Emerging Archetypal Themes: Libra, "Dangerous Beauty" and The Art of Relationship

Emerging Archetypal Themes:

Libra, Dangerous Beauty and The Art of Relationship

                                           Adam & Eve - Rubens

Libra is not only about the need for partnership, it is also about the art of partnership.  This month’s Emerging Archetypal Theme focuses on the artistry of relationship and the need for women to remember our role in the relationship dance.  In our hurry to achieve equal rights with men and to be ‘friends’ with them, we women have lost some of our instinctual feminine knowledge, especially the art of attracting, charming and seducing our partners.  As the heroine of our movie is taught,  “…you need to understand men. No matter their shape or size... position or wealth... they all dream of the temptress. The irresistible... unapproachable Venus.”

Men and women have different needs and desires.  When women act like men in a relationship, there is no balance, no good tension that increases sexual desire, a desire that helps bond us together.  Women don’t want to be friends with men on their level, because male friendships are often competitive and they certainly don’t call each other when they’re going to be late!  Relationships aren’t meant to be competitive; relationships are meant to enhance each partner.  Good partnerships need our willingness to try to meet each other’s needs as long as it doesn’t diminish us.   This is also true for gay couples, because each relationship needs the give and take, the action and attraction that is energized by both masculine and feminine energies.  Whether we pursue or are pursued, the need to attract a mate calls for some artistry.  

Libra rules all kinds of artistry.  An air sign, Libra wants to put into action the rules of engagement.  But relationship mores are changing rapidly, so I thought it might be helpful to discuss some of the feminine characteristics that attract and engage men and women alike.  While women can be as honest, loyal, courteous, honorable and trustworthy as any man, we need to remember how to make those shining virtues enjoyable and attractive.  

And so we turn to Aphrodite/Venus to teach us that joy.  Aphrodite is a Goddess of wholeness, containing both masculine and feminine energies, and yet she is also a female being and manifests the feminine virtues when in relationship.  Venus rules the sign of Libra in October, the harvest time, the time of community and fruitfulness, when there is a balance between light and dark, between masculine and feminine.  She is interested in social relationships; not just love relationships but the whole sphere of proper relationships between all peoples and nations.  And so She rules diplomacy and all forms of art.  She says each of us must examine what Beauty and Truth mean to us and consciously live it out.  Venus’ Libra mission is to teach us to have our own aesthetic, for Beauty opens us to Spirit.  

So let’s take a look at the Goddess of Beauty, Love and Wisdom who sits in the heart center of the body, ready to become the balance point in relationship.

Aphrodite of the Greeks, Venus of the Romans, is one of the most vibrant archetypal images of the Goddess that has come down to us from antiquity; the aspect of the ancient Goddess that was never totally forgotten, the form of the Goddess written about and romanticized down through the ages until She truly embodied 'the mystery of life, and love that begets life'.   Aphrodite is the Goddess who combines the spiritual and natural worlds, spirit and body.  She does this through Her essence, which is Love.  She embodies the energy of connection, for She brings everything into relationship, from electrons to people.   She is the Goddess of Love, the love that is rooted in the body and which is playful, sensual, and erotic.  As Goddess of Sexuality, she engenders all physically passionate love: non-marital and marital, heterosexual and homosexual.  As Goddess of Beauty, she connects us to Truth.  As Goddess of Wholeness, she drives our individuation and awakens Psyche within us.

                                         Aphrodite of Rhodes

The Greeks came to regard the ideal form of Aphrodite’s divinity in the beauty of Her naked body, for ancient statues of Her show Her either about to undress - revealing Her mystery - or already undressed.  If these forms express Her essence, then it is the realm of body that reveals Her mystery.  There is a radiant charm in Her loveliness which draws us into relationship, because the truth of Her Being is embodied.  As the archetypal essence of love and sexuality, Her heavenly nature clothes Her instinctual, earthy nature, thereby uniting both realms in harmony.  She asks us to love our bodies, knowing that they are truly the temple of Spirit here on Earth.

           Aphrodite is so powerful because She connects us to our deepest yearnings and desires, those very instincts and desires which we have tried to control or repress for fear of the chaos which it brings to the collective order.  We fear our bodies as much as we fear death, and so we do not give ourselves over to love completely.  Very often our sexual desires and fantasies symbolize our deep need for union with the Divine.  And if we let it, our deep union with the Divine can open us to our senses so that the world becomes holy.  As we have cut ourselves off from our sexual needs, we have also cut ourselves off from a basic connection to the Spirit, so that in reclaiming our sexuality, we come that much closer to Spirit.   

We have to remember that the Christian Church, from its earliest beginnings, viewed sex as inherently evil.  The early Church fathers felt that chastity was the only means of finding sanctity, and many of them were obsessed with the notion that sexuality was the cause of our fall into original sin.   Medieval theologians felt that sex caused the damnation of the human race, and that women, being the cause of carnal lust, were soulless and the ultimate source of damnation!  (They, however, rarely blamed men for being unable to restrain themselves from raping and pillaging women and children.) 

