Bonnie Bright Interviews "Marked by Fire" Editors

Bonnie Bright of the Depth Psychology Alliance interviewed Naomi Lowinsky and Patricia Damery, Co-editors of Marked by Fire: Stories of the Jungian Way.

You can find the interview in the following locations:

• Radio page on Depth Insights 
• News section on the home page at Depth Psychology Alliance

The interview will also be available through ITunes as a free audio podcast in a few days so it can be downloaded to Iphones, etc., and it will appear in the Depth Alliance June newsletter.

A Review by Smoky Zeidel

The Sister from Below stuck her head out of her cave the other day and saw Smoky Zeidel's review of her book. (If you see her in the meadow doing a jig, it's because she's so pleased to be understood.)

The Sister From Below: When the Muse Gets Her Way
by Naomi Ruth Lowinsky
Fisher King Press

As a writer, I find myself saying things like, “My muse went on vacation,” (if I’m having a difficult time writing), or “My muse really kept me hopping last week,” (if the words are flowing freely and easily). I’ve heard the same sort of comments from lots of my writer and artist friends, too.

But how many of us have taken the bother to learn who our muse is? Does she have a name? Is she ours exclusively, or does she hop from writer to writer on a whim?

I’m ashamed to say, it’s never crossed my mind to even ask my muse anything about herself. Her name? I have no idea. Her favorite book? Not a clue. Am I her only writer/artist, or one of many? Your guess is as good as mine. I’ve never asked her.

There’s one writer/poet out there who can answer those questions about her muse, because she’s been in a running dialogue with her for years. In her unique and highly entertaining book The Sister From Below: When the Muse Gets Her Way, Naomi Ruth Lowinsky lets the reader listen in on the conversation she’s had with her muse, who has appeared to her in nine distinct manifestations, the last of which is, surprisingly, male.

Lowinsky writes of the Sister from Below, her inner poet who, she writes, has been “trying to get my attention all my life.” She writes with longing about her muse from early childhood, a nursemaid who cared for her during a year her family lived in Florence, Italy.

Then there is Eurydice, who expresses her resentment about being kept from making an appearance until Chapter 4, and once Lowinsky allows her to speak, tells a much different version of the story of Orpheus in the Underworld than we are used to hearing. Lowinsky’s Eurydice doesn’t meekly follow Orpheus when he descends into the Underworld to retrieve her. No, this Eurydice tells a decidedly different story: “Orpheus wants to keep me young and beautiful. He denies my ancient nature. He forgets I am nature … I am the dark part of the creative, the mold of change …”

Perhaps most heartbreaking is the grandmother who speaks to Lowinsky from the afterlife, a grandmother she never knew, a grandmother who died of cancer in Hitler’s concentration camps. A grandmother who insists the author confront the terrors of her childhood, her guilt that she lived when so many died, the terror and intense love felt simultaneously for her brilliant musicologist father. It is in this chapter Lowinsky fully opens her veins and allows her vulnerabilities as well as her abilities to flow from within in her poem, “a grandmother speaks from the other side.”

I had to put the book down and take time to recompose myself before moving on from this chapter, for my tears were flowing freely by this time. I wept not only for Lowinsky and all she lost, but for my own lost grandmothers as well.

Lowinsky talks of the muse that is Old Mother India, a place I have longed to visit. Then, she writes of Sappho, a favorite of mine, at midlife; a poet who lived 2600 years ago whose writings exist only as fragments. But what fragments they are, entwining the sexual and the sacred. “How is it she suddenly fills me with her presence, as though I’ve always known her; as though I can remember my time with her as a young woman on Lesbos: the temple to Aphrodite, the meadows with flowers we maidens wove into one another’s hair, what we sang around the altar in the moonlight; as though Sappho was my teacher, my priestess, my wild older woman crush.” Lowinsky asks, “How can I claim to remember Sappho?”

As a post-menopausal woman writer, I know the answer to her question: Sappho represents awakening kundalini, the awakening spiritual and creative energy that happens when women hit midlife. I just never realized this awakening was Sappho as the muse.

The book continues with chapters on Helena, a root vegetable; and the Naomi of the Bible, for whom the author was named. Like the story of Eurydice, the Naomi who presents herself as muse to the author has quite a different story to tell than the one you’ll read in the Bible—a beautiful tale I prefer to the original. Finally, she writes of the muse in her (his?) male manifestation.

The Sister From Below is an intensely personal, almost analytical exploration of the author’s creative side—not surprising, seeing as Lowinsky is a Jungian analyst. Filled with exquisite, heart-rending prose and poetry, it is a book to be savored, one chapter at a time, not rushed through like the latest Dan Brown suspense novel. It is, in places, highly entertaining, even funny. In other places, it will make you cry.

