I’m going up a mountain path with a big group of people. Some of them are bringing Donald Trump to give a speech. They’re having trouble getting him up the hill. Donald Trump isn’t big. He’s small and round, a lot like those orange Trump balloons you see at protests, and people are sort of carrying him up the mountain by squeezing him between them.
Je remonte un sentier de montagne avec un grand groupe de personnes. Certaines d’entre elles emmènent Donald Trump pour qu’il prononce un discours. Elles ont du mal à le faire monter la colline. Donald Trump n’est pas grand. Il est petit et rond, un peu comme ces ballons orange à l’effigie de Trump qu’on voit lors des manifestations, et les gens le portent en quelque sorte en le serrant entre eux.
We arrive at our house, the only one on the mountain top. It’s a beautiful, new, white space, very luminous and clean. Trump gets installed in the front bedroom where there’s a bathroom. None of this is easy but I don’t remember the details. Eventually, it’s time for him to speak, and I see that there are so many people crowding onto the top of that mountain that there no way we’re going to be able to go down again.
Nous arrivons chez nous, la seule maison au sommet de la montagne. C’est un bel espace tout neuf, blanc, très lumineux et propre. Trump s’installe dans la chambre du devant, où se trouve une salle de bains. Tout cela n’est pas facile, mais je ne me souviens pas des détails. Finalement, l’heure de son discours arrive, et je constate qu’il y a tellement de monde entassé au sommet de cette montagne qu’il nous sera impossible de redescendre.
We manage to push through the crowds to get Trump into a central place. Though it’s not elevated like a platform, it’s in a place where people can all face. Trump is helpless – he clearly doesn’t know what to do in that kind of situation. And he refuses do what we ask, or he isn’t able to do what we ask. People have to prop him up. It’s confusing and chaotic.
Nous parvenons à nous frayer un chemin à travers la foule pour amener Trump à un endroit central. Même si ce n’est pas surélevé comme une estrade, c’est un endroit où tout le monde peut se tourner vers lui. Trump est désemparé : il ne sait manifestement pas comment se comporter dans ce genre de situation. Et soit il refuse de faire ce que nous lui demandons, soit il en est incapable. Il faut que des gens le soutiennent. C’est déroutant et chaotique.
After a while some people take him aside, somewhere just off to the top of the mountain, and he never does give the speech. But people from the audience, people of all different colors and nationalities start coming forward to speak. A beautiful girl in a hijab comes up with two other girls, and they sing the most exquisite song in harmony. And other people stand up and give short speeches about peace and cooperation from wherever they are in the crowd.
Au bout d’un moment des gens l’emmènent à l’écart, quelque part près du sommet de la montagne, et il ne prononce jamais son discours. Mais des personnes du public, de toutes les couleurs et de toutes les nationalités, commencent à s’avancer pour prendre la parole. Une belle jeune fille portant un hijab s’avance avec deux autres jeunes filles, et elles chantent en chœur une chanson d’une beauté exquise. D’autres personnes se lèvent et prononcent de brefs discours sur la paix et la coopération, où qu’elles se trouvent dans la foule.
I don’t know where Trump is, but we can’t leave because more and more people are still coming up the mountain. People start going into our house to use the bathroom, and some women make soup, a potage like the French make out of whatever vegetables there are, and they pass it around in paper cups to everybody. The crowd is no problem, and Trump has completely disappeared.
Je ne sais pas où est Trump, mais on ne peut pas partir car de plus en plus de gens continuent d’arriver en haut de la montagne. Les gens commencent à entrer chez nous pour aller aux toilettes, et les femmes préparent de la soupe, un potage comme le font les Français avec les légumes qu’elles trouvent, et elles la distribuent à tout le monde dans des gobelets en papier. La foule ne pose aucun problème, et Trump a complètement disparu.
In the end, even though we knew we couldn’t leave and resources were limited, everything is working out, and it’s a joyous gathering.
Au final, même si nous savions que nous ne pouvions pas partir et que les ressources étaient limitées, tout s’arrange, et c’est une réunion très joyeuse.
Vivre une vie symbolique : la signification de la croix solaire (3e partie)
from C.G. Jung’s Red Book
Over the days and weeks leading up to the solar eclipse on August 12, 2026, I unexpectedly found myself surrounded by most of my closest women friends. They flew across the ocean to see me, they sent hand-written letters through the increasingly dysfunctional postal system, we connected in texts, video chats, phone calls, and dog walks. The depth of the gratitude I feel for each one of you and for you all for being with me is almost overwhelming. That fullness, that warmth, that love, has become a touchstone for me whenever I seek heart coherence.
Au cours des jours et des semaines qui ont précédé l’éclipse solaire du 12 août 2026, je me suis retrouvée, de manière inattendue, entourée de la plupart de mes amies les plus proches. Elles ont traversé l’océan en avion pour venir me voir, elles m’ont envoyé des lettres manuscrites via un service postal de plus en plus défaillant, et nous avons gardé le contact par SMS, appels vidéo, coups de fil et promenades avec nos chiens. La profondeur de la gratitude que je ressens envers chacune d’entre vous et envers vous toutes pour avoir été à mes côtés est presque bouleversante. Cette plénitude, cette chaleur, cet amour, sont devenus pour moi une référence chaque fois que je cherche la cohérence du cœur.
On August 8, several of us attended the opening of an exhibition of the surrealist painter Jean-Gabriel Jonin’s paintings here in my village in France, Cordes-sur-Ciel.
Le 8 août, nous étions plusieurs à assister au vernissage d’une exposition consacrée aux tableaux du peintre surréaliste Jean-Gabriel Jonin, ici même, dans mon village en France, à Cordes-sur-Ciel.
This particular series of Jonin’s works, the last he did before his death in 2014, portrays the coming together of the Sacred Feminine and Masculine. The symbolism is apparent to anyone versed in Jungian and neo-Jungian symbolism as well as tantrism in its many forms. The Masculine enters in the Feminine over and over. It’s an impressive body of work.
Cette série particulière d’œuvres de Jonin, la dernière qu’il a réalisée avant sa mort en 2014, illustre la union du Féminin et Masculin sacré. Le symbolisme est évident pour quiconque connaît bien la symbolique jungienne et néo-jungienne, ainsi que le tantrisme sous ses multiples formes. Le Masculin pénètre sans cesse dans le Féminin. C’est une œuvre impressionnante.
