​

​

 

f o u r

​

T H E  M O T H E R  T O N G U E

​

b y

e m i l y  b l a s s

​

​

1:14: Deep in the woods:

 

Marie Louise von Franz believed that the beginning wording of fairy tales connoted a distancing from the day-to-day environment. Specifically, “being hidden in the deep woods indicates its distance from man's conscious world” (von Franz, Number and Time, p. 31).

 

1:19: Decaying fruit:

 

The detail of the decaying fruit, alludes to Hekate’s journey through the ages, from a revered triple-faced deity to a “maleficent proto-witch figure,” associated with rot (J. D. Rabinowitz, The Origin of the Witch in Classical Antiquity's Demonization of the Fertility Goddess).

 

1:20: Sourdough bread:

 

This reference is an homage to the metaphor of the sourdough starter that began the collaborative film process. When making sourdough bread, a sourdough starter is required. However, the starter cannot be possessed. It must be appreciated and then shared, such that each new version of the sourdough will be different from its parent as the starter evolves, grows, and adapts to a new environment. 

 

1:22: Herbal tinctures made from the nectar of forest flowers:

 

Hillman remarked that when the Christian metaphysics are separated from alchemical language, pagan images shine through: “metals, planets, minerals, stars, plants, charms, animals, vessels, fires, and specific locales. These are the stuff of the work and the texts, and are more basic to the alchemical opus than the metaphysical scaffolding which has supported, if not twisted, alchemy into a seven-story mountain of redemption” (J. Hillman, “A Note for Stanton Marlan,” p. 102).

 

1:40:The woman carried with her an alabaster jar of ointment:

 

The beginning of this fairy tale relates to the Biblical story of Luke 7:36-50, Sinful Woman Forgiven, as well as Matthew 26:6-13; Mark 14:1-11; John 12:1-10. In the biblical story the criticism is not on the woman herself as being sinful but rather the act of wasting the precious perfume. The critique is from one of Jesus’ disciples, who scolds the woman for wasting a valuable product.

 

1:55: Crushed rhizome root:

 

In the biblical story of a woman who carried an alabaster jar, the oil was referred to as a naird oil. Naird oil came from Nardostachys jatamansi, a flowering plant in the honeysuckle family. However, the oil in this story was derived from a rhizome root, as a nod to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari exploration of the phenomenon of intertextual multiplicity as a network of roots. In a collaboration, ideas become connected  and entangled, such that no influence works alone (Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus). 

 

2:00: Deep spiral of a snail shell:

 

The symbol of the spiral served as a powerful image in the collaborative process. The underlying order and design of a spiral is ever-apparent in nature. The spiral of a snail shell adheres to the universal order that matches the mathematical Fibonnaci sequence (M. Conforti, Field, Form, and Fate: Patterns in Mind, Nature, and Psyche). “The spiral in psychology means that when you make a spiral you always come over the same point where you have been before, but never really the same, it is above or below, inside, outside, so it means growth” (C.G. Jung, Symbols of Transformation as found in N.W. Russack, ARAS). 

 

2:12: While hunting for berries at the edge of the forest:

 

“Like the mint that grows so profusely in the poet’s garden, the Forrest floor of our story thrives in abandonment. Only when we tip toe quietly can we see that” (J. Evetts-Secker, At Home In the language of the Soul, p. 136). This story evolved from several sources, including the delicacy of idle time when the bloom of a story is most fit to grow.

 

 

4:33: Star-lit mountain of celestial spiralling spheres:

 

Henri Corbin spoke of “the land of nonwhere” in his description of the Mundus Imaginalis. “The theosophers of Islam “made quite clear that topographically this region starts at the “convex surface” of the ninth Sphere, the Sphere of Spheres, or the Sphere that envelops the Cosmos as a whole” (H. Corbin, Mundus Imaginalis: Or the Imaginary and the Imaginal, p. 3).

 

5:03: Reverts back into a dream:

 

The images formed in this story return to their original essence after the tale is complete. Von Franz wrote, “I think it likely that the most frequent way in which archetypal stories originate is through individual experiences of an invasion by some unconscious content, either in a dream or in a waking hallucination—some event or some mass hallucination whereby an archetypal content breaks into an individual life”(von Franz, The Interpretation of Fairy Tales, p, 24). The story for the woman with long dangling hair was comprised of a biblical reference, a collaborative creation, and an active imagination. Thus the story stays kept in the land of the imaginal.

​

​

​

​

f i v e

​

U N D E R G R O U N D

​

b y

c h a r l e s  m o r s e​

​

​

05:47: La vita nuova:

​

Published in 1294, La Vita Nuova was a precursor to Dante Alighieri's masterpiece, Divina Commedia. In a break from the tradition of courtly love poetry from which it emerged, La Vita Nuova ("new life"), marked the emergence of il dolce stil nuovo, the "sweet new style" of nimble, symbolic, metaphorically rich verse that presaged the creative flowering of the Italian Renaissance.

