Round the Herne

 A reflection on Jung's notions around the Dark Mother archetype and the ideas added by those who came after him (such as Marie-Louise von France, Dorothy Bloch, and Daniella Sieff). This is chiefly for the Suffolk Jungian Circle, who are discussing the topic at the end of the month, but it may well also interest a wider audience.

 Continuing with Longfellow's (1863) narrative poem, "Tales from a Wayside Inn". In this section we have the Spanish Jew's tale in which Rabbi ben Levi meets the Angel of Death, followed by an interlude and the Sicilian's Tale of King Robert, who also meets an angel.

With Halloween just around the corner I am going to record one or two gruesome stories. A friend, Nick, suggested something about a dybbuk - the dibbukim are ghostly entities that possess living flesh, often because they have some task left incomplete in this world that must be done (frequently connected to the idea of teshuva, repenting for wickedness as the dybbuk are decidedly unhappy, often unpleasant ghosts). This tale is a combination of several short anecdotal accounts - too brief to make stories in their own right - overlaid with a brief and ugly snippet of recent history. If you want to understand what a greifer is, have a look here . I hope mashing up stories does not offend any Jewish people who might listen to it (let me know if there's a better version of a dybbuk story that I could record if this one does give offence). I thought about making this tale more graphic, but decided better of it.