Skeleton Woman is adapted from Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ book “Women Who Run With The Wolves.” In her text she relates how she was given the essence of the story from an Alaska Native woman. In my efforts to engage with the images of this story, I let it find its own way in the telling. I also enlisted the fine storytelling abilities of Walton Stanley. Together, we found a way for this tale to speak to the depths of the Sacred Relationship between the masculine, feminine, the land, water, and larger community of life.

My crew at the end of my final shift in the Seattle Fire Department. After nearly 28 years as a Career Fire Fighter, my last ‘smoke and fire’ was a cigar shared with some of the finest men I have ever known! I have a deep and abiding sense of gratitude for the hard work, service, trust, camaraderie, and friendship during my time in the finest Fire Department in the country! Thank you all, Fire Fighters, Citizens, Friends, and Family for the care and support I received during the better part of my life. Gratitude!!!

“I Can’t Imagine”

This is the phrase I write on the board when I teach. It is a statement I hear often in the world, it is a statement I have often made myself! So often, our language is reflective of our inner states in ways we are unaware of. We will say things, quips, statements, jokes, colloquialisms, etc. that are on the surface innocent of deeper meanings or implications. We say things we do not mean and just as often we mean things that we do not say.

“I can’t imagine” is one of those sayings. The truth of the matter is we each have the capacity to imagine—profoundly. We each can create images in our minds based on our experiences, memories, thoughts, and musings. We can gather all this together, along with new information, and we create! The fact is, we “Can Imagine!” And we always do!

So, why do we say this and other statements? Maybe what we imagine seems too terrible. Or, we have our notions of the world challenged when we let our imaginations actually create a new reality for us (of course it always does) and we like the current one—attached to it, addicted to it, or any other version. On a deeper level, we might try and hold onto the notion of “can’t image” because we are frightened at a visceral or ontological level. Remember, the physical responses to fear are ‘freeze, flight, fight’ and it must be recognized when we do these same things mentally.

So, what does this mean for us? The choice to “Imagine!” results in a commitment to learning, growth, and change—all categorical elements of survival and success. Learn to catch oneself in language and thought. Pay attention to the stuck places, our fears, and our desire to hold onto old ways of thinking and being. We can always choose to hold on to our ideas of the world, but the capacity to imagine deeply provides a foundation of resilience that cannot be matched without the imaginations capacity to discover new pathways in life.

All of this and we haven’t addressed the interpersonal benefits of understanding and compassion. Being open and engaged with those around us feeds us each in ways that cannot be measured—and this is a mutual benefit! All that is required is to reflect on who we are most comfortable spending time with to recognize understanding and compassion are a significant part of the equation. We choose to be with people who ‘understand’ us—understanding requires imagination, compassion, and engagement.

The phrase “I Can imagine” has power in it. Cultivate imagination.

Might the old stories be remnants of the Old Gods speaking? Might we be living off the bones of visions of some living story from ages gone by? Through the generations, stories are told, over and over, refined by the hearts and souls of those who have carried them forward from one telling to the next. Stories are passed on, alive, taking on scars, growing “rings” like trees, gaining and giving a little with each telling, and then branching off into other stories. It might be said that the old stories live as long as we tell them. Yet, in this age, we codify, make discrete, enforce and impose academic rigor, enslave and encircle these old Story-Gods until it seems they must languish. However, we keep telling, showing, performing, and sharing the stories as if they were alive. It may be that our time is like any other–a time where the stories take on scars, grow “rings,” gain a little and give a little, and branch off into the mosaic of other stories. So yes, they do find a kind of resurrection in the archetypal expressions of modernity, but something seems to be lost. Is this bad or wrong? I don’t know. It may be that there is a longing for some stories and the sense of loss will help them survive. For it must be that stories need lips, hearts, and imagination to enliven them. This may be why we tell stories.

Be beauty . The tree that is bent is not less of a tree, it is its own beauty. One wouldn’t say to the tree, “you need to heal from your bent-ness” No, we would acknowledge its beauty, admire its resilience, and honor its unique ‘tree-ness.’

“There is no absolute beauty that hath not some strangeness to the proportion…” (Francis Bacon)

I wrote this a few days ago as I was thinking on the notion of healing. Being a First Responder (a career fire fighter) I am in an interesting place. I tend to the sick and injured as a part of my work, I am part of a Peer Support Team for other First Responders, and I must also tend to my own mental, spiritual, and physical health. The reason I wrote the previous paragraph is this. I am who I am, warts and wounds and awarenesses and cussedness. I was born with a plan, “shaped for the best,” as Daniel Deardorff says. I started with all the possibilities this world had to offer—and more! That plan didn’t happen. My promised form was altered, shaped if you will, by the storms of my life and experiences. The result? Well, that is who I am now. Do I need to work on my health and wellbeing? Certainly! There are many things about my life that require attention and tending. However, the core of who I am is simply that…who I am!

So, what about this notion of beauty? My thought is we all worry about our place in society, our community, with our friends, and ultimately whether or not we are valuable. Our culture inundates us with images designed to make us uncomfortable, or feel inadequate and wanting. It does this so the economic juggernaut of our consumer society will keep moving. It demands that we ask ourselves, over and over again, “am I beautiful?” And, it gives us the answer, over and over, “No!”

So, my proposition is this, rather than get caught up in this doomed dilemma of asking over and over again, only to receive the same answer, why not simply “be beauty?

For me? This means planting flowers, having soulful conversations with others, taking photos of stunning sunsets, holding my kitties in the evening, loving with deep and often painful abandon. And, as the poet Rainer Maria Rilke implicates, “Living the question.”

