Quote: The Supreme Meaning of Death

The spiritual climax is reached at the moment when life ends. Human life, therefore, is the vehicle of the highest perfection it is possible to attain; it alone generates the karma that makes it possible for the dead man to abide in the perpetual light of the Voidness without clinging to any object, and thus to rest on the hub of the wheel of rebirth, freed from all illusion of genesis and decay.

Life in the Bardo brings no eternal rewards or punishments, but merely a descent into a new life which shall bear the individual nearer to his final goal.

But this eschatological goal is what he himself brings to birth as the last and highest fruit of the labors and aspirations of earth

~Carl Jung; Commentary on the Tibetan Book of the Dead; Psychology and Religion, Pages 524-525

The Supreme Meaning of Death ~Carl Jung

Anorexia Mirabilis

The head of St. Catherine of Siena

We’ve been taught so effectively to loathe fat people, and especially women who refuse to make themselves small and convenient, that not even the endless drive for profit can convince some of the world’s most enthusiastic capitalists to consider them a priority.

- Amanda Mull, "Why Aren’t Fashion ‘Disruptors’ Serving Plus-Size Customers?"



First, blog news: It’s been pretty quiet here at 2Biat, and that is because I’ve been studying for my final exam. And there's also all the holiday madness that happens every year at this time, so there’s a short hiatus happening. However, I had a little brainwave today that I wanted to share to this blog.

One of the things I’m studying about is eating disorders. This is something I have a very personal relationship with. It’s been a long time but for years I hated myself, and hated my body in particular. It took a long time to heal all those wounds. And this is, sadly, a very common problem.

We have a history of starving the body, everything from sages in the desert to the tradition of girls fasting to show how close to God they are. Modern anorexia is basically the same thing as this religious anorexia. Both are hateful towards the body, carnality, desire, and anything perceived of as “weakness,” especially moral weakness. Both are attempts to destroy the feminine within the body.

To love a large, curving, ample female body is to love the flesh. To hate the flesh is to hate the feminine Goddess that lives within the flesh, in our body. This is sharpest in anorexia but the societal obsession with small, spare, hungry bodies – bodies from which all the soft, warm animal comfort has been carved away – is in itself hatred toward the feminine because the body, the animal, is the feminine principle.

The way out of the pit of self-hatred is self-love. When we can finally acknowledge the tremendous work our bodies do, keeping us alive and bearing the burden of our abuse and contempt, then we can finally become friends with ourselves. And more, we can finally literally start to embody the missing sacred feminine back into the world, through our soft, fragile, but amazing and resilient bodies.

… And now you see more what the jewels behind the meat are. Our hero wanted the flesh and instead he fell into the jewels, the eternal or the divine. He has to realize that divine aspect of the flesh. It is not enough for instance, for a Christian who has up until now despised the flesh, to say, “now I’m going to throw my prudish prejudices overboard. I’m going to have juicy sex and enjoy it.” That would be eating the flesh. That’s nothing. If he does that he doesn’t move one inch out of the old kingdom, he’s still caught in it. He only adds the dimension of so-called sin to it. But nothing has happened. He has to realize that the flesh is a form of the divine, a divine revelation, and that sexuality is divine.

That’s what Jung fought with Freud about. He agreed completely with Freud that sex should be liberated and should be lived, not treated with prudish repression, but he wanted to say that sex is a religious experience as in Tantra. And if you live it, therefore, only with the idea, “That’s very healthy for my hormones and makes me physically better,” then you have missed the whole point. Then you have eaten dead meat, rotten meat. The redemption of the feminine means not the redemption of the flesh; it means the redemption of the divinity of the flesh, of the divine, archetypal, godlike aspect of the flesh…

- The Cat: The Virgin's shadow



Further reading:

Anorexia Mirabilis and the Fasting Girls (Megan, cvltnation.com)
The Cat: Redeeming the feminine


[Image from Anorexia Mirabilis and the Fasting Girls]

Reference: "The Fearsome Hunt of Mallt-y-Nos"

Mallt-y-Nos is generally translated as “Matilda of the Night.” However, it is worth noting that “mallt” is part of the words “mallter” and “malltod.” These mean “curse, blight, rotten, putrefaction or blast.” Therefore, the modern Cymricisation of Matilda into Mallt might mask an older meaning and legend; or it might be a play on words. (As an aside “mallt” is a borrow word meaning “malt” in the whiskey sense, but that could probably be discounted here!”

