Winter Solstice 2012

I always have mixed feelings about this time of year.  The growing darkness creates in me a need for introversion and contemplation. So I am torn because of the equal desire to be with family and friends.

The Winter Solstice is connected with the traditional celebration of Yule, that pre-dates Christianity.  This celebration was associated with the return of the sun at the solstice as the days become longer and the sun gains in strength.  Sacrifice was a common element of Yule.  In this context, the act of sacrifice can be entered into consciously  and becomes a ritual in service of something greater.   And so, this can be an opportunity to let go of something that no longer serves us so that we can allow something new to enter our lives.   I had the wonderful chance to do that this morning

The images of this time of year abound with the archetypal pattern of death and rebirth, a reflection of what has been and the preparation for the new and the arrival of the divine child imaged in the birth of the sun for another cycle.

2012 is particularly laden with the theme of death and rebirth with the so called end of the Mayan Calendar which brings to a close a 5125 year cycle.  2012 has been the subject of numerous doomsday and apocalyptic predictions.  But you are receiving this which means that we are still here.  Carl Sagen was quoted as saying - "Since the beginning of time there have been literally hundreds of thousands of predictions for the end of the world, and we're still here."   There is, however,  no doubt that we are living in stressful times.

Psychologically, there may some truth to the end of the world as we know it.  The world is changing at a pace that we have not experienced in the history of the human race.  All of the outer planets - Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, and Saturn - have changed signs.  Outer planets reflect the archetypal background of the psyche that manifests in collective movements and trends.  When they change signs, there is a corresponding chaos as the new Zeitgeist emerges and settles.  We have witnessed the revolution (Uranus) of outmoded power structures (Pluto) with Arab Spring, the fall of various dictators and other political tyrants,  and numerous occupy movements over the last couple of years. This trend will continue and for some, this does feel like the end of the world if it touches you personally.  I think it is helpful to remember that new life always follows endings and to be patient in the process of transformation.

As I write, I am preparing for a new venture for me - the retreat in Mexico with astrologer Julie Simmons. We are both very excited about this retreat.  We have called it "The Journey of the Heart" and the material will build on the work that I have been doing around the spiritual aspects of individuation and its link to our connection with the divine. I hope to have some pieces of writing on this topic in the future.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish you and yours the best of the holiday season and a prosperous 2013.

Christina Becker is a Jungian Analyst, Alchemical Astrologer and Consultant with a private practice in Toronto, Ontario Canada. She is graduate of the C.G. Institute Zurich. Her practice purpose is to empower individuals, couples, teams and organizations on their path of transformation. Her website is www.cjbecker.com

Body of Thought / Language of Soul

Not too long ago, I read with great interest an article in Scientific American Mind entitled “Body of Thought” The article explored recent research in the neurosciences that showed how our language, the use of metaphors provides the link between the body and the mind. Researchers are discovering that the mind uses the body to make sense of abstract concepts and that metaphors which link the “mind and the body reflect a central fact about the way we think” And that there is a growing amount of evidence for an “embodied” cognition. It is something that scientists in the past believed were irrelevant.

For example, we link morality with cleanliness and use idioms to express that – “I wash my hands of that” or “she has a dirty secret” Worries are experienced as a “heavy load”. How we approach our lives reflect physical movement as metaphors. We move forward in life. We step back from challenging situations.

This is how the language of dreams already speaks to us every night. A dream presents a physical action to reflect the truth of psyche.

Scientific study – whether it knew it or not – seemed to be threading into the realm, image, idioms and the symbolic – touching something of the soul.

James Hillman offers this definition of soul – “By soul I mean, first of all, a perspective rather than a substance, a viewpoint toward things rather than a thing itself. This perspective is reflective; it mediates events and makes differences between ourselves and everything that happens. Between us and events, between the doer and the deed, there is a reflective moment — and soul-making means differentiating this middle ground.

It is as if consciousness rests upon a self-sustaining and imagining substrate — an inner place or deeper person or ongoing presence — that is simply there even when all our subjectivity, ego, and consciousness go into eclipse. Soul appears as a factor independent of the events in which we are immersed. Though I cannot identify soul with anything else, I also can never grasp it apart from other things, perhaps because it is like a reflection in a flowing mirror, or like the moon which mediates only borrowed light. But just this peculiar and paradoxical intervening variable gives on the
sense of having or being soul. However intangible and indefinable it is, soul carries highest importance in hierarchies of human values, frequently being identified with the principle of life and even of divinity. ”

He goes on to write that soul is “the poetic basis of the mind.” The soul imagines , speaks to us through dreams, poetry, fantasies, music, art, and daydreams. The things in our life that we bring into the heart and our imagination.



Christina Becker is a Jungian Analyst, Alchemical Astrologer and Consultant with a private practice in Toronto, Ontario Canada. She is graduate of the C.G. Institute Zurich. Her practice purpose is to empower individuals, couples, teams and organizations on their path of transformation. Her website is www.cjbecker.com