Benjamin Dennis, PhD. May 17, 2012

Coming out of a combination of many years of study of myth, poetry, performance, and ritual, as well as the experience he has gained teaching his Living Myth, Living World series, Daniel Deardorff’s Associative Mythology brings together the very best of Joseph Campbell, Robert Bly, James Hillman, and a host of scholars, story tellers, and poets into a genuinely mythic way of being. More on these notions can be found in his book, “The Other Within: The Genius of Deformity in Myth, Culture, and Psyche”

Contemporary times seem to demand we anesthetize our souls in the face of the soulless cacophony of modern day life. The noise of the I-Generation threatens to overwhelm the song of the robin with such force its absence goes unnoticed leaving a deafening silence where once there was music. With heads furiously bent over myopic devices, the souls eyes and ears are diverted from the living world and stark attention is brought to the warning implied in what David Abram notes in his book, The Spell of the Sensuous; that all cultures realize when they obtain an alphabet (in this case maybe an iPod), theirs is the unique gift of language (100). A fallacy, then, wends its way into the collective soul: If mankind is the only creature with language, then the rest of the world must go silent and the dying voices of the Amazon are only so much background noise as the world “slouches toward Bethlehem” (The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats 216).

Myth, story, oral tradition, and more poke a grubby thumb into that “I” and causes a sometimes painful ripple (hopefully) in the LED-driven gorgon-deviced narrow-mindedness of our world. Associative Mythology interrupts the “Slouch,” the inexorable march of the singular, giving pause to the mono-life so often lived in reaction to the soulless cacophony. We clutch for meaning, sift evening television for tiny bits of nourishment, throw meaning-weights in the gym for a moment’s memory of a lived life, and yet, deep inside, we know there is something terribly wrong. In myth, for it still lives, we open our ears and our hearts, and let the twinkling of the stars be heard again, to speak to us, inform us, and to enliven our wooden minds once more with the mystery of the whole world! Association? This is it! To let living myth inside our bones and bring sustenance to our marrow once more.

“Associative Mythology” is an approach, a process, a way of seeing the world that imagines the ‘livingness’ of myth and story as a vital aspect of not just mythic inquiry, but of living life mythically. The livingness of myth is revealed in the genuineness of life as we know it, as we find it mysteriously flourishing, and as it brings vitality to lived life.”There is a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change” Associative Mythology is not an allegorical construct; rather, it confronts the so-called “I-world” with the recognition that the “thread” does truly exist and we can see it in the living myth of the living world. And as Stafford completes the poem, “You don’t ever let go of the thread” (Stafford, The Way It Is 42).

My task as a mythologist is to enter into a conversation (logos) with the images before me. Often these images and symbols are very well hidden, and often near unrecognizable. Yet, they are always there—this is what thinkers and poets like Jung, Freud, Blake, Bly and others point to. When Telemachus’ hears the story of Menelaus’s return from the Trojan War, there is a ritual of logos occurring. It is a story that mirrors Odysseus’s journey that gives the son an opportunity to embody his father’s journey—and therefore a ritual return for all of us. The ritual of return is important for Telemachus to be able to welcome his father home just as it is important for each of us to be welcomed home, and to welcome home our own fathers. It is clear in Homer the notion that immortality is found in the image and in the oral tradition. In this way, Associative Mythology is the embodiment of Homeric Immortality. Feeding the stories with our own stories as Daniel Deardorff suggests, we keep the myths alive, and as well the myths keep the stories of our daily life vital; immortality is gained. There is an ongoing relationship between the Siren’s and the Furies, and the Muses are alive in us every day.

To hear Daniel please listen to his lectures on his book, “The Other Within”

Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vantage, 1997.

Stafford, William. “The Way It Is,” The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems by WilliamStafford. Saint Paul, Minnesota: Grey Wolf P, 1998. 42.

Yeats, William Butler. “The Second Coming.” The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart:A Poetry Anthology. Eds. Robert Bly, James Hillman, and Michael Meade. New York: Harper Collins, 1992. 216.

© 2012, Ben. All rights reserved.

It occurs to me as I sit here this early morning, that we in this country are in a very unique time. We have the most prodigious communications system ever known to humankind, we can travel to nearly every point on the globe within days, if not hours, and we have the capacity for direct contact with more peoples, cultures, and worldviews than any other human in history. Yet, fear is one of the most prevalent motivators in the world today. Why is this? I wonder if it is due to the immensity of the world and a profound lack of local community? If there is fear and isolation at home, then it seems there would be fear when confronting something different outside of one’s local ecosystem.
In my travels I have found most people welcoming and willing to entertain differences with curiosity and respect. And, to be honest, this is generally true here in this country, on an individual basis. Most people are gracious and welcoming when they have someone face to face, regardless of differences. However, given some sense of separation or anonymity, all bets are off. So, is this a function of deep education? Is there a cultivated emotional intelligence that opens up one’s curiosity and compassion? Maybe, I certainly hope so.

Seth Godin, the internet marketing sage who has influenced a number of my business friends wrote this:

“Racist and sexist verbal attacks (‘remarks’ is too mild) never make sense.
Over time, people who judge others by their origin or chromosomes are always proved wrong, always shown to be afraid, not wise.
The fear that provokes these attacks takes many forms, it doesn’t discriminate based on the bigot’s age or income or even race or gender. But the fear is real, and when the fear pushes people to demean others, it’s revealing itself.
Even though the fear is real, it’s not an excuse. When we speak with respect and offer dignity and empathy, we’re describing our future. ‘Politically correct’ is a cheap way of dismissing maturity, confidence and kindness. Calling angry words a joke, or a momentary slip can’t hide them.
History shows us that attacking those that would bring hard work, generosity and insight to our lives is always a mistake. (Seth Godin)

I often think of all the conversations and opinions I have heard in these challenging times. There are my more liberal leaning friends shocked at recent events, wondering at the disdain for basic decency. Then, there are my conservative leaning friends who seem genuinely surprised at the grief and fear pouring out of so many people, often terrified that they will be swept up in pogroms and acts of violence. It occurs to me there is a truly tragic loss of education in this country, and not just from poor schools or a narrow technical focus. Rather, it is in the vein that James Hillman used to comment on, a loss of educare: to be ‘lead out’ of the darkness. We are caught in a time where the imaginations of many have been severely appropriated by a culture of excitement and titillation. We, collectively, have become addicted to the little excitements found in our devices, sound bites, erroneous and shocking news, and astoundingly biased and inaccurate ‘information’ we are fed. We are becoming less and less We.

