MYTH

PANTHEON Holographic Gods by Iona Miller, 1983-2015 https://holographicarchetypes.weebly.com/pantheon.html Traditional folk tales and multicultural myths can be used as powerful tools because they are repositories of ancient wisdom about the human condition and because they teach the language of symbolism, imagery, and metaphor. These wisdom tales can help us gain insight into behavior and can function as effective catalysts for bringing about change. Through storytelling, we can learn the language of metaphor, which can help us intuit the existence of deeper meanings and truths. In our language a mythological god is an archetype and an archetype is always at the same time an instinctive pattern, an instinctive basis. The mythic field is the realm of the unconscious. The form of myth emerges as patterns from the field of the Collective Unconscious. Pattern is a language, using fields to describe dynamic relationships and energetics. Each pattern is a field. The field of myth is emotional -- emergent, resonant, challenging -- inviting ritual enactment to animate and embody it. Thus, we recognize and develop our own style of mythic consciousness, stepping in to join with others, daring to live our larger lives within the field of historic life. Such journeys are rites of passage.

Anatomy of the Star Goddess Quantum Cosmology, Virtual States, Energy Science, Chaos Theory, and Scalar Fields by Iona Miller, c1992 https://ionamiller2017.weebly.com/nuit.html Multiple realities contain all possibilities, but in enfolded or virtual states. This theory alleges that there are clustered worlds, which are three-dimensional to an observer within them, yet virtual to an observer from outside. These hyperspace dimensions are orthogonally rotated (90 degrees) in respect to one another. Selecting a frame, or cube of space, facilitates access. When we consider the vastness of space, we perceive emptiness due to our relative position in this universe. The Void is actually densely packed with virtual energy which awaits translation, or transduction into our observable 3-dimensional reality. These energies or entities appear as virtual because they are unobservable through ordinary means. Crosstalk across these channels is the basis for the collective unconscious, paranormal phenomena, and the manifestation of our material world. Like philosophy, physics is not any absolute description of Truth. Rather, both disciplines invite us to "Look at it this way." This approach is very much in line with the long-standing tradition of speculative Qabala and Hermetic philosophy.

GEN-ISIS The Goddess in the Roots of Your Family Tree Iona Miller, July 2017 Prepared for Summer 2017 Issue of Isis-Seshat Journal https://ionamiller2017.weebly.com/gen-isis.html There is possibly no older tradition than that of honoring our ancestors. Genealogy is both a traditional and modern way to see how the gods fit into our personal existence. The metadata hidden in our genealogy can supply information hidden in the cognitive and emotional unconscious as structure, embodied memory, and lineage. It can inform our neo-traditional practice, rooted in the present. Few forces are as strong in the psyche as genetics, sex and death. We don't have to take the ancient ancestral lines as literally accurate. But we can appreciate how they directly connect us to the gods and goddesses as our ancestors. Genealogy mediates their voices, helping us live a full complete life, including alternative modes of structuring human experience and ways of inhabiting space. Creativity means discovering something new. In this regard, Isis (Aset) is one of the most ancient goddesses. She still bestows her gifts to humanity in a wide variety of cultural forms, including non-conceptual experience, and magic skills to move through darkness and light. The collective unconscious is the universal template of meaning and experience, while the personal unconscious is specifically what it means to you. Tracing our family tree back to descent from antiquity is a way to actively tap the mythic dimension and the archetypal field of the ancestors. Myth, as Homer noted, includes speech, conversation, advice, opinion, and promise. If myth is the maker of the psyche, soul-making is our return to the poetic and imaginal root of consciousness. If we want to know about psyche, we have to go to psyche, that other realm which is just as real and dangerous as this one.

Embodying Osiris Review for Alchemy Journal Review by Iona Miller of EMBODYING OSIRIS: The Secrets of Alchemical Transformation, by Thom F. Cavalli Egypt remains a realm of mystery as does the psyche. The ancient land of Egypt is not the same as the eternal sunshine of the Egypt of our modern minds. We can never "embody Osiris" with concepts, but only through fully entering the inherent mystery of alchemical processes that define the rhythms of life. In this insightful Jungian volume, Dr. Thom Cavalli is correct in insisting that "empathic engagement of the god on an imaginal and physical level" is required. In this way a more meaningful life springs from death, through a "body" of integrative experience. The Egyptians presumed "death" was not the only option. Universal Solvent There is a generic process in nature and consciousness which dissolves and regenerates all forms. Inherently unpredictable holistic repatterning is the essence of transformation. The dissolution (solve) of death can be followed by a sublimation (coagula) that releases the Ultima Materia of the Soul. Coagulation transcends heaven and earth, producing a transcorporeal incarnation that can survive both. Through this Body of Light we learn to exist at all levels of reality, fusing individual and universal fields. In Anatomy of the Psyche, analyst Edward Edinger describes seven major aspects of solutio symbolism, which recapitulate the cycle of Osiris: (1) return to the womb or primal state; (2) dissolution, dispersal, dismemberment; (3) containment of a lesser thing by a greater; (4) rebirth, rejuvenation, immersion in the creative energy flow; (5) purification ordeal; (6) solution of problems; and (7) melting or softening process. The most undesirable outcome of any Egyptian life was to become nonexistent. But, we can resurrect that portion of the Osirian spirit that we carry in our unconscious. We can resurrect the magical names of Osiris: 'Wenennefer" or "Wennofry", "joy of existence" or "beautiful being". Osiris is a realization -- a Way of being, not simply a philosophical worldview. Human beings weave imaginal tales about the nature of nature, their experience and dreams. We still stave off our fears of death with hopes of eternal life when the existential fact remains that it is impossible for us to leave the sacred source field that undergirds both our corporeal existence and our potential immortalization in the virtual field, the groundstate of continuous creation. We will never know if their ardent efforts granted the Pharaohs primordial awareness or not. We just change form -- and that may be the essence of alchemy. Our alchemy is kept alive by practice and open-ended questions and spiritual questing that keeps the transformative process flowing. The method works if we do. What we derive from it has everything to do with what we put into it. A Jungian approach is not a requirement for alchemical practice, "spiritual" or otherwise. It is a valid approach with its own coherence. A book of this sort can probably help us articulate some of our experiences. It can also highlight where we might strongly disagree about our style of practice. Both resonance and cognitive dissonance add to our self-awareness.

