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www.celtic-connection.com
NOVEMBER 2001
The Soul's Myth GuidesThose Who Search
By CYNTHIA AUSTIN
;T IS NOVEMBER, the first month of the Celtic year. Now deep into the season of Samhain we see the signposts ! of life as we knew them, altered by the transforming events of September 11. Thrust into liminal space, the winds of chaos buffet us between opposing points of fear for what has happened, and the desire for what was and will never again be.
It is said, "the measure of a man's greatness is measured by his ability to live with ambiguity." These are uncertain times. We are living closer to our distant forbears than ever before - they who feared for their survival and their way of life throughout every winter.
But I believe our ancestors had something we do not - a more highly developed ability to live in uncertain times by living close to their own Nature. The tenuous-ness of a hand-to-mouth existence requires that one hold in each hand the fear of death and the ecstasy of life and know that one's own path lies somewhere in-between.
Part of mediating this different world is having an idea of what is ostensibly at the root of the change, both the obvious and the subtle.
In the clear light we can blame the current woild upheaval upon terrorism. On that topic, the late Edward Edinger wrote in 1995, "Terrorism is a manifestation of the psyche. The psychological root of terrorism is a fanatical re-
sentment quasi-hatred originating in the depths of the archetypal psyche and therefore carried by religious (archetypal) energies.
"A classic literary example is Melville's Moby Dick. Captain Ahab, with his fanatical hatred of the White Whale, is a paradigm of the modern terrorist. It is time we recognized the psyche as an autonomous factor in world affairs."
Less obvious is the role each of us play in generating or diffusing the violent energies, which shape our times. Within us all are the tendencies of psyche which we know, and those which we do not - to which we are "asleep." The tendencies of consciousness and unconsciousness exist in a state of never ending opposition and attraction. It is this "tension of the opposites" which keeps our lives, and our world, from stagnation.
Mythology is replete with eternally opposing pairs whose energies keep our world in order. The
bright season of Beltaine stands in opposition to the dark season of Samhain. At midwinter and midsummer, the dark Holly King and the bright Oak King carry out their duels, each prevailing in his own season. In Yuletide mumming plays, the bright St. George slays the dark Turkish Knight but then cries out that he has slain his brother, part of himself. Night and day, light and dark and on and on - our world is fuelled by opposites.
In the legend of the Holy Grail, Parzival, who will ultimately heal the maimed Grail King with his compassion, is drawn into battle with a dark "Knight of Islam." As it turns out, although they are Christian and Moslem they arc brothers of the same father. Wolfram von Eschenbach, author of Parzival, writes "My Brother and I, one body like good man and goodwife...one flesh one blood."
C.G. Jung felt that people who attempt to work with the opposites oil an intra-psychic level are doing no less than contributing to world peace. He wrote, "...when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as fate. That is to say, when the in-
..The best we can do is lean toward the light, toward the harmonious
relationships that come from compassion with suffering...that is what the Grail is about."
dividual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must...act out the conflict and be torn into opposing halves."
While the dynamism of the world is held in dueling opposites, the healing and resolution of the world is found in the "tertium non datur," the reconciling "third" which arises as a synthesis of the opposites that, though in conflict, have been held in consciousness, in authenticity. This "third" is the unforeseeable middle ground which can express both sides, "just as a waterfall visibly mediates between above and below."
According to noted mythologist Joseph Campbell, legend holds that the Grail itself was delivered by neutral angels, right through the middle of good and evil, during the war between God and Satan. As he writes, "It [the grail] represents the spiritual path that is between pairs of opposites, between fear and desire, between good and evil." And it is fitting that the Grail King is restored by the hero Parzival, whose own name means "straight down the middle."
In the Grail legend, the territory of the Grail King has become a wasteland. "It is a land where everybody is living an inauthentic life, doing as other people do, doing as you're told, with no courage for your own life." Campbell states "the Grail becomes symbolic of an authentic life that is lived in terms of its own volition,...that carries itself between the pairs of opposites of good and evil, light and dark. Every act in life yields pairs of opposites in its results. The best we can do is lean toward the light, toward the harmonious relationships that come from compassion with suffering...that is what the Grail is about."
We have just passed the threshold of the Celtic year. The season of Samhain is altogether different this year, its nuances darker, more unsettling. Search for your own Grail, your own authentic life that lies between what you know of yourself and what you don't. Hold it, watch it and suffer for it. For then and only then will the myths of our own souls rise to guide us safely through this season, this life of opposites.
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