 

6:00: A different music moves us here:

​

A reference to the profound and invigorating influence of Black and African music traditions, from which have emerged the blues, soul, jazz, bossa nova, samba, rock, rap, gospel, and R&B among others. Complex, grounded rhythmic qualities, in particular, have served as a compensation to the formality, precision, and relative abstraction of Western classical music.

​

 

6:07: Like seeds seizing their moment:

​

Water uptake by seeds, referred to as imbibation, initiates germination. During this phase, a seed will absorb 2 - 3 times its weight in water. The subsequent expansion causes the encased germ to burst out of its hard, durable membrane, its seed coat.

​

 

6:10: The new wine:

​

Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau: "The exquisite corpse will drink the new wine." According to Andre Breton, this was the first phrase generated by the game now simply referred to as Exquiste Corpse in which participants collectively assemble words or images to create new and unexpected permutations. The game was popular among the French surrealists and is useful as means of getting "unstuck". The phrase "the new wine" inspired this film of mine by the same name.

 

6:48: Here is no place for splendid isolation:

 

The term "splendid isolation" originally referred to a tenet Britain's foreign policy of the latter half of the 19th Century, during which time it sought to steer clear of permanent and entangling alliances. Splendid isolation also implies a sense of superiority and aloofness, qualities sometimes attributed to the god Apollo. We hear echoes of splendid isolation in the rhetoric of Brexit and America First. In depth psychological terms, we could argue that ego consciousness has its own foreign policy of splendid isolation vis-à-vis the many facets of the unconscious.

 

7:42: Why else would they build supercolliders?:

 

Particle accelerators, known colloquially as supercolliders, enable physicists to observe the behavior of subatomic particles by colliding atoms at extremely high velocities. Furthermore, chemistry (which derived from medieval alchemy), is the study of how different elemental substances interact with one another under varying conditions. By analogy, we only begin to understand ourselves through interaction with the people and environment that surround us, as well as the interactions between the elemental components of psyche within us. The short film Archetypal Ball playfully explores what occurs when hitherto siloed archetypal energies begin to interact with one another.

​

7:51: We get to try on all the masks at the masquerade:

​

Vaguely, dimly, I sense that my inner landscape is parched, too.

 

I meet a woman who will become my wife. Her name, Rio, bespeaks water and flow.

Caught in her eddies, she draws me north, to an island of rain and moss. In the moist soil we begin to set roots.

 

8:04: We master the modes and the scales:

 

The dynamic tension between order and chaos, structure and improvisation, the archetypal senex and puer. As Picasso said, "Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist."

 

8:29: We digest the raw events of life into experience:

 

"To make the distinction between inner and outer on other grounds, means seeing the movement between soul and history to be a process that is continually internalizing and externalizing, gaining insight and losing it, deliteralizing and reliteralizing. Soul and history are names we give to this more fundamental operation going on between what Hindu thought refers to as suksma (subtle) and sthula (gross), between the fictional metaphorical viewpoint and the literalistic historical viewpoint, between inwardness and outwardness. It is not that there are two kinds of events, or two places of events, but two perspectives toward events, an inner psychological one and an outer historical one... Soul slows the parade of history; digestion tames appetite; experience coagulates events." (J. Hillman, Healing Fiction, pp. 31 - 32)

 

8:35: We engage in an alchemy that nourishes the soul of the world:

 

As an organic farmer, I am struck by the parallels between the process of composting, i.e. the transformation of dead and decaying organic materials into stable, life-supporting, humus-rich soil and the alchemical stages as articulated by C.G. Jung. Jung believed the alchemists were describing an inner psychological process - from fragmentation to integration and wholeness - as well as observations of their experiments with various physical materials, a process that began with "blackening" and decay and concluded with the life-giving substance of the philosopher's stone.

 

8:42: Different gods hold sway here:

 

Freud, Jung, Hillman, and other depth psychologists often looked to Greek mythology and the Greek pantheon to give shape and story to their psychological insights. Hillman's school of archetypal or imaginal psychology, in particular, richly elaborates upon the archetypal essence of the Greek gods and goddesses. The underworld (i.e. the unconscious) is not governed by gods who represent the characteristics of ego-consciousness (Zeus, Apollo, Hera, Hestia, etc.). To orient ourselves with regards to encounters with unconscious material, we therefore must look to archetypal figures associated with death and the underworld (Hades, Persephone, Hermes, Dionysus, etc.). Honoring the characteristics of Hermes, the messenger god equally at home on Olympus or in the realm of the dead, is particularly useful for those looking to dialog in the symbolic language of the unconscious.

 

"[Hermes] is, par excellence, a god of mythic thought, more interested in the truth of symbols. As Messenger of the Gods, he brings the fundamental message of all gods--which is myth." (G. Paris, Pagan Grace, p.101)

 

5:40: Everything belongs:

 

When asked to distill Jungian psychology to its essence, the Jungian analyst Russell Lockhart thought for a moment before exclaiming, "Everything belongs!"