A student of mine restated a meme found on the Internet, “Complaining about political correctness is simply saying you are angry and frustrated you can’t say sexist and bigoted things.” It took me a moment to grok this. Then, I got it—reverse thinking. When a man walks into a restaurant and says something demeaning to the server or makes a derogatory comment about another customer, then complains about ‘political correctness’ isn’t he speaking more about his own outlook than commenting on the society we all live in? Why would I need to be worried about being PC if I had genuine respect for everyone around me?

Here in Seattle we have a growing issue with homelessness. More areas in the city are becoming home to tents and other structures where homeless people reside. It is a problem—but not the one most of the population think it is. The first thing I observe is that homelessness is a symptom of a much larger systemic issue. It is a departure from WE, from community and from the messiness of democracy. Are there issues with camps? Certainly, big ones. The seeming never-ending flow of people no longer able to provide a fixed home for themselves is another much deeper issue; one with far reaching implications. I have many people say to me, “Well, a lot of them want to live like that…” As if that is an excuse to ignore those very same issues. Likely, there are a few that do want to live on the streets. However, most do not. To say that ‘They’ want to live there lumps everyone into an easy category of difference, separateness, other, and puts us all into a position of division within.

Scars last a lifetime. When we choose to do something, risk something, the outcome may be a wound that we carry for the rest of our life.

A friend related a conflict between his two young sons. Their mother is dark skinned, and the two boys are also dark skinned—the younger one, however, is lighter than his elder brother. When dad broke up the fight, he asked what it was about. The elder son, in tears, said, “my brother called me a Mexican and to get out of here!” When dad went to his other son and asked why he said those words, the son burst into tears and replied, “That’s what ‘xxxxx’ says about dark skinned people…”

It seems words do matter.

Betrayal and Transformation Through Myth
Benjamin Dennis PhD

Given the events of these last months (and years), it seems appropriate to consider the nature of betrayal and its various implications. Politics, wars, our many hopes for change in our country’s public discourse, and the many social difficulties bring forward a distinctive need for self reflection and an honest assessment of our identity—collectively and as individuals.

Stories of betrayal are all too common. Surprisingly, they are populated with characters that we love with all of our being—characters that, in spite of our trust, thrust us into utter confusion and loss. Measured in the innermost regions of the heart, these moments of betrayal are revealed as “a rupture in the veil of ordinary life,” remaining alive and dynamic in the imagination (Deardorff 2).

When we look to stories, myths, and the experiences of our own life to see if there is some greater force at work, we discover that life’s betrayals are intimate with its triumphs. Success, and the subsequent confirmation of place and identity, is often contradicted by those events we may term as ‘betrayals.’ Those events that are “a violation in which we are in-formed by assault: dis-possession, dis-appointment, dis-ease; every indignity, every wound, every curse, every tragic fall brings us to [a] crossroads” (Deardorff 2). Yet, faced with the need to continue living, we must also confront the chance to understand that betrayal is an agent of transformation, its presence implicit in life. And, while a contradiction in the heart, it is at these crossroads, out of the ashes of betrayal, that the opportunity arises for the soul’s creativity to emerge.

Betrayal’s immanence and inherency becomes an ontological disruption, a “catastrophe of the previously unforeseen,” that seems to challenge our very right to live as vital and creative beings (Zimmer 259). Connected in conflict, dismembering and disrupting the status quo, and driving consciousness into chaos and ambivalence, there is more than a risk of annihilation. However, because betrayal exists on a metaphysical plane, contradictory, substantial, and dynamic, it is rich with dangerous potential, and full of the possibility of resurrection and renewal. This is what the catastrophe of betrayal brings—the potential of enantiodromia, the sudden turning in the progression of one’s life, and with it all manner of creativity that may never have been possible otherwise.

The tensions that reside between betrayal and trust are alive and dynamic in all relationships. James Hillman says it this way: “Trust and the possibility of betrayal come into the world at the same moment…and betrayal, as a continual possibility to be lived with, belongs to trust just as doubt belongs to a living faith” (“Betrayal” 66). Trust and betrayal demonstrate the paradox of connection that embodies the willingness to suffer for a vision of something greater than the self. Conceived together, intimate and alive, in service to life beyond the momentary event or circumstance, trust and betrayal are a contradiction that requires conscious entry into their combined territory.

When we experience betrayal, just as when we experience liminality, we die a little. Through this dying we become the beneficiary of the sacred marriage, a hierophany that “breaks the heart open,” as Daniel Deardorff says, “to disclose a deeper invulnerable shape” (48). “Neither here nor there,” Victor Turner notes, “betwixt and between…likened to death, to being in the womb, to invisibility, to darkness, to bisexuality, to the wilderness, and to an eclipse of the sun or moon” (95). Out of liminality comes a sense of bewilderment that erupts as a howl (if not a directive) for the acceptance of the conditions brought about by betrayal. What follows is poesis, soulful creativity, the exhibition of the transformation and renewal that occurs when the fear of death no longer has its hold, and the liminal realm that bring rich and generative resources—the possibilities immense. However, the ego works astonishing counter-intention in its efforts to resist the fear of death found in liminality and suddenly, no longer is it possible to speak of betrayal as opposed to trust. Rather, it must be seen as outside of structure, within the instinctual body, on the verge of a great chasm, between, and ambiguous to everything that is supposed or known.

