“The longing for redemption is an ancient, strange and many-headed demon that inhabits even the most earthly and prosaic of souls. Sometimes sweet-tongued, sometimes mute, this demon seeks some vaguely sensed union with an all-seeing, all-loving, ineffable Other in whose enfolding arms it may find final solace for the harsh limits of mortality and the frightening isolation of individuality that lie embodied somewhere, however unconsciously, in every life. <\/em><\/p>\n Even if we do not call the Other by some divine name, but instead direct our devotion and longing to such unacknowledged surrogates as humanity, family, nature, art, love, or the state, this quest is impossible to mistake and should not be confused with other, more individualized feelings such as desire, passion, love, or admiration for a particular person or thing. <\/em><\/p>\n The hallmarks of the longing for redemption are, first, that it is a longing; second, that it is compulsive and absolute and often clashes violently with individual values; and third, that its goal is not relationship but rather dissolution.<\/em><\/p>\n We have been creating images of the Other since our Paleolithic ancestors first began summoning the magical horse, mammoth, and bison to the empty cave wall\u2014not only to receive supernatural aid in the hunt, but because we have always needed to feel that there is Something out there, beyond, that mitigates the transience and insignificance of mortal life. Alone among the animals, we human animals create rituals and works of art specifically designed to reconnect with the divine source from which we first came, and to which, one day after death, we may return.<\/em><\/p>\n Freud speculates on the possibility that such a persistent quest for the sacred return is a sublimation of the incestuous longing for the bliss of the womb and breasts, clothed in symbols that preserve the intensity and truth of the unconscious longing but avoid the crippling guilt and shame that lurks for those who break the ancient taboo. Jung speculates on the possibility that the longing for redemption is innate, an archetypal predisposition as primal and irresistible as the desire to procreate. <\/em><\/p>\n The main revelation of Symbols of Transformation, this seminal work that heralds Jung\u2019s break with Freud, is that it is not the strict morality of the inner censor that prompts us to generate transcendent images of redemption. It is the unconscious psyche itself that seeks to transform its own compulsive and doomed instinctiveness through the mediating influence of the symbols it itself creates.<\/em><\/p>\n It is not society or the superego but the soul, according to Jung, that is ultimately responsible for the transformation of the crude libido into a work of glorified art, the noble humanitarian ideal, the astonishing dignity of sacred ritual, the profound and cruelly beautiful initiation in the transformation of human lead into human gold. <\/em><\/p>\n In other words, what we call God is really Nature\u2014the chthonic nature described by Freud as the Id\u2014seeking freedom from its own death-shadowed inertia through the gradual evolution not only of form, as Darwin would have preferred, but also of the expression of consciousness. And the instrument of this transformation is that ever-elusive faculty we call imagination.<\/em><\/p>\n It is possible that both Jung and Freud are right, although at first sight Jung seems more flattering about human motivation and more appealing to the spiritually inclined. Manifestations of the longing for redemption participate in both incest and transcendence. They also pose a profound moral dilemma as they encompass not only our myriad efforts to experience and formulate the eternal, but also many of the more horrifying forms of addiction, madness, and mental and physical decay that medicine, not religion, has had to deal with in recent times. We can no longer speak in whispers of the voice of God when an individual person\u2014and even an individual body\u2014breaks into fragments before the dictates of that voice and becomes unable to cope with the simplest demands of earthly life.<\/em><\/p>\n When is an artist no longer merely tragic or mad, but a divinely inspired genius whose excesses are tolerated because his or her suffering elevates our own? When does one display enough talent to justify, say, cutting off an ear like Van Gogh or committing suicide like Richard Dadd, who believed his father was really the Devil dressed in his father\u2019s clothes? When is the visionary no longer just a lunatic but a saint?<\/em><\/p>\n There were once hundreds of saints, and they were easily\u2014if posthumously\u2014recognized by mere mortals. Today, the prevailing collective view of reality no longer trusts in miracles, intact virginity arouses pity rather than awe, a nasty death is available to all, and the requirements for canonization are more stringent.<\/em><\/p>\n What then is this poignant longing that justifies every sacrifice, this eternal cry from the wilderness of embodiment? Is it truly the voice of the soul heard through the prison walls of earthly substance? Or is it the desperate defense mechanism of a fragile personality unwilling or unable to face the demands of ordinary life?<\/em><\/p>\n How can we tell the difference\u2014between Christ and Hitler\u2014when both emerged in response to the cry of desperate people seeking redemption?<\/em><\/p>\n Everything that human beings experience belongs to the realm of the psyche and is therefore psychological. Every experience is subjective as it is lived by the individual. And if our political and spiritual beliefs are too precious to allow honesty about our own exclusively human motives, then what is left to stand between us and destruction in the name of redemption?<\/em><\/p>\n Astrology has a planetary symbol that describes this urge. In astrological language it is called Neptune. The longing for redemption is the longing for dissolution in the waters of pre-birth\u2014maternal, cosmic, or both.<\/em><\/p>\n Longing for redemption is confusing. Sometimes it appears as radiant yearning for unity; sometimes as crippling regression to prenatal fantasy. Religious and psychoanalytic languages describe different faces of the same core impulse.<\/em><\/p>\n Neptune may symbolize the highest expressions of love and vision\u2014or the most destructive impulses born of fear and denial. Which is true? Probably both.<\/em><\/p>\n One can never be sure\u2014least of all of oneself.<\/em><\/p>\n It is precisely for this reason that I have attempted to articulate Neptune\u2019s world more clearly.”<\/em><\/p>\n Selected ¶phrased passages from The Astrological Neptune and the Quest for Redemption <\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/em>by Liz Greene<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If we wish to understand what lies at the very foundation of human psychic life, we must first understand what archetypes are. They are those particular energetic nuclei from which our desires arise, together with the images and ideas that accompany them, and which we usually perceive first through projection. Different archetypes are sources of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":150073,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[646],"tags":[708,710,685,762],"class_list":["post-151829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spiritual-intelligence","tag-analytical-psychology","tag-astro-psychology","tag-liz-green","tag-neptune"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t
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