Wow, Alyssa. Such a beautiful and profound post. It was also wonderful to learn more about your personal story. I can tell that it's not simply an intellectual understanding you share, but rather one that comes through your own lived experience. The archetypal theme of home has been constellated for me these past couple years, and has been "sneaking" its way into my poetry. Curiously I just read the Odyssey not that long ago. Seems timely as I begin to enter Midlife and my Uranus-Opposition. Everything you wrote really resonates with me. Thank for that.
Home is a home-coming to Self and Mystery. And, for me, more recently, I have been feeling called to connect to my Ancestors. Perhaps this belongs more to the theme of belonging.
Thanks, Chris. I appreciate your kind words. Much of my writing, even when it's being portrayed as an intellectual exploration, is often rooted in my own personal experience. I've felt that the path of personal development has led me to so many questions; how to make sense of what is happening, what psychological dynamics seem to underpin a situation, etc. In that sense, it's been a development of my own personality alongside a deepening of concepts, ideas, frameworks. It's why Jung's work resonates so deeply. I find much of my story reflected in his theories.
Having just read the Odyssey, do you sense any of those trials as closely tied to ones you're experiencing now? I found that an interesting exercise.
I think connecting with ancestors is tied to that sense of home as well, the archetypal constellation. Another viewpoint I want to touch on with home is through the mythic lens of Hestia and how nurturing the ancestral hearth is key for a place to be established as home. I think this has inner and outer components. In my experience, visiting ancestral land, reconciling ancestral themes has been really important. But it still felt like something was "missing" if the crucial inner dynamic wasn't met too.
What stuck me most and resonates until today is the katabasis scene, when Odysseus visits Hades to consult the seer on how to make his journey home. Katabasis and the underworld has always appealed to me. That scene is powerful in many respects. For me, it relates to building a living relationship with the unconsciousness, to venture into the depths of myself to seek counsel. It also relates to my current practice (which I've just begun) of ancestral reverence and cultivating a reciprocal relationship with my ancestors. Jung said something really interesting (I don't have the reference). I believe he said that the unconscious is the realm of the dead and the ancestors. What I am coming into is an understanding that dreams and the unconscious are both here and there, inner and outer, personal and collective, psychological and generational. It is not only the place where we meet ourselves, it is also where we meet others. We are ever so intertwined in each other's destiny. There is no escaping that reality.
Beautifully put. It’s paradoxical in a sense, but really in my eyes, complementary. The unconscious contains its opposite, the many layered experience of life in all its shades and colors. We may see through one lens at a time, but it is intertwined, as you said.
I want to print this out and paste it somewhere, so resonant are its words, images, depths, so needed its promise of light amid dark journeying. Thank you.
Home … I long, above all else, to be in Cornwall, caught up in its wildness, its crashing ocean, its cliffs, and to be immersed in its ancient past, its stone circles and monuments. Home is accordingly a physical, but also a soul place. And yet, I hear Nelle Morton’s words that ‘the journey is home’, and agree that it is the navigating of psychic landscapes and soul searching that provides a nomadic home, and that only when looking back, can I see that there were stopping places on the way. It is a desperately uncomfortable thought for me, but I think she may be right that home is not a destination. Home is the knapsack on the back. Images that arise are from Druidcraft tarot: the hermit, the pole star and from the wildwood tarot, the six swords for when we are not able to walk and have to be ferried for a while.
You paint such a beautiful image of Cornwall, I've never been, but I can feel it in your words. I think returning to our birthplace, exploring ancestral roots, is so very important. I've done some of that in recent years, going to Sicily where my family is from, back to where I was born in New York. Yet, I did find that there was still a longing within, even when the landscape provided a sense of healing and belonging. The inner principle had to be met along with the outer.
Thank you for these tarot images, the pole star is such an apt portrayal of what I have felt often. So much wandering in the dark, with only the cosmic-sort of light to guide me. The six of swords as the necessary journeying, but the heaviness that comes with it.
The tragedy is that I live in the Midlands, a town-contained area where I have a long ancestry, and yet feel that I belong in Cornwall and long for it. I am currently trying to decide whether I have to move, alone. Its tough. I'm interested in what you say about the inner principle having to be met.
