‘the heart glows,’ and a secret unrest gnaws at the roots of our being. Dealing with the Unconscious has become a question of life for us.” ~C.G. Jung, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, Paragraph 50.
Copyright: agsandrew
"Excluded ancestors can be scary because their pain overlaps our own lives: however, when we invite them to our hearth shrine, we begin to feel less abandoned ourselves."
- Caitlin Matthews
- Caitlin Matthews
"The collective unconscious is a part of the psyche which can be negatively distinguished from a personal unconscious by the fact that it does not, like the latter, owe its existence to personal experience and consequently is not a personal acquisition. While the personal unconscious is made up essentially of contents which have at one time been conscious but which have disappeared from consciousness through having been forgotten or repressed, the contents of the collective unconscious have never been in consciousness, and therefore have never been individually acquired, but owe their existence exclusively to heredity. Whereas the personal unconscious consists for the most part of complexes, the content of the collective unconscious is made up essentially of archetypes...
"... In addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix), there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents."
(Carl G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, pg. 42-43)
"... In addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix), there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents."
(Carl G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, pg. 42-43)
PARTICIPATION MYSTIQUE
Projection & Identification
http://jungiangenealogy.weebly.com/participation.html
People with a narrow conscious life exteriorize their unconscious, they are continually in participation mystique with other people… if more unconscious things have become conscious to you, then you live less in participation mystique. ~Carl Jung, Visions, para 1184.
Multigenerational Epigenetics
So how do our epigenomes become informed about life around us, particularly the epigenome of a fetus or a yet‑to‑be‑conceived child? Most of the science points to our neural, endocrine, and immune systems. Our brains, glands, and immune cells sense the outside world and secrete hormones, growth factors, neurotransmitters, and other biological signaling molecules to tell every organ in the body that it needs to adapt to a changing world.
Soft evolution is like an annotated book. Those who read different annotations of the same book may end up with very different learning.
As we experience stress, love, aging, fear, pleasure, infection, pain, exercise, or hunger, various hormones adjust various physical responses within our bodies. Hormones surge through our blood; changes in cortisol, testosterone, estrogen, interleukin, leptin, insulin, oxytocin, thyroid hormone, growth hormone, and adrenaline make us behave and develop in different ways. And they signal to our epigenomes, “Time to flip some switches!”Genes get shut off or turned on as the world around us changes.
The Book of LifeSoft evolution is analogous to an annotated book. The basic text and argument of the book remain the same. But if the text is gradually surrounded by margin notes and comments, then those who read different annotations of the exact same book may end up with very different learning, depending on who annotated the particular copy they borrowed, how they treated the original text, how the reader decided to interpret the interplay between the original printed text and the annotations, and whether some of the annotations were erased or modified by other readers.
There are multiple ways to add in rapid, inherited epigenetic adaptations without any change in the core DNA code. One basic and common mechanism is DNA methylation: Enzymes in our cells attach a methyl group (CH3) to a cytosine (C) located next to a guanine (G) in our DNA, forming a methylated island. This tells the gene that follows next, “Shhh, do not express yourself.”
One of the key reasons for human diversity is that about 70 percent, or roughly 14,000, of our genes have these “on/off” switches plus random mutations among them, so there are countless combinations of ways that these switches are flipped in the human population.
Sperm and eggs get a nearly fresh start: An estimated 90 percent of the switches are erased before conception occurs, which means most epigenetic memories are lost. But there is still a lot of recent data moving from generation to generation. (Those who described sperm as simple bags of DNA with a tail could never explain why sperm had so many receptors for so many hormones not directly related to reproduction, including leptin, one of the obesity genes, as well as 19 growth factors, cytokines, and neurotransmitters.)
Epigenetic switches can be flipped on and off in sperm, eggs, or embryos, so your kids and grandkids can share your environmental experiences and knowledge, and be better prepared for the environment they will soon be entering. For instance, if you were a male smoker, and your brother was not, 28 epigenetic signals in your sperm would be different from his. Sperm are listening.
At conception, your grandchildren listen to distant tales, and sometimes pass them on.
Reprinted from Evolving Ourselves by Juan Enriquez and Steve Gullans with permission of Current, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright (c) Juan Enriquez and Steven Gullans, 2015.
Grandma's Experiences Leave a Mark on Your Genes
Your ancestors' lousy childhoods or excellent adventures might change your personality, bequeathing anxiety or resilience by altering the epigenetic expressions of genes in the brain
http://discovermagazine.com/2013/may/13-grandmas-experiences-leave-epigenetic-mark-on-your-genes#.UwOqevk7t8E
Below: Iona and her paternal Grandmother, Amy Delena and maternal Grandmother Rosa
Five Criteria to Assess Wisdom:
Multigenerational Epigenetics
In psychology, genetic memory is a memory present at birth that exists in the absence of sensory experience, and is incorporated into the genome over long spans of time. It is based on the idea that common experiences of a species become incorporated into its genetic code, not by a Lamarckian process that encodes specific memories but by a much vaguer tendency to encode a readiness to respond in certain ways to certain stimuli. Shares much with the modern concept of epigenetics.
Genetic memory is invoked to explain ethnic group memory postulated by Carl Jung. Jungian psychology suggests memories, feelings and ideas inherited from our ancestors as part of a "collective unconscious". The term "epigenetic" refers to heritable traits that do not involve changes to the underlying DNA sequence. This can occur over rounds of cell division, while some epigenetic features can effect transgenerational inheritance and are inherited from one generation to the next.
Multigenerational epigenetics is today regarded as another aspect to evolution and adaptation. Culture is the most fundamental force that has shaped man's life through the aeons. Its effect is, in all likelihood, established in the genome in a few generations.The concept implies that genes have a 'memory'; what you do in your lifetime, and what you are exposed to, could in turn affect your grandchildren.
Epigenetics adds a whole new layer to genes beyond the DNA, the so called "epigenome". Among other things, it proposes a control system of 'switches' that turn genes on or off. The things that people experience, like nutrition and stress, can control these switches and cause heritable effects in humans. The switches themselves can also be inherited. This means that a 'memory' of an event could be passed through generations. A simple environmental effect could switch genes on or off - and this change could be inherited.
Epigenetics can impact evolution when epigenetic changes are heritable.[1] A sequestered germ line or Weismann barrier is specific to animals, and epigenetic inheritance is more common in plants and microbes. Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb have argued that these effects may require enhancements to the standard conceptual framework of the modern evolutionary synthesis.[97][98] Other evolutionary biologists have incorporated epigenetic inheritance into population genetics models[99] or are openly skeptical.[100]
Two important ways in which epigenetic inheritance can be different from traditional genetic inheritance, with important consequences for evolution, are that rates of epimutation can be much faster than rates of mutation[101] and the epimutations are more easily reversible.[102] In plants heritable DNA methylation mutations are 100.000 times more likely to occur compared to DNA mutations.[103] An epigenetically inherited element such as the PSI+ system can act as a "stop-gap", good enough for short-term adaptation that allows the lineage to survive for long enough for mutation and/or recombination to genetically assimilate the adaptive phenotypic change.[104] The existence of this possibility increases the evolvability of a species.
More than 100 cases of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance phenomena have been reported in a wide range of organisms, including prokaryotes, plants, and animals.[105] For instance, Mourning Cloak butterflies will change color through hormone changes in response to experimentation of varying temperatures.[106] Bacteria make widespread use of postreplicative DNA methylation for the epigenetic control of DNA-protein interactions. Bacteria make use of DNA adenine methylation (rather than DNA cytosine methylation) as an epigenetic signal. DNA adenine methylation is important in bacteria virulence in organisms such as Escherichia coli, Salmonella, Vibrio, Yersinia, Haemophilus, and Brucella. In Alphaproteobacteria, methylation of adenine regulates the cell cycle and couples gene transcription to DNA replication. In Gammaproteobacteria, adenine methylation provides signals for DNA replication, chromosome segregation, mismatch repair, packaging of bacteriophage, transposase activity and regulation of gene expression.[107][108]
The filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa is a prominent model system for understanding the control and function of cytosine methylation. In this organisms, DNA methylation is associated with relics of a genome defense system called RIP (repeat-induced point mutation) and silences gene expression by inhibiting transcription elongation.[109]
The yeast prion PSI is generated by a conformational change of a translation termination factor, which is then inherited by daughter cells. This can provide a survival advantage under adverse conditions. This is an example of epigenetic regulation enabling unicellular organisms to respond rapidly to environmental stress. Prions can be viewed as epigenetic agents capable of inducing a phenotypic change without modification of the genome.[108]
Direct detection of epigenetic marks in microorganisms is possible with single molecule real time sequencing, in which polymerase sensitivity allows for measuring methylation and other modifications as a DNA molecule is being sequenced.[110] Several projects have demonstrated the ability to collect genome-wide epigenetic data in bacteria.[111][112][113][114]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics
Projection & Identification
http://jungiangenealogy.weebly.com/participation.html
People with a narrow conscious life exteriorize their unconscious, they are continually in participation mystique with other people… if more unconscious things have become conscious to you, then you live less in participation mystique. ~Carl Jung, Visions, para 1184.
Multigenerational Epigenetics
So how do our epigenomes become informed about life around us, particularly the epigenome of a fetus or a yet‑to‑be‑conceived child? Most of the science points to our neural, endocrine, and immune systems. Our brains, glands, and immune cells sense the outside world and secrete hormones, growth factors, neurotransmitters, and other biological signaling molecules to tell every organ in the body that it needs to adapt to a changing world.
Soft evolution is like an annotated book. Those who read different annotations of the same book may end up with very different learning.
As we experience stress, love, aging, fear, pleasure, infection, pain, exercise, or hunger, various hormones adjust various physical responses within our bodies. Hormones surge through our blood; changes in cortisol, testosterone, estrogen, interleukin, leptin, insulin, oxytocin, thyroid hormone, growth hormone, and adrenaline make us behave and develop in different ways. And they signal to our epigenomes, “Time to flip some switches!”Genes get shut off or turned on as the world around us changes.
The Book of LifeSoft evolution is analogous to an annotated book. The basic text and argument of the book remain the same. But if the text is gradually surrounded by margin notes and comments, then those who read different annotations of the exact same book may end up with very different learning, depending on who annotated the particular copy they borrowed, how they treated the original text, how the reader decided to interpret the interplay between the original printed text and the annotations, and whether some of the annotations were erased or modified by other readers.
There are multiple ways to add in rapid, inherited epigenetic adaptations without any change in the core DNA code. One basic and common mechanism is DNA methylation: Enzymes in our cells attach a methyl group (CH3) to a cytosine (C) located next to a guanine (G) in our DNA, forming a methylated island. This tells the gene that follows next, “Shhh, do not express yourself.”
One of the key reasons for human diversity is that about 70 percent, or roughly 14,000, of our genes have these “on/off” switches plus random mutations among them, so there are countless combinations of ways that these switches are flipped in the human population.
Sperm and eggs get a nearly fresh start: An estimated 90 percent of the switches are erased before conception occurs, which means most epigenetic memories are lost. But there is still a lot of recent data moving from generation to generation. (Those who described sperm as simple bags of DNA with a tail could never explain why sperm had so many receptors for so many hormones not directly related to reproduction, including leptin, one of the obesity genes, as well as 19 growth factors, cytokines, and neurotransmitters.)
Epigenetic switches can be flipped on and off in sperm, eggs, or embryos, so your kids and grandkids can share your environmental experiences and knowledge, and be better prepared for the environment they will soon be entering. For instance, if you were a male smoker, and your brother was not, 28 epigenetic signals in your sperm would be different from his. Sperm are listening.
At conception, your grandchildren listen to distant tales, and sometimes pass them on.
Reprinted from Evolving Ourselves by Juan Enriquez and Steve Gullans with permission of Current, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright (c) Juan Enriquez and Steven Gullans, 2015.
Grandma's Experiences Leave a Mark on Your Genes
Your ancestors' lousy childhoods or excellent adventures might change your personality, bequeathing anxiety or resilience by altering the epigenetic expressions of genes in the brain
http://discovermagazine.com/2013/may/13-grandmas-experiences-leave-epigenetic-mark-on-your-genes#.UwOqevk7t8E
Below: Iona and her paternal Grandmother, Amy Delena and maternal Grandmother Rosa
Five Criteria to Assess Wisdom:
- Factual knowledge: Knowing the 'whats' of the human condition and human nature
- Procedural knowledge: Strategies for solving life's problems
- Lifespan contextualism: Knowledge of life's settings and social situations and how they change overtime
- Relativism of values: Being aware of cultural differences and being considerate and sensitive to different values
- Awareness and management of uncertainty: Recognizing the limits of knowledge, and understanding the uncertainty of the future http://berlinwisdommodel.weebly.com/baltes-assessment-of-wisdom.html
Multigenerational Epigenetics
In psychology, genetic memory is a memory present at birth that exists in the absence of sensory experience, and is incorporated into the genome over long spans of time. It is based on the idea that common experiences of a species become incorporated into its genetic code, not by a Lamarckian process that encodes specific memories but by a much vaguer tendency to encode a readiness to respond in certain ways to certain stimuli. Shares much with the modern concept of epigenetics.
Genetic memory is invoked to explain ethnic group memory postulated by Carl Jung. Jungian psychology suggests memories, feelings and ideas inherited from our ancestors as part of a "collective unconscious". The term "epigenetic" refers to heritable traits that do not involve changes to the underlying DNA sequence. This can occur over rounds of cell division, while some epigenetic features can effect transgenerational inheritance and are inherited from one generation to the next.
Multigenerational epigenetics is today regarded as another aspect to evolution and adaptation. Culture is the most fundamental force that has shaped man's life through the aeons. Its effect is, in all likelihood, established in the genome in a few generations.The concept implies that genes have a 'memory'; what you do in your lifetime, and what you are exposed to, could in turn affect your grandchildren.
Epigenetics adds a whole new layer to genes beyond the DNA, the so called "epigenome". Among other things, it proposes a control system of 'switches' that turn genes on or off. The things that people experience, like nutrition and stress, can control these switches and cause heritable effects in humans. The switches themselves can also be inherited. This means that a 'memory' of an event could be passed through generations. A simple environmental effect could switch genes on or off - and this change could be inherited.
Epigenetics can impact evolution when epigenetic changes are heritable.[1] A sequestered germ line or Weismann barrier is specific to animals, and epigenetic inheritance is more common in plants and microbes. Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb have argued that these effects may require enhancements to the standard conceptual framework of the modern evolutionary synthesis.[97][98] Other evolutionary biologists have incorporated epigenetic inheritance into population genetics models[99] or are openly skeptical.[100]
Two important ways in which epigenetic inheritance can be different from traditional genetic inheritance, with important consequences for evolution, are that rates of epimutation can be much faster than rates of mutation[101] and the epimutations are more easily reversible.[102] In plants heritable DNA methylation mutations are 100.000 times more likely to occur compared to DNA mutations.[103] An epigenetically inherited element such as the PSI+ system can act as a "stop-gap", good enough for short-term adaptation that allows the lineage to survive for long enough for mutation and/or recombination to genetically assimilate the adaptive phenotypic change.[104] The existence of this possibility increases the evolvability of a species.
