🌙 The Tale of The White-Bear Prince

(inspired by ATU 425A: Animal (Monster) as Bridegroom — e.g., East of the Sun and West of the Moon)

Once upon a time, in a humble village nestled under northern stars, lived a young woman named Inga. She was kind and good-hearted, but she carried a secret sorrow: she felt that who she was on the inside was somehow hidden from the outer world. She felt unseen and small, as though her inner self and the outer world were strangers to each other.

One evening, a great white bear appeared at her father’s door. The bear spoke with a voice like distant thunder, offering riches in exchange for Inga’s hand. Though fearful, Inga agreed, believing that perhaps something as yet unforeseen might come of it. The bear carried her away to a magnificent castle that rose above the clouds, where golden halls gleamed under frozen skies. Every day, Inga tended small chores in the castle — she fed the hearth fire, and spoke kindly to the silent rooms. At night, a human voice would whisper to her, gentle and warm, but Inga never saw its face. Each dawn, a bear’s roar called out..

One night, driven by longing to see the face behind the voice, Inga lit a candle even though she had been warned never to do so. In the flicker, she caught sight of a prince beneath the bear’s fur — a prince cursed by some ancient enchantment. At that moment, his trust and pride dimmed, and the castle’s brilliance seemed to shudder and fade. The prince was suddenly gone, farther than the eye could see, to a distant realm “beyond east of the sun and west of the moon,” where his outer form was locked in stillness.

Inga set out to find him. She crossed dark forests and craggy mountains. Along the way she met three wise women. Each gave her a golden gift — an apple, a comb, a spindle.

At last she reached the realm where the prince waited. In the hush before dawn, she polished the apple, combed the bear-man’s tangled hair, and drew threads of hope from the spinning wheel… and by her steady, inward resolve, the enchantment was broken and the prince then stood fully human before her.

At that moment, the world around them reorganized itself: winds sang, frost became gentle dew, and what once was distant and fragmented drew into unity. Inga understood that the seeming outer realm — castle walls, enchanted paths, distant horizons — had always been shaped by her inner perceptions, whether of fear and limitation or of courage, patience, and vision. And the prince, once seen as some mere part of her, can be acknowledged both as an autonomous other and as mirror of her own evolving soul. They return home and wherever they walked together thereafter, the valley bloomed into life.

This variant of the myth of Cupid and Psyche is very different, or apparently so, from the Greek version as told by Apuleius. Inga is helped by the three crones wheres in the Greek version Venus sets a series of incredibly difficult and even impossible tasks which seem so punitive that there’s a whisper about whether its all a matter of jealousy. ..

M.L.von Franz observed that these tasks were in fact more detailed amplifications of the golden apple, sacred comb, magical spindle, in so far as the now more differentiated symbols which give us clues about the dangers and ways forward in relationship with ‘the Other’. The tasks also seem progressive, as though they were stages of development towards conscious reunion with Cupid.

At first glance Venus seems vengeful. It is her impossible demand that Psyche sort out a pile of mixed seeds. Of course, she couldn’t do it and Psyche wept bitterly…. whereupon a great army of ants suddenly arrived and sorted it all out for her.

Next, Venus ramps up her seeming fury by sending Psyche to gather the golden hair of wild and savage solar boars in the forest which will surely tear her to pieces. In despair she is ready to throw herself into a nearby stream when a reed spontaneously begins to speak, telling Psyche exactly what she needs to know. She must wait till the cool of evening when the boars are calm and then gather only the golden hair from thorns and branches.

Next she has to fetch waters from the source of the Styx, river of Death, flowing from a towering rock face guarded by snakes. Again, she is faced with the limits of herself, though Jupiter suddenly appears as an eagle and helps her scoop some up.

The fourth task is even more perilous, she must descend to the underworld and ask Prosperina, Queen of the Dead, for some of her beauty. Psyche again despairs, there is no return from the `Underworld. She climbs a tower, prepared to throw herself down when the tower speaks, ‘Stop. There is a way to go about it.’ The Tower instructs her, ‘speak to no-one, take coins in your mouth for the ferryman and spiced cakes for the watch-dog of the Underworld, Cerberus. Only then may you make safe passage.’

