Chapter 5, "The Stone or the Statue," (9/29-10/5)
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Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law!
I apologize in advance for getting this post up late, however I hope everyone had a lovely Autumnal Equinox last week!
This chapter proved longer than I anticipated but we are now finished with Part One. Since we will begin Part Two next week, I wanted to do this post a little differently than the previous ones! If you don't mind, please indulge me in an experiment.
First and foremost, I would love for everyone to share their thoughts on the book thus far. I have been pretty vocal about my attitude towards Part One in previous posts, and so I thought I would ask others to check in with themselves! Feel free to spend the first part of your post sharing anything significant thus far in your experience of reading this book. Although my attitude towards the book has not been the brightest at moments, I still feel as if I am getting a lot out of reading this book. I am curious to see what your relationship with the text has been like thus far.
For the second half of the discussion this week, I would like to try something new. Rather than pose questions, I am going to present a series of passages from the text. Choose any number of passages presented and write a response detailing your relationship to it. I am purposefully being vague here. I would love to hear your reactions and interpretations of these passages: feelings, updated knowledge about themes described in the passage, Qabalistic significance, Jungian & Qabalistic comparisons & contrasts, etc., are all encouraged. If so called, explore the passage with different lenses from Literary Analysis. Ideally, one would provide any gnosis they may have received from these passages, however if none of these passages call out to you, feel free to supply your own! The goal is less to critique the text (as you may have guessed) and instead to discover what your Holy Guardian Angel is speaking to you through the text.
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"...You must insist on your interpretation, leave the thing in its own realm, and not seek outer solutions. In this way you can reach the inner realm and live in that: but then comes the "red horse difficulty," which is that naturally the outer realm has not been changed and there remains the problem of the practice meaning. This occurs with the foreign analysand who comes here and discusses the family situation and works it out on a psychological level: but then he has to go back and wonders if the whole thing will not collapse when he gets home. Because of the analysand's change, however, the situation is different..." (100)
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"Mary the saint and Mary the prostitute are both images of the anima. As the prostitute she is attraction to the other sex, the emotional attraction, the drive, and at the upper end she is all the things Dante says about Beatrice. There is Venus ourania (the heavenly Venus) and Venus pandemos (the profane Venus), the divine and the vulgar. The symbol of one is the dove, and of the other, the sparrow. The anima contains this duality and is within herself neither an idea not something physical but, in her own essence, something between the opposites. A man gets town between the two aspects, between the common well-known attraction to the other sex and all its emotional mechanisms, and the inner experience of the highest order." (102)
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"The petrification of Faithful John can be seen whenever the dominating principle of consciousness does not recognize the ever-changing aspect of the unconscious, for this failure of vision has a petrifying effect on the unconscious: the failure creates a nonelastic and rigid point of view." (108)
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"When a new symbol of the divinity is built up during the process, the divinity is either sacrificed to strengthen a community or kept secret within the individual." (130)
There are plenty more passages to look at in this chapter (in fact, I felt like this chapter was finally starting to say something, but that it has a lot of what could be volatile subject matter in the latter half). I chose these to give everyone a place to begin with in their response to the text. I didn't want to pull out too many more passages because I fear that this post is already a wall of text
I look forward to seeing what you all post!
Love is the Law, Love under Will.
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H Hannah pinned this topic
-
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law!
I apologize in advance for getting this post up late, however I hope everyone had a lovely Autumnal Equinox last week!
This chapter proved longer than I anticipated but we are now finished with Part One. Since we will begin Part Two next week, I wanted to do this post a little differently than the previous ones! If you don't mind, please indulge me in an experiment.
First and foremost, I would love for everyone to share their thoughts on the book thus far. I have been pretty vocal about my attitude towards Part One in previous posts, and so I thought I would ask others to check in with themselves! Feel free to spend the first part of your post sharing anything significant thus far in your experience of reading this book. Although my attitude towards the book has not been the brightest at moments, I still feel as if I am getting a lot out of reading this book. I am curious to see what your relationship with the text has been like thus far.
For the second half of the discussion this week, I would like to try something new. Rather than pose questions, I am going to present a series of passages from the text. Choose any number of passages presented and write a response detailing your relationship to it. I am purposefully being vague here. I would love to hear your reactions and interpretations of these passages: feelings, updated knowledge about themes described in the passage, Qabalistic significance, Jungian & Qabalistic comparisons & contrasts, etc., are all encouraged. If so called, explore the passage with different lenses from Literary Analysis. Ideally, one would provide any gnosis they may have received from these passages, however if none of these passages call out to you, feel free to supply your own! The goal is less to critique the text (as you may have guessed) and instead to discover what your Holy Guardian Angel is speaking to you through the text.
-
"...You must insist on your interpretation, leave the thing in its own realm, and not seek outer solutions. In this way you can reach the inner realm and live in that: but then comes the "red horse difficulty," which is that naturally the outer realm has not been changed and there remains the problem of the practice meaning. This occurs with the foreign analysand who comes here and discusses the family situation and works it out on a psychological level: but then he has to go back and wonders if the whole thing will not collapse when he gets home. Because of the analysand's change, however, the situation is different..." (100)
-
"Mary the saint and Mary the prostitute are both images of the anima. As the prostitute she is attraction to the other sex, the emotional attraction, the drive, and at the upper end she is all the things Dante says about Beatrice. There is Venus ourania (the heavenly Venus) and Venus pandemos (the profane Venus), the divine and the vulgar. The symbol of one is the dove, and of the other, the sparrow. The anima contains this duality and is within herself neither an idea not something physical but, in her own essence, something between the opposites. A man gets town between the two aspects, between the common well-known attraction to the other sex and all its emotional mechanisms, and the inner experience of the highest order." (102)
-
"The petrification of Faithful John can be seen whenever the dominating principle of consciousness does not recognize the ever-changing aspect of the unconscious, for this failure of vision has a petrifying effect on the unconscious: the failure creates a nonelastic and rigid point of view." (108)
-
"When a new symbol of the divinity is built up during the process, the divinity is either sacrificed to strengthen a community or kept secret within the individual." (130)
There are plenty more passages to look at in this chapter (in fact, I felt like this chapter was finally starting to say something, but that it has a lot of what could be volatile subject matter in the latter half). I chose these to give everyone a place to begin with in their response to the text. I didn't want to pull out too many more passages because I fear that this post is already a wall of text
I look forward to seeing what you all post!
Love is the Law, Love under Will.
@jjones I feel very similar about the text, I at times have to lumber through reading and don't always like what she has to say, but the discussions around its contents have been really powerful for me. Lately I have been seeing the shape of my shadow more and more, and feel empowered taking responsibility for its machinations.
I think no matter the book, the real learning is coming from exchanging dialogue with ya'll! Especially given all of our unique backgrounds which we bring to the text!
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System unpinned this topic