Round the Herne

 The discussion topic for the November meeting of the Suffolk Jungian Circle (online, 7.30pm on Wednesday 26th) is the Star Wars films and how they can be understood from a Jungian stance. The recording below is to kickstart talk, but I am only focusing on the original three films - mainly because I haven't kept up to date with the more recent additions. However, people joining in with the chat may wish to expand into the newer films. If you would like the link to join in the discussion, please let me know.

  A story for Halloween about awakening the Beast Within and the dangers of having an insatiable appetite for revenge (it's a hard path to run back from). It's always the quiet ones you have to watch out for...

 A recording for the October meeting of the Suffolk Jungian Circle (on 29th at 7.30pm, if you would like to be sent the link). This time we will be discussing Jung's views on parapsychology and some of the ways in which it can be understood within the realm of analytic psychology.

 There are quite a few stories told of the legendary Rabbi Loeb who lived in Prague during the 1500s. Several of them centre around his creation of a golem, an animated clay servant possessed of supernatural strength but unable to speak. This was recorded partly because my Jewish friends are celebrating Yom Kippur and partly because of the horrible terrorist attack on the Manchester Synagogue. I've always found the Jewish people I have known to be positive and supportive towards pagans, perhaps because they recognise a fellow minority religion that has often come in for violent suppression.  The nauseating level of anti-Semitism that has been building in this country for some years is deeply worrying. Not only do I worry about what will happen to the people I know (not to mention the much larger numbers of people I don't know), but I am also minded of what someone so famous I have forgotten their name called the Canary in the Mineshaft. When authoritarians get away with attack...

  My version of the story of Adonis' birth (be warned, it involves very adult themes and might upset some people) and the conflict between Persephone and Aphrodite over him. Persephone herself is the subject of near identical dispute between her mother and husband and to who she spends time with, and becomes a possessive (adoptive) mother in her turn, resentful of what loosely be called her daughter-in-law. The Adonia festival was held for three days at the summer solstice, marking the death, funeral, and hoped-for resurrection of the handsome god. The lengthening nights are the time spent with his adoptive mother Persephone but could also be considered indicative of the sadness felt by Aphrodite when he is no longer in her bed. The winter solstice marks Adonis' return to her Olympian boudoir. The Greeks described him as androgynous, a word whose meaning has somewhat shifted over the centuries. Back in the day, it meant that he took the macho, manly role when with Aphrodite (an...

 All five parts of my reading of Forrest Reid's supernatural teen romance "The Garden God" (1905). This is a somewhat controversial work, when it was published same-sex romances were illegal and, whilst there is no sex and it is all sighing and gazing rather than anything else, it was still incendiary ground for any author to tread upon. Even today the work is challenging, given that the main characters in the flashback sequences are about 16-years old. Teen romance novels have become very popular of late, but some of us are sufficiently old and crusty that we would sooner ignore adolescent crushes! However, this work follows the same intensely lyrical style that Oscar Wilde adopted, including the same great love of Greek mythology that weaves throughout this short story, and the vivid embrace of nature imagery. Reid, like his fellow Irishman Wilde, was clearly deeply wedded to the countryside. The supernatural elements are low-key, mostly centred around the possibility t...