Apollo
This sun motif appears in many places and times and the meaning is always the same - that a new consciousness has been born. It is the light of illumination which is projected into space.
Apollo was the son of Zeus and Leto, twin brother of Artemis. He was the god of music, and he is often depicted playing a golden lyre. He was also known as the Archer, far shooting with a silver bow; the god of healing, giving the science of medicine to man; the god of light; and the god of truth. One of Apollo's most important daily tasks was to harness his four-horse chariot, in order to move the Sun across the sky.
Apollo was an oracular god, as he was the prophetic deity in the Oracle in Delphi. People from all over the known world travelled there to learn what the future held for them, through his priestess Pythia. The god was also worshipped in the island of Delos, which was initially dedicated to his twin sister Artemis. In relation to the rituals and practices that took place in Delos and Delphi, it could be said that there were two completely distinct cults in honor of Apollo.
As already mentioned, Apollo was also considered as the god of healing and medicine, either through himself or through his son Asclepius. At the same time, he could also bring forth disease and plague with his arrows; it was considered that a god that can cause disease is also able to prevent it.
He was born on Delos, where his mother Leto seeked refuge; Hera, having realised that Leto was impregnated by her husband Zeus, banned Leto from giving birth on land. So, Leto managed to go to Delos, which had recently been formed, and therefore, was not considered a real island yet. The inhabitants of the island, along with Artemis who had been born a day earlier, helped Leto give birth to Apollo. Leto then promised the Delians that Apollo would always favour them for having helped her.
His holy tree was the laurel, and his holy animal was the dolphin.
Apollo (Attic, Ionic, and Homeric Greek: Ἀπόλλων, Apollōn (GEN Ἀπόλλωνος); Doric: Ἀπέλλων, Apellōn; Arcadocypriot: Ἀπείλων, Apeilōn; Aeolic: Ἄπλουν, Aploun; Latin: Apollō) is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in classical Greek and Roman religion and Greek and Roman mythology. The ideal of the kouros (a beardless, athletic youth), Apollo has been variously recognized as a god of light and the sun, truth and prophecy, healing, plague, music, poetry, and more. Apollo is the son of Zeus and Leto, and has a twin sister, the chaste huntress Artemis. Apollo is known in Greek-influenced Etruscan mythology as Apulu.
As the patron of Delphi (Pythian Apollo), Apollo was an oracular god—the prophetic deity of the Delphic Oracle. Medicine and healing are associated with Apollo, whether through the god himself or mediated through his son Asclepius, yet Apollo was also seen as a god who could bring ill-health and deadly plague. Amongst the god's custodial charges, Apollo became associated with dominion over colonists, and as the patron defender of herds and flocks. As the leader of the Muses (Apollon Musegetes) and director of their choir, Apollo functioned as the patron god of music and poetry. Hermes created the lyre for him, and the instrument became a common attribute of Apollo. Hymns sung to Apollo were called paeans.
In Hellenistic times, especially during the 3rd century BCE, as Apollo Helios he became identified among Greeks with Helios, Titan god of the sun, and his sister Artemis similarly equated with Selene, Titan goddess of the moon.[1] In Latin texts, on the other hand, Joseph Fontenrose declared himself unable to find any conflation of Apollo with Sol among the Augustan poets of the 1st century, not even in the conjurations of Aeneas and Latinus in Aeneid XII (161–215).[2] Apollo and Helios/Sol remained separate beings in literary and mythological texts until the 3rd century CE. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo
The Apollo archetype personifies the aspect of the personality that wants clear definitions, is drawn to master a skill, values order and harmony, and prefers to look at the surface, as opposed to beneath appearances. The Apollo archetype favors thinking over feeling, distance over closeness, objective assessment over subjective intuition.
Apollo looks for clues, interviews eyewitnesses, uses his intuition and employs operatives. He is the archetypal detective. While Apollo as God of Divination and Prophecy does have a special relation to intuition, he is also the God of Law, with a special interest in murder. It was Apollo's province to exact blood for blood; it was his rule that a murderer must be purified (through punishment). Thus, instead of personal revenge (the central event of so many tragedies), the state (representing Apollo) avenges. And thus the detective, the impersonal avenger, is Apollo's agent.
Apollo was an oracular god, as he was the prophetic deity in the Oracle in Delphi. People from all over the known world travelled there to learn what the future held for them, through his priestess Pythia. The god was also worshipped in the island of Delos, which was initially dedicated to his twin sister Artemis. In relation to the rituals and practices that took place in Delos and Delphi, it could be said that there were two completely distinct cults in honor of Apollo.
As already mentioned, Apollo was also considered as the god of healing and medicine, either through himself or through his son Asclepius. At the same time, he could also bring forth disease and plague with his arrows; it was considered that a god that can cause disease is also able to prevent it.
He was born on Delos, where his mother Leto seeked refuge; Hera, having realised that Leto was impregnated by her husband Zeus, banned Leto from giving birth on land. So, Leto managed to go to Delos, which had recently been formed, and therefore, was not considered a real island yet. The inhabitants of the island, along with Artemis who had been born a day earlier, helped Leto give birth to Apollo. Leto then promised the Delians that Apollo would always favour them for having helped her.
His holy tree was the laurel, and his holy animal was the dolphin.
Apollo (Attic, Ionic, and Homeric Greek: Ἀπόλλων, Apollōn (GEN Ἀπόλλωνος); Doric: Ἀπέλλων, Apellōn; Arcadocypriot: Ἀπείλων, Apeilōn; Aeolic: Ἄπλουν, Aploun; Latin: Apollō) is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in classical Greek and Roman religion and Greek and Roman mythology. The ideal of the kouros (a beardless, athletic youth), Apollo has been variously recognized as a god of light and the sun, truth and prophecy, healing, plague, music, poetry, and more. Apollo is the son of Zeus and Leto, and has a twin sister, the chaste huntress Artemis. Apollo is known in Greek-influenced Etruscan mythology as Apulu.
As the patron of Delphi (Pythian Apollo), Apollo was an oracular god—the prophetic deity of the Delphic Oracle. Medicine and healing are associated with Apollo, whether through the god himself or mediated through his son Asclepius, yet Apollo was also seen as a god who could bring ill-health and deadly plague. Amongst the god's custodial charges, Apollo became associated with dominion over colonists, and as the patron defender of herds and flocks. As the leader of the Muses (Apollon Musegetes) and director of their choir, Apollo functioned as the patron god of music and poetry. Hermes created the lyre for him, and the instrument became a common attribute of Apollo. Hymns sung to Apollo were called paeans.
In Hellenistic times, especially during the 3rd century BCE, as Apollo Helios he became identified among Greeks with Helios, Titan god of the sun, and his sister Artemis similarly equated with Selene, Titan goddess of the moon.[1] In Latin texts, on the other hand, Joseph Fontenrose declared himself unable to find any conflation of Apollo with Sol among the Augustan poets of the 1st century, not even in the conjurations of Aeneas and Latinus in Aeneid XII (161–215).[2] Apollo and Helios/Sol remained separate beings in literary and mythological texts until the 3rd century CE. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo
The Apollo archetype personifies the aspect of the personality that wants clear definitions, is drawn to master a skill, values order and harmony, and prefers to look at the surface, as opposed to beneath appearances. The Apollo archetype favors thinking over feeling, distance over closeness, objective assessment over subjective intuition.
Apollo looks for clues, interviews eyewitnesses, uses his intuition and employs operatives. He is the archetypal detective. While Apollo as God of Divination and Prophecy does have a special relation to intuition, he is also the God of Law, with a special interest in murder. It was Apollo's province to exact blood for blood; it was his rule that a murderer must be purified (through punishment). Thus, instead of personal revenge (the central event of so many tragedies), the state (representing Apollo) avenges. And thus the detective, the impersonal avenger, is Apollo's agent.
APOLLO—attributes: sun, light, clarity, truty. Son of Zeus and Leto.
- Represents the principle of rational consciousness, which many times in numerous positive and heroic figures, has difficulty being born.
- The myth of Apollo’s birth shows how the divine can come into being in the human realm. No firmly established ego will grant it refuge but is allowed in where there is a more tenuous consciousness, a floating existence, which then allows it to take root and become permanently established. (The artistic personality.)
- Some say Leto, Apollo’s mother, was Zeus’s kinder and gentler wife before he married Hera. Others say Leto was one of his “other women” with whom he carried on. Either way, the myth has it that Hera, furious about Leto's pregnancy, sent the serpent Python to pursue her and ordered that no place on earth where the sun shone should receive Leto for the birth. Leto was rejected by heaven, earth, and sea. In one version of this myth, the South wind, Zephyr, carried her to a tiny island in the Cyclades islands in the Aegean Sea where she gave birth to twins on a floating island that belonged to neither land, nor air, nor sea. In a cave on the island of Delos, she had her children. At Apollo’s birth, the island became rooted. This is said to have been one of Apollo’s favorite shrines, and legend has it that as a means of keeping this site sacred to Apollo, no one was allowed to give birth or pass away into death on the island.