Another name for this entity is Nos Mallt, which makes more sense as Night Curse, than Night Matilda. The folklorist Wirt Sikes certainly thought so, as he transalted her name as “night-fiend.” Sir John Rhys gave an alternative of “the night evil.”


Mallt-y-Nos: The Horror of the Hunt

She stands in a chariot, led by huge, black horses, each with eyes that burned red. She rides at night, using the legendary Cwn Annwn as her pack of hounds; and she would go hunting. Her prey? Those about to die, who would hear them coming – the barking of the dogs and the eerie cry of the crone behind them.

As the individual died, their spirit might encounter the pack and the chase would be on. If she caught them they would be corralled into Annwn. If they escaped, then there was still a chance of Heaven. Some stories state that Mallt-y-Nos didn’t even wait until death to catch her prey. She was quite capable of setting the Cwn Annwn on a living person, watching her victim tore limb from limb, before capturing their soul as it left their body.


Malit-y-Nos: Who was Matilda

Marie Trevelyan recorded two stories. The first was that the Earthly Matilda had been a Norman noblewoman, who had arrived with Fitzhamon from Gloucester to subdue South Wales. Matilda loved to hunt. In fact, she was so passionate about the chase that she stated, “If I cannot hunt in Heaven, I would rather not go there.” Upon her death, the Welsh God of the Otherworld, Arawn, appeared and took her soul. In life, she had been noted for her beauty; in death, she was transformed into a terrifying hag. Matilda was doomed to go hunting for all eternity.

The second is that a young Welsh woman loved hunting, but her betrothed did not approve of such pursuits for ladies. Upon their marriage, he made her promise never to hunt again and she agreed. However, she missed it. For over a year, she yearned to get back into the chase, but her husband forbade it. Then he went away from home for a while and she seized her opportunity. For a whole day, she happily rode with the hunt meet, swearing everyone else to secrecy. Unfortunately for her, the return journey saw her thrown from her horse.

She had a broken leg, when her husband returned home. It didn’t take him long to put two and two together and deduce that she had reneged on her promise. He stormed out of the house to consult a dyn hysbys (trans: wise woman, wizard or cunning man). The two returned to cast incantations, which raised the young woman from the ground and “threw her to the winds.” As a whirlwind took her up, she was evidently rescued by Arawn and placed in the chariot to lead Annwn’s hunt.


Notable sightings of Mallt-y-Nos

Mallt-y-Nos was particularly well known around St. Donat’s Castle, in Glamorgan, where she was said to be hunting for the soul of the pirate, Colyn Dolphyn. This was the subject of a 1837 poem by Taliensin Williams, The Doom of Colyn Dolphyn:

…Her evil eye
Was never rais’d to greet the sky -
She never sought the mirthful plain;
Nor moved in joyous Hymen’s train;
But mutter’d oft, in voice morose;
And peasants called her – Mallt-y-Nos.

- premiumjoker4195, "The Fearsome Hunt of Mallt-y-Nos"

Reference: Dogs in Zoroastrianism

In Zoroastrianism, the dog is regarded as an especially beneficent, clean and righteous creature, which must be fed and taken care of. The dog is praised for the useful work it performs in the household, but it is also seen as having special spiritual virtues. A dog's gaze is considered to be purifying and to drive off daevas (demons). It is also believed to have a special connection with the afterlife: the Chinwad Bridge to Heaven is said to be guarded by dogs in Zoroastrian scripture, and dogs are traditionally fed in commemoration of the dead. Ihtiram-i sag, "respect for the dog", is a common injunction among Iranian Zoroastrian villagers.

Detailed prescriptions for the appropriate treatment of dogs are found in the Vendidad (a subdivision of the Zoroastrian holy scripture Avesta), especially in chapters 13, 14 and 15, where harsh punishments are imposed for harm inflicted upon a dog and the faithful are required to assist dogs, both domestic and stray, in various ways; often, help or harm to a dog is equated with help and harm to a human. The killing of a dog ("a shepherd's dog, or a house-dog, or a Vohunazga [i.e. stray] dog, or a trained dog") is considered to lead to damnation in the afterlife. A homeowner is required to take care of a pregnant dog that lies near his home at least until the puppies are born (and in some cases until the puppies are old enough to take care of themselves, namely six months). If the homeowner does not help the dog and the puppies come to harm as a result, "he shall pay for it the penalty for wilful murder", because "Atar (Fire), the son of Ahura Mazda, watches as well (over a pregnant dog) as he does over a woman". It is also a major sin if a man harms a dog by giving it bones that are too hard and become stuck in its throat, or food that is too hot, so that it burns its throat. Giving bad food to a dog is as bad as serving bad food to a human.The believers are required to take care of a dog with a damaged sense of smell, to try to heal it "in the same manner as they would do for one of the faithful" and, if they fail, to tie it lest it should fall into a hole or a body of water and be harmed.

