I'm reading a book right now by Thomas Moore, and he's a great writer in the field of Archetypal Psychology. He states that whenever we don't like something, either in someone else or ourselves, there is a tendency to just reject it and walk away 'clean'. But Faces of God are tricky. What is rejected often accumulates as shadow material, that can then 'act' in strange and unconscious ways, creating drastic changes in our lives.
There are always a number of forces at work within us, and rejection of one Face of God can have unintended consequences. To illustrate his point, he turns to a Greek myth, the story of Hippolytus and his devotion to Artemis. The Greeks were always warning about not devoting oneself to only one Goddess because the others will get pissed off. This is their way of warning against black and white thinking or purity spirals. And I think this is the main theme of Balogh's first Ravenwood story - Devlin's pure intent and righteous anger, which is technically correct, but highly destructive, and his Mother's attempts to deal with the consequences of that, and the complex lines between right and wrong.
I see there's some discussion about the Lady in Remember When. there are various ways of interpreting any text. Archetypal psychology is not a common form. In this style of reading, any story is not taken only literally, but also an interplay of archetypes, or the Faces of God or looking at the 'theological reality; spoken about by Laura in The Wave.
For instance, we might see Devlin and his family, who are characters in an external yet fictional world, but also standing in for the relationship between the archetypal Mother, Father, and Child. They aren't just different persons existing externally, but also as internal aspects in our own psyche - the Mother, Child, and Father images within us that inform, or form, our own personal myth, story or worldview. The way we respond to them says a lot about what's going on inside us. They can also be seen as images of one person (the Child) in relationship with culture (the Father) and nature (the Mother).
This derails the common black-and-white thinking common to left-brain domination, which asks the question - 'Well, is she good or bad?' IMO this type of thinking is the target of Balogh's novel, and the ability to reserve quick judgments, hold more than one perspective of someone at a time, and understand the point of view of the Other - or to not do so - is a major lesson for all the characters involved. In essence, it's a meditation on the Covey principle of 'seek first to understand, then be understood'. It scrambles the zero-sum question of 'who is right and who is wrong'.
The implications of this way of reading have been pretty profound for me. Like let's say I don't like the Lady in Remember When because of what she did. If the thinking stops there, at literal interpretation, then some significant insights into the nature of the deep Soul are missed.
For instance, we could see each member of the Ware family being one archetypal aspect of the story of the same mind. We can see characters as 'consciousness energy-directors' in the unfolding story. As every story is basically a story of individuation, that implies the Necessity of conflict to develop one's character, and as such, at a higher level there seems to be a necessity of people making 'bad' decisions in order to provide the painful crucible in which choices are made. Even though the suffering is horrible from a 3D perspective. According to Plato in The Myth of Er, this suffering is Necessity, and it is chosen before we incarnate here.
Archetypal psychology makes sense, then, as a form of tautological thinking. Once we've finished the book, or reached the telos, we can see the Necessity of the actions of all involved - good and bad, Yin and Yang. This is much different than the Hippolytic purity perspective that simply reacts when everyone just does NOT seem to do the right thing. If everyone did the right thing, that's not an interesting story, in large part because it doesn't accurately reflect the complexity of real life.
The C's have said to read fairy tales for clues for male-female relationships. According Marie Louise Von Franz, who pioneered the Western fairy tale renaissance, fairy tales are storehouses of the archetypes, or Faces of God. She writes that in the current blip of time in our culture, there is no adequate image of the Feminine. My understanding is that therefore boys and men have a hard time figuring out how to relate to their Mothers, their own feminine side, their intimate partners, women in general, and also all things feminine.
This is the archetypal context in which Devlin lives - a Protestant culture with a giant hole where the Divine Mother should be. So it's no wonder Mother issues are central in the story - it's generally understood in mythology and fairy tales that that which is ignored or rejected will return with a vengeance. I think this describes the Lady of Ravenswood perfectly. She stands in for, or embodies, the archetype of the rejected Goddess.
I've been learning that fairy tales provide roadmaps of a soul's initiation, or in psychological terms, the path to individuation - becoming one's own person, finding out who you truly are, and discovering your destiny.
The fairy tale material suggests that the individuation roadmap for men needs to meet certain requirements. He needs to bond with the Mother, and then separate from her. He also needs to bond with the Father, and also separate from him. For Devlin, these both occur in a catastrophic way. He also needs to bond with the mentor - in Devlin's case, the military. After this, he begins an apprenticeship with his own unique self - trying to learn to love in a devastated world. The climax of individuation is ironically a move out of mythic isolation and towards relationship, union and reunion, in returning to his family, and eventually marriage. This is not just 3D marriage, but also a reflection of the heiros gamos, the holy marriage of masculine and feminine. There is a reunion with the abandoned Goddess (represented by both his Mother and Gwyneth).
