A DYNAMIC TASK OF OUR AGE: INTEGRATING THE FEMALE ENERGY PRINCIPLE.

I'd like to say something very practical about Jungian depth psychology. And how it has much to offer psychologically/spiritually in explaining and navigating our chaotic and urgent times.

 Carl Jung, Swiss M.D., research/theoretical  psychotherapist, suggested a hundred years ago that we are moving from a prolonged  age when the 'masculine principle' has been  dominant; that of conquering, penetrating, breaking down, differentiating and analyzing  everything. Reason more than feeling and intuition being of highest value for example. 

This was needed for that age of development in Western Civilization: colonization, the industrial revolution, scientific medicine, modern technology and two fateful world wars are some of the outcomes, both positive and negative. Now the 'feminine principle' is seeking to correct that long, but in an evolutionary sense necessary, over abundance of the 'masculine principle' energy. 

Both principles are part of every man and woman's deep psyche. A woman can have an over balance of the masculine attitude as likely as a man for example. Jung would suggest there has been an excess of 'masculine principle' energy in most every aspect of social expectations, religion, economics and politics. 

It is more natural, thus easier by her nature, for a woman to be in touch with the 'feminine principle' than it is consciously for a man. But both, from cultural and sometimes religious influence, can miss developing it to the degree needed for adaptation today. In general all persons stand in need to further recognize and integrate in our age the 'feminine principle' and the attitudes and behaviors that flow from it. The 'feminine principle' has to do with healing, uniting and smoothing the way, of accepting and valuing differences in people, of not seeing 'difference' as an alert to violence or to fight or flight. But to stand in the middle so to speak, to be a bridge and not a wall in human commnication and relationships.

Bridges Are Symbolic Of  The 'Connecting Work'  of the Feminine Principle

 Ironically I see the 16 other GOP candidates' incapacity to stand up to D. Trump's outrageous hateful statements and extreme flip -flops an indication of these competitors not having yet a well developed feminine side (This may be  typical of a majority of men at the present time). We would have seen a very different story if they had a well developed feminine energy. They did not exhibit the skill of engaging in a 'feminine principle' way. Instead they experienced him as an overwhelming, threatening  masculine force and meekly allowed him to take over the discussion with

his contradictory and divisive message. This is a serious development in any democracy which depends on open, honest and safe communications. A strong dose of the 'feminine principle' at work, as I will explain, was needed on that debate stage where the masculine was overpowering.

Walls Of Division Are Symbolic Of The  ' Masculine Principle' At Work

Ideally if the others had been more 'in touch' with the feminine principle they would have in a clear and absolute way called him out from the start. Because part of the feminine principle is like if a mother's child is about to be harmed or kidnapped, she will retaliate  quickly and absolutely to put an end to it. This is seen in a mother bear regarding her cubs. Mess with her cubs and you will hear from her, not tomorrow but right now. The true feminine principle is not anything to mess around with. It will intervene promptly against any damaging falsehood and intimidation of every kind. In this sense it has 'fire in its eye' and tolerates no slick effort to scam and mislead regarding human well being.  

We presently lack this protective spirit in America. We let the bully, intimidator and the boisterous have their way with the community. We stand aside for the most economically leveraged to be 'in charge' as if they know best for what is needed for everyone. These are the disastrous short comings of the male principle gone too far.

We lack a full measure of well developed feminine principle but it is gaining strength; not to conquer the necessary male principle but to bring it to a healthy balance with the feminine. This feminine 'end the nonsense' attitude is in contrast to male planning, strategizing and conquering behavior toward others so effective in the past age. What did not happen on the GOP debate stage during this primary is one indication of the deficiency of 'feminine protective principle' at work psychologically in our culture. 

 From the psychological perspective both  men and women of our culture in general  stand in need of, and evolution is pushing us, discovering and implementing the feminine principle, to bring about a new personal and collective balance of mind and heart in our culture. (BTW, the Christian gospels can be interpreted as strong feminine principle teachings but they have instead traditionally been used to reinforce the 'male principle' attitudes of Western Civilization.)

