Coldwater Counseling Center

In his article “The Psychology of the Child Archetype” C. G. Jung wrote: “The most that we can do is to dream the myth onwards and give it a modern dress.”  Perhaps no one in our age has succeeded in doing this more than J. R. R. Tolkien in his novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.  These novels are rich in symbolism and reflect numerous critical elements in the psychological journey to wholeness.  The symbolic life awakens the “childhood” of the human psyche, that place in us that resonates with the primordial images through which the human mind first made sense of the world around it.  In his more theoretical works Tolkien wrote: “Indeed only by myth making,, only by becoming a ‘sub creator’ and inventing stories, can man aspire to the state of perfection the he knew before the Fall.” Psychologically the “Fall” would represent leaving behind the wisdom of the human imagination and the symbolic language of the soul.

            Tolkien lived his theoretical beliefs by creating a moving and enduring myth.  Books are still emerging exploring the meaning of Tolkien’s work.  Each year Tolkien offered an imaginative gift to his four children by sending them letters from Father Christmas.  These engaging missives became enduring testaments to Tolkien’s effort to nurture the living imagination of his children.  They have been collected into a coffee table volume titled Letters from Father Christmas.

            The Lord of the Rings contains numerous symbols that are especially relevant to this time of year.  One theme of the season is that of gift giving.  In our culture, while it can reach manic and compulsive proportions, it can still be a uniquely creative endeavor. In the character or the Elf Queen Galadriel we see an example of gift giving in its most relevant and timely form.

            When the Fellowship of the Ring arrives in her home of Lothlorien, she perceives the deepest desires of each member’s heart.  As a symbol of the anima archetype par excellence, she understands what lies in each man’s unconscious.  She leads two of the Hobbit members, Frodo and Sam, to her special “mirror,” whereby she pours water from a stream into a silver basin into which they each can gaze.  As if in a dream, Frodo and Sam can see glimpses of the past, present, and future.  Later Galadriel will give each of them a gift most relevant to what they have seen, though they do not realize it at the time.

            To Frodo, the Ring-bearer, she gives a small crystal phial in which is contained the light of Earendil’s star, a mythic reality of an earlier age.  She tells him that it will shine bright when night is about him.  “May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.”  Later the remembrance of this phial by Frodo and his faithful companion Sam is critical to their quest. Indeed, when they use it Sam realizes that they are actually a part of an ongoing myth, the old stories continue to live, and they are carrying them forward

            Part of what Sam saw in the mirror was the destruction of trees in his pastoral home, the Shire.  He desired immediately to return home to make things right, but if he did, Galadriel warned, if he turned from his appointed path, what he saw might come to fruition.  Sam chooses to stay his path with Frodo, but when he returns home, he finds the Shire in the ruined conditions of his vision in Galadriel’s mirror.  But then he remembers her gift to him: a little box with the earth from her orchard, and when he spreads the grains of earth that it contains, the trees and growing things of his beloved Shire are eventually restored.  May we all give and receive such gifts this Yuletide season!

Father Christmas, Gandalf, and Dumbledore  (Winter Solstice 2002)

When his oldest child was three years old, J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of The Lord of the Rings, began to send his children letters—complete with pictures—from Father Christmas at the North Pole.  (Beautifully illustrated in Letters from Father Christmas, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999.)  These letters, eventually sent to all four of his children, continued over a period of twenty years.  Penned by Father Christmas himself, they often contained added notes from Polar Bear, his chief assistant, who also had a knack for getting into mischief.

Tolkien’s imagination carried the legends of Christmas further and enlivened those of his children.  In his later work, The Lord of the Rings, one can recognize aspects of Father Christmas in the wizard Gandalf, especially when one considers the mythological roots of Father Christmas or Santa Claus.  From the Christian perspective Santa Claus is often seen as tied in with the legend of St. Nicholas, an early bishop, who was the patron saint of giving in secret.  His feast day was celebrated on December 5^th.

However, Santa Claus is also symbolically connected with ancient Northern European mythology dating back to the time of the shamans.  As we approach the winter solstice season that culminates in the New Year, we will have another opportunity to experience amplifications of Father Christmas in films that brought us some of the mystery of this figure last year at this time as well.  While the new movie The Santa Claus 2 will present us another lighthearted depiction of this figure, Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings will once more bring to this season more deeply mythological motifs.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets will once again introduce us to the elderly wizard, Albus Dumbledore, and his role in helping to mediate the emergence of the special “gifts” of the maturing Harry Potter.  Each Harry Potter story takes place during one school year, and the nadir is often the winter solstice time when Harry chooses to stay at Hogwarts rather than return to the Dursleys.  Dumbledore is the figure who most facilitates each of Harry’s years of transition, usually by indirect involvement.

The same is true in the Lord of the Rings and the role played by Gandalf.  While occasionally Gandalf does act in important ways, his larger role is shepherding the unfolding of the other key figures, especially the various Hobbits and Aragorn.  Yet each of these figures, like Harry Potter, must make their own choices.  Gandalf and Dumbledore function more like shamanic intermediaries in worlds that must overcome darkness, much as Father Christmas mediates the passage through the darkness of the winter solstice and brings us forward again into a new year and a renewed light.