In its peculiar way betrayal is a tragedy that “breaks the world progression forward, and the moment the catastrophe has come to pass it appears to be what was intended all the while” (Zimmer 259). Therefore, betrayal’s image can no longer be seen as singular, but as strangely purposeful as it reveals one’s orphan-hood by situating the individual as more than isolated and alone in the world. It rends the literal mind and dislodges expectations by forcing the individual to simultaneously occupy the multivalent regions of the sacred, the mundane, and the profane. Betrayal is the mythopoetic anti-structure that is personified by the soul’s movement into liminality and transformation. In this way, betrayal leads inexorably toward what is archetypal, primal, and chthonic.

Myth characterizes conditions such as betrayal, passion, love, and hate as transformational, changing, and acting with agency. In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, C. G. Jung regards the deities found in the old stories as embodiments of the archetypes themselves. He understands that there are inherent dangers found in searching the “fund of unconscious images,” recognizing that inquiry into the “matrix of a mythopoeic imagination [. . .] appears to be a risky experiment or a questionable adventure” (188). He goes on to warn that the contemplation of mythic images open one’s self to their transformative power, and externally “is considered the path of error, of equivocation and misunderstanding” (Memories, Dreams, Reflections 188). Since betrayal is dynamically poetic and timeless in nature, its momentous ubiquity leads to a lived condition where remembrance is no longer a singular instant in one’s life; rather it is the salt and leaven of memory. David Miller describes it as “here and now, not in the ego” (Three Faces of God 8). Within the experience of betrayal time ceases to have discreet meaning. It deforms the senses, alters the perception of the world, occupies an immutable moment, and implicates the immediate.

The notion of living and re-living an instant is one way of recognizing betrayal as a lived condition—before, now, soon-to-come—and iterating existence as it arrives like the sun from behind a cloud. Betrayal is always there, comfortably obscured by a façade, an occlusion existing within untested innocence. Betrayal is fully revealed in the instant that one ignores its brutal lesson, even when that lesson is no longer needed or remembered. The burden of the intellect, as David Miller offers, “would be to continue to imagine that such senses of self—moods, dreams, illnesses—are under the will’s control or are susceptible to an analysis or explanation by the ego’s intellect and reason” (Three Faces of God 8). To the ego, the experience of betrayal is a transformative subversion of its primacy.

If we maintain that betrayal is an archetypal manifestation, it is appropriate to follow David Miller’s reasoning and aver, “it is precisely at these moments that the ego is unconscious,” and our inner activity is an “amplification rather than reduction, mythos rather than logos, story and poetry rather than logic” (Three Faces of God 8). If we reject betrayal, we become a victim unable or unwilling to risk and rise from the ashes of our experience. If we bring imaginative creativity to the chaos, however, we will become transformed and enter the imaginative field of creativity where the artist is found wandering down the dark and painful lanes of memory remembering what was dismembered and investigating how betrayal reveals what is now hidden or secret. Following Jung’s understanding of the collective unconscious and conscious is crucial in grasping how betrayal, as an archetypal entity, inhabits the liminal regions of the psyche; the territory that the archetypal artist navigates, that which was otherwise not known or in the shadows.

In Suicide and the Soul, Hillman writes, “An objective inquiry in this field somehow betrays the impulse of life itself. The question raised in this inquiry necessarily leads beyond the touch of life” (17). The understanding I am after is this: one must explore the territory of betrayal and go beyond life itself to truly grasp what it means to be alive and to experience authentic transformation. It is crucial to understand that betrayal, its moment and its impetus, directs one toward transformation. Whether one heeds the guidance is another question. In the face of betrayal, one may choose to live in the condition dictated by betrayal, and therefore not live fully. Or, one may choose the extraordinary uncertainty of creative effort, reach beyond the limitations imposed, and fully inhabit life.
Betrayal

The word betrayal implies a great variety of meaning, much of which may often be overlooked. Referring primarily to relationships with others, the word betrayal is concerned with what we think, believe, and hope. But on another level it is also a word that is used when hidden things are brought into view. The verb, betray, refers to an action or behavior such as one person’s act of treachery toward another. The noun betrayal indicates the nature of such action. For the purposes of this dissertation, there is a dual meaning to betrayal. First, “to be disloyal [. . .] by acting in the interests of an enemy,” or more personally, to “disappoint the hopes or expectations.” Second, and perhaps more important, to betray is to “reveal the presence” or “evidence of” something hidden or secret (New Oxford American Dictionary). In both cases, betrayal is about the relationship between one’s self and the perceived world.

Betrayal’s etymological root trādere, meaning “to surrender,” or “to hand down (to posterity),” brings attention to deep psychological nuances. In the condition of betrayal there is an exchange of something known for something unknown, deforming the existing sense of reality, and abruptly forcing the mind to contend with the unknown. Betrayal pushes the structure of perception to its limits. By forcing a redefinition and reevaluation of relationships, identity and reality are reorganized into new psychological structures. When one discovers that a preconceived notion is not true, the subsequent emotional attachment and loss are experienced as a betrayal.

Trust.

In any discussion of betrayal, it is important to look at trust. The origin of the word trust in Middle English comes from the Old Norse word “traust, from traustr ‘strong’; the verb from Old Norse treysta,” which is then assimilated to the noun (New Oxford American Dictionary). Trust is the belief that the world is as perceived, reliable and genuine. Someone or something is known, clear, understood to be true, honest, and recognizable. It is the “firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.” To trust is to be able to “believe in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength” of something or someone. It is also the “acceptance of the truth of a statement without evidence or investigation” (New Oxford American Dictionary). Trust has many implications, but it takes on an ominous character when it is violated or there is disparity from what is known and understood to be real.

