Alchemical Reflections - From Carl Jung to Astrology to Synchronicity

Body of Thought / Language of Soul

2011-12-20T21:05:00.000-05:00

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

Dream Segment on Global's The Morning Show - December 12, 2011

2011-12-16T07:27:00.002-05:00

Winter Solstice

2010-12-20T22:29:00.000-05:00

On December 21, 2010 at 6:38 pm EST, the sun reaches its southern most point on its annual journey, and stands still before turning north again. It is the longest night of the year, and in the previous 3 months, the Northern Hemisphere has experienced an abandonment of the sun as the presence of night and darkness increases. In the increasing darkness, we naturally reflect on the year just past - challenges, defeats, leanings, insights, and the possibility of new beginnings. The lack of sunlight has a tangible effect on our bodies. Many people report increasing tiredness, fatigue, and need for sleep. We have an increased need for vitamin D and we might become depressed.

The Winter Solstice represents the first day of Capricorn. It is the turning point of the annual cycle of the Sun and a time of celebration that the Christian myth calls Christmas. Solstice means a sun standing still, hovering, pausing, resting before it begins its northward journey again. At some level, we are extremely aware that life consists of ebbs and flows. New beginnings move towards fullness and culmination followed by the movement back to nothingness and new beginnings.

The sky very much mirrors our own lives. We can symbolically look at the solstice as it turns and makes the transition from one state of being to another. The theme of the annual solar journey is very much felt at this time of year as the Sun is in exile in the southern hemisphere but begins its return journey. It is the return of the light symbolically represented by the birth of the divine child on Christmas Day followed by the beginning a new year. It is an archetypal theme that is found in every spiritual tradition.

Chapter 24 of the I Ching captures this theme very well. The title of the hexagram is the Return or Turning Point. Return leads to self knowledge. The light that has been in exile returned and there is movement again. It is a moment of grace. The Richard Wilhelm translation reads "The idea of the turning point arises from the fact that after the dark lines have pushed all the light lines upward and out of the hexagram. another light line enters the hexagram from below. The time of darkness has past. The winter solstice brings the victory of light".

Out of the darkness, new life is born. The symbolic mean of "Christmas" is a spiritual rebirth manifesting in the birth of the divine child after a period of darkness. The Christian church didn't institute the celebration of nativity until 352 AD and there is some suggestion that it was timed to coincide with Winter Solstice. According to Raymond Kilduff in his paper "The Christian Tradition: The Birthday of the Sun" The birthday of the Son of God came to be celebrated on the Birthday of the Sun. The etymology of word deity derives from "dei" which means gleam, shine. Jung saw the birth of Christ symbolically as an image rebirth and transformation of new consciousness arising out of the darkness of the unconscious. The potential for a new inner wholeness that can be understood as a more comprehensive experience or understanding of ourselves.

Edward Edinger in his book Ego and Archetype examines the Christian myth in light of the process of individuation. He writes "Jesus is both God and man. As Jesus, his is a double being living in particular, limited, historical existence, in space and time. As Christ, he is the anointed one . . . . Psychologically, this means that Christ is simultaneously a symbol for both the Self and the ideal ego. To live Christ consciousness also means that we have to be committed to our own journey's and to deeper calling that is within all of us to fulfil living our own unique life pattern and destiny.

This year the winter solstice is also accompanied by a lunar eclipse. Around 1:30 am EST early Tuesday morning, the Moon will begin to be shadowed by the Earth. At the most exact, the Moon will turn red when the earth, the sun and the moon are all in alignment. The whole eclipse process will be around 72 minutes. As for the best time to witness the cosmic event, NASA suggests being outside at 3:17a.m., "when the moon will be in deepest shadow, displaying the most fantastic shades of coppery red."

Lunar Eclipses are super full Moons. During an eclipse, it is as if the whole 29 days cycle is captured in a much shorter period of time. It probably explains why we experience these periods like "worm holes", life becomes accelerated. The theme of full moons are culminations, they are times when we see what we have created. This particular lunar eclipse is in the signs of Gemini and Sagittarius. The themes of Gemini and Sagittarius are about beliefs, wisdom, and knowledge. What are our belief systems and how do we communicate them to the world? Do we act our beliefs unconsciously? Jung said that "what we don't make conscious comes to the form of fate" and I have been reading a number of things related to the new biology. There is increasing evidence to say that our beliefs and thoughts create our world. We create what we belief and what we create. How are thoughts are so powerful in creating our worlds?

I believe that this is a good time to examine how our beliefs shape our world and determine how we interpret life's events. As the sun rises and consciousness increases, it might be helpful to reflect on whether our beliefs and communicates enhance or diminish our lives.