Each one of the tasks are initiatory, giving Psyche the opportunity to have successive learning experiences which develop her sufficiently to be able to meet Cupid again. Venus is not simply a villain. She is an agent of transformation. On the surface, Venus appears purely destructive. It’s as if she only wants to break Psyche. But the voice from the reed reveals something deeper.

The tasks are not arbitrary cruel. They are structured challenges which compel Psyche into alignment with deeper reality by facing her limitations, as well as her dependence on and gratitude for loving help received. Nature herself supports Psyche’s development—once she listens. Venus is a psychopomp, both the humbling force and the guiding helper which supports and directs Psyche’s journey.

These sequences follow the famous maxim of Uber-alchemist Maria Prophetissa (c. 100–200 CE), “Out of the One comes Two, out of the Two comes Three, and from the Third comes the One as the Fourth.” This odd quote describes, in as condensed a way as possible, a process of differentiation and reintegration.

The One divides into Two. This is the emergence of polarity, light/dark, spirit/matter, conscious/unconscious, male/female. The original unity becomes duality. From Oroboric self encapsulation there is now I and Thou. It’s like the Big Bang of Consciousness, suddenly there is ‘between’. Presiding over this is the Third, Venus, the Three old Crones, who gift the kind of life lessons necessary to develop a sufficiently propitious attitude to bring about the fourth, a conscious relationship between ego and self in which the former is neither inflated nor washed away by the latter.

Maria Prophetissa’s formula describes the basic pattern of transformation:

unity
division
interaction
reintegration

This pattern appears everywhere in alchemy, myth, psychology, and cosmology.

The first stage is a transition away from having the world simply Ready-at-hand (Heidegger’s zuhanden) where objects and people are barely distinguishable from our use of them as mere tools seamlessly integrated into action and experienced as invisible, functional equipment in the background of our engagement with the world which now exists in its own right. Psyche intrudes upon Cupid because she is still in some considerable degree of unconscious identity with the Other and like a careless lover, takes him for granted, disregarding his sovereign dignity, treating him as an object of her intellectual curiosity. His response is to disappear across the event horizon, back into the undifferentiated, unknowable.

Reparation requires the skilful intervention of Venus as the Principle of Relatedness as well as the co-operation of Psyche who gradually learns how to take advice, the value of respect and that she is worth helping.

The four tasks of Psyche correspond not only to cosmological layers, but to the four historical modes of consciousness through which humans have perceived the universe. Each task reflects a different quality of relationship between observer and reality.

This is the gradual separation and reintegration of psyche and cosmos. In intellectual history, it is the evolution from participation mystique to quantum relationality.

Let’s describe them carefully…

First Task: Sorting the Seeds. This mode of consciousness is Animistic and is characterised by unconscious identity with Nature.

At this stage, Psyche is still embedded in the world. She does not stand apart from it. This corresponds to what anthropologist Lucien Lévy-Bruhl called participation mystique — a state where subject and object are not clearly distinguished. Margret Mead emphasized that in animistic thinking, the line between humans, animals, plants, and natural phenomena is fluid, undifferentiated.

In animistic cosmology rocks, animals, plants, and humans share consciousness. Intelligence exists everywhere. Everything is meant. There is no detached observer. To this massa confusa must come some order. The ants represent this distributed, separating, intelligence which begins to differentiate self from other.

Second Task: Gathering the Golden Wool

This mode of consciousness is represented by Pre-Copernican cosmology. Here Psyche encounters the solar sheep — embodiments of divine cosmic power. She cannot confront them directly. She must wait patiently and gather what they leave behind. This corresponds to the medieval and ancient cosmology where the cosmos is hierarchical, celestial bodies are divine and dangerous, humans must approach indirectly through symbol and ritual.

In this geocentric system, Claudius Ptolemy established that Earth is the center, the heavens are perfect and divine and that humans are subordinate to cosmic order. Knowledge comes through revelation, not direct intervention. As yet there is no Jacob’s ladder. Humans do not yet evoke cosmic forces. They only receive them.