The Medea

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.
           (William Stafford, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”)

Euripides’ The Medea is the archetypal divorce story. Blindness, betrayal, revenge, uncompromising retribution, and destruction are all present. Here the children and the mistress are brutally killed, just as they are so often brutally destroyed emotionally and psychologically in our world today. Euripides elaborates these elements with tragic efficiency, suggesting that this is a timeless and archetypal condition. It seems that Euripides is saying that lives are actually destroyed when we lose sight of our instinctual nature. His elaboration of the older myth of the Argonauts plays on these themes with ferocity and inexorable recognition of what devastation is possible. Where, then, do we go from here? How do we move from the apparently inevitable outcomes of betrayal?

The Medea is a tragedy that challenges the meaning of self as it relates to the sense of place and home. The two main characters are at cross-purposes. Each has a notion of how the world should be, and each is at odds with the normative identity that is imposed by external forces and circumstances. In terms of place and home, it is this inner geography and territorial agenda that is at odds with, as Gabriel Marcel declares, “Being as the place of fidelity” (46). As the intimate terrain and inner landscape are ravaged from all sides by betrayal and disappointment, it is one’s most essential and faithful nature that invites the possibility of betrayal—where the confluence of the external forces of domesticity are at odds with the implicate order of one’s primordial self.

In tragedy, betrayal disrupts the connection with the numinous, that sense of deep spiritual attachment to one’s place, and the grasp with the ordered and apparent world. Betrayal provides the “cracks in the mirror,” and allows the “fundamental mystery and ambiguity its terror and grace, its autonomous nature” to enter the soul where it can either live in mutual sustainability, or descend into tragic loss and annihilation (Miller, The Three Faces of God 5). Jason’s naiveté and Medea’s actions expose the dichotomy between the domesticated and apparent life, and the sacred and numinous life. The choices, as Jung offers, “may be indirectly occasioned by consciousness, but never by conscious choice” (Essays on a Science of Mythology 73). Therefore, the intuitive movements and choices inherent in the intimacy and inhabitance of the numinous are supplanted by a departure into the insensate world they now occupy.

When Medea sends her children to Creon’s house with Pyrrhic gifts, they are sent to deliver a mutual curse, and we know that they are doomed. One need not wonder too much what these two boys see when their mother sends them out as unwitting operatives in her plot. In their short journey we remember our betrayals. It may be the core of this story that the children are sent to suffer the pain of the world. Medea’s betrayal becomes her treachery as she makes her children the unsuspecting victims of her own suffering. “But for my children’s reprieve I would give my very life, and not gold only” (Euripides 967-68). Is she lying? Regardless of the answer, she sends her children to the palace with the infernal dress, making unwitting accomplices of them. “Now there is no hope left for the children’s lives,” the Chorus cries in anticipation of the treacherous deed (Euripides 976). This is the very betrayal we most fear, that which comes unbidden and unwelcome, from those we trust most, and bringing with it certain death.

Jason and Medea’s wedding precedes the opening of Euripides’ play. It is the hieros gamos, the sacred marriage between heaven and earth. However, it is also a union that has grown a very large shadow. There is a juxtaposition of the anima, animus, and archetypal shadow images that influence the narrative that unfolds in The Medea. The shadow, exerting a powerful archetypal influence, manifests itself through the characters as they take on alternating characteristics that exemplify contrary positions. Medea operates with agency and ferocity contrasting Jason’s ignorance and powerlessness. Jung observes in his 1948 lectures to the Swiss Society for Practical Psychology:

“The archetypes most clearly characterized from the empirical point of view are those which have the most frequent and the most disturbing influence on the ego. These are the shadow, the anima, and the animus. The most accessible of these, and the easiest to experience, is the shadow, for its nature can in large measure be inferred from the contents of the personal unconscious” (The Portable Jung 145)

The shadow bride and the shadow groom find expression within the marriage by taking on the expected emotional and behavioral features of the other.

Marriage is a bond of trust, sacred, divinely connecting the numinous world with the secular. The archetypal nature of marriage is a union that “inaugurates the universe,” and is clearly a bargain of survival and creativity, and a divinely inspired alliance between the untamed and the domestic (Deardorff 43). “This is indeed the greatest salvation of all—for the wife not to stand apart from the husband” (Euripides 14-15). However, marriage that is intended to establish the sacred occupation of home and place turns into a shadow marriage when only portions of the agreements are honored, bringing in the unimaginable and the darkest nightmares. This is where tragedy is born. “But now there’s hatred everywhere. Love is diseased. For, deserting his own children and my mistress, Jason has taken a royal wife to his bed, the daughter of the ruler of this land, Creon” (Euripides 16-19). The disease disrupts the hieros gamos, and the sacred marriage is lost in tragedy.

Assuming that the sacred is not concerned with our individual happiness or benefit, the tragic has its proper and appropriate place in the cosmos. To reiterate Hillman, “Trust and the possibility of betrayal come into the world at the same moment [. . .] and betrayal, as a continual possibility to be lived with, belongs to trust just as doubt belongs to a living faith” (“Betrayal” 66). Therefore, the assertion can be made that betrayal’s emergence as a sacred event also creates sacred space, inviting sacrality in its varied forms. The implication is that the most severe conditions, as Robert Moore suggests in his book, The Archetypes of Initiation, are inherent to sacred space, that extremes are some of the most powerful sacred spaces (151). The reaction to betrayal is the felt sense of liminality, the numb feeling of simply being neither here nor there. Betrayal, therefore, resides in the liminal realms of sacred space.

As an anima figure associated with the chthonic goddess, Medea is ambivalent. Her gifts turn to curses helping her into poison and betrayal, justified by the perception of victim-hood. Remembering her past, Medea’s evokes Hékaté, naming her as a partner “who dwells in the recesses of my hearth” (Euripides 396). She is the goddess whom Medea calls on to represent the shadow of her rage. Hékaté is goddess of dark places, “an ancient and mysterious chthonian deity of uncertain origin” (Apollonius Rhodius 233). She is also associated with Aphrodite, the terrible goddess of love who provides a framework within which to view Medea’s actions. Recalling her marriage to Jason, “Medea is slighted, and cries aloud on the Vows they made to each other, the right hands clasped in eternal promise” (Euripides 20-22). Aphrodite is known for her uncompromising nature regarding her relationships. Like Aphrodite, Medea operates with complexity and surety of purpose. Betrayed, she has a reason, the promises made to her are broken, and this, like Aphrodite, incurs her wrath.

