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Thought of the Week Archives
December 1998
December 6, 1999
Rituals belong to what the ancient Greeks would have called techne,
the root of our words technical, technique, and technology. Ritual is
a sort of technology because it is a method (a time-honored one) for accomplishing
something in the real world....The techne of ritual, however, is utterly
different from modern technology. Its field of action is not an objectified
physical world but a divine, human, animal and vegetative cosmos of mores,
moralities, and mutual relationships.
When the techniques of ritual are cast off in favor of the apparently
more rational technologies of genes, machines, atoms, and particles, humane
values are jeopardized, because something essential to the self-regulation
of humanity, its ritual processes, are shunted. We enter thn upon a time
of ritual misapprehension and ritual boredom, which cannot be but a time
of dehumanization. The world becomes an impersonal thing, defined by numbers
and not by ceremonial actions. Of this development, the atom bomb may
serve as our preeminent symbol.
- Tom E. Driver
- The Magic of Ritual: Our Need for Liberating Rites that Transform
Our Lives and Our Communities (p. 47)
December 13, 1999
Your personal mythology is a lens that gives meaning to every situation
you meet and determines what you will do with it. ...
Personal myths explain the external world, guide personal development,
provide social direction, and address spiritual questions in a manner
that is analogous to the way cultureal myths carry out those functions
for entire groups of people. Your myths do for you what cultureal myths
do for a society. Your personal mythology is the system of complementary
as well as contradictory personal myths that organize your experiences
and guides your actions. It is the lens through which you perceive the
world. Its values and assumptions color all you see.
...personal myths are circular in their effects -- a personal myth
is a constellation of beliefs, feelings, images, and rules of behavior
that influences your experiences, which shape your mythology, which further
shape your experiences. ... Your personal mythology is your map -- within
the cultures house of mirrors -- and the more trustworthy you can make
it, the more capably you will find your way.
...Myths, in the sense we are using the term, are not the stories you
tell, the attitudes you hold, or the beliefs you embrace, wlthough each
of these may reflect your deeper mythology. Nor are myths properly juged
as being true or false, right or wrong; rather, they are more or less
functional for the development of an individual or group -- and even that
evaluation is made inevitably according to the dictates of a larger myth.
Personal myths bring together specific elements of psychological life
and organize them in distinctive ways.
- David Feinstein, Ph.D. & Stanley Krippner, Ph.D
The Mythic Path: Discovering the Guiding Stories of Your Past -- Creating
a Vision for Your Future (p. 6-7)
December 20, 1999
Myths are more than archetypes. They are stories that, read symbolically,
contain archetypes. Archetypes are "mythological components which, because
of their typical nature, we can call 'motifs,' 'primordial images,' types
or -- as I have named them -- archetypes."108 An archetype
is not merely a motif within a myth but a motif within many myths. A motif
found in only one myth would not be an archetype. Any myth ordinarily
contains multiple archetypes, though one archetype is often dominant.
The plot of myth is not only the manifestation of one or more archetypes,
but also the development of them and their interaction. On the literal
level the subject of a myth is a particular like Zeus. On the symbolic
level the subject is the archetype sumbolized by Zeus -- for example,
sky gods. The activities of Zeus symbolize the development of the archetype
of the sky god and its relationship to other archetypes, as symbolized
by Hera and other gods.
- 180 Jung, "The Psychology of the Chld Archetype," 153
- Robert A. Segal
- Introduction, Jung on Mythology (p. 43)
December 27, 1999
In the psychoanalytic theory of personality and its later derivatives,
a person�s adult personality structure represents an accumulation of numerous
identifications with various role models, who are imitated at various
stages of development � starting with our parents. In adult life we then
find ourselves with a multiplicity of roles. It is not necessary to go
into the details of these theories of human nature to appreciate
the common theme of multiplicity.
Roberto Assagioli, who developed his theory of psychosynthesis
based partly on the esoteric teachings of Alice Bailey, spoke of the existence
in the psyche of a number of differing, and at times conflicting, subpersonalities.
In his view, we are at first unconsciously identified with these subpersonalities;
in time, as we become aware of them, we see them as roles we consciously
play out. Some have suggested the apt metaphor of the self as a kind of
orchestra with many different parts playing together. The task of transformation,
then, is to attune and harmonize the different musicians and instruments
in the personality.
Another metaphor for ordinary psychic multiplicity is the theater.
In Jung�s psychology, for example, the drama of the psyche has four main
characters � the ego, the persona, the shadow, and the anima or animus
� while the Self would be analogous to the author, producer and director
combined. � Each of us has access to an enormous number of archetypes,
myths, and symbols that live in our psyche. These archetypes and symbols
serve as signposts, or centers, around which we crystallized our wishes,
hopes, fears, ideals and impulses. They are as numerous and varied as
the facets of our personality.
Ralph Metzner
The Unfolding Self : Varieties of the Transformative Experience,
page 97
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