Sex Pt lll. A Self Portrait. Amera Ziganii Rao Photography
Writings :: Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus. The Truth of Sex and Love. WHY men do not love. Despite all that is said, it is women who are sexual. Not men.
To be of Mars then is to be of non sex, non love and non heart. NON PASSION = NON SEX. That about sums you up really doesn't it. You will never love or fuck without anima. It is us who are sexual, not you. Venus is of sex. Mars is of hate. That is WHY men fuck without love. Not because there is no love. Because there is no SEX. Because there is no actual love of the sex. You are machines of hate and dryness and pseudo sex. I pity you for real. But anyone can access anima. As this piece from Nancy Qualls Corbett shows. As the great stories in novel and cinematic literature show. Cold men can become passion and love. True love with a man of Mars is possible. But that is the journey and absolutely yours. Good luck. If you want it that is and as I have always said to you, you just don't want it enough and it's because you are sexless. You have no passion because you actually HAVE no sex. That is what I did not fully realise. No wonder a Dom can control a sub so beautifully. But only if he is a Dom and not a dry arsed Mars overload reason archetype of non life. NON LIFE.
Without sex, you cannot have passion. Without passion, you cannot have love. Mars men (and women) defined. Bland, sexless, dry, reason overloaded, animus of the meanest and least compassionate kind. You need to heal. If you want to. But I saw you. I saw the real you and nothing can ever take that away from me. Not even you. Which is why I can walk away now in peace. If you do it, you do it, if you don't, I won't be surprised. You have no motivation. Because you have no passion. You have no love. You are God's darkness. God's brittle dark and dry crust. Animus overload. And this is why you and even women of Mars have such a problem with sex. So much judgment and analysis and caution. Because you don't actually like it. You are not driven by it and you are not drawn to it. It is something outside of you. That is animus overload. Venus is the crafting of passion and reason together for sure. But even in anima overload, we are driven by the passion of life. Sex. Sex. Sex. Sex. And for me, I am fortunate enough to know I have crafted both passion and reason into the Sacred Whore archetype. Because I made the journey into myself. But now I finally know what it is I have been battling against. Someone who does not actually like or need sex. If you don't need that, you don't need me. And you don't want me. Which is why you can pussy foot around, be fascinated, have a temporary connection and then drop me like a sack of potatoes. Like every man before you. The whore and madonna syndrome defined at last. You and your relationship with sex. Not love. Love comes in all kinds. Untrue to true. Sex can only be one thing. Sex. You are sexless as people of Mars. If you are still in animus overload. 'Nuff said. Understood.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2011
...the sacred prostitute in masculine psychology..directly related to a man’s..integration of his own CONTRASEXUAL nature. Nancy Qualls Corbett..
And the reason I can walk away? Because I was loved by the absolute love of my life and indeed all my lives on Earth, and I experienced every visceral, magical, devoted, dedicated and sincere moment of it and as Tennyson says, the beauty of it being 'better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all' is unparalleled, unrivaled and irreplaceable. Male love may not exist, but it did. And I saw it. And to have just seen it once was what it was all for. Nothing else will ever compare and nothing else will ever replace it. I saw love and that's enough for me. Pure, unmitigated, unreserved, absolute, conscious love. Conscious illusionary love. The stuff of legends and the stuff of dreams. And I saw it. And that's enough for me.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2011
Following Nancy Qualls Corbett's outstanding excerpt on the psychology of the sexless man, is a piece by me on Mars and Venus to introduce Camilla K's equally outstanding piece on Twin Souls.
TWIN SOULS and Mars and Venus. Amera Ziganii Rao
All saints revile her, and all sober men
Anima: Man’s Image of Woman
She has many faces, many guises. She has lived in the mind’s eye of man throughout the ages. The anima, man’s inner image of woman, manifests in each male according to his individual psychology.
“Every man carries within him the eternal image of woman, not the image of this or that particular woman, but a definite feminine image. This image is fundamentally unconscious, an hereditary factor of primordial origin engraved in the living organic system of the man, an imprint or ‘archetype’ of all the ancestral experiences of the female.” (Jung. Marriage as a Psychological Relationship)
Like a witch, she can cast spells of moodiness, irritability or depression. Like the Greek Sirens or the German Lorelei, the anima can lure a man to destruction. On the positive side, she brings joy, excitement and a sense of well-being. Like the woman who tamed Enkidu in the Gilgamesh Epic, she may be seen as a reflection of a man’s inner woman capable of leading him out of ‘the wild life’.
Down through the ages men have attempted to unravel the mystery of their eternal image of woman. Her sexuality and spirituality inspire a unique fascination. Her exotic image has been captured on the canvas of Goya as the elegant, reclining nude. The Naked Maja or as the Sleeping Venus by Giorgione whose pose expresses pure innocence without a trace of immodesty.
A similar enchantment with the feminine image is observed in the recently revealed series of the mysterious Helga by Andrew Wyeth. Rembrandt used his mistress as his model for the portrait he called Juno, and in his inspiration elevated her to the realm of the goddess. Titian’s image was the bare-breasted, golden-haired woman full of rapture whom he named Mary Magdalene. Man’s inner reflection of the feminine glows in the countless paintings and statues of Aphrodite and the equally numerous portrayals of the Virgin Mary.
Today, man’s idea of woman continues to be displayed, though not often with the grandeur and reverence characteristic of classical art. Pornographic films and centrefolds in slick magazines reveal the inner woman of some modern men. Another of her images, coming from the far side of reality, is often mirrored in the poetry of contemporary song, as in ‘Suzanne’ by Leonard Cohen;
Suzanne takes you down by her place by the river,
The male’s internal image of the feminine ranges from the sensuous and the exotic to the divine. Since the anima is a personification of the male’s unconscious, it is her image that men regularly project onto the women in their lives.
The feminine in man not only excites him but acts as soul guide on his inner journey. She is Dante’s Beatrice, for whose sake he embarks on a heroic adventure in the lower and upper worlds; in so doing, he exalts his lady’s image to the mystical image of the Mother or God. Or the soul guide can be more earthy, like the prostitute Hermine encountered by Harry Haller, the protagonist of Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf. Haller is a professed pacifist, but inwardly a devouring wolf. He lives secluded in a tiny room and is brought back into the tempo of life by Hermine. She teaches him to dance and to feel the harmonic rhythm of life’s forces as she leads him from isolation to the throbbing world of emotions and appetites. Through her his inner wolf is made conscious. Hermine instills wisdom in Harry as she acquaints him with the neglected areas of his life.
Although great strides have been made in recent years to grant women equal status in the world, the patriarchal system continues to prevail and to impose masculine viewpoints and values on the image of woman. These values reflect the relationship the collective masculine world has both to external woman and to the internal anima. From this point of view, it appears the feminine has three faces – she is mother, whore or virgin – and often a combination of all three. The face the individual man sees is a reflection of his anima.
The woman may be viewed as “property”, someone who exists to serve the man’s sexual need. In that case, she is his whore, his profane prostitute. In most instances such an attitude would be consciously denied; however, it regularly erupts in locker-room expressions, in the sexual harassment found in work situations, and in the privacy of the marriage bed. The repressed notion of woman-as-whore is frequently the manifest or hidden element in marital problems. The man who expects sexual gratification on demand from his wife, as his right and her duty, consciously or unconsciously envisions woman as his whore.
Quite the opposite is the situation where woman is elevated to the heavenly heights of The Virgin Mother; she is all things pure and holy, and consequently is untouchable. “Goddesses and demigoddesses”, writes Jung, “took the place of the personal, human woman who should carry the projection of the anima.” In such cases, relationship with an actual woman is not possible. The projection shatters when the man discovers she is human after all. He then finds fault with his partner, leaves the relationship or becomes impotent. He may remain disheartened, disenchanted to the extent that he finds all women disreputable.
A classic example of this took place on a grand scale in the Middle Ages, when at the same time as magnificent cathedrals were being built to glorify the Virgin Mary, human women who stood solidly on the ground were being persecuted as witches.
The third face of man’s inner feminine composite is that of the mother-wife. “For the son,” writes Jung, “the anima is hidden in the dominating power of the mother, and sometimes she leaves him with a sentimental attachment that lasts throughout his life and seriously impairs the fate of the adult. (Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious)
Typically today, a man in the first half of life leaves the parental home and takes a wife to establish a home of his own. This is undeniably an important first step, for it is an active effort to free oneself from the anima fascination initially carried by the mother; however, sometimes the wife becomes simply a substitute mother.
As mentioned earlier, the image of woman as maternal is the element or static aspect of the feminine, associated with conservative and unchanging attitudes. The security furnished by the stable situation presents a danger, for the man then lacks the experience and emotional challenges that foster anima development. Jung writes,
“The overwhelming majority of men on the present cultural level never advance beyond the maternal significance of woman, and this is the reason why the anima seldom develops beyond the infantile, primitive level of the prostitute. Consequently prostitution is one of the main by-products of civilized marriage. (Mind and Earth. Civilisation in Transition)
It is not uncommon to hear a man speak of the change in the personal relationship he has with his wife once there are children. The man’s image of the feminine, which previously had excited him in love-making, now regresses back to the static maternal model. He feels stuck, often without vitality or a sense of creativity.
Escalating divorce rates in the Western world reflect the route some men take to escape the domination of the wife-mother. Present day societal norms offer no alternatives except divorce and secret affairs to alleviate the frustration and stress men feel when the passionate, dynamic aspect of the feminine is mired down in static maternal security.
The feminine within is literally the stuff dreams are made of. Most often the anima in dreams takes the form of an actual woman whose personal characteristics are significant to the dreamer. She may be someone with whom he is associated in outer life or someone totally unknown. From a still deeper realm of the unconscious come archetypal images of feminine nature, symbolic forms overlaid with emotion.
In the following dream, the goddess of love herself comes in symbolic form, as a dove. Paul was a forty year old Swiss man who had been twice divorced and was increasingly unhappy with a third partner. The dream illustrates on an archetypal level the denial of both the actual women and Paul’s own inner feminine, symptomatic of his unconscious attitude toward her goddess and her gift of love.
Paul’s dream.
I was walking with E. I feel something in my hand I found in the street. I get the feeling that it comes to life. I call to E. Who is now D. It turns into a pigeon. It blows itself up and walks around looking for some food. I have some crumbs in my pocket and give them to it in my hand. Later it changes into a white dove. I tell a young man, “You see it’s like you, as near to death as to life.”
Later the dove is dying again. I’m in a room and the young man brings it in. “Look at your pigeon-dove.” It’s dead again and he throws it on the table. It’s alive again and jumps to the floor. I think it’s looking for a place to die calmly. The young man does not seem to have any feelings for that. I don’t quite remember the next scene but there seems to be a link between the white dove and D, who is lying somewhere, dead.
In his associations, Paul identified E as a playmate whom he had first met when he was five. Their friendship lasted throughout adolescence. She was his first girlfriend, and he recalled her with much fondness. With her he first became aware of love – Aphrodite, who is traditionally symbolised by a white dove. In the dream it is first a pigeon, of the same family as the dove yet not so evolved or refined. Paul’s associations with pigeons was that they ate and mated all the time. Pigeons would be related to the overwhelming passion that adolescents feel.
The young man in the dream was an aspect of Paul’s shadow, a puer aeternus or eternal boy. This shadow side could not enter a mature relationship and denied the deeper source of love, the goddess. There was potential for life but also for psychological death. The alternately live and dead or dying dove is related to the way Paul experienced his relationships with women.
In the dream there seems to be a possibility for love to come into his life, but the puer, Paul’s shadow side, has no feeling for it, for what love is. Psychologically this points to a primitive stage of anima development.
D was the woman Paul was living with, but she was also an inner anima figure appearing in a positive form in previous dreams. She was the human woman who brought the goddess’ love into effective earthly contact; that is, she brought Paul down to earth – which of course his shadow puer did not like. The lysis of the dream speaks directly to Paul’s conscious thoughts about leaving his partner once again. Not only would the inner soul mate lose its vitality and its connection to the goddess of love, the feminine aspect of the Self, but the actual woman would also experience a kind of death.
Young men can bear the loss of the anima without injury, for it is their masculine side of consciousness which must be developed and recognized. But in the second half of life, a new appreciation for feminine nature, both internal and external, must be established in order for a man to be capable of a mature love relationship and also to connect with his inner life. Where there is no sacrifice of immature ego demands or purely collective masculine values, a certain rigidity sets in, a stoniness toward the joy of life; all that is left is a compelling drive for power or material gain.
Paul’s dream indicated a regressive position as it shows no feeling, no remorse for the death of either the goddess as the bringer of divine love, or the human woman, who in this man’s psychology would be the equivalent of the sacred prostitute.
Speaking of the anima, Jung notes that “if the unconscious figures are not acknowledged as spontaneous agents, we become victims of a one-sided belief in the power of consciousness.” Ruled only by a conscious masculine position, a man is cut off from his soul. The principle of Eros, the feeling of relatedness, is not operative; consequently, the man remains detached, unable to experience either his own emotions of his spiritual nature.
In such a situation, ego consciousness, in its rational, orderly manner, becomes fortified against what it experiences as the disorienting effect of the feminine.
“Self – control is a typically masculine ideal, to be achieved by the repression of feeling. Feeling is a specifically feminine virtue.....A man is trying to attain his ideal of manhood represses all feminine traits – which are really a part of him.” (The Secret of the Golden Flower. Alchemical Studies)
If the ego feels threatened by the other – worldy character of the feminine, there develops a strong defence which results in over-identification with masculine persona roles. These roles may be culturally defined, or related to the mask one wears in professional life. Often a man fails to differentiate between his essential identity and his persona, becoming only the mask.
This was Charles’ psychological situation when he first began analysis. He was an ordained minister, skilful in his role and as an administrator. His clerical collar was the emblem with which he identified himself. Publicly, he was admired for his capabilities, but he was profoundly lonely. There were perhaps one or two trusted relationships where he allowed his true feelings to show. Moreover, his relationship with himself felt like an endless, hopeless mess.
His presenting concern was a deep hollow feeling and a certain barrenness in his life. His marriage of twenty – five years offered more anxiety than solace; as he approached retirement age, he wondered what he would do for the rest of his life if the current superficial connection with his wife continued.
Charles was an educated man in his mid-fifties. He lived a well ordered life. He had been raised in a rural community amid extended family ruled by his paternal grandfather, a typically patriarchal environment. As was the custom in his family, Charles frequently attended church and revival meeting. Neither family members no preachers could satisfactorily answer the young man’s burning questions about his religious feelings; his personal God was trapped in the strong admonitions of revivalist Old Testament preaching the patriarchal authority of church, community and family. The feminine was acceptable only as mother or wife, otherwise she was identified with sex and sin.
Dominating consciousness, it prevented any connection to the image of feminine nature as moving, dynamic. Here are two of his dreams during the early stages of analysis;
“My mother and I were in my car going to get fuel. We discussed how far I could travel on one tank, like from this city and back. We were standing behind the car when a couple of guys in an old model car jumped the curb and ran between me and my mother. I tried to scream out Help! Help! But I was too frightened. (I awoke terrified with stiff arms and hands).
I was eating dinner with my wife and a female friend. We were seated at a table in a large church convention hall. We were having some conversation but my wife kept cutting me off. I got up and left.....We were apart physically and emotionally after the efforts to talk at the table.”