More than 100 cases of transgenerational epigenetic inheritance phenomena have been reported in a wide range of organisms, including prokaryotes, plants, and animals.[105] For instance, Mourning Cloak butterflies will change color through hormone changes in response to experimentation of varying temperatures.[106] Bacteria make widespread use of postreplicative DNA methylation for the epigenetic control of DNA-protein interactions. Bacteria make use of DNA adenine methylation (rather than DNA cytosine methylation) as an epigenetic signal. DNA adenine methylation is important in bacteria virulence in organisms such as Escherichia coli, Salmonella, Vibrio, Yersinia, Haemophilus, and Brucella. In Alphaproteobacteria, methylation of adenine regulates the cell cycle and couples gene transcription to DNA replication. In Gammaproteobacteria, adenine methylation provides signals for DNA replication, chromosome segregation, mismatch repair, packaging of bacteriophage, transposase activity and regulation of gene expression.[107][108]
The filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa is a prominent model system for understanding the control and function of cytosine methylation. In this organisms, DNA methylation is associated with relics of a genome defense system called RIP (repeat-induced point mutation) and silences gene expression by inhibiting transcription elongation.[109]
The yeast prion PSI is generated by a conformational change of a translation termination factor, which is then inherited by daughter cells. This can provide a survival advantage under adverse conditions. This is an example of epigenetic regulation enabling unicellular organisms to respond rapidly to environmental stress. Prions can be viewed as epigenetic agents capable of inducing a phenotypic change without modification of the genome.[108]
Direct detection of epigenetic marks in microorganisms is possible with single molecule real time sequencing, in which polymerase sensitivity allows for measuring methylation and other modifications as a DNA molecule is being sequenced.[110] Several projects have demonstrated the ability to collect genome-wide epigenetic data in bacteria.[111][112][113][114]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics
Preface
"In the deepest sense, we all dream not of ourselves,
but out of what lies between us and the other." --C.G. Jung
"In the deepest sense, we all dream not of ourselves,
but out of what lies between us and the other." --C.G. Jung
Jung equates the memory of one’s divinity with the experience of the “eternal” self as “… preexistent to consciousness …”The activated memory of the self then becomes “… the most immediate experience of the Divine which it is psychologically possible to imagine.”Such an anamnesis brings the individual closer to one’s totality in the present, and so always carries with it “… the restoration of an original condition, an apocatastasis.”
Apocatastasis usually refers to the reunion of the totality of creation with its origin at the end of history in a post-temporal situation. When Jung equates the recovered memory of one’s totality with apocatastasis he is stating that such wholeness is experienced as worked by the memory itself and in the here and now. Both paradise and the end time are to be approximated and experienced in the present as moments in natural processes of maturation or individuation no longer distinguishable from divinization. http://iaap.org/congresses/barcelona-2004/memory-and-emergence-jung-and-the-mystical-anamnesis-of-the-nothing.html
Apocatastasis usually refers to the reunion of the totality of creation with its origin at the end of history in a post-temporal situation. When Jung equates the recovered memory of one’s totality with apocatastasis he is stating that such wholeness is experienced as worked by the memory itself and in the here and now. Both paradise and the end time are to be approximated and experienced in the present as moments in natural processes of maturation or individuation no longer distinguishable from divinization. http://iaap.org/congresses/barcelona-2004/memory-and-emergence-jung-and-the-mystical-anamnesis-of-the-nothing.html
Our souls as well as our bodies are composed of individual elements which were all already present in the ranks of our ancestors. The "newness" in the individual psyche is an endlessly varied recombination of age-old components. Body and soul therefore have an intensely historical character and find no proper place in what is new, in things that have just come into being.
That is to say, our ancestral components are only partly at home in such things. We are very far from having finished completely with the Middle Ages, classical antiquity, and primitivity, as our modern psyches pretend. Nevertheless, we have plunged down a cataract of progress which sweeps us on into the future with ever wilder violence the farther it takes us from our roots.
But it is precisely the loss of connection with the past, our up-rootedness, which has given rise to the "discontents" of civilization and to such a flurry and haste that we live more in the future and its chimerical promises of a golden age than in the present, with which our whole evolutionary background has not yet caught up.
We rush impetuously into novelty, driven by a mounting sense of insufficiency, dissatisfaction, and restlessness. We no longer live on what we have, but on promises, no longer in the light of the present day, but in the darkness of the future, which, we expect, will at last bring the proper sunrise.
We refuse to recognize that everything better is purchased at the price of something worse; that, for example, the hope of greater freedom is canceled out by increased enslavement to the state, not to speak of the terrible perils to which the most brilliant discoveries of science expose us.
The less we understand of what our fathers and forefathers sought, the less we understand ourselves, and thus we help with all our might to rob the individual of his roots and his guiding instincts, so that he becomes a particle in the mass, ruled only by what Nietzsche called the spirit of gravity. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections.
That is to say, our ancestral components are only partly at home in such things. We are very far from having finished completely with the Middle Ages, classical antiquity, and primitivity, as our modern psyches pretend. Nevertheless, we have plunged down a cataract of progress which sweeps us on into the future with ever wilder violence the farther it takes us from our roots.
But it is precisely the loss of connection with the past, our up-rootedness, which has given rise to the "discontents" of civilization and to such a flurry and haste that we live more in the future and its chimerical promises of a golden age than in the present, with which our whole evolutionary background has not yet caught up.
We rush impetuously into novelty, driven by a mounting sense of insufficiency, dissatisfaction, and restlessness. We no longer live on what we have, but on promises, no longer in the light of the present day, but in the darkness of the future, which, we expect, will at last bring the proper sunrise.
We refuse to recognize that everything better is purchased at the price of something worse; that, for example, the hope of greater freedom is canceled out by increased enslavement to the state, not to speak of the terrible perils to which the most brilliant discoveries of science expose us.
The less we understand of what our fathers and forefathers sought, the less we understand ourselves, and thus we help with all our might to rob the individual of his roots and his guiding instincts, so that he becomes a particle in the mass, ruled only by what Nietzsche called the spirit of gravity. ~Carl Jung, Memories Dreams and Reflections.
Mysterium Coniunctionis, Iona Miller, 1993
Working with your ancestors or the ancestors of your heart
assures you of opportunities and blessings that you may not have recognized.
assures you of opportunities and blessings that you may not have recognized.
"Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called 'the love of your fate.' Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, 'This is what I need.' It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge.
If you bring love to that moment--not discouragement--you will find the strength is there. Any disaster that you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow. Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now.
You'll see that this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you're required to exhibit strength, it comes." --Joseph Campbell
If you bring love to that moment--not discouragement--you will find the strength is there. Any disaster that you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow. Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now.
You'll see that this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you're required to exhibit strength, it comes." --Joseph Campbell
From a book on the shtetl -
(the soul about to be born is reluctant to leave heaven)
"...Then the angel touches the baby just under the nose, making the cleft
on the upper lip, extinguishing the light at the head and bringing him
forth into the world against his will. Immediately the child forgets all
his soul has seen and learned, and he comes into the world crying, for he
loses his place of shelter and security and rest..."
A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life's morning.
The significance of the morning undoubtedly lies in the development of the individual, our entrenchment in the outer world, the propagation of our kind, and the care of our children.
This is the obvious purpose of nature. But when this purpose has been attained - and more than attained - shall the earning of money, the extension of conquests, and the expansion of life go steadily on beyond the bounds of all reason and sense?
Whoever carries over into the afternoon the law of the morning, or the natural aim, must pay for it with damage to his soul, just as surely as a growing youth who tries to carry over his childish egoism into adult life must pay for this mistake with social failure. ~Carl Jung, "The Stages of Life" (1930). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 787
(the soul about to be born is reluctant to leave heaven)
"...Then the angel touches the baby just under the nose, making the cleft
on the upper lip, extinguishing the light at the head and bringing him
forth into the world against his will. Immediately the child forgets all
his soul has seen and learned, and he comes into the world crying, for he
loses his place of shelter and security and rest..."
A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life's morning.
The significance of the morning undoubtedly lies in the development of the individual, our entrenchment in the outer world, the propagation of our kind, and the care of our children.
This is the obvious purpose of nature. But when this purpose has been attained - and more than attained - shall the earning of money, the extension of conquests, and the expansion of life go steadily on beyond the bounds of all reason and sense?
Whoever carries over into the afternoon the law of the morning, or the natural aim, must pay for it with damage to his soul, just as surely as a growing youth who tries to carry over his childish egoism into adult life must pay for this mistake with social failure. ~Carl Jung, "The Stages of Life" (1930). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P. 787
You Get the Genealogy You Deserve
Life and consciousness are the ultimate emergent phenomena, but we still don't know their real origin, which remains veiled in Mystery. We are Cosmic psychophysical beings with a core reaching down into the microcosm of quantum dynamics and the still center of Zero-Point.
In the split second moment of conception, the two streams of genetic information from your parents, handed on from generation to generation over literally hundreds of millennia, combined in one single cell embodying your unique potential. It ensured that you became an unequaled living record of the lives and ways of your ancestors.
All of your ancient ancestors had one thing in common -- they were survivors who overcame daunting obstacles and hardships in their natural world. Your DNA is a legacy passed down to you from thousands of generations of fittest individuals. You have the best of their collective genes, all meticulously spelled out within the DNA of your genome.
Your individual DNA fingerprint depends on how the chromosomes line up at conception. Some traits from both parents’ potentials will be there, while others get excluded. So, some siblings can be redheads, others not; some can have family medical problems, others not, some may be Rh neg., others not. Extensive historical knowledge of cultural practices and human migratory patterns helps us piece each story together. We may find things we never imagined and find no evidence for traits known within our lineage.
In genealogy the term direct line refers to a relationship of one person to another in a direct line. A direct-line ancestor is someone from whom you descend in a direct line, parent to child, grandparent, great-grandparent, etc. Direct-line research refers to genealogy research focused on one's direct-line ancestors. Blood relations refer to the underground stream, the Red River of Memories that flows within us. The Blood is real and it's fresh; it flows in your veins.
By contrast, collateral line is a term used to describe family relationships not in the direct line of descent such as siblings, spouses and children of siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. Researching direct-line ancestry is a common focus of genealogists and family history researchers. Proving a direct line of descent is generally required for membership in heritage societies. A mere seven generations back we have over 200 people in just our immediate, or father-mother, grandfather-grandmother line.
We are not just talking about the way you look, but about your ancestral memories, the complete set of instincts and response patterns that were responsible for the survival of those two genetic streams in the first place. The instincts and response patterns that you were actually born with are what Jung called the Collective Unconscious. Science calls it epigenetics. Genealogy functions as a therapeutic portal, much like dreams or symptoms allow us to enter the imaginal dimension.
Quo Vadis?
Fundamentally, genealogy is a search for Self. Some are armchair genealogists, while others hit the genealogy trail, making their life a perpetual pilgrimage and search by visiting family domiciles and sacred sites. Many search for relics or novel solutions to riddles they pose to themselves. It is a way of connecting the psychological dots into a seemingly coherent story, one that keeps the narrative moving forward while it looks back.
Some write novels that filter information and scenes through the consciousness of their characters. There are battles and leaders, matriarchs, partriarchs and malefactors. Others create esoteric organizations, usually with themselves set up as authority figures. They hook those who are susceptible to the promise of Mystery. Most such groups devolve into banal cults of personality, which all seem to share the same squabbles and organizational problems.
Some are convinced only they know the real truth of the matter. Yet most exposés of the knowledge of the underground stream are materialistic interpretations of it. They claim to empower you while lining their pockets. Some of this may be compensatory to lack of power in other areas of life. Claims to shift world vision may be more a perception than a reality. Perhaps the biggest value of questionable literature is that people now search elsewhere for their own half-remembered origins.
Many who claim to guard the history actually prey on their vulnerable kinsmen. So one must look at the effects of such behavior rather than relying on proclamations. There have been many blatant hoaxes. It begs the question, "Where is this leading?". In many cases, the answer is nowhere. Reinterpreting sacred sites with idiosyncratic tropes doesn't make it so. Nor does finding out what the Templars or Cathars were doing substitute for one's own individuation and may work against it, fitting a modern person into an obsolete mold.
Many of these overwrought works simply regurgitate the symbolic understanding developed more completely in depth psychologies, applying skewed versions to the selected symbols, often from New Age thought, another faddish collective movement which mostly rehashes theosophical notions. There isn't much "new" about it. If such critique sounds like tough love it is because it comes from close observation of the effects of such subcultures. Schisms and tragedy have been the result, not illumination unless you count disillusionment as such.
Following pilgrimage routes, such as "the Camino" may be stimulating but will likely never be illuminating. It doesn't substitute for the work of self-discovery in the cave of the heart. Overlaying such sites with new age gloss doesn't improve the clarity of the situation and may just add irrelevant data.
In some cases, pilgrimage is another form of what is termed the geographic escape. There are many writers eager to host such trips for their own benefit. It has become a thriving cottage industry whether the goal is ancient aliens or earth chakras. That doesn't mean there is no value in such travel or mystery centers, but it doesn't supersede the inner work and may lead to flooding and inflation. Sentience is not the same as sentimentality. But people will do what they are going to do. All things seek their own level.
Ultimately, individuation is a solitary pursuit. To Edward Edinger (1972), individuation means not having to continually repeat the cycle, but to develop conscious dialogues between I and Self. Without a displaced religious obsession there is little reason to pursue the lies, theories or directives of others over one's own creative genius. Ultimately, the real issue with the bloodline has always been about the concept of "sovereignty".
It isn't merely our royal genealogy that makes us who we are. After all, we share most of it with millions of people. What is unique is our personal reaction to such knowledge and how our relationship with it evolves as we assimilate and integrate that expanded awareness -- the Mystery of the whole matter.
The rich variety of psycho-physical hierogamic themes are illustrated in many alchemical works, illustrating simultaneous humanity and divinity. The hierosgamos union of opposites between human and divine is mediated by Mercurius, the Hermetic method, or hermeneutics. It requires interpretation of experiential material. For example, originally, the dove was a symbolic attribute of ancient female divinities of Mesopotamia.
We need To Know genealogy much like we need to know physics and psychology to comprehend what matter is, as well as what makes us matter. We have thousands of ancestors whose lines are not preserved, making the small slice of royal descent largely archetypal as well as material. The part stands for the Whole - the cosmic process.
Union of Opposites
The body is the alchemical laboratory that generates the subtle body or astral vehicle and the Body of Light or Diamond Body as the highest vehicle. Consciousness is drawn up with sublimation. The elixir of life transforms body and consciousness. In alchemy the resurrection stands not for transcendence of the body, but its glorification and perfection.
We are affected not only by things that happen to us personally, but also by things that have happened in our lineage, to our parents, grandparents and ancestors. Epigenetics shows that the traumas that happened within our culture affect us. Ironically, this is more so when they have been forgotten, relegated to the unconscious realm, where they can cause physical symptoms, phobias, depression, nightmares and other unexplained things.
The Quest for wholeness is the search for meaning, orientation, renewal, and transformation. By making the trauma in our lineage and in our culture more conscious, we can loosen its hold. This helps us to restore a sense of our own self and our own freedom of choice, and allows what is not ours to rest in peace. Thus, genealogy is a kind of healing ritual, which retrieves the lost and disowned parts of the soul, what we've buried in the earth and forgotten.