Third Task: Fetching Water from the Styx

This mode of consciousness is the Galilean/Scientific Revolution. Now Psyche must obtain water from a precise, inaccessible cosmic source. She cannot do it herself. The eagle of Zeus retrieves it. This marks the emergence of a new principle, Reality operates according to universal, abstract laws. This corresponds to the breakthrough of Galileo Galilei and later Isaac Newton. Nature becomes lawful, measurable, objective. The universe becomes governed by consistent laws whilst renouncing being at the center. The observer stands outside and studies the system. This is the birth of objective science.

Fourth Task: Descent into the Underworld

This mode of consciousness is commensurate with Quantum physics. This is the decisive transformation. Psyche must enter the underworld herself. She becomes both observer and participant. In quantum theory, as developed by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, the observer affects the observed, the act of observation changes reality. Reality includes the observer intrinsically. Space and time are dynamic. This returns Psyche to conscious participation. Not unconscious animism, but conscious relationality.

The progression forms a complete cycle:

Unity (unconscious identity)
Separation (hierarchical cosmos)
Detachment (objective science)
Reintegration (conscious participation)

Quantum physics reveals something ancient myths already knew symbolically. The observer cannot be removed from reality. Psyche must enter the underworld herself. She cannot remain outside. The soul must participate in the structure of the cosmos. The inner and outer are no longer separate domains. They are reflections of the same underlying reality. At-one-ment.

I’ve often wondered about a line in the apocryphal book of Thomas, amongst the many others emphasising that the kingdom is both within and without. It is the bit where Jesus takes Thomas aside… ‘and spoke three words’. When Thomas returned, the others asked him what was said. Thomas replied, “If I tell you, you will pick up stones to throw at me, and fire will come from the stones and consume you.”

I wonder what those three words were… Then I imagine a lively group gathered around a crackling desert fire discussing interesting stuff. Two of the group peel off and step beyond the circle of the fire momentarily for a leak, gazing now up at the night sky. The Milky Way arcs across the Deep. Vast and still. The one turns and whispers to the other, ‘thou art that.’

The full progression.

Task	Psyche’s action	Cosmological model	Relationship between observer and universe
Sorting seeds	Passive, ants help	Animistic	Observer identical with nature
Golden wool	Indirect approach	Pre-Copernican	Observer subordinate to cosmos
Styx water	Eagle retrieves	Galilean / Newtonian	Observer detached from cosmos
Underworld descent	Psyche herself descends	Quantum physics	Observer participates in reality

The Shadow King’s Gold.

Long ago, there ruled a King of Perfect Order. His crown was of pure gold. His robes were pure white. His laws were just and.. well, whatever he decided that day. Under his rule, every field bore grain. Every river ran full. Every tower stood straight. He believed nothing existed that he could not see. The world was what he knew of it. And because of this, he believed himself complete. He gathered flattering courtiers about him who understood the king should never be questioned. They plied him with gold, fed his lusts, erected his statues and indulged every whim. Nothing was denied him. No law constrained him. None drew breath without permission.

But beneath the roots of his kingdom, something waited.

At first, it was only a subtle change. Former envoys from neighbouring lands no longer paid tribute. Allies fell away. His lackeys began to bicker with one another. Servants whispered uneasily. Animals grew restless at night. The fruit ripened more slowly in the orchards. The land grew dry. People fell sick. The King noticed none of it. He studied his maps, invaded some places, killed a few enemies. He polished his crown. He issued decrees. But the land no longer listened. The rivers withdrew into themselves. The grain stores slowly emptied. The market places grew silent. And one morning, when the King rose, he felt a heaviness in his limbs. His strength had begun to leave him. No physician could explain it. No priest could cure it. He grew weaker with each passing day. His crown grew heavy on his head.