Most of all, it will send you on a long journey within yourself, searching for your own muse, identifying her, inviting her to not only manifest herself through your creative, artistic side, but as a part of your personality as a whole as well. It will leave you changed.

Smoky Trudeau Zeidel, whose deep connection to nature is apparent in all she writes, is the author of five books, three fiction and two nonfiction. Her current work in progress is due to be released in summer 2012. When not writing or exploring nature, Smoky spends time gardening, camping, meditating, and resisting the urge to speak in haiku.

News From the Muse: The Serpent Muse

Patricia Damery and I are friends and colleagues who have known each other for over twenty years, and have read and supported one another‘s writings. I read her book Farming Soul: A Tale of Initiation in manuscript, and connected Patricia with my publisher, Mel Mathews at my own book launching party for The Sister from Below: When the Muse Gets Her Way. I knew they’d love each other, both being wild shamanic types, grounded in the life of farming. Patricia had read The Sister in manuscript and kept urging me on for years while I was looking for the right publisher.

Patricia Damery

When Patricia and I were in Los Angeles in April, celebrating the launching of Marked by Fire, which Patricia and I co-edited, Nancy Mozur, who runs the Los Angeles C.G. Jung Institute’s wonderful bookstore, handed me a copy of the latest Psychological Perspectives. Synchronistically, as these things seem to happen, the review I  had written of Farming Soul was in that issue: Volume 55, Issue 1.

So let's be clear here—I am no dispassionate critic with an objective eye. I am a friend, a fan, a believer in Patricia’s courageous process, an admirer of her life and writing, and most recently, her co-editor. We both write in the genre we think of as Jungian memoir, personal stories that illuminate the inner life.

Here are some sections from the just published review:

Farming Soul: A Tale of Initiation by Patricia Damery
(Fisher King Press,) 2010.

Individuation is not for sissies. If the Great Serpent of your unfolding demands you develop aspects of yourself that are frowned upon by the spirit of the times, disapproved of by your analyst, and considered weird by most everyone you know, you’ll need to cultivate your own truth. If, on the way to becoming a Jungian analyst, the Golden Snake of your flowering requires you to study shamanism, work with a psychic, commune with invisible Presences, wander off the beaten Jungian path to explore the path of Rudolf Steiner—a cousin of Jung’s in the lineage of Goethe—you may find yourself in various kinds of trouble. If you’re a farmer’s daughter who left the farm as a young woman but the Jeweled Snake of your essential nature transports you back to farming, and you find yourself growing lavender and grapes on a ranch with your second husband, following the magical practices of bio-dynamic farming—an alchemical process developed by Steiner—you’ll need strong muscles of body and of spirit…. If, on top of all of this, your Snake insists you are a writer, and that you must tell your story, you’ll likely learn how lonely it can be to follow your own path.

Farming Soul is the stirring story of a remarkable woman. Patricia Damery has developed all the aspects of herself required by her Snake. Clearly conceived, yet intricately layered, this memoir is a weaving of narrative strands that tell stories in time. They are weft to the timeless warp of the farming cycle, described in short chapters, mostly named for the months of the year. Those sections are more teachings than stories. We learn the mysterious practices of shamanic farming, the stirring of sun soaked waters with a tincture, for example, of valerian, to bring warmth to the grapes when it’s cold in early March. This requires stirring first clockwise then in reverse direction, which “throws the water into chaos, that state that Rudolf Steiner says is most receptive to the divine."

The biodynamic farmer listens to the land, sings to the vines. She does not impose her will upon it, as do industrial farmers. Like a Jungian analyst, she waits for what’s underground to reveal itself. Damery returns us to the roots of Jungian psychology, to Jung’s rhizome—the unseen “true life.” She takes us back to the alchemists, who stirred tinctures of flower essences, and invited the divine. She takes us back to Goethe, who was an alchemist. His great drama, Faust, influenced Jung’s psychology and his scientific studies of plant life influenced Steiner’s ideas about farming.…


A compelling strand of Damery’s story is about the group that followed the late Don Sandner into the Southwest to study shamanism. Sandner was a revered elder of our tribe. He had studied the Navajo and worked in the shamanic tradition. He did drumming rituals for candidates in the early years of my candidacy.…Those trips to the Southwest stirred Damery’s psyche, opened her up to the divine. The Great Serpent showed up during the drumming, in visions, in dreams and in active imagination. It shape-shifted into a Golden Snake, a Jeweled Snake, the Kundalini Snake uncoiling its sacred energies, which, in Damery’s case, erupted with such intensity that she set off car alarms.

Learning to contain and channel this energy required yet another initiatory path for Damery. She did not find her temenos for this work in her Jungian tribe. She had to go off and study with a wise psychic, Norma T, who helped validate Damery’s experience of the “spirit world."