At 4 in the morning following the opening, I woke suddenly, knowing it was exactly 4, with the image of the form I explored in my previous blogs in this series, an equilateral cross in a circle, shining brilliantly on my inner eye.
À 4 heures du matin, au lendemain du vernissage, je me suis réveillé en sursaut, sachant qu’il était exactement 4 heures, tandis que l’image de la forme que j’avais explorée dans mes précédents articles de cette série – une croix équilatérale inscrite dans un cercle – brillait de mille feux dans mon œil intérieur.
The version of the image below represents four figures in a circle, feet touching, arms open to the outside. It’s my souvenir of February 20, when three woman friends and I were in a Japanese hot tub at the exact moment the Saturn-Neptune conjunction perfected at 1° Aries.
La version de l’image ci-dessous représente quatre personnages formant un cercle, les pieds joints, les bras ouverts vers l’extérieur. C’est mon souvenir du 20 février, jour où trois amies et moi-même étions dans un bain japonais au moment précis où la conjonction Saturne-Neptune s’est réalisée à 1° du Bélier.
In my previous post in this series, I explore some traditional meanings associated with the cross within a circle. The straight line can represent the masculine, the circle the feminine, or the vertical line could the Masculine, the horizontal the Feminine. The center, the point of connection, is the heart. You can see the horizontal line as time, the vertical as space. The six directions, north, south, east, west, above and below are encompassed within it. It is central to my teacher Ganesh Baba’s theory of everything, Cycle of Synthesis.
Dans mon précédent article de cette série, j’ai exploré certaines significations traditionnelles associées à la croix inscrite dans un cercle. La ligne droite peut représenter le masculin, le cercle le féminin, ou bien la ligne verticale pourrait symboliser le masculin et la ligne horizontale le féminin. Le centre, le point de connexion, est le cœur. On peut considérer la ligne horizontale comme le temps, et la verticale comme l’espace. Les six directions – nord, sud, est, ouest, haut et bas – y sont englobées. Ce concept est au cœur de la théorie du tout de mon maître Ganesh Baba, le « Cycle de la synthèse ».
But I’d thought about all these things before. What came to me at 4 in the morning was the difference between the symbol of the cross in the circle and the symbolism in Jean-Gabriel Jonin’s work.
Mais j’avais déjà réfléchi à tout cela auparavant. Ce qui m’est venu à l’esprit à 4 heures du matin, c’était la différence entre le symbole de la croix dans le cercle et la symbolique présente dans l’œuvre de Jean-Gabriel Jonin.
Both represent the coming together of the Sacred Feminine and Sacred Masculine. In most traditional esoteric understandings, and in Jonin’s work, the Feminine is seen as the physical, the earth, the body, matter, and the masculine is the spirit, the unseeable, the unknowable. A single, tiny, nearly invisible sperm enters the egg. The active man shoots his life-force into the receptive woman, who holds and carries and nurtures their creation into adulthood. In Jonin’s work the Feminine Principle is depicted as the female body. The Masculine is a ray of light. His work is luminous, delightfully geometric, and rich with symbolism. The curves of the Feminine play with the lines of the Masculine.
Ces deux éléments représentent l’union du Féminin sacré et du Masculin sacré. Dans la plupart des conceptions ésotériques traditionnelles, ainsi que dans l’œuvre de Jonin, le Féminin est considéré comme le physique, la terre, le corps, la matière, tandis que le Masculin incarne l’esprit, l’invisible, l’inconnaissable. Un seul spermatozoïde, minuscule et presque invisible, pénètre dans l’ovule. L’homme actif projette sa force vitale dans la femme réceptive, qui accueille, porte et nourrit leur création jusqu’à l’âge adulte. Dans l’œuvre de Jonin, le principe féminin est représenté par le corps féminin. Le principe masculin est un rayon de lumière. Son œuvre est lumineuse, délicieusement géométrique et riche en symbolisme. Les courbes du féminin jouent avec les lignes du masculin.
The unencumbered cross in a circle offers a different interpretation of the same idea.
La croix libre, inscrite dans un cercle, propose une interprétation différente de cette même idée.
The lines are the Masculine, and the circle the Feminine. In this powerful image that has gripped my imagination for months, the Feminine is holding the Masculine.
Les lignes représentent le Masculin, et le cercle, le Féminin. Dans cette image puissante qui occupe mon imagination depuis des mois, le Féminin tient le Masculin dans ses bras.
And, at the heart of the image is the heart, the point of connection, and the doorway to other dimensions. It’s where fertilization and creation take place, where the new is born and where the old dies. It’s the ultimate möbius twist, the coming together of the opposites, the looking glass, the black hole and the newborn star.
Et, au cœur de l’image, se trouve le cœur, le point de connexion et la porte vers d’autres dimensions. C’est là que s’opèrent la fécondation et la création, là où le nouveau naît et où l’ancien meurt. C’est la torsion de Möbius par excellence, la réunion des contraires, le miroir, le trou noir et l’étoile naissante.
No wonder it’s called the Sun Cross.
Pas étonnant qu’on l’appelle la « Croix du Soleil ».
The astrological symbol for the sun is a circle with a dot at the center.
Le symbole astrologique du Soleil est un cercle avec un point au centre.
I began this piece three days before the solar eclipse, when the shadow of the moon crosses the sun.
J’ai commencé cet article trois jours avant l’éclipse solaire, lorsque l’ombre de la Lune passe devant le Soleil.
The eclipse was 92.3% complete in Cordes À Cordes, l’éclipse a atteint un taux de couverture de 92,3 %.
May the Feminine and Masculine Principles, manifest as the women and men on earth now, connect, hold each other, and work together to create a better balanced, more just, and more loving new world.
Puissent les principes féminin et masculin, qui se manifestent aujourd’hui sur Terre sous la forme des femmes et des hommes, se rapprocher, se soutenir mutuellement et œuvrer ensemble pour créer un monde nouveau, plus équilibré, plus juste et plus aimant.
Il y a environ un mois, j’ai arrêté d’écrire la première partie de cet article parce qu’il était tard et que la page comptait déjà trop de mots. Je pensais m’y remettre le lendemain matin : je savais exactement ce que j’allais dire et comment j’allais m’y prendre.