The Church set out to destroy paganism and the cults of the ancient Goddess, which viewed sexuality, as well as women, with reverence and honor, and which included fertility rites, and so women were seen as the source of all evil.  The Church condemned Eve as the source of our fall from grace when she taught Adam about sex.  The Protestants were even worse in their view of sexuality and women, for they preached that men should beat their wives and not take pleasure in the sexual act.  The Church’s legacy of sexual inhibitions and repression gave rise to the sexual revolution in the ’60’s, and we are still dealing with inappropriate sexuality in terms of sexual permissiveness and out-of-control pornography.   When we react to something, we are still bound to it.  It is only when we really free ourselves from the old that we can find a new balance. 

We need to make sacred sexuality the norm.  For too long it has not been so, and we are still experiencing the dysfunction of our sexual history.  We need to heal our sexuality.   In Raine Eisler’s book, Sacred Pleasure; Sex, Myth and the Politics of the Body, she says that it is important to understand how the way society uses pain or pleasure to motivate human behavior determines how it evolves.   Our traditional Christian imagery sacralizes pain rather than pleasure, especially in choosing Christ Crucified rather than the Risen Christ as their central God-image.  Women’s bodies and sexuality have been demonized by Christianity and therefore rigidly controlled.    And so, we have a society where there is mistrust between men and women because of this longstanding religious mistrust and control over our sexual relationships.

A New Relationship with Sexuality

Aphrodite emerges from the sea radiant in her feminine sexuality.  She does not need a lover, whether man or woman, to awaken or confirm this knowledge for her.  She owns her body and knows she is a sexual being.  Aphrodite is opposed to those thinkers who would do away with the bodily differences that have kept women second-class citizens for millennia; who would say there is no inherent difference between women and men.  Politically and economically men and women must be equal.  But our equality cannot be based on sameness, for it does away with the unique vision and understanding of life that manifests through our bodily differences.  Our equality should be based on the fact of our differences, for we are created male and female.  

The Taoist concept of Yin and Yang speaks of how these two primal energies intermingle in all of creation, how each of us contain both male and female.  The two sexes are miraculous and mysterious.  To disregard our bodily differences does away with a consciousness of images, for our bodies image femininity and masculinity in the world.  We need to get beyond the stereotypes to the reality of our bodies, and when we do, we will begin to understand the mysteries they manifest.

          Aphrodite loves our differences, for She is the dynamic that connects the opposites and brings about transformation.  In ancient Greece, she was paired with Ares, the god of war, just as they were known in Rome as Venus and Mars.  Love and War.  Make love, not war.  And perhaps the most true - only love can contain war.  Only love knows how to take the war out of men, only love and compassion can give rise to true peace.  Aphrodite's love for Ares is long-standing; even when her husband Hephaestus traps them in an unbreakable chain as they lie in bed together, Aphrodite feels no shame.  Perhaps in claiming a connection to the warrior energy of Ares, who as the Roman Mars was concerned with grappling hand to hand with an opponent, Aphrodite shows us that it takes the courage and passion of a warrior to engage in sexual love, because it is through our sexuality that we open ourselves to the Other and grapple with that Other.  We connect on the most basic levels, and in the battlefield of love, we learn that sometimes surrender can be more pleasurable and ecstatic than victory.  And yet in surrendering to love and passion, which opens us to the ‘Unknown’, we come to know and appreciate 'Otherness'. Love seeks to unite us with all Unknowns, bringing its light to each darkness   It is through love that we stretch ourselves and become something more, do something more.  

Dangerous Beauty: A Complete Woman

Aphrodite's companions are the Muses of music, dance and poetry, and much of our popular music recounts the joys, passions, and sorrows of love, for it is through art that we connect (Aphrodite’s power) with our feeling life.   Her sacred priestesses were skilled not only in the arts of sexual love but in all the arts that make for civilization – writing, poetry, history, philosophy, music, art and dance.  Knowledge and creativity in the Arts can also teach the art of living and loving.  

                              Aphrodite & the Muses by Burne-Jones

Throughout the ages, the Courtesan exemplified the ideal woman: a woman who enjoyed her sexuality, who was known for her intelligence and who was skilled in the arts.   There is a beautiful 1998 movie about the famous Venetian courtesan and poetess, Veronica Franco, called Dangerous Beauty.  This film is a tribute to Aphrodite and the courtesans of Europe, who inspired and created much of Western art, literature and culture since the Renaissance.  

          In ancient times, when the patriarchy was just gaining power and the religion of the Goddess and her relationship to fertility and sexuality was still consciously valued, there were sacred prostitutes, priestesses of the Goddess, who would make love to men as a sacred act of worship, a way of connecting men to the power of the Goddess.   As the patriarchy took over power from the earlier matriarchy, men still recognized and honored the power of these sacred prostitutes, and there were still priestesses who performed the hieros gamos, or sacred marriage, of the King to the land and the Goddess.    

These women later became the courtesans of ancient Greece.  Courtesans enjoyed great personal freedom and economic power, while the wives and female children of men were often treated little better than slaves.   These hetaira, called ‘companions to men’ were not viewed as common prostitutes, but were often in the center of the political and as well as the social life of Athens, as were her later counterparts in Venice and Paris.  The most famous woman in 5^th Century Athens was the hetaira, Aspasia, who lived with the great Athenian political leader, Pericles.  Plutarch claimed that Aspasia was clever and politically astute, and noted that Socrates would bring his students to hear her speak, for she was a teacher of rhetoric, even though she also ran a school for courtesans. 