Farming Soul is, as the subtitle indicates, a “tale of initiation,” actually several initiations. As I reflect on the long walkabout Damery had to make, the hermetic practices her Golden Snake required before she could return to her Jungian path and be certified as an analyst, I remember what Joe Henderson told me about initiation. Joe was a founder of the San Francisco Jung Institute and my control analyst. He explained that the initiate needs to leave the tribe, go off and have her personal vision, meet her totem, learn what her myth is before she can return to the tribe, bringing the gifts of her own nature.

Some years ago I was in charge of providing food for a Sunday afternoon event at the San Francisco Institute. Patricia Damery, now an analyst, was going to speak about the Horned Goat. Our community is housed in a gracious old home in an elegant part of town. Suddenly, entering the French doors from the garden, I saw three goats sauntering in. Goats in the Institute? My first thought was, “Oh my God, the food!” But I could see that each goat was firmly attached to a lead and a handler. My second thought was, “How perfect! This hallowed place is in sore need of goatsmell, goatsong, goat energy. And here is our own Patricia Damery, bringing in the vitality of the natural world, the ‘lumen naturae.’ What a blessing to us all.”

Farming Soul is a blessing for Jungians, a reminder of our roots in the Reality of the Psyche, and a challenge to expand our consciousness. Damery helps us remember Psyche as one aspect of the long story Mother Nature has been weaving, of plants and animals, humans and gods—like the Great Serpent who appeared to Damery during a drumming and informed her she needed to develop a practice. She has, and she is showing us the way.

News from the Muse: The Muse of Los Angeles

Gratitude
There are moments, if one is lucky, when the whole circuitous, confusing, maze of a life’s meander reveals its essential shape—Indra’s net is illuminated—everything is connected.  I had such a moment on a recent Sunday in April, at the beautiful book launching for Marked by Fire: Stories of the Jungian Way, sponsored by the Los Angeles Jung Institute.  My co-editor Patricia Damery and I were overwhelmed and deeply moved by the party Chie Lee, the President of the L.A Institute, had thrown for our group the night before, by the presence of almost all the books’ contributors (two by Skype) at the reading, by the generosity of the L.A, Institute which had gotten us a large hall and put out the word and ordered books and provided food. Patricia has written a beautiful blog about all this.  Check it out.

 

I stood at the podium, introducing each contributor, and felt the strands of kinship libido—the memories and associations that connect me to all those who had written essays out of the vital stuff of their lives—their soul stories, their inner landscapes—the fiery process of becoming themselves. Listening to the voices of these friends and colleagues, my heart resonated with their eloquent expression of so many themes that move me: the power of dreams and synchronicities, the dark confused and painful times out of which new life emerges, the twists and turns of fate, luck, grace and individuation that brought us all here together on this bright Sunday afternoon in the Social Hall of Temple Isaiah across the street from the Jung Institute.

 

[from the left: Chie Lee, Sharon Heath, Jackie Gerson, Naomi Lowinsky,

Karlyn Ward, Patricia Damery, Dennis Slattery, Jean Kirsch,

Robert Romanyshyn, Claire Douglas, Gilda Franz]

The City of Angels

In the midst of all this I found myself musing about my relationship to L.A. There is something about L.A. I had been trying to find words to explain it to my friends from the North. Is it the light? The colors? Is it the beach runners, walkers, skaters, cyclists, the casual but trendy dress—sensual and a touch wild?

Suddenly it hit me. Los Angeles is the City of Angels. A procession of angels have visited me in this town. Almost twenty years ago, back in the day when Northern and Southern California analysts worked together in the initiatory process to become an analyst, I was certified at the L.A. Institute. It is such a vulnerable thing to bring one’s inner life and one’s sacred work with an analysand to the eyes of the members of a committee. To be seen and understood is a blessing—a visitation by an angel. 

 Around that time Charlene Sieg, the managing editor of Psychological Perspectives—a fine journal published by the Los Angeles Institute, which describes itself as a “journal of global consciousness integrating psyche, soul and nature”— called me up and wondered if I wanted to be poetry editor. I thought: this woman whom I don’t know has just handed me my place in the community! I have lived there gratefully ever since, at the intersection of Poetry and Jungian Analysis. Charlene is one of my angels.

Dan and I have traveled to Los Angeles twice a year for the board meetings of Psychological Perspectives. We had family in the area for much of that time, and enjoyed our time with them. We made deep friendships and began the threads of connection which eventually led to Marked by Fire and to this event. Psychological Perspectives has itself has been an angel to me, nurturing and supporting my writing over many years, connecting me with a community of writers interested in expressing the direct experience of the unconscious. Robin Robertson, the General Editor, a wonderful writer on science, psyche and the arts, whose most recent book on alchemy and chaos theory is called Indra’s Net, mentored me through many years of wandering in the wilderness, seeking a publisher. He always said it would happen. He, too, is an angel. So is Gilda Frantz, co-editor of the journal and contributor of a marvelous essay in Marked by Fire, who has always given me the courage of my own idiosyncratic vision.

