Make haste slowly — together

Make haste slowly — together

I recently came across a video of people in Sweden lining up to watch cows go outside for the first time since winter.

It’s called the “kosläpp” (cow release).

It seems an apt image for today’s theme of making haste slowly.

The Cultivate Gently hexagram 9 in the I Ching is what I received when asking for wisdom to share about today’s New Moon in Taurus.

For now, only small gains can be made. Which is how the fixed earth sign of Taurus likes it anyway, with its resistance to change.

Success in minor goals: you are a shepherd keeping your sheep calm with the calmness of your mind. Let the flock find their own shrubs and grass. The shepherd’s only role is to see that they are safe. —Benebell Wen, I Ching: The Book of Changes, p. 434).

While we are in the stage of making small gains, a good next step for us to contribute to the collective in a healthier way is to determine what is really your task and what is the task of others. Just like the shepherd’s task is to see to the safety of the sheep and the sheeps’ task is to feed themselves.

I’m reading the book The Courage to be Disliked, which is based on Alderian psychology. It emphasizes how interpersonal relationships are dramatically changed simply by not intruding on others’ tasks or having your own tasks intruded on.

How do you tell whose task it is? Decide who will ultimately receive the result of the choice that is made.

It is like the 2 of Swords image in tarot.

Figuratively put on a blindfold to close out distractions and go within.

There are choppy waters behind you, indicating people’s feelings might get ruffled by your decision. This can be difficult for those of us with a strong extraverted feeling function or lots of Libra energy.

The swords are heavy and are covering up the person’s chest, which in this case can be a way of protecting your own energy as you determine which tasks are no longer yours.

If you are leading a life of worry and suffering—which stems from interpersonal relationships—learn the boundary of “From here on, that is not my task.” And discard other people’s tasks. That is the first step toward lightening the load and making life simpler (p. 128).

Thus unencumbered, we can all make haste slowly—together.

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Pastoring our inner congregation of selves

Pastoring our inner congregation of selves

For the first time this year I drew the Three of Cups as my tarot card of the day.

The Three of Cups is about celebration and connection with others. I immediately thought of today’s Full Moon in Libra, which then brought extraverted feeling to mind, of course:

Extraverted feeling types are generally amiable and make friends easily. They are quick to evaluate what the outer situation requires, and readily sacrifice themselves for others. …there is a genuine rapport with others … The predominant impression is of a person well adjusted to external conditions and social values (Personality Types, Sharp, p. 50, emphasis added ).

That description of extraverted feeling resonates strongly with the energy of Libra, doesn’t it? And considering the Cups in tarot represent the feeling function, it further strengthens the connection.

This Full Moon in Libra highlights the core tension of this sign: the balancing act between Aries’s drive for independence and Libra’s yearning for relational harmony. To truly embody Libra, we must find a way to integrate our individual needs with our desire for connection.

One place to start is to practice extraverted feeling towards the many parts of our psyche first:

For Jung, then, the psyche is plural – composed of many parts, each jostling the others for control. To acknowledge the plurality of identity is to recognize both one’s brokenness and the possibility of growth. To accept this plurality is to realize that one does well to pastor this inner congregation of selves. -Alvin Dueck (The Living God and Our Living Psyche, Ann Belford Ulanov, emphasis added)

A few things that help with this pastoring are dream work, active imagination, and the parts work of Internal Family Systems (Bob Falconer and C. Michael Smith describe using parts work from a depth psychology perspective).

Acknowledging our multitudes ultimately enriches our collective experience so that we can see that “everything belongs:”

I was asked once by someone if I could capture the essence of Jung’s psychology in a single phrase…Finally, it came: everything belongs (Russell Lockhart, Psyche Speaks).

Not just everything, but everyone.

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Working on ourselves, in ourselves, and for ourselves

Working on ourselves, in ourselves, and for ourselves

And so it begins, the much-awaited Aries eclipse and entrance of Neptune into Aries, ushering in a new era where fire will become the dominant element. This marks a shift away from water and earth energy.

Am I the only one who has felt a bit waterlogged as of late, what with various planets all congregating together in late Pisces? Plus Mars is still in Cancer.