One night, as he lay unable to sleep, an uncomfortable niggle at the back of his mind became an actual thought… And it was this, even though he could do whatever he wanted, make people disappear, make laws, make whoopee, make his courtiers praise and flatter and adore, he couldn’t fill himself up, he couldn’t make himself happy. He had given it his best shot, stuffed himself like a pig on other people’s lands, wives, daughters, grain stores and livestock, but somehow still felt.. empty.

Suddenly he saw someone, something, something wraithlike, standing in the corner of his chamber. It was perhaps a man, not merely clothed in black—but black as though made of shadow and earth. His eyes shone like distant stars. The King tried to speak, but his voice failed him. The dark figure spoke instead. “You must come with me” he said. The King trembled with rage. “I am eternal master here,” he whispered hoarsely. The shadowy man said nothing. He only extended his hand. And though the King resisted, he found himself rising and following the dread figure down stone steps which seemed somehow to have been freshly cut into the floor.

The murky shade led him beneath the castle. Down and down and down, deeper and deeper, through corridors the King had never seen, along bechasmed galleries, down spiral staircases that had no end, down into the roots of the earth. The way narrowed until the roof tipped his crown from his head and the rough hewn walls pressed in on all sides. He lost his cloak and somehow his slippers. At last, squeezing along, they came to a tiny chamber sealed in glass, filled entirely with a stone plinth just large enough to lie on.. “This is your kingdom also,” said the dark figure. Before the King could answer, the chamber closed around him. He was alone. Time ceased. His strength abandon him completely. He lay down. His breath slowed. His thoughts dissolved. And there, in darkness, the King died.

The king’s body slowly changed. His skin darkened. His robes blackened. His flesh became like ash. He lay in darkness, without movement, without voice, without will. Above him, the kingdom forgot him. His name faded. His laws dissolved.

After an age without measure, water began to fall. A single drop at first. Then another. Then a stream, warm, scented, humming, loving. Slowly, imperceptibly, something began to change. The blackness softened. The rigidity loosened into… a feeling. The feeling became… awareness, of something which had been incomplete.

He opened his eyes. He felt, different, relaxed, composed. He rose, not as the King who had descended, nor as the corpse who had lain in darkness but as something, someone, new. His body felt.. whole. His strength had returned. But it was not the strength of dominion. It was the strength of Being. He looked at his hands. They shone. Not with the gold of his crown. But with a deeper gold. A living gold which seemed to have emerged from within him.

The chamber opened. He rose up through the earth. Up through the forgotten corridors. Up into the light. The kingdom lay before him, but not as it had been. It was more alive than before. The rivers gurgled and flowed. The trees bore fruit. The scent of myriad herbs was borne on the wind. Insects buzzed. Children laughed and played. The air itself seemed awake. And the King understood. He had not regained his kingdom. He had become worthy of it. The gold he had worn before had been an ornament. The gold he now embodied was his substance. He ruled again, not as master but as steward, as one who had died to avarice and been reborn into plenty.

There is a misconception about shadow work which really gets in the way. The idea that it is something you ‘do’ is just more egotism which adds to the already problematic inflation. ‘Working on yourself’ is dangerously close to what Søren Kierkegaard describes in ‘The Sickness Unto Death’, as the “despair of wanting to be oneself”, a spiritual condition where a person defiantly continues to sustain their identity, doubling down, actively insisting on being their own creator, mason to their own stone. By trying to be so self-sufficient, to author their own growth, the person becomes trapped in isolation, endlessly struggling to stabilise an identity which cannot be self-secured. Such despair is deeper than helplessness because it contains pride and defiance: the refusal to accept any deeper foundation. This results in a self that is intensely assertive yet inwardly fractured and unstable.

The rejected, denied, or disowned aspects of one’s personality cannot be approached with the intellectual desire to ‘integrate’ them. ‘Working’ on your ‘negative emotions’ is a contradiction in terms. For as long as an emotion is labelled negative there is nothing you can do about it. Shaming your shame consolidates it. This is why William Blake says, ‘he who persists in his folly will become wise.’