 

During the Renaissance, the courtesans of Venice, called Honest Courtesans, were as famous for their literary talents as for their sexual artistry, and for the next few centuries, courtesans enjoyed more power and independence – especially economic freedom - than any other women in Western Europe.  The courtesans of Europe have left their mark on our architectural, literary and artistic heritage.

The courtesan became the ideal incarnation of the Goddess Aphrodite, a woman who belonged to herself, who often enjoyed the same freedom and social benefits as men, who was the intellectual equal of men, and who was as adept at the arts of music, poetry and dance as she was at the art of lovemaking.  While the courtesan’s place and power depended on men’s need for female companionship, the courtesan certainly is the exemplar of the powerful influence an independent woman can have on men if we own our wholeness.  

          Susan Griffin, in her book The Book of the Courtesans enumerates the virtues of these courtesans: Timing, Beauty, Cheek, Brilliance, Gaiety, Grace and Charm.  We modern women could learn a lot about getting men to value and complement our standpoint if we practiced these ancient arts. 

          Veronica Franco knew how to use these feminine virtues.  Trained as a courtesan by her mother, who was also a famous courtesan, Veronica quickly became a favorite of the power elite in Venice.  From an ancient, yet impoverished, Venetian family, Veronica was skilled in all the arts of the courtesans, for Venice was famous throughout Europe for her courtesans.  Her literary skills were enjoyed and supported by the rulers of Venice, and at one point, she helped Venice attain the support of the French king in their war with the Ottoman Empire.  But when the plague swept through Venice, the Church blamed it on the licentiousness of the courtesans and had many of them brutalized.  Veronica was charged with witchcraft, but she saved herself by standing up for herself and shaming the noble men who had used her for their own pleasure and yet were quick to abandon her in her trouble.  The character of Veronica Franc is the most complete and whole female character in any movie I’ve ever seen. 

          Dangerous Beauty is a story about Veronica’s rise to fame, as well as her enduring love for a powerful Venetian noble, Marco Venier.  When Veronica (an amazingly artful Catherine McCormack) learns that Marco cannot marry her because he must marry for wealth and power, her mother Paola (the beautiful Jacqueline Bisset) encourages her to become a courtesan.  The scenes where she is taught the arts of the courtesan are both informative and delightful.  The power of the courtesan is that she can be educated, unlike the proper noble wives of Venice, who are left ignorant of both history as well as current events.  Veronica’s friend Beatrice, sister of Marco, has to ask Veronica to come and tell the proper ladies of Venice how their husbands fare during the war, for as Beatrice says, they are totally inconsequential to their men. 

          The beauty of Veronica’s character is that she has all the virtues of the noblemen of her time, and yet she displays them through her femininity.  While she is wildly in love with Marco, once she becomes a courtesan she will not sleep with him, although she enjoys – yes totally enjoys – the sex with other men.  It is Marco who finally breaks down and comes to her after a nasty altercation with his drunk cousin, Maffio (a deliciously evil Oliver Platt).  And once they are together, it seems nothing can separate them.  That is, until Venice needs Veronica to seduce the French King and get his help in their war.  When she does, she wins their accolades but loses Marco. 

          When the men return from war, they find a completely transformed Venice; the plague has decimated the city and fanatical preachers assure the people that it is God’s vengeance on them for their frivolous and licentious ways.  Courtesans are beaten and killed.  Veronica is imprisoned and accused of witchcraft by Maffio, who has always been jealous of her beauty and power.  Marco wants her to plead guilty so she can confess and be absolved of her ‘sins’ but she refuses because that will mean she has to deny who and what she is.  Her speech before the Church court beautifully expresses the feminine standpoint that has been so denigrated by Christianity and patriarchy.  

Veronica Franco: I confess that as a young girl I loved a man who would not marry me for want of a dowry. I confess I had a mother who taught me a different way of life, one I resisted at first but learned to embrace. I confess I became a courtesan, traded yearning for power, welcomed many rather than be owned by one. I confess I embraced a whore's freedom over a wife's obedience. I confess I find more ecstasy in passion than in prayer. Such passion is prayer. I confess I pray still to feel the touch of my lover's lips. His hands upon me, his arms enfolding me... Such surrender has been mine. I confess I pray still to be filled and enflamed. To melt into the dream of us, beyond this troubled place, to where we are not even ourselves. To know that always, this is mine. If this had not been mine-if I had lived any other way-a child to her husband's will, my soul hardened from lack of touch and lack of love... I confess such endless days and nights would be a punishment far greater than you could ever mete out. You, all of you, you who hunger so for what I give yet cannot bear to see that kind of power in a woman. You call God's greatest gift- ourselves, our yearning, our need to love - you call it filth and sin and heresy... I repent there was no other way open to me. I do not repent my life.

          Wow!  I love that speech.  And yet, how many women today would think to say those things.  We are so concerned with making our way in the world – the masculine world of commerce – that most of us don’t value our relationships as much as our jobs.   We no longer believe that relationships are central to our lives because we’ve bought into the patriarchal paradigm that power and money are more important than love and commitment.   I’m not advocating going back to the old paradigm of patriarchal relationships and family values.  I firmly believe, though, that women are the heart and soul of relationships and that we need to polish up our feminine virtues – our courtesan nature – if we want to create vibrant, loving, creative partnerships.

