Journeys of a Pregnant Virgin

It has been such a long time since I last wrote here that I imagine my friends have given up on me! But here I am, back in Zurich since April 20th, and feeling free enough at last to write a few lines. I arrived to a preview of summer, with temperatures in the low and mid 70s and lilac in full bloom everywhere, their enchanting scent wafting through the streets as I walked. Marianne and Nic (landlady and partner) flew to Morocco for a week the morning after I arrived so I was able to settle in quietly and begin working on my Comparative Religion paper in earnest. And that, dear Reader, is what I have been doing these three weeks.

I wrote on Kali and the Black Madonna and their shared essence as "Dark Sisters" in their respective mythologies and also to each other. And to me, of course. A bit shocked about just how much I didn't know about Hinduism (and how much there was to know!) I immersed myself and read as much as I could. But I've got four other exams to study for and the first is on May 31st, so I had to call a halt to the reading and writing and submitted the paper, all forty pages of it, to my examining Reader yesterday. But decided before I plunge into Dreams and Fairy Tales, I want at least to announce my presence in Zurich for my fourth semester now.

As with the Gypsy Symbol paper, I was surprised again how much I enjoyed doing both the research and writing of this paper, even though I see its shortcomings and know it could be much better if I had more time. But it IS an essay, not an article (yet) and there will be time to edit and improve it later if I want to. As usual, it provided an opportunity to weave in many beautiful quotes from other people's writing and I will share just a few here for your enjoyment. Starting with the simple statement from Jung that "The secret is that only that which can destroy itself is fully alive." Now there is something to contemplate!

Here are a few more - some may be familiar to you. I won't comment much but just share the quotes themselves.

First from Marion Woodman, writing about the dark goddess: "This goddess may take many forms [in our dreams]. Usually she is black or oriental or simply dark. She may appear as a proud gypsy, a dancer in a tavern, a sacred prostitute, a Mary Magdalene. Always she is outside the collective value system of the dreamer's conscious world...and carries immense potential for new life."

Here is a beautiful statement that I also keep coming back to, from David Kinsley, scholar of Hinduism: "To ignore death, to pretend that one is physically immortal, to pretend that one's ego is the center of things, is to provoke Kali's mocking laughter.... To accept one's mortality is to be able to act superfluously, to let go, to be able to sing, dance, and shout." (I love the notion of acting superfluously!)

And from James Hillman, writing about the "etymon" or hidden truth of a name buried in its roots: "The search for the roots of words, the etymological fantasy, is one of the basic rituals of the imaginative tradition because it seeks to recover an image within a word.... In their names are their souls."

Meister Eckhart: "The ground of the soul is dark."

Finally, a long one. A poem by Pablo Neruda which expresses the longing for darkness so beautifully that it redeems the sadness itself for me.


“To Sadness/II”

Sadness, I need
your black wing.
So much honey in the topaz
each ray smiling
in the wide fields
and all an abundant light about me,
all an electric whir in the high air.
And so give me your black wing,
sister sadness.
I need sometimes to have the sapphire
extinguished and to have
the angled mesh of the rain fall,
the weeping of the earth….Now I am missing
the black light.
Give me your slow blood,
cold
rain,
Spread over me your fearful wing!
Into my care
give back the key
of the closed door,
the ruined door.
For a moment, for
a short lifetime,
remove my light and leave me
to feel myself
abandoned, wretched,
trembling in the web
of twilight,
receiving into my being
the quivering
hands
of
the
rain.

I hope, one of these months, to get a simple website up and running and then I can post the entire essay for anyone interested in this "Dark" topic. Meanwhile, I hope you have enjoyed these brief quotes.

With four exams taking place between May 31st and June 7th and then another on June 21st, I won't be writing here often but I will certainly be back at some time in the next few weeks, lest anyone is still checking in on me! Meanwhile, thanks for not giving up, and all the best until next time.
Marlene