The powerful stories of the transpersonal realm – that
larger-than-life layer of collective consciousness that is home to heroes,
angels, fairies, gods, and goddesses – have a way of drawing us into them like magnets. Surrendering to their allure, we find
that life becomes imbued with magic for a while, allowing us to access a
reality that fires our imagination and wakes up our souls. We tune into the finer frequencies of our
higher selves, which open us to the songs of the ancients and the music of the
spheres.
Reading myth opens a portal to a rich treasure-trove of
symbols and allegory – all gifts that map the way to our inner goddess. “Symbols are to the mind what tools are
to the hand – an extension of their powers.” They extend our ability to understand things inexpressible
via language, and they help us “build staircases of realization to places where
we cannot fly”. Dion Fortune wrote
eloquently in The Mystical Kabbalah on the use of symbols for deeper understanding of life’s
mysteries. She showed how they
help us transcend the limitations and language of the ego-mind, because
“knowledge of the higher forms of existence is obtained by a process other than
thought….it must be crystallized into form to convey impression.”
As a teacher of dance, mythology, and ritual,
I’ve always felt compelled to move through the myths guided by my instinctive body. To move through a ritual re-enactment of the
myth is to take it a step further and manifest it in the here and now, giving
form to its essence through the body’s expressions. Within the embodiment cycle of
attraction/embodiment/expression, the magic is in the doing, the here and now. We open ourselves to the possibility of the
Higher Self and the instinctual, intuitive body dancing sans ego for a
while. With the ego at rest, we
are open to direct knowledge and revelation.
In Women Who Run With The Wolves, one of the wisest
and most beautiful books on the healing power of myths and stories, Clarissa
Pinkola Estes distills the psychological attraction the mythic tales exert on
the human psyche.
“If story is seed,” she writes, “then we are its soil. Just
hearing the story allows us to experience it as though we ourselves are the heroine
who either falters or wins out at the end. If we hear a story about a wolf,
then afterward we rove about and know like a wolf for a while. If we hear a story about a dove finding
her young at last, then for a time after, something moves behind our feathered
breasts. If it be a story of
wresting the pearl from underneath the claw of the ninth dragon, we feel
exhausted afterward, and satisfied. In a very real way, we are imprinted with
knowing just by reading the tale.
Among Jungians this is called “participation mystique” – a
term borrowed from anthropologist Levy-Bruhl – and it is used to mean a
relationship wherein “a person cannot distinguish themselves as separate from
the object or thing they behold.” Among Freudians, it is called ”projective identification”. Among anthropologists, it is sometimes
called ”sympathetic magic.” All these terms mean the ability of the mind to
step away from its ego for a time and merge with another reality, that is,
another way of comprehending, a different way of understanding.”
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| "Judgment of Paris" Anton Mengs, 1728-1779 |
One ancient myth that holds a lot of revelation potential
for modern women is the “Judgment of Paris”. In it, we see a multi-layered conflict centering on three
main characters: the goddesses Athena, Aphrodite, and Hera, the Warrior, Lover,
and Queen. They are pitted against each other in a plot orchestrated by Zeus to
cause the Trojan War. The spark is
a golden apple thrown into the midst of the three at a royal wedding. Addressed to “the fairest”, it results
in a bizarre beauty contest between the three goddesses, which Zeus commands
the mortal Paris to arbitrate.
Each goddess attempts to bribe Paris into choosing her by
offering victory on the battlefield (Athena) sovereignty over Europe and Asia
(Hera) and the love of Helen, the most beautiful woman on Earth
(Aphrodite). We all know the
disastrous chain of events unleashed by Paris’ choice.
Deconstructing the myth, we uncover themes of manipulation,
ingrained paradigms around Beauty, bad judgment and life choices, and the suffering caused when
women work against each other and not together. The Greeks were famous for dissecting the goddesses of the
peoples they conquered and re-casting their fragments as new entities in the
conquering mythology. Most of
Greek history and myth was handed down by male authors, in service of the
patriarchal narratives that have shaped western civilization for thousands of
years.
But these stories are also living entities. They invite us into them because they
live on through our telling. In The
Greatness of Saturn – a Therapeutic Mythic by the Vedic mythologist Robert Svoboda, he shows how the
reading and re-telling of myth is one of the oldest forms of therapy, a way of
transmitting timeless healing wisdom.
From Svoboda’s viewpoint, it’s a two-way process – the myths inform some
of our innermost scripts and paradigms, but they need us as much as we need
them. Their characters beckon to
us to step into the narrative and identify with them as we re-tell, and eventually
re-write their stories, allowing them
to evolve.
What if Athena had won the apple? What if Hera had?
What if the goddesses decided to plot a different ending to the
story? What if Paris had refused
to choose, or Helen refused to elope with him? What if Zeus’ original plot was exposed – the fact that he
wanted the Trojan War to happen?
These and many other possibilities can be played out in the psychodrama
of ritual theater.
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| "Venus and Juno" (Aphrodite Giving Hera the Golden Strap) Andrea Appiani, 1754-1817 |
The myth of Aphrodite’s golden girdle is paired with the
Judgment of Paris to bring closure to the episode and catharsis to those of us
in the throes of participation mystique.
The Trojan war had dragged on for a decade, and the world had grown
weary of it. The people were
starving and even the primordial parents, the Mother and Father Titans, were at
odds over it. So much so that they had stopped sleeping with one another, which
according to the Law of Correspondences, means that fertility had withered
everywhere, love and harmony shriveled in the shadow of famine.
Hera decides to intervene by trying to broker a peace
between Father Okeanus and Mother Tethys, the primordial Titans. But first she calls Aphrodite to the
side and asks her to teach her the ways of charm, sweet words and enchantment
that make all beings, mortal and immortal, fall to her feet. Aphrodite responds without hesitation,
unfastening from her bosom a magical golden strap that carries her powers of
enchantment and makes the bearer irresistible to anyone. Thus girded, Hera goes to the Titans
and brokers the peace, which results in peace on Earth and the restoration of
order.
The lessons and possibilities in these stories are
far-reaching. How do these dramas
play out in our daily lives? In our psyches? How are women pit against each other in societies that value
physical beauty over our other attributes? And how can the meeting of feminine powers like charm and
duty bring about healing to the problems that plague our world, our
relationships, and our innermost selves?
These and many other possibilities are explored in ritual
theater like “Journey to the Temples of Aphrodite and Hera”. For women in dance, it is also a chance
to consciously explore the gifts each goddess bestows on a dancing soulbody –
Aphrodite imbues us with enchantment, charm, and attraction while Hera crowns
us with majestic presence, impact, and the ability to channel higher
ideals through our art.
Every time I’ve conducted “Journey to the Temples”, an
immense wave of exaltation and euphoria is a typical immediate
result. Women connect to
themselves, each other, and the archetypes for an alchemical healing that
ripples out into their lives and reverberates for quite some time. Cycles of realisation are set into motion as the body and soul begin to reflect and express each other and the profound inner shift the Journey brings. And it all starts with the mystical
call of myth, the old stories, an ancient form of therapy brought to new life through embodied ritual.
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