          Women can find our wholeness when our sexuality is as full and as deep as our minds have become.  The centuries of shame and sin that Christianity has projected onto sexuality must be healed and transformed, for sexuality cannot be anything other than spiritual when it becomes the union of body and spirit.  Before we can engage in true union between two people, we must first bring about a union of body and spirit within ourselves.  We must be somebody if we are to love somebody.  Aphrodite can lead us to this kind of feminine individuation.

          So if you haven’t seen Dangerous Beauty go out and rent it today!  It is a feast for the eyes and the soul.  And then consider learning how to use those feminine virtues of Timing, Beauty, Cheek, Brilliance, Gaiety, Grace and Charm to enliven your life and all your relationships!

From the Bard’s Grove,

Cathy Pagano

Emerging Archetypal Themes: Service Without Self-Sacrifice: Virgo: Mistress of Spices

Service without Self-Sacrifice.  

That’s our emerging archetypal theme for this astrological month of Virgo.  As we leave behind the Piscean Age, which embraced self-sacrifice (a very Piscean notion) as well as service to the world (its Virgo counterpart), we have to shine a new light on the subject of service, because we are being called to service – to bring our talents, inspiration and imagination together to re-create our society, heal Nature and reject war as a means to peace.  

In these past few thousand years, service always included self-denial: sexuality and pleasure, independence and wealth were foresworn so the ego’s attention stayed focused on spirit.  So many people took oaths of ‘obedience, poverty and chastity’, seeing their service as a duty to their Deity.  Mother Theresa and St. Francis of Assisi are inspirations to us.  As they well should be.

However, when we see that sexuality, pleasure, independence and wealth are not bad ‘in and of’ themselves, allowing ourselves those experiences no longer prohibits us from being of service to our fellow sisters and brothers.  While taming the senses and appetites is a necessity for greater consciousness and free will, we have to balance them with work and service.  It is time to bring Heaven to Earth, combining Spirit and Matter; that means, let’s enjoy life while serving others. 

That’s the theme of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Mistress of Spices.  Both the 1997 book and the 2005 movie explore this idea of service and sacrifice.  

Virgo: Healing, Service and Our Authentic Talents 

 

But first let’s look at Virgo’s lessons and initiation.  There’s alchemy involved in Virgo’s lessons, the union of opposing energies and the transformation of those energies through self-knowledge into a new sense of wholeness and Self-consciousness.   Virgo is the sign where we work to perfect ourselves, not by being perfect but by coming to understand how we see ourselves, what we value, how we process life, what our emotional body feels like and where our creative impulse lies. We weave ourselves together in Virgo, discerning what is us and what is not us. 

                                      Alchemical Union of Opposites

When we apply ourselves to discovering what we can do, we want to put that purpose to work.  In doing so we see how our talents can be of services to others.  A time of apprenticeship is a learning time, and that’s what Virgo wants to do.  Learn as much of her craft as she can and continue to perfect it as a master craftsperson.  When we create like this, we are always of service, even when we work for ourselves.

Virgo symbolizes the Virgin of Life, coming at the time of year when we gather in the harvest of our creations.  The Egyptian goddess Isis was associated with Virgo because the end of summer is the time of year when the Nile floods and new life returns to the land.  This aspect of Isis is not the Goddess as Lover, but as the Mother who carries her child in her lap, symbolizing the manifestation of the potentials of life.  A new creation occurs!  New insights are born and new solutions generated. 

                                                Isis & Horus

That is the magical side-effect of Virgo’s initiation into meaningful service!  Something new emerges, something deep and true.  A problem is solved, a wound is healed.  That is also the message of our movie this month – a new truth emerges when we seek to heal a wound and allow a new potential into our lives.

Virgo’s ability to discern what’s happening in the moment and then to find a solution that works is the essence of service to others. There is a joy to this work, a flexibility that is open to incorporating each experience into a new whole.  Virgo concentrates on doing her job well and is humble enough to offer her mastery to the world.  Being of service gives us the opportunity to perfect ourselves and our craft.

The Mistress of Spices

 

This sensual, colorful movie is a delight to the eyes; not only are Aishwary Rai and Dylan McDermott outstandingly good-looking, but the spices that inhabit the shop and our imaginations are exquisite beyond compare.

The Mistress of Spices is a story of two people who are chosen as children to walk the Piscean spiritual path.  The young woman follows her path into Virgoean service; the young man rebels against his mother in anger, forgets his calling and walks a Virgoean path of aloneness and disconnection.  When they meet as adults, their opposing paths collide and they find themselves attracted to each other.  On an unconscious level, their souls know they can heal each other.  But each has been wounded, and so they have to learn to trust their hearts again instead of the inner beliefs they’ve learned to live by.

The story begins with Tilo, a young Indian girl with the gift of prophecy.  While her ability to see brings her fame and fortune, it also brings tragedy.  Pirates want to profit off her talents and they come and kidnap her, killing her parents.  We know that someone with this kind of spiritual power needs to learn how to control it, and soon learns that it really can’t be used for personal power and gain.  That’s what happened with Tilo and her family.  Tilo has to learn the lesson of offering selfless service to others.

She takes this path when she leaps into the ocean, escaping the pirates.   She eventually washes ashore on a magical island, where First Mother has gathered young girls to teach them how to care for and understand Spices.  She teaches these girls so they can go out into the world and keep the magic of India alive for those Indians who have immigrated to foreign lands.  