Mais quand le matin est arrivé, la vie s’en est mêlée, comme c’est souvent le cas, et j’ai perdu le rythme. Si cela m’arrive pendant que je travaille sur un roman, je me mets en mode recherche — c’est donc ce que j’ai fait.
Alors que je cherchais à retrouver la forme que nous avions créée toutes les quatre dans le bain japonais, je suis tombée sur le magnifique pendentif que vous voyez ci-dessus, et j’en ai commandé un pour chacune d’entre nous, les quatre qui étions ensemble dans le jacuzzi à ce moment magique. Tout semblait encore s’arranger, même si je n’écrivais pas.
Voici quelques-unes des choses que j’ai apprises.
La croix équilatérale inscrite dans un cercle, parfois appelée « croix solaire », est l’un des symboles les plus anciens découverts par les archéologues. On en trouve de nombreux exemples anciens à travers le monde, datant pour la plupart du Néolithique à l’âge du bronze.
Les gravures et les pétroglyphes datant d’environ 1800 à 500 avant notre ère sont omniprésents dans tout le monde celtique, de la Scandinavie à l’Irlande, où ils étaient interprétés comme représentant le soleil. On l’appelle également la roue de l’année, la roue solaire, la roue du char du dieu Soleil, le cercle sacré et la roue médicinale. Dans l’Égypte antique, ce symbole désigne un village.
Plus récemment, la croix solaire a été utilisée dans le dessin du drapeau de l’Union paneuropéenne dans les années 1920. Elle a également été adoptée par des groupes néonazis et suprémacistes blancs ; la croix gammée en est une variante.
Mais celle qui me tient le plus à cœur est une autre variante, la croix cathare ou occitane, également appelée croix de Toulouse.
Personnellement, je vois la croix dans un cercle comme le symbole de l’interconnexion, sur un pied d’égalité, de tous les quaternaires et dualités archétypaux : les quatre points cardinaux, le masculin et le féminin sacrés, l’espace et le temps, le haut et le bas, les riches et les pauvres, les femmes et les hommes, le ciel et la terre, l’esprit et la matière, le monde imaginaire et le monde physique, etc. L’équilibre.
Le point d’intersection symbolise la source de toute création. Le cercle qui entoure la croix représente l’éternité et le caractère cyclique de la vie.
from Jung’s Red BookPhillips head screwLace curtain in my wondowAntique plate on my wall
Même après avoir tant appris sur ce symbole et l’avoir vu partout autour de moi, les mots refusaient de venir. Je suis allé me promener dans les bois tout en réfléchissant à la signification de l’apparition d’un symbole aussi puissant à ce moment précis, par rapport à ma raison d’être.
Un message publié par les anciens Hopis il y a quelques années m’est venu à l’esprit.
« Il y a une rivière qui coule à présent très vite.
Elle est si grande et si rapide
que certains en auront peur.
Ils s’accrocheront à la rive ;
ils auront l’impression d’être déchirés
et souffriront énormément.
Sachez que la rivière a une destination.
Les anciens disent que nous devons lâcher prise,
nous pousser au milieu de la rivière,
garder les yeux ouverts et la tête hors de l’eau.
Et je dis : regardez qui est là avec vous et réjouissez-vous.“
C’est là que nous étions, nous quatre, dans le bain japonais, le 20 février, sortant des eaux de la méditation pour nous embrasser.
Nous sommes devenus une entité, une nouvelle famille, une cellule.
Lorsqu’une chenille se recouvre d’un cocon, l’ADN contenant l’empreinte d’une partie du papillon s’active dans certaines de ses cellules. Les cellules de la chenille dépourvues de cet ADN sécrètent des enzymes pour dissoudre les cellules nouvellement éveillées, qu’elles considèrent comme des envahisseurs. Les cellules imaginales isolées succombent dans un premier temps, mais lorsqu’elles sont attirées en groupes par la fréquence à laquelle elles résonnent, elles parviennent à survivre à l’attaque. Les cellules de la chenille continuent à sécréter l’enzyme jusqu’à ce qu’elles s’y dissolvent, créant ainsi le bouillon qui nourrira les cellules imaginales alors qu’elles accomplissent leur destin : devenir une partie essentielle de la nouvelle forme, le papillon.
En cette époque où les récits, les attentes et toutes les certitudes s’effritent, c’est exactement ce dont nous, les humains, avons besoin.
La prophétie Hopi se poursuit :
À ce moment de l’histoire,
nous ne devons rien prendre personnellement,
et encore moins nous-mêmes,
car dès que nous le faisons,
notre croissance spirituelle et notre cheminement s’arrêtent.
La voie du loup solitaire est révolue.
Rassemblez-vous.
Bannissez le mot « lutte » de votre attitude et de votre vocabulaire.
Tout ce que nous faisons désormais doit être accompli de manière sacrée
et dans la célébration.
NOUS SOMMES CEUX QUE NOUS ATTENDIONS.
Convaincue de cela, je me suis immédiatement attachée à encourager la création de petits groupes de femmes, d’hommes et de femmes, de personnes partageant la même vision, afin qu’ils se réunissent régulièrement, à la fois pour être présents les uns pour les autres pendant la dissolution en cours de cette réalité, et pour en créer les éléments de sa forme transformée.
Je voyais ces groupes comme des « nids », un concept que j’avais découvert il y a des années. Et je me suis rendu compte que j’en faisais déjà partie de plusieurs : des appels Zoom réguliers avec ma famille et mes amis, des cercles de femmes auxquels je participe depuis des décennies, et même mon groupe de conversation en français. Mais j’en voulais plus. Je voulais créer des groupes spécialement destinés à apporter un soutien dans les moments difficiles, ainsi qu’un espace propice à l’épanouissement où de nouvelles idées pourraient naître. Je voulais créer des cellules imaginales.
. Hélas, en l’espace de quelques jours, le premier groupe que j’avais tenté de mettre sur pied s’est effondré. Puis j’ai appris que les pendentifs que j’avais commandés avaient été envoyés à la mauvaise adresse.
J’ai battu en retraite. La certitude, me suis-je rappelée, est presque toujours une erreur. J’ai complètement cessé de travailler sur cet essai pendant deux semaines.
Puis, hier, un petit colis est arrivé par la poste. Les pendentifs n’avaient pas été envoyés à la mauvaise adresse.