Donald Trump

Another practical observance of depth psychology is that of the naturally occurring 'women's  movement' of the past five decades involving  women finding and integrating their 'inner masculine' selves, just as men have been pushed to discover the 'feminine within'. This has been showing that women can be just as strong objective thinkers, planners, leaders and conquerors as any man. A Hillary Clinton is an 'in our face' example and symbol of this capacity in woman. Naturally the emerging 'feminine principle' will be the target of much resentment and attack no matter who the personal woman is that carries its  psychological energy.  

Humanity does not make great social/psychological/spiritual changes without an internal fight. Also such cultural changes are far greater than any of the individuals involved. There is a 'greater than us mind' of evolutional type reality that pushes and invites us to higher levels of consciousness. No actual man or woman is perfectly developed and balanced in this ideal way. We can only be moving toward it, cooperating with it, not resisting it. And I sense hopeful  signs that many persons are doing

 that.(Note: The sizable win by Trump in 2024 for president over Pamala Harris would appear to be a setback to gaining a stronger feminine energy in the American Collective psyche. And it is. But it is not a surprise given the many millennial dominance of our Western male-centered patriarchal cultures. Rest assured the feminine archetypal energy will not disappear. It may take this hard unexpected dose of open male principle dominance for more people to 'see' that resisting the equal place of the feminine will do more harm to the nation and to both women and men. 

In the long run I suspect history will show that to fight against the present evolutionary necessity of a rising feminine principle will only delay our culture meeting the pressing psychological/spiritual needs of humanity. And the nation's intense suffering will continue.)

Hillary Clinton

The key according to Jungian thought is for there to be a steady move toward the proper balance of 'male and female psychological/spiritual energy principles' in women and men personally and in the collective consciousness. This is the way that men become 'really' more manly and women 'really' women. 

Men and women remain truly different but each can be and is now equally called to develop these psychological awarenesses and attitudes of the feminine principle as needed for personal development. Only through this kind of inner personality development can men and women together, in equal and complementary fashion, be enabled to confidently engage the threatening new needs and problems of our post modern age.

OBAMA... UNCOMMONLY FORWARD THINKING PRESIDENT... July 14, 2015

I'm thinking our president may be one of the most visionary persons in high public life in recent times. This 'deal with the devil' (Iran) is nearly a perfect example of the Jungian notion that you do not rid the 'shadow' within or without by ... destroying it , crushing it and trying to live as if the shadow is not real or powerful. We have become so accustomed to just beating the crap out of 'the enemy' that we have nearly lost the capacity to interact creatively with any scary 'other'. This reminds me of that metaphorical statement of Jesus, ' you had better strike a deal on the way to judgment with your adversary or you will pay every penny.' Metaphorical truths have their moments when they are exactly and literally true in the outer human real situation.

I am feeling grateful that Obama seems to have been thinking far more into the future from the start of his presidency than the themes that were the hot ones in the news all along. He had dreams of creative solutions to some of the biggest problems. I imagine he envisioned today, and why it was the right thing to do, before he ever entered the office. I'm pretty amazed and proud of his accomplishment(s).

BTW.... just listen to the 'smaller' voices all over the air waves. Someone said, ' it is late in the day when small persons cast long shadows.' Its good to see there are some very large persons that come along in history. I know many do not, and perhaps cannot, agree with this assessment. I am  open to other opinions also.

God, Man, Woman And Love...December 12, 2010... note to Edward Fudge

Suddenly The Clouds Spoke In Clear Images

During my spiritual/emotional development the past twenty five years I was drawn to various authors along the way. Much of this reading did not leave me with details I can recite but  remain alive and influential in my conscious activity and memory. I think they had even a deeper effect on parts of me that had lain barely or not conscious for the first forty years of my life. I doubt that I am unusual in that respect but my experiences made me sensitively conscious of such things. If I felt a harmony  with the ideas that came to me in my reading they became a part of my conscious value system. At least this is how it seems to me that much of my change/development has occurred.