- Apollo killed the Python of Delphi and took over that oracle, becoming the vanquisher of unconscious terrors.
- Golden-haired like the sun, Apollo shoots arrows of insight &/or death; he is god of music and the lyre. Healing belongs to his realm, and he is the father of Asclepius, the god of medicine.
- Muses are part of his retinue—music, history, drama, poetry, dance, creative arts, all belong to him. Muses are called on to invoke the artistic, creative imagination to give helpful guidance and imagery.
- Power and virtue of consciousness and capacity for truth. The opposite would be the darker, Dionysian side.
- In inner experience, dreams that emphasize light/illumination refer to the Apollo principle.
Apollo and Daphne
If one honors God, the sun or the fire, then one honors one’s own vital force, the libido. It is as Seneca says: ” God is near you, he is with you, in you.” God is our own longing to which we pay divine honors. ~Carl Jung.
I once had a talk with the master of ceremonies of a tribe of Pueblo Indians, and he told me something very interesting. He said, "Yes, we are a small tribe, and these Americans, they want to interfere with our religion. They should not do it," he said, "because we are the sons of the Father, the Sun. He who goes there" (pointing to the sun) -- "that is our Father. We must help him daily to rise over the horizon and to walk over heaven. And we don't do it for ourselves only; we do it for America; we do it for the whole world. And if these Americans interfere with our religion through their missions, they will see something. In ten years Father Sun won't rise anymore because we can't help him any more." --Jung
The sun… is the only truly ‘rational’ image of God, whether we adopt the standpoint of the primitive savage or of modern science. In either case the sun is the father-god from whom all living things draw life; he is the fructifier and creator, the source of energy for our world.
The discord into which the human soul has fallen can be harmoniously resolved through the sun as a natural object which knows no inner conflict. ~Carl Jung; CW 5; Symbols of Transformation; Para 176.
If one honors God, the sun or the fire, then one honors one’s own vital force, the libido. It is as Seneca says: ” God is near you, he is with you, in you.” God is our own longing to which we pay divine honors. ~Carl Jung.
I once had a talk with the master of ceremonies of a tribe of Pueblo Indians, and he told me something very interesting. He said, "Yes, we are a small tribe, and these Americans, they want to interfere with our religion. They should not do it," he said, "because we are the sons of the Father, the Sun. He who goes there" (pointing to the sun) -- "that is our Father. We must help him daily to rise over the horizon and to walk over heaven. And we don't do it for ourselves only; we do it for America; we do it for the whole world. And if these Americans interfere with our religion through their missions, they will see something. In ten years Father Sun won't rise anymore because we can't help him any more." --Jung
The sun… is the only truly ‘rational’ image of God, whether we adopt the standpoint of the primitive savage or of modern science. In either case the sun is the father-god from whom all living things draw life; he is the fructifier and creator, the source of energy for our world.
The discord into which the human soul has fallen can be harmoniously resolved through the sun as a natural object which knows no inner conflict. ~Carl Jung; CW 5; Symbols of Transformation; Para 176.
Sun as God
The sun is, as Renan remarked, really the only rational representation of God, whether we take the point of view of the barbarians of other ages or that of the modern physical sciences.
In both cases the sun is the parent God, mythologically predominantly the Father God, from whom all living things draw life; He is the fructifier and creator of all that lives, the source of energy of our world.
The discord into which the soul of man has fallen through the action of moral laws can be resolved into complete harmony through the sun as the natural
object which obeys no human moral law.
The sun is not only beneficial, but also destructive; therefore the zodiacal representation of the August heat is the herd-devouring lion whom the Jewish hero Samson killed in order to free the parched earth from this plague.
Yet it is the harmonious and inherent nature of the sun to scorch, and its scorching power seems natural to men It shines equally on the just and on the unjust, and allows useful living objects to flourish as well as harmful ones.
Therefore, the sun is adapted as is nothing else to represent the visible God of this world.
That is to say, that driving strength of our own soul, which we call libido, and whose nature it is to allow the useful and injurious, the good and the bad to proceed.
That this comparison is no mere play of words is taught us by the mystics.
When by looking inwards (introversion) and going down into the depths of their own being they find “in their heart" the image of the Sun, they find their own love or libido, which with reason, I might say with physical reason, is called the Sun, for our source of energy and life is the Sun.
Thus our life substance, as an energic process, is entirely Sun.
Of what special sort this "Sun energy" seen inwardly by the mystic is, is shown by an example taken from the Hindu mythology.
From the explanation of Part III of the "Shvetashvataropanishad" we take the following quotation, which relates to the Rudra :
(2) "Yea, the one Rudra who all these worlds with ruling power doth rule, stands not for any second. Behind those that are born he stands, at ending time ingathers all the worlds he hath evolved, protector (he).
(3) "He hath eyes on all sides, on all sides surely hath faces, arms surely on all sides, on all sides feet. With arms, with wings he tricks them out, creating heaven and earth, the only God.
(4) "Who of the gods is both the source and growth, the Lord of all, the Rudra Mighty seer; who brought the shining germ of old into existence may he with reason pure conjoin us."
These attributes allow us clearly to discern the all-creator and in him the Sun, which has wings and with a thousand eyes scans the world. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious, Pages 127-129.
[Carl Jung on the Sun and God.]
The sun is, as Renan remarked, really the only rational representation of God, whether we take the point of view of the barbarians of other ages or that of the modern physical sciences.
In both cases the sun is the parent God, mythologically predominantly the Father God, from whom all living things draw life; He is the fructifier and creator of all that lives, the source of energy of our world.
The discord into which the soul of man has fallen through the action of moral laws can be resolved into complete harmony through the sun as the natural object which obeys no human moral law.
The sun is not only beneficial, but also destructive; therefore the zodiacal representation of the August heat is the herd-devouring lion whom the Jewish hero Samson killed in order to free the parched earth from this plague.
Yet it is the harmonious and inherent nature of the sun to scorch, and its scorching power seems natural to men It shines equally on the just and on the unjust, and allows useful living objects to flourish as well as harmful ones.
Therefore, the sun is adapted as is nothing else to represent the visible God of this world.
That is to say, that driving strength of our own soul, which we call libido, and whose nature it is to allow the useful and injurious, the good and the bad to proceed.
That this comparison is no mere play of words is taught us by the mystics.
When by looking inwards (introversion) and going down into the depths of their own being they find “in their heart" the image of the Sun, they find their own love or libido, which with reason, I might say with physical reason, is called the Sun, for our source of energy and life is the Sun.
Thus our life substance, as an energic process, is entirely Sun.
Of what special sort this "Sun energy" seen inwardly by the mystic is, is shown by an example taken from the Hindu mythology.
From the explanation of Part III of the "Shvetashvataropanishad" we take the following quotation, which relates to the Rudra :
(2) "Yea, the one Rudra who all these worlds with ruling power doth rule, stands not for any second. Behind those that are born he stands, at ending time ingathers all the worlds he hath evolved, protector (he).
(3) "He hath eyes on all sides, on all sides surely hath faces, arms surely on all sides, on all sides feet. With arms, with wings he tricks them out, creating heaven and earth, the only God.
(4) "Who of the gods is both the source and growth, the Lord of all, the Rudra Mighty seer; who brought the shining germ of old into existence may he with reason pure conjoin us."
These attributes allow us clearly to discern the all-creator and in him the Sun, which has wings and with a thousand eyes scans the world. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious, Pages 127-129.
The sun is, as Renan remarked, really the only rational representation of God, whether we take the point of view of the barbarians of other ages or that of the modern physical sciences.
In both cases the sun is the parent God, mythologically predominantly the Father God, from whom all living things draw life; He is the fructifier and creator of all that lives, the source of energy of our world.
The discord into which the soul of man has fallen through the action of moral laws can be resolved into complete harmony through the sun as the natural
object which obeys no human moral law.
The sun is not only beneficial, but also destructive; therefore the zodiacal representation of the August heat is the herd-devouring lion whom the Jewish hero Samson killed in order to free the parched earth from this plague.
Yet it is the harmonious and inherent nature of the sun to scorch, and its scorching power seems natural to men It shines equally on the just and on the unjust, and allows useful living objects to flourish as well as harmful ones.
Therefore, the sun is adapted as is nothing else to represent the visible God of this world.
That is to say, that driving strength of our own soul, which we call libido, and whose nature it is to allow the useful and injurious, the good and the bad to proceed.
That this comparison is no mere play of words is taught us by the mystics.
