“It’s easy to be a naive idealist. It’s easy to be a cynical realist. It’s quite another thing to have no illusions and still hold the inner flame.” Marie-Louise von Franz In three short sentences, Marie Franz brilliantly articulates what the union of the opposites of idealism and cynicism looks like. And this, unlike naive […]
What follows from the fact that the compulsion toward self-sacrifice arises from the awakening of the immortal part of the soul, which in Jungian analysis is called the awakened individuational impulse (see The Path of Individuation and the Care of the Soul)? What does the incarnated god (the archetype of the whole personality) receive in […]
“Only by sacrificing what we have can we know what we have. Real sacrifice is made with the same definiteness and lack of bargaining that is involved in throwing something away We can do this only if we are forced by a greater power in us – a power stronger than the ego – that […]
Love, with its passion and pain, becomes an urge toward individuation.That is why there is no genuine process of individuation without the experience of love —for love both torments and purifies the soul.”— Marie-Louise von Franz Below is an excerpt from Marie-Louise von Franz’s book The Golden Ass of Apuleius: The Liberation of the Feminine […]
Below I share a short YouTube video—an interview with Marie-Louise von Franz—which is part of the film The Way of the Dream: Marie-Louise von Franz in Conversation with Fraser Boa. The person who extracted this segment titled it “Real Love Makes the Other Person Whole.” The interview begins with Fraser Boa asking for a comment […]
“To activate the unconscious means to awaken the divine, the devi, Kundalini – to begin the development of the suprapersonal within the individual in order to kindle the light of the gods.Kundalini, which is to be awakened in the sleeping Muladhara world, is the suprapersonal, the non-ego,… For this reason Kundalini is the same principal as […]
All lovers in the world share that sense of specialness—the feeling of wings sprouting as you look into the eyes of your beloved. You believe you can handle anything in the world; you feel wonderful and cherished. The problem is that, sooner or later, we hit the ground, simply because “this kind of love” cannot […]
“Women go through the process of individuation primarily through suffering, when it happens in the right way; it seems that in such cases there is a surge of libido in the unconscious. If a person can adapt to the devil without being eaten by him, this leads to awareness.” Marie-Louise von Franz,“Animus and Anima in […]
“Be quiet, you old witch! You have no right to ask questions of a hero. Bring something to eat and drink, or I’ll cut off your ears and chop off your head, and sand will pour out of your backside!” This is what Ivan—the hero of the Russian fairy tale “The Tsar Maiden”—says to Baba […]
One of the challenges in the stage of calcination — the psychological work with the element of fire and our strong passions – is learning to contain frustration when things do not unfold as quickly as we would like. Life in a material body comes with limitations, not only in space, but also in time, […]
Very often, women are crucified within themselves—torn between showing their feelings to the men who anger them or holding those feelings in. Unfortunately, there is no single right answer. Both are true. Both are rays of a “just sun” that is fair precisely because it shines in both directions. Today, I am sharing only one […]
This article is a continuation of the previous publications Images of Light, The Snow Queen and the Devil’s Mirror, and From Nigredo to Albedo, in which I explore the spiritual dimension of human projections. What this piece adds to this vital topic is an understanding of their archetypal foundation and how the process of their […]