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

Soul and Death

2010-10-12T21:12:00.002-04:00

There is nothing so powerful as the death of someone close to us. Death seems to open up a sacred place where we ponder questions of meaning, and the mystery and the worth of life. Jung says “ The goal of the second half of life is death. "When death confronts us, life always seems like a downward flow or like a clock that has been wound up and whose eventual "Running down" is taken for granted. We are never more convinced of this "running down" then when a human life comes to its end before our eyes, and the question of the meaning and the worth of life never becomes more urgent or more agonizing" (Vol 8 para 796)

He reminds us that life is an energy process that is irreversible. It is a law of nature that irrefutable. There is no going back. There is only a journey towards an inevitable end, a goal. That is goal is an ending. He wrote that the natural flow of life is the nourishing soil of the soul.

The failure to acknowledge this inevitability can turn into a fear of life - neurotic resistances, depressions and other psychological distresses as if some aspect of our lives remains caught in the past and refuse to acknowledge the present and the acceptance of what is. Fear becomes our way of being. Our ego will assert its perceived dominance by trying to make life forward movement stand still. We hold on to what was and to the past and refuse to live in the present.

The celebration of a life well lived becomes the mirror of our own regrets and a confrontation with our fear of death reveals the truth about our own fear of life. We can be painfully reminded of those moments when we have shrunk from taking a risk or to participate fully in life.

At the level of the Soul, - the place of the eternal – there is no limitation of time and existence. Even while our body – the vessel which carries our life energy – breaks with the pain of disease. According to the Cheyenne medicine men, “spirit comes to earth to learn the things of the heart through touching"

It doesn’t seem the Soul is concerned with the death of the body instead dreams at an impeding death reveal images of transformation, rebirth, and journeys. For some spiritual tradition, the goal is home, a return to the after life. Jung observed that psyche is much more concerned with how we die and whether we approach the end with attitude of acceptance or resistance.

Stephen Jenkins, The Griefwalker writes that "grief is the sign of life stirring towards itself" It is an awakening of the soul wanting to have a full experience of life in death Grief calls us into a deeper experience of life

In Memoriam to John Adams Becker - 1932 - 2010

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

Pluto Station Direct - Return from the Underworld 2010

2010-09-14T07:51:00.000-04:00

The planet Pluto changes direction today and begins to move forward again after seemingly moving backwards since April 6, 2010. There were a couple of significant events in my world that week that reminded me how fragile life is and that we must face death as part of our celebration of life. There were two murders in my quiet Polish neighbourhood and for several days, the street was scattered with police cars. On the world stage, President Lech Kaczynski and many of the Poland ruling elite were killed in a plane crash on their way to Russia to mark the 70th anniversary of the massacre of Polish officers by Soviet forces. A country and a people went into another collective mourning with the loss of its leadership.

Planets when they are retrograde don't actually physically stop and start moving backwards. It is our perspective from the Earth viewing planets as they move around the Sun. We just think that planets move backwards and from our vantage point they do.

Human beings need to make sense of our world. Jung wrote that we have a "spiritual instinct" - a hardwired inclination to create meaning, and places ourselves within the cosmos. Astrology and the planets provide a fertile ground to project ourselves and then to come to know ourselves again from a different perspective. An astrological reading can help to make sense of where we are on our individuation journey.

The key in understanding retrograde planets is "re". It comes originally from medival latin and means again and anew. It is a time to re-flect.

Pluto is the planet of transformation and its retrograde periods can be particularly intense and troublesome. Pluto's return from the underworld brings with it hidden aspects of our personality and our garbage. Our lesson is to learn to let go of aspects of our lives that no longer serve our individuation project. If we resist this process, then the lesson will be that much harder to integrate.

With any retrograde planet especially an outer planet, there are key dates on the journey. These dates provide benchmarks or markers along the path for checking in with life and see what is happening around a particular situation.

Check in with your life around these dates and journal what was going on for you at that time.

December 17, 2009 - the Journey began with Pluto arriving at the same place where it is today.
April 6 2010 - Pluto turns retrograde and the process of reflection begins
June 25 2010 - the turning point of the journey
September 14, 2010 - Pluto turns direct and whatever has been hidden emerges to be integrated into our lives
September 24, 2010 -Manifestation of whatever the cycle has been about.

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

The Wallet

2010-09-05T09:26:00.001-04:00

Last week, I was in Montreal for the tri-annual congress of Jungian Analysts. 700 of the world's analysts converged in Canada for the first time in IAAP history. On the first full day, I lost my wallet or it was stolen - I am not sure. The wallet had vanished - completely disappeared. It was all rather discombobulating. Mercury, the trickster god who also rules commerce, and communication, was retrograde i.e. going backwards. The Retrograde Station was the previous Friday. However, the essentials were replaced within a couple of days and so there wasn't a great deal of inconvenience while I was in Montreal.

