Page 30 - NAMAH-Oct-2019

Namah Vol. 27, Issue 3, 15th October 2019

involve much violence. War and destruction usage. “Therapy” is derived from the Indic
lead to a new creation. Our birth from our root “dhara”, which means to “hold”. The
mother’s womb is the first hero’s journey purpose of therapy is to hold the patient, as
we undertake. Archetypal psychology does would a friend (5). Hillman creates new words
not flinch from pain. It welcomes it as an from root words, such as “angelology”. So,
opportunity. if I am allowed the liberty of coining words,
I would say: if one is sad about losses, the
Angelology of Words word to describe it could be lostalgia, where
algia in Greek means “pain”. The aversion to
Hillman says the power of the word has analysis could be analysophobia.
been lost by literalising it. 500 years of the
rational era had created a fear of the numinous Dreams
capitalised words, such as Justice and Love.
“Logophobia” took hold of the collective mind Archetypal psychology uses dreams as an
so strongly that capitalised words appeared important source of truth. We are not in any
first tentatively as allegories (3). The Romantic hurry to find a meaning to explain away our
poets brought them back, as did Animism dreams. In Hillmanian dream analysis, one is
and Neoplatonism. Denying primacy to the to stick to the image. One can enrich it with
word is stifling the intuitive messages that archetypes, from mythologies from world
are sent to us as gifts from above. Denying cultures, from personal associations. But one
language that is strung from words is should not assign a meaning to the image.
stifling the goddess of literary artforms. Her It devalues the image, which is primordial.
language is poetic, imaginative, sensual, full It exists independent of the dreamer. It has
of radiance. She is also the goddess of Love. a place in the anima mundi. A dream is like a
When we stifle her, we stifle the inner core in Zen kōan, which does not need a resolution,
us, our soul. The soul is playful and wants to but it needs tending to. Sit with it today and
experiment with expressing itself. It likes to again next week and continue sitting with it
wear masks and enact roles. Hillman invites for years. Every time you engage with it, it
fiction into the realm of soul-making, just as may reveal something more of itself. Catch
dreams are theatres of the being, as real as can the feeling-tone of the dream, amplify it, and
be when the dreamer is dreaming them. The observe how it reveals more facets of itself.
fantasies the soul weaves do not need to be
its lived experiences. That they are imagined Personification
means they exist somewhere. There is no
need to assign living actors to these stories To understand people well, one needs to fall in
(4). These are the mythologies we create for love with them. The same is true of objects. To
ourselves and the gods and goddesses that know an object, one needs to fall in love with
populate our myths are the archetypes we it, and so, one needs to personify the object.
embody. In gendered languages, most things have a
feminine, masculine or neuter gender, same
Sometimes Hillman goes to the etymological as people. These languages personify a little
essence and rescues a word from its derivative more than English. But real personification

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