Although Medea may have been abandoned and betrayed by Jason’s desire for political gain, she remains “unconquered,” cunningly shielding her distasteful cloak of imposed weakness, all the while maintaining the “power of the inferior” (Turner 99). Just as she abandoned her father and homeland for love, she retains the ability to take care of herself in the face of both social restrictions and the masculine oriented world of physicality and brute strength. She retains the capacity to destroy her enemies in both spirit and body through cunning and her knowledge of both human nature and the natural world around her.

Medea despairs beneath the overwhelming weight of events. She voices the consequence of Jason’s actions, lamenting, “Ah, wretch! Ah, lost in my sufferings, I wish, I wish I might die” (Euripides 96-97). Medea’s voice drives the tension right into the ground with her declaration of utter hopelessness and despair as she collapses into her self. She embodies the descensus ad inferos, “a descent into hell,” that is often associated with love, betrayal, injury, near-death, and trauma (Miller, Hells and Holy Ghosts 14, 16). The essence of these experiences clarifies into sacred manifestations by delivering the immensity of the cosmos, situating her as other than the center. These events initiate her into nonlinear realms where the literal and linear cannot survive. It is in the presence of these expressions that betrayal delivers its terrible gift.

Jason’s Betrayal

That Jason betrays Medea, there is no argument; yet, he also betrays himself. His acquiescence into domesticity and departure from his primal and intuitive nature reveal subtle aspects of his personality. Jason is an opportunist who consistently makes Medea complicit, but unrecognized, in his exploits by letting her do the work while he reaps the benefit. Jason equates material gain and geographical position when he tells her, “You have certainly got from me more than you gave . . . instead of living among barbarians . . . you inhabit a Greek land . . . [and] live by law instead of the sweet will of force” (Euripides 535-38). Medea’s residence with Jason, in his eyes, should be prize enough for her. Jason compounds his neglect of their marriage by taking another wife with the justification that “it was a clever move . . . a wise one, and, finally, that I made it in your best interests and the children’s” (Euripides 548-50). Each has an image of life that is incongruent with the other. Jason is concerned with the images of wealth and political position. Robert Avens says, “Images mirror the psyche just as it is,” disclosing a glaring discrepancy between Jason and Medea’s view of the world. Avens continues, “The ‘place’ of the psyche is identical with the ‘place’ of its imagining” (39). Jason’s place reflects the condition of his psyche, his inner terrain, which has lost the intuitive sensitivity he was initiated with. The result is an irreparable schism that is reflected in his conflict with Medea and ultimately within his own soul

Jason’s relationship to Medea reveals he is capable of discarding his marriage in favor of material gain, abandoning his wife who plied her skills to support and maintain him during the depths of his trials. He is revealed as someone other than the trustworthy hero of many famed accounts. Jason’s betrayal runs much deeper than mere infidelity in marriage; it is a betrayal of character. The Tutor observes, “The old ties give way to new ones. As for Jason, he no longer has a feeling for this house of ours” (Euripides 74-75). Jason’s ability to intuitively navigate his terrain is shifting, and as it does, it leaves Medea behind, disconnected and at risk, psychologically as well as corporeally. His ties to the land, the home, and the family have lost out in favor of political expediency and his lack of intuition reveals that his ties to the intuitive and instinctual are weak. Medea’s Nurse declares the ambiguity of Jason’s place in his home and his connection to his family, “I wish he were dead—but no, he is still my master. Yet certainly he has proved unkind to his dear ones” (Euripides 83-84). Jason’s wandering eye reveals his ignorance and weakness in the face of his home’s shifting terrain.

Desertion, be it friend, family, or wife, has a powerful connotation and makes a salient statement about the individual. It is also a timeless accusation against men, and arguably a common behavior. One man will be accused of abandonment when he leaves a bad marriage, regardless of his actual behavior. Another man, much like Jason, who is not balanced within and in touch with his more authentic self, will abandon his family in search of some gain. And yet another, in search of something important, will leave, as Rilke’s poem, “Sometimes a Man Stands Up During Supper,” so poignantly begins:
Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East. (Rilke)

This does not seem so with Jason. While he is certainly on a quest, the overwhelming emphasis is on material wealth and social status. His actions, although consistent within the context of youthful adventure and a culture of seeking fame, are particularly vainglorious (Apollonius Rhodius 1: 206, 300-305). Other than the desire for revenge over his father’s fate at the hands of Pelias, for which Medea exacted revenge in his stead, Jason is satisfied with his personal aspirations. It represents a familiar behavior that occurs when one decides to act from a monocular perspective. Unfortunately, counter-intention arises, blocking Jason’s progression and eventually derailing one endeavor after the other. His counter-intention is a self-betrayal and is recognized as a departure from his instinctual self. In “The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales” Jung writes:
“The grand plan on which the unconscious life of the psyche is constructed is so inaccessible to our understanding that we can never know what evil may not be necessary in order to produce good by enantiodromia, and what good may very possibly lead to evil.” (CW 9.1: 397)

Jason is no longer able to navigate with his bare foot. His choice to marry King Creon’s daughter is his one-sided choice, and through it he inherits betrayal and tragedy.

Betrayal and The Devil’s Sooty Brother

The Soldier at the beginning of the Brother’s Grimm tale, The Devil’s Sooty Brother, is without territory, habitation, or history as he wanders the land. Devastated by his experiences, the Soldier’s aimless wandering and lack of direction indicate that his soul has been severely disturbed, quite literally leaving him with no place to go. His condition is the archetypal experience of soldiers returning from wars of every generation and akin to the circumstance of anyone who has been thoroughly betrayed by events and circumstances.