The location of the loss and the circumstances of my life at the moment suggested to me that this loss should be taken a bit more symbolically. The whole experience had a dream like quality and if the experience was a dream how would I interpret it. The unconscious seems to have been speaking to me in a quite dramatic way. The wallet that had gone missing was purchased in Florida in December 2008 when I was there with an ex-partner. It was the last reminder of a painful relationship. It was heavy and full of receipts that needed to be organized, filed or thrown out. Over the last weeks, I have been determined to get my life and environment more organized. When my life becomes too busy, it is one of the first things that goes. And yet the disorganization and the outer chaos actually contributes to being ill at ease rather than providing a remedy for the busyness.

Symbolically, the wallet reflects how we look after our resources. I saw that the way I took care of my wallet was a mirror to the way I took care of my inner resources. The wallet is a container of our identity and our relationship to the resources in our life.

I could have looked at this as a great tragedy. However, I recognized that the loss was also an huge opportunity. The trickster/thief forced my hand to look at how I handle my internal and outer resources. The decision facing the "recreation" of my wallet will all its identity papers, drivers licences, health card,and credit cards is how do I do it. Do I revert to my old way of being of being disorganized or do I recreate it with intention and consciousness that is in alignment with how I want to take care of myself. This process is ongoing.

"What's in your wallet?"

Addendum
September 13, 2010 - This has turned out to be a Mercury story. Mercury went direct on September 12 at 7:08 pm. My wallet lost in Montreal on Monday, August 23 - 2 days after Mercury went retrograde - was mailed by Canada Post on September 3, 2010 - the date of Mercury's conjunction with the Sun - and landed in my mailbox today September 13, 2010. The universe moves in mysterious ways and fortunately, we sometimes are graced with a glimpse this through astrology. I will sort through the things that I need to keep and throw the wallet out.

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

Nightmares - How can we transform our night terrors?

2010-06-28T20:06:00.000-04:00

We all have nightmares - those frightening dreams that we wake from in a cold sweat. The mere act of "waking up" is probably the very thing that is needed. Nightmares call us into becoming conscious of our fears.

What are nightmares?

If we consider that dreams are messages from the soul to our conscious mind, then nightmares could be viewed as urgent messages, that is, messages previously sent in a gentler form but went unheard or denied. These messages could point to problems in attitude towards some aspect of our lives, they could expose an outmode way of being that limits our growth or they highlight the death of current perspective or attitude. In all cases, we are confronted in some way. But it is the comfortable and the status quo of our ego that is in some way no longer serving our deeper journey.

The longer we ignore these messages from the soul then the more vehement the messages become.

The way that we look at various aspects of ourselves often determine the form that they appear. For example, a menacing destructive figure comes after you and you run from it. The question is what are you running from in your life. In many cases, apparently dangerous dream figures can lose their destructive energy simply by taking a receptive attitude to our inner world.

How can we transform our nightmares?

Turn around and face whatever it is that you have been avoiding or denying. The menace that you have been running from for what seems like forever will like take on a different shape. I love the phrase that I heard Wayne Dyer "When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change" Try changing your perspective.

I talk a bit more about this in an article in The Toronto Star entitled "Work-related dreams often represent unfinished business"

Christina Becker is a Jungian Analyst, Professional 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

Pluto Station Retrograde and the Night Sea Journey

2010-04-05T20:57:00.026-04:00

Pluto, the planet of death, rebirth and transformation, turns retrograde at 10:34 pm Eastern Daylight Time on April 6, 2010. It has been direct, i.e. moving forward since September 11, 2009. Since then, we have been integrating into our psyches what Pluto raised from the depths during its last retrograde from April 4 to September 11th.

In the Greek myth, Hades, Zeus's oldest brother, is the god of the underworld, the land of the dead. It is place described in various texts as a gloomy chasm where no mortal may enter and the gods avoid. In a later manifestation, Hades also became the lord of the treasures. His imagery associated with the helmet of invisibility and also the cornucopia of plenty. In fairy tales and other mythology, the treasure hard to attain is symbolic of the consciousness and transformation that results from descending into the recesses of our own unconscious.

Pluto is the planet furthest away from the earth and the one that has the most profound effect on our lives. Its station often brings crisis. Situations suddenly erupt like volcanoes forcing us to deal with them. And thus the station signals the turning inward to address underlying unconscious dynamics that fuelled the outer situation. Yet at this time, we are only vaguely aware that something is out of sync in our lives.