The shadow is ‘that which one has no wish to be,’ (Jung) not simply because it is ‘bad’ or inferior but because it demands we renounce the magical thinking of wishing ourselves into a preferred existence. Sugar and spice and all things nice…. or even slugs and snails and puppy dogs tails, so long as the contents hang together comfortably. To be both sugar and spice and slugs and snails is just a big mess that hardly feels like ‘growth’ at all.

And yet… without this discomfort we are bound to be unconsciously identified with the shadow and act it out, denial leading directly to a form of possession exemplified by an aphorism of Nietzsche…

“I have done that,” says my memory.
“I cannot have done that,” says my pride, and remains inexorable.
At last—memory yields.

The persona can become inexorable and unable to be persuaded. Material facts are like chaff in the wind when faced with the survival instincts of self image. You can present someone with incontrovertible proof of something, but if it runs contrary to their belief system it is worse than useless, you will only be perceived as attacking them. This is one of the reasons dreamwork is so useful, because the commentary is coming from within.

Internal collapse of ‘the old outmoded dispensation’ (Yeats) is what the alchemists termed ‘Nigredo’, the blackening. It is commonly experienced as depression, burnout, the painful end of a relationship, not knowing who you are anymore, feeling inauthentic, a loss of purpose or direction, feeling disillusioned. Falling ill.

Shadow work is the felt sense that such things are experiences of incompleteness. You are depressed for a reason. You are burnt out because you are excessively driven or in the wrong job. The relationship is over because one of you outgrew the other, or you got complacent. Or you caught yourself habitually sweeping your truth under the rug to keep the peace and are losing yourself in the process.

Existence requires both creation and destruction. We do not grow incrementally. We grow via a series of deaths. Analyst Michael Fordham calls it ‘deintegration’. The old structure has to collapse more than a little in order for the new one to emerge. The instinct for change and growth is paradoxically dependent on an equally powerful instinct to chop down the old wood. The dark figure, our split off wholeness, seems ‘negative’ because it ends the hegemony of persona, the King’s illusion of primacy.

When the inner descent is renounced it becomes defensive acts of dissent instead. ‘Unlived life does not sit idly on the shelf,’ ML von Franz will remind us, ‘it will turn around and bite you.’ If the ashes of destruction and the death of the old way of being are not entered into they get played out in the world instead.

Mythologically, Eros and Thanatos are complementary cosmic forces. Eros creates and binds life into form, while Thanatos dissolves it back into formlessness, together sustaining the eternal cycle of existence. Thanatos, which Plato felt was contained within Eros itself, has to have expression somewhere. The grandiose persona can only be identified with eternally by aggressive self-maintenance, all of which needs enemies out there, across the Gulf of America, and one form or another of tearing down your house.

Happily, what the shadow also brings alongside the down going and its feelings of diminishment and collapse, is the subsequent quickening once the nadir is passed, once soul is given time and space to get involved, giving rise to a sense of being restored to oneself, of developing a propitious attitude, of feeling golden and grateful.

The Spirit in Matter.

Animism, the belief that Nature is sentient and that material things contains spirits, is mostly considered a quaint footnote of Anthropology by Church and Science alike. Something our foolish ancestors and merely primitive people believe in. Little might any inter galactic tourist imagine the extent to which such beliefs pervade modern life and among the very people who consider themselves to have evolved beyond such apparent nonsense.

As a student I was invited not to return to lectures by a Great Professor whose scoffing at the Hunter-gather’s totemic world drew my attention to the Gucci suit he was wearing and the Mercedes key fob in clear view atop his mighty desk. I made the grievous error of asking if these were not also totems whose meaning, unlike our ancestors, we fail to recognize or have simply forgotten…

Despite pretensions to the contrary, modernity contains just the same degree of magical thinking as it ever did. Evolution builds on what went before. Previous adaptations are the basement of Being. You can’t discard them any more than you could tear out the foundations of a building or heroically leave your childhood behind.

One of the defining characteristics of our age, difficult as it is to see the wood for the trees, is a disdaining identification with the top most levels of the Psyche. We’ve made a cult of Veneer. Which means that the innate propensity for magical thinking, the conflation of spirit and matter, slips its leash and happens without you noticing, making a deity of Bling instead.