From a 3D psychological perspective, then, Devlin's mother and father are definitely not 'good'. But from a deeper Soul perspective, whether it's called archetypal or teleological, they are. Their 'badness' can be understood as a form of Necessity because their behaviour creates the necessary challenge and tension for him to drop his own Hippolytic purity complex, find some Aphrodite in his life, and make him a real man.
There are always a number of forces at work within us, and rejection of one Face of God can have unintended consequences. To illustrate his point, he turns to a Greek myth, the story of Hippolytus and his devotion to Artemis. The Greeks were always warning about not devoting oneself to only one Goddess because the others will get pissed off. This is their way of warning against black and white thinking or purity spirals. And I think this is the main theme of Balogh's first Ravenwood story - Devlin's pure intent and righteous anger, which is technically correct, but highly destructive, and his Mother's attempts to deal with the consequences of that, and the complex lines between right and wrong.
I see there's some discussion about the Lady in Remember When. there are various ways of interpreting any text. Archetypal psychology is not a common form. In this style of reading, any story is not taken only literally, but also an interplay of archetypes, or the Faces of God or looking at the 'theological reality; spoken about by Laura in The Wave.
For instance, we might see Devlin and his family, who are characters in an external yet fictional world, but also standing in for the relationship between the archetypal Mother, Father, and Child. They aren't just different persons existing externally, but also as internal aspects in our own psyche - the Mother, Child, and Father images within us that inform, or form, our own personal myth, story or worldview. The way we respond to them says a lot about what's going on inside us. They can also be seen as images of one person (the Child) in relationship with culture (the Father) and nature (the Mother).
This derails the common black-and-white thinking common to left-brain domination, which asks the question - 'Well, is she good or bad?' IMO this type of thinking is the target of Balogh's novel, and the ability to reserve quick judgments, hold more than one perspective of someone at a time, and understand the point of view of the Other - or to not do so - is a major lesson for all the characters involved. In essence, it's a meditation on the Covey principle of 'seek first to understand, then be understood'. It scrambles the zero-sum question of 'who is right and who is wrong'.
The implications of this way of reading have been pretty profound for me. Like let's say I don't like the Lady in Remember When because of what she did. If the thinking stops there, at literal interpretation, then some significant insights into the nature of the deep Soul are missed.
For instance, we could see each member of the Ware family being one archetypal aspect of the story of the same mind. We can see characters as 'consciousness energy-directors' in the unfolding story. As every story is basically a story of individuation, that implies the Necessity of conflict to develop one's character, and as such, at a higher level there seems to be a necessity of people making 'bad' decisions in order to provide the painful crucible in which choices are made. Even though the suffering is horrible from a 3D perspective. According to Plato in The Myth of Er, this suffering is Necessity, and it is chosen before we incarnate here.
Archetypal psychology makes sense, then, as a form of tautological thinking. Once we've finished the book, or reached the telos, we can see the Necessity of the actions of all involved - good and bad, Yin and Yang. This is much different than the Hippolytic purity perspective that simply reacts when everyone just does NOT seem to do the right thing. If everyone did the right thing, that's not an interesting story, in large part because it doesn't accurately reflect the complexity of real life.
The C's have said to read fairy tales for clues for male-female relationships. According Marie Louise Von Franz, who pioneered the Western fairy tale renaissance, fairy tales are storehouses of the archetypes, or Faces of God. She writes that in the current blip of time in our culture, there is no adequate image of the Feminine. My understanding is that therefore boys and men have a hard time figuring out how to relate to their Mothers, their own feminine side, their intimate partners, women in general, and also all things feminine.
This is the archetypal context in which Devlin lives - a Protestant culture with a giant hole where the Divine Mother should be. So it's no wonder Mother issues are central in the story - it's generally understood in mythology and fairy tales that that which is ignored or rejected will return with a vengeance. I think this describes the Lady of Ravenswood perfectly. She stands in for, or embodies, the archetype of the rejected Goddess.
I've been learning that fairy tales provide roadmaps of a soul's initiation, or in psychological terms, the path to individuation - becoming one's own person, finding out who you truly are, and discovering your destiny.
The fairy tale material suggests that the individuation roadmap for men needs to meet certain requirements. He needs to bond with the Mother, and then separate from her. He also needs to bond with the Father, and also separate from him. For Devlin, these both occur in a catastrophic way. He also needs to bond with the mentor - in Devlin's case, the military. After this, he begins an apprenticeship with his own unique self - trying to learn to love in a devastated world. The climax of individuation is ironically a move out of mythic isolation and towards relationship, union and reunion, in returning to his family, and eventually marriage. This is not just 3D marriage, but also a reflection of the heiros gamos, the holy marriage of masculine and feminine. There is a reunion with the abandoned Goddess (represented by both his Mother and Gwyneth).
From a 3D psychological perspective, then, Devlin's mother and father are definitely not 'good'. But from a deeper Soul perspective, whether it's called archetypal or teleological, they are. Their 'badness' can be understood as a form of Necessity because their behaviour creates the necessary challenge and tension for him to drop his own Hippolytic purity complex, find some Aphrodite in his life, and make him a real man.