It's reminiscent of what Marion Woodman speaks to regarding finding the symbolic/metaphorical component behind compulsive behaviors:
“I always try to grasp the metaphor at the root of an addiction. That varies. With food, it can be mother; with alcohol, spirit; with cocaine, light; with sex, union. Mother, spirit, light, union – these can be archetypal images of the soul’s search for what it needs. If we fail to understand the soul’s yearning, then we concretize and become compulsively driven toward an object that cannot satisfy the soul’s longing.”
Without that inner principle being recognize, we overly concretize, literalize the psychological impulse (somatically, behaviorally, etc). It's really helped me look at certain issues/desires/compulsions in a new way.
You mention Marion just as I've been reading her! In my dreams there is black amorphous swirling cloud and then the spider/Medusa image appears, all legs which means she can skuttle quickly, and grotesque green slug like body, with writhing spiders for hair instead of snakes. Marion writes about the death mother archetype as a medusa killing stare and that seems to be what I'm confronting, stopping me in my tracks, not allowing me any further in the labyrinth to find what I need to find. And yet, in my druidic ritual work with Hekate, I am on the deep downward pathways into underground caverns and feel that I have to keep going. The whole thing induces scary panic attack feelings that are difficult to metabolise. So, the quote you have helpfully mentioned encourages me to look again at root metaphors that are occurring in this search for a lost inner self and see if there is one that really stands out as dreams are raising several symbolic figures, terrains, and feelings. Many thanks.
I relate to a lot of what you've written here, Deryn. I first heard of the death mother archetype from my therapist, who worked with Marion. I wrote about some of those insights and ideas in this older post: https://www.theartemisian.com/p/gazing-in-a-reflective-shield
Ohh, I'd like to hear more on this. What of the labyrinth specifically? Is there a sense of ever leaving it, like Theseus with the support of Ariadne as guide? Is it the twists and turns as we venture towards the center, but never truly finding the end?
I'm searching for a lost little Deryn, so the labyrinth has a rather particular value for me as a defence mechanism place; one where monsters can suddenly emerge, where lights can go out, where archetypal forms from the collective unconscious lurk because there's a strong force in me that doesn't want me to find her. But the path has to be walked and I feel she is sleeping somewhere within. Quite possible that it doesn't end, I don't know. All I know at the moment is that it is a place of steep descents and dark narrow paths. Have you read Susanna Clarke's Piranesi. It speaks strongly to me at the moment.
Thanks for sharing, it sounds like a difficult inward journey, with many potential rewards. When dealing with such charged psychological dynamics, I find it helpful to consider how these images and symbols manifest mythically, ritualistically. The labyrinth in Greek mythology is created as a place to contain and trap the minotaur (whose story is very tragic and complicated). But, we also see many ritualistic uses of labyrinths in religious sites. A way to do an embodied, walking meditation, to drop into prayer, to contemplate. It's such a rich symbol.
Man, I felt every bit of this. Beautifully written. My world was shaken from its foundation around five years ago too and my sense of “home” changed forever. I finally started living a life awake and making a home within myself for the first time. 💛
It's incredible what can come from times of extreme destabilization. It can feel so catastrophic in the moment, at least, for me it often was. And yet, these opportunities arise for new life, for that home within. That is a gift, through it all. Thanks for sharing your experience :)
Great work Alyssa! I enjoy how you weave your personal stories into each letter.
Lately my definition of home has been about returning to self & nature, connecting more deeply with my inner well & creative capacity, finding ways to stay connected with my heritage as someone who is far from home.
It’s been about realising that inner peace, not looking for it in outwards achievements. Approaching life in a more embodied way & moving towards wholeness.
I’ve been re-reading David Whyte’s poem “The House of Belonging” as I explore my own definition of home, I love his line “this is where I want to love all the things it has taken me so long to learn to love.”
I’m curious if there are any movies/TV shows you’d say portray this archetypal yearning for home as you describe it here? Any you’ve enjoyed or would recommend?