When by looking inwards (introversion) and going down into the depths of their own being they find “in their heart" the image of the Sun, they find their own love or libido, which with reason, I might say with physical reason, is called the Sun, for our source of energy and life is the Sun.
Thus our life substance, as an energic process, is entirely Sun.
Of what special sort this "Sun energy" seen inwardly by the mystic is, is shown by an example taken from the Hindu mythology.
From the explanation of Part III of the "Shvetashvataropanishad" we take the following quotation, which relates to the Rudra :
(2) "Yea, the one Rudra who all these worlds with ruling power doth rule, stands not for any second. Behind those that are born he stands, at ending time ingathers all the worlds he hath evolved, protector (he).
(3) "He hath eyes on all sides, on all sides surely hath faces, arms surely on all sides, on all sides feet. With arms, with wings he tricks them out, creating heaven and earth, the only God.
(4) "Who of the gods is both the source and growth, the Lord of all, the Rudra Mighty seer; who brought the shining germ of old into existence may he with reason pure conjoin us."
These attributes allow us clearly to discern the all-creator and in him the Sun, which has wings and with a thousand eyes scans the world. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious, Pages 127-129.
[Carl Jung on the Sun and God.]
The sun is, as Renan remarked, really the only rational representation of God, whether we take the point of view of the barbarians of other ages or that of the modern physical sciences.
In both cases the sun is the parent God, mythologically predominantly the Father God, from whom all living things draw life; He is the fructifier and creator of all that lives, the source of energy of our world.
The discord into which the soul of man has fallen through the action of moral laws can be resolved into complete harmony through the sun as the natural object which obeys no human moral law.
The sun is not only beneficial, but also destructive; therefore the zodiacal representation of the August heat is the herd-devouring lion whom the Jewish hero Samson killed in order to free the parched earth from this plague.
Yet it is the harmonious and inherent nature of the sun to scorch, and its scorching power seems natural to men It shines equally on the just and on the unjust, and allows useful living objects to flourish as well as harmful ones.
Therefore, the sun is adapted as is nothing else to represent the visible God of this world.
That is to say, that driving strength of our own soul, which we call libido, and whose nature it is to allow the useful and injurious, the good and the bad to proceed.
That this comparison is no mere play of words is taught us by the mystics.
When by looking inwards (introversion) and going down into the depths of their own being they find “in their heart" the image of the Sun, they find their own love or libido, which with reason, I might say with physical reason, is called the Sun, for our source of energy and life is the Sun.
Thus our life substance, as an energic process, is entirely Sun.
Of what special sort this "Sun energy" seen inwardly by the mystic is, is shown by an example taken from the Hindu mythology.
From the explanation of Part III of the "Shvetashvataropanishad" we take the following quotation, which relates to the Rudra :
(2) "Yea, the one Rudra who all these worlds with ruling power doth rule, stands not for any second. Behind those that are born he stands, at ending time ingathers all the worlds he hath evolved, protector (he).
(3) "He hath eyes on all sides, on all sides surely hath faces, arms surely on all sides, on all sides feet. With arms, with wings he tricks them out, creating heaven and earth, the only God.
(4) "Who of the gods is both the source and growth, the Lord of all, the Rudra Mighty seer; who brought the shining germ of old into existence may he with reason pure conjoin us."
These attributes allow us clearly to discern the all-creator and in him the Sun, which has wings and with a thousand eyes scans the world. ~Carl Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious, Pages 127-129.
Fragment of Frontispiece by Jan Wandelaar (1690-1759) of Linnaeus, C. (1738), Hortus Cliffortianus. Mother Earth holds the keys to the garden. A young god Apollo, with the head of Linnaeus, steps forward, bringing light in his left hand and with his right hand casting aside the shroud of darkness around the goddess. US Public Domain via wiki
“As mythology shows, one of the peculiarities of the Great Mother is that she frequently appears paired with her male counterpart.” (Carl Jung, CW 9i, para 193)
Temples and Cult of Asclepius by Robert Thom
SPIRITUAL MYTH: Non-Interpretive Dreamhealing
Asklepios, Son of Apollo
While the healing god Asclepius is not a major player in Greek mythology, he is a pivotal one. Counted as one of the Argonauts, Asclepius came into contact with many of the major Greek heroes. Asclepius was also a causal figure in a drama played out between Apollo, Death, Zeus, the Cyclops, and Hercules. This story comes to us through Euripides' tragedy, Alcestis .
The Parents of Asclepius Apollo (the brother of the virginal goddess Artemis) was no more chaste than any of the other (male) gods. His lovers and would-be lovers included Marpessa, Coronis, Daphne (one who got away by having herself transformed into a tree), Arsinoe, Cassandra (who paid for her scorn with the gift of prophecy no one believed), Cyrene, Melia, Eudne, Thero, Psamathe, Philonis, Chrysothemis, Hyacinthos, and Cyparissos. As a result of their union with Apollo, most of the women produced sons. One of these sons was Asclepius. The mother is debated. She may have been Coronis or Arsinoe, but whoever the mother was, she didn't live long enough to give birth to her healing god son.
The Creation of Asclepius Apollo was a jealous god who was mightily displeased when a crow revealed that his lover was to marry a mortal, so he punished the messenger by changing the color of the formerly white bird to the now more familiar black. Apollo also punished his lover by burning her, although some say it was Artemis who actually disposed of the "faithless" Coronis (or Arsinoe). Before Coronis was completely incinerated, Apollo rescued the unborn infant from the flames. A similar event occurred when Zeus rescued the unborn Dionysus from Semele and sewed up the fetus in his thigh.
Asclepius may have been born in Epidauros (Epidaurus) of acoustically perfect theater fame [Stephen Bertman: The Genesis of Science].
Asclepius' Upbringing - The Centaur Connection The poor, newborn Asclepius needed someone to bring him up, so Apollo thought of the wise centaur Chiron (Cheiron) who seems to have been around forever -- or at least since the time of Apollo's father, Zeus. Chiron roamed the countryside of Crete while the king of the gods was growing up, hiding from his own father. Chiron trained several of the great Greek heroes (Achilles, Actaeon, Aristaeus, Jason, Medus, Patroclus, and Peleus) and willingly undertook the education of Asclepius.
Apollo was also a god of healing, but it wasn't he, but Chiron who taught the god's son Asclepius the healing arts. Athena also helped. She gave Asclepius the precious blood of the Gorgon Medusa.
The Story of Alcestis The blood of the Gorgon, which Athena gave Asclepius, came from two very different veins. The blood from the right side could heal mankind -- even from death, while the blood from the left vein could kill, as Chiron would ultimately experience first-hand.
Asclepius matured into a capable healer, but after he brought mortals back to life -- Capaneus and Lycurgus (killed during the war of the Seven Against Thebes), and Hippolytus, son of Theseus -- a worried Zeus slew Asclepius with a thunderbolt.
Apollo was enraged, but getting mad at the king of the gods was futile, so he took out his anger on the creators of the thunderbolts, the Cyclops. Zeus, enraged in his turn, was prepared to hurl Apollo to Tartarus, but another god intervened -- possibly Apollo's mother, Leto. Zeus commuted his son's sentence to a year's term as herdsman to a human, King Admetus.
During his term in mortal servitude, Apollo grew fond of Admetus, a man doomed to die young. Since there was no longer an Asclepius with his Medusa-potion to resurrect the king, Admetus would be gone forever when he died. As a favor, Apollo negotiated a way for Admetus to avoid Death. If someone would die for Admetus, Death would let him go. The only person willing to make such a sacrifice was Admetus' beloved wife, Alcestis.
On the day Alcestis was substituted for Admetus and given to Death, Hercules arrived at the palace. He wondered about the display of mourning. Admetus tried to convince him nothing was wrong, but the servants, who missed their mistress, revealed the truth. Hercules set off for the Underworld to arrange for Alcestis' return to life.
The Offspring of Asclepius Asclepius hadn't been killed immediately after leaving the centaur's school. He had had time to engage in various heroic endeavors, including fathering his share of children. His progeny would and did carry on the healing arts. Sons Machaon and Podalirius led 30 Greek ships to Troy from the city of Eurytos. It is unclear which of the two brothers healed Philoctetes during the Trojan War. Asclepius' daughter is Hygeia (connected with our word hygiene), goddess of health.
Other children of Asclepius are: Janiscus, Alexenor, Aratus, Hygieia, Aegle, Iaso, and Panaceia.
The Name of Asclepius You may find the name of Asclepius spelled Asculapius or Aesculapius (in Latin) and Asklepios (also, in Greek).
