Carl Jung

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The Red Book!

November 6, 2009 in Metaphysical Quirks by Mystic Medusa | 22 comments

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“This is a story about a nearly 100-year-old book, bound in red leather, which has spent the last quarter century secreted away in a bank vault in Switzerland. The book is big and heavy and its spine is etched with gold letters that say “Liber Novus,” which is Latin for “New Book.” Its pages are made from thick cream-colored parchment and filled with paintings of otherworldly creatures and handwritten dialogues with gods and devils. If you didn’t know the book’s vintage, you might confuse it for a lost medieval tome…”

From The Holy Grail Of The Unconscious, fab article about Jung’s controversial  “new” book…Jung was a Leo btw….Mars goes into Leo for months on end and WHAM – he gets a hugely cover-priced but bound-to-be publicised & big-selling (or at least widely reviewed) book out.

I LOVE his work and ideas (he studies astrology, Tarot and the I-Ching as well as classical psychology) but this book is bloody well $320. No I did not expect to see it on a discount table at the mall but still…Some say that nobody should read it, that it’s too bats. But others that it will prove to be the most important book ever written. Thoughts?  Can someone please read it and provide a quickie summary lol?

The Book Of Changes

July 22, 2009 in Metaphysical Quirks by Mystic Medusa | 19 comments

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I have had a copy of I-Ching – a.k.a. Book Of Changes – since I was about 15.  Like old ephemerides, they tat apart from such regular use.

It’s a book of  divination – Jung went mad for it as proof of synchronicity and all. Of course, the cosmology behind it is ravingly complex – similar to the other Ancient Chinese arts/sciences of acupuncture, Feng Shui & so on – but the actual book itself is easy to use. You can just get three coins with heads & tails on them, shake them around and throw six times. Each throw creates a line and you wind up with a hexagram which you then read the ‘result’ for.

It has a rich history too. In Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle, he has Eliza, his seductive spy-princess-courtesan character, using it to communicate in code. With just a few little lines that could pass as a doodle, one could be directed to a paragraph that says the king is about to be deposed. Neal Stephenson himself is a Scorpio genius…though you do  not enter his world lightly.  The moment i began to read Quicksilver, i took a deep breath & started cancelling social engagements etc, all the better to lie on the couch with sandwiches and The Book. Anyway, the I-Ching as spy code is totally fascinating and no doubt the theory of it being used in such a way has some accuracy.

I go on and off it. It’s  not at ALL New Agie & comforting like – say – The Goddess Oracle.

It constantly moralises & addresses one as if one were an aspiring ruler. It’s sexist – The Superior Man is often evoked to remind you of how to conduct yourself. And sometimes reading it is like being whacked over the hand with a ruler by some maniac but maybe-correct teacher. I haven’t got this hexagram for ages but i remember oh-my-godding when I’d ask the same question too many times, i would – without fail – keep getting the Number 4 Hexagram:

“Youthful Folly —

It is  not I who seek the young fool — It is the young fool who seeks me.

At first, I inform him with clear answers; But if he importunes, I tell him nothing,

He must persevere to succeed.”

The I-Ching also has an annoying habit of being right. Note that I’ve tried some of the online versions but i think there is something magical about having it as an actual book.

Astro-Gaga: Inner Child 101

July 3, 2009 in Astro Gaga, Astro-Query, Metaphysical Quirks by Mystic Medusa | 88 comments

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I thought the whole Inner Child seemed to erupt in the 90s but apparently it emerged in the 70s. I think i did one session with someone re it once & it was surprisingly healing, although v.easy to wallow, I imagine, if you wanted to. It was to do with something traumatic & the therapist got me to go back and talk to myself as a five year old etc etc. Comfortingly. Not just nattering. Not-The-Typical-Virgo was doing Self-Parenting Workshops at the same time & we  hung a lot at the pub in Bondi, discussing our findings.

The concept may have slunk from favour now but I thought it interesting that Carl Jung (a multiple Leo) thought of it as the Divine Child & like this amazing golden creature within, whom we could access to be more creative and spontaneous. A sort of invincible summer vibe. But John Brawshaw – a Cancerian and arguably the most prolific/best known of all the Inner Childish authors – thought it nearly always “wounded” and in need of rescue. Etc. Yes, I KNOW that is a massive generalised summary.

I know Louise Hay (a Libran!) is totally into it but that Dr Phil – a Virgo – does not apparently believe in Inner Child work. With the obvious disclaimer, that anyone with a mental illness should seek professional help and not be stuffing around on this site, can we please do Moon in Scorp amateur shrinking & Inner Child theory? Is it still valid, was it ever & do any of you have this consciousness.

BTW, i only watch it at the gym but i think Dr Phil is sooo Virgo and he should go head-to-head with Louise Hay in all her flowery uber-euphemistic ‘everything i eat turns to health & beauty’ glory. I love her but seriously, wouldn’t a debate between those two be FUN television. The person with the prob could sit between them as they fight it out for the best “solution.”

Dissing The Disbelievers

May 26, 2009 in Metaphysical Quirks by Mystic Medusa | 27 comments

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“I don’t believe in astrology. I’m a Sagittarius and we’re skeptical.” Arthur C Clarke.

I never get bored but an emotion close to it, i think, infuses me whenever I am faced with an old-school sceptic. It’s not that they haven’t the right to think/believe w.t.f. THEY want but they so often seem determined, smug & pass-agg-insistent on dialogue with me. My fave retaliation is the George Santayana quote that “skepticism is the chastity of the intellect” but rather than responding to that, they just sort of dirge on. I think it’s actually Taurus (men, soz) who are the most pompous about it. Aquarius too – they’re either super-logical & will cheerily crap on with all sorts of spurious shit or else they’ll try to out-weird one with a harmony-0f-the-spheres rant.

But just as I was about to launch forward on a dissing the disbelievers rant, i thought isn’t it fabulous that many of us live in a time when we can express all these things & share them openly? And how much would many of our ancestors (especially those who lived in darker times) would have ADORED modern freedom of speech, being able to bung up charts on the internet, sharing stories about Mugwort on one’s blog…And i felt amazingly grateful that it’s just the occasional dullard grumbling…”Surely, you cannot possibly believe in xyz…”

The weird thing is that I DON’T know how astrology works. And yes, I have read Cosmos & Psyche.

I just know that it DOES work and it seems to work better the more you do it. It works backwards, it works forwards, it works shallow (when Mars is on your Venus, you will meet hot guys sorta thing) and it works deep…a la Jungian astro et al. Or a Pluto transit. So if it works and it does, then how weird & intricate & MAGIC is our world? Our universe?

And it is all around us, so yes I believe in magic and then i get onto the Dark Matter situation. 90% of our universe is made up of this mysterious substance and scientists have no idea what it is. It sounds so satisfyingly witchy. I went through a stage a few years ago (when Neptune was on my Ascendent by transit) when I became obsessed with Dark Matter. Now I’ve calmed down but if I have had a few drinks & a skeptic is annoying me, i can download all my Dark Matter info (blended ad lib with some alchemy, surrealism, Ancient mythology and obviously astrology) into one Mercury-in-Aries rant enough to scare off any Skeptic.