Fuel is energy, which psychologically is associated with libido, the psychic energy available for life. The car represents the dreamer’s persona, that is, his role as a minister. The beginning of the first dream thus shows Charles’ energy and persona tied up with the mother. This refers not to the personal mother, but to the static, elemental feminine, reflecting an attitude toward life that goes with what is safe, guarded and protected. In this case is also related to Mother church. The dreamer’s fuel or source of energy therefore seems to be derived from the mother-bound component of his psyche.
Two reckless male figures come between mother and son, breaking their strong alliance. As shadowy figures they are incompatible with the dreamer’s image of himself, yet a potentially healthy eruptive force. Of course, the threatening loss of the dreamer’s source of energy, the security of an undisturbed life, is absolutely terrifying; yet at this point in the dreamer’s life, it is necessary. It is also significant that there are TWO shadow figures, an example of the doubling motif, which points to something new on the brink of consciousness.
The situation is symbolically similar in the second dream; however, it lacks the redeeming feature of something breaking through. The dreamer feels only estrangement and separation. Now it is the wife aspect of the mother-wife image which prevents communication with the other faces of the feminine. Eating in the church hall – being nourished within the walls of collective Christian thought – points to the dreamer’s conventional attitudes. In effect he is in a safe container, but that is the very situation in which he feels cut off, “apart physically and emotionally,” from the feminine other.
Along with such mother-wife dreams illustrating an alienation from the full dynamic of the feminine, other dreams indicated a rigid spiritual function. Both kinds of dreams occurred during the same time period.
“I was making a journey with another man to a chapel – the church of my youth. When we got there we had to detour and come from the back due to high water. The water was almost over the road. There was a crust of snow over the edges of the water and vegetation and the churchyard. The flood water was yellow and dingy. We decided there would be no gathering because of the high water.
The burning religious quest of Charles’ youth was sinking into the high flood waters of the unconscious. The fish, most notable as an early Christian symbol (one often marked at the bottom of the pages in his dream diary) is symbolic of both the Christ image and new life, but here the life is frozen. The icy starkness, empty church, no greenery, no gathering, all point to an absence of life. On the other hand, there is now a male travelling companion; the safe, approving mother attitudes have been replaced by a new, yet unknown, masculine attitude.
Other dreams contained images of the inner feminine as sick, old or bedridden:
There is a selection being done for a chaplain. An old woman in bed was conducting it. Several of us to be chosen are gathered around. I went up to her bed to ask if I might say a word.”
In these dreams the image of the feminine lacks vitality; sick and disabled feminine figures parallel the inertness of the desolate churchyard and frozen fish. In this comparison we can see the relationship between the feminine and the spiritual. There is nothing to suggest a dynamic feminine presence; however, the dreamer is beginning to be conscious of the demands of his inner woman. He seems to be aware of the power she has over him, yet at the same time wants to be her chosen one.
“ I was with a young, sexually immature male. I was telling him about his sexual organs and about to achieve sexual intercourse with women. He or I or we had some type of drink – wine or liquor.
I was lying with a woman. She was hidden from view, but I was fully open to the public. A black woman recognised me as the ‘Reverend’ and began telling me about her grief. Then she realised what was going on and became upset with me; still, she accepted me. Before she left, we embraced each other. I kissed her and a small baby she was holding.”
After the dreamer’s psychologically immature masculine side (perhaps related to the new travelling companion in the third dream) became open to instruction and they celebrated with the drink of Dionysus, the active feminine could approach ego consciousness. The dreamer, although still in his ministerial personal, is not offended at being propositioned by prostitutes and can even reach out to touch these provocative new images of the anima. Then he has an encounter with a black woman, personifying the chthonic feminine – dark, earthy and mysterious.
In the last dream of the series, having become more accepting of his sexuality and now aware that it need not be in conflict with his public image, he could show genuine affection for this earthy side of himself and her child, symbol of his own new life.
The principle of relatedness, antithetical to Charles’ earlier patriarchal stance, now had a firm foothold in consciousness, energising him in a new and exciting way. As the following dreams show, this active principle added an adventurous new dimension to his life, one which could take him to places heretofore unknown.
“I was going up on top of a low building to preach and a very attractive red-haired girl was going with me. She was to be my soloist. On the way up, I kissed her. She was very responsive and we kissed some more. She suggested we go to her place afterwards.
Charles had arrived at a new psychological place. The active, moving feminine, loving and erotic, was being integrated into consciousness, no longer in conflict with his spiritual side. Moreover, she was leading him into new, unexplored places in his own psyche the neglected inner world of his emotions.
The awe experienced by a man in meeting with his anima – the inner guide who can contain the mysteries of sexuality and spirituality – is illustrated in D H Lawrence’s short novel, THE MAN WHO DIED.
It is a story of a wanderer in Jerusalem, a Christ figure who has had a tormented, public life and now seeks something more fulfilling. His situation is analogous to that of many men who in the second half of life feel compelled to turn inward.
As he sets out on his journey with painful, open wounds, he meets a woman who is a priestess of Isis. He says to himself, “This girl of Isis is a tender flame of healing. I am a physician, yet I have no healing like the flam of this tender girl. But dare I come into this tender touch of life? Oh, this is harder.”
He is absorbed and enmeshed in new sensations as the woman goes into the shrine and gives herself to the feelings and the urge of Isis. She is lovely to him with the mysterious fire of a potent woman, and he is touched by her desire for him. He trembles with fear and with joy, saying to himself, “I am almost more afraid of this touch than I was of death. For I am more nakedly exposed to it.” His wounds begin to cry again, the cry of regret and guilt.
The priestess anoints his scars, saying, “What was torn becomes a new flesh, what was a wound is full of fresh life.” He tells her of a woman who once washed his feet and wiped them with her hair, pouring on precious ointment.
(The Priestess asked) “Did you love her?”
“And did you let her serve you?” she asked......”Did you let her serve you with the corpse of her love?”
A vivid shame went through him. “After all” he thought, “I wanted them to love with dead bodies.”
The man who died also felt the pain and death inside his own darkness. In this new consciousness, he felt the stir of something coming, a new dawning. “Now I am not myself. I am something new.” And he said, “Lo, Isis is a kindly goddess; and full of tenderness.....She is dear to me in the middle of my being.”
This is a moving example of a man meeting the anima in the image of the sacred prostitute, one who is able to mediate between the wounded body of denied instinctual energies and the numinous experience of the divine. Although fearful that his wounded masculine nature would be more exposed and subject to more torment, the man opened himself to the tender healing and beneficial way of the priestess of Isis.
Here the sacred prostitute, as one aspect of the anima, functions as mediatrix between consciousness and the unconscious, bringing instinctual forces into harmony with the divine. Without an appreciation of this image, contemporary man experiences a major split between the spiritual and sensual aspects of Eros. Sexual acts devoid of an attitude of tribute to the goddess become merely instinctual performances without connection to the inner being.
Many modern men experience this split. “Man cannot come to a positive connection to his anima until this split is reconciled and healed.” Writes Robert Stein. (The Animus and Impersonal Sexuality) Conversely, it may be that this split cannot be healed until a man has found a positive connection to his anima. What is necessary in a man’s psychological development is for him to experience the transformative, active side of the anima. Only then can he abandon conventional, constricted attitudes towards the feminine and enter into the world of full emotional involvement with another.
As a man’s consciousness widens, his attitude towards both his own feminine side and women in general is altered. Jung describes four stages of anima development, analogous to historical images of the feminine personified by Eve, Helen of Troy, the Virgin Mary and Sophia:
The first stage – Hawwah, eve, earth – is purely biological; woman is equated with mother and only represents something to be fertilized. The second stage is still dominated by the sexual Eros, but on the aesthetic and romantic level where woman has already acquired some value as an individual. The third stage raises Eros to the heights of religious devotion and thus spiritualises him; Hawwah has been replaced by spiritual motherhood. Finally, the fourth stage illustrates something which unexpectedly goes beyond the almost unsurpassable third stage; Sapientia (Sophia)......this stage represents a spiritualisation of Helen and consequently of Eros as such. That is why Sapientia was regarded as parallel to the Shulamite in the song of songs.
At first glance, Jung’s description of anima figures in their progressive stages seems restrictive, as if to imply that only when the anima advances out of the instinctive stage, negating sexual feelings, can one develop spiritually. We ask ourselves whether this is yet another echo of the morality of our culture where sexuality is considered the antithesis of spirituality. If we interpret it in this way, “small wonder then that a wild and confusing conflict arises between man as an instinctual creature of nature and man as a spiritually conditioned cultural being.” (The Psychology of the Transference.)
A more careful consideration of the passage, however, suggests that Jung is actually emphasising the presence of Eros, in its broadest sense, at every stage of anima development. Elsewhere he writes,
“Sexuality is not mere instinctuality; it is an indisputably creative power that is not only the basic cause of our individual lives, but a very serious factor in our psychic life as well.” (On Psychic Energy. The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche)
At the apex of the anima’s development, then, her spiritual aspect encompasses her sexuality. It is contained in the very nature of Sapientia (Sophia) who was the bride of God. In the Bible she says, “I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men.” (Proverbs) According to an alchemical text, the Rosarium philosophorum, “On her robe is written in gold lettering.....I am the only daughter of the wise, utterly unknown to the foolish.” (Religious Ideas in Alchemy)
The erotic nature of the highest order of the anima is also seen in the image of the Shulamite, and through this image we find a connection to the sacred prostitute. The Shulamite was a priestess of Ishtar; Jung says that she signifies “earth, nature, fertility, everything that flourishes under the damp light of the moon, and also the natural life-urge.” (Adam and Eve. Mysterium Coniunctionis)
The sacred prostitute, then, while not synonymous with the anima, is a feminine image relevant to every stage of development of man’s inner woman. She offers pleasure, excitement and vitality, a personification of both spirituality and earthiness. She is a lover whose beauty is exciting, whose virginal nature brings forth new life and leads to Wisdom – which is more than simply intellect.
Each successive stage of the anima brings new realizations and an altering of attitudes; at the same time, paradoxically, the influence of the preceding stage is not diminished but rather enhanced. Initially, as Eve, the sacred prostitute is in tune with her biological, sexual nature. She desires physical pleasure. In her wantonness, she desires not THE man but A man. She is not only the giver of sexual pleasure but the receiver. She is matter and body and earth.
As Helen, whose beauty and charm have been idealized as a prototype of erotic love through the ages, (All is dross that is not Helen – Marlowe) the sacred prostitute has these same attributes. She is the beautiful one whose dress and perfume, whose awareness of her rounded form in the movements of her dancing, charms the male and excites his passion. At this stage of anima development, she is seen as more than body – she is an individual in her own right, experienced as the feminine Other. She takes on a particular personality.
The sacred prostitute also has certain characteristics in common with the Virgin Mary, although this is difficult to comprehend because our current cultural image of Mary is clouded by a foggy notion of purity and piety. That is the effect of the split between the sexual and the holy. But there is another image of Mary – as a ‘black’ Madonna – which contains and appreciates these apparently contradictory concepts. Like Mary, the sacred prostitute is considered virginal (psychologically); just as Mary’s virginal womb brought forth the Christ child, so does the womb of the sacred prostitute, as anima, give birth to man’s Christ – like nature, his higher consciousness.
In Roman Catholic tradition, Mary is seen as the intercessor between God and man, leading man to God to assure his immortality. In a similar manner, it was the sacred prostitute who, in welcoming the male into her sacred room and entering into the worship of the deity, was the intercessor, the mediatrix, between the deity and man. The inner woman, through various developmental stages, performs the same function as the mediatrix, notably in the act of sexual love where the physical and personal are transcended.
As described above, Sophia (Sapientia/the Shulamite) parallels aspects of the anima, yet she should also be considered as an aspect of the divine being, analogous to the archetype of the Self. Sophia is Wisdom. In Bibilical tradition she is both the bride of God and the mother, the lover who was with God before Creation. (Proverbs) She is the feminine being who is “a friend and playmate from the beginning of the world, the first born of all God’s creatures, a stainless reflection of his glory and a master workman.” (Jung, Answer to Job. Psychology and Religion, West and East)
Jung quotes from the Wisdom of Solomon to describe her;
We have seen earlier that the sacred prostitute, in the celebration of the sacred marriage, embodied the goddess and was identified with her. She was the bride of God, represented by the king. In the union of the sacred marriage, she brought the regenerative power of Wisdom into effective contact with the lives of men.
In each of these stages a man becomes aware of a different aspect of his own feminine nature. He is led, as it were, by one anima image or another through life’s experiences. Ideally, on his path of individuation, he will come to incorporate the full continuum of his instinctive energies and his spiritual essence, an experience that culminates in the hieros gamos, the sacred marriage or uniting of the opposites. (On the Nature of the Psyche) Such a man enters into the sexual act not from a desire for power or the need to control, but with a feeling of honour for, and devotion to, the mystery of the feminine.
In this affective contact with the anima, invariably mirrored in his relationship with actual women, masculine ego consciousness attains an essential enlightenment. Like the stranger who entered the temple of love, a man gives up an aspect of ego consciousness in order to join with the Other. This union itself symbolizes the equality of male and female; neither is dominating, demanding or possessing. Through this positive relationship with the anima a man experiences an exciting, moving vitality in his life; old ideas and values which have become burdensome are lifted from his shoulders.
Discontent, boredom and a general lack of enthusiasm are common symptoms of an anima problem, especially in the second half of life. If a man experiences the feminine only as the maternal – and therefore as something to be fertilized or feared – can the transformative influence of the sacred prostitute be realised? The endless sameness of a comfortable and predictable relationship is often the Scylla and Charybdis which provokes the inner search for, and development of, the anima.
Such was the case with John, a man in his mid-forties. He spoke of a deep dissatisfaction with his life; he lacked energy and interest both at home and at work. He was an extremely hard worker, but he did not view his work as successful and was very pessimistic because of frequent setbacks. This pessimism was also reflected in his marriage of eighteen years, for he felt that all he did was to no avail. Most often he felt a morbid resignation to his ‘unhappy fate’, yet on occasion there was a glimmer of hope that his life might be different.
As his analyst, I initially experienced John as rigid and obstinate, clutching old values in an inflexible way. He has a growing need for alcohol, which on several occasions had resulted in drunkenness. This in turn created guilt, remorse and depression. Such symptoms are among those described by Jung as indicative of the need to make contact with the anima.
After the middle of life......loss of the anima means a diminution of vitality, of flexibility, and of human kindness. The result, as a rule, is premature rigidity, crustiness, stereotype, fanatical one-sidedness, obstinacy, pedantry, or else resignation, weariness, sloppiness, irresponsibility, and finally a childish ramollissement (lethargy) with a tendency to alcohol. After middle life, therefore, the connection with the archetypal sphere of experience should if possible be re-established.
Jung also pointed out the similarity between the concept of ‘loss of soul’ among primitives and what happens to a man who loses contact with his anima;
So it was with John, for there was a strong masculine ego and considerable conscious development but little recognition of the earthy, irrational feminine base of the unconscious.
“I was at a farm, in a pasture, and decide to carry a gun and hunt. There were some buildings of a school-type. My wife was there but all the others were very conventional, even ‘goody-goody’ type men. I carried a pint of whisky in my hand but felt uncomfortable so I put it in my pocket. There was a round storage bin for grain. I go into it but it is below ground level. A girl is there whose name is Lola. She is a whore. I wanted to make love to her but when i started she said, “I don’t do that” but I knew she did and we did. Several men stopped by, one from the power company and one from the conservation department. We did not finish the act and I awoke frustrated and unfulfilled.”
