This episode of Living Myth begins with the sense that “most stories about the future of the world have become fatalistic” and “some great confusion and mass forgetting has fallen like a shadow over the earth.” It then dives into the ancient waters of the soul in search of the source of deep memory and great imagination that was connected to Mnemosyne, once known as the Well of Rejuvenation and the Mother of the Muses.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his upcoming free online event “Coping in a World Gone Wrong” on Thursday, April 7.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 400 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode of Living Myth, Michael Meade addresses the question of how can we hold things together when the world around us is falling apart. He finds surprising insights and compelling answers in the ancient tales of the recreation of the world known as Earth Diver myths.
We live in a world that is falling apart; climate crisis says that, the brutal war in the Ukraine says that, and the fact that almost anything can divide people says that in a painful way every day. It makes sense that it can be hard for any of us to “get it together” during these turbulent times. So, what does it mean to get it together when everything around us is falling apart?
One answer comes from the tradition of alchemy where Coagulatio refers to the element of earth and the process for bringing things together through creative practice. It makes sense to look to things that are stable, like the solid earth beneath our feet. Yet, part of what unsettles us now is that the Earth itself is in danger. How do we, as frail beings in this upside down world, get it together when it is not even clear that the earth itself can hold together?
Surprisingly, coagulatio describes how the creative process begins with facing the chaos and consciously descending into darkness to find the source of renewal. In mythology, the process of conscious descent into darkness appears in the themes of the Earth Diver stories found in traditions from ancient India to Native North America.
Some versions of the Earth Diver myths appear as tales of a second creation or a re-creation that occurs when the created world has become worn and corrupted. Amongst the first peoples of North America, some variants tell of a time when a rend or tear in the world caused a young woman named Earth to fall from the heavens. As she fell there was nothing below except the dark primeval waters; but the birds and animals arranged for her to land on the back of a turtle. Then, the woman who fell from the sky instructed the animals to dive down into the dark waters and find some mud that could be used to continue creation.
Many animals descended to find the mud of creation, but all failed until a muskrat managed to bring a little ball of mud from the darkness below. Then, the woman who fell from the sky took the mud and spread it out in all directions until it became the earth. After that she directed the process through which the earth was seeded with trees, grains and vegetables and other plants.
It is significant that Mother Earth comes from the heavens above, but also generates the creative energy that arises from the darkest, deepest place. When seen as a collective dream of humanity, Earth Diver myths depict the emergence of creative energy and greater consciousness that comes from below. The earth itself, as the source of life ongoing, shows us how to serve creation and preserve life by descending into the unknown or unconscious depths in search of more bits of “prima materia.”
In alchemy, prima materia signifies the primal materials and core energies from which life on earth is formed. Prima materia was also the name of that bit of hidden matter in the psyche of each person which, if brought into conscious awareness, turns out to be what truly matters when the world turns dark. In the other words, something meaningful is trying to emerge from the very confusions and conflicts inside each person’s psyche or soul.
The emergence metaphor continues when the mud of creation is handled by someone at the surface; it becomes activated and begins to grow and spread. In these troubled times, when darkness has fallen over the earth, each of us are potential earth divers. If we would descend into our own psyches, we would find something to bring from unconsciousness into conscious awareness. In that sense, we each have something to offer that can spread in its own way and contribute to bringing things back together again.
Another important aspect of Earth Diver stories occurs where the animals who take on the mission of diving into darkness are not themselves heroic. They possess no supernatural powers and even those who succeed only manage to bring up a bit of the mud of creation. In other words, helping creation to continue on earth is not a matter of willful heroics. In this time of upheaval and collapse, no one is required to save the world. Yet, we each are implicated in the process of diving down and bringing back our bit of the mud of creation, our contribution to ongoing creation on earth.
