October 31, 2018, the last day of the month is here. We are closer to the beginning of the last two months of this year. Today, the second largest commercial holiday in the United States [ after Christmas ] is been celebrated all over the Nation.
Originated with the Celts, who lived approximately 2,000 years ago in the region that is now Ireland, United Kingdom, and northern France, where people would light bonfires and wear costumes to repel ghosts and evil spirits in what was called the Festival of Samhain. By 43 A.D., the Roman Empire had conquered most of the Celtic territory and combined two Roman festivals [ Feralia, celebrating the passing of the dead, and Pomona, honoring the goddess of fruit and trees, ] with the traditional Celtic celebration.
In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III designated November 1 as a day to honor all saints and all Christian martyrs [ All Saints’ Day, ] incorporating some of the traditions of Samhain. Later, as Christianity was blending with the Celtic rites, the church made November 2 [ All Souls’ Day, ] a day to honor the dead, probably attempting to replace the festival with a church-sanctioned holiday.
In the nineteenth century, as America was being saturated with new immigrants, including the Irish and Puritans from England [ who traditionally celebrated Samhain, ] All Hallows Eve became popularized nationally. With the passing of time and with the demythologization of the West, it evolved into a day of activities like trick-or-treating, carving jack-o-lanterns, celebratory gatherings, wearing costumes and eating sweet treats — an approximately $9 billion holiday, with one-quarter of all the candy sold annually in the United States been purchased for Halloween.
HALLOWEEN AT THE WHITE HOUSE
First Lady Mamie Eisenhower decorated the White House for Halloween for the first time. She hosted a lunch for the wives of staff members in the State Dining Room of the White House. Decorations on October 30, 1958, consisted of skeletons hanging from the wall lights, yellow jack-o’-lanterns and shocks of dried corn in the corners of the room, and State Dining Room columns that were decorated at their bases with brown corn stalks, pumpkins and red apples. The tables had miniature witches on broomsticks and 16 silver bowls filled with yellow and bronze chrysanthemums. Scattered on the tables were autumn leaves and autumn nuts, ears of dried corn, as well as dried gourds and dried squash. Black cats, black owls, disembodied witch heads and goblins hung from the chandeliers in the foyer.
[ whitehousehistory.org ]
Since this is a day which was originally focused on the non-visible phenomenon, soul, spirits, mythology, … here are excerpts, interpretations, scenes, from some of my favorite stories, including Iron Hans, King Arthur [ the medieval mythological figure who was the head of the kingdom of Camelot and the Knights of the Round Table, also believed to have been a Roman-affiliated military leader, ] and from the Judeo-Christian scriptures.
Recognize that you’re endeavoring to increase the perception of truth and learning to read the thoughts of spirit. Nothing is great or small in the eyes of spirit. Spirit is just as interested in the small matters of everyday life as is in the affairs of nations.
In the Grimm’s tale, at the very end, we learn that Iron Hans was once a great and mighty king. But then a terrible spell made him a wild man. The story says nothing about the circumstances of the curse, but other tales hold clues as to what may have happened.
In Grimm’s “The Frog Prince,” an unfortunate prince becomes a frog through a spell cast by a witch. The frog reverts to human form when the princess, in a fit of anger at his insistence that he be allowed to share her bed, throws the frog against the wall “with all her might.” In Chretien de Troyes’ Arthurian romance, Yvain, the unfortunate knight for whom the tale is titled falls under an evil spell of sorts when his wife angrily, in a manner that might be considered witch-like, rejects him after he has failed to keep his word to her. After living a long while in the forest as a wild man, Yvain is restored to sanity, human society, and eventually his wife through the kindness of a woman. Apparently, the making and breaking of spells have a lot to do with relations between the sexes. Perhaps Iron Hans’ transformation into a wild man stemmed from some unfortunate encounter with a woman.
