Myth

Garden of Earthly Delights

This is a dream (from “S”) and its amplification by Stephen Anthony Farah from our first The Way of the Dream Workshop held in November 2024: Individuation through Dreamwork, presented by Byron Gaist.DreamI am standing in my house by a large window.  I am holding on tightly to my little dog who creates a lot of domestic issues for me.  My housekeeper (also a domestic image) is standing next to me leaning out the window giving water to some giant...

Confession

Secrets or inhibited emotions, analogous to repressed sins that lead to neuroses, must be confessed to enable the patient to regain his wholeness.[1] As you stand on the threshold of a new year[2] there exists, at least symbolically, the opportunity for renewal. A renewal of desires and ideals. An opportunity, modest as it may be, to reimagine yourself. To put this in the Jungian lexicon, an opportunity for soul retrieval. A fancy way of saying, a chance...

The rainmaker and the dream of drought

Jung was fond of telling a story of a drought being broken in a village in China by a Taoist rainmaker.[1] I share the story and some further thoughts on it in the light of the current drought and impending day zero in the Cape. There was a great drought where [Richard] Wilhelm lived; for months there had not been a drop of rain and the situation became catastrophic. The Catholics made processions, the Protestants made prayers, and the Chinese...

Reeva and Oscar: A Mythological Perspective from Jung

This post is an application of Jungian theory to offer an alternative way of understanding the tragic event of Reeva Steenkamp’s death at the hands of Oscar Pistorius. It is a continuation of the post A bullet in the chamber: a Jungian perspective on a murderous gun complex Reeva painted these pictures when she was 14, they've been in the house for a long time now, but we never really realized what they were about. here is a man standing...

The Myth of the Sexually Aggressive Male

We are all familiar with the conventional ideology of the sexually aggressive dominant man and his sexually submissive female counterpart. Naturally in contemporary western society this ideology has been challenged. How successful such a challenge has been is open to debate. The purpose of this post though is to explore this contemporary ideology on the assumption that it remains for the most part paradigmatic. I had the opportunity recently to attend a public debate presented by the Wits Centre for...

Hansel & Gretel and the Breadcrumbs of the Apocalypse

There is great disorder under heaven, the situation is excellent. (Mao Zedong, as quoted in Living in the End Times, Slavoj Zizek) Nothing is ever lost, not even the blood pact with the devil. (C. G. Jung, CW 9.1) This post takes a closer look at the 'apocalyptic' era that we are living in. It is a follow on and amplification of the apocalyptic theme first raised in my last post These are Strange Days. My intention is to better articulate the...

The Christian Myth

In my last post The Story of Truth I made reference to the: Christian Myth, and my belief that, Meaning is not always Truthful, nor Truth always Meaningful. This post is an attempt to amplify and illuminate these two thoughts.

Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism in any form is anti evolutionary, even if it is Darwinian Fundamentalism as in the case of someone like Richard Dawkins. Fundamentalism closes the loop, it does not allow for the continual expansion of the imagination. Fundamentalism seeks to trap us in a...

The Story of Two and a Half Dreams

As a child my father told me a story which was the start of my spiritual journey. It was the story of two dreams. My grandfather, Anthony Farah had a strange relationship with the number 5. Everything significant happened in my grandfather's life on the 5th year. He was born in South Africa in 1905, shortly thereafter returning to his family's village in Lebanon called Sib’il, he was a Sib’ilenie (man from Sib’il). In 1925 my grandfather married...