Marc Chagall, Song of Songs II
The title today comes from The Song of Songs. I think these words are are a beautiful expression of the power and the essence of the sacred feminine.
I am still smitten by The Return of the Feminine and the World Soul by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee. It does not happen very often that you pick a book that expresses clearly and beautifully what you have been long suspecting, feeling and longing for. I could never aspire to write like this. His words are like notes played on the harp of my soul.
I am posting a few pearls I have gathered from the book. They are almost exact quotes; the order of sentences has been rearranged by me to form a patchwork of meaning. I have got a paper copy but I have seen that the book is available for download here for a small fee:
http://goldensufi.org/book_pdf_feminine.html
What follows does not contain any passages from the three appendices that are attached to the book. These attachments are quite amazing, especially the one devoted to Vaughan-Lee’s interpretation of Jung’s concept of anima. I might still post on them soon.
Here go the quotes:
- A world that is not connected to its soul cannot heal.
- The world Soul (anima mundi) is a living spiritual substance within us and around us. Just as the individual soul pervades the whole human being – our body, thoughts, and feelings – the nature of the World Soul is that it is present within everything. It pervades all of creation, and is a unifying principle within the world.
- The light we discover in our own depths is a spark of the World Soul, and the world needs this light to evolve. It is the light hidden in matter that will redeem the world.
- It is from the inner dimension of images and symbols that the soul is nourished. Recognizing and working with symbols requires an attitude of receptivity that allows the symbols to communicate in their own language.
- We look for rational answers to our problems rather than working with the divine that is our very core.
- The feminine is always attuned to the oneness, the interconnected wholeness of life. In the cells of her body she carries the light of the consciousness of oneness, a light that is not present in men’s bodies.
- Because our patriarchal culture has separated the spiritual and the physical, one of the first steps in healing the planet is to acknowledge the spiritual potential of matter, to align the world with its divine consciousness. Part of the patriarchal power drive has been to deny matter it magical nature; in this way men could gain power over matter.
- To fully encounter the divine feminine we must be prepared for her anger, for the pain that has come from her abuse.
- On the spiritual path, human beings often have to be healed first before they can develop spiritually.
- The moment of crisis is always a moment of potential. The gates of grace open in a way they were not open before. It is a strange thing: when human beings reach a real crisis, we are given a grace we are not otherwise given.
- Now it is time for the wisdom of the feminine to be combined with masculine consciousness, so that a new understanding of the wholeness of life can be used to help us to heal the world. This synergy of consciousness and matter is a gift of our future.
- At this time of transition the light of the soul of the world has a new vibration; it carries the consciousness of a new era.
I usually read a few books simultaneously and I still haven’t finished The Astrology of Fate by Liz Greene. I was quite amused when I discovered that in the chapter I am reading she is also writing about anima mundi; what is more, her take illuminates and clarifies the concept even further.
For Jung … symbolic products of the psyche hold the borderland between the … world of the archetypes and the daylight world of consciousness. These images are the ‘stuff’ in between, the anima mundi or soul of the world. They and their ground of psychic substance fall under the governorship of Hermes, lord of borders and roadways and crossroads, who in alchemy is called Mercurius.
…
… Anima mundi bears a strong relationship with the ‘objective psyche’ as Jung calls it, the indefinable world-stuff which stretches across the boundaries between psyche and body, between spirit and substance, which belongs to both and to neither, and which is accessible to us through the images of our dreams and fantasies. Work on this stuff in accordance with one’s natural pattern … and one builds the connecting link (or participates in a link which is already existent but unexperienced) between God and his creation, between Ideas and corporeal reality, between archetype and instinct, between freedom and fate.
symbolreader 
The light we discover in our own depths is a spark of the World Soul, and the world needs this light to evolve. It is the light hidden in matter that will redeem the world.- This quote truly resonates for me, Thank you for sharing this book with us. I also read multiple books simultaneously. Sometimes they have the same color covers, which I find comforting somehow.
Namaste
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I also find the concept of lumen naturae that Jung wrote about really amazing. The idea is not his but comes from the Middle Ages, definitely Paracelsus believed in it.
I am having a Venus return today – some sacred feminine rituals are in order.
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The problem with the world is they forgotten about the sacred feminine. The feminine had to be here from the beginning. Or Creation would not have created. We need both halves. Unless the andrygonous was the beginning. But that stlls encampsulates both feminine and masculing. Neither one or the other. But intriniscally both. But the world today is lacking in the feminine. We will not be whole until then. 🙂 I love the sacred feminine 🙂
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Thank you and let me just say I couldn’t agree more.
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I’m thinking I might find this book useful as part of the mix of ideas I’ve been stirring around the past couple of months. Another to look into!
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Hope to read your review!
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I love the art Monika. I have to admit I am just too tired to read but I will. Much love to the sacred feminine.
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You do not need to read it ’cause you live it!
I also love that series on The Songs of Songs by Chagall.
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Ah thank you girl but I still like to read what you write. 🙂
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Delightful. Thank you. And I love the Chagall you have chosen for the image, and all your image picks for your posts for that matter.
And healing of the feminine is healing of the masculine as well, and men benefit from it as well. I have often thought about the sensitive men who have not found a positive outlet for their sensitivity, because “big boys don´t cry”… It is as if the situation is already better concerning the younger generations. (The balance of the feminine and masculine doesn´t turn women into men or men into women, as it is sometimes believed. 😀 You shared an example of Anthony Soprano in “The Shadow Archetype” relating to this.)