Father Christmas flies through the air with the assistance of his reindeer and descends into our homes through our chimneys.  His journey of mediation is quite well known and accepted.   In Harry Potter we see similar flights in the air, whether it is on broomsticks in the wizard game of Quidditch, with the aid of some mythic beasts, or through the magic by which Harry arrives by car at Hogwart’s for his second year of study.  Through the unusual enchanting power of floo powder, we also see the special passage through chimney’s that carry any wizard from one place to another.

Chimneys allow the smoke and residue of fires to pass into the air so that the fire is contained and it can serve human needs.  In the Lord of the Rings the one ring must be returned to the fire that forged it, and the greatest facilitator of this task is Gandalf.  The wizard is a master of the mysteries of fire, whether it’s through the delightful fireworks he brings to the celebrations of the Hobbits, or facing the evil Balrog in the depths of the mines of Moria.  Through his wisdom in matters of fire Gandalf effects transformation within Middle Earth, including his own.

The images that unfold from these stories bear witness to the power of the archetypes that lay behind them and the need in our world for transformation of it’s darker and more threatening energies.

Harry Potter and Frodo Baggins       (Summer Solstice 2002)

In times of stress and amidst life’s struggles we can often look within to our dreams for a unique or illuminating perspective on our situation.  On a collective level the myths of a people help put their experiences of life into perspective.  Stories can help illuminate circumstances or at least offer a fresh outlook on them.  Thus following the enormous tragedy of September, in a meaningful and timely way, two mythological/fantasy films came to theatres in November and December as if to help speak symbolically to the events that had assaulted us at summer’s end.          

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring both drew blockbuster audiences by displaying imaginative dramas that originally came to us in written form.  At the core of both stories we find the heroic struggle and encounter with an essentially unimaginable evil that would take over the world, and that many people would prefer to deny and avoid. These stories offer mythic images portraying the power of such demonic energies to possess, the enormous human effort required not to be overcome by them, and the search for ways to diminish their power and influence.

What we see in these stories is that the truest hero is also an unlikely one--unassuming, and even innocent.  Harry Potter has no clue as to his truest identity or self, and not until his eleventh birthday does he begin to enter a world completely different from the one he has known, but one in which he is far more at home.  Nor is he at all aware that within this magical and imaginative world he is already famous, for at age one he survived a direct attack of the dark wizard who had just killed his parents.  Harry thus can be seen as the ultimate “survivor,” and his story that of a youth growing through the turbulence of adolescence into maturity.

Like Harry, Frodo Baggins of the Shire in Middle Earth is naïve and innocent.  Unlike Harry who suffered at the hands of the Dursley’s during his early years following the deaths of his parents, Frodo’s life in the pastoral setting of the Shire was peaceful and serene.  Only later does he come to feel the enormous burden of being the “ring bearer,” a responsibility inadvertently passed onto him through the early adventures of a beloved uncle.  Frodo’s destiny has a more far-reaching significance for the fate of Middle Earth than anyone could have imagined, even the most intuitive members of this world.  When Frodo comes to lament the burden he carries and wishes the ring had never come to him, the wizard Gandalf offers words that speak to him, to Harry Potter, and to all of us: “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide.  All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Both Harry and Frodo are destined to learn to attain the right relationship to an object—the Sorcerer’s Stone and the one Ring—which in the wrong hands can be used for power and destruction.  In both stories such an object is best destroyed rather than possessed.  The most unique quality of each of these characters is that they are both far less likely to try to possess this mysterious and powerful object than most others.  It is a responsibility best given to them than even the wise, for it seems they are most likely to be who they truly are; not more, but not less.  They answer the call to individuation and their own uniqueness, and are not thrown off by the forces of darkness.

Myth and National Trauma         (Winter Solstice 2001)

Amidst the tremendous tragedy of the airplane assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon most of us are still in a daze as we seek to move forward with our lives amidst the conflict in Afghanistan and fears of terrorism locally.  Symbolically we have experienced a national trauma of mythic proportions.  The dark side of our collective psychic life has erupted in a powerful and disturbing way.

            Most of us experience such events through the sensibilities of our deepest personal traumas.  As we listen to ourselves and others speak, it often seems like are worst fears and most painful experiences are being relived all over again.  Part of the challenge of dealing with this magnitude of collective trauma is working further on the personal ones that we each might be reliving.

            Beyond this we face the challenge of understanding the magnitude of the events of September 11^th and their powerful archetypal nature.  What was enacted has ironically been alive in the collective imagination prior to this date.  News programs have show a flight simulator produced by Microsoft that allowed one to visualize oneself piloting a plane into the World Trade Center.  Similarly a rap album was to be released with a cover depicting explosions emanating from about the same place in the World Trade Center where the two planes actually hit.  This cover illustration was meant to portray the group’s anti-capitalism stance. Obviously this image was in many people’s minds before the event.  Now it is in all of our minds, and the flight simulator and the album cover have been taken off the market.