During the retrograde, Pluto digs up all that is false in our life - adaptations we construct to be in the world and developed to fit in, to be successful, to be liked, or to look good in the eyes of friends and colleagues. We begin to find that things in our lives that use to worked don't. It can often be an intensely emotional time. The feelings and emotions long since buried flow to the surface like lava. The transformation is inevitable and directed by a energy much larger than our ego notions of our life. The ultimate purpose of the transit is to reveal the healing truth of the soul and to systematically stripe all that is doesn't serve the deeper aspects of our personality, our authenticity and individuation.

Key dates to reflect on as we embark on the process letting go.

December 24, 2009 - the journey began with the conjunction with the Sun initiating all that the cycle is about ;
June 25, 2010 - the journey hits a turning point or culmination of a process that started in December and the underlying issue being addressed psychologically begins to emerge with greater clarity.
September 14, 2010 - Pluto turns direct and whatever has been hidden emerges to be integrated into our lives

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

The Psychological Relevance of Good Friday

2010-04-02T08:34:00.002-04:00

Carl Gustav Jung, the founder of analytical psychology was one of the first psychologists to explore the Christian myth as psychological experience. The themes around Good Friday and the cruxification are particularly relevant to the individuation process, that is, the life long journey towards psychological wholeness and to live the Self's experiement in life.

In the Christian Myth, Good Friday marks Jesus's cruxification and the beginning of the three days of waiting for the ressurection on Easter Sunday. The symbols of the cross and the waiting 3 days are found in many other myths and fairy tales. The central theme of which reflect the psychological experience of the death of something in order that something else can rise. Three days is symbolic of the night sea journey with its themes of descent and return. In these journeys, a part of the ego's energy retreats from daily life for inner exploration to find the truth of the soul.

For Carl Jung and Jungian Analyst, Edward Edinger, the cruxificiation and the cross are the psychological experience of that moment when the divine and the ego are locked in a tension of the opposites. Both are on the cross. Both must sacrifice something for transformation to occur. The Self / the Divine must come down from heaven and become conscious in the individual as life energy. The ego must sacrifice the inflated notion that it is the master of its own house and serve the larger call of individuation. The drama of the cruxification is symbolically a fundemental experience of the individuation process.

This process is described by Edward Edinger in Ego and Archetype " This state is a transition period. It is the limbo of despair following the death of an old life orientation and preceding the birth of a new one. Jesus' ressurection symbolizes the birth of a more comprehensive personality which can result from the conscious acceptance of the cruxification ordeal" p 150.

Christina Becker is a Jungian Analyst, Professional 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

Spring and The Archetypal Mystery of Sacrifice, Death and Rebirth

2010-03-20T19:51:00.001-04:00

I have been mindful for a number of weeks now that it has been a long time since I have written in these pages. While various ideas and topics have floated in my thoughts in recent days, nothing captured my attention sufficiently to set words to paper.

This morning was different.

Today is the first day of spring and I welcome it in Antigonish, Nova Scotia where I have a small monthly practice of spiritual direction and Jungian Analysis. The weather is beautiful – blue sky and a warm breeze. The unforgettable smell of new growth is in the air.

I started my morning reflections with the sense of relief after the long winter and the anticipation of new life. My thoughts turned to Persephone in the Homeric Myth to Demeter and the beginning of Spring heralding her return to the upper world from the underworld. In the myth, Demeter agrees with the Gods, in exchange for the return of her daughter, Persephone must return to the underworld to be with her husband Pluto for 3 months of the year. During those 3 months, the land lies fallow. Nothing grows. All of the activity lies in the unconscious - below the level of consciousness. Much like my blog entries, my thoughts and reflections have been fallow.

The theme of this myth is very present in the modern day Easter ritual and Lent, and speaks to the archetypal journey of sacrifice, death and rebirth. It is a theme that is still psychologically relevant. At this time of year, we are called to sacrifice something – an old attitude, outmoded belief, a way of seeing ourselves in the world – in order for something else to be present or to emerge from the empty space.

The archetypal significance of sacrifice to the Gods or to something larger than oneself is found in many spiritual traditions. The word comes from Middle English and means to make sacred. Martha Blake in her paper “The Psychology of Sacrifice” proposes that the essence of sacrifice comes from the innate human need to purify and to give new life, and which takes the form of a conscious action. We need to actively let go of something of value in service of something larger. In the days leading up to Easter, the 40 days of Lent marks the time of letting go, and giving up something in preparation for the death and resurrection inherently symbolized in the Easter Weekend.

