Log24

Thursday, October 1, 2020

Hillman on Perception

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 2:00 am

James Hillman
EGALITARIAN TYPOLOGIES
VERSUS THE PERCEPTION OF THE UNIQUE

“The kind of movement Olson urges is an inward deepening of the image,
an in-sighting of the superimposed levels of significance within it.
This is the very mode that Jung suggested for grasping dreams —
not as a sequence in time, but as revolving around  a nodal complex.”

See also posts tagged The Well.

Well, which is it, Hillman?  Superimposing or revolving?

Friday, June 2, 2023

Annals of Philosophy

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 10:57 pm

James Hillman
EGALITARIAN TYPOLOGIES
VERSUS THE PERCEPTION OF THE UNIQUE

“The kind of movement Olson urges is an inward deepening of the image,
an in-sighting of the superimposed levels of significance within it.
This is the very mode that Jung suggested for grasping dreams —
not as a sequence in time, but as revolving around  a nodal complex.”

. . . Or, sometimes, as . . .

'A hot mess inside a dumpster fire inside a train wreck'— Jake Tapper

Saturday, September 10, 2022

Solomon’s Mental Health Month

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 12:21 pm

May 2003 was "Solomon's Mental Health Month" in this journal.

An essay linked to on the 9th of May in that month —

"Taking the Veil," by Jessica Kardon

https://web.archive.org/web/20021102182519/
http://www.thespleen.com/otherorgans/otherorgans/
index.php?artID=724

James Hillman, writing in The Soul's Code, argues for his "acorn theory" of human individual identity, and suggests that "each person bears a uniqueness that asks to be lived and that is already present before it can be lived." He insists we are born with a given character, a daimon, the carrier of destiny. This theory is closely linked to the beautiful myth described by Plato in his Republic, when the soul stands before Lachesis and receives his specific soul guardian. Hillman maintains that the daimon will always emerge somehow, even if thwarted or unrecognized.

I never had ambitions that reached fruition in the adult world. I have had only two career interests in my life – both formed precognitively. I wanted to be a mermaid or a nun. By the time I learned – shockingly late – that I could not be a mermaid, I had realized I would not be a nun. I concur with Hillman's emphasis on the persistence of early disposition, and I like to imagine that my dreamy, watery, Victorian and self-righteous psyche has held aspects of both of these early interests, throughout my life.

I was adopted one month after my birth. I was tended by nuns during the first four weeks of my life. Thereafter, I spent my whole educational life in convent schools. It was the sisters of Saint Vincent de Paul that gave me my favorite musical and my early distortions about romantic love and the gender plans of Our Lord. My misconceptions about love and marriage were culled from the Lerner Loewe musical Gigi, a wonderful film based loosely on a Colette novel. I was summoned along with my whole class to the gymnasium to view the movie under the edgy eye of Sister Bernadette.

Sister Bernadette was a large, mesomorphic nun famed for the beatings she gave to boys and girls alike, and feared for the mean zest with which she bestowed her favors upon many of us. I was not beaten – but once, believing I was wearing lipstick, she held my head in a sink and scrubbed my lips until they bled, then slapped me. I recall this with a mild, rueful whimsy. We were all manhandled. In memory, Bernadette seems more like an angry and troubled older sibling than a true figure of authority.

Anyway, I loved Gigi. It fed directly into my Francophilia. I was convinced that at some future date, I, like Gigi, would be trained as a courtesan. I, too, would cause some hard case, experienced roué to abandon his chill and irony. I saw myself strolling down the Champs Elysee with Louis Jordan in rapt attendance, pushing a baby carriage, wearing a hat the size of a manhole cover, hoisting a parasol above that to assure the longevity of my adorable pallor.

The gender plans of Our Lord had recently been revealed to me too. Sister B. had drawn a ladder on the blackboard, a ladder with three rungs. At the top, she explained, were the priests, the nuns, and the monks. These souls had surrendered their lives to God. All would be taken directly to heaven upon their passing from this vale of tears, as we all referred to the world in those lean emotional times. On the middle rung stood the married. If you married and kept the law – which meant leaving every act of marital congress open to the reception of a child, you would be eligible for heaven. If you were foul in marriage, seeking your pleasure, you were going to be damned. On the bottom rung were those selfish souls who had remained single and had imagined their lives their own. This group had never given themselves to Our Lord. They were headed to hell in a sort of preternatural laundry chute.

So we little ladies had two viable options: marry and breed without ceasing – or take the veil.

Despite my hat and perambulator fantasies, once given the sorry news of the ladder, the veil became the clear romantic favorite. Therefore I began my research. I obtained a catalogue of nunnery. It offered photographs of each order, describing the duties of the specific order, and displaying the garb of that order. I was looking for two things – a great looking veil and gown, and a contemplative order. I had no desire to sully my glorious vision of myself with a life in the outer world. It was apparent to me that the teaching of children was going to involve a whole range of miseries – making them cry, telling them the bad news about the ladder, and so forth. This was not for me. I saw myself kneeling on the floor of my pristine little cell, serene and untouched by human hands. Teaching would be certain to interfere with the proper lighting. Yoked to a bunch of messy children, I could not possibly have the opalescent illumination of heaven falling reliably on my upturned visage.