The Lord of the Rings comes to mind, specifically Frodo's story. There seems to be this deep desire to return back to the Shire, a place of safety, a simpler time. But the journey with the ring fundamentally changes him. Even when he finally returns, things are not the same, and he has to build a relationship to something deeper and more transcendent to find peace.
Are there any movies or TV shows that come to mind for you with these themes?
From age 8 onwards I’ve had a fantasy of spending a month by myself writing in a thatched roof cottage by the sea in Wales, seeing people only in the evenings at the pub I can walk to for fresh bread and stew. It’s a well developed fantasy - lace curtains blowing in the breeze off the ocean, manuscript pages piling up on the scarred wooden farm table perfectly positioned for light and view of the water.
My ancestry is Scottish, not Welsh so no idea where that detail came from, but visualizing that setting always felt to me like a homecoming, that I would be who I am meant to be in that place. Fast forward many decades of living the exact opposite life — people-filled, on a stage leading workshops and giving keynotes, yes to writing - 6 books - all traditionally published so deadlines galore and writing on planes and in hotel rooms, grabbing fast foods to gulp down before getting back to work. Very far from my Welsh dream.
Then I started analysis, and I found Hestia as the guiding energy in my life. There’s a wonderful chapter about her in a book Hillman edited called ‘Facing the Gods’. Have you seen it, Alyssa? From Hestia I learned about inner home. And five years ago I found the external representation. I now live in an 1837 stone cottage by the St. Lawrence Seaway. Hestia’s symbol is on the cast iron address plate. This is Hestia’s Cottage. It meets every important piece of my fantasy and, it turns out, is far more comfortable and luxurious than those thatched roof cottages!
Karen, thank you for sharing this personal story. What I love is how a fantasy and internal yearning was made manifest outwardly. That feels like a beautiful linking between inner and outer home. Rather than purely seeking it in one place or the other, they coalesce, a true coniunctio :)
I have heard good things about Facing the Gods but have yet to read it myself. Putting that on my list. Have you read Hillman's Mythic Figures? He has a great chapter on Hestia in that volume.
I haven’t read Mythic Figures. Putting it on my list! The chapter in Facing the Gods is by Barbara Kirksey and is titled, “Hestia: A Background of Psychological Focusing.” I’ve realized that this post is a few months old, but if you have need of Hestia material sooner than later, let me know and I can get the chapter to you.
Thank you for the offer. I'm planning to buy it in my next used book purchase. It's been recommended to me a few times, this is the push I need to get it in hand!
Home for me has always been found in the colour green, like pale Icelandic moss, the silver shadows play of birch leaves and rivers. I feel home surrendering to the flow of life and my heart (in those special moments of homecoming when the head is not trying to control) and in stories of nymphs, sovereignty goddesses and shining ones.
I used to feel connected to the green nymphs and draiads, to Daphne (although I usually ran towards relationships rather than away from men haha) and it only clicked until I read the elucidation that my soul home seems to be the well maidens, of whom I personally believe some - after being mistreated and disrespected - made it into the forests and became nymphs, not fully fae anymore but also not fully human. I am currently writing on a short story or modern faerytale about this, hoping to give a different layer of meaning to the usually just frolicking and dancing birch tree nymphs.
Do you have any insights on the potential origins of the sirens/meneads/nymphs in Greek mythology that could be more profound than the common conception? As I stumbled upon a short paragraph in Stuart Hardys mine maiden book on the theory of goddess and priestesses cults predating them and they were turned by patriarchy into side kicks to god/esses so to say
Nothing comes to mind initially regarding sirens/maenads/nymphs for potential origins. But it does remind me of Christine Downing's work. She has some great scholarship and books on the great goddesses and some of their origins. I'm not sure if she has spoken about nymphs, but that may be a place to look!
Your short story work sounds fascinating, lovely to give these figures new life and meaning.
Sometimes I think you are speaking directly to me. I, too destabilized it all to find my home and I realised home was the rich, complex and warm inner world that I have.
So many of these experiences are universal. I'm amazed each time when others find resonance in my writing, as it can often be very personal, but it speaks to how common these challenges and opportunities of life are.