INANNA Primordial Creation When history begins to speak, it speaks as a Tree, represented as the progenitor of the human race. The very first written story from Sumeria -- the world's oldest poetry -- is a creation story about Inanna and the sacred Tree of Life -- a World Tree with instinctual DNA knowledge living in it. This Tree of Life is the first legend and the link between the transcendental and phenomenal worlds. Our kinship bonds and genealogical ancestry are expressed through the sacred tree archetype. Joseph Campbell (1965) said Inanna was the Tree herself, the "cosmic tree of life and death" (p. 64). She is the ineffable totality of what is -- the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge which are one and the same as the Tree of Truth. Jung reminds us, "In the last analysis, most of our difficulties come from losing contact with our instincts, with the age-old unforgotten wisdom stored up in us. And where do we make contact with this old man in us? In our dreams." (Psychological Reflections, 76). Vision Tree The tree is our vegetative self, involuntary action and life in the body. Such experiences are closely related to death, which is a permanent resident of the psyche. The creatures that live in the tree, including the serpent, are our instincts. Your body is your subconscious mind. Mind and body are the same because mind is distributed. We are all interdependent. The problem is we have isolated ourselves from each other, from animals, plants, and the inorganic ground of cosmos. We have forgotten our origins and embody a myth of loneliness. Our emotional and intuitive mind naturally engages with and is interactive with nature. Mindell (1982) likens the dreambody ("subtle body") to a tree. Half is above the ground and can be described medically or biologically as the 'real' body and half is below ground as roots we can sense when we focus our attention on subtle signals in psychophysical reality. Dreambody appears in body images, rituals, and physical therapies. Jung is very clear that, "...there is a thinking in primordial images, in symbols which are older than the historical man, which are inborn in him from the earliest times, and, eternally living, outlasting all generations, still make up the groundwork of the human psyche. It is only possible to live the fullest life when we are in harmony with these symbols; wisdom is a return to them." (CW 8, Pages 399-403). The root is a deeper, universal description of matter, symptoms, and experiential realms where experiences are a matter of life and death. It's the hidden dimension, the "dark matter" of our existence. Mindell says, "The trunk of the tree is a dream symbol that bridges the world between deep sentient experiences and symbols." We can amplify that somatic process by combining instincts, dreams (or trance), and images. The connection depends on unfolding subtle sensations of psyche-matter interactions of psychophysical reality. Somatic rhythms include pulsation, form, flow, construction and deconstruction, and oscillating polarities. All of our cells are intelligent entities. The autonomic system is loaded with all kinds of receptors modulated by peptides stored in the spine all the way down. They can be emotionally expressed through movement and body-centered work. There are receptors for chemical messengers on every cell of the body, and this is where memories are stored. Memory is how much the receptors have been stimulated or not. All the history is there. Emotions are universal. They arise at the cellular level from molecular information -- the remote smart key that fits the subconscious lock.

https://the-wild-psyche.site123.me/ SOBEK: THE WILD PSYCHE by Iona Miller, (c)2018 Prepared for Bibliotheca Alexandrina This essay is a deep dive into the Dark Waters of the human unconscious embodied in the dual nature of Sobek. The self-generated sacred crocodile deity of primal originating force expresses both celestial and chthonic forces of nature. The archetype is an ideational as well as celestial constellation. This dark journey into a dangerous place of unfathomable infinity is a necessary process. It provides an excursion into descent and renewal. So, like the ancients we appeal to the soul and to myth for coherence, for order, for assurance the terrors of suffering and history are not blind, arbitrary or meaningless. The depths of soul become a void. While still felt deeply, we are stripped of our capacity to truly know and differentiate the other. Reactions are experienced only subjectively. Mythologies perform their functions through symbols. The focal point provided by image and symbol holds the mind to truth. The ultimate is, of course, unknowable. Therefore, the images themselves are not "the truth." For us, a journey into the unconscious provides the vital meanings and relatedness to the cosmic order that myths once gave us. It is a return to the source. Meaning is inherent in conscious experience of archetypal processes and the soul's 'suffering of meaning'.