The open pastures belong to the Earth Mother and here is where the dream-ego seeks the female (in the vernacular, goes “hunting”) with phallic symbol in hand. This presents an image of a rugged outdoor-type man, a shadow side of John not often apparent in his gentlemanly manners. John’s persona was in fact related to the “school-type buildings” in the dream: rational, intellectualising and conservative. This was the image with which he identified (and apparently the one his wife saw and supported). The “goody-goody” side of himself is apparently not compatible with his strong, erotic “hunter” nature, which was repressed and therefore consciously incongruous to John. The whisky-from-the-bottle aspect of the shadow was in fact being acted out in bouts of drinking.
In John’s associations to the dream, he related that in his youth he had known a girl named Lola who had been a prostitute. He described her as “wily but clean”. He also thought of the musical, Damn Yankees, in which the female lead, Lola, is a beautiful woman in league with the devil. She sings a song, “Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets.” Another association was that his wife was a school teacher, and that there was a striking difference between the two dream women, wife and whore.
The storage grain bin where the girl is found is related to Demeter and the Kore (Persephone) – Demeter, the maternal image associated with grain, and the Kore, Demeter’s daughter, who was abducted by Hades, the devil. Here the dream-ego (John’s hunter shadow) finds Lola (the dynamic aspect of the feminine, his own inner Kore) “below ground level” which psychologically points to her being contained in the maternal womb of the unconscious. Lola is undifferentiated woman, an object to be used. The sexual act is like a rape, since Lola does not enter into it freely. For a man to take a woman more or less by force, not honouring her “no”, is indicative of a primitive sexual attitude, which here, apparently, is a characteristic of John’s shadow. It is true that a woman might say “no” ambivalently, both fearing and desiring the penetration of the masculine. However, this fine distinction is for the woman to reflect on; it does not justify intercourse without consent.
The men from the “power company” and the “conservation department” are analogous to those self-regulatory psychic components which monitor the flow of psychic energy – libido – and warn against the misuse of natural resources. The sexual act was entered into for instant self-gratification, with no respect for the “otherness” of the woman or for the goddess of love. The appearance of the men and their interruption of the sex act leaves the dreamer feeling frustrated and unfulfilled.
This dream troubled John and led him to wrestle consciously with his shadow side and repressed attitudes towards the feminine, which held his anima at the Eve stage – like a young girl still closely connected with the mother. The image of the feminine as prostitute is promising, but at this point she is simply used by the shadow and there is no sense of the sacred.
In struggling with his shadow, John also became conscious of hostility and even fear towards women. Again this side of himself was so incompatible with his conscious self-image that it had been repressed. Using the technique of active imagination, he became friends with his inner Lola, who at one point said to him, “You didn’t love me enough.” On one occasion he had a compelling urge to play music for her, as if to create a feeling of harmony between them.
Gradually there was a transformation in John’s conscious attitudes, as reflected in the following dream.
“I was looking for calves up on a hill. I came to an old house and went in. There were four or five women there. A young girl was sitting at a reception desk and another one was behind her. We talked and I brushed my lips against hers. The second girl whispered she wanted me to go with her. I followed her through several rooms. She was nude and absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. We came to another room with straw on the floor as in a loft. My feeling was she was a bitch and lover in one.”
“Looking for calves” indicates John’s growing awareness of the love goddess, who as mentioned earlier was often imaged with a crescent-moon headdress, related to cow horns. The calves, an image or representation of the “newly born” goddess must be found. This search leads the dreamer to the house of women.
The house in the dream is reminiscent of a brothel; the fact that it is old may point to the dreamer’s outdated collective attitudes towards sex and women. But because of the erotic atmosphere it may also indicate a growing differentiation in his personal attitude towards the feminine, a movement towards seeing and appreciating them as sexual beings.
Often when a man dreams of several women, one comes forwards and presents herself; she holds a special quality and is particularly attracted to the dream-ego. Here such a woman becomes the dream-ego’s guide through an unknown labyrinth. This alluring and charming woman is receptive to his masculine potency; she is neither overwhelmed nor forced as in the previous dream. There is a humble and unpretentious atmosphere, denoted by the straw on the floor. John is still ambivalent, perceiving the woman in the dream as both bitch and lover. At the same time, he is fascinated by her beauty, charm and promise of love.
The dream depicts the beginning of the Helen stage of anima development, which manifests through John’s efforts to seek an inner connection to the love goddess. Fascinated, he follows her into the unknown places of the feminine realm. Now he shows a certain respect – he is awe-struck by her sheer beauty, an attitude quite different from that in the earlier dream, where the masculine had the “right” to ravish the feminine.
The anima now becomes more receptive, more accessible. Here we find a strong parallel with the stranger who seeks to honour the goddess; John comes to the sacred prostitute and is welcomed by her. She, in being receptive to the masculine, brings the dreamer to a new acknowledgement of the Other, his own inner woman.
In John’s outer reality, he was experiencing much confusion, as he expressed it. “My world is turning upside down.” As new psychic elements began to be known, others were in a stage of transformation; naturally there was a sense of disorientation. The crusty barnacles of old attitudes were slowly dissolving, while only fragile outlines of new ones had formed. Yet even within this chaos, John was accepting new dimensions of life in which he felt a certain excitement and exhilaration. There was an unwanted courage, far from his former resignation, to pursue new avenues of self-expression in writing and music, and the rediscovery of classical literature, thereby balancing his overzealous attachment to work.
Several months later another dream showed the further development of the anima:
“I was at a church service and was sitting between two older obese women. I go to take communion and the two celebrants were women dressed in white. One has the host which is wrapped in silver. She asks if I want to look at it or will I have it. I tell her I will have it. The other has the chalice but she hits it against my forehead and wine spills on my head like a baptism. I go back to my seat and there an attractive blonde is sitting next to me. I do not think it is my proper place and move back between the two older women. Now I feel squeezed and move back to the girl. As I go towards her, she stands up and walks towards me. She has a big lump on the left side of her head which I had not noticed before. It is a third eye. I was shocked by that. “
The two older, obese women suggest the static, maternal aspect of the feminine, which continues to colour John’s attitude towards women in outer reality; however, now he is willing to approach the altar, the place where ego demands and old attitudes are sacrificed. In doing so he is freed from the maternal influence.
At the time of the dream, women had not yet been ordained as priests in the church John attended, therefore the priestesses here are archetypal elements emerging spontaneously from the unconscious. The priestesses stand before the altar, the sacred precinct – as did the sacred prostitute – to offer the Eucharist, the sacrificial elements for the strengthening and renewal of life. The dreamer does not enter into the service vicariously, just by looking, but is receptive to emotional and spiritual involvement with the divine.
The host wrapped in silver, the metal of the moon and therefore of the goddess, is symbolic of body or matter. The chalice, associated with the Holy Grail, is the feminine vessel containing the essential soul substance from which the spirit emanates. The baptism of wine, symbolic of blood is associated with the ancient rites of passage during which the initiate was covered or marked with the blood of the sacrificial animal. Wine is also associated with the ecstatic worship of the god Dionysus by his women followers. It was considered the inspiriting drink of divine ecstasy.
By participating in this ecstatic religious experience, ingesting or internalizing the symbolic form of matter or sensuality, and being bathed in the renewing spiritual element, the dreamer is led to a new position. After communion with the priestesses, he cannot return to his previous orientation but finds a new image of the feminine – the moving, transformative aspect of the anima who comes forward to meet him.
Both the priestess and the attractive blonde are images of the sacred prostitute, although they appear to be different, just as the sacred prostitute when she stood before the altar did not appear the same as when she was in her sacred chamber. The third eye is an archetypal image of wisdom and insight into the spiritual mysteries. It is quite the opposite of rational intellect, which was John’s forte and on which he automatically relied.
Jung writes of the Eucharist as a symbol of the individuation process. (Transformation Symbolism in the Mass) It is reminiscent of the ancient new moon festival, dedicated to the goddess, where moon cakes and libations of blood were served to re-strengthen life. In the role of mediatrix, also the role of the sacred prostitute, the priestess is ministrant of the sacraments. She mediates between the deity and man by offering the symbolic elements of both body and spirit. This development of the anima parallels that of the role of the Virgin Mary as mediatrix between earthly man and God. This anima image embodies the profound spiritual essence of feminine nature.
The dreamer now becomes aware of an inner feminine image that is woman but more than human. This touches the facets of the feminine aspect of the Self, the highest expression of wisdom. Her “third eye” brings illuminating insight rather than abstract or fragmented knowledge. Hers is a responsive wisdom which comes from a loving connection with the divine.
Near the end of the analysis, John had the following dream.
Green is the colour of spring, of new life and also the colour associated with the goddess. In her shelter (which is now above ground, thus more conscious as compared to its underground location in the first dream), the initial preparations for the sacred marriage take place. This involves discarding old collective attitudes, which like broken records are no longer useful. The bed is where dream life is activated, thus a place where one becomes more intimate with one’s unconscious.
Now the dreamer must leave the green house, the sphere of the earth goddess, in order to arrive at a new dimension, that of uniting with – integrating – more developed aspects of the feminine. The bride-to-be, whose features are as yet unknown, may be thought of as the more human aspect of the goddess. This parallels the ritual marriage of ancient times where the sacred prostitute, as the incarnation of the goddess, was the bride.
For this inner marriage, the dreamer’s shoes, related to his stand point in life, are not appropriate. However, the dream ends with the reassurance that a new standpoint is available. This realisation portends a fresh conscious attitude grounded in a new awareness of the feminine. The next step in the dreamer’s process of individuation would be to proceed to the sacred TEMENOS, the chamber where the opposites are united in the sacred marriage, where feminine nature is truly integrated with the masculine principle.
This example of one man’s encounter with the Other demonstrates the developmental stages of the anima in which a man’s inner feminine nature is made conscious, accepted and honoured. Typically, as happened in John’s case, such a process is accompanied by a significant change in the man’s external relationships with women and in his general outlook on life. Contact with the dynamic aspect of the anima has a transforming effect, bringing a sense of joy and humour and suffusing the personality with a noticeable enthusiasm.
Indeed, John experienced considerable suffering through the “death” of those rigid, collective attitudes which stress an orientation toward material values and deny the inner reality of the feminine. Yet this death was also his offering, the sacrifice of known values, of outer stability and maternal comfort. He came as a wounded man with open psychic sores – as a stranger to the unknown place. There he met the anima in her various guises. She guided him through the neglected world of emotions, of Eros and ecstasy. She taught him to feel the harmonic rhythm of life’s forces; she was the mediator between the sensual and the spiritual aspects of his life, both of which had for many years been neglected and repressed.
To summarize, the sacred prostitute in masculine psychology corresponds to an aspect of the anima that functions as a moving and transforming psychic force. She is directly related to a man’s conscious understanding and integration of his own CONTRASEXUAL nature. She modifies a man’s self-image, conscious values and attitude towards women in outer life.
The sacred prostitute aspect of the anima brings joy and laughter and enables the man to see beauty and to feel the emotions of love. As a soul-image connected with the goddess of love, the divine feminine aspect of a man’s Self, she transforms instinctive sexual expression into LOVE-MAKING, an exhilarating experience that is in no way incompatible with its spiritual nature.
In our modern world, the image of the sacred prostitute is buried under the religious, political and economic values of the patriarchy. She lives still, however, and may be rediscovered as a soul-mate by any man with the will and courage to sacrifice stereotypical masculine persona roles and outdated collective values. They are the offering he brings to the sacred prostitute in the temple of love; there she waits, ready to initiate him into the meaning of his life and awaken his consciousness to a new wisdom.
NANCY QUALLS CORBETT
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2011
Following Nancy Qualls Corbett's outstanding excerpt on the psychology of the sexless man, is a piece by me on Mars and Venus to introduce Camilla K's equally outstanding piece on Twin Souls.
TWIN SOULS and Mars and Venus. Amera Ziganii Rao
Exhale Pt lV. A Self Portrait. Amera Ziganii Rao Photography
The Sacred Prostitute in Masculine Psychology. Nancy Qualls Corbett
All saints revile her, and all sober men
Ruled by the God Apollo’s golden mean –
In scorn of which I sailed to find her
In distant regions likeliest to hold her
Whom I desired above all things to know,
Sister of the mirage and echo.
Robert Graves, The White Goddess
Anima: Man’s Image of Woman
She has many faces, many guises. She has lived in the mind’s eye of man throughout the ages. The anima, man’s inner image of woman, manifests in each male according to his individual psychology.
“Every man carries within him the eternal image of woman, not the image of this or that particular woman, but a definite feminine image. This image is fundamentally unconscious, an hereditary factor of primordial origin engraved in the living organic system of the man, an imprint or ‘archetype’ of all the ancestral experiences of the female.” (Jung. Marriage as a Psychological Relationship)
Like a witch, she can cast spells of moodiness, irritability or depression. Like the Greek Sirens or the German Lorelei, the anima can lure a man to destruction. On the positive side, she brings joy, excitement and a sense of well-being. Like the woman who tamed Enkidu in the Gilgamesh Epic, she may be seen as a reflection of a man’s inner woman capable of leading him out of ‘the wild life’.
Down through the ages men have attempted to unravel the mystery of their eternal image of woman. Her sexuality and spirituality inspire a unique fascination. Her exotic image has been captured on the canvas of Goya as the elegant, reclining nude. The Naked Maja or as the Sleeping Venus by Giorgione whose pose expresses pure innocence without a trace of immodesty.
A similar enchantment with the feminine image is observed in the recently revealed series of the mysterious Helga by Andrew Wyeth. Rembrandt used his mistress as his model for the portrait he called Juno, and in his inspiration elevated her to the realm of the goddess. Titian’s image was the bare-breasted, golden-haired woman full of rapture whom he named Mary Magdalene. Man’s inner reflection of the feminine glows in the countless paintings and statues of Aphrodite and the equally numerous portrayals of the Virgin Mary.
Today, man’s idea of woman continues to be displayed, though not often with the grandeur and reverence characteristic of classical art. Pornographic films and centrefolds in slick magazines reveal the inner woman of some modern men. Another of her images, coming from the far side of reality, is often mirrored in the poetry of contemporary song, as in ‘Suzanne’ by Leonard Cohen;
Suzanne takes you down by her place by the river,
You can hear the boats go by.
You can spend the night beside her.
And you know that she’s half-crazy,
And that’s why you want to be there,
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from China.
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her,
She gets you on her wave length and lets the river answer
That you’ve always been her lover.
The male’s internal image of the feminine ranges from the sensuous and the exotic to the divine. Since the anima is a personification of the male’s unconscious, it is her image that men regularly project onto the women in their lives.
The feminine in man not only excites him but acts as soul guide on his inner journey. She is Dante’s Beatrice, for whose sake he embarks on a heroic adventure in the lower and upper worlds; in so doing, he exalts his lady’s image to the mystical image of the Mother or God. Or the soul guide can be more earthy, like the prostitute Hermine encountered by Harry Haller, the protagonist of Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf. Haller is a professed pacifist, but inwardly a devouring wolf. He lives secluded in a tiny room and is brought back into the tempo of life by Hermine. She teaches him to dance and to feel the harmonic rhythm of life’s forces as she leads him from isolation to the throbbing world of emotions and appetites. Through her his inner wolf is made conscious. Hermine instills wisdom in Harry as she acquaints him with the neglected areas of his life.