Thus your soul is your own self in the spiritual world. As the abode of the spirits, however, the spiritual world is also an outer world. Just as you are also not alone in the visible world, but are surrounded by objects that belong to you and obey only you, you also have thoughts that belong to you and obey only you. But just as you are surrounded in the visible world by things and beings that neither belong to you nor obey you, you are also surrounded in the spiritual world by thoughts and beings of thought that neither obey you nor belong to you.
Just as you engender or bear your physical children, and just as they grow up and separate themselves from you to live their own fate, you also produce or give birth to beings of thought which separate themselves from you and live their own lives.
Just as we leave our children when we grow old and give our body back to the earth, I separate myself from my God, the sun, and sink into the emptiness of matter and obliterate the image of my child in me. This happens in that I accept the nature of matter and allow the force of my form to flow into emptiness. Just as I gave birth anew to the sick God through my engendering force, I henceforth animate the emptiness of matter from which the formation of evil grows.
Nature is playful and terrible. Some see the playful side and dally with it and let it sparkle. Others see the horror and cover their heads and are more dead than alive. The way does not lead between both, but embraces both. It is both cheerful play and cold horror. (Jung, Red Book)
Genealogy is like organic gardening. We till the soil, until things break through the surface where we tend and fertilize them with creative expression and contemplation. Living branches of our Tree become knotted together generating many leaves. Entwined with roses and thorns they represent the complexities of life, including the union of opposites. At the microcosmic level they may represent quantum entanglement. All macroscopic parts of the world are entangled quantum mechanically.
Jung pointed out that procreative power is only a special instance of the ‘procreative nature of the Whole', as illustrated in alchemical works such as the Rosarium Philosophorum, which depicts a symbolic hieros gamos, combining the powers of the upper and lower worlds, leading out the gold. We acquire an experiential understanding of the ontological wholeness of the cosmos and know we are in no way separate from that. Such non-duality that closes the gap between spirit and body was the magnificent obsession of the alchemists as it is of the mystics.
As Eliade wrote, "The Sun and the Moon must be made one. . .above all, prajna, wisdom, must be joined with upaya, the means of attaining it. . .all this amounts to saying we are dealing with the coincidentia oppositorum achieved on every level of Life and Consciousness."
Chaos becomes cosmos; the profane becomes sacred; potential is actualized. Alchemical tracts bookend the entire alchemical process between an initial and final image -- opening and closing illustrations that frame the psycho-physical transformation. Like dreams, the fruits of personal insight and practical guidance affect us physiologically, emotionally, psychologically, and/or spiritually, and become part of our being.
They change us regardless of whether we make any logical waking connections or not. Even when we spot such connections, it can be limiting to assume that this was the sole ‘point’ of the discovery, and therefore drop further exploration or creative expression for an "Aha" moment. Carrying away golden coins, we may miss the priceless and treasured jewel fashioned or concealed within the chest itself.
Genealogy is an Art, a quest for the truth within. Harvesting the fruits of the Tree of Life mobilizes the soul for creative self-expression, self-discovery and self-healing. Much benefit and fulfillment comes simply by remembering, writing, tape-recording, sharing, painting, enacting or otherwise birthing them into the physical world.
Genealogy takes tremendous effort, like the Great Work. It affects the psyche with both historical and imaginal, known and unknown elements. It has its own magic, alchemy, and synchronicities. Some attempt to garner social status through their genealogies when other avenues elude them. Some in search of their identity wind up finding the Shadow.
Genealogy is about Identity. Some people who come to this practice use it to build a persona that becomes their main way of connecting in the world, an excessive commitment to a rather false image. Jung identified the persona as a social mask or psychological armor. Recovery, the aim of individuation, "is not only achieved by work on the inside figures but also, as conditio sine qua non, by a re-adaptation in outer life," according to Jung. We live in the present moment.
The path of Individuation is the psychological equivalent of self-initiation. The goal of individuation is self-realization through increasing conscious relationship with the Self, archetype of wholeness. This Self includes both positive and negative traits of an individual which, in the beginning of analysis, are generally projected out, or attributed to, the environment.
As the ego continues its heroic journey through the labyrinthine psyche, it comes into confrontation with personifications of various archetypal and ancestral characters. During the maturing process, these characters emerge from the undifferentiated mass of unconscious contents. Though their presence in the psyche was implied from the beginning, they begin to unfold in unique patterns in the life of the individual.
Jung called the persona the "conformity archetype." As part of its positive function, it protects the ego and the psyche from the varied social forces. Thus one goal for individuation is for people to "develop a more realistic, flexible persona that helps them navigate in society but does not collide with nor hide their true self". Eventually, "in the best case, the persona is appropriate and tasteful, a true reflection of our inner individuality and our outward sense of self."
Jung also cautioned, "It would indeed be the height of absurdity if a man tried to have a conversation with his persona, which he recognized merely as a psychological means of relationship." So, the purpose of genealogy is not to over-identify but distinguish ourselves from our ancestral lines. It is especially true for an adopted fantasy-based social role which functions like an actor's mask. A mask is what individuals wear to hide their real self.
A person unfamiliar with psychic dynamics may not recognize that these are processes that Jung described and for which he developed now time-tested therapies to circumvent the pitfalls of alienation, dissociation, projection, and inflation. It's as if unconscious contents lack genealogical links to consciousness proper.
A Jungian genealogy permits a cultural study of the unconscious and a psychological study of culture that facilitates an understanding of the emotional impact culture provides, the unconscious elements of group creation, and the multiple individual perspectives in each historical moment. Formal structures help us understand the significance of mythical discourse.
Theories and ideas also have 'genealogies' that trace how they transform over time as they are inherited through culture. This is particularly true of faith-based ideas. They can be used instead of historical analysis or traditional explanations that are more magical than effective to follow the transformation of notions without drawing conclusions on their origin.
Even without knowing the cause we can describe the transformations themselves, their strengths, weaknesses, ideology and competing arguments, mechanisms of coercion and contents of knowledge. A genealogy is an open system of relationships, the effect of making a process intelligible and describes cultural elaboration.
“Cultural complexes structure emotional experience and operate in the personal and collective psyche in much the same way as individual complexes, although their content might be quite different. Like individual complexes, cultural complexes tend to be repetitive, autonomous, resist consciousness, and collect experience that confirms their historical point of view”. (Thomas Singer and Samuel L. Kimbles define cultural complex in their book The Cultural Complex: Contemporary Jungian Perspectives on Psyche and Society).
Using an archaeology and genealogy of analysis of process reveals multiple strategies,
conditions of acceptability, and a field of possibilities, and possible dislocations . We can look at socio-historical data as an event that allows us to describe ways of experiencing that are
unique to particular sets of people -- a group's way of perceiving itself. Repetitive group experiences take root in the cultural unconscious of the group.
Genealogy is the thread that connects. It stimulates the imaginal faculty and can induce strong identifications, projections, activated archetypes, ego inflations, and even possessions. Identification means being fused to an unconscious content. Projection is a kind of unconscious identification with the object. A complex is an entity within the unconscious that holds intense resonance around an emotion or way of being. Cultural complexes change over time.
The freed surplus of libido (psychological energy) causes inflation because an archetype has lost its container and becomes identified with the conscious mind. This activates various -isms, utopian fantasies, psychic infections, and a longing for collective ideals. In possession, the archetype hijacks and overwhelms the conscious personality utterly, appearing as distinctly "other".
Doing your genealogy can induce a process Jung called Individuation, by which an individual self emerges from the undifferentiated unconscious. He said, "Evolution is the line of least resistance whereas individuation is the line of most resistance."
A person who enters this experiential dimension has gone beyond that of hobby genealogist, but without a consciousness map or a guide it may seem overwhelming. Even Jung complained of emotional flooding at the onset of his inner journey. Flooding is your physiological reaction to a perceived threat. The threat can be real, it can be an old tape replaying a pattern, or it can be imagined. Automatic, instinctive, reactive emotional processes rush in to numb and protect you from being overwhelmed.
Individuation helps us fulfill our conscious relationships with the ancestors and archetypes of the collective unconscious (ancestral memory). They come in dreams, in revere, in ritual, with the gentle assist of an "angel" or other surprise clues, and they inform our being, literally and figuratively. They carry mystery in their wake, often with cryptic messages or information that can later be verified or found in the physical world. Dynamic archetypes like The Quest or Hero's Journey inform and modulate our behavior.
They inspire our spiritual studies and humanitarian efforts, our self-expression, proclivities and desires. They compel our loves and help create our children, perpetuating the line. We are theirs and they are ours. We are family; we are Blood. We feel their experience from their point of view. As we collect them in name, we collect their experiences, integrating them into our own meaning.
We cultivate our own rows or lines of ancestors through genealogy, the pedigree of our origins. Genealogy and even genetic genealogy are pursuits that require interpretation of assembled data, not literal interpretation, due to hidden variables and a variety of other factors, including the interpretive bias of the researcher.
Thus, they are essentially Hermetic pursuits and should be approached as such, seeking both their wisdom and their subtle misdirection, outright lies of the past and present, misrepresentations, and other Trickster elements.
Even today, grandiose speculation often passes for science. Those unfamiliar with either subject are most likely to misinterpret their own family's functional relation to others, and likewise to misinterpret the evidence of their alleles in relation to antic origins and their meaning. Identifying SNPs from deep common ancestry, or rare SNPs related to shared characteristics helps us recognize one another as kin.
Even with scientific linkage to specific ancestral groups, self-discovery should not be confounded with personal mythology though both necessarily overlap. There is what the evidence shows or suggests, then the narrative which we construct from that limited evidence, which suggests certain things about our ourselves, our families, current and former cultures, and the future of society.
Hermeneutics is the study of theories and methods of the interpretation of systems of meaning, including interpretations of experience, or human behavior generally, including language and patterns of speech, social institutions, and ritual behaviors. It is a specific method or theory of interpretation, such as Freud or Jung's depth psychologies, for example.
The word hermeneutics is a term derived from 'Ερμηνεýς, the Greek word for interpreter. This is related to the name of the Greek god Hermes in his role as the interpreter of the messages of the gods, the mystagogue who reveals divine mysteries.
Hermes was believed to play tricks on those he was supposed to give messages to, often changing the messages and influencing the interpretation thereof. The Greek word thus has the basic meaning of one who makes the meaning clear -- a decoder. DNA still manages to preserve its deepest secrets about who and what we are.
The Men Who Would Be King
Your truth lies beyond any media controversies over bloodlines, false ideologies, erroneous claims, hoaxes, works of fiction, spin-doctored history, genetic superiority, occultism, vanity courts, ancient aliens, subcultures, cults, gnostic, pseudo-masonic or templar revivals, idiosyncratic philosophies, or other ways people come together around their shared beliefs, real or self-delusional.
There is no end to the pretentious claims of "royal" wannabees, phony personae, delusional fantasists, and obsessional megalomaniacs to be this or that reincarnation, usually to sell their "celebrity" brand. Let the buyer beware of self-styled experts with little or no traction. They are modern claimants to the mantles of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, St. Germain or any number of other illustrious figures.
By Soul, Jung is not defining something religious. He speaks of a return to the Soul of the World, the source of knowledge. Our instincts begin to grow sharper, our emotions more radical, the signs of life are of greater importance than logic, our perception of reality is no longer so rigid. We begin to deal with things we are not used to, and to react in ways that not even we ourselves would expect.
Than we discover that if we can only manage to channel all this surge of energy, we can organize it in a very solid center, which Jung calls the Wise Old Man for men, or the Great Mother for women. It’s quite dangerous to allow this to manifest itself. Generally speaking, whoever reaches that point tends to consider himself holy, a tamer of spirits, a prophet.
So you find you come from royalty -- get over it. The Pyramid Theory, a doubling of ancestors each generation back, claims you have 2048 ancestors by the 12th generation in your past, and possibly 60,000 direct ancestors going back to the Crusades. By Generation #40, you would have more than one trillion ancestors!
We are at the end of a long and winding genetic journey that continues after and through us. We are probably all connected by the 25th gr-grandparents, if you do the math. There is a great possibility that we are descendants (or are related) from almost everyone alive some seven hundred years ago. With our parents' generation as Nº 1, the number of persons is 33,554,432.
That number is the theoretical result of (x2) progression, since many of those ancestors are the same persons. The genealogical evidence shows that many of the families intermarried for generations, producing a rich genealogical heritage. Yet, somehow a determined gen can survive intact through all those descendants and become a particle of memory that will give you a dejá vu once in a while. Ancestral memories may not be of actual events - it is not to be confused with the idea of past life or reincarnation - but of reactive response patterns and emotional states brought about by environment.
The past has gone and the future has yet to come. All you have is the present.
Life and consciousness are the ultimate emergent phenomena, but we still don't know their real origin, which remains veiled in Mystery. We are Cosmic psychophysical beings with a core reaching down into the microcosm of quantum dynamics and the still center of Zero-Point.
In the split second moment of conception, the two streams of genetic information from your parents, handed on from generation to generation over literally hundreds of millennia, combined in one single cell embodying your unique potential. It ensured that you became an unequaled living record of the lives and ways of your ancestors.
All of your ancient ancestors had one thing in common -- they were survivors who overcame daunting obstacles and hardships in their natural world. Your DNA is a legacy passed down to you from thousands of generations of fittest individuals. You have the best of their collective genes, all meticulously spelled out within the DNA of your genome.
Your individual DNA fingerprint depends on how the chromosomes line up at conception. Some traits from both parents’ potentials will be there, while others get excluded. So, some siblings can be redheads, others not; some can have family medical problems, others not, some may be Rh neg., others not. Extensive historical knowledge of cultural practices and human migratory patterns helps us piece each story together. We may find things we never imagined and find no evidence for traits known within our lineage.
In genealogy the term direct line refers to a relationship of one person to another in a direct line. A direct-line ancestor is someone from whom you descend in a direct line, parent to child, grandparent, great-grandparent, etc. Direct-line research refers to genealogy research focused on one's direct-line ancestors. Blood relations refer to the underground stream, the Red River of Memories that flows within us. The Blood is real and it's fresh; it flows in your veins.
By contrast, collateral line is a term used to describe family relationships not in the direct line of descent such as siblings, spouses and children of siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. Researching direct-line ancestry is a common focus of genealogists and family history researchers. Proving a direct line of descent is generally required for membership in heritage societies. A mere seven generations back we have over 200 people in just our immediate, or father-mother, grandfather-grandmother line.
We are not just talking about the way you look, but about your ancestral memories, the complete set of instincts and response patterns that were responsible for the survival of those two genetic streams in the first place. The instincts and response patterns that you were actually born with are what Jung called the Collective Unconscious. Science calls it epigenetics. Genealogy functions as a therapeutic portal, much like dreams or symptoms allow us to enter the imaginal dimension.
Quo Vadis?
Fundamentally, genealogy is a search for Self. Some are armchair genealogists, while others hit the genealogy trail, making their life a perpetual pilgrimage and search by visiting family domiciles and sacred sites. Many search for relics or novel solutions to riddles they pose to themselves. It is a way of connecting the psychological dots into a seemingly coherent story, one that keeps the narrative moving forward while it looks back.
Some write novels that filter information and scenes through the consciousness of their characters. There are battles and leaders, matriarchs, partriarchs and malefactors. Others create esoteric organizations, usually with themselves set up as authority figures. They hook those who are susceptible to the promise of Mystery. Most such groups devolve into banal cults of personality, which all seem to share the same squabbles and organizational problems.