So let’s bring one some fire: individuation, freedom, spiritual autonomy, clarity, independence, charisma.

The shift from water to fire is like the withdrawal and return in the individuation process:

The withdrawal must conclude with a return—otherwise the journey was self-indulgent. Creative persons who respond to a challenge have to communicate a sense of their experience. If they can’t communicate their response, if they can’t cause others to listen and hear, they may suffer serious psychological damage within themselves (Sparks, Carl Jung and Arnold Toynbee: The Social Meaning of Inner Work, p. 72).

When we retreat to work on ourselves, we must then take it back outside and help fix the problems in society, otherwise we will remain detached:

By working on ourselves, in ourselves, and for ourselves, we are also working for society. Inner work, done at depth and with integrity, leads us back to the social world insofar as the problems we have addressed and made progress in solving in ourselves are also the problems ailing our times (Sparks, p. 41).

The fire energy is supportive of you doing what you do best.

Be clear on your values and what you stand for.

Remember you are not what happened to you – you are what you choose to become.

Reclaim the lost parts of yourself that you have previously disowned, as they are your treasures.

Learn to feel your fear without letting it stop you.

Finally, as James Hollis says, “keep the fire for freedom, dignity, and respect for all burning with a hot blue flame in your heart.”

We’re all depending on it.

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An Eclipse with Maple Sugar

An Eclipse with Maple Sugar

It’s that time of year where we look for the first signs of spring, both literal and metaphorical; both personal and collective.

The Maple Sugar Moon in Virgo later this week—this year it is also an eclipse—is a reminder how maple trees have a system for detecting spring that is far more sophisticated than ours. This harkens back to a time when maple trees helped people survive:

People living a subsistence lifestyle also know it as the Hunger Moon, when stored food has dwindled and game is scarce. But the maples carried the people through, provided food just when they needed it most. They had to trust that Mother Earth would find a way to feed them even in the depths of winter.

…The Maples each year carry out their part of the Original Instructions, to care for the people. -Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, p. 68, emphasis mine

For just a few weeks in the spring, maple trees use their sapwood to transport sugar to the buds so that they can grow and blossom.

Then, because mature leaves make more sugar than they need, the leaves send sugar back to the roots of the tree. “And so the roots, which fed the buds, are now fed in return by the leaves all summer long” (Kimmerer).

It seems not entirely coincidental that the Maple Sugar Moon occurs in Virgo. The Sun in Pisces, representing the sweetness of sap, is combined with the harvesting energy of Virgo.

Kimmerer tells the story of Nanabozho, who was dismayed when he came upon villages where people had become lazy and were found sitting beneath maple trees with their mouths wide open to catch the syrup.

Because they were taking the gifts of the Creator for granted, he poured water into the maple trees to dilute the syrup. Today, sap only has a trace of sweetness. “And so it is that it takes forty gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup” (Kimmerer, p. 63, emphasis mine).

Saturn is co-present with the Sun in Pisces during this year’s Maple Sugar Moon, so it may be feeling like it takes even more than forty gallons of sap to make a gallon of syrup, metaphorically speaking.

Nanabozho made certain that the work would never be too easy. His teachings remind us that one half of the truth is that the earth endows us with great gifts, the other half is that the gift is not enough. The responsibility does not lie with the maples alone. The other half belongs to us; we participate in its transformation. It is our work, and our gratitude, that distills the the sweetness (Kimmerer, p. 69, emphasis mine).

There is much talk these days among astrologers about the huge shift at the collective level from earth and water to air and fire in the common months and years.

This makes me appreciate our Maple Sugar eclipse in earthy Virgo all the more.

There are two questions that Kimmerer mentions in her book that haven’t been far from my mind since I read them. She said her students were unable to answer the first one in the affirmative, but became very talkative in response to the second.

I’ll close by leaving them with you to ponder:

Do you think the earth loves you?

What would happen if you believed that?

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How you are is who you are

How you are is who you are

How you are is who you are and not what you are said to be by your personality type, astrology chart, a medical diagnosis, job title, your role in your family, and so on.

That is a key concept of James Hillman’s “acorn theory” as described in his book The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling.

