“Oh my!” cried the monk, who was on probation and had just broken his teacher’s favorite (and very precious) cup. The frightened youth went to the Zen master and asked, “Why must there be death?” The Master replied, “Death is natural. It comes to all people and things. It is not to be expected with […]
Here are Marie Louise von Franz’s last comments on the end of the story of Amur and Psyche, from which we learn more important things about the development of the soul and the embodiment of love on Earth. “In this ultimate, tragic moment, Eros comes down from Olympus and wakes Psyche, and, with the help […]
And this is the fourth and final task Venus gives Psyche to atone for her sin – to fetch a box of beauty cream from Persephone, queen of the underworld. Unlike the previous three tasks (sorting a pile of seeds, fetching a golden wave from the wild sun rams, and fetching water from the icy […]
After Psyche’s first task, which is to sort through a large pile of seeds, and the second task, which is to bring a wave of wild sun rams, comes the third task, which is to bring water from the icy waterfall of the River Styx that separates the earth from the underworld. What our soul […]
Psyche’s first task was to sort through a huge pile of seeds, and she tackled this ordeal with the help of the ants. I recall that Marie Louise von Franz interpreted this as help from the unconscious that comes when we are true to ourselves. After the first task comes the second, which teaches our […]
This is the next part of Marie Franz’s analysis of the story of Amour and Psyche, told by Apuleius in his book The Golden Ass. The previous parts are: Marie Franz on the duality “romance – banality” in love Marie Franz: The incarnation of Venus is the embodiment of the god from the feminine side […]
I continue this series of articles on the theme of self-sacrifice by turning to its most radical expression: the sacrifice of our desire for an easy and carefree life. Another way of saying the same thing is to stop resisting pain and to mature. I will begin with a quotation from Jung, because self-sacrifice is […]
“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 […]
“He [God] first appears in a hostile form, as an aggressor with whom the hero has to fight.This corresponds to the violence which is inherent in every unconscious dynamism.That is the way in which the god manifests himself, and that is the form in which he has to be overcome.The struggle has its parallel in […]
“During the night, Jacob arose, took his two wives, his two maidservants, and his eleven sons, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He sent them across the stream, along with all his possessions. Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower […]
There are already many articles on this site devoted to the topic of suffering—by which I mean psychic suffering, because it is precisely this kind of suffering that leads a person to psychotherapy. It is also what leads us toward spirituality and compels us to seek, in various spiritual practices, a remedy for the pain […]
“The great Buddhist saint Nagarjuna used to wander naked, except for a simple loincloth—and, somewhat absurdly, carrying a golden alms bowl given to him by a king who was one of his followers. One night, as he was about to lie down to sleep among the ruins of an ancient monastery, he noticed a thief […]
