Doctor Maureen Roberts and I talk about the “Diana Luminatis “ message. (See Links) Doctor Roberts is a brilliant woman who was most gracious with her time and abilities.

Thanks Doc!
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Hi Anne

Thanks for sharing this - interesting psychology but it makes no impact on me - it's basically the 'celestial' Virgin Mary/Diana myth retold. It's therefore nothing new - the Assumption of Mary achieves the same result - the feminine is elevated to divine status.

What one must be careful of is that the Earthly, material and shadow realms (which go hand-in-hand-in-hand) are not left out of the picture, which they tend to be if there's too much emphasis on the 'angelic light' side of the Goddess archetype (as there tends to be here).

While these sorts of 'messages' do little harm, they are also, I fear, a great hindrance to our appreciation of the significance of Diana's death - which is that we - as frail, human, imperfect human beings - are all capable of love and must now to carry the ball. We can't appeal to angels, or Diana (as perfect Moon Goddess) any more - it's up to us.

These sorts of messages, on the other hand, consign us all to a spiritual kindergarten where we can avoid individual responsibility by projecting onto a 'perfect Goddess' image. (And please note - if you intend to print the below - that she misrepresents Jung's meaning of archetype - which he doesn't describe as a ” mass consciousness role model”.)

Kind wishes & safe journeys through 1999 for you!

Maureen
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Dear Maureen,

I'm not kidding when I say you're brilliant and it takes me alot of thinking to understand what you are saying when you speak about Jung/myth/psychology etc.--- I'm still trying to absorb all that's on your Diana page!

However, your point about we have to do our own loving is clear. And I agree with that. I think part of the shock felt over Diana's death was the loss of a person who did our loving for us--of those suffering from AIDS, land mine victims, etc.

When I read what you say about Diana...I wonder if you feel love for her? I see and appreciate the broad themes you are talking about. And we need to see the Diana event in it’s archetype context, but do you feel something for Diana the person?

Just as you blend two seemingly diffident states into one (shaman and PhD.), I seek to bridge what I call the little Diana (the person) and the big Diana (the arch type/ spiritual being). I don’t believe one has to be true and the other false.

Anne

And a P.S . later:

Dear Maureen,
I get some thing out of what you write every time I read it.

Now this is the point that has come out from my mental fog... I don't see the big Diana (for want of a better term) as a being that does for us. I see her/it as an example of where we are going-- as an example of our own big self. And pondering such a message is a way for us to see our big self.

Doesn't the emphasis on the dark also consign us to a kindergarten?

Thanks for your time,and have a fine 1999!
Anne
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Hi Anne

To clarify: I for one hope we're not heading back into this kind of 'angelic' idealism which sweeps the dark side of the Goddess under the carpet from where She will hit back with a vengeance).

'Big Self' is whole Self, not half of it. Any emphasis that is one-sidedly 'spiritual', OR shadow-bound is infantile. Either extreme misses the point :wholeness.

What we need is the unity of opposites - the reintegration of light and dark, male and female, heavenly and earthly into one new God-image, not a return to naive, idealistic, or sentimental belief in an angelic, or all-good deity. The latter is where New Age stuff is hopelessly one-sided - plus it assumes it's OK to commit intellectual suicide and 'simply believe' (in channeled messages, aliens, or whatever).

Sure, many folk may need these as a form or religion, and I never discourage it if it helps, but as I say, it's a step backward
into just another form of Christianity, or 'God vs Devil' oppositional thinking. Read Jung's “Answer to Job” if you want to better understand where he and I are coming from.

Do I love Diana? If you have read my paper and my description of what I shared with her, why ask? 'Compassion' means (literally) 'the ability to suffer with'. I love her the way I love everyone - with and through Eros.

In my three dream encounters with her, she was no more and no less than what she was when alive - a simple, fragile human being (like you and me) - not an angelically perfect Goddess.

It's still very hot here Down Under..(no wonder I'm comfortable in the Underworld!)

Kind regards & safe journeys

Maureen
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Dear Maureen,

That last bit was funny !

I greatly appreciate the time you have spent on this and I will read the Jung article.

The needed new god you are describing however sounds like superhuman being--the Greek god model. I am looking for something beyond concept.

The other point I wanted to make about that Diana message (theses points are slow in coming) is I see it as a metaphor, not something to be read, or believed , literally.

There is the emotional/ inspirational experience and then there is how that experience is expressed. I’m looking beyond the expressions to the experience. At that place , it’s not a matter of intellectual suicide. The intellectual is not the prime equipment involved.

I never simply “believe” . It’s a case a sensing something behind it all.

“Sensing “ a subjective something as a bases may seem like intellectual suicide, but I think not. You say your experience of Diana is one way, others say their experience is another. I say both are true for each of you and one must decide for one self.

See, I don’t believe in a priest class as a tenet . I think some people are more aware of themselves than others. ..” why ask”
I knew your answer to the love Diana question, but asked in order use your wording to better understand what you were saying generally. My experience in all this is emotional--not intellectual. I was looking for a Roberts Rosetta stone.

Later.

I was at a book store and looked up Jung’s “Answer to Job” and read for some time.I can’t pretend to understand it all. But it struck me that Jung held god, all that is, or whatever one wishes to call it , as responsible and answerable for our concepts of same. What does the actuality have to do with our concepts?