Betrayal shatters one’s orientation to life, de-structuring the sense of personal place, direction, and destiny, and demands a re-creation of one’s ontological connections. In this state, deep resources are called upon, and the soul relies on the imagination to recover and recreate itself. The journey that betrayal initiates is the challenge for one to change in fundamental ways, to transform the soul, and to inhabit life with ever increasing flexibility and awareness. Dennis Slattery suggests that within epic there are movements to be observed in relation to one’s location and trajectory toward home. He says, “the actual founding or refounding of place creates a bounded area promising building, habitation, a history, and a destiny” (The Narrative Play of Memory in Epic 332). Those who have known profound betrayal will say that that those experiences never truly go away. They are not forgotten, nor are they any less devastating in the memory. However, the journey one makes toward history and destiny is also the path that is taken to rediscover the essence of what was lost and, more importantly, to discover something new.

Lost in the wilderness, the young Soldier is approached by a Dark Man (the Devil in some translations) and offered employment if he will agree to certain conditions. For the Soldier, this defining moment signals significant change. Drawing him in, the Devil confronts the young Soldier on his aimless path and asks him, “What ails you, you seem so very sorrowful?” The young Soldier laments his forlorn state and in a moment of absolute clarity declares, “I am hungry” (Grimm 600). Regardless of the specific reasons for the Soldier’s betrayed condition, a choice must be made to either continue on as before or to open up to a new possibility. The disparity between what was and what will come coalesces into a juxtaposition of divine forces that work to change the status quo into the possibility of profound transformation for the Soldier.

When the Soldier is certain that he is no longer fed by the life he is leading, the dark man confronts him with an opportunity:
“If you will hire yourself to me, and be my serving-man, you shall have enough for all your life. You shall serve me for seven years, and after that you shall again be free. But one thing I must tell you, and that is, you must not wash, comb, or trim yourself, or cut your hair or nails, or wipe the water from your eyes.” (Grimm 600)

If the Soldier does not agree to follow the dark man, then life will continue much as it has—not much will change. If, however, the young Soldier agrees to serve the Devil without knowing what his tasks will be, he will descend from the world of unrecognizable despair and step into a generative darkness rich with both risk and potential.

By accepting the dark man’s proposal to spend seven years in hell in his service, the soldier will undergo an unknowable transformation. Because of the horrendous experiences that have shattered his identity, the Soldier’s need to descend into the underworld is greater than his need to maintain his life as it has been. The moment of this agreement is the culmination of the ambiguity between experience and the paradigms by which he has previously lived. The decision to descend is now the only choice—it is time to go down into the unknown darkness. The young Soldier is to descend deep into the earth, tend the hell-fires of three cauldrons, and “if he once [peeps] into the kettles, it [will] go ill with him” (Grimm 600). The Soldier goes to work without complaint, stoking the fires high, shedding tears, and driving the “sweepings behind the doors” (Grimm 600).

The tailings and ashes are important images to the psyche. They are the garbage and worthless detritus that fill the dark corners. Difficult to see as anything other than useless, there is more to these sweepings than mere garbage. Charcoal, in the ancient agricultural traditions, is used to treat the fields, returning much needed nutrients and minerals to the soil. This process, as old as agriculture, mimics nature’s way of clearing out the dead and unnecessary duff on the land. It also creates the conditions for many seeds and seedpods to open and release the new kernel so it can sprout in the freshly burned and re-fertilized ground.

What was choking the psyche with unneeded weight is burned away in the cave of depression and hopelessness where desperate tears are shed, matted hair lays heavy on the face, and untrimmed nails tend the inner fires of hell. In this descended heat the soul deepens into the work of sweeping, cleaning, and gathering strength. Along with the heat, the darkness in its still ferocity is like winter in the mountains. When the snow gathers and the land becomes frozen the plants do not stop growing. Rather, in this apparent time of cold, roots grow deep into the heat of the earth, drawing ancient minerals, and finding strong purchase in the dark and unknown depths.. With his eyes obscured with tears, and attending to the daily drudgery of feeding the flames, sweeping the shavings, and gathering the raw materials of unrealized strength and purpose, the Soldier does seven years of cave work.

Driven by deep emotions and one’s unconscious nature, comprised of all that is unknown, psychologically unseen, and understood to be primarily instinct, intuition, or weakness, archetypal betrayal arrives with its own agenda. Operating on a “lower level with its uncontrolled or scarcely controlled emotions,” as Jung writes, “one behaves more or less like a primitive, who is not only the passive victim of his affects but also singularly incapable of moral judgment” (The Portable Jung 145-46). These limitations require something, some goal or task, which reaches beyond those shadowy inclinations and focuses the psyche toward a purpose that has enough simplicity and depth in it to hold the attention of the unconscious while the psyche regains consciousness through the imagination.

The Soldier must confront his instructions and break the rules otherwise he risks remaining in the primitive emotional condition, unable to ever leave the dark cave of despair. The appropriate disregard of an order or command is crucial to many stories in myth and folk tale. The conventions of the world from which the young Soldier comes demand that he follow the imposed rules as a condition of his life in the military. There is a moment where the transitory, yet archetypal and primordial nature is revealed by betrayal as it speaks to the authenticity of the circumstance by bringing the imagination into relationship with the manifest world. Roberts Avens notes that typically “images express only those unconscious contents which are momentarily constellated,” suggesting that image is intimately tied to the imagination’s capacity to abstract (Imagination is Reality 35).