Shrines of Asclepius The best known of the roughly 200 Greek shrines and temples of Asclepius were at Epidaurus, Cos, and Pergamum. These were places of healing with sanatoria, dream therapy, snakes, regimes of diet and exercise, and baths. The name of such a shrine to Asclepius is asclepieion/asklepieion (pl. asclepieia). Hippocrates is thought to have studied at Cos and Galen at Pergamum.
http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/asclepius/a/Asclepius.htm
Asklepios, Son of Apollo
While the healing god Asclepius is not a major player in Greek mythology, he is a pivotal one. Counted as one of the Argonauts, Asclepius came into contact with many of the major Greek heroes. Asclepius was also a causal figure in a drama played out between Apollo, Death, Zeus, the Cyclops, and Hercules. This story comes to us through Euripides' tragedy, Alcestis .
The Parents of Asclepius Apollo (the brother of the virginal goddess Artemis) was no more chaste than any of the other (male) gods. His lovers and would-be lovers included Marpessa, Coronis, Daphne (one who got away by having herself transformed into a tree), Arsinoe, Cassandra (who paid for her scorn with the gift of prophecy no one believed), Cyrene, Melia, Eudne, Thero, Psamathe, Philonis, Chrysothemis, Hyacinthos, and Cyparissos. As a result of their union with Apollo, most of the women produced sons. One of these sons was Asclepius. The mother is debated. She may have been Coronis or Arsinoe, but whoever the mother was, she didn't live long enough to give birth to her healing god son.
The Creation of Asclepius Apollo was a jealous god who was mightily displeased when a crow revealed that his lover was to marry a mortal, so he punished the messenger by changing the color of the formerly white bird to the now more familiar black. Apollo also punished his lover by burning her, although some say it was Artemis who actually disposed of the "faithless" Coronis (or Arsinoe). Before Coronis was completely incinerated, Apollo rescued the unborn infant from the flames. A similar event occurred when Zeus rescued the unborn Dionysus from Semele and sewed up the fetus in his thigh.
Asclepius may have been born in Epidauros (Epidaurus) of acoustically perfect theater fame [Stephen Bertman: The Genesis of Science].
Asclepius' Upbringing - The Centaur Connection The poor, newborn Asclepius needed someone to bring him up, so Apollo thought of the wise centaur Chiron (Cheiron) who seems to have been around forever -- or at least since the time of Apollo's father, Zeus. Chiron roamed the countryside of Crete while the king of the gods was growing up, hiding from his own father. Chiron trained several of the great Greek heroes (Achilles, Actaeon, Aristaeus, Jason, Medus, Patroclus, and Peleus) and willingly undertook the education of Asclepius.
Apollo was also a god of healing, but it wasn't he, but Chiron who taught the god's son Asclepius the healing arts. Athena also helped. She gave Asclepius the precious blood of the Gorgon Medusa.
The Story of Alcestis The blood of the Gorgon, which Athena gave Asclepius, came from two very different veins. The blood from the right side could heal mankind -- even from death, while the blood from the left vein could kill, as Chiron would ultimately experience first-hand.
Asclepius matured into a capable healer, but after he brought mortals back to life -- Capaneus and Lycurgus (killed during the war of the Seven Against Thebes), and Hippolytus, son of Theseus -- a worried Zeus slew Asclepius with a thunderbolt.
Apollo was enraged, but getting mad at the king of the gods was futile, so he took out his anger on the creators of the thunderbolts, the Cyclops. Zeus, enraged in his turn, was prepared to hurl Apollo to Tartarus, but another god intervened -- possibly Apollo's mother, Leto. Zeus commuted his son's sentence to a year's term as herdsman to a human, King Admetus.
During his term in mortal servitude, Apollo grew fond of Admetus, a man doomed to die young. Since there was no longer an Asclepius with his Medusa-potion to resurrect the king, Admetus would be gone forever when he died. As a favor, Apollo negotiated a way for Admetus to avoid Death. If someone would die for Admetus, Death would let him go. The only person willing to make such a sacrifice was Admetus' beloved wife, Alcestis.
On the day Alcestis was substituted for Admetus and given to Death, Hercules arrived at the palace. He wondered about the display of mourning. Admetus tried to convince him nothing was wrong, but the servants, who missed their mistress, revealed the truth. Hercules set off for the Underworld to arrange for Alcestis' return to life.
The Offspring of Asclepius Asclepius hadn't been killed immediately after leaving the centaur's school. He had had time to engage in various heroic endeavors, including fathering his share of children. His progeny would and did carry on the healing arts. Sons Machaon and Podalirius led 30 Greek ships to Troy from the city of Eurytos. It is unclear which of the two brothers healed Philoctetes during the Trojan War. Asclepius' daughter is Hygeia (connected with our word hygiene), goddess of health.
Other children of Asclepius are: Janiscus, Alexenor, Aratus, Hygieia, Aegle, Iaso, and Panaceia.
The Name of Asclepius You may find the name of Asclepius spelled Asculapius or Aesculapius (in Latin) and Asklepios (also, in Greek).
Shrines of Asclepius The best known of the roughly 200 Greek shrines and temples of Asclepius were at Epidaurus, Cos, and Pergamum. These were places of healing with sanatoria, dream therapy, snakes, regimes of diet and exercise, and baths. The name of such a shrine to Asclepius is asclepieion/asklepieion (pl. asclepieia). Hippocrates is thought to have studied at Cos and Galen at Pergamum.
http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/asclepius/a/Asclepius.htm
Dreamhealing
The history of dreams is longer than that of humanity itself. Science now tells us that dream may reflect a fundamental aspect of mammalian memory processing. Crucial information acquired during the waking state may be reprocessed during sleep. Humans have always sought to understand the meaning of dreams, and indeed science verifies that they are meaningful. Throughout the centuries there have been many approaches to the dream. Some of these approaches focused on the individual, others on society at large.
The shamanic practice of travelling in dreamtime through non-ordinary states of consciousness is perhaps our oldest lore about dreamlife. Through their dream journeys, shamans garnered the personal power and knowledge to help and heal the members of their societies. The ancient Egyptians believed that dreams possessed oracular power. In the Bible, for example, Joseph elucidates Pharoah's dreams and averts seven years of famine. Possibly the first recorded "dreamwork" was known as Egyptian "temple sleep," in which the participants entered a trance state. Hypnotic in nature, it probably was the prototype of practices re-iterated in Greece in the Asklepian dream healing temples.
Modern dreamwork employs various techniques, but trance is common to all the experiential methods. Mostly "natural trance" is employed rather than formal induction. Natural trance is induced simply by focusing inward, taking a few deep breaths, and relaxing the body. Modern dreamwork draws together these two threads of our heritage (dream and trance) in the relationship between therapist and client. This type of work creates a co-consciousness of the dreamworld shared by both participants. In the early 1900s, Freud proposed that dreams were the "royal road" to the unconscious. He rediscovered an ancient truth known to many cultures who valued dreams as inspirational, curative, or alternative realities. Together, therapist and client create a shared reality, an altered state of consciousness, using the dream as a doorway to enter on a journey into the unknown depths of the imagination.
Allan Hobson of Harvard Medical School had maintained for years that dreams were just responses to random nerve firings in the primitive brain, without purpose or meaning. He has recently revised his theories, acknowledging the deep psychological significance of dreams. The sense or plot of dream results from order that is imposed on the chaos of neural signals, according to Hobson's current view. "That order is a function of our own personal view of the world, our remote memories." In other words, he is saying, the individual's emotional vocabulary could be relevant to dreams, and that brain stem activation may simply function to switch from one dream episode to another. Jonathan Winson (SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, Nov. 1990) has suggested that theta rhythm "reflected a neural process whereby information essential to the survival of a species--gathered during the day--was reprocessed into memory during REM sleep."
Theta rhythm has been linked to spatial memory and survival behavior that is not genetically encoded, a response to changing environmental information. Theta is also sometimes associated with meditation states and the regeneration of body tissue. Today our culture is learning more and more respect for the nightly dramas that are so much a part of the fabric of our lives. This has not always been the case. Over the centuries the dream has been feared and maligned, ignored or distorted. Some have dreaded its portentous message, while others refused the notions it contained any meaning at all.
Dreams present us with a seemingly chaotic jumble of imagery which all agree is difficult to grasp with the rational mind. In primitive times, people took it for granted that dreams were related to the world of the supernatural beings in which they believed. Dreams served a special service: they predicted the future. As humans evolved out of their more intuitive-instinctual relationship with nature and became more rationally-oriented, dreams came to be interpreted in many ways.
The phenomena always remains the same, but theories come and theories go. The extraordinary variations in the concept of dreams and in the impressions they produced on the dreamer made it difficult to formulate a coherent conception of them. The value and reliability of information processed as dreams has gone through as many changes as our culture. To Aristotle, arguably the grandfather of logical thought, the dream constituted a problem of psychology. He alleged that the dream is of daemonic origin, not god-sent.
