Friday, June 11, 2010
Lac Virginis
Virgin's milk. One of the liquids flowing into the Mercurial Fountain is the remedy for darkmotherscream. I didn't know. There it is hiding in the alchemical image all this time. The virgin's milk softens the dark mother complex. Perhaps that is the walk in darkness. But why virgin's milk. Perhaps the purity of image. The lack of toil with the real world, the profane, the lack of tainting by the personal realm. It is the archetypal realm, the soft white milk from the archetypal realm that softens the dark mother. When the father confronts the enchantress in Rapunzel he tells her of his wife's plight and need for the rapion from the garden. The witch softens and doesn't swallow him whole but gives as much of the greens as he wants for the price of his daughter. The softening of Sedna, the princess of the sea, by combing the lice out of her hair. When Hera finds Hercules in the field in a basket "exposed" she takes pity on him and saves his life, not knowing he was her mortal enemy. Hercules' mother, Alcmene, knew Hera would kill him unless she softened her dark side by appealing to her maternal side. The virgin's milk comes from our maternal side, when caring for ourselves we soften the darkmotherscream.
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I believe we are coming to one of those delightful paradoxes:
ReplyDeleteNurturing is both the problem and the solution.
The mother must mother. It is a noun and verb all at once. But the object of mothering can change. Be redirected.
I think a common example of this is the mother who nags and annoys her adult child until he or she produces a grandchild to consume her attention. The virgin's milk is now needed and can flow again.
But within the individual psyche, what does this all mean? Perhaps we annoy and menace ourselves when we incorrectly nurture or "smother" ourselves. And perhaps a similar dynamic change is needed to redirect our virgin's milk to the mouth of a new and more worthy "baby" or undertaking.
Incidentally, the phrase "virgin's milk" itself seems paradoxical. Lactation organically follows procreation. What is suggested by this interesting permutation of nature?
Yes. The paradox of the virgin's milk. The literal virgin would have no milk. I am thinking this image folded into the Virgin Mary. We needed the feminine uncontaminated by the masculine or the maternal stripped of its dark shadow to produce a Jesus. Yet Jesus had to confront the dark mother later on anyway. But somehow the rest of us were contaminated at birth because of course our mother's were not virgins. Contaminated with what? Goes back to Oedipus. Original sin. Something we inherited yet we have to remedy. Something we cannot escape. Hamlet showed us that pathway. Any virgins in that story were quickly dispatched. Is the poison poured into the ear really virgin's milk? Is it the truth of the story? Is it consciousness that is the remedy?
ReplyDeleteNo. The virgin's milk comes from the lunar influence in the image of the fountain. It is the influence of the unconcious, not consciousness. The lunar is the feminine, it is the creative, it is the animating core of the psyche, the soul. That's why Hamlet died, he went overboard, threw the baby out with the bathwater, squeezed all the feminine out of his system and had no virgin's milk to suckle. He starved to death. Shakespeare must have said, "Fuck it! I'm killing all you assholes off at once".
ReplyDeleteI love that you posted twice, once beginning with the word "yes" and once beginning with the word "no." Paradox indeed.
ReplyDeleteSo Hamlet subtracted the feminine both literally and figurative, and is thus left vulnerable in the last scene. In retrospect, he had other paths. Ophelia might have assisted him; had Hamlet loved her well, Polonius may have engineered his route to the throne. Gertrude might have assisted him; had he played her properly, she might have played Claudius on his behalf.
But it seems Hamlet inherits his father's failing, which was also a neglect of the feminine. It was Old Hamlet, the great and masculine warrior, who squandered Gertrude's loyalty. It is Young Hamlet who must struggle with the aftermath and consequences.
So Hamlet's struggle must ultimately be judged a failure. It is a struggle he undertakes on our behalf, and we benefit. We might better integrate the masculine consciousness and feminine unconscious we inherit, and let neither be killed by the other.