31st October, All Hallow’s Eve
There was once a man who had three sons all of which wanted to get married . Their father decided to set them a task, saying that whoever could bring him the most beautiful flowers would be the soonest wed. The two older lads already had brides-to-be in the village and between them they quickly produced beautiful garlands.
The youngest had no paramour as yet and set off into the dark forest despairing of how to find any bouquet worthy of attention. In the depths of the forest he found an ancient crone all gnarled and horrible who lived in a frightful cottage which wandered about the forest floor all by itself on rotting chicken legs.. She asked him why he despaired and so he, being unafraid, told her his story. She quickly rustled up the loveliest bunch of flowers and he easily won his father’s favour once he returned home.
The older brothers were peeved and begged their father to set another test, which he did saying that whoever could produce the most beautiful handkerchief would win the right to marry first. The two elder sons quickly got their sweethearts to crochet intricate designs and again the youngest wondered forlornly into the dark wood not knowing what to do since he could not sew a stitch and knew of no-one to help him. Again the ugly old lady helped him, again he won the day and again his father set a further test, ‘bring me your fiancés, the loveliest will win the right to marry first.’ This was easy for the older sons but the youngest still had no-one and once more he wandered into the dark forest not knowing where to look or how to proceed.
The ugly witch took the young lad into her loathsome cottage and told him to light a fire. ‘When the fire begins to spark, each spark will become a witch, each uglier than the last. Do not fear. When the ugliest of all appears with a bunch of keys between her teeth, grab them in order to prevent the other witches from tearing you apart. This the lad did, not flinching as each witch appeared. When the ugliest of all come out of the fire with the keys between her teeth he grabbed them and suddenly all the witches were transformed into beautiful maidens. He chose the most beautiful who was, of course, the ugly witch who had helped him throughout. He took her home to his father who blessed them and announced the wedding.
People often ask, ‘what is shadow work and how do you do it?’ The most important thing is to disabuse oneself of the prejudice that there is any such thing as a negative feeling. Our hero wins through because he is not put off by the ugliness of the ancient crone. He accepts her and relates to her as he would any other. The two older sons have much more comely companions but they are both from the same village, already part of an established persona, so they cannot enrich the young men in the same way as does a venture into the unknown of the dark forest.
This venture into the forest is a journey into the depths of oneself where all kinds of difficult situations are survived so long as you refrain from judging the figures encountered as ‘negative’. How can you work with the shadow if you are prejudiced against it? If you try and dismiss or suppress it?
You cannot engage in shadow work whilst simultaneously attempting to run through thought and feeling deemed as negative with your trusty sword. In fact there is nothing more likely to get you turned into a frog, dividing the psyche against itself and entrenching inner conflict.
This unfortunate notion that you should combat ‘negative emotions’ is no more than an invitation to suppress and feel guilty about yourself without enquiring into such experiences or asking how they may have arisen in the first place. The precondition for all psychological healing is that all the feelings/ thoughts/ memories associated with past traumas/difficulties find some acceptance and validation. There simply is no recovery without the compassionate tending of rage/despair/pain. The suppression of oneself in the name of ‘being positive’ is a form of tyranny leading to the shallow and provisional of absurdity of Monty Python’s Eric Idle in ‘The Life of Brian’ singing ‘always look on the bright side of life’.
More seriously, feelings are intimately connected to values. They always..
‘bind one to the reality and meaning of symbolic contents which in turn impose binding standards of ethical behaviour from which (we are otherwise) only to ready to emancipate ourselves.’ CG Jung
If you suppress the ugly witch for the sake of a sunnier self image you also forgo the associated values which enable you to live well. At the root of anger you invariably find the reality of injustice which can then give rise to an instinct for fair treatment. Beneath jealousy there invariably lurks memories of being unloved, which, once accepted, can then expand your capacity for love. Beneath feelings of inferiority there often lies recollections of having been shamed which, once explored, can give rise to a truer sense of self-worth.
The trick with ‘negative emotion’ is not to expunge it but to take your jackboot off its neck. If you can withstand the sparks from the fire and not be afraid of the ugliness in your inner world then that which you ordinarily prefer to burn at the stake will give you the keys to personal transformation. We forget that the worst exigencies of human wickedness are invariably perpetrated by those convinced by their own moral rectitude.
The best defence against enactments of evil is to get acquainted with all those aspects of oneself which lie outside the easy homogeneity of village life, which defy the riteous self image of being ‘good’, which accepts oneself warts and all… Hence the need for Halloween; the opportunity, if only for one day in the year, to identify with the not-so-nice, the malefic, the dreadful, a spontaneous collective expression of psychological hygiene which aspires to the humility of wholeness rather than the tyranny of perfection.