In some versions of the myth, the woman who fell from the sky was pregnant with twins intended to assist in the continuing process of creation on Earth. Yet, it turns out that the twins are opposites, sometimes described as “good mind’ and “bad mind.” Whatever the good twin does to enhance life, the bad twin does the exact opposite; so that life on earth involves conflicting energies that can become intensified.
Eventually, the twins must face off against each other. At the point of almost losing, the good twin is encouraged by the voice of Mother Earth speaking directly to him, encouraging and reminding him of the importance of continuing creation. Inspired and strengthened by the energy coming to him from below, the good twin wins the battle. Thus, creation can continue; but not even the best intentions or good deeds can cancel the opposing energies and darker thoughts of his twin from being part of the world.
At times on earth, the dynamic balance between light and dark falters. The darkness in the world grows and begins to shift things back towards the primal chaos at the beginning. During such a shift, the earth becomes plagued with an overshadowing of the light as the forces of arrogance and ignorance expand. There comes to be a darkening of the way that blocks the living path, a faltering of the dream of life ever trying to be born in the depths of each human soul.
In one sense, Earth Diver myths serve as warning tales about the dangers that can upset the entire world. On another level, they offer ways of understanding times like these when the troubles have already become so great as to be worldwide, and so deep as to be existential. On yet another level, Earth Diver stories become teaching tales intended to awaken, to inspire and to embolden each human soul.
Diving down to make conscious our deepest inner gifts shows how we must surrender to a path or a project that requires all our goodness and positive energies, while also bringing to light all the negatives and oppositions within us. In order to be fully alive, we must bring up our best and worst selves, as being tossed back and forth by extreme changes and conflicting issues serves to awaken the sleeping potentials in each person's life.
In that sense, we either add to the growing darkness in the world or else become agents of creation and help bring back to consciousness the essential life forces and the healing energies that have become lost. In that kind of consciousness making process, we rejoin creation. We learn again how to serve the Earth, which is secretly trying to inspire and embolden us to become part of a radical transformation in which the earth revives and the world renews itself again.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his upcoming free online event “Coping in a World Gone Wrong” on Thursday, April 7.
Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Members receive bonus episodes each month, access to the full archives of over 400 episodes and a 30% discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during this challenging and uncertain times and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth begins with the deepening of the war in Ukraine and the growing sense of anxiety in the world. Michael Meade turns to depth psychology to consider instinctive ways of coping with insecurity, uncertainty and the tragedies of life.
"If a person wishes to be sure of the road they tread, they must close their eyes and walk in the dark." That statement comes from St. John of the Cross, who also coined the phrase “the dark night of the soul.” Often, I wake up thinking about the hordes of people who now find themselves treading through darkness, like those caught in the ever-deepening tragedy of the war in Ukraine.
An old tension exists between the presence of tragedy and the loss of innocence. And there's a way in which this clearly unnecessary, coldly destructive and brutal war enacts a daily assault on human innocence. When the Russian army heavily bombed a maternity hospital, people all over the world saw images of a very pregnant mother being hurriedly carried through smoking rubble on a makeshift stretcher. The sense of tragedy deepened when desperate attempts to save the mother failed and both innocent lives were lost.
At times, I try to turn away from the ongoing tragedy, but mostly I cannot manage to turn away. It's as if averting my eyes might add to the anguish and abandonment of all those who are suffering. Part of me wants to see all the video clips of the thousands and thousands of children being hurried fearfully into an unknown, uncertain future. And part of me wants to witness with my own eyes the filling in of mass graves in the city of Mariupol, where an actual witness said that “the land is now soaked in blood, bitterness, and despair.”
When I do close my eyes, I continue to see some of the tragic images. I also see and feel the darkness that fell over me and our country during the Vietnam War. I was torn open at that time and become torn again each time an unjustified war turns the living world upside down. When I hear the dark propaganda and the massive misinformation coming out of Russia, I viscerally remember the distortions and lies used to deny the actual death tolls and the massive destruction unleashed during the Vietnam era.