Although great strides have been made in recent years to grant women equal status in the world, the patriarchal system continues to prevail and to impose masculine viewpoints and values on the image of woman. These values reflect the relationship the collective masculine world has both to external woman and to the internal anima. From this point of view, it appears the feminine has three faces – she is mother, whore or virgin – and often a combination of all three. The face the individual man sees is a reflection of his anima.
“When projected”, writes Jung, “the anima always has a feminine form with definite characteristics. This empirical finding does not mean that the archetype is constituted like that IN ITSELF.”
Elsewhere he points out that “most of what men say about feminine eroticism, and particularly about the emotional life of women, is derived from their own anima projections and distorted accordingly.”
Elsewhere he points out that “most of what men say about feminine eroticism, and particularly about the emotional life of women, is derived from their own anima projections and distorted accordingly.”
The woman may be viewed as “property”, someone who exists to serve the man’s sexual need. In that case, she is his whore, his profane prostitute. In most instances such an attitude would be consciously denied; however, it regularly erupts in locker-room expressions, in the sexual harassment found in work situations, and in the privacy of the marriage bed. The repressed notion of woman-as-whore is frequently the manifest or hidden element in marital problems. The man who expects sexual gratification on demand from his wife, as his right and her duty, consciously or unconsciously envisions woman as his whore.
Quite the opposite is the situation where woman is elevated to the heavenly heights of The Virgin Mother; she is all things pure and holy, and consequently is untouchable. “Goddesses and demigoddesses”, writes Jung, “took the place of the personal, human woman who should carry the projection of the anima.” In such cases, relationship with an actual woman is not possible. The projection shatters when the man discovers she is human after all. He then finds fault with his partner, leaves the relationship or becomes impotent. He may remain disheartened, disenchanted to the extent that he finds all women disreputable.
A classic example of this took place on a grand scale in the Middle Ages, when at the same time as magnificent cathedrals were being built to glorify the Virgin Mary, human women who stood solidly on the ground were being persecuted as witches.
The third face of man’s inner feminine composite is that of the mother-wife. “For the son,” writes Jung, “the anima is hidden in the dominating power of the mother, and sometimes she leaves him with a sentimental attachment that lasts throughout his life and seriously impairs the fate of the adult. (Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious)
Typically today, a man in the first half of life leaves the parental home and takes a wife to establish a home of his own. This is undeniably an important first step, for it is an active effort to free oneself from the anima fascination initially carried by the mother; however, sometimes the wife becomes simply a substitute mother.
As mentioned earlier, the image of woman as maternal is the element or static aspect of the feminine, associated with conservative and unchanging attitudes. The security furnished by the stable situation presents a danger, for the man then lacks the experience and emotional challenges that foster anima development. Jung writes,
“The overwhelming majority of men on the present cultural level never advance beyond the maternal significance of woman, and this is the reason why the anima seldom develops beyond the infantile, primitive level of the prostitute. Consequently prostitution is one of the main by-products of civilized marriage. (Mind and Earth. Civilisation in Transition)
It is not uncommon to hear a man speak of the change in the personal relationship he has with his wife once there are children. The man’s image of the feminine, which previously had excited him in love-making, now regresses back to the static maternal model. He feels stuck, often without vitality or a sense of creativity.
Escalating divorce rates in the Western world reflect the route some men take to escape the domination of the wife-mother. Present day societal norms offer no alternatives except divorce and secret affairs to alleviate the frustration and stress men feel when the passionate, dynamic aspect of the feminine is mired down in static maternal security.
The Anima in Dreams.
The feminine within is literally the stuff dreams are made of. Most often the anima in dreams takes the form of an actual woman whose personal characteristics are significant to the dreamer. She may be someone with whom he is associated in outer life or someone totally unknown. From a still deeper realm of the unconscious come archetypal images of feminine nature, symbolic forms overlaid with emotion.
In the following dream, the goddess of love herself comes in symbolic form, as a dove. Paul was a forty year old Swiss man who had been twice divorced and was increasingly unhappy with a third partner. The dream illustrates on an archetypal level the denial of both the actual women and Paul’s own inner feminine, symptomatic of his unconscious attitude toward her goddess and her gift of love.
Paul’s dream.
I was walking with E. I feel something in my hand I found in the street. I get the feeling that it comes to life. I call to E. Who is now D. It turns into a pigeon. It blows itself up and walks around looking for some food. I have some crumbs in my pocket and give them to it in my hand. Later it changes into a white dove. I tell a young man, “You see it’s like you, as near to death as to life.”
Later the dove is dying again. I’m in a room and the young man brings it in. “Look at your pigeon-dove.” It’s dead again and he throws it on the table. It’s alive again and jumps to the floor. I think it’s looking for a place to die calmly. The young man does not seem to have any feelings for that. I don’t quite remember the next scene but there seems to be a link between the white dove and D, who is lying somewhere, dead.
In his associations, Paul identified E as a playmate whom he had first met when he was five. Their friendship lasted throughout adolescence. She was his first girlfriend, and he recalled her with much fondness. With her he first became aware of love – Aphrodite, who is traditionally symbolised by a white dove. In the dream it is first a pigeon, of the same family as the dove yet not so evolved or refined. Paul’s associations with pigeons was that they ate and mated all the time. Pigeons would be related to the overwhelming passion that adolescents feel.
The young man in the dream was an aspect of Paul’s shadow, a puer aeternus or eternal boy. This shadow side could not enter a mature relationship and denied the deeper source of love, the goddess. There was potential for life but also for psychological death. The alternately live and dead or dying dove is related to the way Paul experienced his relationships with women.
In the dream there seems to be a possibility for love to come into his life, but the puer, Paul’s shadow side, has no feeling for it, for what love is. Psychologically this points to a primitive stage of anima development.
D was the woman Paul was living with, but she was also an inner anima figure appearing in a positive form in previous dreams. She was the human woman who brought the goddess’ love into effective earthly contact; that is, she brought Paul down to earth – which of course his shadow puer did not like. The lysis of the dream speaks directly to Paul’s conscious thoughts about leaving his partner once again. Not only would the inner soul mate lose its vitality and its connection to the goddess of love, the feminine aspect of the Self, but the actual woman would also experience a kind of death.
Young men can bear the loss of the anima without injury, for it is their masculine side of consciousness which must be developed and recognized. But in the second half of life, a new appreciation for feminine nature, both internal and external, must be established in order for a man to be capable of a mature love relationship and also to connect with his inner life. Where there is no sacrifice of immature ego demands or purely collective masculine values, a certain rigidity sets in, a stoniness toward the joy of life; all that is left is a compelling drive for power or material gain.
Paul’s dream indicated a regressive position as it shows no feeling, no remorse for the death of either the goddess as the bringer of divine love, or the human woman, who in this man’s psychology would be the equivalent of the sacred prostitute.
Speaking of the anima, Jung notes that “if the unconscious figures are not acknowledged as spontaneous agents, we become victims of a one-sided belief in the power of consciousness.” Ruled only by a conscious masculine position, a man is cut off from his soul. The principle of Eros, the feeling of relatedness, is not operative; consequently, the man remains detached, unable to experience either his own emotions of his spiritual nature.
In such a situation, ego consciousness, in its rational, orderly manner, becomes fortified against what it experiences as the disorienting effect of the feminine.
“Self – control is a typically masculine ideal, to be achieved by the repression of feeling. Feeling is a specifically feminine virtue.....A man is trying to attain his ideal of manhood represses all feminine traits – which are really a part of him.” (The Secret of the Golden Flower. Alchemical Studies)
If the ego feels threatened by the other – worldy character of the feminine, there develops a strong defence which results in over-identification with masculine persona roles. These roles may be culturally defined, or related to the mask one wears in professional life. Often a man fails to differentiate between his essential identity and his persona, becoming only the mask.
This was Charles’ psychological situation when he first began analysis. He was an ordained minister, skilful in his role and as an administrator. His clerical collar was the emblem with which he identified himself. Publicly, he was admired for his capabilities, but he was profoundly lonely. There were perhaps one or two trusted relationships where he allowed his true feelings to show. Moreover, his relationship with himself felt like an endless, hopeless mess.
His presenting concern was a deep hollow feeling and a certain barrenness in his life. His marriage of twenty – five years offered more anxiety than solace; as he approached retirement age, he wondered what he would do for the rest of his life if the current superficial connection with his wife continued.
Charles was an educated man in his mid-fifties. He lived a well ordered life. He had been raised in a rural community amid extended family ruled by his paternal grandfather, a typically patriarchal environment. As was the custom in his family, Charles frequently attended church and revival meeting. Neither family members no preachers could satisfactorily answer the young man’s burning questions about his religious feelings; his personal God was trapped in the strong admonitions of revivalist Old Testament preaching the patriarchal authority of church, community and family. The feminine was acceptable only as mother or wife, otherwise she was identified with sex and sin.
The mother-wife, static aspect of Charles’ unconscious feminine was evident in his dreams.
Dominating consciousness, it prevented any connection to the image of feminine nature as moving, dynamic. Here are two of his dreams during the early stages of analysis;
“My mother and I were in my car going to get fuel. We discussed how far I could travel on one tank, like from this city and back. We were standing behind the car when a couple of guys in an old model car jumped the curb and ran between me and my mother. I tried to scream out Help! Help! But I was too frightened. (I awoke terrified with stiff arms and hands).
I was eating dinner with my wife and a female friend. We were seated at a table in a large church convention hall. We were having some conversation but my wife kept cutting me off. I got up and left.....We were apart physically and emotionally after the efforts to talk at the table.”
Fuel is energy, which psychologically is associated with libido, the psychic energy available for life. The car represents the dreamer’s persona, that is, his role as a minister. The beginning of the first dream thus shows Charles’ energy and persona tied up with the mother. This refers not to the personal mother, but to the static, elemental feminine, reflecting an attitude toward life that goes with what is safe, guarded and protected. In this case is also related to Mother church. The dreamer’s fuel or source of energy therefore seems to be derived from the mother-bound component of his psyche.
Two reckless male figures come between mother and son, breaking their strong alliance. As shadowy figures they are incompatible with the dreamer’s image of himself, yet a potentially healthy eruptive force. Of course, the threatening loss of the dreamer’s source of energy, the security of an undisturbed life, is absolutely terrifying; yet at this point in the dreamer’s life, it is necessary. It is also significant that there are TWO shadow figures, an example of the doubling motif, which points to something new on the brink of consciousness.
The situation is symbolically similar in the second dream; however, it lacks the redeeming feature of something breaking through. The dreamer feels only estrangement and separation. Now it is the wife aspect of the mother-wife image which prevents communication with the other faces of the feminine. Eating in the church hall – being nourished within the walls of collective Christian thought – points to the dreamer’s conventional attitudes. In effect he is in a safe container, but that is the very situation in which he feels cut off, “apart physically and emotionally,” from the feminine other.
Along with such mother-wife dreams illustrating an alienation from the full dynamic of the feminine, other dreams indicated a rigid spiritual function. Both kinds of dreams occurred during the same time period.
“I was making a journey with another man to a chapel – the church of my youth. When we got there we had to detour and come from the back due to high water. The water was almost over the road. There was a crust of snow over the edges of the water and vegetation and the churchyard. The flood water was yellow and dingy. We decided there would be no gathering because of the high water.
I was fishing. I caught no fish but saw large fish frozen in big blocks of ice.”
The burning religious quest of Charles’ youth was sinking into the high flood waters of the unconscious. The fish, most notable as an early Christian symbol (one often marked at the bottom of the pages in his dream diary) is symbolic of both the Christ image and new life, but here the life is frozen. The icy starkness, empty church, no greenery, no gathering, all point to an absence of life. On the other hand, there is now a male travelling companion; the safe, approving mother attitudes have been replaced by a new, yet unknown, masculine attitude.
Other dreams contained images of the inner feminine as sick, old or bedridden:
“I was with this woman. She was rather undeveloped or slow witted. We had intercourse and during this time it was discovered that she had need of radical female surgery.
An old hag drives up the hill where I am in a special rigged car so that she can drive. She is very old and very much a hag. I had been friendly to her before but now I am tired of her whiny demands and dependence.
There is a selection being done for a chaplain. An old woman in bed was conducting it. Several of us to be chosen are gathered around. I went up to her bed to ask if I might say a word.”
In these dreams the image of the feminine lacks vitality; sick and disabled feminine figures parallel the inertness of the desolate churchyard and frozen fish. In this comparison we can see the relationship between the feminine and the spiritual. There is nothing to suggest a dynamic feminine presence; however, the dreamer is beginning to be conscious of the demands of his inner woman. He seems to be aware of the power she has over him, yet at the same time wants to be her chosen one.
In time the image of the feminine began to change, as did Charles’ attitude towards his persona and his sexuality. The transformation was mirrored in subsequent dreams:
“ I was with a young, sexually immature male. I was telling him about his sexual organs and about to achieve sexual intercourse with women. He or I or we had some type of drink – wine or liquor.
I was riding in a car with three very attractive girls, with a male driver. One of the girls was talking to me and in a nice way propositioned me. I realised they were prostitutes, and politely refused their offer in that I am a minister. I reached over and touched all three with my hands.
A tall, well-built black woman wearing a brown sweater turned into the office in front of me. She asked me, “Who do you kiss?”
I was lying with a woman. She was hidden from view, but I was fully open to the public. A black woman recognised me as the ‘Reverend’ and began telling me about her grief. Then she realised what was going on and became upset with me; still, she accepted me. Before she left, we embraced each other. I kissed her and a small baby she was holding.”
After the dreamer’s psychologically immature masculine side (perhaps related to the new travelling companion in the third dream) became open to instruction and they celebrated with the drink of Dionysus, the active feminine could approach ego consciousness. The dreamer, although still in his ministerial personal, is not offended at being propositioned by prostitutes and can even reach out to touch these provocative new images of the anima. Then he has an encounter with a black woman, personifying the chthonic feminine – dark, earthy and mysterious.
In the last dream of the series, having become more accepting of his sexuality and now aware that it need not be in conflict with his public image, he could show genuine affection for this earthy side of himself and her child, symbol of his own new life.
The principle of relatedness, antithetical to Charles’ earlier patriarchal stance, now had a firm foothold in consciousness, energising him in a new and exciting way. As the following dreams show, this active principle added an adventurous new dimension to his life, one which could take him to places heretofore unknown.
“I was going up on top of a low building to preach and a very attractive red-haired girl was going with me. She was to be my soloist. On the way up, I kissed her. She was very responsive and we kissed some more. She suggested we go to her place afterwards.
I as in a boat with a woman (in real life she is a chaplain). We were discussing our appreciation for each other and felt alive sexually with each other. She was driving the boat and I was sitting behind her. We crossed over the main river and stopped on the other bank. She was showing me around. This place was almost like an enchanted land. The houses and people were all very neat.”
Charles had arrived at a new psychological place. The active, moving feminine, loving and erotic, was being integrated into consciousness, no longer in conflict with his spiritual side. Moreover, she was leading him into new, unexplored places in his own psyche the neglected inner world of his emotions.
DH Lawrence’s THE MAN WHO DIED
The awe experienced by a man in meeting with his anima – the inner guide who can contain the mysteries of sexuality and spirituality – is illustrated in D H Lawrence’s short novel, THE MAN WHO DIED.
It is a story of a wanderer in Jerusalem, a Christ figure who has had a tormented, public life and now seeks something more fulfilling. His situation is analogous to that of many men who in the second half of life feel compelled to turn inward.
As he sets out on his journey with painful, open wounds, he meets a woman who is a priestess of Isis. He says to himself, “This girl of Isis is a tender flame of healing. I am a physician, yet I have no healing like the flam of this tender girl. But dare I come into this tender touch of life? Oh, this is harder.”