We are not able to see how any one is when we try to see by means of types, categories, classes, diagnostics. Types of any sort obscure uniqueness. (p. 124)

The acorn is “concealed invisible potential” that is visible in the how of an action. For example, it’s not that James Hollis is a Jungian writer but how he writes. It’s not that Jon Batiste is a musician but how he performs and composes music. (His song “Waldstein Wobble” is playing on repeat as I write this and I highly recommend it!)

As someone who speaks the languages of astrology and typology I, of course, see the irony here. Are not type and astrology just ways of putting people in a box, as the critics like to say?

On the contrary, astrology and typology are tools that have the potential to facilitate the “imaginative perception” that Hillman says is necessary to look “with the eye of the heart.” They also provide the language with which to craft a narrative of insight that says what we see:

To see the acorn requires an eye for the image, an eye for the show, and language to say what we see.

Failures in our loves, friendships, and families often come down to failures of imaginative perception. When we are not looking with the eye of the heart, love is indeed blind, for then we are failing to see the other person as bearer of an acorn of imaginative truth. (p. 124).

Hillman goes on to describe how psychological jargon is often used instead of describing what is really happening. For example, “your husband is not ‘mother-bound’, he whines and expects and is often paralyzed.” Defaulting to jargon happens in the astrology and type worlds too.

An example in astrology is when someone blames the planets – a sort of archetypal bypassing – when saying something like, “Mars retrograde in Cancer is making it hard to deal with my mother right now!” In actuality, astrology is divinatory; the planets are metaphoric mirrors that reflect what is happening but don’t cause things to happen. A thoughtful approach would include asking questions and exploring what material is being activated and brought to their attention regarding their relationship with their mother. From there, when the story is revealed, one can take a closer look at the archetypal ground of Mars in Cancer.

An example in typology is when someone says something like, “That’s my J talking!” It’s better to instead ask questions and explore how they used their extraverted thinking parent/caretaking function with a colleague in such a way recently that was close-minded and too focused on achieving the project’s goal.

John Beebe describes his archetypal model of typology as one that “opens life up the way a novelist does.” So, too, can astrology.

Empathy is the main requirement for imaginative perception:

[Empathy] enable[s] people to see through typical conceptions and into the heart of the other. Put yourself in your husband’s place, your wife’s, your child’s. Imagine how they feel, how would it be to be them? Imagine! Maybe you can discover a kernel of truth in their behaviors if you look again by means of imagining. (p. 125)

“To be is to be perceived,” said the Irish philosopher George Berkeley (1686-1753). We are all wounded healers of each other, whether therapists, astrologers, typologists, atheletes, or customer service representatives, it doesn’t matter. “Perception bestows blessing” as Hillman says, and by having the patience to perceive someone, we bestow blessing. “In your patience is your soul.”

How are you?

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Following in your own footsteps

Following in your own footsteps

The Great Mother does not tolerate childish dependence.

Cancer is the sign of the Great Mother archetype, and under today’s Full Moon in Cancer, co-present with Mars, the god of war, I can’t help but think of the Great Mother’s dual nature:

She has two aspects: in her light aspect she is compassionate, filled with maternal love and pity, and in her dark aspect she is fierce and terrible and will not tolerate childish dependence.” -M. Esther Harding

Harding reminds us that the Great Mother embodies both nurturing compassion and fierce demand for growth. This Cancer Full Moon highlights where we lean too heavily on others—or let others lean too heavily on us—hindering the balance she represents.

Mars in Cancer stirs up family karma — drama, conflict, and old patterns tied to parental complexes.

Rather than getting caught up in all that, how about pondering what you ask of others that you should instead do for yourself?

Also: do you take too much responsibility for the emotional well-being of others?

If you are a parent, this Cancer/Mars combo is a good time to remember Jung’s oft-quoted statement that a child’s greatest burden is the unlived life of the parent. Ouch!