The hold that money has over our imaginations is perhaps the most generic and pervasive example of the way in which we create symbolic equations between spirit and matter. We do more than expect money to make us happy. We stake our worth and meaning on it, pursuing it as if it were a holy Grail containing the promise of redemption and do so with all the anxiety of one who has indeed just lodged their essence in something beyond influence.

The deBeers Diamond Company made a fortune out of our hidden but all to human animistic soul. Some bright spark in marketing came up with the idea that if diamonds could be symbolically equated with eternal love and made a fixture of a sacred marital vow then everyone would have to buy their stuff.

Prior to the 1930’s diamonds were a strictly luxury item whose inflated price could only be maintained by holding back reserves that might otherwise flood the market. Ad men N.W. Ayer and Son found a market for the stones de Beers couldn’t sell. Their aggressive campaign took advantage of the one thing designed to put a diamond into every household whilst maintaining its mystery and the myth of its rarity, they equated it with Eternity, wherein all anxiety of separation and death is laid to rest.

Stuff as Symbol is an important part of growing up. The transitional objects of bear and doll in early childhood are necessary to manage separation anxiety and signals the development of symbol formation, part of whose function is to manage change whilst preserving a sense of object constancy..

Thereafter the capacity of things to embody and represent other things helps us to cross life’s thresholds. When my son was making the transition into his teens he spent hours whittling precious lumps of wood with which he decorated the hearth. He spent hours carving and smoothing. These sacred bits of wood were deeply significant to him, like aboriginal soul stones, which gave him belonging, gravitas, space.

The equation between spirit and matter is not only common, it can assume some very specific and intricate meanings. My favorite example is the mythology surrounding pirate ear-rings, which, to those in the know, signified much more than ornament.

The tradition was that the gold ring in your ear would pay the price of your funeral. The fact that this so rarely occurred, pirates generally dying either at sea or upon the gallows, invites closer inspection.

What the gold hoop says is that I have mates who I can trust and will do right by me. Its a mark of Belonging, of collective identity, which also serves not just as payment in the event of death but as a defense against death itself, useful in the piratical business. The ring is a statement of confidence that you will not be lost at sea and that you’ll die sufficiently in one piece to be buried at all; that it will somehow be quiet and dignified with both the wood and the time for coffin making, that you will be neither sluiced from the quater-deck nor tossed over the side..

a sentiment somewhat betrayed by the brief eulogy traditionally afforded piratical demise..

‘One and the body, the body I say. Two, shall be cast, shall be cast away. Three.. and into the sea, the sea, into the sea goes he..’

Such projections into matter are not merely defensive. The psyche often discovers the incipient stirrings of nascent consciousness in the worldly garb of either fascination or disgust, which, with time, may be realized as having more to do with oneself than circumstance suggests.

This is the meaning behind alchemical gold. The old alchemists understood that the ancient Sanskrit maxim, ‘Tat twam Asi, (‘thou art that’) meant the outer physical events they were exploring were reflections of inner processes. The base elements they sought to transform were elements of their own psyche. They knew their work was symbolic and in pursuit of inner treasure.

‘Aurum nostrum non est aurum vulgi.’ (Our gold is not the ordinary kind.)

Often this confusion of inner and outer is most keenly felt in relationships. We confuse lovers with angels, spouses with parents, opponents with the devil, migrants with inner impoverishment. We attribute public figures with the power to redeem our lives. Irvin Yalom even gave that one a name.. ‘the fantasy of the ultimate rescuer’. Someone, somewhere has the power to save me from my situation.

Such projections are useful despite the mess they can get us into because they afford us a glimpse into the inner world otherwise hidden from view. Nature abhors a vacuum..

‘ It is as if the investigator’s own psychic background were mirrored in the darkness. What he sees in matter are qualities and potential meanings which are chiefly the data of his own unconscious.’ C. G. Jung.

Modern psychotherapy makes use of this phenomenon, taking the raw elements of experience and fantasy, the ‘massa confusa’ and giving them context so that transformation can take place. My analyst used to describe paranoia, of which I had plenty, as a feeling searching for its home.