To this day, I feel compelled to witness war coverage and often fail to know when I've seen enough or how I might find a way of withdrawing and escaping the numbing presence of mindless war. Yesterday, I was at the point of feeling torn between witnessing and turning away when an interview with a Ukrainian man, who lives in war torn Ukraine but is Russian in origin, caught my full attention. He spoke passionately about trying to inform his parents in Russia about the horrors of Putin’s war. He then described how distressing and enraging it was to have his own parents tell him that he was not telling the truth when he described all of the destruction and unnecessary death that is tearing Ukraine apart.
His parents get their news from Russian state television and believe that the Russian army entered Ukraine to drive the Nazis out and create humanitarian corridors to safety. After expressing outrage about the fact that the Russian army had actually attacked those trying to use the humanitarian corridors, his passion shifted to a sense of compassion for those trapped under the spell of many years of propaganda.
He explained that he came to realize how important it remains, for both Ukrainian and Russian people, that he and others find ways to communicate the ongoing tragedy to their parents and older relatives. He described how they were continuing to reach out and expressed genuine hope that the Russian people could awaken from the heavy spell of propaganda. I found myself released from the immediate tensions and searing presence of the war. I also realized why Karen Horney’s theories about human anxiety and instinctive coping strategies had been on my mind.
Horney was an early follower of Sigmund Freud, but broke away in order to consider the psychology of infants and parents, which she thought had a great bearing on how we cope with fears and anxiety later in life. She suggests that each infant must develop a strategy for coping with “basic anxiety.” She also argues that we tend to use the same coping strategy from our infancy when we encounter crises later in life. In other words, there is a psychological connection between intense fears and anxieties that overtake us in life, and the way we survived traumas early on.
A big surprise came when Horney pointed to “parental indifference” as the root cause of basic anxiety early in each life, but also a key factor in neurotic conditions later in life. A child doesn't have to be treated harshly or be severely rejected in order to experience anxiety and insecurity at a basic level. Indifference on the part of parents at critical points is enough to trigger a deep sense of anxiety that seems to be an inevitable human condition.
That kind of parental indifference seemed to be present in the experience of the man in Ukraine whose parents would not accept their own son's evident feelings of fear, anxiety and loss. In the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the attitude of indifference must be present in millions, including the parents and relatives of those actually under attack. At the same time, that kind of indifference appears in people all over the world who manage to deny the evident tragedies and rampant injustice that characterize all of the human suffering in these troubled times.
Horney states that the first reaction to parental indifference tends to be frustration and anger. Being frustrated by the sense of abandonment causes a child to protest the injustice by crying out. If the parents respond to this angry cry, the child has found a coping strategy that is likely to become their habitual response to life's trials and troubles.
When a child’s “aggressive reaction” does not bring the help they need, they are thrown back into basic anxiety and fears of abandonment. In order to survive, the child must then suppress the anger and somehow win the over the parents. If this strategy works, “compliance” becomes the preferred means of coping for that person. If neither the aggressive strategy nor the compliance strategy works, children cope with basic anxiety by means of withdrawal. In coping with anxiety by withdrawal, the child moves away from the parents, retreats inwardly and tries to become self-sufficient.
The child that adopts the strategy of anger and aggression concludes that “if I have power no one can hurt me.” The child using the strategy of compliance or connecting carries the sense that “if I can make you love me, you will not hurt me.” The child who must cope with a strategy of withdrawal follows the idea that "if I withdraw, nothing can hurt me."
The three ways of coping with basic anxiety can also be seen as three distinct conceptions of a child's inner self. The first being, I am as big as or bigger than the world. The second being, I must adjust to the world. And the third being, I must appear smaller in the world.
These psychological insights ring true, partly because they parallel defensive strategies found throughout the animal realm in patterns of fight, submission or flight in the face of danger. Being conscious of these deeply ingrained attitudes becomes more important as the world around becomes more troubled and both collective and personal anxieties increase.