The ancient Greeks believed that nature is daemonic, not divine; that is to say, the dream is not a supernatural revelation, but is subject to the laws of the human spirit, which of course has a kinship with the divine. The dream is defined as the psychic activity of the sleeper, inasmuch as he is asleep. Aristotle knew that a dream converts the slightest sensation perceived in sleep into intense sensations.
The dream exaggerates and distorts. Nevertheless, he concluded that dreams might easily betray to the physician the first indications of an incipient physical change which had escaped observation by daytime consciousness. We shut our focus on the inner world of visions, hunches, etc. because we have to tune ourselves into the physical world. In that action we filter out much valuable input.
Earlier Greeks realized the inherent healing power within dreams and deified this force as the Olympian god, Apollo, and his son the healer Asklepios (known later in Rome as Aesculapius). When the potions and practices of medicine failed, one sought healing in the sacred dream. There were many dream temples throughout the countryside devoted to this very mission. Here one could end one's pilgrimage with purifications in the sacred spring in hopes that the god Asklepios would visit on his nightly sojourn. Priests attended these temples and the worshippers, but never interfered with the pure healing energy of the god by offering their own rational interpretations.
This ancient approach to the dream grounds modern non-interpretive, experiential dreamwork in a rich cultural heritage. Because they have an archetypal quality, these images emerge again and again through the centuries and their dynamic is as relevant for us today as it ever was. There is an archetypal timeless quality, something which transcends both space and time, to both dreams and dreamhealing. None of this means that there is no value in dream analysis or interpretation, but the dream's power is not limited to that. It is the ego, not the larger self, which forms and desires interpretation to give "meaning" to a dream. On the other hand, the meaning of dreams is inherent in the experience, much like the purpose of being IS being.
There are many ways the dream symbols help us gain conscious self-knowledge. However, in the last century perhaps too much emphasis was put on the rational side. So today, a lot of people who are interested in growth and healing, emphasize feeling and the heart over the head. They seem to wish to reject anything mental or especially intellectual. Again, this seems one-sided. The mind has its rightful place as an ally. It takes heart and mind to be whole. The proper role of the rational mind in dreamhealing is to surrender to the autonomous flow of the stream of consciousness, and to suspend any analysis of dream material until after the dreamjourney has revealed its unique qualities. After that, the mind may integrate the gut reactions with "what it knows."
It matters little if we take the Freudian approach and reduce most of the dream material to repressed sexuality and instinct, or grasp a broader concept of our movement toward the higher self, as the Jungians allege. We can even form Gestalt relationships with various dream aspects and become involved with our myriad of inner parts. There are several systems for accessing a feeling-identification with dream images, but they rarely lead to whole healing of the psyche and body. Some people feel they really "get" a dream when they experience the moment of "a-ha" or integration. The problem here is that stops the process of relating to the dream image by substituting some sort of intellectual inner "click" which may or may not be "right."
Dreams have many levels of reality, so no single interpretation can encompass that. A myriad of interpretations contain useful self-knowledge. Even a single dream can continue to unfold over the years since it contains an unfathomable depth of information. Beyond the symbols, beyond the "click," beyond "a-ha" is a healing state. It is a gift from your dream in the form of a healing state--a place which is without dialogue, which is about vision, which is about healing inside, and which is beyond mere psychological understanding. This is Mystery. So much of our time and energy is invested in building up models allowing us to formulate our ego view of the world of relationships and preferences.
Where the most profound healing comes in is in the holistic (body/mind) experience of the dream. When you re-enter a dream in therapy, both the conscious mind and subconscious cooperate in a new and wonderful way that you may never have experienced before. Unpleasant seeming dream imagery often transforms into a peaceful, healing place, if you allow the imagery to take your consciousness down into deeper, less structured awareness. The healing comes from simply "being there." This is a far cry from the scientific understanding of dreams.
However, Freud was not wrong when he postulated that the dream was the result of the conflict or cooperation of psychic forces. The process that underlies dreams, when studied, can elucidate the nature of these psychic forces. One of the main focuses in modern dreamhealing is on actualizing the healing power within dreams and other visionary consciousness states. There are many things you can do with a dream. One popular pastime now is the development of lucid dreaming, where you become conscious within the dream and direct your activities as in waking life. This may produce an increased sense of personal power and control.
However, there is a chance that this is an invasive intrusion on natural corrective forces by an over-active ego. The point of dreamwork is not to take the ego into the dreamworld. We need to bring the dream images into our conscious awareness and waking life. Since the dream state arises from beyond the ego, anything can happen, and natural laws of physical reality do not apply. Unbounded by any physical limits and laws, dream realities broaden awareness so that we can begin to experience our full range of humanness. Virtually anything is possible in the dream reality -- death, rebirth, time travel, out-of-body journeys, enhanced physical or mental powers, even extraordinary effects like healing and balancing. Yet, there is a voice in most of us that wants to discount the dream experience as a less important, inconsequential reality than our waking experience.
For example, a parent tells a child, "Go back to sleep; it was only a dream!", after the child has just awakened from a terrifying dream and still experiences the physiological consequences, which are very real. Disregarding the nightmare is one way to ignore the power of the dream as if it did not have impact or validity in the conscious awareness and experience of the child. The truth is that the experience of a nightmare is just as threatening and dreadful as any waking situation that evokes extreme fear and bodily contraction. In fact, the nightmare may usher in an even stiffer fright because it may be drawing on the fantastic and other-worldly aspects of the psyche. What is important to observe is that, in both cases, the fear experience causes bodily feelings and reactions.
Our natural reaction to a fearful situation like a nightmare is to turn away and avoid the experience entirely. This avoidance (a version of "out of sight, out of mind") sets our system off-balance and triggers the fight/flight syndrome. To re-establish the balance and harmony, it is usually necessary to stop avoiding the fear and turn around and move toward it, accepting it and owning it as a valid part of our reality. The monsters of our dreams are only alienated parts of ourselves, vying for attention. If we can embrace the fear, we no longer need to run away, and we can experience the peace that comes from having "let go" of the fear. Pain, either physical or emotional, is a marker that indicates where healing is needed within us; but we usually surround our pain with fear to protect us from experiencing it.
The fear is usually a base for our anger, or any of the other numerous denial and avoidance strategies we use. The nightmare makes us a gift of the fear and its underlying pain. It leads us to the inner places that need healing, and provides the healing as we experience expansion within of our "stuck", blocked, lifeless parts. At the heart of our approach is the notion that because dreams affect us on our primary experience level -- the body -- and can stir intense multi-sensual feelings and reactions in us, dreams can be used to enter a bodily place of dis-ease and restore the natural flow and balance to that place. In honoring the dream we draw from the ancient healing tradition of the past, and the best of modern psychotherapeutic technique.
The ancient word for therapy, therapeuin, originally meant "service to the gods." In this case therapy facilitates the healing process of the Greek god Asklepios. He was god of both dreams and healing. The content of the dreams -- the characters, the inanimate objects, the activities, the feelings, the colors -- can all be doorways into the infinite inner territory of our myriad inner selves. They are states of consciousness that facilitate healing on mental, physical and spiritual levels. If we can go deeply into the experience of a dream such as the nightmare, for example, we can bring a healing to the dis-ease that caused the nightmare.
Dreams and nightmares are a unique way to move our awareness into our inner feelings and bodily places of flow and blockage. With a remembered dream, we already have in our grasp a good start at an inner resolution of the process. Borrowing from C.G. Jung, we propose the idea that dream symbols arise from the psychic energies that create us and bind us together with all other life forces, the collective unconscious.
However, moving beyond analytical and interpretive methods of treating dreams, it is possible for us to experience directly the timeless and dimensionless primal force that creates dreams. To do so we have to use dreamhealing to travel beyond the symbols to their very source. We call these experiences dream journeys, in the old shamanic sense. The therapist functions as a guide to take the client deeper than the surface symbolism. Symbols are merely a means of capturing our attention -- of attracting, appeasing, or scarring our ego's conscious waking awareness.
Any illness or disease, as the name itself suggests, has at its source a state of dis-ease or out-of-balance energies. Like the shamans of old, Jung noted that the onset of any serious disease was reflected in dreamlife. In addition to leading to the source of our dis-ease, dreams and nightmares also have within them the potential for expansive experiences which can heal and bring us back to a state of balance and health. They are both diagnostic and prescriptive, in that sense. They reveal both problem and solution, if we only learn how to attend to their clarion call. On the surface and analytical level, dream symbols usually relate to the ego's particular concerns.
Some "big dreams" carry a more mysterious, archetypal or collective value. However, each symbol is actually of equal value. They are doorways opening into the formless, chaotic energy underneath it which gave rise to it. Interpreting the symbol gives us a more detailed description and picture of the doorway, but does not give us the experience of going beyond that doorway and exploring experientially what is on the other side over the threshold in those primal energies.
