This is my month to celebrate and honor the archetype of, Leo, and the image I relate to the expression of this instinct as: the Art Sorceress.
I took this name from a quote by one of my beloved madmen philosophers, Nietzsche, who so brilliantly woke to the genius of the bodypsyche and realized it in his own art, that both Carl Jung and Marion Woodman were inspired to weave it into their own work. Marion used his book, Thus Spake Zarathustra, in her Bodysoul Intensive trainings. If you are aware of her brilliance and work, then you will understand why this is notable.
“Here, when the danger to his will is greatest, art approaches as a saving sorceress, expert at healing. She alone knows how to turn these nauseous thoughts about the horror or absurdity of existence into notions with which one can live: these are the sublime as the artistic taming of the horrible, and the comic as the artistic discharge of the nausea of absurdity.”
I have found no better name to describe the work that I do with painting, stream-of-consciousness writing and ritual performance art than the Art Sorceress. Expressive art doesn’t cut it.
In these works I unleash the deep ground of the imaginal realm of my wild soul in creation with the forces of Nature. Jung and transpersonal psychologists referred to these forces as the transcendent function. The transpersonal. Archetypes. The Self. God.
There is serious embodied magick of self transformation that occurs in these processes. Levels that talk therapy cannot reach into. Yet even more than transforming the schisms and wounds we are born with into strengths and powers to be fortified by, is the power of creation one is able to achieve. Creation of one’s Life. Creation of Art that reaches into the collective bowels and heart of existence, giving form and voice to forces that shape whole new worlds.
It sounds dramatic because it really is.
This realm was known and lived naturally when we were children. We followed our natural impulses to create from imagination, to heal schisms by working them out through dramatic play, by drawing, dancing, enacting our monsters, our witches, knights and faeries.
This natural response to primal intelligence moving in us was ripped from us by well meaning parents and systems that believed we needed to stop fooling around with our imagination. Stop following our own passions into creation and instead, follow the teacher, the program, the sit-still-in-your-chair-and-shut-up-and-grow-up methods that messed so many of us up.
This is not the way to keep the genius which includes our many million year old primal instincts alive.
So this month I am honoring this archetype of the Art Sorceress by posting wild things for you to read and images to view so as to get a glimpse into my journey as a way to stir this force of imagination and creation in you.
Yours of course will be unique to you. And that is the beauty of what Jung taught of individuation, what Montessori reflected in her method of honoring and nourishing the growing impulses of each child unique to them, and what the archetype of Leo’s nature is about:
Self Expression. That which is innate to you reflected in your personal style, voice, your heart’s passions and desires.