First Mother warns the girls that serving the spices demands that they give up their lives for the spices. The path of their service demands self-sacrifice.  They are charged with three rules when they go out into the world to be of service: They must never use the spices for their own desires, they can never leave their shop and they must never be touched.   The girls must be free of personal desires; if they fail in their duty, they are told that the spices will punish them.

Here is the old belief that serving others entails self-sacrifice.  It is true with regard to the issues of power and control.  Serving others can’t be about the ego, because then you don’t listen to what others really need. If power and domination are the end-game of spiritual powers, we walk a dark path indeed.  Since these powers are very real, they need to be used responsibly and in service to the world.  

But the Piscean vision of service has been one of self-sacrifice – of the body, of the emotions, of one’s very freedom.  The First Mother’s rules are very much like a nun’s vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.  These rules bind women’s lives until all that is left for them is service.  This form of service constellates when a Virgo gets so consumed with work that there is nothing else in her life.  She must make things perfect and perfection is a hard taskmistress.

When these young ‘mistresses of spices’ must remain so virginal that they are literally ‘untouchable’, the Virgo archetype is clearly out of balance.  Virgo’s virginity has nothing to do with sexuality, but rather with having your own sense of purpose.  Virgo’s true virginity is fresh and full, bringing with it a sense of ‘belonging to oneself’ in the midst of endless possibilities.  Our old beliefs about virginity and service are being questioned here.  Do these old rules and beliefs still serve a purpose or is it really a matter of consciousness and choice?

Tilo finds her place in Oakland/San Francisco, where she runs a Spice Emporium.  People come to her with their problems and joys, and she listens to what the spices tell her is needed.  And so she counsels and cooks and helps them get through their lives.  She believes that each person has their own special spice.  Her spice is sesame, the spice of nourishment, which is what she gives to all who come into her spice shop.  And while she might not be happy, she is content.  Until the day she looks out her window and sees Doug, an American architect, working outside her shop.  

                                          Giorgio Di Iorio

Something in his spirit calls to her because the spices pick up on it.  The fiery red chilies in her shop speak to her through their fierce vibrations. This happens before Tilo even sees Doug – a sure indication that they are meant to meet and interact and hopefully figure out the reason they have been brought together.   Red, a primary color, is the color of blood, hot chili peppers and roses; these beautiful chilies symbolize the energies of attraction, passion and love, anger and energy.  All those desires are sizzling in the air around Tilo and the chilies manifest that energy not by talking with her but by dancing!

  But she’s afraid, because she’s never been in love before.  And needless to say, it’s forbidden to a Mistress of Spices!  Tilo’s test is upon her.  Her overwhelming feelings come up against the ‘rules’; rules that say that if they are broken, she will pay the supreme price – loss of her connection to the spices.  New instincts arise in her and her test is to understand them and integrate them into her life.

First she tries to ignore the attraction, but its energy begins to flow out into her interactions with the rest of her customers.  She flows with a sense of service, love of Doug transformed into love for all. This attraction is a crossroads in her life’s journey.  She must test her beliefs against her own instincts and desires. So first she pours the energy into her work, thinking it will dispel the attraction.  In truth, Tilo is caught up in the experience and the spices know it.  

Once again, the chilies sound the alarm.  Are they the cause of Doug crashing his motorcycle outside her shop? If it’s a test, she can’t help herself – she calls him into the shop so she can bandage his hand.  When she touches him, she sees him making love with another woman.  This image sparks her desire, and soon Tilo is filled with confusion; she can’t find the right spice to serve his needs because her own emotions are now involved.  She refuses to admit that the chili is his spice when she looks for his spice.  The spices speak to her but her own mis-reading of what she saw in him keeps her from listening to them.  She is the one who shuts down on the spices, refusing the truth.

Frantically searching for his spice, she finally choses Holy Basil, a spice for remembrance, hoping that he’ll remember her and come back to see her.  But he doesn’t, at least not right away.  Tilo wanders through her days, lost in desire, until desire burns away and she remembers her service.

As she worries about repressing her feelings, Tilo gets more and more confused about what her people need, until it seems that the spices no longer talk to her.  Forbidden desire clouds her judgment - she longs for love she’s been told she can’t have.  We all know how that feels, trying to deny our feelings because of the rules.  Rules that should only guide our steps not control them.  Tilo is coming to a crisis point.  Will she give into her desires or turn her back on them so she can continue to serve her people?  Or will she find the third way, a new way that contains both the opposites yet transcends them?

Determined to forget Doug, Tilo works to regain her equilibrium so she can communicate with the spices again.  And just as she once again achieves it, her tests continue.   Doug returns to her shop and tells her that the spice she gave him made him remember something important he’d forgotten.  The lesson Tilo is learning is not to have expectations about how the spices will accomplish their healing.  A good lesson for us as well!

Doug remembered the first time his mother took him to the Indian reservation to see his great-grandfather.  His beautiful mother had never revealed their Native background to him because she was fleeing from it. This grandfather was some kind of medicine man, and he wanted to give Doug the choice of learning about the ancient ways.  But his mother refused to let him learn.  He never forgave her and left home as soon as he could, never speaking to her again.  But he forgot he had a choice – he forgot his heritage until Tilo gave him the spice.

