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Welcome by Tom Singer

The Book of Job: Encountering Inner Multiplicity by Diane Cousineau Brutsche

On Making a film of THE MYSTIC LAMB by Jan van Eyck by Jules Cashford

The Poetry Portal by Ellen Liberatori

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This edition of ARAS Connections features two outstanding articles: Diane Cousineau Brutsche's "The Book of Job: Encountering Inner Multiplicity" and Jules Cashford's "On Making a film of THE MYSTIC LAMB by Jan van Eyck". A new invitation to write a poem about an archetypal image is introduced by Ellen Liberatori in the Poetry Portal where you can also read selections of poems inspired by the  previous theme. The two articles and Poetry Portal are rich in imagery that is conveyed both in words and paintings. Each evokes a deep level of psychic reality and in this Welcome I would like to focus on the process of how we might best approach the archetypal imagery of a poem, a novel, a painting or a film. I am moved to do this because Jules Cashford's contribution renewed my vision of how to take in a dream or work of art that fascinates us with its beauty, terror, or any other numinous call to psyche. She calls this process "seeing with the archetypal eye" which, in my mind, goes to the very heart of ARAS' purpose.
 
In describing her making of a film about The Mystic Lamb, Cashford becomes our guide for looking at any image in depth--whether it arises spontaneously in a dream image or through the creative efforts of an artist. We could well make her elegant articulation of this process the "mission statement" of ARAS. The following are extracted quotes from pages 10, 11 and 12 of her article:
 
"I want to recreate...the experience of being present with a painting, in the way we all are when we are deeply immersed in it - standing before it, meditating on it, reaching for a perspective, being overwhelmed, letting it speak to us, capture and enthrall us - just as though it were a baffling dream or a poem, which of course it is... Where does the painter want us to go first, and why? How does he draw us in, let us go, move us on, and is he moving us to here, or there, or where? What is the inherent movement of the painting, the particular image which sends us to the next image-
 
'those images that yet
Fresh images beget',
 
as Yeats says in his poem Byzantium.
 
It is… important to "leave room" for other ways of feeling into the painting, other ways of imagining it. This is one of Coleridge's metaphors for the imagination, to "leave room", in the sense that the chrysalis leaves room for the antennae to come. Without this there is always a danger of turning image into concept, symbol into allegory and drama into meaning, and of not trusting that the psyche of a viewer will tune in where it wants to go.
 
As with any art we are asking: can we find the inner logic to it, the way it moves our consciousness? But, rather as in a meditation or in reading a poem, we have first to get ourselves out of the way. This is Coleridge's 'suspension of disbelief for the moment', and Keats's 'Negative Capability, that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason'. And yet, being practical, the rational mind has reasonably to know where it is before it can let go and relax - (who's he, what's going on, what's the general idea?) Then perhaps we can sink down into the deeper meaning and let it act upon us so we can see through the drama to its essence: in other words, to try to see with the archetypal eye."
 
Tom Singer, M.D.
Co-Chair of ARAS Online for National ARAS

February 1- June 23:   The Vermont Institute of Contemporary Arts in Chester VT, (VTica) presents a substantial Jungian-inspired art exhibit, The Mysterious Mind. On June 14th, Ami Ronnberg, Curator of ARAS, will present "Art and Symbols: Why Does Art Matter?"

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Job's Despair by William Blake

For anyone with even the slightest interest in THE BOOK OF JOB or Jung's ANSWER TO JOB, Diane Cousineau Brutsche's paper will be a rich experience. Her interpretation both complements and contradicts accepted readings with a subtle psychological understanding that breaks new ground. As if this were not enough, she illustrates her insights with companioning images-- paintings by William Blake. Each image seen through her deeply psychological lens becomes in turn a new artistic experience of some of Blake's familiar works. Several years ago I had the privilege of hearing Diane present this paper and now I have that of bringing it to you through ARAS Connections.
 
Diane Cousineau Brutsche is a Jungian Analyst in private practice in Zurich, Switzerland. She has lectured widely in Europe and North America.  Her book: LE PARADOXE DE L'AME: Exile et Retour d'un Archetype is an extraordinary psychological study of the famous tapestries of la Dame a la Licorne in the Cluny Museum of Paris.

 
"The self is like a crowd", says Jung (Jung 1988, p. 102) "when people integrate their unconscious (...) it is as if one man were becoming a whole town." (Jung 1988, p. 827). I could think of no better way of starting a presentation on the theme of "multiplicity" than with this quotation of Jung taken from his Seminars on Zarathustra. Inner multiplicity is a natural state of any human psyche. Individuation consequently can be understood as a process of engaging in a dynamic relationship with the elements of one's "inner village", thereby responding to the psyche’s natural tendency towards wholeness. I have chosen to observe such a journey as it is exemplified in the Biblical Book of Job.
 
