| Carl Jung and his superb soror mystica Louise-Marie von Franz are the best sources of external information concerning the recollectivization process. Depth psychologist Erich Neumann is also enlightening in revealing the alchemy of recollectivization, in which the individuation of ego-consciousness, having reached its extremities, reverses and re-traces its footsteps to source in the maternal, unconscious and collective. Ouroboric return to source is a gathering of strength, requisite and preparatory to transformation. It�s similar to the method that space vehicles use to gain momentum for extended journeys -- slingshotting themselves off the gravitational fields and rotations of heavenly bodies. Spaceship humanity is not at the end of its voyage, but at the beginning. David Shackleton, in his on-line essay �Feminism Exposed: Our Blindness to Feminine Evil,�* agrees that modern bi-lateral Genderwar is only now coming to a head. �The real war has not yet begun. We are still appeasing feminists, trying to give them enough of what they want so that we won't have to confront them in their power, much as the allies did with Hitler in 1936-39. It didn't work then, and it won't work now. In fact, as then, it will lead to disaster. �The coming war is unavoidable. At a psychological level, we have to take women off the pedestal, and we won't do that as a culture until we see the evil that they do, as we already have with men. But we are very attached to idealizing women. 'Motherhood' is our last great god(dess), and so it will take massive suffering before we will be willing to see women's dark side and let them be fully human. �In the short term, I believe that we will see increasing levels of violence and delinquency as traditional social restraints break down, increasingly strident claims that it is all the fault of men, ever-greater penalization of men and 'protection' of women and children, and rising levels of psychological distress, despair and suicide. Feminism will become ever more virulent and radical. We will know that we have won, that we are beginning to emerge from it when anger and fear finally turn to grief, when we see massive grief across our whole culture, grief at what we have done, at what we have allowed to happen to our children and to ourselves. �I can only guess how long this process will take: probably at least twenty years. [I wish!] Comparing it to the situation in Nazi Germany, two things stand out. The first is that the mother wound is deeper than the father wound, because our relationship with our mother is the first and deepest relationship we make. That, of course, is why we did the father work first -- it was easier. And so the working out of the mother wound will be harder and more distressing, and perhaps require more suffering before we are finished with it. And the second thing is that there are no "allies" waiting in the wings to save us. We must do what Nazi Germany was unable to do: we must find the resources to recognize and to battle this evil from within our own culture, even while still possessed and blinded by the power of our mother wound. �This is not comfortably remote, like Nazism is now for most of us, but archetypally powerful in our psyches right now. It is significant, perhaps, that there was no effective resistance to Nazism within Germany, from the beginning to the end of the Third Reich. Consider what that means. Despite all of the atrocities, the loss of personal freedoms, the social and political abuses, and the massive financial and personal costs of the war, Nazism yet enjoyed apparent popular support throughout Germany until the end. Clearly, it satisfied a vital need. That is the kind of challenge that I believe we are facing � the mother wound is the last ubiquitous psychological wound.� Evil, as Shackleton advises, is not the opposite of good, but the regression to infantilism, the inhibition of mature wholeness. In his words evil is �moral justifications for unearned privilege, using coercive methods.� That phrase rings so true in modern America that I do believe the crack in the Liberty Bell just widened. Our job is to re-forge and heal it. America, and the planet, are not in for a walk in the park. On the contrary, we�re in for a hike through Hell itself. Already we are many spirals down the basement stairs. America, in pursuit of the Great Work, began its descent to Tartarus almost four decades ago, struggling back to the beginnings of Ur-War, to the origins of consciousness, to the primal split of the opposites. Here is how two rising Sisters put it: �When the center does not hold, we regress. On a personal level, we may find ourselves being moody or demanding -- like a two-year-old. When the crumbling center involves a paradigm that we have been immersed in for over 4,500 years [i.e., �patriarchy�], we regress collectively to the infancy of our race. In regression, we return to the crux of an earlier unresolved conflict -- in this case, the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy. This collective regression is manifesting itself today in the resurgence of fundamentalism [e.g., right-wing theocracy, feminism, Islamic extremism] and the proliferation of cults. Both rise in the face of fear. Both attempt to hold onto the old identity through a forced collective mentality. Individuality is forfeited. Thinking becomes rigid, concrete, dualistic in an attempt to set boundaries against what is perceived as threatening. Personal security and meaning are preserved through a restricted world view. �Tribal warfare� ensues, verbally or physically, against the 'enemy' out there." (Woodman and Dickson, pp. 209-210.) The dissolution and descent experiences of America�s current stroll through Hell are preliminary to the emergence of nothing less than a resurrected humanity, and a revivified planet. Resolution, peace, and heaven on earth is the human destiny, and we will come to it, no matter how many trips around the wheel it takes. But first the opposites will have their full day. First there will be Genderwar. It will manifest physically as War on Earth (e.g., WWI and WWII, and the destruction of the �evil, misogynistic� Taliban), and as War in Heaven -- a spiritual struggle for the soul of America and indeed, of the planet. The ancient Powers that rule this Earth -- The Empowered Witch and Toxic King, and Powers yet greater � will never abdicate willingly. Against them and their overwhelming weapons � their cages, teargas, militaries, torturers, corporations, intelligence agencies, and all other elements of the totalitarian Machine � is set a ragtag band of outcasts, knights of the Queen of Heaven. |