The ancient journey of the divine feminine is also present at this time for it is the lunar cycle that defines the timing of the Easter Ritual. The name Easter is derived from the goddess of fertility and birth — Eostre. Eostre was worshipped by early Anglo-Saxons in what is now Central Europe and Britain during the vernal equinox. The Vernal Equinox is the beginning of the astrological new year and the first day of Aries. The Aries Point is regarded as a highly significant point in astrology. The sign of Aries speaks of action, initiation, and pioneering. The shifting date of Easter is tied to this point and is calculated for the first Sunday following the Paschall Full Moon. The Paschell Moon is calculated from the 14th day of the lunar cycle following the Vernal Equinox.

As we approach Easter Weekend in approximately 14 days, we are in a liminal sacred time. Treat this time with reverence and mystery and reflect on what are you prepared to let go or to give up in order for something new to come into your life?

Christina Becker is a Jungian Analyst, Professional 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

Retrogrades and the Three Fold Path

2009-11-24T11:35:00.002-05:00

With the exception of the earth, all planets in the solar system - Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto - embark on a 3-fold path at some point on their journey around the Sun. Relative to the earth, it appears that during these particular times, these planets follow a pre-determined path and move backwards.

The pattern goes something like this - planet moves forward and at some point, at the station retrograde, begins to move backward and retraces its path until the station direct where it begins to move forward again. During the path, it journeys through the degrees and the signs of the horoscope three times. Once moving forward, 2nd time moving backwards and the third time moving forward again.

These retrograde journeys are archetypal - that is, they call forth a deep recognition of a universal journey in the human psyche. The three fold nature of the retrograde path can be found in other aspects of the human condition. There are 3 aspects of time - "past present and future". In fairy tales, heros and heroines must accomplish three tasks. There are 3 degress of craftman: apprentice, journeyman and Master. Three states of matter - solid, liquid, gas. In Alchemy, there are three heavenly substances - Salt, Mercury and and Sulfer. And the process of alchemy itself is a three fold art with alchemical process following the sequence of nigredo (black), the albedo (white) and the rubedo (red). Carl Jung identified that psychological development follows process of unity, the duality arising from the tension of competing energies that creates psychological distress, followed by synthesis available through consciousness and awareness that leads to a new wholeness and unity. The process then begins all over again as we engage in our individuation towards wholeness.

How can we take this archetypal journey of retrograde planets and use it to add meaning and richness to our lives? How can this three fold journey be in service to psychological development and our individuation project.

Mars is now on the first leg of its 3 fold path starting the journey on October 17 2009. Look in your life, what began that day? New ideas, projects or actions appeared in your life. I started a new Self Expression and Leadership program that Saturday. My first program as Head Coach. Mars is the planet of action, drive, ambition, outward action, and desire. It is a masculine planet which defines what drives us and how we purse our life's ambitions and goals. It tells us what motivates us and what desires drive us most powerfully.

Mars will station on December 20, 2009 and will remain retrograde for just under 3 months, turning direct March 10 2010. During this time, outer action might be thwarted as the Mars energy is reevaluated or there might be a need to rethink some action.

Maybe the point of reflection for this is who does Mars serve? Does he serve some old pattern of behaviour that is more interested in outer achievement and appearances, or does it serve the deeper life force moving through the psyche?

Christina Becker is a Jungian Analyst, Psychological 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

Carl Jung's The Red Book - The Astrology of the Confrontation with the Unconscious

2009-10-07T07:43:00.018-04:00

Today, October 7, 2009, Jung's The Red Book will be published by W.W. Norton. The book has been eagerly awaited by the Jungian community and contains the musings, visions and active imaginations between 1913 and 1930. Over the last several weeks there has been lots of conversation around this volume including an exceptional article in the New York Times Magazine http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/magazine/20jung-t.html. Following Jung's death in 1961, the Jung family didn't know what to do with it but were relunctant to release it for publication. The Red Book sat in a safety deposit box in a Zurich bank vault for 23 years. Many are decribing it as the most influential unpublished work in the history of psychology.

I believe that the origins of the book can be found in 1909 when Jung and Freud's travelled to Clark University in the United States in September 1909. Freud and Jung were very close up until this trip. Jung was tauted as Freud's heir apparent. As an young up and coming psychiatrist practising at the Burgholzli Psychiatric Hospital in Zürich, Jung was applying Freud's psychoanalytic method.

Freud and Jung were invited separately to Clark University and both were to receive honoray doctorates. They decided to travel together and arrived in New York on August 29, 2009. The conference was to take place between September 6 and 11. The expedition is noteworthy for our discussion because the seeds of the ideological differences between Freud and Jung were beginning to be felt. Both men returned to Europe with a deep understanding that, at some level, their paths would be different.