​

9:18: They tell fabulous lies that point to truths:

​

Again, echoing Pablo Picasso, who stated in a 1923 interview, "We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand."

​

9:40: Of pomegranate seeds, eat no more than six:

​

After Zeus forced his brother Hades, god of the underworld, to relinquish the maiden Persephone, Hades offered her a pomegranate. She ate six seeds, and for each seed that she ingested, she was bound to spend one month of every year by his side as his Queen. Thus, Persephone is unique among the gods in that she spends equal time between the upper world (of ego-consciousness) and the underworld. To eat more than six pomegranate seeds is thus to become ensnared in the mystery and dark allure of the underworld and lose the healthy connection with our conscious awareness.

​

​

​

​

s i x

 

T O  P A S S  B A C K  T H R O U G H

T H E  H E A R T

​

b y

d e b r a  g o l d m a n

​

 

 

10:23: Labyrinth:

 

Constructed in the early 13th century, this labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral in France, is one of the most recognized representations of a pilgrims’  spiritual quest.

 

10:26: Distillation, transformation, individuation:

 

The slow and steady process of my own personal growth after a traumatic family event. “…the psychospiritual death-rebirth process occurring during individuation is on a continuum with a larger process of psychological development….Everyone is subject to the transformative process of individuation on some level.” (K. LeGrice, Archetypal Reflections, Insights and Ideas from Jungian Psychology, p.67)

 

10:34: Mandala

 

C.G. Jung studied, created and practiced with his patients, the symbolic healing capacities of  the mandala.  The mandala is…..”[an] instrument of meditation, concentration, and self-immersion, for the purpose of realizing inner experience….At the same time they serve to produce an inner order - which is why, when they appear in a series, they often follow chaotic, disordered states marked by conflict and anxiety. They express the idea of a safe refuge, or inner reconciliation and wholeness.” (C.G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Unconscious, p.383-384)

 

10:59: Dream

 

Visual and narrative amplification of a dream image which reflects the alchemical transformation of the Self. “In alchemy….Jung found a mine of symbolism that he recognized to parallel the way a human being, with a correct use of will and imagination, and the assent of fate, can enter a process whose goal is the creation of an internal structure he called the self.” (N. Schwartz-Salant, Jung on Alchemy, p. 2)

 

11:10 Alchemy

 

“…alchemy attempted to deal with the complexities of change, the transformation from one state or form to another, from a seed to an embryo, or from an ore of little value to silver or gold….This outer or mundane work with materials was intimately linked to an inner or mundane work on the human personality.” (N. Schwartz-Salant, Jung on Alchemy, p. 2)

 

11:29: Providence

 

The charcoal bowl in the dream has been left in Providence. The bowl might be thought of as an alchemical vessel where the process of decomposition takes place. This might signify the breaking apart of the psyche. In the dream, change occurs when I am able to break from a habituated way of reacting to life circumstances and instead develop the capacity to reflect and respond. Providence, is seen as divine guidance, the protective care of God or of nature as as spiritual power.

 

11:55: Painting

​

The alchemical process is not always a linear process or one of easily identified and quantified steps as is suggested in the steps I have illuminated. The creation of this painting is represented in five stages leading to the final “reddening” of the bowl, or in alchemical terms, the rubedo. “The growing redness (rubedo) which now follows denotes an increase of warmth and light coming from the sun, consciousness. This corresponds  to the increasing participation of consciousness, which now begins to react emotionally to the contents produced by the unconscious….gradually leading to the synthesis of the opposites.” ( (N. Schwartz-Salant, Jung on Alchemy, p.107-108)

 

12:37: Synchronicity

 

After sleeping for several hours and dreaming into the creation of this presentation, I am startled awake by a loud and thunderous rain and wind storm. Unable to fall back to sleep, I reach to my side and pick up a book I have been reading. Before this reading, C.G. Jung had not been mentioned. Jung coined the term synchronicity to describe a phenomenon where an event in the outside world coincides meaningfully with a psychological state of mind. Sometimes also called a coincidence.

 

13:29: Palimpsest

​

“When an image is realized - fully imagined as a living being other than myself - then it becomes a psychopompos, a guide with a soul having its own inherent limitation and necessity.” (J. Hillman, A Blue Fire, p. 56)

 

14:07: Heart as organ of perception

​

“For Beauty, as we have seen, means the form of what is presented, that which is breathed in aesthesis, and by which the value of each particular thing strikes the heart, the organ of aesthetic perception, where judgements are heartfelt responses, not merely critical, mental reflections.” (H. McConeghey, Art and Soul, p. 83)

 

14:26: Disconnection and the Anima Mundi

 

“To the archetypal psychologist the world, too, is a patient in need of therapeutic attention. When our fantasy of the world deprives it of personality and soul, we tend to treat this “inanimate” world badly….If the world has subjectivity, we have to have a relationship with it….returning soul to the world not only attends to the world, it offers more opportunity to engage in the work of soul ourselves.” (J. Hillman, A Blue Fire, pp. 95-96)

​

 

 

​