Both according to the Vendidad and in traditional Zoroastrian practice, dogs are allotted some funerary ceremonies analogous to those of humans. In the Vendidad, it is stated that the spirits of a thousand deceased dogs are reincarnated in a single otter ("water dog"), hence the killing of an otter is a terrible crime that brings drought and famine upon the land and must be atoned either by the death of the killer[23] or by the killer performing a very long list of deeds considered pious, including the healing of dogs, raising of puppies, paying of fines to priests, as well as killing of animals considered noxious and unholy (cats, rats, mice and various species of reptiles, amphibians, and insects).

Sagdid is a funeral ceremony in which a dog is brought into the room where the body is lying so that it can look on it. “Sagdid” means “dog sight” in the Middle Persian language of Zoroastrian theological works. There are various spiritual benefits thought to be obtained by the ceremony. It is believed that the original purpose was to make certain that the person was really dead, since the dog’s more acute senses would be able to detect signs of life that a human might miss. A “four-eyed” dog, that is one with two spots on its forehead, is preferred for sagdid.

The traditional rites involving dogs have been under attack by reformist Zoroastrians since the mid-19th century, and they had abandoned them completely by the late 20th century. Even traditionalist Zoroastrians tend to restrict such rites to a significant extent nowadays (late 20th - early 21st century).

- "Dogs in religion" (Wikipedia)

"Baba Yaga and the Challenge of Darkness. Or, I Love the Smell of Manflesh in the Morning"

A little late for Halloween, but here's something interesting:

She is more than a witch. She is a great nature goddess, possessing the power of both life and death like nature herself. She is an image of the Divine Feminine, that which is capable of ruthless destruction and loving nurturing. She is the folklore equivalent of other bivalent goddesses such as Kali. In this sense, it isn’t correct to categorize Baba Yaga as evil, any more than it would be to describe nature itself with this word. Nature is amoral, sometimes fantastically destructive and cruel, and other times just as life-giving and nurturing. Jung explores this theme in his famous essay “Answer to Job.” In it, he makes the case that Yahweh is unconscious, and therefore amoral. “This is I, the creator of all the ungovernable, ruthless forces of Nature, which are not subject to any ethical laws. I, too, am an amoral force of Nature, a purely phenomenal personality that cannot see its own back.” Evil can only exist where there is consciousness.

Baba Yaga’s grotesqueness and power are illustrative of the problem of dealing with these dark, primordial psychic contents. All of us contain this kernel of darkness. We manage to hide it away from ourselves for the most part, remaining naïve to our own capacity for evil and destruction. What happens when we do confront it? Sometimes, it can destroy us, overwhelming us and turning us into the very monster we sought to overcome. This is a story of the ego’s hubris, the imperial belief that it can colonize and rule over the contents of the unconscious. When consciousness does not approach the archetypal energies within the collective unconscious with sufficient humility, it will be vulnerable to being devoured or corrupted by the darkness therein.

- "Baba Yaga and the Challenge of Darkness. Or, I Love the Smell of Manflesh in the Morning", Lisa Marchiano (The Jung Soul")


Links:
Vasilisa the Beautiful


See also:
Crone
Death

Symbolism: Death

[An overview will be written at some point in the future.]

 

Posts:

"A Journey from Where to Where"
"Baba Yaga and the Challenge of Darkness. Or, I Love the Smell of Manflesh in the Morning"


See also:
Dog
Incest

"A Journey from Where to Where"

Oliver Sacks - humanist neurologist and one of the greatest popularizers of science, and also one of my personal heroes - died a couple years back (2015). RadioLab just released an episode featuring recordings from his final days; he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer and had many interesting dreams:

I’ve been having a lot of strangely archetypal dreams of a journey I have to make. Getting lost, and getting found; full of surprises, maybe going through a door, which I think will be a door to another room but is a door to a mountain landscape – and sometimes frightening ravines and edge-long, very narrow ledges – but then finally coming to some great, spacious, heavenly mountain meadow, and then waking. Dreams about journeys, an approaching end, and..... it’s a journey from where to where.

RadioLab Oliver Sacks: A Journey From Where to Where (10/27/17, 4:49)



See also:
Death
Journey
Mountain
Ravine