So projection doesn’t deserve such poor press. It can be useful. Sometimes it’s the way ‘in’. Marie Louise von Franz went so far as to say that the projection of ‘healer’ onto another can often yield results even whilst the projection is in place. You know from your own experience how everything in life feels resolved when you are in love, that you suddenly have more vitality and drive. You ‘glow’ with life, even though the beloved is condensed into a flawed and all too human vessel which can only temporarily contain it..

We encounter ourselves in the world, in other people, in concrete situations and sometimes just in concrete. We do this as a prelude to the disruptive experience of ushering emergent aspects of Self across the threshold of our inner caucus where they can be more consciously at home. Far from being an aspect of a bygone era we would do well to re-discover the conflation of spirit and matter in our own experience so they may be sources of meaning rather than the drivers of a cruel fate.

Teachings from Thomas.

The Gospel of Thomas was buried in the desert at Nag Hammadi along with other sacred texts by gnostic monks fleeing persecution. They were hidden for safekeeping, in the hope that someone of their number would survive the wrath of powers already Orthodox and Deadly by the fifth century; not averse to giving any-one they didn’t like the chop.

None returned, though the books themselves…

”lay unmolested until such a time as the established Churches lost the power to be able to subdue them.” H. MacGregor Ross.

They were discovered ‘accidentally’ by someone who thought to himself, in all the vastness of the unforgiving desert, that this particularly parched and arid spot looked like a perfect place to do a bit of a recreational digging…

in 45* of desert heat.

Curiously the book itself is about persecution, the persecution of ourselves and how this leads to our treatment of one another. It also tells us quite explicitly how to resolve this….

and it doesn’t involve being good.

which is why the church wanted to get their hands on it.

These undisturbed ‘logia’, straight from the mouth of the Master, are undoctored by millenia of fiddling kings. And they record, in typical Gnostic style, just how entirely dismissive he was of the Establishment.

”Grapes are not harvested from thorn trees, nor are figs gathered from thistles.” logia 45

sometimes he’s a bit less polite..

”for they are like dogs in the manger for neither does he eat nor does he allow the oxen to eat.” logia 102

and sometimes, plain insurrectionist..

”I will overturn this house… logia 71.

But what really made the Church at the time want to kill him and the Church that then bore his name to twist the story into such a butchered parody, is what he has to say about sin and redemption, the mere thought of which would quickly have had him roasting over an Inquisitional fire had they been around at the time.

He doesn’t even want us to be sorry..

”Do not lie and do not do what you hate.” logia 6.

His philosophy (philo-Sophia) is not about imposed morality, or sanctioning behaviour, or codified law. Be square with yourself and with the Image, the Other, within.

At-one-ment, right now.

and so buying your way into a future heaven on the basis of good behaviour becomes laughably like prisoners applying for parole..

‘If those who guide your Being say to you, ‘behold, the Kingdom is in the heavens, then the birds of the sky will precede you.’ logia 3

no-where to go, nothing to do…

”The Kingdom is in your centre, and it is about you.’ logia 3

It turns out that redemption is not only available without having to weigh your sins in the balance or having to go to church on Sunday. It is actually more a matter of fulfilling your own destiny, of living out your undivided potential, whatever it is..

”If you bring out what is inside you, what is inside you will save you. If you do not bring out what is inside you, what is inside you will kill you.’ logia 70

Sin is then the failure to become oneself,

They said to him ‘let us pray today and let us fast!’ Jesus said, ‘what is the sin that I have committed or in what have I been overcome? When the bridegroom comes forth from the bridegrooms chamber, then let them fast and let them pray’. logia 104

According to the uncensored Jesus, the Kingdom of Heaven is attained by resolving inner dividedness…

”If two make peace with each other in this single house they will say to the mountain ‘move’ and it shall move. logia 48

There is no gaining of favour, no propitiation, no sacrifice, no prayer, no offering, no special diet, since this in itself already creates a world of divisions between one thing and another and therefor misses the point. Rather we have to turn to the Image within, unmediated by any prejudice or external opinion and try to digest its import without being swallowed up in turn.