Dreamhealing centers around the idea that by going into and then past the experience of the symbols, we can experience the consciousness that created them. This creative state is a source of healing and re-creation. Some symbols offer access to memories of the past, some reveal future events, others can lead us to our inner healer -- the part of us that can provide the energy we need to restore balance and harmony within ourselves.
Much work has been done lately with imagery and healing, usually importing symbols or images into the client's visualization. The healing tale or teaching tale is used in both spiritual and secular counseling. The "imported metaphor" is part of the stock-in-trade repertoire of Ericksonian hypnosis. The results are inherently stronger when the individual produces their own imagery while the therapist unobtrusively helps the client avoid the pitfalls of self-indulgent fantasy.
The client is guided to stick with the metaphors that arise from within to describe what his state of being and experience is like. You can experiment with this yourself, simply by asking yourself a few simple questions: What would you like to have happen? When it isn't happening, how do you know its not? And where do you feel that in your body? And what's it like? By this means you create your own metaphor for your personal experience, whether it comes from dreamlife or some problem, or a childhood trauma.
The therapist functions solely as a guide to the inner realms, since it is familiar territory to the practitioner. We can use the well-known map analogy, noting that the map can only be a partial representation or symbol of the actual terrain. For example, looking at any map of the countryside we can see lines that mark rivers, hills, and other topological features; however, to walk through an actual old growth forest with a compass, climb the hills and pitch camp under the protective canopy of the trees, and listen to one of those rivers imprints a much deeper impression of the forest than the map ever could. It is a full experience of what is behind the map.
Trying to experience the terrain through the map is like interpreting the symbol, while the experience of going into and beyond the symbols is as ever-changing and alive as an excursion deep into the forest and the mysteries of nature. Another example of the distinction is the difference between reading a recipe and tasting the dish. The savor certainly isn't the same.
A dream guide, like a river guide, takes the person through the turbulent (chaotic) waters of the psyche, past the rocks and boulders of their fear, to find the safe passage where the river flows easily into the calm beyond the rapids. The therapist's approach evolves in the moment to keep pace with the flow of the client's process deep in the heart of the dream. Consequently, the client has an active part in the healing process and learns psychological self-care. Flowing with the experience through the progression of multi-sensory images provides the pathway to healing. The experience of finding an inner healing state is invaluable, as it teaches firsthand that the healer is within.
The outer healers are only representations or mirrors of what is already inside. The healing process and myth are deeply engrained in our lives, as individuals and societies. Each culture evolves its own variations on health and disease, and those able to aid in recovery from physical and mental distress. The problem with the old western healing paradigm is that the perception is that healing comes from without. In our culture now we are developing many alternatives to mechanistic medical and psychological practices. One of those alternatives is awareness of personal mythology. Jung suggested that each individual life is based on a particular myth. By discovering that myth, we can live it consciously and adapt ourselves to our destiny, thus harmonizing inner and outer experience, and allowing our true individuality to emerge.
But mythic living doesn't necessarily mean living one myth, since the patterns of all god/dess forms are within us. The myth does not provide us with a blueprint for daily living concerning what we should or ought to do. Instead, it helps us in the process of discovering who we are, where we come from, and where we are going. They spark our sense of discovery and urge us to question and go deeper. There is a chaotic assortment of mythical images within each of us, but sometimes certain themes emerge and assert their priority on a life.
So, an individual life seems to strongly parallel a specific myth theme. One way this can manifest is through an uncanny series of synchronistic events, wherein a particular myth becomes the paradigmatic model of a life. The quest for actualization of this myth motivates a variation on the age-old journey of the hero. What's New with My Subject? In ancient Greece, if you wanted to ensure success in some undertaking you invoked the god who oversaw your particular endeavor with prayers and offerings.
As stated before, Asklepios was the Greek god of healing and dream. He was the son of Apollo and the mortal Coronis who was slain by Apollo for infidelity before the child was born. Taken prematurely from his mother, Asklepios was raised by the centaur Chiron, who was a master of the healing arts. Asklepios was an able student who soon surpassed his teacher and incurred both the wrath and blessings of the various gods and goddesses. To protect him from these whims, Zeus immortalized him as the Divine Healer. An entire healing tradition developed in ancient Greece based on this myth. The medical physicians became known as Asklepiads; however, the Asklepian dream healing temple was the place to go if their medicines and treatments failed.
At the Asklepian temple, the god himself visited mortals in their dreams to bring Divine healing. At the temple, Asklepian priests oversaw the rites and procedures which brought the sick mortal into direct contact with the god. These temples were located at great distances from the cities and populated areas in Greece so that to reach one a pilgrimage was necessary. Having arrived at the temple, one was received by the temple priests who began the sometimes lengthy process of determining whether or not the god had summoned one for healing. The priests did have a therapeutic function in the temple, but they were not in any way therapists, nor did they interpret any of the supplicant's dreams.
The priests determined whether or not one had been summoned by Asklepios by making discreet inquiries about the god's appearance in their dreamlife. An appearance by the god signified that one had indeed been invited and was ready to enter the temple. The form which Asklepios assumed in dreams was either a snake, or less commonly a dog (or wolf). The next steps of bodily and mind purification were begun. Another interview with a priest was held because it was recognized that unless a person was conscious and accepting of his present life condition he could not expect a healing from the god. After the interview, the patient's body went through cleansing in the springs or streams around which the temples were always constructed. And at last, the supplicant was prepared to approach the god.
Since Asklepios visited the sick in their dreams, a special chamber, called the abaton (a Greek word meaning "a place not to be entered into uninvited"), was provided where the person would remain alone and asleep. The couch inside where the patient lay was known as the kline. This period of waiting for the god was called the incubation. After dreaming the patient was interviewed by the priests who, without interpreting the dream, would instruct the patient as to whether or not the god had brought the healing. Sometimes many sessions in the abaton on the kline were necessary to come into contact with the god and the sick did not leave the temple until they were healed. As far as interpreting the dream, the belief was that the experience of the dream and not an interpretation was how the healing came to the sick.
The healing was accomplished through the direct intervention of the god himself with the patient's soul through the dream. As a final part of the healing process, a fee was paid to the temple priests as an offering for the ongoing maintenance and work of the Temple. It was said that a failure to do so would result in a relapse of the dis-eased condition. Testimonies were inscribed on the temple walls attesting to the miraculous and powerful healing which went on in the temples, including cures for afflictions like blindness.
In this way the Asklepian dreamhealing went on for hundreds of years. This tradition is continued in dreamhealing. The eight phases of dreamhealing reflect an archetypal healing process. This healing myth is reiterated in the techniques ("ceremonies") of many disciplines. These steps form the real sequence of inner healing no matter what the outer form, including traditional medical practice. These phases include: 1) the pilgrimage; 2) the confession; 3) purification; 4) the offering; 5) dream quest; 6) dreamhealing; 7) work on dreams; 8) re-entry or integration. The entire process is contingent on a healing sanctuary, whether that refuge can be found without or within.
The history of dreams is longer than that of humanity itself. Science now tells us that dream may reflect a fundamental aspect of mammalian memory processing. Crucial information acquired during the waking state may be reprocessed during sleep. Humans have always sought to understand the meaning of dreams, and indeed science verifies that they are meaningful. Throughout the centuries there have been many approaches to the dream. Some of these approaches focused on the individual, others on society at large.
The shamanic practice of travelling in dreamtime through non-ordinary states of consciousness is perhaps our oldest lore about dreamlife. Through their dream journeys, shamans garnered the personal power and knowledge to help and heal the members of their societies. The ancient Egyptians believed that dreams possessed oracular power. In the Bible, for example, Joseph elucidates Pharoah's dreams and averts seven years of famine. Possibly the first recorded "dreamwork" was known as Egyptian "temple sleep," in which the participants entered a trance state. Hypnotic in nature, it probably was the prototype of practices re-iterated in Greece in the Asklepian dream healing temples.
Modern dreamwork employs various techniques, but trance is common to all the experiential methods. Mostly "natural trance" is employed rather than formal induction. Natural trance is induced simply by focusing inward, taking a few deep breaths, and relaxing the body. Modern dreamwork draws together these two threads of our heritage (dream and trance) in the relationship between therapist and client. This type of work creates a co-consciousness of the dreamworld shared by both participants. In the early 1900s, Freud proposed that dreams were the "royal road" to the unconscious. He rediscovered an ancient truth known to many cultures who valued dreams as inspirational, curative, or alternative realities. Together, therapist and client create a shared reality, an altered state of consciousness, using the dream as a doorway to enter on a journey into the unknown depths of the imagination.