On the Nature of Angels

Speaking of idiosyncratic vision, you may wonder about all this talk of angels when I’m blogging on the muse. Are angels muses? Angels, according to someone named Walter Rigg, writing in Harper’s Bazaar in 1962, “are powers which transcend the logic of our existence.” I found this quote in Gustav Davidson’s Dictionary of Angels, an essential reference for anyone into angelology. Yes, indeed, you are walking along the known path of your life and suddenly an angel enters the scene and shifts everything. You’re invited to be Poetry Editor and it changes your life, transcending the old logic of your existence.

My take on angels draws from the Jewish tradition, which, like Islam and Christianity is chock full of angels—perhaps compensatory for all that monotheistic singularity. Just look up angels in the index of Tree of Souls, a marvelous reference on the mythology of Judaism, and you’ll see what I mean. For me, personal angels are powers connected with our souls from before we were born.  They remember who we really are when we have forgotten. They tell us, as Robin Robertson often told me, that it’s not my way to write the conventional Jungian teaching book—I needed to write as a poet.  The Sister from Below is the result of that wise counsel.

In my life angels often take human form. They are ordinary people who connect with something of your eternal nature, which seen, fills you with the light of your own essence. Sometimes they are beings of the imaginal world who show up in vision, dream or active imagination. They have our backs, stand behind us, pointing the way. Sometimes they show up with flaming torches and burn down the world as we know it. Sometimes they see where we’re going years before we do. And yes, sometimes an angel can be a muse.  

The Angel/Muse of Watts Towers 

Such an angel came to me in L.A. years before I’d even thought of being a Jungian—this was the angel and muse of Watts Towers. That angel/muse flew me to L.A. for the first time in my life, and into a larger vision of who I could be. I was a young mother, hemmed in by family demands, shaped by babies and kitchen and laundry. This angel whispered in my ear: “You’ve got to get out of here. Leave the kids with your husband and get away for a weekend. Remember who you are.”  “And go where?” I wondered. “Visit your friends in L.A.” the angel advised. And so it was I found myself in the home of dear friends whom I’d known when we were all in India together, associated with Peace Corps.

I had never been away from husband and kids for an entire weekend. It felt wicked. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. My hip felt empty without my baby girl. I don’t remember how that angel/muse spirited me to Watts Towers but there I was—a memory imprinted in my soul for life—contemplating the sacred space Simon Rodia, a poor immigrant from Italy, had created out of steel rods, cement and junk. I imagined him, wandering around in his life, picking up small pieces of broken glass and crockery, using them to create a mosaic in cement—his Sanctuario. Had he known about the Taj Mahal? I had been to the Taj; those small bits of glowing color creating intricate and glorious designs seemed to me to be part of the same artistic lineage.
 

I remember reflecting that if I could just be like Simon Rodia, picking up small pieces of glittering, broken fragments from my every day wanderings and gathering them into sacred shapes, I would be happy. It would be years before I could dedicate myself to that practice as a poet, years before I would write a poem about that visitation, but the angel/muse of Watts Towers had shown me my path.

how Simon Rodia showed me my craft

before I’d launched a single soul
or heard the cat call in my voice
some sanity insisted that I see
the joy leaps of your towers
                Simon Rodia
in flat exhausted Watts
where no tree grew
                I  
                twenty-six
                afraid of my life
                looked up at your craft

                a maze of spires
                cathedral of steel rods
                a  window washer’s labyrinth of tile
what wind had ripped you loose
of the gray grind?
motorcycles growled revenge
Spanish mothers prayed
their baby Jesus would survive
sixteen
cement  and broken dishes
your creation:  the ark
still pushes at the backyard fence
baptismal font awaits
the new born
and here a bench for sitting
in your Italian Sanctuario
inlaid with jewels from the garbage
are all the treasures of a boy:  blue of broken tile                  
green fire of soda pop
seashells from the bottom of your pocket                             
                ruby
                of broken wine decanter  
                and in my northern neighborhood
when no wind blew
and nothing happened in the house
              
I would imagine I had a craft
like yours              
                Simon Rodia
and every broken bit of color
that life washed up
would have a place in my design

the city fathers
tried to pull
your towers from their roots
                Simon Rodia
not even swinging cement balls
could shake your work
                I saw you
                riding your joy leaps over their upturned faces
                         
                your laughter
                ripped me loose!

(This poem is published in Adagio & Lamentation)