”Happy is the lion which the man will eat… and abominated is the man whom the lion will eat.” logia 7

This means that we must take everything as it comes and experience our circumstances as independant of salvation. To favour one set of circumstances over another is just to go back into division. So when someone from the crowd shouts out to him..

”fortunate is the womb that bore you and the breasts that suckled you…”

he replies..

”There will be days when you say fortunate is the womb that did not conceive.’ logia 79

Jesus is pointing to what alchemists centuries later would call Unus Mundus, One World, a coniunctio oppositorium, the collapse of Division in on itself from contradiction into paradox, atonement but with a hint of death since the experience of the Image within is always deflating, crucifying.

”A death blow is a life blow to some, who till they died did not alive become. Who , had they lived did most surely die, but when they died – vitality began.” Emily Dickinson.

The death blow is the bloodied nose of ego realising it isn’t king of its own castle but it is also the end of division, of alienation from Self and others.

Its as if we are three and bickering when suddenly a competent adult steps into the room and calmly takes charge. And that person is you.

Division on a collective scale is at its most evident in our war-mongering but there is an aspect of modern atrocity that deserves special mention. The body counts and broken buildings are all too evident and its that which catches our attention. Less obvious but at the core of Western alienation is that we just don’t care.

Descendants of the survivors of the the Armenian holocaust, a genocide of 1.5 million people just a century ago, all say that preventing this terrible catastrophe from slipping into historical obscurity is a full time job. No-one wants to know. There are only 22 nations that acknowledge it even happened. The US is not among them.

So why all the denial?

You would think that given that the Armenians were Christians savagely killed by Muslim extremists that Western allies were at war with at the time, would be all the excuse needed to impliment, forever, the overt foreign policy of unashamed war profiteering our civilisation covertly enjoys.

But the true horror of this genocide was in the silence that accompanied it.

No-one went to help them. We didn’t care enough to intervene. And that’s why no-one talks about it. Because its a massive blot on our collective conscience. To think that one and a half million lives came second to diplomatic manouvering that resulted in European powers actively voting against intervention on behalf of the Armenians, out of the concern that it would increase Russia’s influence in the region is just appalling. It’s inhuman.

‘…abominated is the man whom the lion will eat.” logia 7

Psychologically, when we split ourselves in order to identify with one polished corner of the p;syche we are bound to see our demons out in the world that then gives us riteous leave to regress, to do as we please, or to do nothing.

Consumers become the consumed..

And so we can suck our teeth and say isn’t it terrible what we failed to do a hundred years ago. Weren’t our forebears awful? Feeling all pimped for our piety forgetting that right now exactly the same thing is going on in Yemen. An entire people are being starved to death by Western backed blockades and arms deals.

It’s allowed.

Why?

Because folk are too divided to care..

‘On the day you were One you created the two, but then being two, what will you do?’ logia 11.

The divisions are endless, race, creed, dogma. But they’re inner divisions too, from our own shadows, from the inner image, from the mediation of the Divine Feminine.

‘for my mother has begotten me, but my true Mother gave me life.’ logia 101

and so whilst its true that we have to stomach for just how much inner division and lethargy actually exists, so too does it seem to be the inevitable consequence of a culture that is not simply plagued with the unbridgeable tif between Yahweh and Lucifer, nor even the ugly divorce scene between Him and..

DON’T MENTION HER NAME..

Sophia…,

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..but that the split within his own psyche between Old and New Testament is diagnostically scary because Gods, like people, tend to regress when they are under pressure. And Yahweh is not a pretty sight when he’s in his terrible twos.

What can we do?

Name what is going on.

‘happy is the man who knows when and where robbers will creep in, so that he will arise and gather strength and prepare for action before they come.’ logia 103

M. L. von Franz gives the example of telling herself that the book she was writing was a load of rubbish and should be abandoned. After some while she realised that she didn’t think that at all, but that something very persuasive, yet hidden inside her, really did.

When your robber arrives sit him down and ask him what he wants. Remember to be polite.