He is absorbed and enmeshed in new sensations as the woman goes into the shrine and gives herself to the feelings and the urge of Isis. She is lovely to him with the mysterious fire of a potent woman, and he is touched by her desire for him. He trembles with fear and with joy, saying to himself, “I am almost more afraid of this touch than I was of death. For I am more nakedly exposed to it.” His wounds begin to cry again, the cry of regret and guilt.
The priestess anoints his scars, saying, “What was torn becomes a new flesh, what was a wound is full of fresh life.” He tells her of a woman who once washed his feet and wiped them with her hair, pouring on precious ointment.
(The Priestess asked) “Did you love her?”
“Love had passed in her. She only wanted to serve,” he replied. “She had been a prostitute.”
“And did you let her serve you?” she asked......”Did you let her serve you with the corpse of her love?”
A vivid shame went through him. “After all” he thought, “I wanted them to love with dead bodies.”
The man who died also felt the pain and death inside his own darkness. In this new consciousness, he felt the stir of something coming, a new dawning. “Now I am not myself. I am something new.” And he said, “Lo, Isis is a kindly goddess; and full of tenderness.....She is dear to me in the middle of my being.”
This is a moving example of a man meeting the anima in the image of the sacred prostitute, one who is able to mediate between the wounded body of denied instinctual energies and the numinous experience of the divine. Although fearful that his wounded masculine nature would be more exposed and subject to more torment, the man opened himself to the tender healing and beneficial way of the priestess of Isis.
Here the sacred prostitute, as one aspect of the anima, functions as mediatrix between consciousness and the unconscious, bringing instinctual forces into harmony with the divine. Without an appreciation of this image, contemporary man experiences a major split between the spiritual and sensual aspects of Eros. Sexual acts devoid of an attitude of tribute to the goddess become merely instinctual performances without connection to the inner being.
Many modern men experience this split. “Man cannot come to a positive connection to his anima until this split is reconciled and healed.” Writes Robert Stein. (The Animus and Impersonal Sexuality) Conversely, it may be that this split cannot be healed until a man has found a positive connection to his anima. What is necessary in a man’s psychological development is for him to experience the transformative, active side of the anima. Only then can he abandon conventional, constricted attitudes towards the feminine and enter into the world of full emotional involvement with another.
Snake Woman Eve Pt V. A Self Portrait. Amera Ziganii Rao Photography
Stages of the Anima
As a man’s consciousness widens, his attitude towards both his own feminine side and women in general is altered. Jung describes four stages of anima development, analogous to historical images of the feminine personified by Eve, Helen of Troy, the Virgin Mary and Sophia:
The first stage – Hawwah, eve, earth – is purely biological; woman is equated with mother and only represents something to be fertilized. The second stage is still dominated by the sexual Eros, but on the aesthetic and romantic level where woman has already acquired some value as an individual. The third stage raises Eros to the heights of religious devotion and thus spiritualises him; Hawwah has been replaced by spiritual motherhood. Finally, the fourth stage illustrates something which unexpectedly goes beyond the almost unsurpassable third stage; Sapientia (Sophia)......this stage represents a spiritualisation of Helen and consequently of Eros as such. That is why Sapientia was regarded as parallel to the Shulamite in the song of songs.
At first glance, Jung’s description of anima figures in their progressive stages seems restrictive, as if to imply that only when the anima advances out of the instinctive stage, negating sexual feelings, can one develop spiritually. We ask ourselves whether this is yet another echo of the morality of our culture where sexuality is considered the antithesis of spirituality. If we interpret it in this way, “small wonder then that a wild and confusing conflict arises between man as an instinctual creature of nature and man as a spiritually conditioned cultural being.” (The Psychology of the Transference.)
A more careful consideration of the passage, however, suggests that Jung is actually emphasising the presence of Eros, in its broadest sense, at every stage of anima development. Elsewhere he writes,
“Sexuality is not mere instinctuality; it is an indisputably creative power that is not only the basic cause of our individual lives, but a very serious factor in our psychic life as well.” (On Psychic Energy. The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche)
At the apex of the anima’s development, then, her spiritual aspect encompasses her sexuality. It is contained in the very nature of Sapientia (Sophia) who was the bride of God. In the Bible she says, “I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him; Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men.” (Proverbs) According to an alchemical text, the Rosarium philosophorum, “On her robe is written in gold lettering.....I am the only daughter of the wise, utterly unknown to the foolish.” (Religious Ideas in Alchemy)
The erotic nature of the highest order of the anima is also seen in the image of the Shulamite, and through this image we find a connection to the sacred prostitute. The Shulamite was a priestess of Ishtar; Jung says that she signifies “earth, nature, fertility, everything that flourishes under the damp light of the moon, and also the natural life-urge.” (Adam and Eve. Mysterium Coniunctionis)
The sacred prostitute, then, while not synonymous with the anima, is a feminine image relevant to every stage of development of man’s inner woman. She offers pleasure, excitement and vitality, a personification of both spirituality and earthiness. She is a lover whose beauty is exciting, whose virginal nature brings forth new life and leads to Wisdom – which is more than simply intellect.
Each successive stage of the anima brings new realizations and an altering of attitudes; at the same time, paradoxically, the influence of the preceding stage is not diminished but rather enhanced. Initially, as Eve, the sacred prostitute is in tune with her biological, sexual nature. She desires physical pleasure. In her wantonness, she desires not THE man but A man. She is not only the giver of sexual pleasure but the receiver. She is matter and body and earth.
As Helen, whose beauty and charm have been idealized as a prototype of erotic love through the ages, (All is dross that is not Helen – Marlowe) the sacred prostitute has these same attributes. She is the beautiful one whose dress and perfume, whose awareness of her rounded form in the movements of her dancing, charms the male and excites his passion. At this stage of anima development, she is seen as more than body – she is an individual in her own right, experienced as the feminine Other. She takes on a particular personality.
The sacred prostitute also has certain characteristics in common with the Virgin Mary, although this is difficult to comprehend because our current cultural image of Mary is clouded by a foggy notion of purity and piety. That is the effect of the split between the sexual and the holy. But there is another image of Mary – as a ‘black’ Madonna – which contains and appreciates these apparently contradictory concepts. Like Mary, the sacred prostitute is considered virginal (psychologically); just as Mary’s virginal womb brought forth the Christ child, so does the womb of the sacred prostitute, as anima, give birth to man’s Christ – like nature, his higher consciousness.
In Roman Catholic tradition, Mary is seen as the intercessor between God and man, leading man to God to assure his immortality. In a similar manner, it was the sacred prostitute who, in welcoming the male into her sacred room and entering into the worship of the deity, was the intercessor, the mediatrix, between the deity and man. The inner woman, through various developmental stages, performs the same function as the mediatrix, notably in the act of sexual love where the physical and personal are transcended.
As described above, Sophia (Sapientia/the Shulamite) parallels aspects of the anima, yet she should also be considered as an aspect of the divine being, analogous to the archetype of the Self. Sophia is Wisdom. In Bibilical tradition she is both the bride of God and the mother, the lover who was with God before Creation. (Proverbs) She is the feminine being who is “a friend and playmate from the beginning of the world, the first born of all God’s creatures, a stainless reflection of his glory and a master workman.” (Jung, Answer to Job. Psychology and Religion, West and East)
Jung quotes from the Wisdom of Solomon to describe her;
“She is ‘the breath of the power of God,’ ‘a pure effluence flowing from the glory of the Almighty,’ ‘The brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God,’ a being ‘most subtil’ who ‘passeth and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness.’ She is ‘conversant with God’ and ‘the Lord of all things himself loved her’......She is sent from heaven and from the throne of glory as a ‘Holy Spirit’” (Ibid)
We have seen earlier that the sacred prostitute, in the celebration of the sacred marriage, embodied the goddess and was identified with her. She was the bride of God, represented by the king. In the union of the sacred marriage, she brought the regenerative power of Wisdom into effective contact with the lives of men.
In each of these stages a man becomes aware of a different aspect of his own feminine nature. He is led, as it were, by one anima image or another through life’s experiences. Ideally, on his path of individuation, he will come to incorporate the full continuum of his instinctive energies and his spiritual essence, an experience that culminates in the hieros gamos, the sacred marriage or uniting of the opposites. (On the Nature of the Psyche) Such a man enters into the sexual act not from a desire for power or the need to control, but with a feeling of honour for, and devotion to, the mystery of the feminine.
In this affective contact with the anima, invariably mirrored in his relationship with actual women, masculine ego consciousness attains an essential enlightenment. Like the stranger who entered the temple of love, a man gives up an aspect of ego consciousness in order to join with the Other. This union itself symbolizes the equality of male and female; neither is dominating, demanding or possessing. Through this positive relationship with the anima a man experiences an exciting, moving vitality in his life; old ideas and values which have become burdensome are lifted from his shoulders.
Yet this new consciousness is not achieved without frustration, conscious suffering and fear, for it is invariably accompanied by disconcerting changes.
Anima Development in Middle Life
Discontent, boredom and a general lack of enthusiasm are common symptoms of an anima problem, especially in the second half of life. If a man experiences the feminine only as the maternal – and therefore as something to be fertilized or feared – can the transformative influence of the sacred prostitute be realised? The endless sameness of a comfortable and predictable relationship is often the Scylla and Charybdis which provokes the inner search for, and development of, the anima.
Such was the case with John, a man in his mid-forties. He spoke of a deep dissatisfaction with his life; he lacked energy and interest both at home and at work. He was an extremely hard worker, but he did not view his work as successful and was very pessimistic because of frequent setbacks. This pessimism was also reflected in his marriage of eighteen years, for he felt that all he did was to no avail. Most often he felt a morbid resignation to his ‘unhappy fate’, yet on occasion there was a glimmer of hope that his life might be different.
As his analyst, I initially experienced John as rigid and obstinate, clutching old values in an inflexible way. He has a growing need for alcohol, which on several occasions had resulted in drunkenness. This in turn created guilt, remorse and depression. Such symptoms are among those described by Jung as indicative of the need to make contact with the anima.
After the middle of life......loss of the anima means a diminution of vitality, of flexibility, and of human kindness. The result, as a rule, is premature rigidity, crustiness, stereotype, fanatical one-sidedness, obstinacy, pedantry, or else resignation, weariness, sloppiness, irresponsibility, and finally a childish ramollissement (lethargy) with a tendency to alcohol. After middle life, therefore, the connection with the archetypal sphere of experience should if possible be re-established.
Jung also pointed out the similarity between the concept of ‘loss of soul’ among primitives and what happens to a man who loses contact with his anima;
Loss of soul amounts to a tearing loose a part of one’s nature; it is the disappearance and emancipation of a complex, which thereupon becomes a tyrannical usurper of consciousness, oppressing the whole man. It throws him off course and drives him to actions whose blind one-sidedness inevitably leads to self-destruction.
So it was with John, for there was a strong masculine ego and considerable conscious development but little recognition of the earthy, irrational feminine base of the unconscious.
Early in the analytic process the anima began to present herself, as in the following dream:
“I was at a farm, in a pasture, and decide to carry a gun and hunt. There were some buildings of a school-type. My wife was there but all the others were very conventional, even ‘goody-goody’ type men. I carried a pint of whisky in my hand but felt uncomfortable so I put it in my pocket. There was a round storage bin for grain. I go into it but it is below ground level. A girl is there whose name is Lola. She is a whore. I wanted to make love to her but when i started she said, “I don’t do that” but I knew she did and we did. Several men stopped by, one from the power company and one from the conservation department. We did not finish the act and I awoke frustrated and unfulfilled.”
The open pastures belong to the Earth Mother and here is where the dream-ego seeks the female (in the vernacular, goes “hunting”) with phallic symbol in hand. This presents an image of a rugged outdoor-type man, a shadow side of John not often apparent in his gentlemanly manners. John’s persona was in fact related to the “school-type buildings” in the dream: rational, intellectualising and conservative. This was the image with which he identified (and apparently the one his wife saw and supported). The “goody-goody” side of himself is apparently not compatible with his strong, erotic “hunter” nature, which was repressed and therefore consciously incongruous to John. The whisky-from-the-bottle aspect of the shadow was in fact being acted out in bouts of drinking.
In John’s associations to the dream, he related that in his youth he had known a girl named Lola who had been a prostitute. He described her as “wily but clean”. He also thought of the musical, Damn Yankees, in which the female lead, Lola, is a beautiful woman in league with the devil. She sings a song, “Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets.” Another association was that his wife was a school teacher, and that there was a striking difference between the two dream women, wife and whore.
The storage grain bin where the girl is found is related to Demeter and the Kore (Persephone) – Demeter, the maternal image associated with grain, and the Kore, Demeter’s daughter, who was abducted by Hades, the devil. Here the dream-ego (John’s hunter shadow) finds Lola (the dynamic aspect of the feminine, his own inner Kore) “below ground level” which psychologically points to her being contained in the maternal womb of the unconscious. Lola is undifferentiated woman, an object to be used. The sexual act is like a rape, since Lola does not enter into it freely. For a man to take a woman more or less by force, not honouring her “no”, is indicative of a primitive sexual attitude, which here, apparently, is a characteristic of John’s shadow. It is true that a woman might say “no” ambivalently, both fearing and desiring the penetration of the masculine. However, this fine distinction is for the woman to reflect on; it does not justify intercourse without consent.
The men from the “power company” and the “conservation department” are analogous to those self-regulatory psychic components which monitor the flow of psychic energy – libido – and warn against the misuse of natural resources. The sexual act was entered into for instant self-gratification, with no respect for the “otherness” of the woman or for the goddess of love. The appearance of the men and their interruption of the sex act leaves the dreamer feeling frustrated and unfulfilled.
This dream troubled John and led him to wrestle consciously with his shadow side and repressed attitudes towards the feminine, which held his anima at the Eve stage – like a young girl still closely connected with the mother. The image of the feminine as prostitute is promising, but at this point she is simply used by the shadow and there is no sense of the sacred.
In struggling with his shadow, John also became conscious of hostility and even fear towards women. Again this side of himself was so incompatible with his conscious self-image that it had been repressed. Using the technique of active imagination, he became friends with his inner Lola, who at one point said to him, “You didn’t love me enough.” On one occasion he had a compelling urge to play music for her, as if to create a feeling of harmony between them.
Gradually there was a transformation in John’s conscious attitudes, as reflected in the following dream.
“I was looking for calves up on a hill. I came to an old house and went in. There were four or five women there. A young girl was sitting at a reception desk and another one was behind her. We talked and I brushed my lips against hers. The second girl whispered she wanted me to go with her. I followed her through several rooms. She was nude and absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. We came to another room with straw on the floor as in a loft. My feeling was she was a bitch and lover in one.”
“Looking for calves” indicates John’s growing awareness of the love goddess, who as mentioned earlier was often imaged with a crescent-moon headdress, related to cow horns. The calves, an image or representation of the “newly born” goddess must be found. This search leads the dreamer to the house of women.
The house in the dream is reminiscent of a brothel; the fact that it is old may point to the dreamer’s outdated collective attitudes towards sex and women. But because of the erotic atmosphere it may also indicate a growing differentiation in his personal attitude towards the feminine, a movement towards seeing and appreciating them as sexual beings.