Some are convinced only they know the real truth of the matter. Yet most exposés of the knowledge of the underground stream are materialistic interpretations of it. They claim to empower you while lining their pockets. Some of this may be compensatory to lack of power in other areas of life. Claims to shift world vision may be more a perception than a reality. Perhaps the biggest value of questionable literature is that people now search elsewhere for their own half-remembered origins.
Many who claim to guard the history actually prey on their vulnerable kinsmen. So one must look at the effects of such behavior rather than relying on proclamations. There have been many blatant hoaxes. It begs the question, "Where is this leading?". In many cases, the answer is nowhere. Reinterpreting sacred sites with idiosyncratic tropes doesn't make it so. Nor does finding out what the Templars or Cathars were doing substitute for one's own individuation and may work against it, fitting a modern person into an obsolete mold.
Many of these overwrought works simply regurgitate the symbolic understanding developed more completely in depth psychologies, applying skewed versions to the selected symbols, often from New Age thought, another faddish collective movement which mostly rehashes theosophical notions. There isn't much "new" about it. If such critique sounds like tough love it is because it comes from close observation of the effects of such subcultures. Schisms and tragedy have been the result, not illumination unless you count disillusionment as such.
Following pilgrimage routes, such as "the Camino" may be stimulating but will likely never be illuminating. It doesn't substitute for the work of self-discovery in the cave of the heart. Overlaying such sites with new age gloss doesn't improve the clarity of the situation and may just add irrelevant data.
In some cases, pilgrimage is another form of what is termed the geographic escape. There are many writers eager to host such trips for their own benefit. It has become a thriving cottage industry whether the goal is ancient aliens or earth chakras. That doesn't mean there is no value in such travel or mystery centers, but it doesn't supersede the inner work and may lead to flooding and inflation. Sentience is not the same as sentimentality. But people will do what they are going to do. All things seek their own level.
Ultimately, individuation is a solitary pursuit. To Edward Edinger (1972), individuation means not having to continually repeat the cycle, but to develop conscious dialogues between I and Self. Without a displaced religious obsession there is little reason to pursue the lies, theories or directives of others over one's own creative genius. Ultimately, the real issue with the bloodline has always been about the concept of "sovereignty".
It isn't merely our royal genealogy that makes us who we are. After all, we share most of it with millions of people. What is unique is our personal reaction to such knowledge and how our relationship with it evolves as we assimilate and integrate that expanded awareness -- the Mystery of the whole matter.
The rich variety of psycho-physical hierogamic themes are illustrated in many alchemical works, illustrating simultaneous humanity and divinity. The hierosgamos union of opposites between human and divine is mediated by Mercurius, the Hermetic method, or hermeneutics. It requires interpretation of experiential material. For example, originally, the dove was a symbolic attribute of ancient female divinities of Mesopotamia.
We need To Know genealogy much like we need to know physics and psychology to comprehend what matter is, as well as what makes us matter. We have thousands of ancestors whose lines are not preserved, making the small slice of royal descent largely archetypal as well as material. The part stands for the Whole - the cosmic process.
Union of Opposites
The body is the alchemical laboratory that generates the subtle body or astral vehicle and the Body of Light or Diamond Body as the highest vehicle. Consciousness is drawn up with sublimation. The elixir of life transforms body and consciousness. In alchemy the resurrection stands not for transcendence of the body, but its glorification and perfection.
We are affected not only by things that happen to us personally, but also by things that have happened in our lineage, to our parents, grandparents and ancestors. Epigenetics shows that the traumas that happened within our culture affect us. Ironically, this is more so when they have been forgotten, relegated to the unconscious realm, where they can cause physical symptoms, phobias, depression, nightmares and other unexplained things.
The Quest for wholeness is the search for meaning, orientation, renewal, and transformation. By making the trauma in our lineage and in our culture more conscious, we can loosen its hold. This helps us to restore a sense of our own self and our own freedom of choice, and allows what is not ours to rest in peace. Thus, genealogy is a kind of healing ritual, which retrieves the lost and disowned parts of the soul, what we've buried in the earth and forgotten.
Thus your soul is your own self in the spiritual world. As the abode of the spirits, however, the spiritual world is also an outer world. Just as you are also not alone in the visible world, but are surrounded by objects that belong to you and obey only you, you also have thoughts that belong to you and obey only you. But just as you are surrounded in the visible world by things and beings that neither belong to you nor obey you, you are also surrounded in the spiritual world by thoughts and beings of thought that neither obey you nor belong to you.
Just as you engender or bear your physical children, and just as they grow up and separate themselves from you to live their own fate, you also produce or give birth to beings of thought which separate themselves from you and live their own lives.
Just as we leave our children when we grow old and give our body back to the earth, I separate myself from my God, the sun, and sink into the emptiness of matter and obliterate the image of my child in me. This happens in that I accept the nature of matter and allow the force of my form to flow into emptiness. Just as I gave birth anew to the sick God through my engendering force, I henceforth animate the emptiness of matter from which the formation of evil grows.
Nature is playful and terrible. Some see the playful side and dally with it and let it sparkle. Others see the horror and cover their heads and are more dead than alive. The way does not lead between both, but embraces both. It is both cheerful play and cold horror. (Jung, Red Book)
Genealogy is like organic gardening. We till the soil, until things break through the surface where we tend and fertilize them with creative expression and contemplation. Living branches of our Tree become knotted together generating many leaves. Entwined with roses and thorns they represent the complexities of life, including the union of opposites. At the microcosmic level they may represent quantum entanglement. All macroscopic parts of the world are entangled quantum mechanically.
Jung pointed out that procreative power is only a special instance of the ‘procreative nature of the Whole', as illustrated in alchemical works such as the Rosarium Philosophorum, which depicts a symbolic hieros gamos, combining the powers of the upper and lower worlds, leading out the gold. We acquire an experiential understanding of the ontological wholeness of the cosmos and know we are in no way separate from that. Such non-duality that closes the gap between spirit and body was the magnificent obsession of the alchemists as it is of the mystics.
As Eliade wrote, "The Sun and the Moon must be made one. . .above all, prajna, wisdom, must be joined with upaya, the means of attaining it. . .all this amounts to saying we are dealing with the coincidentia oppositorum achieved on every level of Life and Consciousness."
Chaos becomes cosmos; the profane becomes sacred; potential is actualized. Alchemical tracts bookend the entire alchemical process between an initial and final image -- opening and closing illustrations that frame the psycho-physical transformation. Like dreams, the fruits of personal insight and practical guidance affect us physiologically, emotionally, psychologically, and/or spiritually, and become part of our being.
They change us regardless of whether we make any logical waking connections or not. Even when we spot such connections, it can be limiting to assume that this was the sole ‘point’ of the discovery, and therefore drop further exploration or creative expression for an "Aha" moment. Carrying away golden coins, we may miss the priceless and treasured jewel fashioned or concealed within the chest itself.
Genealogy is an Art, a quest for the truth within. Harvesting the fruits of the Tree of Life mobilizes the soul for creative self-expression, self-discovery and self-healing. Much benefit and fulfillment comes simply by remembering, writing, tape-recording, sharing, painting, enacting or otherwise birthing them into the physical world.
Genealogy takes tremendous effort, like the Great Work. It affects the psyche with both historical and imaginal, known and unknown elements. It has its own magic, alchemy, and synchronicities. Some attempt to garner social status through their genealogies when other avenues elude them. Some in search of their identity wind up finding the Shadow.
Genealogy is about Identity. Some people who come to this practice use it to build a persona that becomes their main way of connecting in the world, an excessive commitment to a rather false image. Jung identified the persona as a social mask or psychological armor. Recovery, the aim of individuation, "is not only achieved by work on the inside figures but also, as conditio sine qua non, by a re-adaptation in outer life," according to Jung. We live in the present moment.
The path of Individuation is the psychological equivalent of self-initiation. The goal of individuation is self-realization through increasing conscious relationship with the Self, archetype of wholeness. This Self includes both positive and negative traits of an individual which, in the beginning of analysis, are generally projected out, or attributed to, the environment.
As the ego continues its heroic journey through the labyrinthine psyche, it comes into confrontation with personifications of various archetypal and ancestral characters. During the maturing process, these characters emerge from the undifferentiated mass of unconscious contents. Though their presence in the psyche was implied from the beginning, they begin to unfold in unique patterns in the life of the individual.
Jung called the persona the "conformity archetype." As part of its positive function, it protects the ego and the psyche from the varied social forces. Thus one goal for individuation is for people to "develop a more realistic, flexible persona that helps them navigate in society but does not collide with nor hide their true self". Eventually, "in the best case, the persona is appropriate and tasteful, a true reflection of our inner individuality and our outward sense of self."
Jung also cautioned, "It would indeed be the height of absurdity if a man tried to have a conversation with his persona, which he recognized merely as a psychological means of relationship." So, the purpose of genealogy is not to over-identify but distinguish ourselves from our ancestral lines. It is especially true for an adopted fantasy-based social role which functions like an actor's mask. A mask is what individuals wear to hide their real self.
A person unfamiliar with psychic dynamics may not recognize that these are processes that Jung described and for which he developed now time-tested therapies to circumvent the pitfalls of alienation, dissociation, projection, and inflation. It's as if unconscious contents lack genealogical links to consciousness proper.
A Jungian genealogy permits a cultural study of the unconscious and a psychological study of culture that facilitates an understanding of the emotional impact culture provides, the unconscious elements of group creation, and the multiple individual perspectives in each historical moment. Formal structures help us understand the significance of mythical discourse.
Theories and ideas also have 'genealogies' that trace how they transform over time as they are inherited through culture. This is particularly true of faith-based ideas. They can be used instead of historical analysis or traditional explanations that are more magical than effective to follow the transformation of notions without drawing conclusions on their origin.
Even without knowing the cause we can describe the transformations themselves, their strengths, weaknesses, ideology and competing arguments, mechanisms of coercion and contents of knowledge. A genealogy is an open system of relationships, the effect of making a process intelligible and describes cultural elaboration.
“Cultural complexes structure emotional experience and operate in the personal and collective psyche in much the same way as individual complexes, although their content might be quite different. Like individual complexes, cultural complexes tend to be repetitive, autonomous, resist consciousness, and collect experience that confirms their historical point of view”. (Thomas Singer and Samuel L. Kimbles define cultural complex in their book The Cultural Complex: Contemporary Jungian Perspectives on Psyche and Society).
Using an archaeology and genealogy of analysis of process reveals multiple strategies,
conditions of acceptability, and a field of possibilities, and possible dislocations . We can look at socio-historical data as an event that allows us to describe ways of experiencing that are
unique to particular sets of people -- a group's way of perceiving itself. Repetitive group experiences take root in the cultural unconscious of the group.
Genealogy is the thread that connects. It stimulates the imaginal faculty and can induce strong identifications, projections, activated archetypes, ego inflations, and even possessions. Identification means being fused to an unconscious content. Projection is a kind of unconscious identification with the object. A complex is an entity within the unconscious that holds intense resonance around an emotion or way of being. Cultural complexes change over time.
The freed surplus of libido (psychological energy) causes inflation because an archetype has lost its container and becomes identified with the conscious mind. This activates various -isms, utopian fantasies, psychic infections, and a longing for collective ideals. In possession, the archetype hijacks and overwhelms the conscious personality utterly, appearing as distinctly "other".
Doing your genealogy can induce a process Jung called Individuation, by which an individual self emerges from the undifferentiated unconscious. He said, "Evolution is the line of least resistance whereas individuation is the line of most resistance."
A person who enters this experiential dimension has gone beyond that of hobby genealogist, but without a consciousness map or a guide it may seem overwhelming. Even Jung complained of emotional flooding at the onset of his inner journey. Flooding is your physiological reaction to a perceived threat. The threat can be real, it can be an old tape replaying a pattern, or it can be imagined. Automatic, instinctive, reactive emotional processes rush in to numb and protect you from being overwhelmed.
Individuation helps us fulfill our conscious relationships with the ancestors and archetypes of the collective unconscious (ancestral memory). They come in dreams, in revere, in ritual, with the gentle assist of an "angel" or other surprise clues, and they inform our being, literally and figuratively. They carry mystery in their wake, often with cryptic messages or information that can later be verified or found in the physical world. Dynamic archetypes like The Quest or Hero's Journey inform and modulate our behavior.
They inspire our spiritual studies and humanitarian efforts, our self-expression, proclivities and desires. They compel our loves and help create our children, perpetuating the line. We are theirs and they are ours. We are family; we are Blood. We feel their experience from their point of view. As we collect them in name, we collect their experiences, integrating them into our own meaning.
We cultivate our own rows or lines of ancestors through genealogy, the pedigree of our origins. Genealogy and even genetic genealogy are pursuits that require interpretation of assembled data, not literal interpretation, due to hidden variables and a variety of other factors, including the interpretive bias of the researcher.
Thus, they are essentially Hermetic pursuits and should be approached as such, seeking both their wisdom and their subtle misdirection, outright lies of the past and present, misrepresentations, and other Trickster elements.
Even today, grandiose speculation often passes for science. Those unfamiliar with either subject are most likely to misinterpret their own family's functional relation to others, and likewise to misinterpret the evidence of their alleles in relation to antic origins and their meaning. Identifying SNPs from deep common ancestry, or rare SNPs related to shared characteristics helps us recognize one another as kin.
Even with scientific linkage to specific ancestral groups, self-discovery should not be confounded with personal mythology though both necessarily overlap. There is what the evidence shows or suggests, then the narrative which we construct from that limited evidence, which suggests certain things about our ourselves, our families, current and former cultures, and the future of society.
Hermeneutics is the study of theories and methods of the interpretation of systems of meaning, including interpretations of experience, or human behavior generally, including language and patterns of speech, social institutions, and ritual behaviors. It is a specific method or theory of interpretation, such as Freud or Jung's depth psychologies, for example.
The word hermeneutics is a term derived from 'Ερμηνεýς, the Greek word for interpreter. This is related to the name of the Greek god Hermes in his role as the interpreter of the messages of the gods, the mystagogue who reveals divine mysteries.
Hermes was believed to play tricks on those he was supposed to give messages to, often changing the messages and influencing the interpretation thereof. The Greek word thus has the basic meaning of one who makes the meaning clear -- a decoder. DNA still manages to preserve its deepest secrets about who and what we are.
The Men Who Would Be King
Your truth lies beyond any media controversies over bloodlines, false ideologies, erroneous claims, hoaxes, works of fiction, spin-doctored history, genetic superiority, occultism, vanity courts, ancient aliens, subcultures, cults, gnostic, pseudo-masonic or templar revivals, idiosyncratic philosophies, or other ways people come together around their shared beliefs, real or self-delusional.
There is no end to the pretentious claims of "royal" wannabees, phony personae, delusional fantasists, and obsessional megalomaniacs to be this or that reincarnation, usually to sell their "celebrity" brand. Let the buyer beware of self-styled experts with little or no traction. They are modern claimants to the mantles of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, St. Germain or any number of other illustrious figures.
By Soul, Jung is not defining something religious. He speaks of a return to the Soul of the World, the source of knowledge. Our instincts begin to grow sharper, our emotions more radical, the signs of life are of greater importance than logic, our perception of reality is no longer so rigid. We begin to deal with things we are not used to, and to react in ways that not even we ourselves would expect.