The Soldier’s curiosity gets the better of him and he tips the lid off of the first cauldron. In the first he discovers his corporal from the war boiling away in the hellish brew. “Aha, old bird,” says he, “do I meet you here? You once had me in your power, now I have you” (The Devil’s Sooty Brother). He closes the lid and stokes the fires higher. The Soldier repeats this with the next two, discovering in each a superior that at one time had progressively greater power over his life. His response is to stoke each fire higher and higher, and increase the heat. Through the fire, he tends his own changing story. The limitations he was at one time subject to as a young man awaken his soul’s intuition as he becomes engaged in this risky and inspired activity. The Soldier is no longer a victim of his circumstances. Rather, his imagination has now taken hold and he is fast becoming an agent of his own destiny.

When the Devil returns to see how he has fared, he confronts the Soldier with the disregard of his instructions. “Well Hans, what have you done?” The devil clearly knows. “But you have peeped into the kettles as well, it is lucky for you that you added fresh logs to them, or else you life would have been forfeited” (The Devil’s Sooty Brother). Without the Soldier’s disregard for those particular instructions and his imaginally vital response to heat the fires even more, his term underground would have been for naught. What he needed was the proper mistake, to correctly disregard the devil’s instructions, and ultimately to operate with cunning to break the bonds that held him in the liminal condition when the dark man first approached him. For the first time the Soldier has a name—Hans. Up to this point in the story, identity has been general, associated with his past, and dependent upon his outward vocation.

With a newly established identity, the devil tells him to fill his pockets with the sweepings from behind the door, to remain unwashed, untrimmed, and not wash the tears from his eyes. He is then told that when anyone asks who he is to respond in this way, I am “the devil’s sooty brother, and I am my king as well” (The Devil’s Sooty Brother). Along with his name, the devil gives Hans the roots of his identity, a new appellation, and now lives connected to both his descended and ascending nature. He is to go into the world apparently unchanged and with no outward indication that he has accomplished anything of importance. The only thing he has are what fills his pockets—the sweepings of his efforts—and his name. When Hans returns to the surface and begins his travels anew, he reaches into his pockets to rid himself of the ash only to discover the ash has become gold.

Hans wanders until he comes to an inn. The innkeeper asks him who he is and Hans answers, “The devil’s sooty brother, and my king as well” (The Devil’s Sooty Brother). Hans is no longer the lost soldier he once was. The incalculable time tending the fires has changed him. However, those changes are untested, hence his instructions to remain disheveled in appearance.

In an effort to obtain a meal and a place to sleep, Hans shows the innkeeper the gold in his pockets. He is fed and given a comfortable place to sleep. In the morning he discovers that his gold is gone, stolen by the innkeeper, and he no longer has the means to continue his journey. Hans faces his reality and immediately returns to hell to lament his situation. The devil himself washes his face, trims his nails, and tells Hans to refill his pockets with sweepings. Finally, a miraculous transformation has occurred. Now that his work in hell has been tested in the world, Hans is ready to be seen for who he truly is.

The devil instructs Hans, “Tell the landlord that he must return you your money, if you do not return it, you shall go down to hell in my place, and will look as horrible as I” (The Devil’s Sooty Brother). Hans does so and his money is returned, leaving him wealthier than when he first appeared. He continues his journey wearing modest clothing and making music. These choices lead Hans to the door of a king who so loves his music, he offers him his youngest daughter in marriage. In time the king dies and leaves Hans and his wife the kingdom for their own.

The capacity of myth and story to elaborate upon a myriad of multifaceted relations, events, and trends provides a context for the imagination to begin to reformulate and reorient one’s self after betrayal has wreaked its devastation. Betrayal operates in conjunction with other psychological phenomenon and manifestations to find some bit of solid ground upon which the psyche can stand. When the soldier leaves the underworld and discovers the sweepings-turned-to-gold, he is aware enough to follow the Devil’s instructions and outwardly leave himself in his beggarly condition. He is no longer a foolish or lost young man, but someone who has abandoned unrealistic and grand expectations and made a movement inward and downward toward the subtle miracle that is not hoped for, expected, or even noticed.

When the Innkeeper steels his money, he does not return for revenge. Rather, Hans confronts the situation with a very different understanding of life. He forgives his past and he alters those events to transforms them into the prima materia of genuine creativity and beauty. By offering the innkeeper the promise of his own fate, Hans accepts the reality of his past and the profound and important transformation within.

Betrayal can come from any quarter. When Ginette Paris writes in Pagan Grace, “Apollo teaches us distance, while Dionysus teaches us proximity, contact, intimacy with ourselves, nature, and others,” we can deduce that trust and betrayal come from each, in its own way (23). The gods are personifications of the archetypal and inhuman forces of the cosmos, and they remind us of the immensity of our lives. Betrayal “teaches us distance,” revealing the weave of the web behind the mystery and complexity of life. However, betrayal also teaches us that intimacy and proximity are not free of the risk either. A question remains at the forefront of all human experience. What does it mean to be intimate with the soul and live in the world in the face of a tragic life? For the answer one must contemplate the depths of suffering, as well as the gifts of life.

When we forgive, truly, there remains no uncollected debt. An uncollected, or uncollectible, debt is the raw material for resentment; it  is the first step toward a new series of offenses, mistakes, and betrayals. The only way to truly forgive requires a supreme effort by the imagination to see through to a different picture, image, or vision of the world. This is what Jung calls “moral achievement” (CW 9.2: 16). A red ledger balance is an either/or question posed—paid/not paid. If one answers the question directly, the debt is left on the books as an offense, regardless of the outcome. However, if one imagines something else, and that page in the book is removed and replaced with something else of beauty—whatever that might look like—then there is poesis (creativity). Authentic forgiveness is a transformation that requires the imagination to transact an agreement with the psyche to re-make the offense into gold. It is a long and arduous journey, and one that will be, if attended to with diligence, fruitful. The music that Hans learns to make while in the darkness is the process of genuine creativity that becomes the manifestation of authentic forgiveness at work.

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Benjamin Dennis PhD
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