Demain, je déjeune avec quelques-unes de mes amies les plus proches. Qui sait ce qui va émerger de ce terrain si fertile ?
About a month ago I stopped writing Part 1 of this blog because it was late and too many words were already on the page. I imagined picking it up in the morning – I knew exactly what I was going to say and how I planned to act on it.
But when morning came life interfered, as it so often does, and I lost the rhythm. If that happens while I’m working on a novel, I go into research mode—so that’s what I did.
While searching for the image we four women created in the hot tub, I found the beautiful pendant pictured above, and I ordered one for each of the four us who were together in the hot tub at that magical moment. Everything still seemed to be falling into place even though I wasn’t writing.
Here’s some of what I learned.
The equilateral cross in a circle, sometimes called a sun cross, is one of the oldest symbols archaeologists have discovered. Ancient examples are common across the globe, dating mostly from the neolithic period to the bronze age.
Carvings and petroglyphs dating from c. 1800–500 BCE are ubiquitous across the Celtic world from Scandinavia to Ireland, where they were interpreted as representing the sun. It is also known as the wheel of the year, the solar wheel, the wheel of the chariot of the sun god, the sacred hoop and the medicine wheel. In ancient Egypt, the symbol means village.
More recently, the Sonnenkreuz was used of the flag design of the Paneuropean Union in the 1920s. The solar cross has also been adopted by neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups—the swastika is a variation of it.
Closer to my heart is another variation, the Cathar or Occitan cross, also called the Cross of Toulouse.
Occitan Cross
Personally, I see the cross-in-a-circle as a symbol of the connectedness to the whole, on an equal basis, of all the archetypal quaternaries and dualities—the four directions, the sacred masculine and feminine, space and time, above and below, the rich and poor, women and men, heaven and earth, spirit and matter, the imaginary world and the physical world, and so on. Balance.
The point of intersection represents the source of all creation. The circle surrounding the cross represents eternity and the cyclic nature of life.
from Jung’s Red BookPhillips head screwLace curtain in my wondow
Antique plate on my wall
Even after learning so much about the symbol and seeing it all around me, written words wouldn’t come. I took a walk in the woods while contemplating the meaning of the manifestation of such a powerful symbol at that particular moment in terms of my purpose in life.
A message published by Hopi elders a few years ago came to me.
There is a river flowing now very fast.
It is so great and swift
that there are those who will be afraid.
They will hold on to the shore;
they will feel they are being torn apart
and will suffer greatly.
Know that the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore,
push off into the middle of the river,
keep our eyes open and our heads above the water.
And I say, see who is there with you and celebrate.
That’s where we were, we four women in the Japanese hot tub on the 20th of February, emerging from the waters of meditation to embrace.
We became a unit, a new family, a cell.
When a caterpillar creates a chrysalis around itself, DNA carrying the image of part of the butterfly activates in some of its cells. The caterpillar cells lacking that DNA secrete enzymes to dissolve the newly awakened cells, whom they see as invaders. The isolated imaginal cells succumb at first, but when they’re drawn into groups by the frequency they resonate, they’re able survive the attack. The caterpillar cells continue excreting the enzyme until they dissolve into it, creating the soup that will nourish the imaginal cells as they fulfill their destiny to become an essential part of the new form, the butterfly.
In this time of the dissolution of stories, expectations, and certainty of any sort. that’s exactly what we humans need to do.
The Hopi prophecy continues,
At this time in history,
we are to take nothing personally,
least of all ourselves,
for the moment we do,
our spiritual growth and journey come to a halt.
The way of the lone wolf is over.
Gather yourselves.
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and vocabulary.
All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner
and in celebration.
WE ARE THE ONES WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR.
Full of certainty, I immediately set out to encourage the creation of small groups of women, of men and women, of people who resonate on the same frequency, to meet regularly, both to be present for each other during the ongoing dissolution of this reality, and to create parts of its transformed form.
I thought of the groups as “nests,” a concept I’d come across years ago. and realized that I was already part of a few: regularly scheduled zooms calls with family and with friends, women’s circles I’ve participated in for decades, and even my French conversation group. But I wanted more. I wanted to set up groups specifically to provide support in hard times as well as generative space where new ideas might bloom. I wanted to create imaginal cells.
Alas, within days, the first group I tried to set up fell apart. Then I learned that the pendants I had ordered were being sent to the wrong address.
I retreated. Certainty, I recalled, is almost always a mistake. I stopped working on this essay entirely for a couple weeks.
Then, yesterday, a small package came in the mail. The pendants hadn’t gone to the wrong address.
Tomorrow I’m having lunch with some of my closest women friends. Who knows what will emerge from such fertile ground?
At just before six in the evening on February 20, 2026, I was immersed in a Japanese-style hot tub, perfectly round and not too hot, with three dear women friends. With our legs bobbing in the warm water in front of us, the four of us formed a Celtic cross.
It was a seminal moment. We all knew it.
At just that time, the conjunction of Neptune and Saturn was exact. Not only was it exact, which happens every 36 years, but it was exact at 0° Aries, which only happens every 6000 years.
And, not only was it exact, but it fell exactly on the north node of the moon in my birth chart. And we were at that spa at that moment to celebrate the birthday of one of the other women.
That’s a lot of astrology to unpack, and I’ll do it, but first, take a look the Sabian symbol for 0° Aries:
A Woman Just Risen From The Sea; A Seal Is Embracing Her
I hoped the four of us would take that moment to rise from the water and embrace, but, sadly, the water wasn’t welcoming enough for any of us to feel like submerging.
So we meditated and emerged from there to embrace.
What’s the significance of all this?
Last night I dreamed that I was deep in a forest with a group of people. We’d had to escape from somewhere and there was a question about whether we had brought the right stuff with us and whether there was enough food. It was a fairly large group of people, maybe twenty or thirty. I was at the back of the group, walking slowly with a companion. When we caught up with the others, they were cooking and eating. I was happy to see that they had roasted some chicken and that I had a choice of either a leg or a breast piece—I didn’t want them both because it seemed like too much.
Our whole civilization is entering the deep woods of uncertainty, and the question of whether we’re bringing the right things with us matters. The dream is reassuring—there’s enough chicken for us to have a choice, even if we’re the last to be served. Yet it would be a mistake to take it literally. Most of us won’t have to carry chickens along as we navigate the deep woods. We have to take some form of symbolic sustenance.