            Such movements within the collective psyche demonstrate how easily we can be affected by the impulses and images that emerge out of the unconscious, and they confront us with the big question: How do we deal with them?  On some level we can all be gripped by an impulse to lash out, erupt in anger, fall into the grip of a temper tantrum.  For instance, we frequently witness road rage incidents around us on almost a daily basis.  We do not, though, usually see such things of the magnitude that we did on September 11^th.

            Ironically and fortuitously, our modern mythmakers have already been grappling with some of the “scenes” that we have witnessed in this tragedy.  For example, in the first Star Wars film George Lucas portrayed power driven figures who would destroy a whole planet to achieve their purposes.  What drives such people?  How do the rest of us hold on to other values and live our lives?  These are some of the questions posed by such stories and by the events that have so deeply affected us.

            The current sequence of films Lucas is working on essentially revolves around the theme of how a basically sweet, good kid turns to evil.  Young, unselfish Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader.  Post-September 11^th we are left to wonder how upper and middle class, well educated men could turn to such horrendous acts and a deep-seated belief in their justification.  These are questions of mythic proportions and will take along time for us to comprehend.

            As we approach the Solstice season, which celebrates a time of seasonal darkness and the birth of new life out of the dark void, we might want to consider the story told in Matthew’s gospel concerning the birth of Christ. Sinister forces, as represented by Herod, sought to destroy all male newborns so as to destroy the newborn king.  But the boy’s father, Joseph, was warned in his dreams as to how to protect his child and see to his survival and growth.  This story would suggest that we can look to the depths of the human psyche itself in order to best understand how to deal with the eruption of its darkest aspects.

            This holiday season be sure to talk openly with those you know about what you might be feeling as the drama in the world around us continues to play itself out.  May the Force be with us All.

The Burning Bush       (Summer Solstice 2001)

            One of the best examples of the relevance of the symbolic language of the psyche to our psychological development comes to us from the story of the Exodus.  After a time of exile from Egypt and a new, more grounded life as a shepherd, Moses discovers the burning bush.  This experience comes to him quite unexpectedly.  Sensing this encounter as one of great importance, he honors it reverentially, and soon hears the voice of God.

This incident sets Moses forth toward his destiny as the leader of the people of Israel out of Egypt, to Mount Sinai, and on to the Promised Land.  In the language of Jungian psychology, at the burning bush Moses encounters the call to individuation, his unique destiny and purpose.

The burning bush is a fitting symbol of this call for Moses.  When last in Egypt he had become possessed with rage while watching an Egyptian overseer beating a fellow Hebrew.  Out of this rage Moses killed the Egyptian, and was forced to flea into the surrounding wilderness in order to save his own life.  Here Moses settles into a life more rooted to the earth, its plants and animals, including starting his own family.  In the burning bush, Moses discovers a fire that burns, but does not consume, indicative of his now transformed anger.  This fiery energy is not a threat to the organic life represented by the living bush.  In this symbol they coexist.  Now Moses is ready to go forward into life in a new way, not consumed by primitive affect, but able to channel his energies into the service of the greater purposes of life.

Spring has traditionally been a time to consider such transformative experiences.  The miraculous events of Passover and Easter are celebrated during this season.  Persephone returns from the underworld, and the vegetative earth governed by her mother Demeter is renewed and regenerated.

This spring we at Coldwater Counseling Center wish you a meaningful encounter with the symbolic world of the burning bush, either through renewed contact with the traditions of old, or in some new transformative way.  Maybe your dog will talk, your moose will fly, or that which you most fear, rather than consume you, might bring you warmth and comfort.

The Imaginative World             (Winter Solstice 2000)     

          As we discussed in the last newsletter the most direct access to the symbolic life we all share is our nightly dreams.  Each night as we sleep the psyche imparts it’s own unique--though usually perplexing--form or wisdom.

            However, there is also a cultural component to this experience, a time of year in which various cultures believe that we are closest to the “spiritual realm.”  While this may vary in some societies, it is primarily the fall and winter that most people experience this affinity to the mysterious side of life.  We have just passed one such juncture in Western culture with the celebration of Halloween, which now is the second busiest commercial holiday (after Christmas) in our society.  Here the dark elements are imagined and “incarnated” through the various decorations and costumes.  Aspects of life that lie in the further reaches of the imagination are manifest much more directly. Similarly the spirits of the dead are assumed to be closer to us than at other times.  Psychologically, all these various components bring us closer to parts of ourselves that require more attention.

            Similarly, as we get closer to the winter Solstice, Christmas, and New Years we encounter another time when our imaginations are pulled to consider the transformative elements of the human soul that can come into play to enrich us.  It is a magical time of year when myths of the imagination are on display more than any other.

            We are Coldwater Counseling Center hope that even as you may touch the dark points of your soul’s struggles as the days shorten, that you will find ways to ignite the spirit that brings light and hope to those places that may need it most.