Than we discover that if we can only manage to channel all this surge of energy, we can organize it in a very solid center, which Jung calls the Wise Old Man for men, or the Great Mother for women. It’s quite dangerous to allow this to manifest itself. Generally speaking, whoever reaches that point tends to consider himself holy, a tamer of spirits, a prophet.
So you find you come from royalty -- get over it. The Pyramid Theory, a doubling of ancestors each generation back, claims you have 2048 ancestors by the 12th generation in your past, and possibly 60,000 direct ancestors going back to the Crusades. By Generation #40, you would have more than one trillion ancestors!
We are at the end of a long and winding genetic journey that continues after and through us. We are probably all connected by the 25th gr-grandparents, if you do the math. There is a great possibility that we are descendants (or are related) from almost everyone alive some seven hundred years ago. With our parents' generation as Nº 1, the number of persons is 33,554,432.
That number is the theoretical result of (x2) progression, since many of those ancestors are the same persons. The genealogical evidence shows that many of the families intermarried for generations, producing a rich genealogical heritage. Yet, somehow a determined gen can survive intact through all those descendants and become a particle of memory that will give you a dejá vu once in a while. Ancestral memories may not be of actual events - it is not to be confused with the idea of past life or reincarnation - but of reactive response patterns and emotional states brought about by environment.
The past has gone and the future has yet to come. All you have is the present.
San Pietro in Vincoli
Jung, in the Red Book
"He who sleeps in the grave of the millennia dreams a wonderful dream. He dreams a primordially ancient dream. He dreams of the rising sun.
If you sleep this sleep and dream this dream in this time of the world, you will know that the sun will also rise at this time. For the moment we are still in the dark, but the day is upon us.
He who comprehends the darkness in himself, to him the light is near. He who climbs down into his darkness reaches the staircase of the working light, fire maned Helios.
His chariot ascends with four white horses, his back bears no cross, and his side no wound, but he is safe and his head blazes in the fire.
Nor is he a man of mockery, but of splendor and unquestionable force. I do not know what I speak, I speak in a dream. support me for I stagger, drunk with fire. I drank fire in this night, since I climbed down through the centuries and plunged into the sun far at the bottom. And I rose up drunk from the sun, with a burning countenance and my head is ablaze. Give me your hand, a human hand, so that you can hold me to the earth with it,for whirling veins of fire swoop me up, and exultant longing tears me toward the zenith.
But day is about to break, actual day; the day of this world. And I remain concealed in the gorge of the earth, deep down and solitary, and in the darkening shadows of the valley. That is the shadow and heaviness of the earth.
How can I pray to the sun, that rises far in the East over the desert? Why should I pray to it? I drink the sun within me, so why should I pray to it? But the desert, the desert in me demands prayers, since the desert wants to satisfy itself with what is alive. I want to beg God for it, the sun, or one of the other immortals.
I beg because I am empty and am a beggar. In the day of this world, I forget that I drank the sun and am drunk from its active light and singeing power. But I stepped into the shadows of the earth, and saw that I am naked and have nothing to cover my poverty. No sooner do you touch the earth than your inner life is over; it flees from you into things.
And a wondrous life arises in things. What you thought was dead and inanimate betrays a secret life and silent, inexorable intent. You have got caught up in a hustle and bustle where everything goes its own way with strange gestures, beside you,
above you, beneath you, and through you; even the stones speak to you, and magical threads spin from you to things and from things to you. Far and near work within you and you work in a dark manner upon the near and the far. And you are always
helpless and a prey.
But if you watch closely, you will see what you have never seen before, namely that things live their life, and that they live off you: the rivers bear your life to the valley,. one stone falls upon another with your force, plants and animals also grow through you and they are the cause of your death. A leaf dancing in the wind dances with you; the irrational animal guesses your thought and represents you. The whole earth sucks its life from you and everything reflects you again.
Nothing happens in which you are not entangled in a secret manner; for everything has ordered itself around you and plays your innermost. Nothing in you is hidden to things, no matter how remote, how precious, how secret it is.
It inheres in things. Your dog robs you of your father, who passed away long ago, and looks at you as he did. The cow in the meadow has intuited your mother, and charms you with total calm and security. The stars whisper your deepest mysteries to you, and the soft valleys of the earth rescue you in a motherly womb.
Like a stray child you stand pitifully among the mighty, who hold the threads of your life. You cry for help and attach yourself to the first person that comes your way. Perhaps he can advise you, perhaps he knows the thought that you do not have, and which all things have sucked out of you.
I know that you would like to hear the tidings of he whom things have not lived, but who lived and fulfilled himself. For you are a son of the earth, sucked dry by the suckling earth, that can suck nothing out of itself, but suckles only from the sun. Therefore you would like to have tidings of the son of the sun, which shines and does not suckle. You would like to hear of the son of God, who shone and gave, who begot, and to whom life was born again, as the earth bears the sun green and colorful children.
You would like to hear of him, the radiating savior, who as a son of the sun cut through the webs of the earth, who sundered the magic threads and released those in bondage, who owned himself and was no one's servant, who sucked no one dry, and whose treasure no one exhausted.
You would like to hear of him who was not darkened by the shadow of earth, but illuminated it, who saw the thoughts of all, and whose thoughts no one guessed, who possessed in himself the meaning of all things, and whose meaning no thing could express.
The solitary fled the world; he closed his eyes, plugged his ears and buried himself in a cave within himself but it was no use. The desert sucked him dry, the stones spoke his thoughts, the cave echoed his feelings, and so he himself became desert, stone, and cave. And it was all emptiness and desert, and helplessness and barrenness, since he did not shine and remained a son of the earth who sucked a book dry and was sucked empty by the desert. He was desire and not splendor, completely earth and not sun.
Consequently he was in the desert as a clever saint who very well knew that otherwise he was no different from the other sons of the earth. If he would have drunk of himself he would have drunk fire.
The solitary went into the desert to find himself But he did not want to find himself but rather the manifold meaning of holy scripture. You can suck the immensity of the small and the great into yourself and you will become emptier and emptier, since immense fullness and immense emptiness are one and the same. He wanted to find what he needed in the outer. But you find manifold meaning only in yourself not in things, since the manifoldness of meaning is not something that is given at the same time, but is a succession of meanings.
The meanings that follow one another do not lie in things, but lie in you, who are subject to many changes, insofar as you take part in life. Things also change, but you do not notice this if you do not change. But if you change, the countenance of the world alters. The manifold sense of things is your manifold sense. It is useless to fathom it in things. And this probably explains why the solitary went into the desert, and fathomed the thing but not himself.
And therefore what happened to every desirous solitary also happened to him: the devil came to him with smooth tongue and clear reasoning and knew the right word at the right moment. He lured him to his desire. I had to appear to him as the devil, since I had accepted my darkness. I ate the earth and I drank the sun, and I became a greening tree that stands alone and grows. ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
"He who sleeps in the grave of the millennia dreams a wonderful dream. He dreams a primordially ancient dream. He dreams of the rising sun.
If you sleep this sleep and dream this dream in this time of the world, you will know that the sun will also rise at this time. For the moment we are still in the dark, but the day is upon us.
He who comprehends the darkness in himself, to him the light is near. He who climbs down into his darkness reaches the staircase of the working light, fire maned Helios.
His chariot ascends with four white horses, his back bears no cross, and his side no wound, but he is safe and his head blazes in the fire.
Nor is he a man of mockery, but of splendor and unquestionable force. I do not know what I speak, I speak in a dream. support me for I stagger, drunk with fire. I drank fire in this night, since I climbed down through the centuries and plunged into the sun far at the bottom. And I rose up drunk from the sun, with a burning countenance and my head is ablaze. Give me your hand, a human hand, so that you can hold me to the earth with it,for whirling veins of fire swoop me up, and exultant longing tears me toward the zenith.
But day is about to break, actual day; the day of this world. And I remain concealed in the gorge of the earth, deep down and solitary, and in the darkening shadows of the valley. That is the shadow and heaviness of the earth.
How can I pray to the sun, that rises far in the East over the desert? Why should I pray to it? I drink the sun within me, so why should I pray to it? But the desert, the desert in me demands prayers, since the desert wants to satisfy itself with what is alive. I want to beg God for it, the sun, or one of the other immortals.
I beg because I am empty and am a beggar. In the day of this world, I forget that I drank the sun and am drunk from its active light and singeing power. But I stepped into the shadows of the earth, and saw that I am naked and have nothing to cover my poverty. No sooner do you touch the earth than your inner life is over; it flees from you into things.
And a wondrous life arises in things. What you thought was dead and inanimate betrays a secret life and silent, inexorable intent. You have got caught up in a hustle and bustle where everything goes its own way with strange gestures, beside you,
above you, beneath you, and through you; even the stones speak to you, and magical threads spin from you to things and from things to you. Far and near work within you and you work in a dark manner upon the near and the far. And you are always
helpless and a prey.
But if you watch closely, you will see what you have never seen before, namely that things live their life, and that they live off you: the rivers bear your life to the valley,. one stone falls upon another with your force, plants and animals also grow through you and they are the cause of your death. A leaf dancing in the wind dances with you; the irrational animal guesses your thought and represents you. The whole earth sucks its life from you and everything reflects you again.
Nothing happens in which you are not entangled in a secret manner; for everything has ordered itself around you and plays your innermost. Nothing in you is hidden to things, no matter how remote, how precious, how secret it is.
It inheres in things. Your dog robs you of your father, who passed away long ago, and looks at you as he did. The cow in the meadow has intuited your mother, and charms you with total calm and security. The stars whisper your deepest mysteries to you, and the soft valleys of the earth rescue you in a motherly womb.
Like a stray child you stand pitifully among the mighty, who hold the threads of your life. You cry for help and attach yourself to the first person that comes your way. Perhaps he can advise you, perhaps he knows the thought that you do not have, and which all things have sucked out of you.
I know that you would like to hear the tidings of he whom things have not lived, but who lived and fulfilled himself. For you are a son of the earth, sucked dry by the suckling earth, that can suck nothing out of itself, but suckles only from the sun. Therefore you would like to have tidings of the son of the sun, which shines and does not suckle. You would like to hear of the son of God, who shone and gave, who begot, and to whom life was born again, as the earth bears the sun green and colorful children.
You would like to hear of him, the radiating savior, who as a son of the sun cut through the webs of the earth, who sundered the magic threads and released those in bondage, who owned himself and was no one's servant, who sucked no one dry, and whose treasure no one exhausted.
You would like to hear of him who was not darkened by the shadow of earth, but illuminated it, who saw the thoughts of all, and whose thoughts no one guessed, who possessed in himself the meaning of all things, and whose meaning no thing could express.
The solitary fled the world; he closed his eyes, plugged his ears and buried himself in a cave within himself but it was no use. The desert sucked him dry, the stones spoke his thoughts, the cave echoed his feelings, and so he himself became desert, stone, and cave. And it was all emptiness and desert, and helplessness and barrenness, since he did not shine and remained a son of the earth who sucked a book dry and was sucked empty by the desert. He was desire and not splendor, completely earth and not sun.
Consequently he was in the desert as a clever saint who very well knew that otherwise he was no different from the other sons of the earth. If he would have drunk of himself he would have drunk fire.
The solitary went into the desert to find himself But he did not want to find himself but rather the manifold meaning of holy scripture. You can suck the immensity of the small and the great into yourself and you will become emptier and emptier, since immense fullness and immense emptiness are one and the same. He wanted to find what he needed in the outer. But you find manifold meaning only in yourself not in things, since the manifoldness of meaning is not something that is given at the same time, but is a succession of meanings.
The meanings that follow one another do not lie in things, but lie in you, who are subject to many changes, insofar as you take part in life. Things also change, but you do not notice this if you do not change. But if you change, the countenance of the world alters. The manifold sense of things is your manifold sense. It is useless to fathom it in things. And this probably explains why the solitary went into the desert, and fathomed the thing but not himself.
And therefore what happened to every desirous solitary also happened to him: the devil came to him with smooth tongue and clear reasoning and knew the right word at the right moment. He lured him to his desire. I had to appear to him as the devil, since I had accepted my darkness. I ate the earth and I drank the sun, and I became a greening tree that stands alone and grows. ~Carl Jung; Red Book.
'Philosophical Mercury’. Italy, 15th century
David Ho
What the Ancients did for their Dead!!!
Image: Funeral of a Mummy by Frederick Arthur Bridgman.
Image: Funeral of a Mummy by Frederick Arthur Bridgman.
The Chalice Re-activated, Walter Bruneel
Introduction
'Every one of those unfortunates during the process of existence should constantly sense and be cognizant of the inevitability of his own death as well as of the death of everyone upon whom his eyes or attention rests'. --Gurdjieff
The Quest for Transcendence
Jung describes Individuation as a process of transformation whereby the personal and collective unconscious are brought into consciousness (by means of dreams, active imagination, or free association) to be assimilated into the whole personality. It is a completely natural process necessary for the integration of the psyche. The pursuit of self-knowledge is a pilgrimage to our deep center with its divine inner spark or Light.
We seek to remember what our soul has always known. When the psyche heals it produces mandala-type images, balancing dark and light, male and female, yin and yang aspects of nature. The genealogical image is more than a metaphor: you are the center of multiple radiant lines of descent, all of which converge on your unique manifestation.
It can be combined with transpersonal techniques, including hypnotherapy, regressions, shamanic healing, vision quest, mystic arts, seasonal celebrations, spirit journeying, psychodrama, bodywork, trauma release, meditation, soul retrieval, kin contact, and personal mythology. We might also consider using healing therapies on our ancestors in special cases. Woolger's Deep Memory Process suggests you can use such therapies to:
• clearly recognize the core issues or complexes running your life
• journey in time to resolve childhood and other traumas
• vividly relive and resolve emotional conflicts through a healing psychodrama
• develop somatic awareness of deep memories to release them from your body
• let go of old unwanted ancestral patterns and influences
• integrate wounded soul fragments (“past lives”)
• clear your energy field of negative influences
• open up with love to higher spiritual resources within yourself
We have to find and heal the Grail King within, reowning the projections and meaning we have conveniently let others carry for us, for good and evil. In that process we may glimpse and lose the Grail many times over. Genetic descent is amplified creatively by a recursive psychological descent into the unconscious to retrieve our lost soul and lost ancestors.
Individuation has a holistic healing effect on the person, both mentally and physically. Individuation is a self analysis, a self discovery, analyzing your own psyche. It serves as the guide or goal of a quest—the Holy Grail, the Elixir of Immortality, the Philosopher's Stone.
Like genealogy, individuation is the story of you as the unique individual you are. Genealogy, like a dragon's hoard, is a treasure hard to attain, yet priceless to the person who holds it. This most collective situation becomes the most individual experience because no two individuals incorporate it in exactly the same way.
We all search for something. In genealogy we narrow that search for the Holy Grail and the Precious Blood. In this case, in genealogy the blood is precious because it is our own lifegiving blood. Legend tells us the Blood and the Grail are united. In medieval literature the Grail is often associated with a feast -- it is, indeed, a great feast of metaphors attached to the primary icon.