This applies even if you aren’t a parent, as you likely mentor or take care of others in some way. There’s no Jungian author better than James Hollis on these points:

As parents, mentors, leaders of one kind or another, we are called to grow up, take care of business, gain our own authentic journeys, and thus lift this terrible distraction to the soul off those whom fate has brought into our care. That is how we are healed, our children healed, and their possibilities liberated. – James Hollis, Living an Examined Life

On the flip side, the assignment for adult children is to not just blame the parents and instead work with the Mars energy to become more conscious:

Being a grown-up means, essentially, that despite whatever formative things happened in my life, I am responsible for what spills into the world through me. I cannot just blame my personal parenting, however influential it might have been. I cannot blame ignorance. I cannot blame unconsciousness. In fact, Jung once said the unforgivable sin is to *choose* to remain unconscious. -James Hollis, The Broken Mirror

Mars in Cancer could find us saying “you can’t go home again,” but as Clarissa Pinkoloa Estés says, “While you cannot crawl back into the uterus again, you can return to the soul-home. It is not only possible, it is requisite.” Journaling, working with dreams, drawing mandalas, active imagination, and contemplation are a few ways to connect with your soul-home.

I shared the below quote on Instagram last week and a couple of people commented on how it is appropriate for Mars in Cancer:

For some, home is the taking up of an endeavor of some sort. Women begin to sing again after years of finding reason not to. They commit themselves to learn something they’ve been heartfelt about for a long time. They seek out the lost people and things in their lives. They take back their voices and write. They rest. They make some corner of the world their own. They execute immense or intense decisions. They do something that leaves footprints. – Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves

As the Full Moon casts it light, leave your footprints boldly, and follow them with courage and curiosity to your soul-home.

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Saturn’s rain and repenting dragons

Saturn’s rain and repenting dragons

Saturn is raining!

Specifically, Saturn is losing its rings; water particles are leaking out of its rings at a “worst-case scenario rate.” That sounds alarming, but it will be a hundred million years before the rings completely vanish as a result of the”ring rain.” (source: The New Yorker)

That’s a slow pace even for Saturn. Due to the way Saturn will tilt in 2025, however, it will create the illusion that the rings are invisible (which sounds Saturn-Neptune-ish, too, but I digress). We’ll get a sneak peek of how Saturn will look a hundred million years from now.

This cosmic phenomenon, with its slow pace and inevitable transformation, feels aligned with the reflective wisdom of the I Ching, which also speaks to cycles of change and decisive action.

At sunrise today, New Year’s Day, I asked the I Ching oracle for wisdom for the new year to share here on the blog.

Creative Power, the first Hexagram, was the reply.

Its energy is all yang (masculine). It correlates with the beginning of summer. It advises that what has been hidden is now on the rise but we should pause before proceeding:

Know who you are. Know where you came from. Be humble and modest. Be above reproach—then those who seek to harm will be rendered harmless. You will become the dragon that emerges from the depths, visible and rising above your peers. A pillar of beneficent astral light guides your movements. You face a moment of choice: the temporal or the spiritual. Endurance and patience will be required of you, as what is to unfold shall do so for a prolonged length of time. – Benebell Wen, I Ching, The Oracle

The dragon, a symbol of power and wisdom, emerges from the depths to guide us; Saturn helps provide the endurance and patience. Although it sounds awesome to be like a dragon guided by astral light, changing line six echoes the caution to remember where you came from. If creative powers are misused, they will be retracted. “The arrogant and reckless dragon will repent.”

Decisive Action (Hexagram 43) is the follow up hexagram to this, suggesting the possible future state. Its image is of an impending flood and having to plan and act decisively.

Instead of all yang energy, there is now a hint of yin (feminine) added to the mix, as one of the six lines is yin.

After a long period of tension, there will be a breakthrough. Be careful, as there may be risks ahead. Your interests are not the only ones at stake in the endeavor; be sure to warn others about the risks involved, but do not yet reveal your intentions. No gains from reactive combat. You intuit that you must take decisive action, but how? In which direction will you go? Send a prayer upward to Heaven. Place full faith in the Divine that blesses your path, and your prayer shall be answered. The solution will be a different path from the one initially conceived. – Benebell Wen, I Ching, The Oracle

It correlates with late spring, before summer’s Creative Power, and is referred to as Grain Rain in the I Ching calendar. Grain rain is rain that brings forth a hundred grains. Whereas Saturn’s ring rain reminds us of the impermanence and cycles within the cosmos.

