Archetype of the Witch: Dangerous, Denied & Dishonored
Вставка
- Опубліковано 26 жов 2021
- It’s witching season, the time when women of all ages embrace a mythical image of unfettered feminine power. The witch may cast spells, seek vengeance, or wreak creative havoc-as she pleases. Flying the night skies of psyche, the witch brings primordial realities into culture’s brittle convictions.
Like all aspects of the collective unconscious, the witch lays low when times are fine but rises when times are tense. Her archetypal power then infects humankind, inciting mass hysteria and the horrors of persecutory epidemics. The witch is a symbol of our fear and vulnerability to the Great Mother in her dark, heartless aspect--and her power remains. Jung says, “On a primitive level people are afraid of witches; on the modern level we are apprehensively afraid of microbes.” If we can face the witch and acknowledge her power to depose ego and order, we can also face our choices and the freedom to make them.
HERE'S THE DREAM WE ANALYZE:
"My family has rented a house in an affluent area of my city for a celebration. I borrow my dad's keys afterward to get something out of the car before planning to return quickly to the house. I'm wearing a yarmulke for the occasion. On my way back, I step onto a concrete block overlooking an SUV with an alarm going off. Despite there being a man in the car, a plainclothes policeman approaches me to say I'm being taken in for questioning because the car was stolen. The police officer refuses to let me call my father to tell him what happened. I am questioned by two officers, now in their uniforms, at the back of a luxurious synagogue. I am outraged and trying to profess my innocence with confidence but my body and voice are shaking. The other officer lets me call my dad, who speaks in a gentle voice with sadness and almost disappointment. Then I am brought to a university-type study room to be questioned by a group of teen police officers, some of whom I recognize as people I went to high school with. On the way to this room I see a friend and explain what is happening but she seems apathetic and keeps walking. In the room, the teen police group is being irreverent and making jokes and creating distractions, looking at their phones, playing games, not listening to my expressions of anger and fear. At the end of the dream, Amy Winehouse appears in the room and we all sing her song "Love is Blind." I strain my voice to sing loudly and distinctly."
REFERENCES:
Erich Neumann, Fear of the Feminine
Geoff Shullenberger, “Karen” and the Maenads, Outsider Theory
Madeline Miller, Circe.
BECOME A DREAM INTERPRETER: We've created Dream School to teach others how to work with their dreams. A vibrant community has constellated around this mission, and we think you'll love it. Check it out: thisjungianlife.com/join-drea...
PLEASE GIVE US A HAND: Hey folks, we need your help. Please become our patron and keep This Jungian Life podcast up and running: / thisjungianlife
SHARE YOUR DREAM WITH US: Submit your dream for a possible podcast interpretation: thisjungianlife.com/share-you...
SUGGEST A FUTURE PODCAST TOPIC: Share your suggestions: thisjungianlife.com/podcast-f...
INTERESTED IN BECOMING A JUNGIAN ANALYST? Enroll in the Philadelphia Jungian Seminar and start your journey to become an analyst: www.cgjungphiladelphia.org/se...
YES, WE HAVE MERCH! www.zazzle.com/store/thisjung...
#jungian #dreamanalysis #analyticalpsychology #dreaminterpretation #jung
I just found your channel. I feel like I have stumbled on a lost treasure - years ago, I was involved in a dream group led by a depth psychologist. I joined it as a lark, but it turned into a psychologically and spiritually powerful experience for me and helped me work through a major block in regards to my personal life and its connection to my fiction writing. Your dream work and Jungian interpretations inspire me to revisit the idea of my fantasy stories as my archetypal memoirs. I look forward to listening to more of your episodes - what a gift for our age as so many of us realize how cut off we are from the power of these archetypes and how much we need that power to move forward and evolve spiritually.
The connection of the witch archetype with the shadow… brilliant. Very insightful conversation.
Mother can be an object for a person's hatred. I am enjoying your podcast.