But more profound than my reading was the advent of a different world, that of 'dreams and visions.' No theme was more central to my 'vision' experience than that of  'man and woman loving.' I can recall being utterly spellbound and fully alert for hours as every imaginable image of man and woman loving formed in the early morning clouds over my parked car in North West Houston. The couples had expressions of ecstasy on their closed eyed faces. There was a sense of total mutuality, equality and tenderness in every image. Preceding these vivid images A large 'Adam and Eve' appeared in the sky and passed over me. The couple was holding the serpent between them and they were exercising some restraint on it. Following the 'love images' there was a repetition of large flying eagles. From that first experience for days and into months I was being  astounded, impressed and entertained by a near continuous flow of images formed in the 'things' of nature. The images were continuously in the clouds, any fog or smoke that was available, the trees, grasses, rocks and also human made things. lt was an experience as if all of nature and the physical landscape were alive and communicating to me. I was connected with my total surroundings. There was no division between mind and matter, between spirit and nature. It was all one and all connected. The images were nearly always available if I had the time and solitude to attend to them. I needed to be alone to do this for I was very aware that I would appear  'strange'  to any onlooker as I gazed into a fog or  focused on the grass of a field. I managed to keep living in a normal human way, teaching middle school science and my physical health was good. My verbal and intellectual capacities seemed significantly stronger during the months I was experiencing  this sense of  'connection.'

Adam and Eve 1192 German Art

 Fortunately, I was quite isolated  at the beginning of this time in my life so could give much attention to the images. Early on a central image was a playful feminine personality who gave me an assurance that 'she' was a reliable friend. 'She'  was much more than human and had direct influence on what was happening in every continuous detail of my life but also of all the world about me. But she was also full of playful tricks and frequently led me in 'circles' whether I was in my car driving or attempting to do some task or errand. 

At some point I began to look back at my life and see how 'she' was behind many of behaviors long before I was conscious of  'her' reality as a part of me.  'She' was definitely imploring me to trust her as a guide in every detail of life. I once asked aloud to her, “ Do you ever get serious?' 

At that moment three crosses with skulls on top of each appeared in the clouds and before I was done contemplating  on that a mushroom cloud formed and filled the space above. Early on I asked her, 'Is Jesus the literal Son of God?' Her answer was an image of the head of a gorilla being gently pulled, as in birth, from a human  birth canal.

The Location Of The First 'Visions' -18 Years Later

I had spent the night before the first visions occurred on the streets of downtown Houston with homeless people, myself being temporarily homeless. I was presently without a formal job and extremely aware of the difficulty that my family was experiencing without my being physically present with them. I was a man in psychological suffering as I had never experienced it. My suffering was embedded in spiritual ecstasy and the uncertain psychological landscape between conflicting  'polarities' including 'Eros and Logos', 'freedom and destiny', 'order and chaos', 'spirit and matter', 'female and male', 'individuality and community' and 'heaven and earth.'  A person having such an encounter with the archetypes of the Collective Unconscious(the 'Jungian opposites')  also may experience an integrating and uniting of them within where something  genuinely beneficial be birthed. Only with such a harmonizing of the opposites with both aspects informing and completing each other might a gift be received for both the individual and the community s/he is a part of. 

At age 41 then I had a reasonably well developed and growing personal theology which, though greatly challenged, provided some support.  No doubt the stress of my outer situation made me more susceptible to such a necessary  'revelation' from the Collective Unconscious. Any one of these 'visions' left me at first with only two words to even try to convey what was happening: 'miracle and ecstasy.'  And these words had little personal place or meaning in my theology at that time. But these kinds of reality occurred time after time for many weeks, even months and years  from when it first began.