Over the next three years, Jung's divergence from Freud grew more apparent. However, the correspondence and the involvement of the two men remained close until about 1912. However, the growing split between the two men in ideology was becoming evident and this difference also had institutional aspect. Jung was then President of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA) and a secret committee was formed in the summer of 1912 to displace him. It was evident to Freud and his inner circle that Jung was unwilling to be the leader of "Freud's movement"and to be under Freud's control. He had a direction of his own. He also brought other interests and orientations to the conversation of psychology including religion, mythology, alchemy and anthropology. Jung was a spiritual seeker.

The impact of the split with Freud left Jung profoundly disoriented resulting in a schism in his identity. Jung held considerable standing at the time as a psychiatrist with published papers, lectures and an active practice. Yet he resigned a number of these public positions. He describes in Memories, Dreams, Reflections that he struggled with psychosis. The following years, Jung descended into disorientation and the confrontation with the unconscious. We are now able to experience this journey first hand.

The astrology of this is also very interesting. Uranus went into Jung's 12th house of the collective unconscious in 1906. Uranus would stir up both the deeper, darker levels of Jung's unconscious as well as a desire to approach the unconscious in a different way. At the same time, Neptune was transiting his 6th house of work. collective consciousness, and daily routine causing misunderstanding, confusion. The manifestation of this particular transit suggests that his path of advancement mysteriously blocked by someone who will not confront him directly. Jung was not aware of the secret plot against him and experienced it as a great betrayal.

Uranus Neptune was opposed each other 10 times in between 1906 and 1910 highlighting the principle of renewal and revolution of worn out patterns against the principle of spiritual impulse in human beings. Jung was compelled through the Zeitgeist of these two powerful influences as well as from his own background to revolutionize psychoanalysis to incorporate the spiritual component. It was this direction that Freud could not understand. This time also was the birth of Einstein's Theory of Relativity and the transition into the 20th century world-view.

In 1912, Uranus crossed his ascendant and oppose his Sun in Leo causing a revolution and disruption to his public persona and sense of identity. It would be the overriding influence for much of the coming two years and expose all that was false in the way that Jung's identity and presentation in the world. Jung would write later that the journey of individuation required that the individual remove himself or herself from the collective and divest oneself of the identification with collective norms and values. Individuation is an uniquely individual path towards wholeness and consciousness.

The images in the RED BOOK started as Jung descended in the unconscious beginning in 1913 and continued until 1930. The most intense of the journey lasted until 1916 when he emerged from the disorientation with a new sense of himself. He has written that the content of the book would be the basis for everything that he did since then.

Christina Becker is a Jungian Analyst, Psychological 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

October 4th Full Moon - Self and Other

2009-10-05T08:31:00.000-04:00

“Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.” – Carl Jung

Yesterday's Full Moon opens the question of relationships with the tension between the me energy of Aries and the we energy of Libra. It seems that the energy brings up the universal questions of self and other and how do we remain ourselves and be fully in relationship. Power exists in relationships when we are attached to what the other has to be rather than accepting what is. Love exists in the committment to both self and other.

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

That's My Story and I am Sticking to It

2009-09-30T07:53:00.003-04:00

Is your glass half empty or half full?

The journal Circulation of the American Heart Association recently published a study that showed that our attitude towards life has a direct bearing on our physical health. The study followed 97,000 women for 8 years. The seminal conclusion was that optimism is an important factor in our resilience to illness. Women who were optimistic had a significantly lower risk of developing heart disease and dying from a major illness. Conversely, the study showed that women who were negative, mistrusting and cynical were more likely to die over the same time frame.

The study’s conclusions are not revelations to the spiritual traditions but they do reveal that mainstream medicine is taking seriously something that alternative researchers and spiritual teachers have known for a long time – that psyche, mind and the body are an integrated system. Our emotions and thoughts affect the body’s bio-chemistry and thus our physical well being.   Our thoughts and words create our world, our reality and our placement in it.   They operate as dialogues running in the background of our lives.

Many psychological theories and spiritual traditions have defined this phenomenon - voice in the head, self talk. Eckhart Tolle in his book A New Earth explores the difference between what happens and our story about it   Buddhism calls it dukkha. Roughly translated, it means suffering, pain, sorrow, dissatisfaction, pessimism, and bitterness. Indeed bitterness in the western world is so common and so destructive that psychiatrists are discussing whether to add it as an official diagnosis in the DSM – the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. (In a later blog posting I want to look at bitterness and wisdom and what transforms bitterness into wisdom)

Carl Jung developed the notion of complexes to describe the filter, the lens with which we interpret the world. He defined a complex as a cluster of related but often repressed ideas and impulses that compel characteristic or habitual patterns of thought, feelings, and behavior.

Anyway you look at it, the suffering that the ego creates for our soul occurs when we view the world through a particular lens or filter and refuse to accept what is. It is the thoughts that we have about our world and our place in it that creates suffering and illness.