A woman once told me that her lovers always seemed to turn her into a witch. She tended to be attracted to men who apparently assumed that women were primarily responsible for what went on in relationships. This fits in well with her natural inclination to take charge of things. But when difficulties arose, she was blamed, even when she was clearly not the source of the problem. Her lover would accuse her of having as if by magic, made him feel and do things that were totally alien to him.
While witches are represented as both male and female in folklore all around the world, we usually think of them as women. If the fairytale princess is the perfect picture of young womanhood, the [ usually old ] which is womanhood gone wrong. Much like the wild man in relation to civilized man, the witch is the shadow of the civilized woman, the inverse of what is expected of females in a male-dominated society. If women are supposed to be beautiful, devoted, and nurturing helpmates to men, the witch is ugly, malevolent, and beholden to no man.
When women are denied access to political and social power, whatever power they manage to obtain will be condemned as an illegitimate, malevolent threat to the established order. Forbidden even the basic right of self-determination, disenfranchised women learn to get what they want by manipulating men. Men come to fear the “subtle wiles” that women supposedly use to surreptitiously gain the upper hand. Women become mysterious creatures possessing magical powers inaccessible to men. Such an image can be exciting — the seductive temptress is more or less a beautiful witch. It can also be horrifying. Men fear the apparent ability of the witch to unman them but fail to realize that the witch herself is a product of that very fear. If the witch is to release the man, the man must first release the witch.
The medieval tale of “Gawain and the Lady Ragnell” tells of the breaking of one such spell. Once upon a time, so the story goes, King Arthur encountered a terrible giant. Helpless before the giant’s great strength, Arthur seemed doomed. The giant, however, offered Arthur the chance to gain his freedom by answering a riddle. But if he did not give the right answer, the king and his kingdom would belong to the giant. Having little choice, Arthur asked for the riddle. The giant responded, “What one thing above all else do women desire?” Arthur went throughout the land, asking every woman he met what she most wanted. He collected a multitude of responses, but all were different and he feared none would satisfy the giant.
Then Arthur came upon a most hideous woman, a sort of witch, in the forest. So appalling was her appearance, he nearly fainted away at the sight. The loathly lady berated him for his disdain, saying that while she might be able to help him in his distress, she would aid no one who was not courteous. Arthur pulled himself together to tell her his problem. After making him swear to grant whatever boon she asked of him, the woman gave Arthur the answer to the giant’s riddle. Unlike all the other answers that he had collected, this one rang true. Arthur met the giant at the appointed time and gave him the hideous damsel’s answer: “A woman desires above all else the right to freely exercise her own will.” With a terrible oath, the giant confessed that was indeed the correct response.
Arthur joyfully returned to the woman to thank her, only to be utterly dismayed by her demand that she be wed to a knight of the Round Table. Arthur returned to his castle to reluctantly relate his adventure and the loathly lady’s request for something that he could not bring himself to ask of any man. Gawain, however, without hesitation offered himself as husband to the ill-favored dame.
After their wedding banquet, Gawain led his bride to their chamber. With sinking heart, he turned towards her. To his great astonishment, he saw not the hideous woman, but the most beautiful maiden he had ever beheld. She explained that an enchantment had caused her to take on the hideous form. The spell could only be broken if the greatest knight in Britain married her of his own free will, as had happened that day. But she was not yet entirely free. She told Gawain that he must decide whether she was to be beautiful by day and ugly by night, or ugly by day and beautiful by night.
Gawain thought for a while before telling his now beloved wife that the choice was hers to make. Joyfully, the lady told Gawain that the spell was now completely broken. She would henceforth always be her beautiful self, for he had truly grasped the answer to the riddle.
Some versions of the tale say that Lady Ragnell was the victim of a plot by her evil stepmother and giant stepbrother. Others assert that the giant was actually Ragnell’s brother, who too had been cursed by their terrible stepmother. The evil stepmother is a variant of the witch, and once again, as with Eve in the Bible and Pandora with her box of ills in Greek mythology, it seems that a woman is responsible for everything that goes wrong. But reading between the lines, we find another interpretation.