Often when a man dreams of several women, one comes forwards and presents herself; she holds a special quality and is particularly attracted to the dream-ego. Here such a woman becomes the dream-ego’s guide through an unknown labyrinth. This alluring and charming woman is receptive to his masculine potency; she is neither overwhelmed nor forced as in the previous dream. There is a humble and unpretentious atmosphere, denoted by the straw on the floor. John is still ambivalent, perceiving the woman in the dream as both bitch and lover. At the same time, he is fascinated by her beauty, charm and promise of love.
The dream depicts the beginning of the Helen stage of anima development, which manifests through John’s efforts to seek an inner connection to the love goddess. Fascinated, he follows her into the unknown places of the feminine realm. Now he shows a certain respect – he is awe-struck by her sheer beauty, an attitude quite different from that in the earlier dream, where the masculine had the “right” to ravish the feminine.
The anima now becomes more receptive, more accessible. Here we find a strong parallel with the stranger who seeks to honour the goddess; John comes to the sacred prostitute and is welcomed by her. She, in being receptive to the masculine, brings the dreamer to a new acknowledgement of the Other, his own inner woman.
In John’s outer reality, he was experiencing much confusion, as he expressed it. “My world is turning upside down.” As new psychic elements began to be known, others were in a stage of transformation; naturally there was a sense of disorientation. The crusty barnacles of old attitudes were slowly dissolving, while only fragile outlines of new ones had formed. Yet even within this chaos, John was accepting new dimensions of life in which he felt a certain excitement and exhilaration. There was an unwanted courage, far from his former resignation, to pursue new avenues of self-expression in writing and music, and the rediscovery of classical literature, thereby balancing his overzealous attachment to work.
Several months later another dream showed the further development of the anima:
“I was at a church service and was sitting between two older obese women. I go to take communion and the two celebrants were women dressed in white. One has the host which is wrapped in silver. She asks if I want to look at it or will I have it. I tell her I will have it. The other has the chalice but she hits it against my forehead and wine spills on my head like a baptism. I go back to my seat and there an attractive blonde is sitting next to me. I do not think it is my proper place and move back between the two older women. Now I feel squeezed and move back to the girl. As I go towards her, she stands up and walks towards me. She has a big lump on the left side of her head which I had not noticed before. It is a third eye. I was shocked by that. “
The two older, obese women suggest the static, maternal aspect of the feminine, which continues to colour John’s attitude towards women in outer reality; however, now he is willing to approach the altar, the place where ego demands and old attitudes are sacrificed. In doing so he is freed from the maternal influence.
At the time of the dream, women had not yet been ordained as priests in the church John attended, therefore the priestesses here are archetypal elements emerging spontaneously from the unconscious. The priestesses stand before the altar, the sacred precinct – as did the sacred prostitute – to offer the Eucharist, the sacrificial elements for the strengthening and renewal of life. The dreamer does not enter into the service vicariously, just by looking, but is receptive to emotional and spiritual involvement with the divine.
The host wrapped in silver, the metal of the moon and therefore of the goddess, is symbolic of body or matter. The chalice, associated with the Holy Grail, is the feminine vessel containing the essential soul substance from which the spirit emanates. The baptism of wine, symbolic of blood is associated with the ancient rites of passage during which the initiate was covered or marked with the blood of the sacrificial animal. Wine is also associated with the ecstatic worship of the god Dionysus by his women followers. It was considered the inspiriting drink of divine ecstasy.
By participating in this ecstatic religious experience, ingesting or internalizing the symbolic form of matter or sensuality, and being bathed in the renewing spiritual element, the dreamer is led to a new position. After communion with the priestesses, he cannot return to his previous orientation but finds a new image of the feminine – the moving, transformative aspect of the anima who comes forward to meet him.
Both the priestess and the attractive blonde are images of the sacred prostitute, although they appear to be different, just as the sacred prostitute when she stood before the altar did not appear the same as when she was in her sacred chamber. The third eye is an archetypal image of wisdom and insight into the spiritual mysteries. It is quite the opposite of rational intellect, which was John’s forte and on which he automatically relied.
Jung writes of the Eucharist as a symbol of the individuation process. (Transformation Symbolism in the Mass) It is reminiscent of the ancient new moon festival, dedicated to the goddess, where moon cakes and libations of blood were served to re-strengthen life. In the role of mediatrix, also the role of the sacred prostitute, the priestess is ministrant of the sacraments. She mediates between the deity and man by offering the symbolic elements of both body and spirit. This development of the anima parallels that of the role of the Virgin Mary as mediatrix between earthly man and God. This anima image embodies the profound spiritual essence of feminine nature.
The dreamer now becomes aware of an inner feminine image that is woman but more than human. This touches the facets of the feminine aspect of the Self, the highest expression of wisdom. Her “third eye” brings illuminating insight rather than abstract or fragmented knowledge. Hers is a responsive wisdom which comes from a loving connection with the divine.
Near the end of the analysis, John had the following dream.
“I am in a green farm house. There are phonograph records on the bed. Several were broken records and had been taped together and I thought how can anyone play those and threw them away. Then I leave and enter into a large crowd. It is a wedding party and it is to be my wedding. I don’t know anyone in the wedding party. Now across the street, I am preparing for my wedding. I notice my shoes are not appropriate and I wonder about them but then I realise I have a new pair and those will be fine.”
Green is the colour of spring, of new life and also the colour associated with the goddess. In her shelter (which is now above ground, thus more conscious as compared to its underground location in the first dream), the initial preparations for the sacred marriage take place. This involves discarding old collective attitudes, which like broken records are no longer useful. The bed is where dream life is activated, thus a place where one becomes more intimate with one’s unconscious.
Now the dreamer must leave the green house, the sphere of the earth goddess, in order to arrive at a new dimension, that of uniting with – integrating – more developed aspects of the feminine. The bride-to-be, whose features are as yet unknown, may be thought of as the more human aspect of the goddess. This parallels the ritual marriage of ancient times where the sacred prostitute, as the incarnation of the goddess, was the bride.
For this inner marriage, the dreamer’s shoes, related to his stand point in life, are not appropriate. However, the dream ends with the reassurance that a new standpoint is available. This realisation portends a fresh conscious attitude grounded in a new awareness of the feminine. The next step in the dreamer’s process of individuation would be to proceed to the sacred TEMENOS, the chamber where the opposites are united in the sacred marriage, where feminine nature is truly integrated with the masculine principle.
This example of one man’s encounter with the Other demonstrates the developmental stages of the anima in which a man’s inner feminine nature is made conscious, accepted and honoured. Typically, as happened in John’s case, such a process is accompanied by a significant change in the man’s external relationships with women and in his general outlook on life. Contact with the dynamic aspect of the anima has a transforming effect, bringing a sense of joy and humour and suffusing the personality with a noticeable enthusiasm.
In Geothe’s FAUST, one sees a similar transformation of the anima as she changes from Gretchen to Helen, and finally to the Mother of God. As Jung points out, Faust’s nature “is altered by repeated figurative deaths” until he attains the highest state of consciousness represented by Dr. Marianus.
Indeed, John experienced considerable suffering through the “death” of those rigid, collective attitudes which stress an orientation toward material values and deny the inner reality of the feminine. Yet this death was also his offering, the sacrifice of known values, of outer stability and maternal comfort. He came as a wounded man with open psychic sores – as a stranger to the unknown place. There he met the anima in her various guises. She guided him through the neglected world of emotions, of Eros and ecstasy. She taught him to feel the harmonic rhythm of life’s forces; she was the mediator between the sensual and the spiritual aspects of his life, both of which had for many years been neglected and repressed.
To summarize, the sacred prostitute in masculine psychology corresponds to an aspect of the anima that functions as a moving and transforming psychic force. She is directly related to a man’s conscious understanding and integration of his own CONTRASEXUAL nature. She modifies a man’s self-image, conscious values and attitude towards women in outer life.
The sacred prostitute aspect of the anima brings joy and laughter and enables the man to see beauty and to feel the emotions of love. As a soul-image connected with the goddess of love, the divine feminine aspect of a man’s Self, she transforms instinctive sexual expression into LOVE-MAKING, an exhilarating experience that is in no way incompatible with its spiritual nature.
In our modern world, the image of the sacred prostitute is buried under the religious, political and economic values of the patriarchy. She lives still, however, and may be rediscovered as a soul-mate by any man with the will and courage to sacrifice stereotypical masculine persona roles and outdated collective values. They are the offering he brings to the sacred prostitute in the temple of love; there she waits, ready to initiate him into the meaning of his life and awaken his consciousness to a new wisdom.
NANCY QUALLS CORBETT
The Scheherazade Series XVl. A Self Portrait. Amera Ziganii Rao Photography
Thank you to Nancy Qualls Corbett for this excerpt.
The original piece can be found here, with links to other writings on The Sacred Prostitute.
The original piece can be found here, with links to other writings on The Sacred Prostitute.
http://ameraziganiirao.blogspot.com/2011/06/psychology-sacred-prostitute-second.html
TWIN SOULS and Mars and Venus. Amera Ziganii Rao
The meek shall inherit the Earth.
Imbalanced Mars, the imbalanced animus is mean, cruel, extraordinarily selfish, banal, sexless, bland and without creativity in men of Mars for sure, but also the women of the Mars archetype. Spineless, emotionally slow, hard and superficial. These are the negatives. The positives are there in the healed, balanced Mars archetype for sure. But they are all anima, Venus, female, feminine, of spirit, of the inner self, of the higher self, of God. Whatever you want to call it, these attributes of love, creativity, sexuality, kindness, passion and imagination are not of Mars. They are of Venus. And it is the negative of Mars that we are dealing with here, so I am not interested in wasting my time in platitudes.
Animus out of control is the imbalance of Mars. The man who has a mistress. The gay man who is married. Anyone with a mask on and anyone who is the mask. The antagonists and destroyers on this planet. The reason for cruelty in the home and in the country. The reason for carnage everywhere. Men and indeed women of hate. Men of war. Women of war. People of non love. People of hate.
Reason, being the operative word. The twin soul piece by Camilla K talks of reason. In a world where the word reason is thrown around like it is sacred, I feel and think that this is an inaccurate and actually irresponsible way of putting it. Compassion for the enemy is always required but certainly not indulgence. Venus is here to make war on Mars. To fight for love. To make people love. To show people how to love. To lead in love. To use the gift of love properly, responsibly, ably and with as much or as little force as is necessary. Mars are the antagonists. Venus is the protagonist. The heroines and indeed heroes of this world. The leaders in humanity, creativity, depth, passion, sexuality, kindness, humanitarianism, courage, integrity and all things beautiful. The light of God. Mars is the darkness of God. The other. Satan. The devil. Mars. All is of God. God is the all.
It is Venus who is the sacred sexuality of the planet. As I say in my introduction, the journey Venus in imbalance has to make is of a different nature. To balance up with animus, to become so many things that are of hate and pragmatism, business, mediocrity, Earth life, and to control passion and to know that life is about much more than just love. But what this actually means is now in a totally different context after what I see today. And I did it and can see how the book I am working on is primarily for the Venus of this world. Not Mars.
Mars can have a look if they want. But they will find little to relate to at first. The book is for those of Venus. Those of love. Those of sex. Those of sexuality. Those of sacred sexuality. The High Priestesses and High Priests of this world. The ones with the gift of love.
The book is to help us all to fight. Fight Mars, fight Satan, fight evil, so that the meek shall inherit the Earth. So that LOVE will inherit the Earth. So that Venus will inherit the Earth. In each moment, big or small. So that human rights is a generic ordinary thing on this planet, instead of the extraordinary battle of wills and action that has to take place in each moment. Venus is of love. Venus is of sex. Mars is of hate.
Mars is the other. Mars is the cold and sexless and heartless machine mind of non love and hate.
And this is all aside from the fact that each one of us has to heal a broken heart in order to be whole. My examination over the past two years has been in the different ways, we seem to be broken hearted into vengeance. Venus commits suicide. Mars kills. The two second version of all my work and all those who have come before me. The masters of this world. The wise, the knowledgeable, the healers.
So for me, as I read this twin soul piece again, I see it differently. Yes, Venus has to learn many lessons too, but Mars is the issue, the enemy and the antagonist and must be stopped, got rid of or sent away to see if he (she) can ever change. Because the issue is motivation. Those who want to die, have the motivation to heal and change, to survive. What is the motivation of someone who knows how to kill? How does that person change and what makes them even want to do so in a world that promotes emotional, practical and economic and violating homicide in each and every moment? That is the question. And what motivates someone to love, who does not even WANT to have sex? That is the greatest revelation for me today. Mars do not have sex because Mars do not WANT sex. That is the million dollar question and my success as a newly balanced Venus over the past two years is that I know I don't need anyone for sex. I am sex. I am love. I am business too. And I haven't died. Therein lies the proof. Your turn.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2011
Twin Souls. Camilla K
http://ameraziganiirao.blogspot.com/2011/05/twin-souls-camilla-k-separation-in.html
The Little Mermaid. Hans Christian Anderson
http://ameraziganiirao.blogspot.com/2011/05/fiction-little-mermaid-hans-christian_31.html
Childrens Parable on Forgiveness. Neale Donald Walsch
http://ameraziganiirao.blogspot.com/2011/06/childrens-parable-on-forgiveness-neale.html
For Good Men and Women To Do Nothing. Amera Ziganii Rao
http://ameraziganiirao.blogspot.com/2011/08/for-good-men-and-women-to-do-nothing.html
Amera Ziganii Rao is a philosophical writer, essayist, social commentator, prose writer, dramatist and photographer artist as well as a consciousness explorer, self actualiser and emotional healer. She is a former journalist who is now turning professional with her art forms and indeed, her healing forms, after a long journey of inner searching, self teaching and exploring many layers and areas of both craft and wisdom. She is now working on her first book of philosophy and esoteric thought, and social and cultural commentary. She is also showing her first photography collections. And last but most definitely not least, she is building a business to share her consciousness and empowering explorations to reach as many people as possible across the world. She is 46 years old and currently lives in London © 2011
TWIN SOULS and Mars and Venus. Amera Ziganii Rao
The meek shall inherit the Earth.
Imbalanced Mars, the imbalanced animus is mean, cruel, extraordinarily selfish, banal, sexless, bland and without creativity in men of Mars for sure, but also the women of the Mars archetype. Spineless, emotionally slow, hard and superficial. These are the negatives. The positives are there in the healed, balanced Mars archetype for sure. But they are all anima, Venus, female, feminine, of spirit, of the inner self, of the higher self, of God. Whatever you want to call it, these attributes of love, creativity, sexuality, kindness, passion and imagination are not of Mars. They are of Venus. And it is the negative of Mars that we are dealing with here, so I am not interested in wasting my time in platitudes.
Animus out of control is the imbalance of Mars. The man who has a mistress. The gay man who is married. Anyone with a mask on and anyone who is the mask. The antagonists and destroyers on this planet. The reason for cruelty in the home and in the country. The reason for carnage everywhere. Men and indeed women of hate. Men of war. Women of war. People of non love. People of hate.
Reason, being the operative word. The twin soul piece by Camilla K talks of reason. In a world where the word reason is thrown around like it is sacred, I feel and think that this is an inaccurate and actually irresponsible way of putting it. Compassion for the enemy is always required but certainly not indulgence. Venus is here to make war on Mars. To fight for love. To make people love. To show people how to love. To lead in love. To use the gift of love properly, responsibly, ably and with as much or as little force as is necessary. Mars are the antagonists. Venus is the protagonist. The heroines and indeed heroes of this world. The leaders in humanity, creativity, depth, passion, sexuality, kindness, humanitarianism, courage, integrity and all things beautiful. The light of God. Mars is the darkness of God. The other. Satan. The devil. Mars. All is of God. God is the all.
