Religion and Sex

One of the Townships near me is working on banning any kind of adult entertainment within the township. I don't know where I'm at concerning the issue, but I've always like this quote by Alan Watts: "Religion without sex is a rattling skeleton, and sex without religion is a mass of mush." Or this one by Thomas Moore, "Sex and religion are closer to each other than either might prefer."

Priapus's Hard-on

My morning started with a question. Why does priapus have a permanent hard-on? Then while doing some research on that I got sidetracked by a quote:

"Tell me for what you yearn and I shall tell you who you are. We are what we reach for, the idealized image that drives our wandering."--James Hillman

Back to priapus. A few reflections: From what I know about priapus so far health class would've been much more interesting if priapus would have been introduced. Sex would have lost some of its heaviness, I think. He also lightens things up when the subject of sex comes up with your 14 year old son. If you don't believe me look up some images of him.

Now it's time to go deliver mail in the polar vortex. While doing the route yesterday the temperature didn't get above -12 F. I've been noticing a lot of deer tracks along the wood edges. They have to be really struggling right now.

Back After a Few Days

It's been close to four days since I've posted anything on here. Been busy with building a pole barn, canning garden produce, and just being dad. I've noticed my day goes better when I put something on here. A few thoughts and a quote below.

I think I've figured out the 50 Shades of Gray phenomenon: people are craving ritualistic sex.

It's the third day of school in these parts. It has caused me to reflect a bit on my school days some 30 years ago. Reflection: School would have been a whole hell of a lot more interesting if we would have been introduced to myth, the gods, and the other world. In other words, spent a lot more time on mythology than we did. Michael Meade has said no learning takes place unless psychology is involved.

"One always thinks you get your ideas from the masters, the mentors, the teachers. I found that ideas are connected with eros, and that where the eros is alive, the two work together. That's a crucial part of all the work. We always had parties surrounding it all. Eros is the whole key."--James Hillman, pg. 580, The Life and Ideas of James Hillman

Intercourse

Reading about sex and intimacy this morning. This quote interested me:

"It's no accident that the word intercourse means both physical lovemaking and intimate conversation."--Thomas Moore, pg.171, Soul Mates

How Do They Do It?

Yesterday I was talking to a friend about Thomas Moore's book, Dark Eros: The Imagination of Sadism, which I read two summers ago. During our talk I mentioned to my friend that I'd heard Moore mention in a radio interview that I downloaded last year that he felt compelled to write that book because he'd just started out practicing psychotherapy and a lot of his patients were coming to him with dreams filled with kinky sex, death, and murder. It has always fascinated me how an analyst can handle sitting across from a patient and listen to them reveal the different dimensions of their soul. Well, this morning, while reading James Hillman's biography I ran across this quote in a letter that he wrote to his mother in his early thirties:

"To be an analyst is a hell of a burden, since the questions one must face are not to be answered easily, else the patient himself would have found the answers. Every hour of working with someone involves the whole personality, with all it weaknesses especially in this Jungian method where the two people sit face to face, and not where one does all the talking lying down and the other hides behind a note book out of sight.. So this autumn I have been depressed over facing all the implications of my work, my shortcomings, mistakes...It has never been clear sailing but the difficulties become more apparent as one gets nearer the port. One can only have an effect on the other person if one can experience certain symbols and certain problems and certain wounds. In ancient times the physician was symbolized as having a wound himself, or the same disease as the patient. Or he carried or caught the patient's disease and thus by curing himself cured the patient. Since most of the illnesses brought to the consulting room are the standard illnesses of our day, illnesses which everyone has and shares, I have to work these things in myself before they can be of any use to anyone else."--[James Hillman in a letter to his mother in 1957, pg. 441, The Life and Ideas of James Hillman]

On a different note but somewhat related. Yesterday I ordered Lament of the Dead: Psychology After Jung's Red Book. It was the last project James Hillman was working on before he died.

Depth and Mystery

"Why do we crave the sight of the human body? Why do men especially need to look at breasts and that part of the woman's body that not only has to do with intercourse but also with birth? It's a great mystery that probably shouldn't be expl
ained, but I think we can say this much: Men have identified with the hero. We have to be adventurous, fight and conquer. We have no time for the mysteries of nature.

"Fully occupied with their heroic quests, men haven't had an opportunity to consider the great deep mysteries of sex, life and death. But a woman's body forces us to consider them. We try to turn our eyes away from it, but we can't. Over and over again we want to see those objects that say so much about our sheer existence: breasts and vaginas, nurturance and continuing existence.

"Beneath all the display of nipples and crotches lies a desperate search for self-understanding. Where do I really come from and where am I headed? Men devote their lives to achieving a position at work, a decent bank account and the reputation of responsibility, and yet, as we have seen so many times, they risk it all on the sight of a woman's body or an hour of foreplay."-- Thomas Moore