It was” move over, Job” but instead of boils, Jung seemed to be lamenting the concepts of god we have saddled ourselves with. Well, they are often lamentable. But I don't see theses concepts as laws I have to argue with or pull apart in order to be free of them. They are made up, human concepts.. so unmake them. I guess that’s a shocking statement.

Anne
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Hi Anne,

The needed new god you are describing however sounds like a super human being--the Greek god model. I am looking for something beyond
concept.

Good luck in your search. Me, I'm much simpler, since I'm not looking for anything, least of all an 'explanation', or .'God'. Like Jung, I'm an empiricist - I know (as 'gnosis') what I've experienced, what's real to me - that's all - and part of that divine reality was the dark Abyss.

There's nothing specifically Greek about a God-image that's whole - such God-images feature in all religions, e.g. the Hindu Shiva, who's a union of dark and light.The union of human and divine is similarly common in Buddhism and Hinduism; in the latter, Brahman is the divine essence of the human; not a 'super-human', but a (Blakean) divine humanity 'Seek and ye shall find'; but as Jung quotes, "Whether called on or not, God will be present'.

I'm looking beyond the expressions to the experience. At that place , it's not a matter of intellectual suicide. The intellectual is not the prime
equipment involved.

Agreed absolutely; again, all my own work involves reflection on experience. The reflection includes reason, since the experience doesn't negate it, even if it does initially transcend it. (Einstein is a prime example here; he 'saw' relativity in a flash of all-encompassing intuition, but then had to nut out the details through hard thinking).

Again, the issue for me (and Jung) is being whole - and that means honoring all our faculties, and all the 'four functions' - including thinking. A lot of New Age stuff has reacted against reason and gone to the opposite extreme of 'uncritical thought'
(in Jung's terms, it's swung from 'thinking' to its opposite 'feeling' function). Since the Aquarian Age is very much about critical thinking (Saturn energy), this kind of wishy-washy 'faith' - however sincerely expressed and well-meaning - will alas, not carry much weight into the New Millennium.

What does the actuality have to do with our concepts?
Everything, since Jung is trying to make clear that there's no such thing as exhaustive knowledge of an objective God; theology, beliefs, etc. are merely relative concepts about God - they are not the equivalent of God (the Absolute), which is an unknowable, indefinable, non-dual, transcendent beyond explanation, or concept. The best we can manage is the symbol, e.g. the mandala as a God-image of wholeness; and the psychology of the God-image - the description of how we experience God (as an archetype of wholeness) in our own psyche.

Hence Joe Campbell talks of the 'Masks of God' as opposed to the imageless God behind them. Most religious believers mistake the Mask for the faceless Face behind it.

I love your Leaf Man tile - very shamanic!
It's delightful and original -and clearly made with heart and soul.

Kind regards & safe journeys,
Maureen

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Dear Maureen,

We are saying the same thing " looking for something beyond concept" is way of speaking. I'm not looking for...I'm looking past the masks you speak of...while enjoying them.

Since the Aquarian Age is very much about critical thinking(Saturn energy), this kind of wishy-washy 'faith' - however sincerely expressed andwell-meaning - will, alas, not carry much weight into the New Millennium.

And what of your faith in "critical thinking"?

What does the actuality have to do with our concepts? Everything, since Jung is trying to make clear that there's no such thing as exhaustive knowledge of an objective God; theology,beliefs, etc. are merely relative concepts about God - they are not the equivalent of God (the Absolute), which is an unknowable,indefinable, non-dual, transcendent beyond explanation, or concept.

That's what I was saying. I was saying our concepts can be played
with or dropped as we wish--since they are merely card board stand-ins. We agree again.

The best we can manage is the symbol, e.g. the mandala as a God-image of wholeness; and the psychology of the God-image - the description of how we experience God (as anarchetype of wholeness) in our own psyche. Hence Joe Campbell alks of the 'Masks of God' as opposed to the imageless God behind them. Sadly, most religious believers mistake the Mask for the faceless Face behind it.

Well I believe the masks are true... while clearly seeing them as masks. To me, that is part of embracing both the light and the dark of which you have spoken.

Were you with Diana...or was that a symbolic experience?The answer to this may help me understand better than what Jung and Campbell were about. Where does dreamwalking and reason meet? Not backed by reason, but FOR you?... Maureen.

I believe in the personal, the subjective, as a bases for reality.

I think you were with Diana and your dreams were a symbolic expression of an actual event and since a mask is the only way we can experience the unknowable, it becomes, in that inspired moment, true.

Where we fall down is when we insist the unknowable IS the mask. That that moment can be invoked again by the mask. At best, the mask is a monument to the moment. ( But still dear none the less--as all lovely souvenirs are)

It seems that while " There's no such thing as exhaustive knowledge of an objective God" there is an exhausting amount of wordage about it! Sometimes I feel we would cheerfully kill the phnomanon in order to study it better.

love your Leaf Man tile - very shamanic! It's delightful and original - and clearly made with heart and soul.

Thank you . I thought you would like that piece. The ceramic process I use is very shamanic as well. It's called " Raku".

One takes the clay piece and heats it in a kiln until nearly white hot. Then the kiln is opened and with thongs, one lifts the piece out and places it in a can of straw and leaves.

The heat from the clay causes the straw to ignite. The fire gives each piece a completely diffident affect because the factors of air pressure, fire, straw, are unique to that moment.

Ah there is that moment again....

Thank you once more for all your time

Anne