To heal the symptom, James Hillman argues in Healing Fiction, we must heal the person, and to heal the person we must first heal the story in which the person has imagined himself.

What’s your story?

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

New Moon in Virgo: Walking the Labyrinth

2009-09-18T17:57:00.016-04:00

I walked the labyrinth in High Park this morning in honour of the New Moon and my birthday. It was part of the ritual that I wanted to create for the day to create a new beginning for this year. It turned into so much more.

The journey started when I had a synchronistic encounter. I ran into my homeopath - a woman who was instrumental in the treatment of me and my beloved cat Artemis who succumbed to cancer last March. This synchronicity created the atmosphere of something awesome that was about to happen. The healing element was present.

I reached the Labyrinth and left my purse with all of my outer persona outside of the circle - phone, wallet, identity etc. I entered the circle and said aloud "I am open to hearing whatever spirit has to say to me." Throughout the walk I felt my heart open and felt joy love and gratitude exist in a place deep inside of me. I could hear someone say "this is all you". The circle of the labyrinth contained me. It provided safety and protection. My senses were heightened in this open hearted place - the wind rustling through the tall grass, the bird song. It was as if my being has tuned itself into nature and danced with it.

Three quarters of the way into the centre, I saw a homeless man walk towards the labyrinth and sit on the benches that surround the circle. His clothes dirty. He was in his 30s. Thin from the lack of food. Dark curly hair and a beard. He sat with his back was to me.

At this point, the experience transformed into a dream or a vision. I continued to walk. Mindful of my persona lying on the ground inside the outer circle and potentially in danger, and outside the labyrinth itself, a personification of whatever was homeless in me smoking a cigarette. I didn't see his face but his back, the part of himself that he couldn't see.

The unconscious will often be personified as masculine in the dreams of a woman. His physical appearance could have been a personification of my animus.

I continued to walk and reaching the centre. I faced both persona and homeless. After a couple of minutes, the homeless man put his cigarette out, looked at me briefly, got up and walked into woods. I was still in the centre of the labyrinth. At this point, I started my way out feeling touched by spirit and clear on the need to integrate the homeless aspects of myself. The parts of myself that I have disowned and relegated to living in the woods.

There was something of this experience that reminded me of the Saturn Uranus Opposition - the configuration so influencing this New Moon. It was as if the two symbols reflected either side of the opposition. Saturn symbolized by the purse lying on the ground - the status quo, the blackberry, the pieces of identity, the structure around who I am in the world. The Homeless man -the outcast, the rebel, the energy that lives outside of the system and all that Saturn relegates to the unconscious -the woods in High Park.

The danger with all oppositions is to identify with one pole and project the other. The lesson to learn might be is to recognize - as I did from the centre of the Labyrinth - that both aspects are from the same whole and to explore the possibility of revolution with the existing structure.

Christina Becker is a Jungian Analyst and Psychological Astrologer. Her practice purpose is empower individuals, couples, teams and organizations on their path of transformation. Her website is www.cjbecker.com .

Pluto Station Direct - Return from the Underworld

2009-09-11T07:56:00.004-04:00

The planet Pluto changes direction today and begins to move forward again after seemingly moving backwards since April 4, 2009. Planets when they are retrograde don't actually physically stop and start moving backwards. It is our perspective from the Earth viewing planets as they move around the Sun. We just think that planets move backwards and from our vantage point they do.

Human beings need to make sense of our world. Jung wrote that we have a "spiritual instinct" - a hardwired inclination to create meaning, and places ourselves within the cosmos. Astrology and the planets provide a fertile ground to project ourselves and then to come to know ourselves again from a different perspective.

The key in understanding retrograde planets is "re". It comes originally from medival latin and means again and anew. It is a time to re-flect.

Pluto is the planet of transformation and its retrograde periods can be particularly intense and troublesome. Pluto's return from the underworld brings with it hidden aspects of our personality and our garbage. Our lesson is to learn to let go of aspects of our lives that no longer serve our individuation project. If we resist this process, then the lesson will be that much harder to integrate.

With any retrograde planet especially an outer planet, there are key dates on the journey. These dates provide benchmarks or markers along the path for checking in with life and see what is happening around a particular situation.

Check in with your life around these dates and journal what was going on for you at that time.

December 15 2008 - the Journey began with Pluto arriving at the same place where it is today.
April 4 2009 - Pluto turns retrograde and the process of reflection begins
June 23 2009 - the turning point of the journey
September 11, 2009 - Pluto turns direct and whatever has been hidden emerges to be integrated into our lives

Christina Becker is a Jungian Analyst and Psychological Astrologer. Her practice purpose is empower individuals, couples, teams and organizations on their path of transformation. Her website is www.cjbecker.com .