In the fall, while preparing a presentation for the Seeker’s Compass (watch it here: https://youtu.be/iQIEb5dbF9w), I remembered the profound importance of living symbolically. I’ve appreciated the idea since I was fourteen or so, when the marvelous creative writing teacher at my summer camp introduced us to the power of myth through the work of CG Jung and Joseph Campbell. (My eternal thanks go to Joe Beatty at Lighthouse Art and Music Camp). Ever since, I’ve attended to the metaphors behind details of daily life. I even studied myth at Pacifica and, in my work with Alice O. Howell, focused on seeing the sacred on the commonplace as well as on astrology—but when I used those words “living a symbolic life” in that talk, something powerful reawakened in me.
In the talk I said something like, “In these liminal times, living a symbolic life is surely one of the ways through to the next world.” It wasn’t a phrase I intended to put into that talk, which I gave several times, live and on camera, with and without notes. It wasn’t in my notes.
After the talk, I thought, huh, good thing nobody asked me a question about that—I wouldn’t have known what to say, or who to attribute it to for certain. I thought I remembered hearing it first in a talk by James Hillman at Pacifica, and had assumed it was his. It actually comes from Jung himself. InThe Symbolic Life: a collection of miscellaneous writings, he says,
You see, man is in need of a symbolic life – badly in need. We only live banal, ordinary, rational, or irrational things . . . but we have no symbolic life. Where do we live symbolically? Nowhere except where we participate in the ritual of life. . . .
Have you got a corner somewhere in your house where you perform the rites, as you can see in India? Even the very simple houses there have at least a curtained corner where the members of the household can perform the symbolic life, where they can make their new vows or their meditation. We don’t have it; we have no such corner. We have our own room, of course, – but there is a telephone that can ring us up at any time, and we always must be ready. We have no time, no place.
We have no symbolic life, and we are all badly in need of the symbolic life. Only the symbolic life can express the need of the soul – the daily need of the soul, mind you! And because people have no such thing, they can never step out of this mill – this awful, banal, grinding life in which they are “nothing but.” . . .
Everything is banal; everything is “nothing but,” and that is the reason why people are neurotic. They are simply sick of the whole thing, sick of that banal life, and therefore they want sensation. They even want a war; they all want a war; they are all glad when there is a war; they say, “Thank heaven, now something is going to happen – something bigger than ourselves!”
These things go pretty deep, and no wonder people get neurotic. Life is too rational; there is no symbolic existence in which I am something else, in which I am fulfilling my role, my role as one of the actors in the divine drama of life.
After I copied and pasted the above text into this essay, I thought I’d look for an image to illustrate the concept, maybe something from Jung’s The Red Book. The very first image that came up in my search was this one:
Over the top synchronicity.
But to return to the astrology that marked the moment: when the woods get deep and all the trees look alike, I often look up at the stars. Astrology provides a symbolic map for understanding changes in our personal and civilizational lives.
Astrology divides the celestial sphere into 12 sections or signs of 30 degrees each, for a total of 360 degrees. 0° Aries is considered the first degree of the zodiac, the threshold of a new level in the upward spiral of change. The exact passage, or conjunction, of two planets that appear to be moving slowly through the heavens, occurring at 0° Aries begs exploration.
Saturn is the furthest away of the seven “planets,” which in astrology include the sun and the moon, which are visible to the naked eye. Thus, it’s what holds the “world” together, the outer boundary, the structure.
Neptune, discovered using a telescope in 1846, was assigned the farthest out concepts of the time: imagination, illusions, dreams, the abstract, the mysterious.
The conjunction of Saturn and Neptune indicates a merger of structure with dreams.
In a birth chart, the planets are laid out on the zodiac in the position they were in at a person’s birth, each planet at a certain degree in one of the twelve segments, or signs.
In 1925, an astrologer, Marc Edmund Jones, and a clairvoyant, Elsie Wheeler, created a series of 360 images, one for each of the degrees of the zodiac. They called them the Sabian symbols. Each one is completely unique. For example, the woman rising from the sea embraced by the seal is followed by a man entertaining a group of people, and a few degrees later, by a triangle with wings.
In addition to the planets, there are other markers that are assigned meaning, among them the lunar nodes, which mark the moon’s orbit as it intersects the apparent path of the sun. The south node is said to show what a person comes into life with, and the north node what their purpose is.
One of the basic things astrologers do is to compare the position of the planets in the sky at present, or at any given time, to their positions at the time of one’s birth. Thus, I knew that the rare conjunction of Saturn and Neptune at 0° Aries coincided with the position of the north node in my birth chart at 0° Aries. When I looked up the significance of that, Astrology.com said, “When planetary transits touch your north node directly, you’ll find significant, destined events and meetings take place. The north node is uncharted terrain and unlocks the key to your life’s purpose.”
So, there I was, creating one of the four limbs of that cross in a circle at the exact moment of the structure/dream collaboration, at the exact point in time when I am supposed to come into whatever I came into this life to do. And with three dear friends, one of whose birthday was at the same time.
It’s taken too many words and too much time to get to this point in the story, so I’ll explore where the experience took me in my next post.
My parents were immigrants. They left Vienna in March, 1938, and arrived in Philadelphia in November, 1942, on a Portuguese ship called the Serpa Pinto.
Mes parents étaient des immigrants. Ils ont quitté Vienne en mars 1938 et sont arrivés à Philadelphie en novembre 1942, à bord d’un navire portugais appelé le Serpa Pinto.
Connected to the Quaker community through their pacifism, they settled in Philadelphia.
Liés à la communauté Quaker par leur pacifisme, ils s’installèrent à Philadelphie.
Though they’d only brought two suitcases with them in 1942, by the mid-1950’s, they’d already sold our rowhouse in a working-class suburb south of the city and built a split-level on a one acre plot in a middle-class suburb in the northwest. My little family truly lived the American dream.
Alors qu’ils n’avaient emporté que deux valises avec eux en 1942, au milieu des années 1950, ils avaient déjà vendu notre maison mitoyenne dans une banlieue ouvrière au sud de la ville et construit une maison à deux niveaux sur un terrain d’un acre dans une banlieue bourgeoise au nord-ouest. Ma petite famille vivait véritablement le rêve américain.