Allan Hobson of Harvard Medical School had maintained for years that dreams were just responses to random nerve firings in the primitive brain, without purpose or meaning. He has recently revised his theories, acknowledging the deep psychological significance of dreams. The sense or plot of dream results from order that is imposed on the chaos of neural signals, according to Hobson's current view. "That order is a function of our own personal view of the world, our remote memories." In other words, he is saying, the individual's emotional vocabulary could be relevant to dreams, and that brain stem activation may simply function to switch from one dream episode to another. Jonathan Winson (SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, Nov. 1990) has suggested that theta rhythm "reflected a neural process whereby information essential to the survival of a species--gathered during the day--was reprocessed into memory during REM sleep."
Theta rhythm has been linked to spatial memory and survival behavior that is not genetically encoded, a response to changing environmental information. Theta is also sometimes associated with meditation states and the regeneration of body tissue. Today our culture is learning more and more respect for the nightly dramas that are so much a part of the fabric of our lives. This has not always been the case. Over the centuries the dream has been feared and maligned, ignored or distorted. Some have dreaded its portentous message, while others refused the notions it contained any meaning at all.
Dreams present us with a seemingly chaotic jumble of imagery which all agree is difficult to grasp with the rational mind. In primitive times, people took it for granted that dreams were related to the world of the supernatural beings in which they believed. Dreams served a special service: they predicted the future. As humans evolved out of their more intuitive-instinctual relationship with nature and became more rationally-oriented, dreams came to be interpreted in many ways.
The phenomena always remains the same, but theories come and theories go. The extraordinary variations in the concept of dreams and in the impressions they produced on the dreamer made it difficult to formulate a coherent conception of them. The value and reliability of information processed as dreams has gone through as many changes as our culture. To Aristotle, arguably the grandfather of logical thought, the dream constituted a problem of psychology. He alleged that the dream is of daemonic origin, not god-sent.
The ancient Greeks believed that nature is daemonic, not divine; that is to say, the dream is not a supernatural revelation, but is subject to the laws of the human spirit, which of course has a kinship with the divine. The dream is defined as the psychic activity of the sleeper, inasmuch as he is asleep. Aristotle knew that a dream converts the slightest sensation perceived in sleep into intense sensations.
The dream exaggerates and distorts. Nevertheless, he concluded that dreams might easily betray to the physician the first indications of an incipient physical change which had escaped observation by daytime consciousness. We shut our focus on the inner world of visions, hunches, etc. because we have to tune ourselves into the physical world. In that action we filter out much valuable input.
Earlier Greeks realized the inherent healing power within dreams and deified this force as the Olympian god, Apollo, and his son the healer Asklepios (known later in Rome as Aesculapius). When the potions and practices of medicine failed, one sought healing in the sacred dream. There were many dream temples throughout the countryside devoted to this very mission. Here one could end one's pilgrimage with purifications in the sacred spring in hopes that the god Asklepios would visit on his nightly sojourn. Priests attended these temples and the worshippers, but never interfered with the pure healing energy of the god by offering their own rational interpretations.
This ancient approach to the dream grounds modern non-interpretive, experiential dreamwork in a rich cultural heritage. Because they have an archetypal quality, these images emerge again and again through the centuries and their dynamic is as relevant for us today as it ever was. There is an archetypal timeless quality, something which transcends both space and time, to both dreams and dreamhealing. None of this means that there is no value in dream analysis or interpretation, but the dream's power is not limited to that. It is the ego, not the larger self, which forms and desires interpretation to give "meaning" to a dream. On the other hand, the meaning of dreams is inherent in the experience, much like the purpose of being IS being.
There are many ways the dream symbols help us gain conscious self-knowledge. However, in the last century perhaps too much emphasis was put on the rational side. So today, a lot of people who are interested in growth and healing, emphasize feeling and the heart over the head. They seem to wish to reject anything mental or especially intellectual. Again, this seems one-sided. The mind has its rightful place as an ally. It takes heart and mind to be whole. The proper role of the rational mind in dreamhealing is to surrender to the autonomous flow of the stream of consciousness, and to suspend any analysis of dream material until after the dreamjourney has revealed its unique qualities. After that, the mind may integrate the gut reactions with "what it knows."
It matters little if we take the Freudian approach and reduce most of the dream material to repressed sexuality and instinct, or grasp a broader concept of our movement toward the higher self, as the Jungians allege. We can even form Gestalt relationships with various dream aspects and become involved with our myriad of inner parts. There are several systems for accessing a feeling-identification with dream images, but they rarely lead to whole healing of the psyche and body. Some people feel they really "get" a dream when they experience the moment of "a-ha" or integration. The problem here is that stops the process of relating to the dream image by substituting some sort of intellectual inner "click" which may or may not be "right."
Dreams have many levels of reality, so no single interpretation can encompass that. A myriad of interpretations contain useful self-knowledge. Even a single dream can continue to unfold over the years since it contains an unfathomable depth of information. Beyond the symbols, beyond the "click," beyond "a-ha" is a healing state. It is a gift from your dream in the form of a healing state--a place which is without dialogue, which is about vision, which is about healing inside, and which is beyond mere psychological understanding. This is Mystery. So much of our time and energy is invested in building up models allowing us to formulate our ego view of the world of relationships and preferences.
Where the most profound healing comes in is in the holistic (body/mind) experience of the dream. When you re-enter a dream in therapy, both the conscious mind and subconscious cooperate in a new and wonderful way that you may never have experienced before. Unpleasant seeming dream imagery often transforms into a peaceful, healing place, if you allow the imagery to take your consciousness down into deeper, less structured awareness. The healing comes from simply "being there." This is a far cry from the scientific understanding of dreams.
However, Freud was not wrong when he postulated that the dream was the result of the conflict or cooperation of psychic forces. The process that underlies dreams, when studied, can elucidate the nature of these psychic forces. One of the main focuses in modern dreamhealing is on actualizing the healing power within dreams and other visionary consciousness states. There are many things you can do with a dream. One popular pastime now is the development of lucid dreaming, where you become conscious within the dream and direct your activities as in waking life. This may produce an increased sense of personal power and control.
However, there is a chance that this is an invasive intrusion on natural corrective forces by an over-active ego. The point of dreamwork is not to take the ego into the dreamworld. We need to bring the dream images into our conscious awareness and waking life. Since the dream state arises from beyond the ego, anything can happen, and natural laws of physical reality do not apply. Unbounded by any physical limits and laws, dream realities broaden awareness so that we can begin to experience our full range of humanness. Virtually anything is possible in the dream reality -- death, rebirth, time travel, out-of-body journeys, enhanced physical or mental powers, even extraordinary effects like healing and balancing. Yet, there is a voice in most of us that wants to discount the dream experience as a less important, inconsequential reality than our waking experience.
For example, a parent tells a child, "Go back to sleep; it was only a dream!", after the child has just awakened from a terrifying dream and still experiences the physiological consequences, which are very real. Disregarding the nightmare is one way to ignore the power of the dream as if it did not have impact or validity in the conscious awareness and experience of the child. The truth is that the experience of a nightmare is just as threatening and dreadful as any waking situation that evokes extreme fear and bodily contraction. In fact, the nightmare may usher in an even stiffer fright because it may be drawing on the fantastic and other-worldly aspects of the psyche. What is important to observe is that, in both cases, the fear experience causes bodily feelings and reactions.
Our natural reaction to a fearful situation like a nightmare is to turn away and avoid the experience entirely. This avoidance (a version of "out of sight, out of mind") sets our system off-balance and triggers the fight/flight syndrome. To re-establish the balance and harmony, it is usually necessary to stop avoiding the fear and turn around and move toward it, accepting it and owning it as a valid part of our reality. The monsters of our dreams are only alienated parts of ourselves, vying for attention. If we can embrace the fear, we no longer need to run away, and we can experience the peace that comes from having "let go" of the fear. Pain, either physical or emotional, is a marker that indicates where healing is needed within us; but we usually surround our pain with fear to protect us from experiencing it.
The fear is usually a base for our anger, or any of the other numerous denial and avoidance strategies we use. The nightmare makes us a gift of the fear and its underlying pain. It leads us to the inner places that need healing, and provides the healing as we experience expansion within of our "stuck", blocked, lifeless parts. At the heart of our approach is the notion that because dreams affect us on our primary experience level -- the body -- and can stir intense multi-sensual feelings and reactions in us, dreams can be used to enter a bodily place of dis-ease and restore the natural flow and balance to that place. In honoring the dream we draw from the ancient healing tradition of the past, and the best of modern psychotherapeutic technique.
The ancient word for therapy, therapeuin, originally meant "service to the gods." In this case therapy facilitates the healing process of the Greek god Asklepios. He was god of both dreams and healing. The content of the dreams -- the characters, the inanimate objects, the activities, the feelings, the colors -- can all be doorways into the infinite inner territory of our myriad inner selves. They are states of consciousness that facilitate healing on mental, physical and spiritual levels. If we can go deeply into the experience of a dream such as the nightmare, for example, we can bring a healing to the dis-ease that caused the nightmare.