THE HERMIT HEPHAISTOS by Iona Miller https://holographicarchetypes.weebly.com/hephaistos.html Hephaestos (also sp. Hephaistos), God of the Forge, is the personification of subterranean and terrestrial fire, including human lustiness. The instinctive, libidinous "fire down below" is echoed by the Tarot attribution of the spermatazoic letter Yod, which means "hand" but represents the 'point' of the phallus, particularly the sperm which projects from it. It represents the longing for soul completion, or union through the sexual act. This is reflected in the mythic versions where cuckolded Hephaestos is married to Aphrodite. He also attempts the rape of Athena, but his seed falls to the earth depotentiated. Thus he embodies the betrayed and/or rejected lover. The Hermit is solitary, but not lonely. When he seeks the antidote for isolation, he wants to seen, touched, reacted to, to be intimately close to another human being. Even that partner cannot walk his path with him, for we can only become self-realized alone. His worship is probably derived from the Vedic god, Agni. His dominion over primal fire ranges from the wild force of volcanic activity to the harnessed fire of metallurgy. He is the archetypal mechanic or engineer. Technological man has inherited his legacy, and his woundedness, and in this regard Hephaestos shares something in common with Prometheus who stole "fire" from the Gods. The boon carries a bane inherent within its nature -- for one thing, he is preoccupied, even obsessed, with details. We see this today in the obsessive loner techno-geek type. Hephaistos was born of Hera alone. Some ancient authors say Hera invented the legend of his virgin birth because he was conceived before her marriage to Zeus. Others claim that he was conceived from Hera's brooding over Zeus' creation of Athena. Since Hephaistos is credited with striking the blow which released Athena from the cranium of Zeus, this account seems confused. Yet, the mythic dimension is non-linear. So when we compare accounts of exploits, there are discrepancies and variations on the theme from different regions and times. Whether Zeus fathered Hephaistos or not, he rejected him forthwith. In one version, Hera abandoned him also, hurling her lame son into the sea from Olympian heights. This rejection and abandonment led him to judge himself as "imperfect" and his compensation was to achieve technological perfection through his work. Hephaistos was born with a birth defect; he was lame and twisted, and only learned to walk with great difficulty. His appearance disgusted Hera, and she tried to hide him from the Immortals.

APHRODITE: MYSTIQUE & MYSTERIUM The Breath of the Soul Is the Heart of the Matter By Iona Miller, ©2016 https://ionamiller2017.weebly.com/aphrodite.html “The world of gods and spirits is truly 'nothing but' the collective unconscious inside me.” ~Carl Jung, On 'The Tibetan Book of the Dead, CW 11; Page 857. Summary: It is not easy to make an honest attempt to find words for the ineffable. Like unashamed Aphrodite, this essay hopes to titillate, to provoke, to promise even more than it may deliver. The naked mysteries and hidden charms of existence are concealed and revealed. We will flirt with ideas, but won't cover all of her aspects, exploits, or relationships. We may even mix metaphors, or skip promiscuously from subject to subject like a restless dreamer. We all have a keen grasp of the obvious when it comes to love goddess myths and basic psychology. Culture is part of our nature. Hopefully, each reader -- anyone who has had or lost a love, or is a devotee of the goddess – will find their own revelations arising within from the unconscious. A psychological approach to Aphrodite as image-making capacity attends and tends passionately to both psyche and logos. Image and words are the interplay of sensation, intuition, thinking, and feeling. Born into Chronos, our 2 million year old soul longs for Kairos, spirit's time -- the opportune or crucial moment for significant change. Every moment is an opportunity if we tend and attend to it. Aphrodite, the divine Beloved, is the unseen third being that informs every relationship, every devotion. We suggest an archetypal sense of her in the world at large, beyond our libidinous cravings. Tending the heart is minding the soul. Imaginal figures invite us to share the wisdom of our own inner landscapes, dreams, intuitive callings, visions, feelings, and events. Ritual action expresses that relationship with wisdom greater than our conscious mind leading to a larger view of self and world. But technique is not soul. Aphrodite’s mystique is her sacred presence in the ordinary, inherent beauty apprehended as soul. But the creative and poetic power of language is also a natural feature of reality. Imagination and language transform the soul through Mystery. All the functions of the psyche converge in fantasy, in imagination. We are all equally prone to the seductions of our own inner images, thoughts, emotions, and sensations.

HELIOS: PRIMORDIAL LIGHT Creation, Catastrophe, & Titanic Forces by Iona Miller, (c)2018 https://ionamiller2017.weebly.com/helios-titan.html Primordial Deities About 4.6 billion years ago, our solar system, the Sun and the Earth were formed. Myth straddles a scientifically false account of the world, and one which never took place as recounted but contains core truths about the universe or human experience. Myths reveal the human condition in relation to the sky, stars, and planets. The theory and nature of myth is related to the sky. The Titan god Helios is one such personification. The ancients naturally worshiped the life-giving sun, the symbol of the Source and origin of all things. The circumpunct symbol has been around for millennia, as "the circle with the dot in the middle". The circumpunct meaning ranges from an explanation of deity,to an explanation of the self. The circumpunct is one of most symbolic of all symbols. An Egyptian solar symbol dates back to Ra (or Re), god of the midday sun. In fact, the circle with a midpoint, plus a vertical line is the hieroglyph meaning "sun". The all-seeing eyes derives from the circumpunct. The most ancient initiatory and healing symbols, the circumpunct, a dot within a circle and/or a cross within a circle symbolizes the inner sun. is all-seeing eye evolved from prehistoric sun-disc images. The solar cross and wheel pendants mark the cardinal directions and the zodiacal houses of the precessional Great Year, a 26,000 years long cycle. Helios symbolizes the order of solstices punctuated by periodic eclipses. Ancient mankind built megaliths, burial chambers, and cave features to predict these cycles and fearsome wonders. Today, we use telescopes, and the heart of each telescope is a mirror which brings things into focus. The primacy of Helios reflects the primacy of consciousness. Solar energy and fire were always natural metaphors of creative power that becomes exhausted, then sinks back into its prior unconscious condition. Helios became the symbol of pure consciousness shining in the darkness of the unknown and the spiritual vision of the seer, described by H.P. Blavatsky: "[The] “opened eye” is the inner spiritual eye of the seer, and the faculty which manifests through it is not clairvoyance as ordinarily understood, i.e., the power of seeing at a distance, but rather the faculty of spiritual intuition, through which direct and certain knowledge is obtainable. This faculty is intimately connected with the “third eye"... All creation stories, scientific or mythic, describe the manifestation of something out of nothing. Beyond our experience of material reality in spacetime, there is a field of infinite potential, of unbounded possibilities, of absolute space, absolute nature. It is the source of naturally arising light. Light arises like consciousness, thoughts, images, and other mental events arise in our field of experience.