May we, like dragons following astral light, rise with the wisdom to navigate life’s impermanent yet fertile cycles, sowing the seeds of transformation in the new year and for generations to come.

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Leave deep footprints because you can

Leave deep footprints because you can

One of my favorite childhood games at family gatherings was playing hide and seek outdoors at night. The thrill of hiding in the dark, listening for the familiar refrain of “come out, come out wherever you are” still lingers in my memory.

We are now at a turning point following the winter solstice. Previously there was the increasing darkness and a tendency to hide and ignore the calls of “come out, come out wherever you are.”

The Return (Turning Point) hexagram, symbolizing the energy shift at the winter solstice, marks a time for renewal and reflection:

It is a time of repose. Conserve your strength. And yet Thunder at the base means the way to conserve your strength is through movement. Auspicious to undertake action. When you move the body, the mind will move with it…The action to understand is to recharge the body, mind, and spirit. Focus not on the grim world around you, but on the brilliant charge within. – I Ching: The Oracle, Benebell Wen

Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ words, which resonated deeply with me and many others this year (it was the most popular quote I shared on Instagram this year), perfectly encapsulate this moment:

Let us keep in mind that the best cannot and must not hide. Meditation, education, all the dream analysis, all the knowledge of God’s green acre is of no value if one keeps it all to oneself or one’s chosen few. So come out, come out wherever you are. Leave deep footprints because you can. – Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves

As we step into the turning point of this season, may we answer the call to emerge with purpose. Let us move with the energy of Thunder, leaving footprints that resonate with authenticity and courage, knowing that even the smallest steps can carry profound meaning.

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The best Jungian psychology books I read in 2024

The best Jungian psychology books I read in 2024

What a great day to talk about books! There’s a full Moon in Gemini and Mercury stations direct today. I appreciate this dose of Gemini energy as we enter our final week of Sagittarius season before the winter solstice.

My approach to reading is much like what Simone Weil describes, as I don’t follow a syllabus or structure in selecting the books I read and write about:

In reading, as in other things, I have always striven to practice obedience. There is nothing more favorable to intellectual progress, for as far as possible I only read what I am hungry for at the moment when I have an appetite for it, and then I do not read, I eat.

The selections here are my favorite Jungian books that I read in 2024 (for visuals, and fun Jon Baptiste music in the background, here is a Reel I made of the books):

  1. Life and Ideas of James Hillman: Volume 1: The Making of a Psychologist by Dick Russell This covers Hillman’s life from childhood through his years running the Jung Institute in Zurich. I look forward to reading volume 2 in 2025.
  2. The Faithful Gardener: A Wise Talk About That Which Can Never Die by Clarissa Pinkola Estés Estés grew up in a foster family and says she learned more from those family members about grief, rebirth, and nature than she did in all her years of psychoanalytic training. The stories about the trees in this book have stayed with me all these months later. It is less than 100 pages and a book one can easily reread many times.
  3. Where People Fly and Water Runs Uphill: Using Dreams to Tap the Wisdom of the Unconscious by Jeremy Taylor This book gives you all the information you need to work dreams in a group. Note that this isn’t group therapy but any gathering of individuals who want to work through dream material together. Taylor shares his experiences running dreams groups in the local community and in prisons. A major theme of this book is that dreams come in the service of health and wholeness. All dreams reflect society as a whole as well as the dreamer’s relationship to it.
  4. Tracking the Gods by James Hollis This is one of Hollis’ earliest works and a favorite of his. Hollis explains myths using real world examples, which is very helpful. He defines depth psychology as care of the soul and “a process whereby the fractured psyche may heal, whereby one may achieve a personal myth to supplant the bankrupt cultural ideologies. It is not a dogma, but rather a methodology that seeks to facilitate one’s encounter with inner transforming powers. It is not New Age but Old Age, as old as the archetypes.”  Overall this book reminded me of why I love depth psychology and it would be a great one for astrologers to read as well, as astrologers essentially engage in tracking the gods.
  5. Coming Home to Myself: Reflections for Nurturing a Woman’s Body and Soul by Marion Woodman and Jill Mellick This is like a daily devotional/day book of Marion Woodman passages that have been reworked into poetry. I started most every day in 2024 with one of these passages and highly recommend it.
  6. Addiction to Perfection by Marion Woodman Woodman shows how body movements can be understood as a waking dream. Perfectionism inhibits us in taking responsibility for our bodies and keeps us trapped in our heads. She was the daughter of a minister and is also brilliant on the topic of Christianity and religion in this book.
  7. Labyrinths: Emma Jung, Her Marriage to Carl, and the Early Years of Psychoanalysis by Catrine Clay It is clear when reading this book that Jung’s work and legacy wouldn’t have endured without Emma, who, in addition to being a mother of five children, was an analyst and scholar in her own right. The book also provides a birds-eye view of the early years of Jung’s career and his relationship with Freud.
  8. Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams by Lisa Marchiana, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee This book was released just a month ago. I’ll have more to say about it in my December newsletter, but it is a much-needed practical and accessible guide for working with your dreams. James Hollis wrote the foreword and the book is written by the three Jungian analysts of the This Jungian Life podcast.