What divided me from my dream of rebirth as a mermaid was the force of what was real: I could not morph. What divided me from my dream of life as a nun was the force of the erotic: I would not abstain.

Now, long years later, I am still underwater, and I am still bending the knee. I live in the blue shadows of hidden grottoes, and I am swimming, too, in the gold of my drifting prayers.

September 7th, this dream. I am standing in a dimly lit room, gazing at a group of heavy, antique silk burqas that look weirdly like Fortuny gowns. A holy woman approaches me, and tells me that my soul will leave my body, and enter these garments. She turns and points at a young girl standing nearby, a child with close-cropped hair and a solemn look. My heart knows her, but my eyes don't.

For a moment I am thinking, exactly as I did in the seventies when holding a joint: "This isn't working." Suddenly, these things: I feel the shape of flame, then I am the shape. I am released into the air, and as pure essence I enter other forms, dissolving in them, gathering my energy back into myself, and flying out again. This was a sensation so exquisite that my dreaming brain woke up and announced to me: "This is a dream about death."

I saw that child again as I flew. This time my eyes knew her. I flew to her, but the flame of my soul would not cohere with hers, this child who was, of course, my own self.

In the shadows alone, I heard myself whisper: "I'm in the wind. I'm in the water."

This lovely dream, which gave me the sublime gift of a little visceral preview of the soul in the death process, also showed me my guardian spirit; divided, but viable.

I pass through my life swimming in one self, kneeling in the other. I thought of Rilke's 29th Sonnet to Orpheus and realized this was what I had been dreaming about all my life, moving between them.

Silent friend of many distances, feel
how your breath enlarges all of space.
Let your presence ring out like a bell
into the night. What feeds upon your face

grows mighty from the nourishment thus offered.
Move through transformation, out and in.
What is the deepest loss that you have suffered?
If drinking is bitter, change yourself to wine.

In this immeasurable darkness, be the power
that rounds your senses in their magic ring,
the sense of their mysterious encounter.

And if the earthly no longer knows your name,
whisper to the silent earth: I'm flowing.
To the flashing water say: I am.

– Stephen Mitchell, translating Rainer Marie Rilke.

by jessica kardon
iowa city, iowa
2002-09-23

See as well yesterday's post "At a Still Point."

Wednesday, November 24, 2021

Turning Nine  Continues*

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:20 pm

From Log24 on Epiphany 2012 —

IMAGE- Cathy Hull, detail from cover of Hillman's 'The Dream and the Underworld'

A version of the Zemeckis Cube —

* See Turning Nine (Log24, Nov. 8, 2021).

Update of later the same evening —

The subtitle for the hashtag symbol at left is "Explore." Appropriate.

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Mira and the Intruders* Present …

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 9:11 pm

Epiphany 2012: An Exercise
in Bulk Apperception

This post was suggested by a Marrific photo posted today,
by a New Orleans song as played by Bix Beiderbecke,
by a trailer for a new Zemeckis film that appeared at YouTube
on the way to the New Orleans song, and by
the longing for Bix by Mira Sorvino in "Intruders."

The YouTube Bix date, Jan. 6, 2012, suggested a trip back
to that date via a Zemeckis Cube (see "Ready Player One.")

From Log24 on Epiphany 2012

IMAGE- Cathy Hull, detail from cover of Hillman's 'The Dream and the Underworld'

A version of the Zemeckis Cube

From the Zemeckis trailer —

* See a Log24 search for Mira + Intruders.

Sunday, February 2, 2014

A Shadow for Groundhog Day

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 8:00 am

Alec Baldwin as Lamont Cranston

IMAGE- Conclusion of Hillman's 'The Dream and the Underworld'

Compare and contrast with the psychoanalyst in Remembrance
(January 27, 2014).

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Woman at the Well

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:00 pm

For some images related to this rather biblical topic,

see Hillman + Dream in this journal.

“She was dazzled by light and shade, by the confusing
duplication of reflections and of frames. All coming from
too many directions for the mind to take account of.
The various images bounced against each other
until she felt a desperate vertigo….”

Cold Mountain

Summary image:

IMAGE- Quilt blocks- Devil's Claws and Yankee Puzzle

“… Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed….”

A Wrinkle in Time

Sunday, January 8, 2012

All About Eve (continued)

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:23 am

Literary symbolism, offered without comment—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix12/120108-NYTfront305AM.jpg http://www.log24.com/log/pix12/120108-NYTobits.jpg

http://www.log24.com/log/pix12/120108-Tilley.gif

Log24 post of January 14, 2011

http://www.log24.com/log/pix12/120108-EveAndApple.jpg

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Fearful Cold Intelligence

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 7:00 am

"Dreams are sleep's watchful brother, of death's fraternity,
heralds, watchmen of that coming night, and our attitude
toward them may be modeled upon Hades, receiving, hospitable,
yet relentlessly deepening, attuned to the nocturne, dusky, and
with a fearful cold intelligence that gives permanent shelter
in his house to the incurable conditions of human being."

