writing

Living a symbolic life: the significance of the sun cross (part 3)

Eve Neuhaus 1 Comment

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.

A shift in the wind

Eve Neuhaus 16 Comments
It’s five weeks until Tom’s and my exploratory trip to France following the final sale of Mama Ganache, and less than four months until our projected move to France.
This immense choice to change countries, and languages, and neighbors is largely driven by my current project, Two Suitcases, a series of historical fiction pieces based on my parents’ three escapes from Vienna, Paris, and the south of France. In order to do research in all three settings, we planned to move to Luçon, a city of 10,000 on the Atlantic coast, very near to Centre Tripura and dear friends.
IMG_0153
As these things go, the moment I fell totally in love with Luçon, having explored it in great detail via leboincoin, the French Craigslist, Google Maps, and a series of wonderful five-minute broadcasts by Sud Vendée TV, the direction of our adventure seems to be changing.
It occurred to me to consider moving directly to the region of southern France where my parents were in hiding, rather than settling in Luçon immediately. Do the the research out of chronological order. Ease into our new life in a furnished apartment in a small city  more like San Luis Obispo or Ithaca, walkable, culturally and historically rich, with no need for a car.
Screen Shot 2018-03-25 at 4.36.22 PM.png
Our trip to France in May will now include a few days in Montauban , a city of 58,000, four hours southeast of Luçon. If the right furnished apartment in center of the city shows up, perhaps we’ll end up there for our first year of footlooseness.
An hour north of Toulouse, Montauban was my parents’ destination when they left Paris as part of the great exodus of June 1940. Under the combined auspices of the Austrian Social Democratic party and the French Resistance, they spent the next two years in hiding outside a small village about an hour from Montauban. As I was growing up, both of them – but especially my mother – spoke of retiring to Montauban.
So we will see where the shifting winds blow us. Stay tuned.

Two Suitcases – progress and a little taste of what’s to come

Eve Neuhaus 7 Comments

Today, even though I had most of the day to work on my new book, I only added a few lines and revised a short section. Instead, I worked on a crowd-sourcing site I’m planning to put up to help pay for the increasingly necessary research trip to the settings of the novel next spring. You can see the opening image of the site above. The day turned out to be more fun than I anticipated because, as incentives for people who are willing to support the project, I’m making and sending out pipe cleaner animals. Today I practiced making some to be sure I really could do what I’m promising.

IMG_7009

Some of you, I’m sure, are shaking your heads and asking, pipe cleaner animals? Here’s the reason. When I was a child, I had a collection of pipe cleaner animals made by one of the people in my parents’ circle. Unexpectedly, they turned up in Two Suitcases, playing a sort of Jiminy Cricket or Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern role. Here’s the beginning of the book in its current draft:

Chapter 1

Meeting

December 31, 1954

Brooklyn, New York

I lift the green pipe cleaner giraffe with the toothbrush neck from the shelf under the window and turn him toward the rising voices. “I doubt it,” he says. “Not anytime soon.”

The red antelope with wishbone horns snorts. Her attention is mostly absorbed in remaining upright. A powerful breeze rushes through the window, open an inch or so to mitigate the heat and cigarette smoke in the room. It hits the antelope’s oversized horns directly. She staggers but doesn’t topple. 

“It won’t be over till after bedtime,” she says grumpily. “Once they start to shout, we should make ourselves comfortable.” 

The blue pipe cleaner lady with the red plastic dress is upside down at the moment. The antelope is already packing their belongings—two acorn caps, a hard candy wrapped in foil and two carefully folded pieces of foil from candies eaten earlier—into her dress, which until recently topped a canister of whipped cream. They’d already chosen which of their things to leave behind and which to take. The ashtray is too heavy and they didn’t think they should touch the lovely china cigarette box. Anyway, they only have the lady’s whipped cream top dress to carry things in. Too bad the third acorn cap doesn’t fit. They’ll have to share plates at their next place, wherever that is.

“I’m so sorry I can’t help you with the packing,” the giraffe says. “But I’ve got a stiff neck.” He bobs the toothbrush to see if anybody gets the joke. “I’m very good at seeing over things, though.” Bravely, he hops up onto the windowsill and, bracing himself against the woodwork so as not to blow away, he peers out into the Brooklyn night. “It’s still raining, and the lights are on,” he reports. “Even in the park.”

I move all three of them to the bookshelf below the window and rearrange the pillows I took from the sofa on the floor around me. I am usually in bed by dark, but tonight I am in New York with my parents, visiting their friends. As always, I chose the most beautiful pillows, the ones with the multi-colored covers Fanny weaves. To my right, a heavy cast-iron radiator chuffs out heat relentlessly. I like sitting near the radiator, but the apartment is so warm, it makes me sleepy even when I don’t want to fall asleep.

Turning back toward the toys, my eye is caught by the bold, black calligraphy on the spine of one of the books. Die Sozialdemokratie und die Nationalitätenfrage it says, though at four, I couldn’t have read nor understood it even if it was in English: Social Democracy and the Nationality Question. There are a great number of beautiful books, some hand-printed and neatly bound with string. Some have pictures, black and white prints made from woodcuts. I’ve studied these closely. One picture fills a whole page. It’s a big tree with its trunk breaking in a thunderstorm. There are only four words on that page: O schwanken! O taumel! – my mother says they mean something like “Oh, sway! Oh, tremble!”

I’ve asked to hear the stories that go with the pictures, but everyone says I wouldn’t understand, so I make up my own stories to go with the pictures and look at the shapes of the words and letters. I especially like the books with the clean, tall, squared-off letters. The invitation to the evening’s gathering of my parents’ friends was hand-lettered in the same elegant style.

That’s as much as I’m willing to give away now, but to be honest, I’m not very good at keeping my own secrets, so more of the book is likely to show up here. In the meantime, watch for the crowd-sourcing site, which I hope to have in order within a week or two. This is so much fun!