This rich and complex text has always triggered a great interest among psychoanalytic schools and has generated a wealth of often very distinctively contrasted interpretations (see Merkur 2004, pp. 120-22). It gave birth among others to Jung's "Answer to Job", a powerful and most controversial text in which Jung focused his attention on the problematic relationship between Job and Yahweh, as symbolizing the relationship between ego and Self i.e., from a psychological perspective. This exclusive focus as well as Jung’s highly emotional reaction to the character of Yahweh brought him however to disregard extremely rich and revealing passages about the relationship between Job and other characters involved in the story. Approaching the text as a symbolic representation of an intra-psychic reality, not only can Yahweh and Job be seen as depicting Self and ego but all the other characters interacting with Job can be interpreted as aspects of the psyche. Following the evolving relationship between the main character and these part-selves results in an interpretation that complements Jung’s perspective, even if in many aspects it contradicts his. The integration of the part-selves brings new insights into the development of a rich psychodynamic process: a journey into wholeness.  

 
Read The Book of Job: Encountering Inner Multiplicity in its entirety.

 

 

The Mystic Lamb (1432), Jan van Eyck. Closed Wings.

Jules Cashford is a distinguished author, film maker, mythologist, lecturer and Jungian analyst. Her books include The Moon: Myth and Image, The Homeric Hymns, The Myth of the Goddess, The Myth of Isis and Osiris. Her films include The Mystic Lamb and The Mystery of Jan van Eyck. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Gaia Foundation for whom she has written Gaia: From Story of Origin to Story of Universe.
 
 
Accompanying sample clip of DVD is available free on YouTube here. Full Length DVDs are also available. Details at the end of this article.
 
The Mystic Lamb by Jan van Eyck (1390–1441)
 
The Mystic Lamb (1432), or the Ghent Altarpiece, in St. Bavo's Cathedral in Ghent, is one of the most magnificent paintings of the Early Northern Renais-sance. It is an immense triptych, 5 meters long and 3 meters wide, and was originally opened only on feast days, when many people and painters would make a pilgrimage to be present at the sacred ritual. They could see – when the wings were closed – the annunciation of the Angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary, which they knew as the Mystery of the Incarnation. But when the wings were opened they would witness and themselves participate in the revelation of the new order: the Lamb of God, the story of Christendom, and the redemption of the World.
 
Jan van Eyck
 
Jan van Eyck (1390 – 1441) is known as the founder of Early Netherlandish Painting. He was born into a family of painters who lived in Maaseik, a small town on the River Meuse, downstream from Maastricht. So great was his reputation that a hundred years later Giorgio Vasari, in his Lives of the Artists, declared him to be the inventor of oil painting. Rather, he refined oil painting by applying transparent colors in several thin glazes upon a white ground, creating a wholly new translucence of color – as if lit from within. His earliest unsigned paintings show him to be a miniaturist of phenomenal precision, and he later brought this skill into the service of his passionate explorations of human consciousness.
 
In 1422, van Eyck entered the service of John of Bavaria, Count of Holland, in the Hague. On the Count's death in 1425, he became "Court Painter and Chamberlain" to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgandy, in Lille – "to make such paintings as will please the Duke" – a position he held for the rest of his life. As Court Painter he had access to the Duke's large library and the most inquiring minds of the time, and he traveled widely in the course of his work, officially to Portugal and Spain, visiting Santiago de Compostella, and perhaps also Florence; and, unofficially, "on distant journeys to foreign parts…for some secret affairs", suggesting a voyage beyond Christian spheres of influence. It is also known that the Duke thought him the best painter in the world, defended his pay against the protests of accountants, and doubtless protected him from zealous representa-tives of church doctrine.
 
Read On Making a film of THE MYSTIC LAMB by Jan van Eyck in its entirety.

 

 

Blessing the Boats, by Mary Ann Reilly

This image is subtle and ethereal and we are left only to imagine the boats in the title, Blessing the Boats. The image shows a woman on the shore – perhaps she is left behind? Perhaps she has blessed the boats in the way that the following lines bless our journey. They are taken from a poem with the same name by Lucille Clifton, a most celebrated poet:
 
"…may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever…"
 
I invite you to read more of Lucille Clifton’s most beloved verse as a tribute to her life and work - her memorial was held in February. May her words and this image take us forward and as we sail new waters, may we be embraced with these blessings. I hope you are inspired by this image and I encourage you to submit your poem to the Portal.
 
Send us your inspired poems by May 15, 2013.
 
Thank you,
 
Ellen Liberatori
 

 

The goal of this research project is to engage all our users in an interactive participation with ARAS Online by extending you an invitation to contribute images and commentary on cultural complexes that have captured your imagination. We want to reach out to you to help us explore image, complex, archetype, and culture in a new way. We will include examples contributed by our users in future issues of ARAS Connections.
 
Please send your submissions to info@aras.org.

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