Legend has it there is a fellowship or underground Family of the Grail that furthers and protects its interests in all worlds. The "underground stream" is yet another symbol of the Grail.. The Grail appears in many forms, including radiant light and the sangreal of the Holy Bloodline that flows from the Davidic line, including the Desposyni descendants of the Holy Family, perhaps including offspring of Jesus and Mary Magdalene -- or so they say.
Genealogies bring revelations, which may belong to millions of descendants but feel extremely important because they are part of our own personal heritage. It comes with strong spiritual and mythic overtones from the elder god-kings, the royal Davidic/Solomonic line, the family of Jesus, the Merovingians, Gnostics, Grail Kings, Camelot, and crusading Templars. Internal conflict may arise when loyalties are torn between opposing forces, each of which are ancestral lines.
In fact, the symbolic treasure of genealogy is that it encodes the entire transformational process from the war of opposites to the reconciling royal marriage and graphically shows just how intimately it is connected to our very existence through those who gave us faces. This knowledge, more than a pedigree on paper, is the treasure hard to attain that nourishes and sustains us in our intergenerational Being. This is, in fact, The Grail, which serves the divine spark within.
Phillip Stephen Lansky concludes, “Interestingly, the “chymical wedding” of alchemy was a symbol for the simultaneous constellation of psychic opposites, which we have already suggested concurs with a state of physiological paradox. Might not the contents of the two archetypal flasks represent two amines, serotonin and noradrenalin, being poured simultaneously into a marriage bath in the hypothalamus?”
The Grail symbolizes life, spirituality, youth, health, joy, purity, creativity, the unconscious, and generativity [Jung and von Franz 1970, 114]. It harmonizes the conflicting opposites of male-female, rationality and emotion, dark and light, good and evil, etc. [Jung and von Franz 1970, 194]. Wholeness requires a coniunctio oppositorum (conjunction of opposites).
William Blake describes it paradoxically: "Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence. From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy. Good and evil is Heaven just as evil and good is Hell."
The conflict of opposites in Parsifal's psyche needed to be discovered for him to get back into the Grail Castle. He needs to expand his consciousness and travel, psychologically speaking, far beyond the naive fool, to find the Grail Castle and discover himself, to be conscious of and reconcile the opposites in his psyche.
The Fisher King, or the Grail King, represents a limited consciousness, one who is too rational and is incapable of solving the real problem his kingdom faces [Jung and von Franz 1970, 212]. The successor who will free him was prophesied to be a wholly innocent fool who would ask a specific question. "The myth is telling us that it is the naive part of a man that will heal him and cure his Fisher King wound. It suggests that if a man is to be cured he must find something in himself about the same age and about the same mentality as he was when he was wounded" [Johnson 1989, 11].
Jung himself experienced this woundedness after his break with Freud that opened his deep unconscious, flooding him with imagery that took a lifetime to assimilate and analyze. He speaks of his soul-loss and efforts to retrieve it in his visionary tome, The Red Book, which has only recently been published, many years after his death.
The Red Book illuminates all of his theories of unconscious dynamics. As in dreams, we are all of the characters in mythological tales, and their stories hold deep meaning for us when they are activated by our own life experiences. They call us into the hero's adventure and one of their ways of doing so is the call to trace our genealogical roots.
The Wounded Fisher King
Jung and the Ancestors
The long-awaited release in the 21st century of Jung's RED BOOK (2009) reveals just how much of a role his ancestors and inner figures played in his own psychic life. They led directly to the formation of many of his theories of psychic dynamics.
Historically, in Western societies the focus of genealogy was on the kinship and descent of rulers and nobles, often arguing or demonstrating the legitimacy of claims to wealth and power. The term often overlapped with heraldry, in which the ancestry of royalty was reflected in their coats of arms. Modern scholars consider many claimed noble ancestries to be fabrications, such as the Anglo-Saxon chronicles that traced the ancestry of several English kings to the god Woden.
But Jung healed and transformed his own fragmentation by taking up imaginal relationships with his inner figures. He developed what might be called a Dialogical Gnosis -- a Way of Knowing informed by the wisdom of the Collective Unconscious, the plenum of inherent knowledge and experience. Jung was engaged in the process of individuation.
One does not choose the path of individuation, but rather is chosen by it. Individuation seems to be the innate urge of life to realize itself consciously. The transpersonal life energy, in the process of self-unfolding, uses human consciousness, a product of itself, as an instrument for its own self-realization.
New discoveries must not only be made, but assimilated with concurrent experience and meaningful psychological insight. The individual meaningfulness of an experience is what creates unique personality. The instinctive feeling of significance is expanded by rooting experiences in their mythical patterns.
If the ego can withstand the irrational temptations, ordeals, and peril at the hands of the unknown, it is eventually rewarded with an expanded experience of self and a rejuvenation, or rebirth. In his essay on the "Relationship between the Ego and the Unconscious," Jung has stated that,
It is impossible to achieve individuation by conscious intention, because conscious intention invariably leads to a typical attitude that excludes whatever does not fit in with it. This assimilation of the unconscious contents leads, on the contrary to a condition in which the conscious intention is excluded and supplanted by a process of development that seems irrational. This process alone signifies individuation, and its product is individuality as we have defined it; particular and universal at once....Only when the unconscious is assimilated does the individuality emerge more clearly, together with the psychological phenomenon which links the ego with the non-ego and is designated by the word attitude.
But this time it is no longer a typical attitude but an individual one.
What the conscious ego can do in regard to individuation is make the commitment to work in harmony with the unfolding subconscious process, to give it constant attention, and to place proper value on the experience. This creates a resonance, the experience of "being in harmony with the cosmos", reflecting the Hermetic Axiom, "As Above, So Below."
The Secret Garden of the Rose
Cult of the Archetypal Feminine
The Mother of us all is also the Earth, as the light of the divine womb (primal source) and the mystery of divine light that informs and transforms into matter. The Sangreal is a cult of bloodline. Many who are of it are unaware or unawakened to that genealogical and gnostic awareness.
Many who think they are 'awake' are merely enthralled with the fugue state or eruption of symbolic material which is actually a form of dissociation. Dissociative disorders are typically experienced as startling, autonomous intrusions into the person's usual ways of responding or functioning. Due to their unexpected and largely inexplicable nature, they tend to be quite unsettling. Jung theorized that theorized that dissociation is a natural necessity for consciousness to operate in one faculty unhampered by the demands of its opposite.
Much of the magic and mystery enters our lines through our grandmothers, from the distaff side of our physical inheritance. It is carried in the mitochondrial DNA, inherited only from the mother on the x chromosome. It is very persistent through generations in both men and women, which helps us determine the relationship of populations.
The fact that mitochondrial DNA is maternally inherited enables genealogical researchers to trace maternal lineage far back in time. The concept of the Mitochondrial Eve is based on the same type of analysis, attempting to discover the origin of humanity by tracking the lineage back in time.
In the medieval era, a cult of the Feminine arose with a persistent theme of gender reunion in the Great Rite of the ancient bloodline, mystical eroticism known as the Mysterium Coniunctionis or Royal Marriage, in the underground Church of Love. Jung wrote a large book with that title describing "the separation and synthesis of psychic opposites in alchemy".
The opposites to be reconciled were Venus and Mars. It's about healing sexual woundedness, the pathless Wasteland of male-female relationships (literal and psychic), with a mystical inner marriage. Like Isis and Horus, when the Madonna holds the infant Jesus, he represents the Future, and he continues to do so as the future is always coming.
The Sacred Heart and Mary Magdalene are twin symbols of the Grail. She has been used to symbolize the hidden teachings of Jesus. The cult of Mary Magdalene and the Cult of the Black Virgin survive in many forms to this day. The meeting of the sun-god and the earth-mother brings forth the miracle of birth, death, and rebirth from her dark creative womb. The god comes through the goddess.
We find that balance in Individuation, after facing the Shadow and connecting with inner wisdom. Through his relationship with the feminine a man gains access to his own soul, to the deeper layers of his "heart". His sensitive quest for his "queen" makes him wiser, more sensitive, more scrupulous as a person. AMOR is a spiritual development. The courage to persist is the hallmark of loyalty.
The Rosy Cross is a symbol of the human process of reproduction elevated to the spiritual: The fundamental symbols are the female rose and the male cross. As generation is the key to material existence, those symbols exemplify the reproductive processes. As regeneration is the key to spiritual existence, the symbolism of the rose and the cross typifies redemption through the union of our lower temporal nature with our higher eternal nature.
The Rosy Cross is equivalent to the Philosopher's Stone or Holy Grail, and refined Gold. All represent the Grail of Self-Realization. As an image The Grail was a symbol of not just spiritual transcendence but also the Divine Immanence in creation. In Jewish mysticism, every woman is an earthly embodiment of the celestial Shekinah. The Grail Temple is the body, our sacred vessel. We need to learn again that the family is a being, a goddess.
There are many icons of Mary that show black faces and hands. In France, these are called Vierge Noires—Black Virgins. Elsewhere, they may be called Black Madonnas or the "other Mary." Jung called her Isis, while others claim she is the symbolic remains of a prehistoric worship of the Earth Mother. She is generally connected with Cybele, Diana, Isis, and Venus, as well as with Kali, Inanna, and Lilith. Historically she is connected with the Crusades, the Islamic occupation of Spain, the Conquistadors, the Kabbala, as well as the Merovingians and Knights Templar, who viewed her as Mary Magdalene.
Courtly Love (courtezia) and Troubadours were institutions that compensated the misogyny of medieval times. The contemplation of beauty in its feminine incarnation opens the Middle Way between debauchery and self-abnegation. Transcendent beauty is reflected in a beautiful face or body. Contact with the beautiful is a sacrament. The culture of l'amour courtois flourished in Anjou and the Languedoc. The House of Anjou remains the senior Grail family.
The Crusades, the so-called 'holy war', filled the need for collective Shadow projection. In this scenario, Venus and the cult of the Feminine played counterpoint to the Martian cult of warrior-knighthood, with its chivalric code of honor. This Quest for a lost sacred object, the Holy Grail, appears out of a deep and urgent need to counteract the brutality of the rapacious crusading, murderous military oppression. AMOR was a gnostic and esoteric doctrine of the divinity of the Mother and the higher meaning of the chivalric quest.
The persecuted became persecutors in a collective defensive strategy known as identification with the aggressor and the splitting-off of the victim. Whether personal or collective the consequence is the same. A need arises to find and project the shadow onto an external victim who opposes the newly found power of the aggressor. The real problem was and remains how to reconcile the two warring extremes of human nature: spirituality and sexuality. Men met the challenge by becoming more rigid and investing women and the Grail with the powers of generation and regeneration.
The historical origin for the collective resurgence of the sacred feminine is most likely derived from ancient cults of the Great Goddess—the mysteries of Isis, of Diana of Ephesus or Cybele, and especially the Sophia of the Gnostics. They were carried to Europe through the artistic contacts of troubadours who had been to the East.
Above all, the Cathars revered a version of Isis-Sophia and ordained women as priestesses equally with men. However, their Gnosticism also vilified the flesh and therefore all matter. Their archetypes, The Archons, were likewise demonized, being stunted by duality.
It is likely that the troubadour aubades or songs to the lady in spring ultimately derive from remnants of the old cults of Demeter, the Mother Goddess and her daughter Persephone. The Greeks brought this worship to Provence when they colonized Marseille and the south of Gaul in early times.
In the ancient Basilica of St. Victor in Marseille, on the 2nd of February each year thousand of candles are lit to attend the raising of the famous Black Madonna from the infernal darkness of the crypt up into the upper air. Persephone returned to the upper world every spring in Greek times, with masses of torches, to re-unite with her mother Demeter.
So in many of the noble courts of the South of France in the 11th-12th centuries there is a kind of revival of the pagan substrate that has been buried, but not entirely, by Christianity. What re-emerges is Christianity’s pagan shadow, to use Jung’s terms. What we see is the upsurge from the unconscious of the repressed pagan archetypal energies of the Dionysian-Venusian. Ecstatic use of art, music, and the body led to communion with the godhead within the body. (Woolger) http://www.deepmemoryprocess.com/page33.html The Grail hero discovers a castle in the midst of a Wasteland of self-alienation
The Fisher King is the wounded father principle, the weakened, unproductive and spiritually desolate father-world of medieval times. The waters of life have dried up both within and without laving a damaged consciousness, cut off from Mother Earth.
Jung said that today "the Gods have become diseases," and Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) describes not only the psychological victims of war and brutality but says something about our own "hostage" culture. It is a kind of stuckness where the trauma seems to be continuously recurring, a torturous victimization without relief. The war comes home in chaos, flashbacks, dark futures, and suicidal impulses. We can imagine that the old warrior-knights were not immune from such human frailties. http://ptsdpolitics.iwarp.com/
“Peace for veterans is not an ‘absence of war’ but its living ghost in the bedroom, at the lunch counter, on the highway. The trauma is not ‘post’ but acutely present, and the ‘syndrome’ is not in the veteran but in the dictionary, in the amnesiac’s idea of peace that colludes with an unlivable life.” “The return from the killing fields is more than a debriefing; it is a slow ascent from hell. …The veteran needs a rite de sortie that belongs to every initiation as its normal conclusion, making possible an intact return.” (James Hillman)
In contrast, the passion of the troubadours was earthy, bodily and sensual no matter how sentimentalists would later portray it. Dali quipped, "The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot." There is no longer any excuse to see the ladies of the troubadours through rose-tinted spectacles of the early Romantic poets and the Pre-Raphaelite painters, as purely ethereal disembodied “spiritual” anima figures.
The troubadours celebrated the incarnation of the feminine every bit as much as its spiritualization. Some say fins amor, or pure love of a woman as a form of spiritual initiation through a forbidden but transcendent love affair, was practiced not for procreation but contemplation.
http://www.deepmemoryprocess.com/page209.html
Woolger, Roger, The Holy Grail: Healing the Sexual Wound in the Western Psyche (1983/2010)
Karena Karras "The Bath"
Rose Line Descent
The Da Vinci Code made much of the so-called Roseline marking sacred sites in the European landscape. But the real Rose Lines are revealed in the royal genealogies with which it is interwoven. The Grail is the source of life, of generativity, of the primordial Eros. The Grail belongs to all that is soft, yielding, yin, of the body, of the earth, of the Mother: full, rich, gentle, and infinitely abundant.
Certain images, such as the Garden of the Rose, the Fountain, the Loathly Bride, the Damsel in distress, and above all the Holy Grail recur in all kinds of variations. The symbol of the Rose, for example, finds its way from the Sufis to the Roman de la Rose, to Dante's Paradiso, to the windows of Chartres Cathedral, and eventually to the mystical Brotherhood of the Rosicrucians. The underground tradition of alchemy and esoteric arts kept the spiritual Mysteries and Great Goddess discipline alive in the Underground Stream.
Jung describes Individuation as a process of transformation whereby the personal and collective unconscious are brought into consciousness (by means of dreams, active imagination, or free association) to be assimilated into the whole personality. It is a completely natural process necessary for the integration of the psyche. The pursuit of self-knowledge is a pilgrimage to our deep center with its divine inner spark or Light.
We seek to remember what our soul has always known. When the psyche heals it produces mandala-type images, balancing dark and light, male and female, yin and yang aspects of nature. The genealogical image is more than a metaphor: you are the center of multiple radiant lines of descent, all of which converge on your unique manifestation.
