Recently I have been feeling a little low about our world and the madness that seems to be unleashed on every quarter in these turbulent times. Hearing that our own Stephen Karcher was about to appear on Caroline’s show I decided to go to her website to see what she does. Her Candlemas broadcast on February 2nd had me captivated. In it she talked of the nature of the troubled times in which we live and pointed to the causes and their attendant solutions.
Her delivery is fast, animated and is clearly the product of considerable learning and wisdom. Caroline has a biography which leaves me a little breathless. She has appeared on many of the leading TV stations in the U.S. along with being featured in People Magazine, the Washington Post and the Sunday Times in the U.K. She is the author of Making the Gods Work For You - the astrological language of the psyche (Harmony Books/Random House or Random Harmony).
In her Candlemas show she talked about how we are bound and circumscribed, or expanded, by the images we hold in our minds and the way in which our ‘literal’ style of thinking has systematically excluded those ways of understanding our world, which we need, in order to deal with the problems we face as individuals and as cultures.
We are caught up in a compelling illusion of realism which excludes mythical images whose role has traditionally been to make plain to us those parts of ourselves which they represent. We have excluded our shadow world, the place in ourselves where we need to confront those difficult, disturbing and uncomfortable things which are a part of us. If we fail to recognise these things we are doomed to project them on to others. Thus on the world stage it is some other regime which becomes the demon. This polarized world we create is bereft of true dialogue and is one which is prone to wars and other ills. By recognizing the difficult shadows within ourselves we can find a position from which to dialogue rather than to polarize.
She illustrates this with the myth of Demeter searching for Persephone who has been abducted to the underworld. In the myth Persephone begins her ascent to the outer, real world, bringing with her the magic from the underworld thus making the outer world whole. This magic is the non literal, the non logical, it is creativity and intuition, it is the knowledge of our darker potentials which, if not recognized will burst forth in a dreadful manner. When Ishtar (Persephone in another cultures myth) wanted to return to the outer world she told the gatekeeper that should they not open the gate then she would smash it down and the outer world would be consumed by the dead. If we don’t have a regular process to go down into difficult places inside us, to be unfertile, to be depressed and face uncomfortable things then this part of the psyche will smash down doors and the dead will eat the living.
So it is that Caroline makes the case for the need to de-animate the images which set the current trail in motion and the task of bridging the two worlds of our psyche. Only then will we be able to find the dream or a vision we need to live up to.
She tells us that one of the ways we can begin this healing journey is by the use of oracles which are one medium for dialogue between these parts of ourselves. Hey, I have heard this before. It is one of the central tenets of Great Vessel. And it just so happens that the Total Yijing program is written in and dedicated to reviving the language of the mythos.
Stephen walks us through some of the features and stages of this healing journey in his article, The Shaman of the Shadows. In it he shows how Hexagram 38 is an instruction set for this passage.
Caroline’s website is here. I hope you will try one of her broadcasts, I expect to be blogging her again so please leave feedback.
Somehow I don’t feel as confused and helpless after listening to her and reading Stephen’s paper. But the journey is not easy and it has to be ongoing.