It is Venus who is the sacred sexuality of the planet. As I say in my introduction, the journey Venus in imbalance has to make is of a different nature. To balance up with animus, to become so many things that are of hate and pragmatism, business, mediocrity, Earth life, and to control passion and to know that life is about much more than just love. But what this actually means is now in a totally different context after what I see today. And I did it and can see how the book I am working on is primarily for the Venus of this world. Not Mars.
Mars can have a look if they want. But they will find little to relate to at first. The book is for those of Venus. Those of love. Those of sex. Those of sexuality. Those of sacred sexuality. The High Priestesses and High Priests of this world. The ones with the gift of love.
The book is to help us all to fight. Fight Mars, fight Satan, fight evil, so that the meek shall inherit the Earth. So that LOVE will inherit the Earth. So that Venus will inherit the Earth. In each moment, big or small. So that human rights is a generic ordinary thing on this planet, instead of the extraordinary battle of wills and action that has to take place in each moment. Venus is of love. Venus is of sex. Mars is of hate.
Mars is the other. Mars is the cold and sexless and heartless machine mind of non love and hate.
And this is all aside from the fact that each one of us has to heal a broken heart in order to be whole. My examination over the past two years has been in the different ways, we seem to be broken hearted into vengeance. Venus commits suicide. Mars kills. The two second version of all my work and all those who have come before me. The masters of this world. The wise, the knowledgeable, the healers.
So for me, as I read this twin soul piece again, I see it differently. Yes, Venus has to learn many lessons too, but Mars is the issue, the enemy and the antagonist and must be stopped, got rid of or sent away to see if he (she) can ever change. Because the issue is motivation. Those who want to die, have the motivation to heal and change, to survive. What is the motivation of someone who knows how to kill? How does that person change and what makes them even want to do so in a world that promotes emotional, practical and economic and violating homicide in each and every moment? That is the question. And what motivates someone to love, who does not even WANT to have sex? That is the greatest revelation for me today. Mars do not have sex because Mars do not WANT sex. That is the million dollar question and my success as a newly balanced Venus over the past two years is that I know I don't need anyone for sex. I am sex. I am love. I am business too. And I haven't died. Therein lies the proof. Your turn.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2011
Twin Souls. Camilla K
http://ameraziganiirao.blogspot.com/2011/05/twin-souls-camilla-k-separation-in.html
The Little Mermaid. Hans Christian Anderson
http://ameraziganiirao.blogspot.com/2011/05/fiction-little-mermaid-hans-christian_31.html
Childrens Parable on Forgiveness. Neale Donald Walsch
http://ameraziganiirao.blogspot.com/2011/06/childrens-parable-on-forgiveness-neale.html
For Good Men and Women To Do Nothing. Amera Ziganii Rao
http://ameraziganiirao.blogspot.com/2011/08/for-good-men-and-women-to-do-nothing.html
Amera Ziganii Rao is a philosophical writer, essayist, social commentator, prose writer, dramatist and photographer artist as well as a consciousness explorer, self actualiser and emotional healer. She is a former journalist who is now turning professional with her art forms and indeed, her healing forms, after a long journey of inner searching, self teaching and exploring many layers and areas of both craft and wisdom. She is now working on her first book of philosophy and esoteric thought, and social and cultural commentary. She is also showing her first photography collections. And last but most definitely not least, she is building a business to share her consciousness and empowering explorations to reach as many people as possible across the world. She is 46 years old and currently lives in London © 2011
Amera Ziganii Rao. A Profile
Writer and Intellectual. Social, Cultural and Spiritual Commentator. Personal Development Coach and Communicator. Philosopher and Metaphysical Clair Cognisant (Prophetess, Hierophant and Esoteric Mystic). Theologian, Theosophist and Historian. Photographer, Graphic Artist. Designer, and Actor/Dramatist/Filmmaker. Feminist and Human Rights Advocate, and a Healer of Emotional Sicknesses and Self Discoveries on earth.
AMERA ZIGANII RAO :: AN ATLANTEAN ELDER ON EARTH
AMERA ZIGANII RAO :: SACRED WHORE HIGH SERPENT PRIESTHOOD FEMALE HIEROPHANT AVATAR VALKYRIE WIZARD MONARCH™ & SACRED DISIR
AMERA ZIGANII RAO ALCHEMY & LIBERATION & HUMANITY™
Amera Ziganii Rao :: Supernatural Cosmic Intelligence + Supernatural Intelligence. Training to be a world class educator in Consciousness + The Politics of Rape/The True Love Journey + Human Rights + Purpose + The Lost Knowledge + Inner and Outer Power.
NATURAL BORN MYSTIC™ :: THE RETURN TO ATLANTIS :: THE RETURN TO LEMURIA
NATURAL BORN MYSTIC™ :: THE TRUE LOVE JOURNEY :: THE POLITICS OF RAPE :: AMERA ZIGANII RAO
I have fought a great, great battle. Atlantis is no longer raped by a Lemurian earth. The rest we shall see. Leadership training indeed. Warrior, lover, Valkyrie, Healer, Prophet and Atlantean Queen. That is me. Warrior, lover, poet in training, and broken Agamemnon, woman beating warlord of filth and slavery, will he be. Atlantis is firmly back on earth. Now, true love may just finally be.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2014
NATURAL BORN MYSTIC™ :: THE LOVE HOLOCAUST :: THE LIFE HOLOCAUST :: THE DIVINITY HOLOCAUST
The Macho Intellectual Consciousness Passion and Compassion of the Visceral Soul.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2011
Amera Ziganii Rao :: Writer. Philosopher. Performer. Psychologist. Humanist. Esoteric. Sexualist. Hedonist. Artist. Teacher. Coach. Social Reformer. Feminist. Hierophant. Sacred Disir. Former Slave. Seer. Sage. :: My Business Is Transformation Of The Soul. My Business Is Power. My Business Is Freedom. My Business Is Love. My Business Is To Fight Fascism And Human Cruelty And Emotional Sickness In All Its Relationship Forms On Earth. My Business Is Applied Spirit. Real Sex. Real Love. Real Life. Real GOD. The Return.
FEMINIST AND HUMAN RIGHTS, METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHER. WRITER. MENTALIST AND ARTIST
NATURAL BORN MYSTIC™ & AMERA ZIGANII RAO ALCHEMY & LIBERATION & HUMANITY™
Alchemy & Liberation & Humanity™ as a writing and speaking business of empowerment will be announced. As will written material, to be published and other methods of spiritual, political and psycho-spiritual rhetoric. Poetry Polemics + Essays + Lectures + Speakings. And books of consciousness. Meanwhile, enjoy the free writing and consciousness work that I have produced so far. It is being written through an Odyssey. The story of myself and men, as we (I) have struggled to re-define all that is relationship and marriage, alongside the mutual journey of escape and the evolution out of The Patriarchal Tribe. Against intransigent misogyny of dependency that demands a full time carer. The last secret of slavery on earth. Addiction to women. Addiction to The Light by people of The Dark. And I don't mean that in the traditional sense. Dominants and Submissives. This is the real background. As has been viscerally analysed and discovered and endured, like all other women on earth. Of The Light and even of The Dark, as they often end up meting out the same dependency and selfish drive punishment themselves. The lower consciousness of the high consciousness peoples of earth. Dependency on women. Dependency on The High Serpent Priesthood, that women and men of The Light, in fact, are. An insane journey in an insane world.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2018
The self discovery that took us (me) from female slavery and male confusion and fascism into a society that was left behind a long time ago, when The New World Order (as was and is, not the one that is currently trying to take over, from the same beings) took over and put men in charge, when they didn't even want it, by all that I have seen. Other than in sex as is the primal partnership. Our exploration is here. The world of Bluebeard Male Supremacy™ through to the Sacred Whore and High Female Esoteric Serpent Priesthood Society™, again, with men as the beloveds. Equality, Liberty, FRATERNITY. The New New World. Again.
My writings, plus work from other consciousness teachers too. My Manifesto for Human Rights (Especially Female) in Relationship and Family.
These writings from the two blogs, are being edited now, to be produced in book form. An extensive but necessary narrative about the philosophies I am here to explore. And indeed, share. What the fuck is going on in anything to do with relationship. I've worked it out in relationships of all kinds, beginning with one's birth family, any group that one is involved with. And so on. The politics of human all the way. And it is extraordinarily insane and real and true and powerfully alchemically fool proof. To know the truth.
Poetry Polemics + the essay form + book form + spiritual analysis + psycho spiritual analysis + speaking + visual art, and anything else, after a very long revolution of war, and apprenticeship, for a better world of love, independence, sex and individuation. And true companionship and family. Power to the people, indeed. Together.
Thank you.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2014
The Two Messages ::
The Female Divine Highest Love Intelligence Energy. God The Mother, The Universe. Plus, the SACRED WHORE HIGH PRIESTESS HIEROPHANT AVATAR VALKYRIE WIZARD MONARCHs™ as the only true High Priests, with a GNOSTIC spirituality for all.
There is no love on earth. We are all here to fight for it, or be hate. We are here to be profound, or to be shallow. To be adventurers of the soul, or turgid and needing security, to be humane or greedy, to BE love, or BE hate. Earth is hell. Hell, created by hate, for hate, of hate. Free will is to choose which way to go. Love, or hate. That is Existentialism. That is evolution. That is the advancement of the soul. Hate to love. And nothing less. The conquering of evil by good. The light must push out the dark. The light must win.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2014
My Business Is Alchemy & Liberation & Humanity™
Feminism is not feminism. Feminism is anti slavery. They call us control freaks and that has to be watched. However, in the context of the truth, it is a ridiculous statement. It is the oppressor, calling the courageous campaigner for freedom and equality, the terrorist.
Feminism is not 'man hating'. Feminism is not feminism. Feminism is the movement against slavery. Humanitarianism is the same. Slavery must not exist in any form on earth. Slavery is everywhere.
From unpaid work in marriage to unpaid work in the family, to minimum wage in the market to a hundred other arenas, slavery is the way of earth.
Feminism and humanitarianism are the movements against it. Slavery is fascism. Fascism is everywhere. We just don't know it. They made sure that we don't know it. Now we do. And we will forever.
Society calls it bullying. Society calls it unfortunate, while propping it up in every single second, across the world. Fascism must die. Fascism will die. Fascism is to die.
That is World Ascension. The end of fascism.
My Business Is Alchemy & Liberation & Humanity™
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2014
Alchemy & Liberation & Humanity™
The point of this planet is to find out what we are not, so we can find out what we are.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2012
Alchemy & Liberation & Humanity™
The journey to the breaking of one's lower self into one's great self. The actual journey. That is my business. Alchemy & Liberation & Humanity™. Turning oneself into gold and honey and authentic power. The pain of transformation, the shock and the trauma and terror and resistance of it. The path to heaven on earth. That is my business. THAT part of it. The crucifixion and disability of Alchemy & Liberation & Humanity™. The pain of it.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2012
Natural Born Mystic™
The compassion to go with the passion. The discipline of mind, to know your darkness and the education of a post patriarchal man. Love. And changing the very matter of your spiritual DNA. Ascension. I can feel it coming. The build up is your job. The rest I can help with.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013
My daughter will teach you our ways. Learn well, Jake Sully. Then we will see if your insanity can be cured.
Mo'at
Avatar (2009. James Cameron)
Natural Born Mystic™
Misogyny is sadism against women. An unconscious hijacking and a conscious will to maintain it.
Tyranny and sadism. Misogynists. Slaves of Sauron (Tolkein's Lord of the Rings). Wifebeaters.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013
Natural Born Mystic™
An Hierophant is an interpreter of sacred mysteries and arcane principles. 'Jake Sully' (Avatar) is her Sacred Warrior Protector™
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013
Natural Born Mystic™
A Natural Born Mystic™ is primarily a Sacred Whore Healer as a Cinderella Warrior™. As a woman. A High Priestess Wizard™ is a Sacred Whore Healer and Enlightener. That has specific duties and challenges to do with men and their immense madness (Mo'at - Avatar) and their profanity (killing God The Mother, The Triple Goddess) and monetising the slavery of emotional care. A Sacred Whore Healer has to do this against all the odds. She does it because she and they, the Sacred Whore Healers and High Priestess Wizards™ are the strongest.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2012
Natural Born Mystic™
'Respect' as fear.
'The Accomplished Female' = the only thing that the male patriarch can deliver as 'love'. Men do not tolerate women earning money. They want slavery to instil FEAR. Fear as 'respect'. Fear is not 'respect'.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2014
Alchemy & Liberation & Humanity™
The secret enemies of psychological warfare. From within and without. Bringing the darkness of evil into the light. Immense self belief, intelligence and courage, plus wizardry. In other words, 'naming it and shaming it and letting it go' and re-programming the mind from any belief to another. To evolve.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2012
Consciousness. The politics of the 21st century. The Lost Knowledge. Forget trying to change the world. Change yourself. It changes your own world that changes THE world.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2011
Sexuality, non religious 'Wizard' and 'Witch' spirituality (the Gnostic intelligence of esoteric and consciousness exploration, ie wisdom and love) and human rights are the least fashionable things and the most uncomfortable things on the planet. And the things human beings have been damning and condemning for 8000 years. And the things that most people are absolutely fascinated by. What a shame. How bourgeois. How ordinary. How ego.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2011
The Sacred Whore High Priestess Society™
The Super Sacred Brother Lover™
The Return To The Source. Ascension.
The Sacred Whore High Priestess Society™. When we were giants. All of us. When you did more than rape me.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013
Neo Feminist™, Post Tribe Social Reformer™ and Sacred Sexualist™. Human Rights Healer. Metaphysical Philosopher, Writer, Spiritual Intelligence Teacher, Hierophant (Interpreter of The Universe) and Mentalist Self Actualiser.
I can help you grow power, from nothing.
Alchemy & Liberation & Humanity™.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013
The Sacred Whore High Priestess Hierophant™ and Sacred Pimp Warrior Protector, Brother Lover™ Society. The kings and queens of old. Angels and Sorcerers together in each of themselves and in the other. The Wizard life. Forever. Living and loving from The Source. Sourcery, Carlos Castaneda first said. I'll say it again. Sourcerers together. Living a life worth living. At last.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013
Witches are healers. Witches are the Love Healers and SOURCErers of The Lost World, when we were the giant warriors. We were good and so were were you. 'The World of Men'. The Tribe of Misogyny and Bourgeois™.
Gives us all a bad name. And poisons all hearts.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013
Feminist Lolita Intellectuals™. You lucky man. A place at the table, a place at the Executive Table. That's all. The rest is easy.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013
Spiritual power = emotional power = emotional intelligence = mental intelligence = re-programming of the whole self = spiritual intelligence = The Lost Knowledge™ = power = The New World.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013
The Company
Writer, Speaker and Enlightener, Amera Ziganii Rao, is now putting together a comprehensive and unique programme of Alchemy & Liberation & Humanity™. A programme of learning that is specifically about one particular kind of woman. And one particular kind of man. The Sacred Whore High Priestess™ and the Sacred Whore High Priest™, and the true society that they come from and the one they, in particular, she can and has to return to and that anyone can join her and him in. This is about Paradise on Earth.