HELIOS: The Primordial Light of the Celestial Sphere The Uplifter of Souls by Iona Miller, (c)2018 https://ionamiller2017.weebly.com/helios-titan.html About 4.6 billion years ago, our solar system, the Sun and the Earth were formed. Myth straddles between false accounts of the world, and those that never took place as described but contain core truths about the universe, the sky of our ancestors. Universal patterns in nature have a mystical, cosmological, sociological, and individual function, both divine and subliminal. Every culture questions the nature, structure and order of the Universe -- the context from which all arises. Helios embodies this archaic worldview. Process is a language full of action. Mankind tracks time by its relationship to the sky, to the seasons and the ceremonies. The daily and yearly journey of the sun has been observed and tracked for aeons all over the world, based on the six sacred directions. We seek our spiritual place within it, skywatching astronomical events to find our place in the world. The premise is that psychic reality, psychic dynamism, including the mind turning around to reflect on itself, is as or more authentic than material reality. We can contemplate a more “conscious” universe, beyond human consciousness rooted in energy and information—a worldview in tune with myth and quantum cosmology. We can only pretend to see our own consciousness 'as if' we were outside of it. Our information states are entangled. Entanglement is the key to the dynamics of absolute space. Conscious awareness depends on the profoundly unconscious substrate. We have a cognitive unconscious for mundane and spiritual content that is difficult to access consciously. And, we have a deep psychic unconscious that is creative and imaginal. We might wonder what all that bright light is hiding. In a similar way, the hidden celestial sun is behind the bright rays of the sun. Sol Invictus is invincible self-effulgent flux. Perceptions shape reality. Its magic is the coherence of ritual or ceremony, gesture, art, and symbolic language in dramatic form. The unified psychic field is an immersive experience of dynamic thought forms and metaphorical-emotional resonance. Epiphany is upon you. Enlightenment awaits. The presocratic monist philosopher, Parmenides, is the father of metaphysics. He identifies his guides as the daughters of Helios, who conduct him on an allegorical mystical journey along the same path Helios travels to the halls of Night, toward the light. The metaphorical activation builds with each image as participatory vision. The Heliades took him by chariot along the Sun's path to the citadel of of a sophic goddess, presumed to be Night. This cosmic goddess revealed to him the true nature of existence within our delusional perceptions and illusory senses. She describes a cosmology and reveals “the unshaken heart of well-rounded reality” (fr. 1.29). Archetypal psychologist James Hillman explained that the “heart is the seat of imagination.” All great adventures begin in the heart. This extraordinary dialogical experience is the motif of mystery, initiation, and encounter with divinity. Some suggest the deity is Helios, in a liminal place where night and day are conflated or intertwined by conceptual blending of source and target domain (knowledge) with myth and metaphor. Poetical images intertwine with scenes of a non-metaphorical journey. The Earth and the Sun travel with retinue of planets through the galaxy. Our true self, like the sun gives us life. Parmenides formed his philosophy from his journey to knowledge where he received divine revelation and wisdom. He assembles corresponding metaphors, focusing and emphasizing the correlations between approach, inquiry, and paths. For the traveler and enquirer, knowledge is the destination of a journey. The metaphorical target is the domain of knowledge but described literally and symbolically. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/parmenides/ We frame our cognitions into narratives or conceptual metaphors -- an imaginal ecology or metaphorical reality. Helios is the core of the intelligence of the natural world with multiple meanings, ambiguity, and polyvalent symbolism; pre-verbal ‘primary process’ of the unconscious: associative, iconic, timeless. Dramatic-metaphorical structure helps us navigate unconscious psychic dimensions and access subliminal states of individual and natural psyche. Cognitive unconscious reconfigures archetypal states and psyche's dream-like imagery into coherent projections with devotional and healing potential. "Psychological reflections always catch light from a peculiar angle; they are annoying at the same time as they are perceptive. Psychologizing sees things peculiarly, a deviant perspective reflecting the deviance in the world around." (p. 164. Hillman, Revisioning Psychology) "There is the psychological moment, a moment of reflection, wonder, puzzlement, initiated by the soul which intervenes and countervails what we are in the midst of doing, hearing, reading, watching. With slow suspicion or sudden insight we move through the apparent to the less apparent." (HRP, p. 140) https://ionamiller2017.weebly.com/helios-uplifter.html