Recently a neurologist I was seeing for a neck injury asked me out of the blue if I had read the book When God Was A Woman by Meril Stone? I told him I had just completed it. We were both struck by the important historical information it establishes. I was amazed not only that he had read it but that he asked me if I had. That motivated me to  re-read the chapter specifically on sexuality. It regards those women who lived in the Goddess temples of nearly all Eastern pre- Hebrew cultures who were referred to as 'sacred women'. They are described as being involved in sexual worship there with 'strange men.' Sometimes after some years of work for the Goddess in the temple they later married to become very good and reliable wives. Any children born through this temple sexual expression kept the mother's family name and she was their parent.   There was no dishonor in those ancient cultures for these women. Quite the opposite. Children were not bastardized or likely abandoned or abused who came from temple births. These women were sometimes wealthy land owners. Such  sacred sexual practice was considered just that, not irresponsible unconscious, unremembered sex for sex sake. 

On first becoming aware of such historical realities the modern Westerner cannot fathom it and is likely to turn away in disgust at what was once deeply held and honored religious experience. What the 'stranger men' experienced was expected to be a passage into a deeper realm of spiritual reality and  responsibility to the community. This was religious experience that honored the place of living Eros in human spiritual development. Our culture has no such way or place to honor Eros and so this living god/human power goes 'underground', becomes unconscious, to arise in the modern world as unsacred pornography and or nearly socially arranged marriages as a way to 'control' it. Religion and State have cooperated in these unsuccessful and fear based ways of relating to Eros. I think my 'vision' experience was saying loudly that Eros must be returned to our culture. I most definitely am not suggesting we return to literal temple sexual expression but that the air and spirituality of that statement of Eros find a way to live in the hearts and responsible relationships of couples and lovers in the post modern age. Our culture has instead created an ugly and nonspiritual model of women and men's sexuality. Only later did commentators take the word that then meant 'sacred woman' and translate it, with very negative intent, to 'temple prostitute'. Thus demeaning such women and the Eros of life they helped their culture to celebrate and connect with. 

The Hebrews, and other male centered cultures, tried to drive all this out and created the first strong patriarchies in human history. In patriarchy lineage, unlike matriarchy lineage where the parent is obvious for it is the mother, had to be 'proven and kept protected' by the established order. This became a task for the religious hierarchy, the Levitical Priests and law makers, for the Hebrew nation. Thus sexuality outside of marriage, no matter how loving or committed, was described off -hand as sinful, base, low life and immoral.  The Hebrew law of Moses made this punishable by death for women. The Bible clearly shows there was no such strong law against men for there was no need to keep men from having sex with 'strangers' or outside marriage to protect the patriarchy lineage. Any woman a man secretly impregnated simply was put death. There was a constant message from Yahweh warning the people to stay away from the 'groves' where the ancient feminine goddesses and matriarch religion was still alive and Eros had not been turned into something evil. Often, the Levitical priests and the Hebrew prophets called for an all out assault on the native goddess religions of this land that flowed with 'milk and honey' well before the Hebrews attempted to make it exclusively their own.

At all times for any surviving child, it was made known who its father was. This is what drove the theme of the sinful nature of a woman having unmarried sex. The Adam and Eve story blaming woman making her character suspect put this into powerful mythical language that has more than any image shaped Western  thought about Man, Woman and Sexuality. The 'sexual laws' also had much to do with economics and keeping the wealth of a male run family in tact and under male control.  This  successfully totally shifted ancient cultures   from   a Female description of God to a totally male one.  From this Yahweh of the O.T. was born intonthe Collective Consciousness of the Hebrews. The shamefulness of female sexuality, more than any mortal sin, and the control and demeaning of women was sold eventually to all of Western society...first through Judaism and then Christianity(not with the help of any authentic view of Jesus' view of sexuality). So there is a good reason why a woman has never adorned  most protestant pulpits or likely even distributed communion until recent decades, why a man committing 'adultery' is defined as a sin against the woman's husband or father even if it were non consensual by the woman ....not to mention that a woman has never been a Catholic priest or President  of the U.S.A. I add that there are places in the Hebrew scripture and history where the positive aspects of Eros Love are strongly supported, such as the Song Of Songs at near the center of the Bible.

