What Was This About?

Stephanie Rew

*

My words will either attract a strong mind or offend a weak one.

— Anne Sexton

*

At the same time, we are standing in the shadow cast by a future, of which we still know nothing, but which is already somehow anticipated by the unconscious.

So if the child is going to leave this world in the relatively near future, it is conceivable the unconscious has already in some way anticipated death.

It is a question that we ask before we die: “Now what was this really all about?”

— Jung

*

The Classical and Renaissance solution to identification with one god, i.e., the monotheistic affliction, was not resolved in syncretism, or “getting it all together” by worshipping all the gods, as if standing in a circle and bowing to each in turn.

This keeps the old “I” in the center, apportioning attention according to the principle of equity (Apollo? Saturn and his scales? Athene and justice? …). A pantheon is a Roman idea, appearing in a culture that still today gives home to the One True Universal Church (i.e., Catholic). No, the Greek and Renaissance solution to identification with any single god was the profound realization that never does one god appear alone.