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Thank you. I cannot get enough of that particular painting. The colours are stunning. I agree 100 per cent about the need for a balance. I hate to refer to myself but I thought deeply about this when writing about Hamlet, the knight in soft slippers. Love, Moniks
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Yes, I remember the post. To my mind it is totally okay to refer to your own older posts.
(I hope I don´t sound teaching in a negative sense, when I share what pops into my mind regarding the posts…There are no pedestals but equality in how I see things…this is so with the “inner plane light beings” as well. Would I bow to them, they would say thank you, and bow back to me. :D)
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I love your comments, they are very wise!
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Thanks Monika. Refreshing thoughts for me this morning (:
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My pleasure. Why the unhappy smiley? I noticed it is your new signature.
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I call it my small smiley, and it is not unhappy…look again. It is small, and happy! 🙂 <–big smiley
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O:-)
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a halo. See Monika? I can read smileys.
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A halo = sacred feminine. Very good!
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o 🙂
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Now, like in Monty Python, a man should enter and hit us on the head with a chicken: “I am stopping this sketch, it is too silly.”
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lol you are funny. I needed that.
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Thank you for sharing the Marc Chagall painting, it was wonderful to see it today. Whenever I see a Chagall painting like this I have the same inner experience conveyed by the wonderful quotes you selected. Chagall became my favorite painter around the same time I discovered astrology, around 19 or so. I keep thinking of using his images myself- he also has a birthday coming up! I thought his birthday was July 7, 1887 but I just noticed wikipedia has it as July 6. He was born in Vitebsk, which was part of Russia but is really Belarus? Near Poland? Do you know it? peace, Gray
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That particular painting is stunning. I cannot stop looking at it.
I am quite sure he was born on 7 July, a lot of sources confirm it. I have never been to Belarus or Russia, but I have been to Ukraine, which has a similar feel. I have always regretted not visiting these areas properly. Chagall was able to infuse his paintings with the soul of these areas. Of course it also matters that he was Jewish. I see a combination of Jewish and Slavic elements in his art. I feel connected to both – by being Polish and by having been born in a city which had a vibrant and huge Jewish community.
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I recently put up a chagal poster in my living room area, it is Half-Past three ( the poet) 1911. What is the sgnificance of this piece? I also have been sharing Chagall lately on facebook. I get art sent to me by I Require Art, such a godsend!!!
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I have never seen it, interesting but so not typical of him. I think I prefer the typical Chagall. We have stunning stained glass windows by him in Zurich.
I found some explanation of your painting here, but maybe you have seen it already:
http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/51267.html
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thanks, that Is where I got the poster from!
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These articulations render readable the human soul. Llewellyn has done a great service in writing them, and you a similar service in sharing them with us. Much gratitude.
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It really read like a holy book to me, honestly.
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“Because our patriarchal culture has separated the spiritual and the physical, one of the first steps in healing the planet is to acknowledge the spiritual potential of matter, to align the world with its divine consciousness. Part of the patriarchal power drive has been to deny matter it magical nature; in this way men could gain power over matter.” This makes sense to me — and I think we’re in for far more feminine anger than most presume. Grrrr….
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Yes!
Nothing else to add except of course: grrrr
I really need to write about Lilith.
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I wish you would write about Lilith. I don’t know when she was first mentioned, how it was that she was cut out of the Bible or if she’s a secondary myth, and what to make of the asteroids. My BML is too close for comfort to Pluto, and both are hovering around my IC. When I try to understand what this means I get dark portents, but they’re not specific. I don’t know if you caught this article by Michael Lutin about Regulus in Virgo, but I love it — http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-lutin/regulus-enters-virgo-the-_b_1114929.html — and I believe it. I think patriarchy has doomed itself with its own bad behavior, which very much includes separating the soul from the body and identifying masculinity with the former and femininity with the latter — which is why girls are dressed in pink or peach (for the flesh) and boys in blue (godly and celestial). How could man have ever believed himself the only conscious being? It’s too precious and special to even make sense.
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My Lilith is in the 7th house in Pisces and squaring my Sun.
I actually wrote about Regulus in Virgo a long time ago, when I was just starting to blog:
https://symbolreader.wordpress.com/2013/02/23/the-riddle-of-the-sphinx/
I think this shift is very important and I feel it strongly because I was born with Regulus on my Asc in a very patriarchal place.
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I’m heading over to your Regulus article. Thanks for sharing your BML placement; it makes me feel less problematic. Hahahoho…
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Forgot to write that I know the article that you linked.
Adding some more joy to my Lilith placement, it is on the apex of a semi-square. It squares my Sun in Gemini in the tenth house and my Neptune in Sagittarius in the 4th. I am a Piscean Gemini.
But I love and appreciate my Lilith. She has been a great teacher to me.
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Thanks for something essential to think about again.
It seems by the qoutes of the book you read that you interprete the world soul or our collective (un) consciouness as something good, light or positive at the end.
I’m afraid it is not. There are in us -both men and women- very constructive but also very destructive powers. Its to our selves to recognize them and to choose which side we are with.
I hope and think that the global exchange about this recognizing and chosing increases.
The titel of the song of songs expresses this challenge wonderful: there is the fairness of the moon and the horror of wars in us, and at the sametime the clarity of the sun to distinghuis and to choose.
Have a sunny sunday.
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Maybe the quotes were chosen in this way but actually both Jung and the author of the book would agree with you. Me too! Lovely weather in Switzerland, sunny finally, so your good wishes came true.
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OK, Yes some good sun in Holland too finally. I had a nice boatjourney with pleasant company in the Amsterdam canals this afternoon. So no difficult choices to make today (:
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And I had a beautiful hike in the mountains. Like going to the temple.
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Sonds good too; roof of the earth.
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