My 'visions and dreams' regarding human sexuality are not proposing a return to temple sexuality nor is their purpose to demonize Judaism, Christianity or Islam. Such confirmed historical  information about human sexuality and images of God means we need to UNDERSTAND the human spiritual path that has been trod in leading up to our presently internalized meanings of God, man and woman, the very fundamentals of life. We urgently need to take responsibility for the effect that these historical movements have on our present sexual identity. We need to acknowledge this all has indeed happened and shaped us.  Then we can be more responsible for what we really value from it all and experience that famous quotation that. 'you shall know the truth and the truth will set you free...

 If the son sets you free you shall be free indeed.'  Jesus did not invent these timeless truths but he surely with an unusually expanded consciousness was aware of them, believed them and no doubt experienced them as central to his human life.

This basic information of When God Was A Woman, firmly documented even by conservative archaeologists, is mind boggling, and if assimilated by many Westerners would change in amazingly positive ways what it means today to be woman and man. The most profound implication of this information is central to the very first and most indelible 'visions' I had in Houston. An implication is it is likely many, if any, Western men are close yet to loving a woman as men and women are  potentially capable of loving. 

The only way a man could ligically begin to more fully love a woman is for him to have had the internal experience of 'God being woman' just as strongly as he has experienced God being male. Until that reality becomes more conscious a man cannot possibly bring  

the spiritual and psychological levels of agape and certainly not phileo and Eros to their fullness in relating to a woman. 

This is astonishing and also very encouraging. It surely would threaten and anger many men to hear this now but it brings with it the possibility of a man experiencing loving a woman in an ecstasy and innocent intimacy that has only been a painful dream for him up to now. He can theologically return to the Garden and be with Eve, not in 

dreaming innocence but with a full knowledge of good and evil(transcended as reflected in such modern images of the couple holding the serpent)!!  I do believe in this evolving reality. The historical facts I think are bearing it out. This archetype of When God Was A Woman  has lived eternally in all our Collective Unconscious.  I wish the book by that title would receive an ever larger reading by men and women.  And it is a corollary of all this that also women, who have not had some experience of God really being feminine, cannot fully appreciate themselves and love others, including men and children, to near their human potential. 

So if women and men could have a clear outer, logical fact based, and inner archetypal  experience of  God As Woman, it  would propel a level of love in a culture to a new evolutionary level. The New Testament appeal for humans to 'love one another' would be realized to a level that has likely not happened since  Jesus, or one of his elevated consciousness, personally loved a woman, perhaps even Mary Magdalene. 

To me, and I trust many others, God is just as much woman as man. To a significant level I've been blessed with that experience, both outwardly and inwardly. I do not know why this has been my and some others' experience but it has. I don't know if I am to be blessed or only somehow burdened by it. Up to now it seems to have been both. I know I highly value it either way for I believe it is a truth sorely needed in a spiritually drifting world.  Blessings,  Jim

P.S. Some years ago I read  The Sacred Prostitute by Nancy Qualls  Corbett which I literally stumbled across. She is the wife of the late Gene Qualls.(Gene was my Birmingham Jungian therapist during the summer of '85. I  was able to get back to him three days after the 'vision' experience described above began. That was also the last time I got to meet with him. It was as if he had helped me give birth to this 'new world of oneness.' Within two weeks I was teaching Jr. High math/science and back at home with my family.  I'm sure my life would have shattered if I had not been able to get back to my family environment but my 'vision' experiences, though less intense, had only just begun. Being home and interacting with family kept my feet on the ground and was a continual essential reminder of the mortal person I was.  I'm confident Nancy Qualls Corbett  must have referred to this work When God Was A Woman?  I have a hard time fathoming  how a woman steeped in the culture of North Alabama, the same as me, could have written such an astounding chronicle on this subject. She must have had a profound  experience of God as Woman?  I wonder who was first drawn to leaving Dr. Gene Quall's medical practice and becoming Jungian therapists, she or her husband?  I was not drawn to Jungian thought out of conscious intellectual curiosity but out of emotional and spiritual survival as a human being. These things are not matters of interesting curiosity to me. They have been and are matters of living and dying at many levels.  Blessings, Jim Hibbett