This is about The Sacred Whore High Priestess™ and the Sacred Whore High Priest™, and the Alchemy and Liberation and Humanity that is for all as a result of their healing and in particular, hers. This is about the kind of woman who is at the bottom of the pile in a Patriarchal Toilet Tribe from Hell Society™, the norm, the conventional world and the world of the Tribe. This is about the kind of man who is next in line from the bottom. The sensitive man and the female chattel. The High Priestess and High Priest of a profane society, that has long forgotten who they are.
This is about being at the bottom of the pile, for the forgotten and strangled shamans, and for her, the story of escape. Abused by her family, her friends, her men, her whole society, by the very nature of who she is and who they are and what has happened on this Earth. It is about women of love, of Spirit and of sex. It is about men of love, of Spirit and of sex. It is about the Cinderellas of this world. It is about the The Sacred Whore High Priestess™. Who she is and how, loving her is the secret to Paradise on Earth and how we have been living a lie for 8000+ years. A lie of male (non High Priest) religion with a male ‘God’ and with Patriarchs and Patriarchal types and Matriarchs and Matriarchal types ruling over us and making our lives hell, all in the name of family, the tribe and the way things are and should remain. Hate, fascism and profanity. A sick society that vilifies, more than anyone else, the The Sacred Whore High Priestess™, just because it was told to. A sick society that calls her Eve. A sick society that has forgotten who we all are, let alone the The Sacred Whore High Priestess™ and the Sacred Whore High Priest™. This is about us remembering and knowing who WE are.
This is a programme of healing for the The Sacred Whore High Priestess™, and the Sacred Whore High Priest™, to take them and particularly, her, from monstrous levels of low self esteem and lack of self knowledge, back to herself and it is a programme for all those who truly want to love her, and indeed, him. This is a programme for the greatest carers on Earth, who are vilified, destroyed, ridiculed, ignored, abused, used, misused and hated for being everything that those who would steal from us are not. This is a programme to turn Cinderellas into The Sacred Whore High Priestesses and for anyone who wants to love her or live by the values of the The Sacred Whore High Priestess Society™. And this is a programme to turn sensitive men into Sacred Whore High Priests™ and for anyone who wants to love him and live by the values of the The Sacred Whore High Priestess™ and High Priest Society. Love, humanity, Spirit and sex. This is a programme to reverse 8000+ years of witch burning, women hating and healer ridicule. This is about the The Sacred Whore High Priestess™ and all those who would love her and live by her values.
This is about the chance for Paradise on Earth. This is a programme for the most beautiful, kind hearted, wounded women and men on this planet. A programme of how to implement a system of how to beat life, how to survive life and how to resurrect from the grief that is a true life. Alchemy and Liberation and Humanity of the lower mind into the higher mind, the soul and the inner heart and therefore one's true, confident, ‘happy’, successful, creative, sexual, sensual, individual, intelligent, emotionally healed, capable of loving and being loved self. How to turn grief into creation and survive and thrive, despite all the shit, all the pain and all the hurt. How to live in a world of madness, hollowness and cruelty and how to be a winner. How to stand up for oneself and to take back the power that has been stolen from anyone with heart, Spirit and sex. The art and science of Alchemy.
This is a programme, based on my scholarly and non scholarly work over 15 years (so far), if not for my whole life, and my extensive and intense, visceral experiences of self transformation from resignation, cynicism and despair to a state of relative bliss, and above all, the right to be. The programme and the courses and my speaking and indeed my forthcoming book, will cover the method of change. The psychological, sociological, spiritual, cultural, political, emotional and physical and even anthropological methods of change. Why we are here. Who the Sacred Whore High Priestess™ is and why she is here. And who the Sacred Whore High Priest™ is. Why we are here. Who we are and what we are and why we are. The beauty and glory of the truth. The meaning of life, no less. This will be on offer in the future.
My first book of consciousness, my first book of the spiritual politics of humanity, of authentic power and of self love and strength. A comprehensive series of online courses, live events and audio and visual material. Books, live events, CDs and DVDs. And one on one personal empowerment consultations. The Amera Ziganii Rao Method of Change™. The right to be and the way to have the right to be. And indeed, how to maintain the will to live without love. How to BE unconditional, self sufficient, self caring, self love. The right to be and the will to be and the unparalleled success that comes with that. The Lost Knowledge™. HOW to live. And how to heal others, the profane and the sick and the soulless. The others. My Business and that of any Sacred Whore High Priestess™ and Sacred Whore High Priest™, is Human Rights, The Right to a Sexual Society, Self Actualisation and Freedom.
My Business is To Overthrow Fascism, in the Home and in the Country. My business is also mastering destiny. Overthrowing the ultimate 'fascism'. Our journey on Earth and The Return To The Source. Our healing, our ascension and our redemption. Fate. The daily crucifixions of a true life, the challenges and the fury of being healers and people of love on a planet like Earth.
Submitting to the journey to liberate and evolve oneself, through following one's heart, however much heartbreak and devastation it leads to on the long long long journey to freedom and then the longer journey to happiness. 'Long Road to Freedom', as Nelson Mandela says. My business is always taking risks, never giving up and making the endless sacrifices it takes to become whole. Enlightenment, Nirvana and then Parinirvana and beyond. My business is pain. My business is bliss.
My business is seeing the truly glory of Spirit on Earth. The Sacred Whore High Priestess Society™ and all that it is. Spirit, humanity, sex and love again at last. And the end of our legacy as either servants or witches or unpaid carers or indeed, ignored mistresses, other women, other men even, and the weirdos that are at the bottom of society. This is our world and it is time to take it back and I can show you how. And that makes my life, truly, worth living.
I want you to feel the way I do. Alive, with the right to be and the belligerence to exist in this profane and male ‘God’ led world of male supremacy, female supremacy, domestic, casual fascism, tribe rules from hell, with beautiful and kind, love intelligence laden, female and male Cinderella warriors at the bottom, caring for everyone else and getting nothing but hatred, ridicule and isolation for it. The meek are already inheriting the Earth and I can show you how.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2012
I enter the magical hours of pure feeling, pure thought, pure imagination and I think and I write and I 'mysticise' the Universe. I escape at will, the truth of my humanless, Samurai solitude, and I pursue the truth of love in myself and in everyone else. I am philosopher. I am shaman. I am alone. I frontier the Soul to be spirit on Earth.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2011
To trust your soul is to have courage. The courage to ‘get out of the way’. It takes a commitment to courage, a changing of the very matter of one’s access to courage, one’s relationship with courage and becoming the total renegade of an individual you have to, to become soul. It is that rare. ‘Getting out of the way’ takes a commitment to love and loving and being of love, no matter what. And frankly, that means redefining what love is, EVERY STEP OF THE WAY. Finding out what love really is and getting rid of the bullshit we think it is. Love. Soul. Power. It takes courage to be soul. Courage, courage and courage. The rest is easy. Soul is soul. Finally it is an absolute relief to get out of the way. The life of soul may be hair raising, treacherous and mind numbingly arduous. But it is a life of no regrets. Courage. The key to soul. Just give it a go. Wear that hat, say what’s on your mind, dream your dreams again, dream your dreams at all and just smile through the hate. Including one’s doubt. Courage. ‘Kill’ when you have to, especially yourself, and smile the rest of the time and cry when you need to. Always cry. Earth is a battlefield and crying is the way to win. Soul is a way of life. The natural way. Courage is ‘all’ it takes. We learnt the rules, only so we could break them. The rest is the art of life. Creation. Creating oneself again and again and again. Soul. The only way of life worth anything. Otherwise, we are just waiting to die. We don’t need to. We can live. It’s called soul.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013
Self esteem. True, authentic, self knowing, self esteem. The one that includes the sex, the primal, the primitive, the animal, the real. The one that includes humanity and a state of unconditional love. Non needing, non greedy, non controlling, non afraid, non negative and non inhumane and non angry. Self esteem. What ego really is, in its true essence. The physical vehicle of self esteem. The physical vehicle of action, reaction, mastery, ‘misstery’, love and war, tenderness and sexuality. Humanity and human. The beautiful, crafted, styled, educated, aware, sincere, active, visceral, sexual, super sexual, heart led, sensitive, humane, courageous and ethical, hopeful ego. The instinct. The intuition. The magic. The primal. The whole. The whole Soul.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2013
I can feel your sexuality. I love it. My beautiful, filthy, dominating, obsessed, possessed, hedonistic, nihilistic, Sacred beast of a man. Because those of us who are the most sexual, what do we think, in the truth context of the The Sacred Whore High Priestess™, and The Sacred Whore High Priestess (Priest) Society™, that means? We are the most spiritual. The most sexual are in fact the most spiritual. Spirituality being the communing between Mortal and The High Priestess (Priest) to reach ecstasy. Orgasm. Bliss. The most active, dirty minded, passionate, non reproductive, hedonistic, glorious, worthwhile, point of life, meditation or prayer or communing on Earth. THE way to reach God, The Mother, The Universe™. THE way to happiness. Humanity. Joy. Hope. Love. Sex. Sex. Our sex. Sex.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2011
Love takes courage. Love takes being ready. Love takes love.
Amera Ziganii Rao © 2011
Copyright and intellectual property rights are serious issues. And legally protected. Please do not reproduce my work anywhere without due credit and obviously, never for financial gain. 'Big Sister' is watching you! Other than that, please continue to enjoy my original work and the work of (credited) others, for free, while I work on using my material in further professional formats. Thank you for your interest and support.
Thunder. Perfect Mind.
The Gnostic Gospels
I was sent from the power and have come to those who contemplate me and am found among those who seek me. Look at me, you who contemplate me, and you who hear, listen to me. You awaiting me, take me to yourselves. Do not banish me from before your eyes. Do not let your voice be hateful toward me, nor your hearing. Do not be ignorant of me, in any place, at any time. Be alert; do not be ignorant of me. For I am the first and the last. I am the honoured and the scorned. I am the whore and the holy. I am the wife and the virgin. I am the mother and the daughter. I am the limbs of my mother. I am a barren woman who has many children. I have had many weddings and have taken no husband. I am a midwife and a woman who does not give birth. I am the solace of my own birth pains. I am bride and groom, and my husband produced me. I am the mother of my father and the sister of my husband, and he is my offspring. I am the servant of him who fashioned me, I am the ruler of my offspring. He produced me with a premature birth, and he is my offspring born on time, and my strength is from him. I am the staff of his power in his youth, and he is the rod of my old age, and whatever he wishes happens to me. I am silence that is incomprehensive and insight whose memory is great. I am the voice whose sounds are many and the word whose appearances are many. I am the utterance of my own name. You who hate me, why do you love me and hate those who love me? You who deny me, confess me, and you who confess me, deny me. You who tell the truth about me, tell lies about me, and you who have lied about me, tell the truth about me. You who know me, be ignorant of me, and as for those who have not known me, let them know me. For I am knowledge and ignorance. I am shy and bold. I am shameless; I am ashamed. I am tough and I am terror. I am war and peace. Be attentive to me. I am disgraced and great. Be attentive to my poverty and my wealth. Do not be arrogant toward me when I am thrown down on the ground, and you will find me in those who are to come. If you see me on the dungheap, don't go and leave me thrown there. You will find me in the kingdoms. If you see me when I am thrown out with the disgraced in the most sordid places, don't mock me. Don't throw me down violently with those in need. I, I am compassionate and I am cruel. Take care not to hate my obedience, but love my self-control. In my weakness do not disregard me, and do not fear my power. For why do you despise my terror and denounce my pride? I am present in all fears, and I am strength in agitation. I am a weak woman, and I am well in a pleasant locale. I am foolish and I am wise. Why have you hated me in your counsels? Because I shall be silent among the silent and I shall appear and speak? Why have you hated me, you Greeks? Because I am a barbarian among barbarians? For I am the wisdom of the Greeks and the knowledge of the barbarians. I am the judgment of Greeks and barbarians. I am one whose image is great in Egypt and who has no image among the barbarians. I have been hated everywhere and loved everywhere. I am the one called life, and you have called me death. I am the one called law, and you have called me lawless. I am the one you pursued, and I am the one you seized. I am the one you have scattered, and you have gathered me together. I am the one before whom you have been ashamed, and you have been shameless to me. I am a woman who does not celebrate festivals, and I am she whose festivals are many. I, I am godless, and I have many gods. I am one you have professed, and you have scorned me. I am uneducated, and people learn from me. I am one you have despised, and you profess me. I am one from whom you have hidden, and you appear to me. Whenever you hide, I shall appear. For whenever you appear, I shall hide from you. As for those who have.....foolishly...... take me away from their understanding, from grief, and receive me, from understanding and grief. Receive me, from low places in creation, and take from the good, even if in a lowly way. From shame, take me to yourselves shamelessly. From shamelessness and shame, put my members to shame within you. Draw near to me, you who know me and you who know my members, and establish the great among the insignificant first creatures. Draw near to childhood, and do not despise it because it is small and insignificant. Do not make what is great turn away, part by part, from what is small, for what is small is known from what is great. Why do you curse me and honour me? You have smitten and you have shown mercy. Do not separate me from the first ones, whom you have known. Do not cast anyone out nor turn anyone away.... Turn yourselves.... do not know.....what is mine.... I know the first ones, and those after them know me. I am perfect mind, and rest....... I am the discovery of those who seek me, the command those who ask of me, the power of powers, through my knowledge, of angelic ambassadors, through my word, of gods among gods, through my counsel, of spirits of all people dwelling with me, of women dwelling within me. I am honoured and praised, and scornfully despised. I am peace, and war has come because of me. I am alien and citizen. I am substance and a woman without substance. Those from union with me are ignorant of me, and those sharing in my being know me. those near me have been ignorant of me, and those far from me have known me. On the day I am near you, you are far from me, and on the day I am far from you, I am near you. I am......a lamp of the heart. I am.....of natures. I am.....of the creation of spirits, and the request of souls. I am restraint and lack of restraint. I am unity and dissolution. I abide and dissolve. I am descent, and people ascend to me. I am judgement and pardon. I, I am sinless, and the root of sin comes from me. I am desire outwardly, and within me is self-control. I am hearing adequate for everyone and speaking that cannot be repressed. I cannot talk or speak, and plentiful are my words. Hear me in gentleness, and learn from me in roughness. I am the woman crying out, and I am cast upon the face of the earth. I prepare bread, and my mind within. I am the knowledge of my name. I cry out and I listen. I appear.....walk..... ...seal......sign of refutation..... I am the judge, I am the defense..... I am the one called justice, but violence is my name. You honour me, you who overcome, and you whisper against me, you who are overcome. Judge before you are judged, because in you are judge and partiality. If you are condemned by it., who will pardon you? Or if you are pardoned by it, who can detain you? For what is within you is outside you, and the one who fashions you on the outside has formed you within. What you see outside you, you see within you. It is visible and it is your garment. Hear me, you listeners, and learn my words, you who know me. I am hearing adequate for everything. I am speaking that cannot be suppressed. I am the name of the voice and the voice of the name. I am the sign of the letter and the indication of division. I......light.......and shadow. Hear me, you listeners, ....take me to yourselves. As the Lord, the great power, lives, the one who stands will not change the name. It is the one who stands who created me. I shall utter his name. Look at the words of this one, and all the texts that have been written. Pay attention you listeners, and you also, you angels, and you who have been sent, and you spirits who have risen from the dead. I alone exist, and I have no one to judge me. For there are many sorts of seductive sins and deeds without restraint and disgraceful desires and fleeting pleasures that people embrace, until they become sober and rise up to their place of rest. They will find me there and they will live and not die again.
The Gnostic Gospels.
The Nag Hammadi Library
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