Exegesis V07 Issue 024

Exegesis Volume 07 Issue #024

In This Issue:

From: "JG or DF"
Subject: [e] Re: exegesis Digest V7 #22

Exegesis Digest Mon, 11 Feb 2002

From: "JG or DF"
Subject: [e] Re: exegesis Digest V7 #22
Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2002 23:42:00 +1300

Reply to Roger...
> >I am guilty of accusing Jung's of hedging, being vague, and even imitating
> >the style of a lily livered academic bureaucrat; but the older I get, the
> >more I like him...:) The passage above seems pretty clear and to me, and I
> >don't quite understand your disappointment in this particular
> >explanation/definition. I do respect a certain unknowable difference between
> >the "consciousness" of the psyche and the conscious activities of an
> >individual's mind. I'm fairly certain the psyche of individual's was engaged
> >in life enriching and life sustaining symbolic activities at a time when men
> >had a vocabulary we could only describe as grunts and gestures. The
> >"thinking" activity of both man and animal (perhaps of rocks as well) seems
> >likely to be quite autonomic, hence the too common notion that God (whatever)
> >is busy doing all the "thinking" and choosing.

Sounds suspiciously like the thesis advocated by Julian Jaynes, with which I find myself inclined to agree. A genius, perhaps, able to validate original insights with inexorable documentation and reasoning. How sad that only one book has thus far emanated therefrom. Too revolutionary for the academic world, I guess. Probably didn't so much freak out his peer group as blow them completely out of the water and into the next county, and after they crawled back they never forgave him.

Forced me to revise the habit of a lifetime - meaning adherence to the romantic fallacy; that people in ancient cultures were just as perceptive and articulate as now.

> >The fact that we have a tendency to interpret symbols in a much too
> >cultural and or too personal manner would seem to leave us unable to
> >...well..., to intelligently speak for the psyche--to properly name the
> >characters of its incoming symbolic data, or to list the exact motivations
> >these "symbols" may give rise to at any given time. I think I dimly see the
> >psyche as being involved in some form of spiritual autonomic homeostasis. In
> >many ways I see the psyche as being very much a blind and mute poet who
> >usually manages to respond to life's circumstances miraculously well. Unlike
> >me, it behaves almost as if it knew what is was it was doing..:)

Sounds interesting. If you mean the psyche does it's own thing in as natural a way as possible despite our attempts at control, I agree, to the extent that such a generalisation applies. Serial killers have a different explanation, presumably. Rapists however, maybe not, if evolutionary psychology is reliable. Some of that stuff is persuasive, but I always feel a reluctance to go down that road. Too civilised, already??

On your earlier point, I agree that we tend to be too idiosyncratic in reading a meaning to symbols sometimes, and too conformist to social convention other times. I guess that's just how we are. Ideally we would read the symbol as a signpost pointing to the archetype that it represents (restricting the discussion to only those symbols that represent astrological archetypes). Doing so gives us inner recognition of the archetype, perhaps even inner attunement to it.

> >Much to the chagrin of Jung, I'm sure, I have very non-Jungian thoughts
> >about something I can only call the *individual psyche*--the spiritual native
> >of the birth chart. My idea of the personal psyche is not that of a well
> >trained collective creature...:)

I guess I'm with you on this. But maybe we became so individualised that we are not typical, so you can't generalise on our basis. Most people are `well-trained collective creatures'. Just watch them still waving the flag like robots (or has everyone abandoned that habit except Americans?). Just watch the astrologers, still using Ptolemy's rulerships like robots, to invent meanings that aren't there.

> >I do suffer from the usual Western schismatic notion of a separation, a
> >distance of some sort, between mind and soul. However, my individual psyche
> >is like a bridge spanning this ethereal plain--this no man's land where angels
> >apparently fear to tread...:) This bridge between the state of eternal
> >omnipotence and the finite, temporarily do-able, human existence is built by
> >individual effort from the available spiritual materials, it serves dutifully
> >in all kinds of weather, but eventually exhausts the potentials of the
> >inherited structural materials, or suffers from poor maintenance and, is no
> >more.

In fact, currently an area of investigation for me, of which more anon.. I'll be out of town for over a week from tomorrow, so any comment or query to me that appears here in the interim will get a delayed response.