Tilo’s service to him was this remembering.  She put him in touch with a rejected, but important part of himself.  She gave him back his choices.  But in giving him those choices, she also opened herself to doubting the rules imposed by First Mother and the spices.  Did she have choices too?  I think her early prophetic experiences and their consequences made her afraid to make those choices.  This is where sacrifice comes into the picture.  She was willing to sacrifice her desires because of her guilt over her parents’ death and perhaps misuse of her power.  And now those old choices are catching up with her.  Is guilt a valid reason for self-sacrifice?

Tilo’s guilt builds when all her careful spice choices for her customers seem to go astray.  Lovers break up, families aren’t talking, a young boy gets into bad friendships and her friend gets hurt.  Tilo is sure that the spices are punishing her customers because she is falling in love with Doug.  But she can’t stop, because she cares for him and wants him to heal.  Virgo service is often very compassionate and caring.

When he finds out that his mother has died, Doug needs to see Tilo, sensing she will heal his pain.  And so she does – how can she not try to heal him when he is remembering who he is!  He tells her, “I didn’t have a clue of what I wanted ‘til I met you.  I want to start over.  I’m not rooted like you.”  Tilo responds, “When the roots are too strong they can strangle you.”   Both of them are trying to find their way to a new vision of life, one that has meaning and one that is free.  They are teaching each other what they themselves have learned.  And because of the exchange, both meaning and choice will grow and change.

Since she has never been out of the shop, Tilo finally accepts Doug’s invitation to go out with him, knowing she is stepping over a line.  She leaves her shop, telling the spices, “I’m not leaving you spices.  I’ll be back!”  And she has fun!  But before she returns, she discovers her friend Haroun has been beaten up and her shop has been vandalized.  First Mother appears to her and tells her she has broken too many rules and must return to the Island.  Is it really First Mother or her own guilt?

Tilo agrees to return, but she has also changed enough that she decides to have her one night with Doug before she goes.  She also discovers that she has made a difference in her clients’ lives, for they are all changing in ways she couldn’t foresee.  Despite her confusion, she got it right!

Tilo lets the chilies stir her desire.  She leaves behind her old self to experience her new self just this one time.  She covers her body with spices, finally liberating the beautiful woman inside the servant.  And she dresses in red, no longer afraid of the passion within her.  She has tamed her desires, so she can choose her desire.

                                                                       Kintop Films

First she goes to see Haroun, who is not only recovering but who has fallen in love.  Then she goes to Doug’s home and lives her dream.  After though, she leaves him to return to her store and to exile at the Island.  

There she builds a magical fire of chili peppers that will take her back to the Island and the Mother.  But when she tries to return, she is stopped by the spices.  They will not abandon her, even if she doesn’t follow the old rules.  They have chosen her and will allow her to choose both love and service.  

Chili peppers are a great symbol for these lovers, not only because they initiated this test of passion but because they also symbolize fidelity, breaking old negative patterns and most importantly, Love!  

          Mistress of Spices is a marvelous story about the transformation of the archetype of Service.  Do we really need to give up all the joys of life to serve our sisters and brothers?  Do we really need to be ‘untouchable’ for our service to be pure and humble?  Do we really need to give up love to serve the world?

          Being of service is part of the human experience just as love and sexuality are.  This new path of service is big enough to include our wholeness.  Our Virgo journey wants to unite body, mind and spirit.  When we do, our service will be inspired and true!

From the Bard’s Grove,

Cathy Pagano

Emerging Archetypal Themes: Leo, the New Queen & Dirty Dancing Cathy Pagano, M.A.

Emerging Archetypal Themes: Leo, the New Queen & Dirty Dancing

Hrana Janto offers beautiful photo-quality art prints of the image of Sekhmet shown here, as well as her other goddess images, at her website, http://www.hranajanto.com.

The emerging archetypal theme I’ve worked with this month is the journey of Individuation, the Leo initiation of becoming conscious of your original Self.  Due to the critical issues facing our world, individuation is the most important task any of us can undertake this lifetime.  Many spiritual people believe that we are at a moment of conscious evolution, and we are living in the moment of choice.  The only way to make a real choice is by living our essential truth, through being connected to what Carl Jung called the Self.  That’s what our movie heroine does.

The spotlight is on the new Queen for this Leo month because it is the Feminine Spirit that leads us to transformation and individuation. At the turn of the Ages, the Goddess returns to rebirth the world.  She is here, now!  And the truth is, women have led the way in the search for an authentic Self, partly because we’ve never been this free to understand ourselves before and partly because we make second-class men!  

In a world understood and shaped by male perceptions, women have had to run away from those masculine perceptions to find that Self.  But all of us have a feeling nature, a feminine side that wants to leave the old rules behind and find our own standpoint.  Our emotions as well as our beliefs shape our choices.  If they are left unconscious, we are easily led; when understood and acted upon, we are free.  

  

Leo is the sign of the King and Queen and ruled by the Sun, an ancient symbol of the Center.  The Lion’s gift to all of us is this search for individuation, for the ability to express who we are fully, with joy, pride and dignity.  The path of individuation leads inward to those feminine aspects of life which help us achieve transformation and inner freedom.  The truth is that outer freedom is an illusion unless you first achieve inner freedom.   