So beautiful and insightful conversation ! The Scarlet witch in "Doctor strange 2 " movie is a perfect representation of how repressed grief , pain and the unwillingness to let go of it can cause the darkest scenario in our lives , that is the root cause of the rageful manifestation of the witch .
Finally got a chance to listen to this in its entirety. Thank you for this - such a wonderful analysis of the witch archetype and its relationship to modern life. Because of my name, friends have sent me so many Karen memes as jokes - love the cat ones especially. Never considered the tie of the Karens to the witch archetype before - I obviously need to claim the power of my name! Seriously, thanks for this. So much food for thought here for me in relation to my writing. In my first series, my main character is a psychic artist - she has to keep her abilities secret, lest she get burned as a witch in her repressive society. When I first started writing this series, I had no idea what kind of archetypal stew I had dived into. By working with dreams and learning more about Jungian archetypes, my subconscious guided me through this series to an unexpected conclusion. Discussions like yours help my conscious mind understand better where my subconscious is taking my stories and not fight the natural artistic process so much. So difficult for artists these days to let go and plunge into the unknown, especially for writers because of how our brains filter language. The editor part of the brain gets turned on far too soon for many writers I know, and they get lost in plotting out every detail ahead of time to escape the terrifying abyss of the unknown and never finish their stories as a result. I believe archetypal work could help people let go and trust their intuition far more in their creative journeys.
Thank you for this conversation and for the hovering around so many beautiful images around witching. Also this question of whether and how to be/become/integrate the witch. I wanted to contribute to the conversation with something that you touched upon, seemingly intuitively - the skill. Integrating the witch shadow as a way of skillful and competent living. In Slavic languages, like Bulgarian for example, the word for witch references exactly to the skill and the material object - VESHTITSA (вещица) where VESHT (вещ) is the adjective for the one who knows and is able to do sth, as well as the noun for a material object.
THANK YOU - your amplification was very interesting ~ Joseph
Thank you! - this is my favorite! I love applying my true conviction of the inner four archetypal SUB--PERSONALITIES: Child, Nurturer, Sage, Warrior; And once you settle on their number, then becomes a relative language of exponentials of potency beyond the original Four--in-One situation within. On the dream: -the actual police are lower in rank in one's perception in relation to The Father.... like the Kennedy's in Dorcester, Mass.
Silencing women by labelling them ''Karens'' is very frustrating. If there is a problem with entitlement in society, or anger, but it's not middle aged women who are the worst offenders. I would say that, I'm 51 but the whole Karen thing is so ageist and sexist and yeh, older women are on the receiving end of both. I'll complain if I want to complain! Same as any man.
Excellent podcast!
Excellent video. I really needed to hear this one
My broken heart...I had a few outbursts and the crone (narcissist) below took it to the streets of the community. I have embraced the Cross and I am healing to gain strength to go another direction. I am praying for karma.
I loved this episode! However, witches are real, not just an archetype. Also yes on the hags coming out! Even men have inner hags and they are worth hearing. "Karens" is a term for a woman being unjustly upset and also wealthy. It's sort of someone being petty about little mistakes that can easily be fixed. It's not a slur for a woman, it's like saying a white woman is being harmful by exploiting their position of wealth by talking down to lower class people. Just wanted to clear that up!
Thank you- I agree they have a poor understanding of the Karen..i.e. A Karen isn't defending HER parking space- she's getting someone towed from THEIR parking space..because she thinks they look funny. aka a gross infringement on the rights of others with utter self entitlement. Otherwise, a good talk..
Omg that makes so much sense.
This came at a interesting time....
I second that. Spirit science thirds it
About the dream. In my imagination it is the notion of law and order that got constellated when I heard the dream.
For all that police force to show up, some law must have been broken. But what kind of law?
Not the civil law because visibly the dreamer didn’t do anything wrong in that regard. He didn't steal that car. And yet, he got detained for questioning by a plain clothes police officer who takes him to a synagogue. For me a synagogue in the dream is an invocation of another kind of law e.g. divine, spiritual or invisible. What has the dreamer done wrong there?