Every month I write about the Jungian books I read in my Reading in Depth newsletter. Would love to have you as a subscriber! I also weave in quotes from these books into my blog posts and post quotes on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky. I cross-post my blog posts onto Substack.

As always, feel free to contact me with any questions or comments. Talk to you soon!

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Portals to wonder: letting go of certainty

Portals to wonder: letting go of certainty

The neutral color palette of this season can remind us that the most vivid colors often emerge from times of stillness and reflection.

The last few colorful autumn leaves have fallen. A few pink petunia flowers are still barely there but are now wilted and dark purple. The orange pumpkin remains are now barely visible in the soil.

We are in the two week period of Lesser Snow per the I Ching calendar and today is the New Moon in Sagittarius, with Mercury currently retrograde in Sagittarius.

This period remains under the guidance of The Receptive. The amount of darkness in each day is increasing until the Winter Solstice. The Receptive energy encourages us to “embrace the power of yielding, and you shall receive…A heart receptive to faith will never fear darkness or uncertainty.” (Benebell Wen, I Ching: The Book of Changes)

Because it is Jupiter’s domain, Sagittarius season might find us occasionally too preoccupied with opinions and lofty ideals as a way, perhaps, to fend off fear of the darkness. Yet Jupiter, the planet of expansion of wisdom, also reminds us that wonder—an openness to what lies beyond certainty—can be the antidote to fear.

Saturn is keeping a sharp eye on Mercury and this New Moon, offering opportunities to get more grounded. Perhaps we could choose to focus on wonder instead of opinions.

I think the most interesting things are the things that light us up, the things that are portals to wonder for us. And the thing about opinion is that it’s based on certainty. To have an opinion is to have a certainty about something. And wonder is the opposite of certainty. Wonder is this openness to reality, whatever it may bring, and without fear, right? — Maria Popova | 3 Books Podcast

I came across a portal of my own today when, in true Mercury retrograde in Sagittarius fashion, I suddenly remembered a book about wonder that I enjoyed many years ago in a much different phase of life. Dusting off an old shelf to find it I was happy to be reminded of this story:

“There is not enough darkness in all the world to put out the light of one candle….

“This inscription was found on a small, new grave stone after a devastating air raid on Britain in World War II. Some thought it must be a famous quotation, but it wasn’t. The words were written by a lonely old woman whose pet had been killed by a Nazi bomb.

“I have always remembered those words, not so much for their poetry and imagery as for the truth they contain. In moments of discouragement, defeat or even despair, there are always certain things to cling to. Little things, usually: remembered laughter, the face of a sleeping child, a tree in the wind—in fact, any reminder of something deeply felt or dearly loved.

“No man is so poor as not to have many of these small candles. When they are lighted, darkness goes away…and a touch of wonder remains.” —A Touch of Wonder by Arthur Gordon

In yielding to stillness and reflecting on the small lights in our lives, we may find that wonder continues to guide us, even in the darkest days.

_____________________

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