Both Leo and the Sun are apt symbols for our powers of self-awareness and generative creativity.  If we are in any way like the gods, it is because we are also creative. The Sun’s light is an ancient image of spiritual enlightenment, taking this exuberant energy even deeper.  So you see, Leo isn’t only about fun, applause and power.  Leo’s fixed nature can take the fire of creativity/destruction and ground and center it, stabilizing and sustaining the fire for the benefit of life.  

When women claimed our freedom in the 60s, we claimed it with our bodies as well as our minds and hearts.  Many of us threw off the shackles of patriarchal expectations and went exploring, and others met those expectations by entering the work world or staying home with their children.  But all of us were Father’s Daughters, women committed to the masculine ideals of patriarchy/capitalism.  Education in hand, we thought we were quite capable of handling life.  Well, life more often handled us, but though we were often disillusioned and sometimes hurt, we learned from our experiences and built on that new knowledge.  Many of us left the Father’s House of patriarchal expectations and became conscious women.

For the most part, women have been denied Leo’s gift for millennia, subjugated to the rules of a society that devalued women and offered few opportunities for freedom of expression.  I love the cosmic synchronicity that it is the Pluto in Leo women – the Baby Boomers – who first experienced this freedom on a large scale.  

Women want to find out who we are as opposed to just living as who we’re told to be.  The Archetypal Feminine energy is abroad once more, the Goddess has returned and her daughters are transforming the world with their freedom.  

As we incarnate this renewed archetypal energy, we each exemplify an aspect of the New Queen.  Being a Queen is being a female leader; being a Queen is embodying the emotional rhythms of life.  I wrote about such a new queen in the Aries blog about the movie Whale Rider.  The movie speaks of the shift of leadership from masculine to feminine if we want renewal of life.

An ancient function of the queen and king was to serve as mediators between heaven and earth, man and woman, god and goddess.  They represented the gods to their people, and their people to the gods.  They were spiritually conscious people and they were leaders of their people.   Isn’t it time again for wise leaders?

In a democracy, we are all called to become queens and kings.  We’re supposed to contribute our creativity to the world.  That’s what makes us whole, personally and collectively.  It’s not enough to create for our own sakes; we want to share our creativity with the world.  We want to make a difference when Leo is strong in us.

But first women have to leave the Father’s House and move beyond the patriarchal rules in their souls.  I’m not talking about rebellion, although that’s often a first step.  Or being sexually free, which isn’t the same as sexually whole. Women need to take the best and brightest of what we’ve learned from our ‘fathers’ and leave all the rules behind and find our own rules, based on our values, understanding and love. The first step is to return to our bodies, not just with sexual freedom but with understanding and love.  We need to discover our own courage, strength, truth, beauty, love, imagination, intelligence, power and mystery.   Happily, we’ve been left stories and fairy tales to show us how to do this. 

Fairy tales seem to be the bare bones of the primal archetypes of life.  Stories passed down through the ages to help us get through the transitions in life.  One big transition that’s been brewing for centuries is this women’s journey from the Father’s House to freedom.  There is an old story that tells the tale of a princess who fled the father’s house and gained her freedom and deep wisdom through day-long toil and a strong dose of patience.  Freedom from oppression is never free!

The tale gives us clues to achieving our quest for a conscious feminine standpoint to base our purpose on.  The basic pattern is set.  How we fill it in is up to us.  The Grimm fairy tale is called Allerleirauh and the movie that fleshed out this archetypal pattern is Dirty Dancing.

Allerleirauh: The Wisdom of Nature

Real individuality calls for freedom of choice – we must have the freedom to listen within and choose our own course to become whole.   In the past century, women, for the most part, have found outer freedom, and still more recently, some have found inner freedom.  But first, because patriarchy gives higher value to the outer world than to the inner realms of feeling and intuition, women used our freedom to go into the outer world, expecting to find equality with men.  But what we found was that we had to act like men because our social structures are male-based and cared nothing about feminine gifts unless they served patriarchy’s purposes.   

When women realize that patriarchy still wants to own our creativity and energy, many of us decide to leave the father’s house and go out on our own.  It takes the bravery and determination, intelligence and passion of a father’s daughter.  A father’s daughter who is ready to grow up and become her own woman.  When women start to listen to our own wisdom, the world prospers.  Through the years since the 60s, women have worked long and hard to change the culture, and we’re beginning to see the effects of adding responsibility and compassion, imagination and intuition to our public life. 

The story of betrayal, flight, toil and transformation goes like this.

Once there was a king and queen who were deeply in love.  But the queen got sick and began to die.  Before she did, she forced the king to make a promise that he would only marry someone like her, with the same golden hair.  The only one who fit the bill was their daughter.  And so the king decided to marry her.  Think of it – all her fertility and life will belong to him.

Being a smart father’s daughter, the princess demands that her father make her three dresses: one that shines like the Sun, one like the Moon, and one like the Stars.  Then she demands that he make her a mantle of furs with a bit of fur from every animal in his kingdom.  She believes he will never accomplish the tasks and she will be free.

Unfortunately, the king has a lot of people working for him, and he gets the clothes made.  And makes his demands – they will marry!  So the princess does what any conscious woman would do – she leaves.  Or rather, she runs away to the forest, dressed in her mantle of furs, taking a few treasures and her dresses with her in a nutshell.