While the complexities of mother-daughter relations are well beyond this discussion, the evil stepmother who persecutes the heroine in many tales is an all too accurate description of the process in which mothers, denied “the right to freely exercise their own wills,” collude with patriarchy in keeping their daughters in the place assigned to women. Women, as well as men, often fear the feminine and try to deny it its rightful place beside the masculine. Internalized misogyny is a powerful, unrecognized force in the lives of many women. The ability of a man to lovingly respect a woman for who she is can go a long way towards breaking the spell that has led her to believe that she is an inadequate human being, doomed to a lifetime of victimization simply because she is female.
“No one will ever win the battle of the sexes; there’s too much fraternizing with the enemy.” Henry Kissinger
“… Clouds of sulfur in the air / Bombs are falling everywhere / It’s heartbreak warfare / Once you want it to begin, / No one really ever wins / In heartbreak warfare / If you want more love, / Why don’t you say so? / If you want more love, / Why don’t you say so? … I swear to God we’re gonna get it right / If you lay your weapon down …” John Mayer | Heartbreak Warfare
The war of the sexes is a contest in which there are no winners. Tales of courtly love and knightly quest remind us that the goal is achieved not through power but by courtesy and respect [ Sword of Truth balanced with the Lover Archetype, the same way that the King Archetype needs to be balanced with the Magician. ] The royal wedding, the joining of the two into a whole much greater than the sum of its parts occurs only when each partner honors the inherent right of the other to freely choose who she or he will be. Men and women alike have been too long held spellbound by gender expectations. As women are freed from traditional roles, the power of the male stereotypes that drive men to destroy themselves and others in futile attempts to prove themselves men is also lessened.
Most obviously, the tale of “Iron Hans” is about the process by which a boy becomes a man. The story concludes with its hero a married man assuming his place in the world. But the story can also be read as an outline of the lifelong process of individuation which Jung described as a progressive encounter with persona [ one’s adaptation to the social world, ] shadow [ aspects of oneself that are denied in adapting to the world, ] anima/animus [ the inner image of the opposite sex, ] and self [ the totality of the psyche. ] While this schematic description of psychological growth can, like any other, be twisted into a mechanistic formula, many people have found it a useful map.
In “Iron Hans,” the king at the beginning of the tale corresponds to the persona, the social role with which one is identified. But the king was inadequate to the challenge of the wild man [ the shadow, ] for the shadow requires a response from a deeper level. The little prince with his golden ball is a beautiful image of the undeveloped, largely unconscious self of early life. The princess, who perhaps knows more about the boy than he does himself is of course representative of the anima.
Finally, the royal couple [ multiplied threefold by the presence of the prince and princess’ parents ] at the wedding feast is an image of the realized self, a concept also represented by the figure of the Mighty King who arrived just as the wedding feast was getting underway to announce himself as Iron Hans.