Wrestling with Thanatos by Iona Miller, 2013 https://ionamiller2017.weebly.com/thanatos.html Contemplation of death conjures up images of disintegration, dismemberment, flying apart. In consciousness journeys, the dreamer may be sucked through a swirling vortex into a profound blackness--black that is blacker than black--cold and utterly empty. This state of nothingness feels different to individuals, depending on their personal experience with various aspects of death. Thanatos-consciousness may be an encounter with an apocalyptic whirlwind which rends one limb-from-limb, then fragments the sense of self even further down to cellular, genetic, and atomic consciousness. The imagery of apocalypse and natural disaster surfaces as the ego glimpses its immanent doom. The dance of Death is a whirlwind of transformation. Ego-death is a requirement for opening to the broader realm of transpersonal reality. It heralds a change in the form of consciousness. The crux of this consciousness process is reaching the creative state of undifferentiated consciousness. It is in this state that old primal self images dissolve, and from it the new ones form. It is a death because at the deepest levels we define ourselves by this image and what it has created and frozen into our lives. It ultimately means the dismemberment of our former personality and life patterns. We are it and it is our death when it dissolves into the infinite possibilities of chaotic consciousness. This unformed consciousness--which we often mistake for death-- is really the essence of our vitality and life force. It is the energy we can use to recreate ourselves in every instant of time. It reaches our awareness through dreams (Hypnos) and the flow of our imagination. Yielding to ego-death leads to this consciousness, whether it comes through therapy or a spontaneous near-death experience (N.D.E.) or a closely witnessing death. This consciousness can result from a brush with one's own death or that of another. Dissolving is a death that opens into a field of unformed consciousness with infinite creative possibilities. But we must go through the fear and pain which surrounds this experience to reach this consciousness state. There may be sensations of falling, or floating-falling, or flying off in all directions at once. Eventually all parts of the self are dismembered by the centrifugal forces experienced in the vortex. With a sweep of His scythe, the unseen specter of death cuts us down utterly. Sensations of spinning and being drawn deeper create intense dizziness and disorientation, even nausea. Dismemberment in the spiral often leads to a sense of being "no-thing." The experience of another's natural death is awesome, as is that of birth. Being there, one finds that at that amazing moment there is a giant dilation in the flow of time; a window opens into that other vast realm which is slow to close. It may capture part of oneself for a time, creating a mini-death, or death-in-life. The changes which ensue may be voluntary or involuntary. It may trigger a regression as well as a profound opening to transpersonal awareness. Particularly when a parent or child of ours dies, we are permanently changed in ways we may never have imagined. Some of them have to do with what we imagine or believe the nature of death and an afterlife to be. In myth, Thanatos or Death, naturally supplied Hades with his subjects. Thanatos is the son of Night, who in turn was born from Chaos. The godform of Thanatos is pictured alternatively as dressed in a black robe holding the fatal sword, or as a winged spirit, resembling his twin brother Hypnos, or Sleep. Hypnos also lives in the underworld. He induces the little death of sleep with his magic wand or by fanning his dark wings.

HIGH PRIESTESS ARTEMIS by Iona Miller https://holographicarchetypes.weebly.com/artemis.html In the Tarot, Artemis is corresponded with both the XIV Path 'Art' in her huntress nature, and II 'High Priestess' in her solitary role as Virgin-Mother. In both cases she is associated with the Moon or Lunar Consciousness. She is Queen of the Night, Thea. In Rome she was Diana, in Egypt Isis, for the Jews Shekinah, to Moslems Sakina, in India Shakti, Prakriti and Maya, in Scandinavia Disa. Artemis as Virgin-Mother expresses the archetype in its most exalted form. Paradoxically, she is Great Mother and Immaculate Virgin, the White Goddess. She is a variation of Celestial Queen, the deepest mysteries of nature. She personifies pure self-reliant Feminine power, with an esoteric knowledge of visible and invisible forces, mediumistic abilities. She embodies our submission to faith in destiny. She encourages us to seek our own mystical experiences in receptivity. She represents our oneness with the universe, our essential "be-ing," with attention to natural rhythms and cycles. Paradoxically, she is Great Mother and simultaneously Immaculate Virgin, containing the entire cyclic process of nature and its relationship to time. She transcends time, living constantly in a co-temporaneous eternal Now. her paths up the Middle Pillar exemplify the Way of experiential discovery of these mystic truths. Her way is through symbolic and meditational means -- through the senses and transcendence even beyond the mind, essentially through soul travel. Her Way is the Middle Way, in tantric philosophy the opening of the Sushumna channel and the raising of Kundalini toward the Crown. Union with her is consciousness of primal existential self, and our deepest ecological self. Beneath the layer of alienation from nature which our culture has created lies a deep resource we can tap which is fundamental wisdom about the unity of life. The Virgin helps us balance emotions and desires, directing our thoughts toward higher consciousness. In ancient times she was known as Isis, who exemplified her impenetrable mystery by reiterating that, "I am Isis; no man has lifted my veil." She is bathed in the Light and concealed by it; she is a multifaceted brilliant Solitaire. Thus she alludes to her virgin nature, that sense of wholeness within oneself, which is the source of wisdom. She is the secret powers of nature, Sophia, Shakti, Shekinah. This wisdom is deep ecology which reveals the way of living in balance through intuition. She is the natural Light of the Soul--illumination. This archetype has reverberated down through history as the sublime matriarch known as the Great Mother. She is the possibility of bringing creative ideas to birth, to manifestation. She contemplates the possibility of various manifestations. The matriarchies of ancient times reflected societies intimately in touch with seasonal cycles and natural rhythms. We all yearn for "the mother."

