Bunny Rabbits and Easter

The other day my 12 yr. old son asked: "Dad, why do we have the Easter bunny?" Of course, I didn't have the foggiest idea. But, lo and behold, while finishing up reading The Maiden King this morning, the answer appeared:

"The goddess of the spring equinox was Eastre, the hare was her ritual animal and the egg her fertility symbol. The image suggests the lasciviousness of the goddess, the sheer lusciousness of life, sexuality, and birth. And with the goddess, the moon, the luminous white of the moon that carries the imprint of the hare, shines."

"Moon goddess imagery carries the cyclic pattern; it is simply a law of life. The forest knows how to sacrifice parts of itself that have to give way to new growth. The grief in the dying gives place to the miracle of resurrection. The hare willingly sacrifices itself for the sake of spirit: unconscious matter sacrifices itself for conscious awareness.

"Farmers who know hares well think of them as sacrificial animals. When fields and hedges are burned off, they see hares who refuse to run before the fire reaches them, suddenly leap, their fur on fire, to run to their death aflame. The more we meditate on the hare, the more we love this animal that, like the moon, dies to be reborn." [Page 217, The Maiden King]

Perhaps it was moment of synchronicity.

Good and Evil

Ran across this quote while reading "The Maiden King" this morning:

"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to seperate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart." Alexander Solzhenitsyn

One Reason Why

One of the main reasons I broke down and bought The Maiden King was to have this poem by Rumi, and Robert Bly's commentary on it.

We should ask God
to help us toward manners. Inner gifts
do no find their way
to creatures without just respect.

If a man or woman flails about, he not only
smashes his house,
he burns the world down.

Your depression is connected to your insolence
and refusal to praise. Whoever feels himself walking
on the path, and refuses to praise--that man or woman
steals from others every day--is a shoplifter!

The sun became full of light when it got hold of itself.
Angels only began shining when they achieved discipline.
The sun goes out whenever the cloud of not-praising comes near.

The moment the foolish angel felt insolent, he heard the door close.--Rumi

Not In Control

Lately I've been reading up on mythology and fairy tales. I found this quote significant: "The movement to demonize the father gods, and to create a sentimentalized version of the Goddess makes women and men more infantile." [Robert Bly, Pg.88, The Maiden King]

Out of all this reading and thinking about this I can say one thing for sure: We're not in control!

Bringing It To Light

Reading through The Maiden King again this morning and found these words of wisdom about depression:

"...the only way out of a covert depression is an overt derpression."[Pg.67,The Maiden King]

He also mentions in this section that most men in the west suffer from a covert depression.

Mythological Understanding

Slowly working my way through The Maiden King. I wrote this passage down yesterday:

"With the help of Freud, Western culture has moved from a literal to a psycholgical understanding of the world in only a hundred years. But now we are receiving a request to move on still further, from the psychological to the mythological stage. This is more difficult. We are at the moment, almost incapapable of a mytholgical understanding of the world. That understanding is not behind us, but ahead of us. It does not involve adversarial thinking, but the sort of double vision that develops in the Underworld." [Robert Bly, Pg. 40, The Maiden King]

Tired

I don't have anything to say or a quote in mind to share. I'm going to shut this thing down and start reading through The Maiden King, by Robert Bly and Marion Woodman.