Part of what intrigued me with the Ukrainian son trying to communicate with his parents in Russia, was that he seemed to go through all three strategies. At first, he was angry and frustrated and outraged that his parents were indifferent to his suffering and the suffering of all the other people in Ukraine. After that, he went through a sense of withdrawal before realizing that over time a way of compassion would be needed to reestablish some kind of basic connection with parents and other relatives.
As someone who learned the aggressive coping strategy early on, I do not instinctively go to a withdrawal strategy to get some respite or relief from tragic events. But, I do remember that in the midst of intense protests that used aggressive strategies against war, the compelling cry of "make love, not war" would arise as if on cue from the collective psyche. There had to be a limit to strategies that were solely against war. There needs to be a conscious strategy to stay connected to love and mutual care, even in the midst of war.
It seems highly unlikely that Putin or Trump or any of the other overly forceful characters on the world stage, who continually double-down on raw aggression will adopt one of the other modes. However, the rest of us who must suffer through and struggle with the great crises and sorrowful tragedies of these dark times will need to learn ways to keep finding love and building interconnectedness, even while we stand up against the war on humanity, freedom, and justice.
We need to learn new ways to retreat and find refuge for our own souls, just as we pray for those being forced to tread in the darkness of this troubled world. At this critical point in the collective life of humanity, when we are all subject to a cascade of worldwide, anxiety-inducing issues like the climate crisis, the Covid crisis and the crisis of wars against our basic humanity, we each need all three strategies to survive, to heal and to help transform the world.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can further support the podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Along with a discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles, members receive access to the full archives of nearly 400 episodes and bonus episodes each month.
Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
On this episode, Michael Meade addresses the war within the war being waged on Ukraine. In order to justify the cold-hearted attacks on civilians and mindless destruction of towns in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has waged an insidious war on truth in the minds of the Russian people.
There are times when it becomes clear that there is more overt suffering in the world. There are times when the suffering of some people equals the suffering of all people. There are times when all of our good intentions and hopes that things will get better are at odds with the world as it is. There are times when helplessness and hopelessness cannot simply be driven from the door.
I feel a great sadness for all the suffering and heavy losses befalling the people of Ukraine. I also feel a deep respect for the way so many Ukrainians are standing for the ideas of freedom, facing down the engines of war with a kind of nobility of spirit that can only come from the part of the human heart that values truth, beauty and the meaningfulness of life.
As the Ukrainian people suffer from the rain of bombs and reign of terror that Vladimir Putin has unleashed upon them, it can be shown to be not just an invasion of Ukraine, but also an attack on democracy, on the ideals of freedom and on the soul of humanity. For, there is another war, a war within the war, an insidious war that came before the invasion began and that will continue after the current battles are over.
As millions seek safety from the mindless destruction of towns and cities, Putin is persecuting other people and prosecuting another war. The war within the war is being waged inside Russian territory and inside the minds and hearts of the Russian people. The warfare undertaken before the invasion involved a massive effort to indoctrinate an entire nation and set them against the world.
The shocking military assault could not have begun unless the blitzkrieg against truth had penetrated the psyches of a majority of the Russian population. In the parallel universe where many Russians now reside, Putin's propaganda machine grinds night and day to convince the Russian people that Ukraine and NATO provoked the invasion, that his “special military operation” is actually a liberation campaign to purge Ukraine of Nazis. Truth has always been the first casualty in a war; now wars against truth are waged long before any battles begin.
As safety has become ever harder to find throughout Ukraine, truth has become ever more scarce inside Russia. Recently, Putin issued a draconian law that criminalizes any speech that contradicts the official Kremlin line which insists that the deadly offensive against Ukraine is not a war at all. Merely referring to it as a war can put a person in prison for 15 years, making them a casualty of the war on truth.