The second car my parents bought, the Kaiser, in front of their house in Morton in the early 1950s – La deuxième voiture achetée par mes parents, la Kaiser, devant leur maison à Morton au début des années 1950
Occasionally, we’d have guests from Europe or other parts of the country, usually other immigrants. After a day in Philadelphia seeing the Liberty Bell, which you could touch then, and Independence Hall, we’d cram into our car, me in the middle of the front seat, guests in the back, and take route 1, or later the turnpike, through New Jersey to New York City, where my father’s sister and most of their social circle had settled.
De temps en temps, nous recevions des invités venus d’Europe ou d’autres régions du pays, généralement d’autres immigrants. Après une journée passée à Philadelphie à visiter la Liberty Bell, que l’on pouvait alors toucher, et l’Independence Hall, nous nous entassions dans notre voiture, moi au milieu du siège avant, les invités à l’arrière, et empruntions la route 1, puis l’autoroute, pour traverser le New Jersey jusqu’à New York, où la sœur de mon père et la plupart de leur cercle social s’étaient installés.
Aside from the visit to Eclair Bakery, the best part of the trip to New York was the ride on the Staten Island Ferry. It cost a quarter round-trip and it went by the Statue of Liberty.
Outre la visite à la boulangerie Eclair, le meilleur moment de notre séjour à New York a été la traversée en ferry de Staten Island. Le billet aller-retour coûtait 25 cents et nous sommes passés devant la Statue de la Liberté.
Most of the other passengers on the ferry were commuters, so it wasn’t too hard to find places to stand on the side where you could see the statue. Every time we passed her, my father would proudly tell the story of how the statue was a gift from France, where he and my mother lived between 1938 and their arrival in America. My favorite part of the tale was where the money came from to build the enormous statue and the pedestal to hold it.
La plupart des autres passagers du ferry étaient des navetteurs, il n’était donc pas trop difficile de trouver des places où se tenir debout sur le côté d’où l’on pouvait voir la statue. Chaque fois que nous passions devant elle, mon père racontait fièrement comment cette statue avait été offerte par la France, où lui et ma mère avaient vécu entre 1938 et leur arrivée en Amérique. Ce que je préférais dans cette histoire, c’était l’origine des fonds qui avaient permis de construire cette statue gigantesque et le piédestal qui la soutenait.
It wasn’t France’s national government that paid for the gift. That would have been considered inappropriate. Instead, hundreds of municipalities, from tiny villages to great cities, gave thousands of francs to build the statue. Schoolchildren saved up and donated centimes. Descendants of French soldiers who fought in the American Revolution contributed. The skin of the statue is made of copper offered by a French copper company.
Ce n’est pas le gouvernement français qui a financé ce cadeau. Cela aurait été considéré comme inapproprié. Ce sont plutôt des centaines de municipalités, des petits villages aux grandes villes, qui ont donné des milliers de francs pour construire la statue. Les écoliers ont économisé et donné des centimes. Les descendants des soldats français qui ont combattu pendant la Révolution américaine ont également contribué. La peau de la statue est faite de cuivre offert par une entreprise française spécialisée dans ce métal.
Yet when the gift was finally ready, it wasn’t certain that the statue would ever be erected in America, Many powerful Americans, including the New York Times, opposed it. But in the end, Joseph Pulitzer organized a campaign asking children to contribute pennies, and enough money was raised to install Lady Liberty in New York Harbor.
Cependant, lorsque le cadeau fut enfin prêt, il n’était pas certain que la statue serait un jour érigée en Amérique. De nombreux Américains influents, dont le New York Times, s’y opposaient. Mais finalement, Joseph Pulitzer organisa une campagne demandant aux enfants de donner quelques centimes, et suffisamment d’argent fut récolté pour installer Lady Liberty dans le port de New York.
I collected pennies. And I carried a carefully constructed Unicef donation box with me every Halloween. I knew about children contributing to great causes.
Je collectionnais les pièces de monnaie. Et chaque Halloween, je portais avec moi une boîte de dons pour l’Unicef soigneusement fabriquée. Je savais que les enfants pouvaient contribuer à de grandes causes.
And then there was Emma Lazarus’s poem, The New Colossus, which was written for the statue.
Et puis il y avait le poème d’Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus, qui avait été écrit pour la statue.
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
« Donnez-moi vos pauvres, vos exténués,
La foule qui aspire à vivre libre,
Le rebut de vos rivages surpeuplés.
Envoyez-moi ces sans-abri, ces victimes de la tempête,
Je lève ma lampe près de la porte dorée ! »
I felt both embraced and empowered by the Statue of Liberty.
Je me suis sentie à la fois étreinte et inspirée par la Statue de la Liberté.
Now, that idealism is gone, the wretched refuse scorned, and immigrants imprisoned. The golden door is closed.
Aujourd’hui, cet idéalisme a disparu, les misérables sont méprisés et les immigrants emprisonnés. La porte dorée est fermée.
My father, a green card holder who was never naturalized, would be living in fear instead of pride.
Mon père, titulaire d’une carte verte qui n’a jamais été naturalisé, vivrait dans la peur plutôt que dans la fierté.
Once in a while, the fog that rises from the valleys surrounding Cordes-sur-Ciel freezes.
Overnight the dense cloud that made driving so difficult the night before becomes a delicate crystalline web, clinging to the edges of every leaf, every branch.
It’s magic.
This morning we walked to the le Grain de Sel, the chalky outcropping you can see from our street.
It’s a short but steep climb to walk there from our house, but you can drive up past it and take a flat path too.
Wishing you all a year filled with glimmers of hope, fresh insights, many moments of pure joy and raucous laughter, and at least a few of breathtaking awe.
Look! I’m doing an online presentation that you can sign up for using the link on the picture. It’s an extension of the ponderings I’ve been doing on my blog in recent months. See you there?
Type the word “magic” into the search on my blog to get an idea of what I’ll be talking about.
Use the link at the bottom of the description to sign up.
Last night the storm hit. All day I’d been watching the weather to see if Cordes was likely to be in the path of a small but exceptionally intense storm crossing the south of France. Yes, said the weather forecast, no, said the forecast, yes. By 6 in the evening it was here. In force.
La nuit dernière, la tempête a frappé. Toute la journée, j’ai regardé la météo pour voir si Cordes était susceptible de se trouver sur la trajectoire d’une petite tempête exceptionnellement intense qui traversait le sud de la France. Oui, disait la météo, non, disait la météo, oui. À 18 heures, l’orage était là. En force.