The forest is, as you know, a place of mystery.  All those shadows and hidden places.  All the life and silence.  Finally exhausted from running away, the princess falls asleep in a tree.  Safe at last.  Only she isn’t.  For now a new king comes, a hunter who also lives in the forest.  And he finds her, thinks her a beast and brings her home to work in his kitchen.

He’s certainly different from her father.  In fact, it seems she dreamed him up in that tree, don’t you think?  Anyway, she works hard for a long time in the king’s kitchen.   Then the hunter king decides to hold three balls.  

Dancing is a must in fairy tales of transformation.  We need to catch the rhythm, need to incarnate the energy, need to focus it on our goals. Dancing is the most ancient form of this kind of archetypal energy transfer.  Like the pounding contractions of birth, rhythm takes over our bodies and we are at one with our nature again.  The Feminine is Nature’s rhythms; the Masculine is choice of rhythm. That’s the choice of an individual destiny.  

So the princess, who is now called Allerleirauh – of many kinds of furs – appears at the balls each time in one of her cosmic dresses, appearing to the king clothed in the light of the sun, the moon and the stars.  She knows who she is, she knows what needs to be done and she knows why it needs to happen.  But she never would have understood if she hadn’t been living in her mantle of furs – in her body wisdom.  That’s the first thing we need to validate and understand if we want to be free.  We need to listen – to our bodies, to our hearts, to our minds and most especially to our spiritual imagination – to be free.

After each appearance, she leaves some nourishment for the king, something for him to ponder and feel and desire.   Until he desires her just as much as she desires him.  She has shaped a new King while she’s been working in the kitchen of transformation and nourishment.  A new masculine energy within herself that will begin to resonate with the man in her life and transform him.

                       

 After the third ball, the king, who’s been enchanted by Allerleirauh since the beginning, recognizes her and desires her Wisdom and Beauty, and gives her his love and allegiance.   

This New Queen becomes the man of her dreams – and probably finds her mate too. That’s the story we find behind the 1983 movie, Dirty Dancing.

Dirty Dancing: the Birth of the Conscious Woman

I just spent an evening with a multi-generational group of my women friends, re-watching Dirty Dancing for the umpteenth time. I don’t know a single woman who doesn’t love that movie.  Why? There have certainly been other movies about first love, a changing society and rebellion, just as there are lots of movies with hot dancing in them.  Why do women of all ages gather round to experience this story again and again?  And love it every time?

I believe it’s because Dirty Dancing is built around the archetypal story of Allerleirauh. 

 When a story is based in an archetypal process, we can’t help but be affected.  The energies call to us.  We are all father’s daughters, and our next step in consciousness is to leave the father behind and find our own emotional standpoint.  This girl/woman Baby is a perfect persona for our innocent, idealistic father’s daughter who wants to become the heroine of her own life. 

The movie begins with Baby saying she couldn’t imagine ever finding a man as good as her dad.  She is the archetypal father’s daughter, idealistic, accommodating and ready to make her mark in the world. It’s interesting that Baby doesn’t have one strong exchange with her mom during the whole movie.  For Baby, mom is dead.  It’s dad who nurtures her – the real sign of a father’s daughter.   Baby is just that – a baby - she goes along with whatever her father suggests, even when she feels uncomfortable.  She doesn’t really fit into the resort’s activities like her mother and sister do.  She has other interests.

Like the dancer, Johnny.  His sensuality grabs Baby’s attention.  He’s Baby’s hunter king of the forest.  She’s smart enough to know she’s interested and courageous enough to seek him out.  She pays attention and is the one who discovers that Penny is in trouble.  And then she does something about it.  She gets involved because of her idealistic beliefs and because of her interest in Johnny.  She leaves the father’s house when she helps Penny without telling her father.  She starts to wear her mantle of furs when she offers to take Penny’s place in the dance.

She learns to dance. Everything her father taught her gets enhanced once she brings her energy into her body in the dance.  She comes into herself and becomes a woman.  

After Baby tells Mr. Kellerman she was with Johnny the night the wallet was stolen, Baby’s father won’t talk with her.  So she goes to confront him in the best scene of the movie.  And the truth of the matter shines out.  He is the father who rejects the reality of his child. The father who would rather marry his own daughter than let her live her own life. 

Baby:  I’m sorry I lied to you, but you lied too.  You told me everyone was alike and deserved a fair break, but you meant everyone who was like you.  You told me you wanted me to change the world and make it better, but you meant by becoming a lawyer or economist and marrying someone from Harvard.  I’m not proud of myself… There are a lot of things about me that are not what you thought, but if you love me, you have to love all the things about me.  And I love you, and I’m sorry I let you down, Daddy.  But you let me down too.  

Baby arrives at Kellerman’s a baby in truth and leaves as a woman named Frances, standing in her own truth.  And the interesting thing we find out at the end of the story is that Baby’s mother claims that Baby gets her dancing ability from her!  While mom doesn’t seem to have an identity of her own, being another father’s daughter herself, she claims the Feminine power of dance and rhythm as her great gift to her daughter. 

The power of a good story comes from its connection to archetypal themes.  Dirty Dancing’s power lies in showing us the process of leaving the Father’s House and becoming a conscious woman.  That’s the gift that Leo offers all of us – the task of becoming conscious human beings.