The dreamer is wearing a yarmulke which according to Wikipedia stands for “fear of the King”. In the case of a 24 year old dreamer that sounds terribly like “fear of the father”. If the Wikipedia is wrong and yarmulke means something else, the dream supplies enough alternative evidence that it's the masculine that rules this dream. Does the dreamer believe he broke his father’s law/trust by not graduating in time and thus disappointing him?
There’s a sense of guilt here as well as the “anger and fear” that justice hasn’t been served. The teen police force as it is portrayed in the dream is a caricature of law enforcement. There’s no law, there’s no law enforcement and there’s no justice there. It’s all fun and games. This puts the dreamer in a situation when the person he calls for help, his father, speaks to him with a voice of sadness and disappointment. This effect is amplified by the fact that this incident evolves in public, in a synagogue, and has a public dimension.
To conclude, to me this is a coming of age dream when things get serious and one is called to reflect on things and begin to consider all kinds of laws that exist in life, the written and the unwritten ones. And it's wonderful that the dreamer begins to sense it all himself. This is a good first step to figuring things out. Thank you!
Fascinating. Glad you mentioned Kali. What about the fact that in the Last Midnight scene in Into the Woods the witch says, “Ok mother then. Lost the beans again. Give me claws and a hunch just away from this bunch,” which to me means the witch’s mother originally turned her into a witch. Also do witches have an alchemist element, mixing disparate and rare natural elements in a cauldron to create a potion that changes people from one state to another? I suppose that could be the magical factor you mentioned, but I’m thinking magic and alchemy are different somehow.
I also identify the witch with the alchemist/magician, a transformative archetype of sorts, also find goddess’s such as Kali, Eris, Lilith, Ishtar, & Ceres within the witch archetype (the uninvited feminine principle). There is a destructive as well as regenerative quality to the witch that isn’t always recognized, which also gives a sense of the qualities of Pluto in astrology.
Denigration of the feminine, also includes the sacred feminine.
Fave: The Wicked Witch of the West.
Can you tell me what the parallel archetype would be for a male? Thank you.
The witch can inhabit both women and men equally. ~ Joseph
The clown. Checkout Ann and Barry ulov’s book the witch and the clown
Bitterness about being oppressed
The witches brew
Maybe this is too harsh but women valued for their beauty and baby making and unfortunately not much more. That is how it is for social media and hence the common folk. When that is all there is, an old woman loses all there is. From that point of view, calling somebody an old woman is, well, bad. There aren't many wise old woman types around. Most of the old women are just that, old. They do not get wise, they are too busy with their husbands and rearing their children to develop any awareness of their own inner worlds.
"There aren't many wise old woman types around. Most of the old women are just that, old."--- this way of thinking is part of the problem.
@@redruby8529 I had no wise lady elder role models around me growing up or now. It is not a thinking, it is a reality. Narrow thinking might be a problem too😁
@@pinargosterisli8249 lol talk about narrow thinking...
@@redruby8529 Yes Joy, so true, I'm just quietly, privately feeling more valuable now at 51 than I felt at 21. Nobody notices my wisdom! Nobody young is asking me what to worry about but I have wisdom. It serves me well. Men don't get to decide that femininity has to be youth. I see that now. I'm feminine in my sense of myself. I have no shortage of inspiration from wise older women luckily! I know there are legions of wise women if we're wise enough to notice them.
Until a woman , beside rearing children , also develops awareness to her deepest inner worlds.
Athena is to me the true shadow of the feminine. Look what she also did to Medusa. IMO, women like Hillary Clinton are like Athena because they are in power in patriarchal hegemony. In order to get far in this hegemony, a woman has to give up much of her own nature. To me equality in this power structure is to have equality with all that continues to profane the sacred- the sacred being the hidden feminine.
Unfortunately a lot of Karen behavior is racist and that makes it nigh impossible to have any kind of sympathy or empathy for what may be underneath.