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09/09/09 - Symbol of an Ending and a New Beginning

2009-09-09T08:04:00.001-04:00

For many people, today is a particularly auspicious day. It is the last single digit configuration of its kind for at least 1000 years.

If we just look at the symbolism of the number "9" we might get a sense of why we have attached significance to the day. Carl Jung wrote in Man and his Symbols:

"Nine has been a magic number for centuries. According to the traditional number symbolism, it represents the perfect form of the perfected trinity in its threefold elevation" (p. 367).

The number is the last single digit before beginning of a new cycle that starts with 10. In the Tarot, the ninth card in the deck is the Hermit. This major arcana card reflects the archetypal energy of completion, introspection and space.

Therefore the number Nine is a number of completion. It is also a number of gestation, birth and intiation. It takes 9 months for a human child to gestate. I have seen in the dreams of my clients that the psyche will have the same gestation as an individual births a new perspective or attitude. We could see that the number Nine reflects the culmination of awareness as it ends a cycle

As human beings we have a need to make sense of our place in the cosmos and we create symbolic systems to add meaning to our lives.

Whether you believe or not, this is a good day to reflect or meditate on:

what have you accomplished over the last 9 months;
what goals do you have;
what are you thankful for;

Christina Becker is a Jungian Analyst, Psychological Astrologer and Consultant.. Her practice purpose is to "empower individuals, couples, teams and organizations on their path of transformation" Her website is www.cjbecker.com .

Shadow, rage and when it is too late to take it back

2009-09-03T20:24:00.007-04:00

In Toronto this week, there was a tragic accident involving a bicycle courier and a former cabinet minister of the provincial government. This incident has dominated conversation and news reports. The details of the accident seems to suggest that the bicyclist and the driver were involved in a "minor collision" at the beginning. Something in the altercation escalated, with courier holding onto the car while the driver apparently tried to dislodge him. The bicyclist died and the driver of the car has been charged with criminal negligence causing death.

On Thursday morning, the Globe and Mail published an article on the physiology of rage, that fight or flight reaction that lies deep within the body. The journalist reported that people in this state of rage feel as if their bodies have been taken over or that they are so not present that they forget everything that happened. The heated emotions of anger and rage take our ego's ability to reflect, and discern. It is in those moments when passion, anger, fear, and frustration get the better of us and we lose our ability to get out the situation only to emerge with the world fundamentally different from when it was only a moment before. In fairy tales, this kind of psychological experience would be personified as demon possession.

Coining the word `shadow`was one of Carl Jung`s significant contribution to modern psychology. His definition is `the thing that we do not wish to be" The shadow reflects all that is in us that we refuse to acknowledge and deny out of shame, guilt or embarrassment. Like the Jewish banishment of the goat into the dessert, the shadow becomes the scapegoat. We all know the story of Dr.Jeyyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll is an upstanding Victorian doctor by day and by night, his alter ego is the demonic monsterous, Mr. Hyde. Modern examples of the shadow are seen everywhere.

The usual manifestation of the shadow is polarization - we and them. And the story has elements of a growing polarization between the established, collective structure and values pitted against marginalized bicyclist. Each side blaming and demonizing the other. Ultimately as Pogo once said "we have seen the enemy and he is us."

100 Years of Psychoanalysis in America

2009-09-01T20:13:00.000-04:00

100 years ago this week marks an important turning point in the development of Freud's psychoanalysis and Carl Jung's analytical psychology with arrival of Jung and Freud in America.

In August 1909, Freud and Jung set sail for the United States with colleague Sandor Ferenzi to attend the Clark University Conference on Psychology and Pedagogy. The ship docked in Hoboken New Jersey August 29 1909. The conference held between September 6 and 11, 1909 would introduce the European analytic movement to the Americas and lead to Jung's later distance from Freud and the development of his brand of psychology.

When Freud received the invitation to speak at the conference in late 1908, he declined believing that he needed a holiday more than taking the long journey across the ocean to speak. Carl Jung apparently grasped the significance of this adventure and urged Freud to accept. It wasn't until the dates were changed to September and Freud was offered an honorary degree did he accept. Unbeknownst to Freud, Jung would also be offered a place on the schedule and a honorary doctorate.

Tensions existed between the two men on the crossing. They would tell each other their dreams and analyze each other symptoms as hidden feelings and beliefs about the other. Upon entering the New York Harbour, Freud apparently commented on how surprised the Americans would be to hear what they to tell him. Jung believed that Freud was overly ambitious. Freud had the same belief of Jung as well.

More information on the celebration of the Centennial can be found at the Clark University http://www.clarku.edu/micro/freudcentennial/