It can be combined with transpersonal techniques, including hypnotherapy, regressions, shamanic healing, vision quest, mystic arts, seasonal celebrations, spirit journeying, psychodrama, bodywork, trauma release, meditation, soul retrieval, kin contact, and personal mythology. We might also consider using healing therapies on our ancestors in special cases. Woolger's Deep Memory Process suggests you can use such therapies to:
• clearly recognize the core issues or complexes running your life
• journey in time to resolve childhood and other traumas
• vividly relive and resolve emotional conflicts through a healing psychodrama
• develop somatic awareness of deep memories to release them from your body
• let go of old unwanted ancestral patterns and influences
• integrate wounded soul fragments (“past lives”)
• clear your energy field of negative influences
• open up with love to higher spiritual resources within yourself
We have to find and heal the Grail King within, reowning the projections and meaning we have conveniently let others carry for us, for good and evil. In that process we may glimpse and lose the Grail many times over. Genetic descent is amplified creatively by a recursive psychological descent into the unconscious to retrieve our lost soul and lost ancestors.
Individuation has a holistic healing effect on the person, both mentally and physically. Individuation is a self analysis, a self discovery, analyzing your own psyche. It serves as the guide or goal of a quest—the Holy Grail, the Elixir of Immortality, the Philosopher's Stone.
Like genealogy, individuation is the story of you as the unique individual you are. Genealogy, like a dragon's hoard, is a treasure hard to attain, yet priceless to the person who holds it. This most collective situation becomes the most individual experience because no two individuals incorporate it in exactly the same way.
We all search for something. In genealogy we narrow that search for the Holy Grail and the Precious Blood. In this case, in genealogy the blood is precious because it is our own lifegiving blood. Legend tells us the Blood and the Grail are united. In medieval literature the Grail is often associated with a feast -- it is, indeed, a great feast of metaphors attached to the primary icon.
Legend has it there is a fellowship or underground Family of the Grail that furthers and protects its interests in all worlds. The "underground stream" is yet another symbol of the Grail.. The Grail appears in many forms, including radiant light and the sangreal of the Holy Bloodline that flows from the Davidic line, including the Desposyni descendants of the Holy Family, perhaps including offspring of Jesus and Mary Magdalene -- or so they say.
Genealogies bring revelations, which may belong to millions of descendants but feel extremely important because they are part of our own personal heritage. It comes with strong spiritual and mythic overtones from the elder god-kings, the royal Davidic/Solomonic line, the family of Jesus, the Merovingians, Gnostics, Grail Kings, Camelot, and crusading Templars. Internal conflict may arise when loyalties are torn between opposing forces, each of which are ancestral lines.
In fact, the symbolic treasure of genealogy is that it encodes the entire transformational process from the war of opposites to the reconciling royal marriage and graphically shows just how intimately it is connected to our very existence through those who gave us faces. This knowledge, more than a pedigree on paper, is the treasure hard to attain that nourishes and sustains us in our intergenerational Being. This is, in fact, The Grail, which serves the divine spark within.
Phillip Stephen Lansky concludes, “Interestingly, the “chymical wedding” of alchemy was a symbol for the simultaneous constellation of psychic opposites, which we have already suggested concurs with a state of physiological paradox. Might not the contents of the two archetypal flasks represent two amines, serotonin and noradrenalin, being poured simultaneously into a marriage bath in the hypothalamus?”
The Grail symbolizes life, spirituality, youth, health, joy, purity, creativity, the unconscious, and generativity [Jung and von Franz 1970, 114]. It harmonizes the conflicting opposites of male-female, rationality and emotion, dark and light, good and evil, etc. [Jung and von Franz 1970, 194]. Wholeness requires a coniunctio oppositorum (conjunction of opposites).
William Blake describes it paradoxically: "Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence. From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy. Good and evil is Heaven just as evil and good is Hell."
The conflict of opposites in Parsifal's psyche needed to be discovered for him to get back into the Grail Castle. He needs to expand his consciousness and travel, psychologically speaking, far beyond the naive fool, to find the Grail Castle and discover himself, to be conscious of and reconcile the opposites in his psyche.
The Fisher King, or the Grail King, represents a limited consciousness, one who is too rational and is incapable of solving the real problem his kingdom faces [Jung and von Franz 1970, 212]. The successor who will free him was prophesied to be a wholly innocent fool who would ask a specific question. "The myth is telling us that it is the naive part of a man that will heal him and cure his Fisher King wound. It suggests that if a man is to be cured he must find something in himself about the same age and about the same mentality as he was when he was wounded" [Johnson 1989, 11].
Jung himself experienced this woundedness after his break with Freud that opened his deep unconscious, flooding him with imagery that took a lifetime to assimilate and analyze. He speaks of his soul-loss and efforts to retrieve it in his visionary tome, The Red Book, which has only recently been published, many years after his death.
The Red Book illuminates all of his theories of unconscious dynamics. As in dreams, we are all of the characters in mythological tales, and their stories hold deep meaning for us when they are activated by our own life experiences. They call us into the hero's adventure and one of their ways of doing so is the call to trace our genealogical roots.
The Wounded Fisher King
Jung and the Ancestors
The long-awaited release in the 21st century of Jung's RED BOOK (2009) reveals just how much of a role his ancestors and inner figures played in his own psychic life. They led directly to the formation of many of his theories of psychic dynamics.
Historically, in Western societies the focus of genealogy was on the kinship and descent of rulers and nobles, often arguing or demonstrating the legitimacy of claims to wealth and power. The term often overlapped with heraldry, in which the ancestry of royalty was reflected in their coats of arms. Modern scholars consider many claimed noble ancestries to be fabrications, such as the Anglo-Saxon chronicles that traced the ancestry of several English kings to the god Woden.
But Jung healed and transformed his own fragmentation by taking up imaginal relationships with his inner figures. He developed what might be called a Dialogical Gnosis -- a Way of Knowing informed by the wisdom of the Collective Unconscious, the plenum of inherent knowledge and experience. Jung was engaged in the process of individuation.
One does not choose the path of individuation, but rather is chosen by it. Individuation seems to be the innate urge of life to realize itself consciously. The transpersonal life energy, in the process of self-unfolding, uses human consciousness, a product of itself, as an instrument for its own self-realization.
New discoveries must not only be made, but assimilated with concurrent experience and meaningful psychological insight. The individual meaningfulness of an experience is what creates unique personality. The instinctive feeling of significance is expanded by rooting experiences in their mythical patterns.
If the ego can withstand the irrational temptations, ordeals, and peril at the hands of the unknown, it is eventually rewarded with an expanded experience of self and a rejuvenation, or rebirth. In his essay on the "Relationship between the Ego and the Unconscious," Jung has stated that,
It is impossible to achieve individuation by conscious intention, because conscious intention invariably leads to a typical attitude that excludes whatever does not fit in with it. This assimilation of the unconscious contents leads, on the contrary to a condition in which the conscious intention is excluded and supplanted by a process of development that seems irrational. This process alone signifies individuation, and its product is individuality as we have defined it; particular and universal at once....Only when the unconscious is assimilated does the individuality emerge more clearly, together with the psychological phenomenon which links the ego with the non-ego and is designated by the word attitude.
But this time it is no longer a typical attitude but an individual one.
What the conscious ego can do in regard to individuation is make the commitment to work in harmony with the unfolding subconscious process, to give it constant attention, and to place proper value on the experience. This creates a resonance, the experience of "being in harmony with the cosmos", reflecting the Hermetic Axiom, "As Above, So Below."
The Secret Garden of the Rose
Cult of the Archetypal Feminine
The Mother of us all is also the Earth, as the light of the divine womb (primal source) and the mystery of divine light that informs and transforms into matter. The Sangreal is a cult of bloodline. Many who are of it are unaware or unawakened to that genealogical and gnostic awareness.
Many who think they are 'awake' are merely enthralled with the fugue state or eruption of symbolic material which is actually a form of dissociation. Dissociative disorders are typically experienced as startling, autonomous intrusions into the person's usual ways of responding or functioning. Due to their unexpected and largely inexplicable nature, they tend to be quite unsettling. Jung theorized that theorized that dissociation is a natural necessity for consciousness to operate in one faculty unhampered by the demands of its opposite.
Much of the magic and mystery enters our lines through our grandmothers, from the distaff side of our physical inheritance. It is carried in the mitochondrial DNA, inherited only from the mother on the x chromosome. It is very persistent through generations in both men and women, which helps us determine the relationship of populations.
The fact that mitochondrial DNA is maternally inherited enables genealogical researchers to trace maternal lineage far back in time. The concept of the Mitochondrial Eve is based on the same type of analysis, attempting to discover the origin of humanity by tracking the lineage back in time.
In the medieval era, a cult of the Feminine arose with a persistent theme of gender reunion in the Great Rite of the ancient bloodline, mystical eroticism known as the Mysterium Coniunctionis or Royal Marriage, in the underground Church of Love. Jung wrote a large book with that title describing "the separation and synthesis of psychic opposites in alchemy".
The opposites to be reconciled were Venus and Mars. It's about healing sexual woundedness, the pathless Wasteland of male-female relationships (literal and psychic), with a mystical inner marriage. Like Isis and Horus, when the Madonna holds the infant Jesus, he represents the Future, and he continues to do so as the future is always coming.
The Sacred Heart and Mary Magdalene are twin symbols of the Grail. She has been used to symbolize the hidden teachings of Jesus. The cult of Mary Magdalene and the Cult of the Black Virgin survive in many forms to this day. The meeting of the sun-god and the earth-mother brings forth the miracle of birth, death, and rebirth from her dark creative womb. The god comes through the goddess.
We find that balance in Individuation, after facing the Shadow and connecting with inner wisdom. Through his relationship with the feminine a man gains access to his own soul, to the deeper layers of his "heart". His sensitive quest for his "queen" makes him wiser, more sensitive, more scrupulous as a person. AMOR is a spiritual development. The courage to persist is the hallmark of loyalty.
The Rosy Cross is a symbol of the human process of reproduction elevated to the spiritual: The fundamental symbols are the female rose and the male cross. As generation is the key to material existence, those symbols exemplify the reproductive processes. As regeneration is the key to spiritual existence, the symbolism of the rose and the cross typifies redemption through the union of our lower temporal nature with our higher eternal nature.
The Rosy Cross is equivalent to the Philosopher's Stone or Holy Grail, and refined Gold. All represent the Grail of Self-Realization. As an image The Grail was a symbol of not just spiritual transcendence but also the Divine Immanence in creation. In Jewish mysticism, every woman is an earthly embodiment of the celestial Shekinah. The Grail Temple is the body, our sacred vessel. We need to learn again that the family is a being, a goddess.
There are many icons of Mary that show black faces and hands. In France, these are called Vierge Noires—Black Virgins. Elsewhere, they may be called Black Madonnas or the "other Mary." Jung called her Isis, while others claim she is the symbolic remains of a prehistoric worship of the Earth Mother. She is generally connected with Cybele, Diana, Isis, and Venus, as well as with Kali, Inanna, and Lilith. Historically she is connected with the Crusades, the Islamic occupation of Spain, the Conquistadors, the Kabbala, as well as the Merovingians and Knights Templar, who viewed her as Mary Magdalene.
Courtly Love (courtezia) and Troubadours were institutions that compensated the misogyny of medieval times. The contemplation of beauty in its feminine incarnation opens the Middle Way between debauchery and self-abnegation. Transcendent beauty is reflected in a beautiful face or body. Contact with the beautiful is a sacrament. The culture of l'amour courtois flourished in Anjou and the Languedoc. The House of Anjou remains the senior Grail family.
The Crusades, the so-called 'holy war', filled the need for collective Shadow projection. In this scenario, Venus and the cult of the Feminine played counterpoint to the Martian cult of warrior-knighthood, with its chivalric code of honor. This Quest for a lost sacred object, the Holy Grail, appears out of a deep and urgent need to counteract the brutality of the rapacious crusading, murderous military oppression. AMOR was a gnostic and esoteric doctrine of the divinity of the Mother and the higher meaning of the chivalric quest.
The persecuted became persecutors in a collective defensive strategy known as identification with the aggressor and the splitting-off of the victim. Whether personal or collective the consequence is the same. A need arises to find and project the shadow onto an external victim who opposes the newly found power of the aggressor. The real problem was and remains how to reconcile the two warring extremes of human nature: spirituality and sexuality. Men met the challenge by becoming more rigid and investing women and the Grail with the powers of generation and regeneration.
The historical origin for the collective resurgence of the sacred feminine is most likely derived from ancient cults of the Great Goddess—the mysteries of Isis, of Diana of Ephesus or Cybele, and especially the Sophia of the Gnostics. They were carried to Europe through the artistic contacts of troubadours who had been to the East.
Above all, the Cathars revered a version of Isis-Sophia and ordained women as priestesses equally with men. However, their Gnosticism also vilified the flesh and therefore all matter. Their archetypes, The Archons, were likewise demonized, being stunted by duality.
It is likely that the troubadour aubades or songs to the lady in spring ultimately derive from remnants of the old cults of Demeter, the Mother Goddess and her daughter Persephone. The Greeks brought this worship to Provence when they colonized Marseille and the south of Gaul in early times.
In the ancient Basilica of St. Victor in Marseille, on the 2nd of February each year thousand of candles are lit to attend the raising of the famous Black Madonna from the infernal darkness of the crypt up into the upper air. Persephone returned to the upper world every spring in Greek times, with masses of torches, to re-unite with her mother Demeter.
So in many of the noble courts of the South of France in the 11th-12th centuries there is a kind of revival of the pagan substrate that has been buried, but not entirely, by Christianity. What re-emerges is Christianity’s pagan shadow, to use Jung’s terms. What we see is the upsurge from the unconscious of the repressed pagan archetypal energies of the Dionysian-Venusian. Ecstatic use of art, music, and the body led to communion with the godhead within the body. (Woolger) http://www.deepmemoryprocess.com/page33.html The Grail hero discovers a castle in the midst of a Wasteland of self-alienation
The Fisher King is the wounded father principle, the weakened, unproductive and spiritually desolate father-world of medieval times. The waters of life have dried up both within and without laving a damaged consciousness, cut off from Mother Earth.
Jung said that today "the Gods have become diseases," and Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) describes not only the psychological victims of war and brutality but says something about our own "hostage" culture. It is a kind of stuckness where the trauma seems to be continuously recurring, a torturous victimization without relief. The war comes home in chaos, flashbacks, dark futures, and suicidal impulses. We can imagine that the old warrior-knights were not immune from such human frailties. http://ptsdpolitics.iwarp.com/
“Peace for veterans is not an ‘absence of war’ but its living ghost in the bedroom, at the lunch counter, on the highway. The trauma is not ‘post’ but acutely present, and the ‘syndrome’ is not in the veteran but in the dictionary, in the amnesiac’s idea of peace that colludes with an unlivable life.” “The return from the killing fields is more than a debriefing; it is a slow ascent from hell. …The veteran needs a rite de sortie that belongs to every initiation as its normal conclusion, making possible an intact return.” (James Hillman)
In contrast, the passion of the troubadours was earthy, bodily and sensual no matter how sentimentalists would later portray it. Dali quipped, "The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot." There is no longer any excuse to see the ladies of the troubadours through rose-tinted spectacles of the early Romantic poets and the Pre-Raphaelite painters, as purely ethereal disembodied “spiritual” anima figures.