Mocha was frightened in advance, as she often is. When she tried to hide under the chair I was sitting on, she knocked over a full cup of tea. Tom and I were cleaning up the mess—there was tea on books, games, a pillow, the floor, the power strip for all the electronic devices, the chair itself, the side table, and the dog was dripping—as huge gusts of wind and rain tore down the streets and battered the village.
Mocha était effrayée à l’avance, comme elle l’est souvent. En essayant de se cacher sous la chaise sur laquelle j’étais assis, elle a renversé une pleine tasse de thé. Tom et moi étions en train de nettoyer le désordre – il y avait du thé sur des livres, des jeux, un oreiller, le sol, la barre d’alimentation de tous les appareils électroniques, la chaise elle-même, la table d’appoint, et le chien dégoulinait – alors que d’énormes rafales de vent et de pluie déchiraient les rues et frappaient le village.
I didn’t know until morning that the huge linden tree at the Barbacane had fallen.
Je n’ai su qu’au matin que l’énorme tilleul de la Barbacane était tombé.
She had graced the square below the round tower guarding our fortified city for as long as anyone who was standing near me as we listened to the chainsaw cutting her to pieces could remember.
Elle ornait la place située sous la tour ronde qui gardait notre ville fortifiée depuis aussi longtemps que ceux qui se tenaient près de moi alors que nous écoutions la tronçonneuse la découper en morceaux pouvaient s’en souvenir.
Linden trees can be female or male, though their flowers are hermaphroditic. Cordes has several male trees—they’re the ones with the heavenly scent in the late spring—but the one at the Barbacane was female, and ready to drop her seeds. She was perfectly formed, with a beautiful round top that rose above the houses and provided a circle of deep shade.
Les tilleuls peuvent être femelles ou mâles, mais leurs fleurs sont hermaphrodites. Cordes possède plusieurs arbres mâles – ce sont eux qui dégagent un parfum céleste à la fin du printemps – mais celui de la Barbacane était femelle et prêt à laisser tomber ses graines. Il était parfaitement formé, avec une belle cime ronde qui s’élevait au-dessus des maisons et offrait un cercle d’ombre profonde.
After paying homage to her uprooted body, I took a little branch and visited some of the other grand trees pf Cordes. The black locust behind the library seemed very sad to me. So did the horse chestnuts, who are suffering from leaf-miners themselves. But the other lindens seemed the most affected.
Après avoir rendu hommage à son corps déraciné, j’ai pris une petite branche et j’ai visité quelques autres grands arbres de Cordes. Le robinier derrière la bibliothèque m’a semblé bien triste. Il en va de même pour les marronniers d’Inde, qui souffrent eux aussi de la mineuse. Mais les autres tilleuls semblaient les plus touchés.
When I touched the little branch I’d taken from the queen tree to the linden on rue de Colombier, the living tree grabbed hold of the branch of its queen tightly. As I held onto my branch and pulled on it gently, I could feel a vibration running through my body that made me not want to let go either.
Lorsque j’ai touché la petite branche que j’avais prise de l’arbre reine au tilleul de la rue de Colombier, l’arbre vivant s’est agrippé fermement à la branche de sa reine. Alors que je m’accrochais à ma branche et que je tirais doucement dessus, je sentais une vibration parcourir mon corps qui me poussait à ne pas la lâcher non plus.
In ancient Celtic societies, like the Gauls who lived here before the Romans, people gathered to celebrate and dance under linden trees, as well as to hold official meetings to restore peace and justice. The linden tree was believed to preserve the truth. In German mythology, it is the tree of peace and love.
Dans les anciennes sociétés celtiques, comme les Gaulois qui vivaient ici avant les Romains, les gens se réunissaient pour célébrer et danser sous les tilleuls, ainsi que pour tenir des réunions officielles afin de rétablir la paix et la justice. Le tilleul était censé préserver la vérité. Dans la mythologie allemande, il est l’arbre de la paix et de l’amour.
A couple weeks ago, in response to a friend’s distress over the heart-wrenching news, I responded, “Maybe we’re moving from the three dimensional world into the fourth and fifth dimensions.”
I said it lightly—and, sadly, I doubt that my friend was any less upset after I said it—but I do take refuge in the thought. It gives me comfort to imagine that, as the world as we know it becomes less and less sustainable, there’s more out there than meets the eye.
After sending the idea into cyberspace, I spent the week reflecting on how such a shift might unfold. I stopped listening to the news, I focused on internal work, and I reflected on how the 3-D world might intersect with the 4 and 5 dimensional worlds.
It’s an area that’s interested me for as long as I can remember. Even as a child I had extraordinary dreams. I’m prone to synchronicity. I was more at ease in the world of make-believe than in the real world for many years. I love fiction, especially fiction with magical elements. Speculative and science fiction appeals, too, as do the edges of science and philosophy. It’s where I usually go, along with increasing my time in meditation and contemplation, when the world is too much.
So, for a week or so in mid-July, I paid more attention to my posture and my breath, I meditated more, and I tuned into the cosmic hum more often. Instead of the news, I listened to archetypal astrology—Richard Tarnas, Heather Ensworth, and Rick Levine—and I took lots of time for reverie.
In 1969, when the Fifth Dimension told the world about the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, astrologers believed it had already been happening in fits and starts for a long time. And the sun did shine in the late 60’s and early 70’s—for a little while anyway.
A whole generation of kids and young adults valued peace and love over money. I was in my late teens then, and I was completely swept away by hippie values. I still am. It’s heartbreaking that the promise often attributed to Jimi Hendrix, “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace,” hasn’t yet happened.
What astrologers are saying these days is that the transition to the age of Aquarius, which is indeed upon us, involves a major shift in consciousness, a change in essential values, and ultimately, a move from focusing on gathering goods to generating good.
Whether any of us alive on earth today will live long enough to enjoy such a world seems doubtful to me, but I see great value in releasing the expectation that life will return to the state it was in when we grew up. Opening one’s heart and mind to some of the infinite possibilities the future could bring seems like a much better option than hanging onto a vision of reality that’s crumbling into the past.
I love the idea that our perception of the measurable world will soon be enhanced by a greater understanding its more subtle aspects, as well as its place in the greater, less dense whole.