Putin’s state has become a testament to how authoritarian leaders can stage manage false narratives and big lies as the first stage in wars against humanity. Many Ukrainians recount stories of their older relatives in Russia expressing profound disbelief about the war; saying that there is no shelling of Kyiv and that Russian forces are only in Ukraine to help people. The campaign against truth does not spare innocent children either, as those in grade schools receive sessions reinforcing the official government line that the war is not a war, but a special operation intended to save lives.
Researchers say that those creating propaganda in Russia understand the grievances and the tendencies of their audience. They know how to make their stories dramatic, but also entertaining. The sad truth that they do embrace is that when people see the same false message repeatedly, it becomes easier and easier to believe it.
Being alive at this time, we all suffer a cascade of crises that weigh heavily on our souls. The climate crisis affects the entire planet, the Covid pandemic affects everyone to some degree and the many crises of social injustice affect all of humanity at this time. Yet, the root of our troubles can be seen in the crisis of truth and meaning which can both obscure as well as deepen all other crises. In the war on Ukraine we can see the crisis of truth and meaning being coldly converted into rockets and bombs and methods of destruction that must chill the heart of humanity.
Some people talk about a post-truth world as if the repetition of big lies and misinformation can erase the longing for truth and meaning that has been an essential part of humanity from the very beginning. The core ideals of humanity are intended to serve as a light to follow, especially when the dark times come round and we become more exposed to the extremes of life and to the winds of despair. And, we are the current inheritors of the deep human longings for truth, for beauty and for the life sustaining capacity to truly transform.
An old idea states that nothing but truth can hold the truth. In other words, we can only hold to ideals like truth, beauty and justice, if we find ways to embody the truth of our own lives. Finding antidotes to the epidemic of falsity, to the onslaught of misinformation, and the weaponizing of big lies, means being willing to be open to radical changes in our lives while finding ways to live in truth.
It is not that we each have to be heroic; rather that we each somehow must find ways to stand in the truth of our own lives, in the truth of our own being. In doing that, we begin to rewrite the story of humanity at a time when the entire planet needs a renewal of truth, beauty and the meaning of life.
Thank you for listening to and supporting Living Myth. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his upcoming online workshop “Creative Paths in Chaotic Times” on Saturday, March 12. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Along with a discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles, members receive access to the full archives of nearly 400 episodes and bonus episodes each month. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well and thank you for your support of our work.
This episode of Living Myth focuses upon Vladimir Putin’s tragic invasion of Ukraine and the archetypal pattern of the “negative senex” or sick and dying old king. Psychologically, the negative old ruler represents a dominant position in consciousness which has outlived its usefulness and has become an obstacle to, and even an enemy of, a greater sense of consciousness.
It is the same to live in a tragic time as it is to be in a tragic place, a poet once said. And we now live amongst growing tragedies the world over with the latest being the war in which Russia targets innocents and aims to terrorize everyone in Ukraine. Because we live in a time of mass communications as well as mass casualties, we are all witnesses to the carnage and the madness of war. In that sense, we are all subjects of a cold-hearted attack on all who hold human liberty and human dignity to be essential to human culture.
There is a manifestation of the nobility and courage of the human soul coming from the people in Ukraine, who not only choose to fight to save their homes and their sense of liberty, they also enter a battle to save their sense of self in the face of a darkness that can cause despair. And, we are all implicated in that battle; for we all live on the border of uncertainty, that can in a moment, become the edge of despair.
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrates a wicked truth about the human condition. For, a single person, should they have enough power and enough darkness in their heart, can dream up a war and impose that nightmare on everyone. Other nations can send weapons and supplies and set sanctions against Putin and Russia, but there is no effective mechanism to stop someone from misusing power, even if they announce their intention to wreak unholy havoc on humanity and the world.
I am not criticizing political responses or the meaningful efforts being made to stop mass destruction and potential genocide. Rather, what strikes me in this tragedy is how the psyche and the pathology of one person can hold everyone hostage and then coldly unleash darkness and terror on a massive scale.