The Primeval World https://ionamiller2020.weebly.com/kybele-attis.html The Primeval World Kybele is 'Mother of the Gods,' 'Mother of the Mountains,' and 'Mistress of Beasts.' The Anatolian Earth Mother embodied the original fluid relationship between the constellation of all beings that gave rise to her voice even before time began. Primal Tradition Goddess, Great Goddess, Kybele, Lady Goddess of the Mountains Visit your small madness upon me, I pray, that the great madness shall pass me by. The Asiatic goddess and her cult-partner arose long before the classical era of belief. She is the Phrygian goddess of magic, wild things, and faith -- the dark mysteries of earth and nature. Phrygians originally worshiped their goddess in an aniconic fashion, like the Thracians who before being influenced by the Greeks never depicted their goddess anthropomorphically. (Bogh, 2007) Generally, she is characterized by a dual nature of unpredictable power and beneficent qualities. We are not proposing a discounted universal goddess theory or matriarchy (Gimbutas 2001). Instead we have to look for evidence derived from an experience of the sacred and artifacts. Arguably, it is a mystery religion, which requires undergoing ordeals, a death-like exerience and suffering. She is usually represented seated on a throne with a phiale (a libation bowl) and a tympanon. She has formidable, awesome, magical powers. People come to her to seek vengeance or justice, and she can possess individuals with madness or illness, or cure them from disease (Borgeaud 1996:27ff.; Roller 1999:156). Roller demonstrates, there is no divine Attis until Hellenistic and Roman times, but this doesn't preclude more archaic antecedents when the goddess was worshiped alone. Other symbols were later transferred to Kybele. The Roman version of the cult differs greatly from the cult in the ancient Phrygian homeland of Kybele. In the Paleo-Phrygian period (9th–7th centuries bc) there was still no influence from the Greeks. The Phrygians were said by Herodotos (VII, 73) to be immigrants from Thrace settling in Anatolia. According to modern theories, this would be in the late Bronze age -- 12th and the 10th centuries bc. The chthonic great goddess had myriad names (Matar, Kubileya, Kubaba) localized at different Mystery sanctuaries. Today's Anatolians are the indigenous population of the region according to scientific studies, and use a Turkish language name for Kybele, which is Sibel. The realities and specifics of prehistoric culture are closed to us. Like it or not we have to rely on ancient evidence to even imagine what she and her controversial cult were actually like. The mythical body is the body in the myth. In Phrygia, no records remain concerning her cult and worship, though there are numerous statues of seated women that archaeologists believe represent Kybele. Often she is also portrayed giving birth, indicative of her Mother Goddess status. The cult was never monolithic, but a power laced with amgibuity. We know the rites were very bizarre, including visionary communion, mystical sympathy with the world, the non-rational dimensions of human experience. This was an oracular cult with no body of doctrine, and no sacred books. It did have mystical psychoactive communion. "Orgia may have been earlier manifestations of cult than the formal mysteries, as suggested by the violently ecstatic rites described in myth as celebrated by Attis in honor of Cybele and reflected in the willing self-castration of her priests the Galli in the historical period. The orgia of both Dionysian worship and the cult of Cybele aim at breaking down barriers between the celebrants and the divinity through a state of mystic exaltation." Giulia Sfameni Gasparro, Soteriology and Mystic Aspects in the Cult of Cybele and Attis (Brill, 1985), p. 53 and 11–19. There is little doubt that the prepared sacred drink was intoxicating and intended to access altered consciousness or mystical communion in a ritual context. It flourished because it provided everyone with the same basic connection to underlying reality. We still feel the impact of the world around us in a series of personal relationships with such genuine radical metaphors. Kybele was worshiped in orgiastic rites, dissonant music, and wild dancing. This kind of bodily mysticism and psychosomatic liberation had only temporary effects each time — the period of the ekstasis (Turcan). But we don't hear how and why of the archaic practices. Our approach tries to penetrate the phenomenon itself, surrounding it from all sides, circumambulating and expanding it by increasing the volume -- amplification. The phenomenon is mythopoetical, not intellectual. But belief in a deity was subsumed in direct experience. Pre-rational experience is somatic -- our physical, animal, biological nature, felt sense experience, and emotions. Beneath the numbness or dissociation of disembodiment, the felt sense has been available as a constant stream of invaluable information. It manifests itself in direct contact which is more than a metaphor -- a vibrant experience.