— James Hillman, conclusion of
The Dream and the Underworld  (Harper & Row, 1979)

In memory of Raymond Edward Alan Christopher Paley

IMAGE- 'Note on the Mathieu Group M12' by Marshall Hall, Jr.

Related material— Mathieu Symmetry.

Little Morning

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 5:01 am

IMAGE- Conclusion of Hillman's 'The Dream and the Underworld'

… que cantaba el rey David.

Friday, January 6, 2012

Form

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 pm

An example for the Feast of the Epiphany*
IMAGE- Cathy Hull, detail from cover of Hillman's 'The Dream and the Underworld'

For one approach to defining this form, see Diamond Star.

* And for Pomona College

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Saturday August 29, 2009

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 8:00 pm
Continued from
Father's Day
  last year–

Shoe cartoon, detail, Sunday, June 15, 2008

I Ching hexagram 48, The Well

"For further details,
 click on the well."

From the above link:

James Hillman

"The kind of movement Olson urges is
 an inward deepening of the image,
an in-sighting of the superimposed
 levels of significance within it.
This is the very mode that Jung
suggested for grasping dreams–
 not as a sequence in time,
but as revolving around
 a nodal complex."

And from Feb. 29, 2008:

http://www.log24.com/log/pix08/080229-Doonesbury3.jpg

and the following day:

Heraclitus: '...so deep is its logos'

— Heraclitus

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Sunday December 16, 2007

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 1:09 pm
 
Mad Phaedrus
Meets Mad Ezra

"Plato's Good was a fixed and eternal and unmoving Idea, whereas for the rhetoricians it was not an Idea at all. The Good was not a form of reality. It was reality itself, ever changing, ultimately unknowable in any kind of fixed, rigid way." –Phaedrus in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

This apparent conflict between eternity and time, fixity and motion, permanence and change, is resolved by the philosophy of the I Ching and by the Imagism of Ezra Pound.  Consider, for example, the image of The Well

as discussed here on All Saints' Day 2003 and in the previous entry.

As background, consider the following remarks of James Hillman in "Egalitarian Typologies Versus the Perception of the Unique," Part  III: Persons as Images

"To conceive images as static is to forget that they are numens that move.  Charles Olson, a later poet in this tradition, said:  'One perception must immediately and directly lead to a further perception… always, always one perception must must must move instanter, on another.' 80  Remember Lavater and his insistence on instantaneity for reading the facial image.  This is a kind of movement that is not narrational, and the Imagists had no place for narrative.  'Indeed the great poems to come after the Imagist period– Eliot’s The Waste Land and Four Quartets; Pound’s Cantos; Williams’s Paterson– contain no defining narrative.' 81  The kind of movement Olson urges is an inward deepening of the image, an in-sighting of the superimposed levels of significance within it. 82  This is the very mode that Jung suggested for grasping dreams– not as a sequence in time, but as revolving around a nodal complex.  If dreams, then why not the dreamers.  We too are not only a sequence in time, a process of individuation. We are also each an image of individuality."

   80  The New American Poetry (D. M. Allen, ed.) N.Y.: Evergreen, Grove, 1960, pp. 387-88. from Jones, p. 42.

81  Jones,* p. 40.

82  H. D. later turned narration itself into image by writing a novel in which the stories were "compounded like faces seen one on top of another," or as she says "superimposed on one another like a stack of photographic negatives" (Jones, p. 42).  Cf. Berry,** p. 63: "An image is simultaneous. No part precedes or causes another part, although all parts are involved with each other… We might imagine the dream as a series of superimpositions, each event adding texture and thickening to the rest."

    * Imagist Poetry (Peter Jones, ed.) London: Penguin, 1972

    ** The contrast between image simultaneity and narrative succession, and the different psychological effects of the two modes, is developed by Patricia Berry, "An Approach to the Dream," Spring 1974 (N. Y./Zürich: Spring Publ.), pp. 63, 68-71

Hillman also says that

"Jung’s 'complex' and Pound's definition of Image and Lavater's 'whole heap of images, thoughts, sensations, all at once' are all remarkably similar.  Pound calls an Image, 'that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time'… 'the Image is more than an Idea.  It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy'… 'a Vortex, from which and through which, and into which, ideas are constantly rushing.' 79 Thus the movement, the dynamics, are within the complex and not only between complexes, as tensions of opposites told about in narrational sequences, stories that require arbitrary syntactical connectives which are unnecessary for reading an image where all is given at once."

79  These definitions of Image by Pound come from his various writings and can all be found in Jones, pp. 32-41.  Further on complex and image, see J. B. Harmer, Victory in Limbo: Imagism 1908-17, London: Secker & Warburg, 1975, pp. 164-68.

These remarks may help the reader to identify with Ada during her well-viewing in Cold Mountain (previous entry):

"She was dazzled by light and shade, by the confusing duplication of reflections and of frames. All coming from too many directions for the mind to take account of. The various images bounced against each other until she felt a desperate vertigo…."

If such complexity can be suggested by Hexagram 48, The Well, alone, consider the effect of the "cluster of fused ideas… endowed with energy" that is the entire 64-hexagram I Ching.
 

Related material: St. Augustine's Day 2006

Powered by WordPress