Before the war started, those who study Putin questioned which side of the autocratic leader would take charge. Would it be the cold, strategic side of Putin’s mind or the ideological, nationalistic side of him that would decide the fate of Ukrainian as well as Russian people?
Once the invasion began, the question rapidly shifted to whether Putin was of stable mind. Had he become mentally unstable and paranoid after being isolated by COVID-19? Was he diminished because he had turned 70 years old or was he simply crazy? Some of those conditions may be present, however dismissing Putin’s behavior as crazy obscures important psychological issues and collective energies that are playing out throughout the world at this time.
Putin and other would be autocrats can be seen to be caught in the archetypal patterns of the “negative senex,” the sick and dying old king. In mythology, this dark side of Saturn or Cronos appears as the oppressive autocrat who exploits every crisis precisely to acquire more power. The shadow side of this psychological complex appears in the crushing patriarchal figures who seek to cling to power at any cost, just as Cronos ate his own children in order to avoid losing power and control.
Throughout history, autocrats have sought to manipulate and control a fearful populace with promises to restore idealized conditions of the past, while restricting freedoms in the present. Tragically, mass communications and weapons of mass destruction have made the powers of manipulation as well as the levels of destruction much greater.
Psychologically, the negative old ruler represents a dominant position in consciousness which has outlived its usefulness and has become an obstacle to, and even an enemy of, a greater sense of consciousness. There is a symbolic coincidence in which Putin individually represents the archetype of the sick, reckless, autocratic ruler; while at the same time, the negative side of the archetype manifests in other would be rulers and in extreme political parties.
Part of the darkness of these dark times involves the negative patriarchal energies that threaten the health and safety of the entire world. This cynical senex energy rejects the feminine capacity for relatedness as weakness, as it has lost touch with intimate feelings and all sense of human compassion and love. The absence of the feminine can be seen and felt in the dryness and coldness of a consciousness that only wants to be in touch with power, while increasingly becoming out of touch with life itself.
And yet, the archetype of the controlling and dividing ruler can be initiatory, in the sense that it indicates the nature of changes trying to happen in the human psyche as a whole. The dark side of Saturn-Cronos, with its willful lust for and abuse of power, challenges us to connect with our own deepest feelings of nobility, unity and care for the earth we share.
What is playing out dramatically and tragically on the world stage is also being played out as a struggle in the heart of humanity. The instinctive feeling of connection to and support for the vulnerable people of Ukraine is connected to our collective vulnerability at this time. What Putin cannot grasp and will not understand is the expansion of consciousness that is needed to dissolve the rigid, vengeful forces that entrap his soul, the souls of many of his people, and at some level, all of our souls.
In the dark times the eye begins to see, said a poet. At the dark edge of fear for the future of humanity and for the earth, a vision tries to form as past and future seek to clarify at the same time. The hope to be found at the edge of despair must involve new ways of seeing the world and our place within it. For, we are also standing at the edge of nobility and despair, in the collective shadow of not knowing what might come next.
Although it cannot diminish the suffering and loss occurring to the people of Ukraine, I want to end with a poem from Hafiz. "I have come into the world to see this, the swords drop from man's hands, even at the top of their arc of anger, because we have finally realized that there is just one flesh that we can wound.
Thank you for listening to and supporting this podcast. You can hear Michael Meade live by joining his new online workshop “A Self in Training” on Saturday, March 12. Register and learn more at mosaicvoices.org/events.
You can save 30% on this workshop and further support this podcast by becoming a member of Living Myth Premium. Along with a discount on all events, courses and book and audio titles, members receive access to the full archives of nearly 400 episodes and bonus episodes each month. Learn more and join this community of listeners at patreon.com/livingmyth.
As always, we appreciate you leaving a review on wherever you listen to this podcast and sharing it with your friends. On behalf of Michael Meade and the whole Mosaic staff, we wish you well during these challenging times and thank you for your support of our work.