Dreams and nightmares are a unique way to move our awareness into our inner feelings and bodily places of flow and blockage. With a remembered dream, we already have in our grasp a good start at an inner resolution of the process. Borrowing from C.G. Jung, we propose the idea that dream symbols arise from the psychic energies that create us and bind us together with all other life forces, the collective unconscious.
However, moving beyond analytical and interpretive methods of treating dreams, it is possible for us to experience directly the timeless and dimensionless primal force that creates dreams. To do so we have to use dreamhealing to travel beyond the symbols to their very source. We call these experiences dream journeys, in the old shamanic sense. The therapist functions as a guide to take the client deeper than the surface symbolism. Symbols are merely a means of capturing our attention -- of attracting, appeasing, or scarring our ego's conscious waking awareness.
Any illness or disease, as the name itself suggests, has at its source a state of dis-ease or out-of-balance energies. Like the shamans of old, Jung noted that the onset of any serious disease was reflected in dreamlife. In addition to leading to the source of our dis-ease, dreams and nightmares also have within them the potential for expansive experiences which can heal and bring us back to a state of balance and health. They are both diagnostic and prescriptive, in that sense. They reveal both problem and solution, if we only learn how to attend to their clarion call. On the surface and analytical level, dream symbols usually relate to the ego's particular concerns.
Some "big dreams" carry a more mysterious, archetypal or collective value. However, each symbol is actually of equal value. They are doorways opening into the formless, chaotic energy underneath it which gave rise to it. Interpreting the symbol gives us a more detailed description and picture of the doorway, but does not give us the experience of going beyond that doorway and exploring experientially what is on the other side over the threshold in those primal energies.
Dreamhealing centers around the idea that by going into and then past the experience of the symbols, we can experience the consciousness that created them. This creative state is a source of healing and re-creation. Some symbols offer access to memories of the past, some reveal future events, others can lead us to our inner healer -- the part of us that can provide the energy we need to restore balance and harmony within ourselves.
Much work has been done lately with imagery and healing, usually importing symbols or images into the client's visualization. The healing tale or teaching tale is used in both spiritual and secular counseling. The "imported metaphor" is part of the stock-in-trade repertoire of Ericksonian hypnosis. The results are inherently stronger when the individual produces their own imagery while the therapist unobtrusively helps the client avoid the pitfalls of self-indulgent fantasy.
The client is guided to stick with the metaphors that arise from within to describe what his state of being and experience is like. You can experiment with this yourself, simply by asking yourself a few simple questions: What would you like to have happen? When it isn't happening, how do you know its not? And where do you feel that in your body? And what's it like? By this means you create your own metaphor for your personal experience, whether it comes from dreamlife or some problem, or a childhood trauma.
The therapist functions solely as a guide to the inner realms, since it is familiar territory to the practitioner. We can use the well-known map analogy, noting that the map can only be a partial representation or symbol of the actual terrain. For example, looking at any map of the countryside we can see lines that mark rivers, hills, and other topological features; however, to walk through an actual old growth forest with a compass, climb the hills and pitch camp under the protective canopy of the trees, and listen to one of those rivers imprints a much deeper impression of the forest than the map ever could. It is a full experience of what is behind the map.
Trying to experience the terrain through the map is like interpreting the symbol, while the experience of going into and beyond the symbols is as ever-changing and alive as an excursion deep into the forest and the mysteries of nature. Another example of the distinction is the difference between reading a recipe and tasting the dish. The savor certainly isn't the same.
A dream guide, like a river guide, takes the person through the turbulent (chaotic) waters of the psyche, past the rocks and boulders of their fear, to find the safe passage where the river flows easily into the calm beyond the rapids. The therapist's approach evolves in the moment to keep pace with the flow of the client's process deep in the heart of the dream. Consequently, the client has an active part in the healing process and learns psychological self-care. Flowing with the experience through the progression of multi-sensory images provides the pathway to healing. The experience of finding an inner healing state is invaluable, as it teaches firsthand that the healer is within.
The outer healers are only representations or mirrors of what is already inside. The healing process and myth are deeply engrained in our lives, as individuals and societies. Each culture evolves its own variations on health and disease, and those able to aid in recovery from physical and mental distress. The problem with the old western healing paradigm is that the perception is that healing comes from without. In our culture now we are developing many alternatives to mechanistic medical and psychological practices. One of those alternatives is awareness of personal mythology. Jung suggested that each individual life is based on a particular myth. By discovering that myth, we can live it consciously and adapt ourselves to our destiny, thus harmonizing inner and outer experience, and allowing our true individuality to emerge.
But mythic living doesn't necessarily mean living one myth, since the patterns of all god/dess forms are within us. The myth does not provide us with a blueprint for daily living concerning what we should or ought to do. Instead, it helps us in the process of discovering who we are, where we come from, and where we are going. They spark our sense of discovery and urge us to question and go deeper. There is a chaotic assortment of mythical images within each of us, but sometimes certain themes emerge and assert their priority on a life.
So, an individual life seems to strongly parallel a specific myth theme. One way this can manifest is through an uncanny series of synchronistic events, wherein a particular myth becomes the paradigmatic model of a life. The quest for actualization of this myth motivates a variation on the age-old journey of the hero. What's New with My Subject? In ancient Greece, if you wanted to ensure success in some undertaking you invoked the god who oversaw your particular endeavor with prayers and offerings.
As stated before, Asklepios was the Greek god of healing and dream. He was the son of Apollo and the mortal Coronis who was slain by Apollo for infidelity before the child was born. Taken prematurely from his mother, Asklepios was raised by the centaur Chiron, who was a master of the healing arts. Asklepios was an able student who soon surpassed his teacher and incurred both the wrath and blessings of the various gods and goddesses. To protect him from these whims, Zeus immortalized him as the Divine Healer. An entire healing tradition developed in ancient Greece based on this myth. The medical physicians became known as Asklepiads; however, the Asklepian dream healing temple was the place to go if their medicines and treatments failed.
At the Asklepian temple, the god himself visited mortals in their dreams to bring Divine healing. At the temple, Asklepian priests oversaw the rites and procedures which brought the sick mortal into direct contact with the god. These temples were located at great distances from the cities and populated areas in Greece so that to reach one a pilgrimage was necessary. Having arrived at the temple, one was received by the temple priests who began the sometimes lengthy process of determining whether or not the god had summoned one for healing. The priests did have a therapeutic function in the temple, but they were not in any way therapists, nor did they interpret any of the supplicant's dreams.
The priests determined whether or not one had been summoned by Asklepios by making discreet inquiries about the god's appearance in their dreamlife. An appearance by the god signified that one had indeed been invited and was ready to enter the temple. The form which Asklepios assumed in dreams was either a snake, or less commonly a dog (or wolf). The next steps of bodily and mind purification were begun. Another interview with a priest was held because it was recognized that unless a person was conscious and accepting of his present life condition he could not expect a healing from the god. After the interview, the patient's body went through cleansing in the springs or streams around which the temples were always constructed. And at last, the supplicant was prepared to approach the god.
Since Asklepios visited the sick in their dreams, a special chamber, called the abaton (a Greek word meaning "a place not to be entered into uninvited"), was provided where the person would remain alone and asleep. The couch inside where the patient lay was known as the kline. This period of waiting for the god was called the incubation. After dreaming the patient was interviewed by the priests who, without interpreting the dream, would instruct the patient as to whether or not the god had brought the healing. Sometimes many sessions in the abaton on the kline were necessary to come into contact with the god and the sick did not leave the temple until they were healed. As far as interpreting the dream, the belief was that the experience of the dream and not an interpretation was how the healing came to the sick.
The healing was accomplished through the direct intervention of the god himself with the patient's soul through the dream. As a final part of the healing process, a fee was paid to the temple priests as an offering for the ongoing maintenance and work of the Temple. It was said that a failure to do so would result in a relapse of the dis-eased condition. Testimonies were inscribed on the temple walls attesting to the miraculous and powerful healing which went on in the temples, including cures for afflictions like blindness.
In this way the Asklepian dreamhealing went on for hundreds of years. This tradition is continued in dreamhealing. The eight phases of dreamhealing reflect an archetypal healing process. This healing myth is reiterated in the techniques ("ceremonies") of many disciplines. These steps form the real sequence of inner healing no matter what the outer form, including traditional medical practice. These phases include: 1) the pilgrimage; 2) the confession; 3) purification; 4) the offering; 5) dream quest; 6) dreamhealing; 7) work on dreams; 8) re-entry or integration. The entire process is contingent on a healing sanctuary, whether that refuge can be found without or within.
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FAIR USE NOTICE
This site may contains some copyrighted material which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. This constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law, in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.