Alchemy, Shadow and Alchemical Marriage
Hannah Green
Dear Community,
Here we go! The nights are getting longer, the earth's shadow time approaches and we are at October's doorstep. I hope you had a wonderful late Summer and I send each of you autumnal blessings for candlelight, apples, remembrances, reflections, bubbling cauldrons and crisp evening walks. We are heading towards the season of shadows - the season of illumining what is in the dark and lighting a candle for the unseen world.
I am welcoming the season with a two week trip and pilgrimage that I look forward to sharing about in next months email.
A highlight of September for me was the Embracing the Shadow Workshop. Big thank you to everyone who attended and shared their process. I was so moved by the ecstatic theme of alchemical marriage that came through in the group process.
When I make space for the shadow and the unseen world a rapturous love bubbles up. This is the alchemy of the inner or alchemical marriage - the marriage of the masculine and the feminine, of the light and the dark, of the conscious and the unconscious, of Spirit and Matter. There is a deep attraction that exists between the two. The workshop revealed to me the depth to which the conscious and the unconscious - the Matter and the Spirit are seeking one another. What a romance! I see this ecstatic marriage as the substance of spiritual awakening - Of spirit coming into matter and Matter coming into Spirit. This inner marriage unites the two halves of self, masculine and feminine, conscious and unconscious. When the inner marriage takes place we can own our shadow and experience our wholeness.
This is perhaps where the myth of the soulmate comes from - a love that completes us and creates an unshakeable foundation for life. Think of the inner marriage as you read Shakespeare's sonnet...
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
One of the ways my husband and I work with the shadow is to periodically "renew our shadow vows." A few days before our wedding we had a wonderful ritual on the full moon ~ just the two of us. We called this our shadow wedding. During this ritual we acknowledged, named and offered all of our shadow parts in marriage. We wanted and still want our relationship to be a safe haven and a place where all parts are welcome. When we renew our shadow vows we notice how our relationship deepens and relaxes. This ritual is powerful and simple and makes our marriage a container for integration and alchemical magic!
Here are a few suggestions for working with your shadow and communing with yourself this season…
Keep a book of shadows. This book is for compiling and recording art or poetry that moves you, your own drawing, dreams, collaging, reflecting and anything you are moved to include. When you spend time with the unconscious and listen ~ she speaks.
Create a little altar for the unseen world. Include something that represents a shadow or unseen aspect of yourself. Have fun with this! When we work with objects and images we speak psyches language. These little rituals are powerful because they acknowledge the shadow and the psyche responds to symbol and ritual.
Some poems for the shadow 🕯
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
-Rumi
For the Unknown Self
So much of what delights and troubles you
Happens on a surface
You take for ground.
Your mind thinks your life alone,
Your eyes consider air your nearest neighbor,
Yet it seems that a little below your heart
There houses in you an unknown self
Who prefers the patterns of the dark
And is not persuaded by the eye's affection
Or caught by the flash of thought.
It is a self that enjoys contemplative patience
With all your unfolding expression,
Is never drawn to break into light
Though you entangle yourself in unworthiness
And misjudge what you do and who you are.
It presides within like an evening freedom
That will often see you enchanted by twilight
Without ever recognizing the falling night,
It resembles the under-earth of your visible life:
All you do and say and think is fostered
Deep in its opaque and prevenient clay.
It dwells in a strange, yet rhythmic ease
That is not ruffled by disappointment;
It presides in a deeper current of time
Free from the force of cause and sequence
That otherwise shapes your life.
Were it to break forth into day,
Its dark light might quench your mind,
For it knows how your primeval heart
Sisters every cell of your life
To all your known mind would avoid,
Thus it knows to dwell in you gently,
Offering you only discrete glimpses
Of how you construct your life.
At times, it will lead you strangely,
Magnetized by some resonance
That ambushes your vigilance.
It works most resolutely at night
As the poet who draws your dreams,
Creating for you many secret doors,
Decorated with pictures of your hunger;
It has the dignity of the angelic
That knows you to your roots,
Always awaiting your deeper befriending
To take you beyond the threshold of want,
Where all your diverse strainings
Can come to wholesome ease.
-John O'Donohue (1956-2008)
I am enjoying James Hillman’s audio recording available on Audible entitled the Alchemy of Psychology. Give it a listen to learn more about alchemy, alchemical marriage and Jungian psychology.
