Healing the Masculine Stack
Jungian, Depth Psychology stack for men's healing and the sacred masculine. It felt like the right time. Hard to fit them all in and I deliberately left a couple out. Read with care, patience, and consideration as some are classics. Healing our opposites cannot be bypassed, not by yoga nor nondual idealism, not by dissociating from soma, and not by simply identifying beyond them consciously. The unconscious aspects of our inherent duality cannot be transcended without first deeply healing both within. This stack is for both men and women working the depths of their psychic opposites and recollecting their projections while also humbly attempting to integrate their personal shadows created by the collective shadows of their families and society.
Excerpt from Chinen's 'Beyond The Hero,' on methods of reaching the deep masculine:
"Men's stories portray what Robert Bly has aptly christened "the deep masculine." This is the part of the male psyche that is normally buried under conventional male roles, heroic ideals, and patriarchal ambitions. In fact, men's fairy tales break dramatically with traditional masculine values and poke fun at heroes and patriarchs. The satire is startling because the 'myths and legends' of most cultures extol the virtues of warriors and kings. Men's tales escape this conformity for several reasons. The advantage of tales rather than legends is that they contain more experience than any one man can gain in a lifetime. The tales of men are a legacy from who have gone before, providing a map for all who peer anxiously ahead. They address mature men who have already mastered traditional male roles or lived under those who 'have' and now need help in breaking free. Freed from that burden, 'men's tales' explore alternative images of manhood. This is why such stories offer men a post-heroic and post-patriarchal vision of their wild masculinity. They speak directly from the unconscious in the original voice of the male psyche; originally told in secret amongst brothers, soldiers, and within male lodges. Alone together, men can put aside heroic pretenses and reveal their secret fears and dreams speaking exclusively in the primordial voice of the male psyche."
Books mentioned:
The Fisher King and the Handless Maiden by Robert A. Johnson, Modern Man in Search of Soul by Carl Jung, Iron John by Robert Bly, Healing the Wounded God by Jeffrey Raff & Linda Bonnington Voctura, Hermes by Károly Kerényi, Kind of Power by James Hillman, The Wisdom of the Serpent by Joseph L. Henderson and Maud Oakes, Saturday’s Child: Encounters with the Dark Gods by Janet Dallett, Puer Aeternus by Marie-Louise von Franz, Under Saturn’s Shadow by James Hollis, Androgyny: The Opposites WIthin by June Singer, Man and Transformation by Joseph Campbell, The Water of Life by Michael Meade, Healing the Male Psyche: Therapy as Initiation by John Rowan, Meeting the Shadow by Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams, Dionysus by Walter F. Otto, Gods in Everyman by Jean Shinoda Bolen M.D., The Gods Within by Peter Lemesurier, Aspects of the Masculine by Carl Jung, Beyond the Hero by Allan Chinen, Tracking the Gods: The Place of Myth in Modern Life by James Hollis, The Irish Bull God by Sylvia Brinton Perera, Green Man, Earth Angel by Tom Cheetham and Robert Sardello, The King & The Corpse by Heinrich Robert Zimmer and Joseph Campbell, Overcoming Modernity by Yasuo Yuasa, Jung and Frodo by Robin Robertson, Compass of the Soul by John L. Giannini, Senex & Puer by James Hollis and The Force of Character by James Hillman.