The pull of the three-dimensional world
Imagine my surprise then, when, in the midst of my dedication to exploring higher dimensions, the 3-D world intervened with an invitation to appreciate, if not acquire, a genuine treasure.
Tom had recently come into a small inheritance. At the time, that money wasn’t three dimensional at all—it was some numbers on a screen. It occurred to me that rather than putting it in the bank, we might make it more productive by buying a building here in Cordes-sur-Ciel. Tom could move his little chocolate shop there, and an apartment or two would provide us with some income. I took time out from my reverie to look at what was on the market.
Who knew a magnificent piece of untouched old Cordes just 200 steps from our front door would immediately turn up? Such an opportunity! Unoccupied for 50 years but clean and sound, the owner had maintained it more or less as a memorial to her parents. Embossed wallpaper, plump feather beds, wool mattresses, lace curtains. And an old bakery.
Tom’s shop would go in this room. That’s a kitchen behind it. Perfect.
It is very, very charming, a magical place.
Filled with stuff like this.
And that that ancient bakery!
Of course there are more a few black holes that would need to be dealt with, like the low wooden shelf or seat in the downstairs bathroom that I thought might be a well. When we lifted the top off, layers and layers of newspaper, paint, and rust showered down. No point in looking in.
But it would be possible for someone to live in that house almost as is. Some plumbing would probably have to be done, but the first floor has 25-year old decent wiring and lighting. The bedrooms are delightful as they are, and so is the upstairs bathroom. A temporary kitchen of some sort could be set up, though the old wood and gas cookers, gems themselves, are there.
With tax and fees, the house and bakery would cost roughly 100 000€. Tax is 950€/year. So appealing! I almost couldn’t resist.
The morning after we saw it, however, the weight of the project hit me. We live so lightly now: small house, very small electric car, and everything we need in walking distance.
Why would I even consider taking on a huge stone building, no matter how beautiful it is?? Then I realized how much of my mental and physical energy had already gone into that place over the last three days!
I went back to listening to astrology and contemplating existence outside the confines of time and space.
Beyond the confines of the 3-D World
Einstein identified the fourth dimension as time, already a stretch to envision as a dimension, but the fifth is even harder to understand. Our civilization is so thoroughly engrossed in the gross world of matter that we can barely imagine it. Subtler worlds, if our physical science-based understanding gives them any credence at all, are only very slowly being discovered. Ganesh Baba often pointed to the discovery of electricity when talking about increasing understanding of subtle energies.
On the second day I spent with Ganesh Baba, he drew a diagram on a paper napkin that he told me encapsulated his entire cosmology. In brief, in an endless cycle, consciousness creates matter, and matter evolves into consciousness.
(To align with the yogic teaching that good posture is essential to conscious evolution, he placed “Homo Erectus,” meaning having a straight back, above “Homo Sapiens.” The spine running up the center is replicated in the human body as the chakra system.)
Ganesh Baba described eight fields functioning in eight dimensions: matter, energy, space, time, life, mind, intelligence, and consciousness, each more subtle than the last. He identifies the fifth dimension as life. Indeed, neither time nor life is understood very well at this point of human evolution, and mind is an even greater mystery.
The Cycle of Synthesis is an attempt at a 2-D representation of an 8-D cosmos, a fractal universe, microcosm in macrocosm and vise versa. It is not static—rather, it is constantly in flow, twisting and turning, expanding and contracting, in an infinite number of directions, smaller and smaller, greater and greater, replicating itself in an infinite number of manifestations, each one connected to all the others.
As in a Moebius strip, the twists in the helix at the center of the drawing indicate shifts from one dimension to the next.
Passing through them is like water going down a drain. The water turns more and more quickly until suddenly it’s somewhere else. I think the transition human consciousness is going through is like that.
It’s interesting to consider that the perspective of the lower dimension is always subsumed into the perspective of the higher one, as when a point becomes a line, a line becomes a square, and a square becomes a cube.
If the point moves, a line exists. The line moves into a square, and the square moves to become a cube. Move the cube, and time exists. But beyond that?
What comes first? Consciousness or matter?
In most non-Western perspectives on existence, consciousness precedes matter. Even in the bible, God creates the earth. Assuming that only what can be measured is real is a recent twist in human understanding. It’s a limiting conception, though certainly a useful one in the practical world. If the great god of civilization, Science, wants to survive the coming twist, it will have to let go of the shores of time and space and greet the coming age of immeasurability with curiosity and eager anticipation.
I have less hope for the other worldwide religion of our era, the Economy, and its god, Money. I can easily see Mr. Moneybags falling off the edge of the earth to become a monster. An idea that particularly struck me during my studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute is that as dominant mythologies shift, for example from the “pagan” religions to Christianity, the old gods are forced underground, or off the edge of the earth, where they’re perceived as devils. It happens every time.
In Ganesh Baba’s model, following the downward arrow on the left, consciousness condenses into matter. Then, as it evolves back toward its source, more and more of the whole becomes comprehensible. As well as being reflected in the human body as the chakras, the Cycle of Synthesis mirrors Indian theory of the Yugas, a cycle of epochs in which the understanding of subtle things recedes as the earth moves away from the center of the universe, and increases again after it reaches its nadir and moves toward the center again.
So, if, as many astrologers are now saying, we are moving out of the Kali Yuga, the period of least understanding, into an era in which subtle energies will become more apparent, we will have to learn to navigate in the bio-psychic and intello-conscious fields in Baba’s diagram, the dimensions beyond space and time.
One way to do that is to begin by paying more attention to the interface, the twist, the liminal place, where fourth and fifth dimensional events show up in the 3-D world.
That’s why the dramatic incursion, in the form of that very attractive, very large three-dimensional stone house, into my fourth- and fifth-dimensional musings struck me. It was magic. That opportunity came into my physical world via a current of synchronicity. Its appearance overrode the laws of time and space, and I was very nearly beguiled.
What’s next?
Now, I’m on the lookout for magic. I’m asking a question before going to sleep, hoping for a response in my dreams. I’m actively looking for coincidence, actively seeking synchronicity.
So it was that I noticed some writing in blue chalk on the cobblestones of Rue Saint Louis as I walked Mocha one morning this week, when I had just begun this essay. The message is a little hard to read, but the words are in English, even though I found it in our beautiful French village.
Eve Neuhaus 