https://5efa4d9bb68ea.site123.me/ I am the Triple Mother of Life, the mistress of all of the elements, the original Being, the Sovereign of Light and Darkness, the Queen of the Dead, to whom no God is not subject. I rule the starry skies. the boisterous green seas, the many--colored earth with all its peoples, the dark subterrene caves. I have names innumerable. In Phrygia I am Cybele; in Phoenicia, Ashtaroth; in Egypt, Isis; in Crete Rhea; in Athens Athena; in the Caucasus 'The Bird-Headed Mother'...Agdistis, Mariamne, Hekate, Hera. --Graves, The Golden Fleece Wild Darkness Kybele gives voices to mute places, a marriage of trees, rocks, and starry sky. Narrative gives a grounded sense of self. The margins are the center of the imagination. Reflecting her own cavernous interiority, she transforms inhospitable, harsh terrains into inviting primordial parks and riverbeds flowing with the imaginal. We yearn to float downstream; reverie moves us forward. Landscape is a provocateur. To see the beauty we must stop, breathe and absorb into the moment, the only reality we all really have. Some cultures create zoomorphic figures and geometric patterns to transform the vast land into a highly symbolic, ritual and social-cultural landscape. She speaks for their unspeakable immensity that reminds us we are truly small. Liminal places connect outside with inside across all experiential domains. Wandering off the path of hypermodernity, we are arrested, trapped in her magically woven web of poetic resonance. There is a synergetic relation between landscape, instinct and imagination that rekindles all as a unified field that is the mycelial root of sacred places of heart and mind. Relationships are the poetry of life and connecting with the land. Kybele is the earth from which we grow, our connection to dreams, the animal realm, our ancestors, and deep unconscious. She is the dust under our feet beyond those areas of origin that can be mapped, giving place a face in the present. What is this invisible ground whose image we carry in our souls where spiritual ideals merge with worldly realities? Isn’t it always right here, right now everywhere always, forever? The contextual background, the invisible environment, is the fundamental ground from which both mind and matter emerge, the luminous absolute space of reality beyond the mere absence of energy/matter. The radiant ground is the fundamental source. Psyche expresses the nature of things, including our own nature. Jung claimed, "every soil has its secret, of which we carry an unconscious image in our souls: a relationship of spirit to body and of body to earth." - CW XVIII Jung said, "The body is the original animal condition, we are all animals in body, and so we have to have an animal psychology in order to be able to live in it. […] Since we have a body it is indispensable that we exist also as an animal.” The animal is the instinctual level of the psyche. Hillman notes, "Our dreams recover what the world forgets. Forgotten pagan polytheism breeds in animal forms. In those animals are the ancient Gods:... The old Gods are still there in our dreams... The animals may go on like Gods, alive and well and unforgotten, in the ikons of our dreams and in the vital obsessions of complexes and symptoms..." The animal within is a guide. Dream animals behave in unusual ways and can even talk as they do in fairy tales. The path, track, or trail of an animal can be followed. They may appear at crucial 'soul junctures,' validating our direction, choices, and path. According to Jungian analyst Dennis L. Merritt: "To be truly human, Jung believed, and to reach our unique potential, we have to be in relationship to animals. This is both an outer relationship to animals and an intimate relationship with the collective unconscious, coming to terms with the animal in our inheritance." We can respond consciously to such animal spirits as we do to land, weather, and seasons of the soul. This bedrock of archaic psyche is the germinal image of images, a generative matrix, personification and inflection of deep universal principles. https://ionamiller2020.weebly.com/cybele.html

https://ionamiller2017.weebly.com/ares.html We are born into a family which we share with more and more contemporary people as we look further back in time. But when we are gathered to the ancestors are we met by the gods? Shall we move Ares from our archetypal altar to the family shrine? Perhaps some of us can. We know there is power in naming. What is it to name something, to name someone, to name someone an ancestor, or even name a god as direct ancestor? It all comes down to our own name. Genealogy is a heritage-led regeneration. Tracing our lines back from our parents, we move deeper into the realm of the ancestors who gave us the substance of life and soul's self-expression. A sense of soul gives us a sense of history. Our sacred and mythic roots inform our primordial human behavior and the timeless soul-world. They act on us through meaning as well as the world stage. This natural unconscious process doesn't need to be driven by a therapeutic or self-development agenda. In a complex and fragmented world, genealogy helps us revision the present. We look back for a context of meaning using our most personal history of being. We also recognize cultural ancestors, collective ancestors, ancestors of our land, and animal ancestors. We don't carry ancestral DNA from all our direct ancestors. But we remain entangled with them in the ancestral field, consciously, or unconsciously. In real, imaginary, and symbolic ways they are meaningful to our wholeness. We reflect as we find our way back. The inner life exerts its manifest influence. Emotions shape our sense of self and relationships. Ares aggression, might and energy have controlled all of history from behind the scenes. History is written by the competitive winners who then self-describe their glorious descent from the gods, insuring their renown and divine right to rule with genealogical propaganda. It is enforced with constant wars and worldview warfare, a battle for minds. The dragon or serpent guards the treasures of the deep unconscious, the unwritten history of mankind, and its myth-spinning capacity. The serpentine path, which is an image for our descent and return, is a way to find our instinct that has no conflicts, because conflicts belong to the discriminating conscious mind.

