Kybele Speaks We have to let Kybele speak and amplify herself and listen. We seek the emotional and feeling factor associated with the archetypal image. To study plants, we study the soil from which they grow. All archetypes are contaminated with one another in the unconscious. The motifs of myths grow from a human basis. We have to circumambulate the story to grasp its essence as personal and cosmic religion -- through mystic identification. If we start with the Paleo-European Great Mother, we can pile up comparative material forever until all symbols are included, for she is 'the mother of all'. We can't erase inconvenient parts of history; that is denial. But it is not mere speculation either. 'Going down into the depths' of thought-patterns and emotional experience and re-emerging remains the great Mystery. You danced with the Mother, shrieked with the Mother, bled with the Mother, and the Mother helped you heal. How can we make her Presence, participation mystique, and animism felt in our lives today, in contemporary society? The sacred meal is her oldest ritual, despite all later modifications. James Hillman said, "When the gods arrive on stage, everything becomes silent and the eyelids close. Plunged into oblivion by this experience, we re-emerge and without knowing exactly what is happened, we know only that we have been transformed." We need to set the scene.
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