The troubadours celebrated the incarnation of the feminine every bit as much as its spiritualization. Some say fins amor, or pure love of a woman as a form of spiritual initiation through a forbidden but transcendent love affair, was practiced not for procreation but contemplation.
http://www.deepmemoryprocess.com/page209.html
Woolger, Roger, The Holy Grail: Healing the Sexual Wound in the Western Psyche (1983/2010)
Karena Karras "The Bath"
Rose Line Descent
The Da Vinci Code made much of the so-called Roseline marking sacred sites in the European landscape. But the real Rose Lines are revealed in the royal genealogies with which it is interwoven. The Grail is the source of life, of generativity, of the primordial Eros. The Grail belongs to all that is soft, yielding, yin, of the body, of the earth, of the Mother: full, rich, gentle, and infinitely abundant.
Certain images, such as the Garden of the Rose, the Fountain, the Loathly Bride, the Damsel in distress, and above all the Holy Grail recur in all kinds of variations. The symbol of the Rose, for example, finds its way from the Sufis to the Roman de la Rose, to Dante's Paradiso, to the windows of Chartres Cathedral, and eventually to the mystical Brotherhood of the Rosicrucians. The underground tradition of alchemy and esoteric arts kept the spiritual Mysteries and Great Goddess discipline alive in the Underground Stream.
Great Rite
THE GREAT UNBROKEN CHAIN
Depth Psychology & Genealogy
SPIRIT THREAD
Genealogy is Fractal Ontology
There is no pure individual; the group is inside the individual.
Nature (genetics) and nurture (epigenetics) encompass the biological,
relational, and environmental aspects of life.
Environment * Relationships * Biological Capabilities * Stress * Dynamics * Problem Solving * Patterns
Depth Psychology & Genealogy
SPIRIT THREAD
Genealogy is Fractal Ontology
There is no pure individual; the group is inside the individual.
Nature (genetics) and nurture (epigenetics) encompass the biological,
relational, and environmental aspects of life.
Environment * Relationships * Biological Capabilities * Stress * Dynamics * Problem Solving * Patterns
The universe is steadily giving birth to itself, producing new information. Metaphorically, it is a self-unfolding story. Individual events are the ‘letters’ and ‘words’ of the evolutionary opus. Events do not pass away into non-existence but remain forever as an indelible part of the whole.
The Tree of Nature includes the evolutionary phylogenetic system of the various forms of life. The very base of everything that exists includes space and time, the laws of Nature, the material particles and the forces acting between them. The vacuum of absolute space, which exists within and without us, is the groundstate.
Death is the completion of a lifetime. An information cycle incorporates all events in which the respective person (the ‘Self’) has acted as an information processing entity. Death is not the end of it all, as we erroneously believe.
The universe as a whole continues to live and grow; not only directed outwardly (in the dimensions of space and time), but also inwardly. In some way, the lifetime of each individual remains part of this ‘story of the universe’- forever, in all eternity. The so-called "vacuum" has a memory. Our psychophysical being is nothing but memory. The body is the unconscious.
"The fantasy we call 'current events,' that which is taking place outside the historical field, is a reflection of an eternal mythological experience... Nothing can be revealed by a newspaper, by the world's chronique scandaleuse, unless the essence is described from within through an archetypal pattern. The archetype provides the basis for uniting those incommensurables, fact and meaning." --James Hillman, "An Aspect of the Psychological & Historical Present"
As the most advanced mental structure, the Self resists ordinary articulation so completely that, according to Jung, it is the primary object of mysticism. Indeed, an experience of the Self also constitutes one of Reality, because the two reflect each other, providing (again, according to Jung) para-psychological knowledge of and influence over Reality. Jung considers the Self as a repository of all archetypes, which is, among other things, a way of saying that someone advanced in Stage Seven has experienced all the preceding ones, and, as part of a final dialectic between conscious and unconscious, is likely to refine mastery over the preceding ones. (Whitlark, 2006) http://www.goertzel.org/dynapsyc/2005/Whitlark.htm
Fields of Meaning
Telling ancestral stories was the way that the tellers came to understand their own being. And the same is true today. Campbell speaks of the similar stories that our ancestors shared -- universal ways of telling tales. Such myths allow us to resonate with some greater emotional connection with our world.
In genealogy, we put together our personal and mythic history in a way that reflects nature. The pedigree provides a vast historical panorama for pattern recognition -- the big picture. It is a way of consciously recovering and reclaiming one's deep past via the ancestral field. Putting things together in a meaningful way is one of the basic features of nature,’ according to Albert Szent-Gyorgyi*, 1977.
Potential information is indeterminate latent information that yields factual information once it is taken up and understood, in some way. It is charged with meaning. All kinds of interpretations of a given situation depend upon the receiver of the information and the corresponding context. The ‘real effect’ on the receiver can be regarded as the most important aspect of an information cycle. Genealogy is one such method of accruing new information about oneself and family. It can have a transformative effect.
Depth psychology has ancient roots. Though its antecedents stretch backward toward antiquity, depth psychology begins with Sigmund Freud and C.G. Jung, two visionaries who called attention to the importance of what lies below the surface of conscious awareness. There are Jungian, post-Jungian, archetypal, and developmental lineages of depth psychology. The study of myth and depth psychology opens the full range of the human senses and psyche.
This dimension of psychic reality is revealed in literature, the expressive arts of different cultures, dreams, and in the collective symptoms suffered by individuals and societies. Concepts at the core of depth psychology are central to genealogy. Ideas such as the importance of image, metaphor, and psyche in personal and cultural expression, and the interplay between the aesthetics of the natural world and the human experience, are deeply ingrained. Depth psychology is a long process of exploration and listening at the margins of all collective thought.
Jung revealed his 'gnostic' orientation his Red Book, but it was not limited to medieval gnostic doctrine. Rather it expressed his direct experience -- the self-knowledge of raw psychic elements, which included his ancestors. Psyche is a dynamic spiritual function.
Jung realized that the ancient practice of alchemy contained a rich symbolic language which mirrored the process of transformation inherent to individuation. He called it "a momentous discovery" -- a process of psychophysical transformation and healing.
The central dynamic in Jungian psychology is the individuation process, psyche's journey toward wholeness, an embodiment of the archetype of the Self. In Jungian psychology, this is done in large part by balancing or uniting the opposites within the psyche, including the feminine and masculine principles, known as the anima and animus.
Archetypal psychology is one of the central strands of post-Jungian theory. James Hillman, (its main proponent), emphasized the development of a mythic sensibility in confronting the complexity and multiplicity of psychological life. Through symbols, the unconscious speaks to us and through us with its visual language for conveying the deep mysteries of life.
In "A Review of the Complex Theory," Jung calls complexes the via regia, or royal road, to the personal and collective unconscious. We explore complexes on multiple levels— personal, familial, group, cultural, and political — looking at their phenomenology, their autonomy, and their biology.
James Hillman wrote, "Psychology shows myths in modern dress and myths show our depth psychology in ancient dress." Understanding the connection between mythology and psychology, Jung argued that it is important to our psychological health to know the myth we are living. There are archetypal motifs in fairy tales and myths that appear in our personal and collective psychological lives.
Jung pioneered working with unconscious material in the psyche via Active Imagination. We work with an image or dialogue with an inner figure in the course of doing our genealogy, too. The Red Book contains 16 years of Jung's active imagination, and helps us explore this powerful technique and its relationship to psychic creativity and consciousness. Romantic relationships are often laden with psychological expectations of mythic proportions.
Jung wrote, "The spirit is the life of the body seen from within, and the body the outward manifestation of the life of the spirit—the two really being one." We explore the interrelationship between psyche and soma. Topics include the body as shadow; the body as a site of trauma, healing, and contact with the divine. Bodywork practices like dance, authentic movement, yoga, and breathwork embody the process. Healing traditions facilitate the relationship of the body with the collective unconscious, including concepts like cellular memory, deep fields, and archetypes as bodily-based inherited images.
As Jung saw it, "Natural life is the nourishing soil of the soul." Many of us feel split off from that nourishment today, living within a worldview which divides the inner from the outer, spirit from matter, and humans from nature. An ecopsychological perspective remedies this malaise by considering individuation as rooted not only in our relationship to self and human others, but to the natural world as well. The importance of place to the psyche includes observation of the natural world as it appears in our dreamscapes.
http://www.pacifica.edu/degree-programs/ma-phd-jungian-archetypal-studies/jungian-archetypal-studies-course-descriptions
"There is nothing that the madness of men invents which is not either nature made manifest or nature restored." --Michel Foucault. Madness and Civilization (283).
"Myth expresses in terms of the world - that is, of the other world or the second world - the understanding that man has of himself in relation to the foundation and the limit of his existence." - Paul Ricœur
The Tree of Nature includes the evolutionary phylogenetic system of the various forms of life. The very base of everything that exists includes space and time, the laws of Nature, the material particles and the forces acting between them. The vacuum of absolute space, which exists within and without us, is the groundstate.
Death is the completion of a lifetime. An information cycle incorporates all events in which the respective person (the ‘Self’) has acted as an information processing entity. Death is not the end of it all, as we erroneously believe.
The universe as a whole continues to live and grow; not only directed outwardly (in the dimensions of space and time), but also inwardly. In some way, the lifetime of each individual remains part of this ‘story of the universe’- forever, in all eternity. The so-called "vacuum" has a memory. Our psychophysical being is nothing but memory. The body is the unconscious.
"The fantasy we call 'current events,' that which is taking place outside the historical field, is a reflection of an eternal mythological experience... Nothing can be revealed by a newspaper, by the world's chronique scandaleuse, unless the essence is described from within through an archetypal pattern. The archetype provides the basis for uniting those incommensurables, fact and meaning." --James Hillman, "An Aspect of the Psychological & Historical Present"
As the most advanced mental structure, the Self resists ordinary articulation so completely that, according to Jung, it is the primary object of mysticism. Indeed, an experience of the Self also constitutes one of Reality, because the two reflect each other, providing (again, according to Jung) para-psychological knowledge of and influence over Reality. Jung considers the Self as a repository of all archetypes, which is, among other things, a way of saying that someone advanced in Stage Seven has experienced all the preceding ones, and, as part of a final dialectic between conscious and unconscious, is likely to refine mastery over the preceding ones. (Whitlark, 2006) http://www.goertzel.org/dynapsyc/2005/Whitlark.htm
Fields of Meaning
Telling ancestral stories was the way that the tellers came to understand their own being. And the same is true today. Campbell speaks of the similar stories that our ancestors shared -- universal ways of telling tales. Such myths allow us to resonate with some greater emotional connection with our world.
In genealogy, we put together our personal and mythic history in a way that reflects nature. The pedigree provides a vast historical panorama for pattern recognition -- the big picture. It is a way of consciously recovering and reclaiming one's deep past via the ancestral field. Putting things together in a meaningful way is one of the basic features of nature,’ according to Albert Szent-Gyorgyi*, 1977.
Potential information is indeterminate latent information that yields factual information once it is taken up and understood, in some way. It is charged with meaning. All kinds of interpretations of a given situation depend upon the receiver of the information and the corresponding context. The ‘real effect’ on the receiver can be regarded as the most important aspect of an information cycle. Genealogy is one such method of accruing new information about oneself and family. It can have a transformative effect.
Depth psychology has ancient roots. Though its antecedents stretch backward toward antiquity, depth psychology begins with Sigmund Freud and C.G. Jung, two visionaries who called attention to the importance of what lies below the surface of conscious awareness. There are Jungian, post-Jungian, archetypal, and developmental lineages of depth psychology. The study of myth and depth psychology opens the full range of the human senses and psyche.
This dimension of psychic reality is revealed in literature, the expressive arts of different cultures, dreams, and in the collective symptoms suffered by individuals and societies. Concepts at the core of depth psychology are central to genealogy. Ideas such as the importance of image, metaphor, and psyche in personal and cultural expression, and the interplay between the aesthetics of the natural world and the human experience, are deeply ingrained. Depth psychology is a long process of exploration and listening at the margins of all collective thought.
Jung revealed his 'gnostic' orientation his Red Book, but it was not limited to medieval gnostic doctrine. Rather it expressed his direct experience -- the self-knowledge of raw psychic elements, which included his ancestors. Psyche is a dynamic spiritual function.
Jung realized that the ancient practice of alchemy contained a rich symbolic language which mirrored the process of transformation inherent to individuation. He called it "a momentous discovery" -- a process of psychophysical transformation and healing.
The central dynamic in Jungian psychology is the individuation process, psyche's journey toward wholeness, an embodiment of the archetype of the Self. In Jungian psychology, this is done in large part by balancing or uniting the opposites within the psyche, including the feminine and masculine principles, known as the anima and animus.
Archetypal psychology is one of the central strands of post-Jungian theory. James Hillman, (its main proponent), emphasized the development of a mythic sensibility in confronting the complexity and multiplicity of psychological life. Through symbols, the unconscious speaks to us and through us with its visual language for conveying the deep mysteries of life.
In "A Review of the Complex Theory," Jung calls complexes the via regia, or royal road, to the personal and collective unconscious. We explore complexes on multiple levels— personal, familial, group, cultural, and political — looking at their phenomenology, their autonomy, and their biology.
James Hillman wrote, "Psychology shows myths in modern dress and myths show our depth psychology in ancient dress." Understanding the connection between mythology and psychology, Jung argued that it is important to our psychological health to know the myth we are living. There are archetypal motifs in fairy tales and myths that appear in our personal and collective psychological lives.
Jung pioneered working with unconscious material in the psyche via Active Imagination. We work with an image or dialogue with an inner figure in the course of doing our genealogy, too. The Red Book contains 16 years of Jung's active imagination, and helps us explore this powerful technique and its relationship to psychic creativity and consciousness. Romantic relationships are often laden with psychological expectations of mythic proportions.
Jung wrote, "The spirit is the life of the body seen from within, and the body the outward manifestation of the life of the spirit—the two really being one." We explore the interrelationship between psyche and soma. Topics include the body as shadow; the body as a site of trauma, healing, and contact with the divine. Bodywork practices like dance, authentic movement, yoga, and breathwork embody the process. Healing traditions facilitate the relationship of the body with the collective unconscious, including concepts like cellular memory, deep fields, and archetypes as bodily-based inherited images.
As Jung saw it, "Natural life is the nourishing soil of the soul." Many of us feel split off from that nourishment today, living within a worldview which divides the inner from the outer, spirit from matter, and humans from nature. An ecopsychological perspective remedies this malaise by considering individuation as rooted not only in our relationship to self and human others, but to the natural world as well. The importance of place to the psyche includes observation of the natural world as it appears in our dreamscapes.
http://www.pacifica.edu/degree-programs/ma-phd-jungian-archetypal-studies/jungian-archetypal-studies-course-descriptions
"There is nothing that the madness of men invents which is not either nature made manifest or nature restored." --Michel Foucault. Madness and Civilization (283).
"Myth expresses in terms of the world - that is, of the other world or the second world - the understanding that man has of himself in relation to the foundation and the limit of his existence." - Paul Ricœur
Art above: http://www.howarddavidjohnson.com/
(c)2015; All Rights Reserved, Iona Miller, Sangreality Trust
[email protected]
Fair Use Notice
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
(c)2015; All Rights Reserved, Iona Miller, Sangreality Trust
[email protected]
Fair Use Notice
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.