PAN https://ionamiller2020.weebly.com/pan.html When Pan is dead, then nature can be controlled by the will of the new God, man, modeled in the image of Prometheus or Hercules, creating from it and polluting in it without a troubled conscience. (Hercules who cleaned up Pan’s natural world first, clubbing instinct with his willpower, does not stop to clear away the dismembered carcasses left to putrefy after his civilizing creative tasks. He strides on to the next task, and ultimate madness). As the human loses personal connection with personified nature and personified instinct, the image of Pan and the image of the devil merge. Pan never died, say many commentators on Plutarch; he was repressed. Therefore as suggested above, Pan still lives, and not merely in the literary imagination. He lives in the repressed which returns, in the pathologies of instinct which assert themselves, as Roscher indicates, primarily in the nightmare and its associated erotic, demonic, and panic qualities."--Hillman Pan and the Nightmare James Hillman "Panic, especially at night when the citadel darkens and the heroic ego sleeps, is a direst participation mystique in nature, a fundamental, even ontological experience of the world as alive and in dread. Objects become subjects; they move with life while one is oneself paralyzed with fear. When existence is experienced through instinctual levels of fear, aggression, hunger, or sexuality, images take on compelling life of their own. The imaginal is never more vivid than when we are connected with it instinctually. The world alive is of course animism; that this living world is divine and imaged by different gods with attributes and characteristics is polytheistic pantheism. That fear, dread, horror are natural is wisdom. In Whitehead's term "nature alive" means Pan, and panic flings open a door into this reality." --Hillman p.33, Pan and the Nightmare This brilliant book brings Pan back to life by following C. G. Jung's famous saying: "The Gods have become our diseases." Chapters on nightmare panic, on masturbation, rape and nympholepsy, on instinct and synchronicity, and on Pan's female loves-echo, Syrinx, Selene, and the Muses-show the goat-God at work and play in the dark drives and creative passions of our lives. Hillman's insights present the archetypal figure in the depths of nature and archetypal psychology as a method of revelation.Pan and the Nightmare (which includes a full translation of Wilhelm Roscher's masterful 19th-century mythological-pathological treatise on Pan and the demons of the night) is the most radical study of this God ever undertaken. The body of the work is a translation of a monograph by Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher, ‘Ephialtes: A Pathological-Mythological Treatise on the Nightmare in Classical Antiquity’. A co-founder with Nietzsche of the University of Leipzig’s Philology Club, Roscher is lauded by Hillman as a great example of the kind of nineteenth century scholar whose voluminous, wide-ranging knowledge and enthusiasm for the psychological reality of his subject led to flawed but valuable efforts of synthesis and comparison. As Hillman eloquently argues, the “psychological ferment” of the time (Roscher’s monograph appeared in the same year as Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams) means we “may not blame Roscher for the wide casting of his net nor for some of the odd fish he comes up with.” Equally valuable is Hillman’s introductory essay, nearly as long as Roscher’s work, in which he applies his characteristically shrewd, penetrating and original psyche-oriented analysis to Roscher’s subject. Classic psychological concepts such as instinct, the uncanny, synchronicity and repressed sexuality are given fertile new frames via Pan’s irresistible force and the shock of the nightmare experience. THE GREAT GOD PAN IS DEAD. "Plutarch mentions, that in the reign of Tiberius, an extraordinary voice was heard near the Echinades, in the Ionian sea, which exclaimed, that the great Pan was dead. This was readily believed by the Emperor, and the astrologers were consulted; but they were unable to explain the meaning for so supernatural a voice, which probably proceeded from the imposition of one of the courtiers who attempted to terrify Tiberius." Lempriere. "This event occurred, supposedly in the first century A.D., during the reign of Tiberius, in a Roman world in which the rationalistic and evolutionary approach to religion had already done much to bring death not only to Pan but to many of the other greater and lesser Gods of the Greek Pantheon." Robert B. Palmer, in the Introduction, to Dionyus, Myth and Cult, W.F.Otto, p. x. A cry went out through late antiquity: "Great Pan is dead!" Plutarch reported it in his "On the failure of the Oracles, " yet the saying has itself become oracular, meaning many things to many people in many ages. One thing was announced: nature had become deprived of its creative voice. It was no longer an independent living force of generativity. What had had soul lost it: or lost was the psychic connection with nature. With Pan dead, so too was Echo; we could no longer capture consciousness through reflecting within our instincts. They had lost their light and fell easily to asceticism, following sheepishly without instinctual rebellion their new shepherd, Christ, with his new means of management. Nature no longer spoke to us-- or we could no longer hear. The person of Pan the mediator, like an ether who invisibly enveloped all natural things with personal meaning, with brightness, had vanished... When Pan is alive then nature is too, so the owl's hoot is Athena and the mollusk on the shore is Aphrodite... When Pan is dead, then nature can be controlled by the will of the new God, man, modeled in the image of Prometheus or Hercules, creating from it and polluting in it without a troubled conscious... As the human loses personal connection with a personified nature and personified instinct, the image of Pan and the image of the devil merge. Pan never died, say many commentators on Plutarch, he was repressed... Pan still lives... in the repressed which returns, in the psychopathologies of instinct which assert themselves, as Roscher indicates, primarily in the nightmare and its associated erotic, demonic, and panic qualities." James Hillman, A BLUE FIRE: pp.97-98 (originally in "Pan": 24-25,33, 54)

PSYCHOLOGICAL POLYTHEISM https://ionamiller2020.weebly.com/polytheism.html iMages Soul is rooted in the main ground of the Western tradition, extending from the Greeks through the Renaissance, Romantics, depth psychology and non-interpretive archetypal psychology. Archetypal psychology is a polytheistic, aesthetic, poetic, phenomenological approach. Grounded in myth and archetype, it is about the imaginative life, soul-not-ego, healing; active, reflective introspection; connection with the daemonic; purposeful communication. Knowing oneself is essentially mythic and archetypal, a transition from the material to the psychical point of view. Polytheistic Imagination is Reality; we are deepened and enlivened by tending to soul. Nontheological soul is another dimension grounded in cultivation of imagination and vision. Psyche or Soul is Anima Mundi, Soul of the World; Image is psyche; healing fiction. The Goddess is The Feminine; the Gods are Archetypes, multiple archetypal perspectives; Soul Guide is our Daemon, Angel, or Genius; There is an Ecology of Souls. Narrative fiction is the tool to explore cultural wounding, and ground cultural futuristics as an imaginal methodology, rooted in soul governing the perspectives we have of ourselves in the world (1975). Archetypal psychology is a move away from cure and toward the honoring of symptom, including cultural neurosis. Hillman's archetypal psychology injects the voice of soul from past and present cultural events into future scenarios.