By becoming the person he was meant to be, in fulfilling his destiny, the prince had unknowingly restored Iron Hans to his real identity and received Iron Hans’ riches without measure as his reward. Iron Hans was the prince’s second, initiating father who did what his first father could not. As the restored great king, Iron Hans represents the highest development of the boy’s golden potential [ not including the Sage, after he unselfishly transfers the kingship to the leadership of a successor, ] a development that could be realized only after the wild man, the shadow of the king, had been duly acknowledged. In effect, the boy redeemed both his father and the wild man, joining them together in the figure of Iron Hans the Great [ integrating instinctual body and higher brain functions. ] The spell that had hung over the kingdom since the beginning of the story was broken as prince and princess, the two royal families, and Iron Hans joined together in joyful celebration. So always, the redemption of the world proceeds hand-in-hand with the redemption of oneself.*
IN THE BEGINNING …
GENESIS 1 | … Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in His own image [ glorious and shameless beings, ] in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; …”
GENESIS 2 | … The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them [ co-creating and choosing the animals characteristics, super advanced form of genetic editing, forming the DNA structures; ] and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, [ cutting physical, emotional and spiritual umbilical chords before true bonding ] and they become one flesh. Adam and his [ breathtakingly beautiful ] wife were both naked, and they felt no shame. [ Glory, true identity and essence, … the opposite of shame. ] …
GENESIS 3 | IDENTITY THEFT, DISCONNECTION FROM SOURCE, … THE FALL | Now the serpent [ the shadow or trickster ] was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, [ attack on Eve’s trust of the Truest Authority and Source of Identity, ] “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden [ SDI, closed Blue vMeme, ] and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” [ the trickster lied: ] “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it [ trickster lied, it closes ‘the eyes,’ Jer 5:21, Mark 8:18, … ] your eyes will be opened, and [ attack on identity, they were already made in the image of God, … ] you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
“… No cares and woes / Whatever comes later goes / That’s how I’ll take and I’ll give / Devil may care / When the day is through, I suffer no regrets / I know that he who frets loses the night / For only a fool thinks he can hold back the dawn / He who is wise never tries to revise what’s past and gone …” Diana Krall | Devil May Care
The trickster penetrated Eve’s psychological boundaries and attacked the connection to the Eternal King as well as her Inner Queen [ Imago Dei. ] | Eve’s better response after the first question should’ve been something like: “F*** you, snake, get out of here!!!” The warrior defending psychological boundaries and connection to the Eternal King and Inner Queen.
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When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened [ in a different context, it was ‘opened’ to shame, … right translation: Once they saw what they had done, … ] and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. Then the man [ King ] and his wife [ Queen ] heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day [ their hearts were not totally damaged and disconnected yet, they could still “hear God.” ] and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where [ not physically ] are you?” He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid [ shame and fear ] because I was naked; so I hid.” And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
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Adam’s correct action and answer: “Eve, I cannot eat from it,” and call the trickster’s bullshit showing her the truth in love. Then, when God was ‘near,’ walking at the garden in the cool of the day, Adam could have said: “God [ Father, King, …, ] we have a problem and I need your help, Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, …” God: “Adam, I’m thrilled you didn’t! … About Eve, if she doesn’t choose us and the process to be reintegrated into the our Kingdom, if she chooses to follow the serpent [ the trickster, ] I can always use your other rib, or I can make another one from scratch using the dust of the ground.”
When tempted by the trickster, Adam should have followed Christ’s example of “spiritual warfare.” The attacks were directed at the same ‘things:’
“If you are the Son of God … If you are the Son of God … All this I will give you, if you bow down and worship me.” Trickster | “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord Your God, and serve Him only.’” King Jesus Christ | Matthew 4
Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” … So the Lord God said to the serpent [ trickster, ] “Because you have done this, …” To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe [ wrong translation, translated from closed SDI vMeme and from a wrong view of God and of the big picture, … consequence and discipline, not condemnation; in other words, spiritually dead, you’ll become very weak and much more vulnerable to pain. ] with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband [ better translation: And you will desire to CONTROL your husband, ] and he will rule over you [ better translation: and he will desire to CONTROL you. ]”
BONDAGE OF THE WILL, ORIGINS OF SYSTEMS OF DOMINATION, disconnected from the Eternal-KWML-God, the dark side of matriarchy ( patriarchal on the inside ) and the dark side of the patriarchy ( matriarchal on the inside ) …
Adam [ or man, father, … ] named his wife Eve [ or not-a-man, mother, … ] because she would become the mother of all the living. The Lord God [ as a Wise and Loving Father, Eternal-KWML-God ] made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us [ wrong translation ] knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. [ Boundaries, … therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden, to cultivate the ground from which the man had been made. ] After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden [ the veil and temporary separation between visible and invisible realities ] cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
All the stars, all the planets and all the galaxies that can be seen make up just 4 percent of the universe. The other 96 percent is made of material astronomers cannot see, detect or even comprehend. These magical and mysterious substances are called dark energy and dark matter.
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