Also, welcome to the membership here at The Artemisian, Susan. Thank you so much for your support :)
Wow, Alyssa. Such a beautiful and profound post. It was also wonderful to learn more about your personal story. I can tell that it's not simply an intellectual understanding you share, but rather one that comes through your own lived experience. The archetypal theme of home has been constellated for me these past couple years, and has been "sneaking" its way into my poetry. Curiously I just read the Odyssey not that long ago. Seems timely as I begin to enter Midlife and my Uranus-Opposition. Everything you wrote really resonates with me. Thank for that.
Home is a home-coming to Self and Mystery. And, for me, more recently, I have been feeling called to connect to my Ancestors. Perhaps this belongs more to the theme of belonging.
Thanks again, Alyssa. Beautiful post!
Thanks, Chris. I appreciate your kind words. Much of my writing, even when it's being portrayed as an intellectual exploration, is often rooted in my own personal experience. I've felt that the path of personal development has led me to so many questions; how to make sense of what is happening, what psychological dynamics seem to underpin a situation, etc. In that sense, it's been a development of my own personality alongside a deepening of concepts, ideas, frameworks. It's why Jung's work resonates so deeply. I find much of my story reflected in his theories.
Having just read the Odyssey, do you sense any of those trials as closely tied to ones you're experiencing now? I found that an interesting exercise.
I think connecting with ancestors is tied to that sense of home as well, the archetypal constellation. Another viewpoint I want to touch on with home is through the mythic lens of Hestia and how nurturing the ancestral hearth is key for a place to be established as home. I think this has inner and outer components. In my experience, visiting ancestral land, reconciling ancestral themes has been really important. But it still felt like something was "missing" if the crucial inner dynamic wasn't met too.
What stuck me most and resonates until today is the katabasis scene, when Odysseus visits Hades to consult the seer on how to make his journey home. Katabasis and the underworld has always appealed to me. That scene is powerful in many respects. For me, it relates to building a living relationship with the unconsciousness, to venture into the depths of myself to seek counsel. It also relates to my current practice (which I've just begun) of ancestral reverence and cultivating a reciprocal relationship with my ancestors. Jung said something really interesting (I don't have the reference). I believe he said that the unconscious is the realm of the dead and the ancestors. What I am coming into is an understanding that dreams and the unconscious are both here and there, inner and outer, personal and collective, psychological and generational. It is not only the place where we meet ourselves, it is also where we meet others. We are ever so intertwined in each other's destiny. There is no escaping that reality.
Beautifully put. It’s paradoxical in a sense, but really in my eyes, complementary. The unconscious contains its opposite, the many layered experience of life in all its shades and colors. We may see through one lens at a time, but it is intertwined, as you said.
'theme of belonging', that is a very helpful thought.
I want to print this out and paste it somewhere, so resonant are its words, images, depths, so needed its promise of light amid dark journeying. Thank you.
Home … I long, above all else, to be in Cornwall, caught up in its wildness, its crashing ocean, its cliffs, and to be immersed in its ancient past, its stone circles and monuments. Home is accordingly a physical, but also a soul place. And yet, I hear Nelle Morton’s words that ‘the journey is home’, and agree that it is the navigating of psychic landscapes and soul searching that provides a nomadic home, and that only when looking back, can I see that there were stopping places on the way. It is a desperately uncomfortable thought for me, but I think she may be right that home is not a destination. Home is the knapsack on the back. Images that arise are from Druidcraft tarot: the hermit, the pole star and from the wildwood tarot, the six swords for when we are not able to walk and have to be ferried for a while.
You paint such a beautiful image of Cornwall, I've never been, but I can feel it in your words. I think returning to our birthplace, exploring ancestral roots, is so very important. I've done some of that in recent years, going to Sicily where my family is from, back to where I was born in New York. Yet, I did find that there was still a longing within, even when the landscape provided a sense of healing and belonging. The inner principle had to be met along with the outer.
Thank you for these tarot images, the pole star is such an apt portrayal of what I have felt often. So much wandering in the dark, with only the cosmic-sort of light to guide me. The six of swords as the necessary journeying, but the heaviness that comes with it.
The tragedy is that I live in the Midlands, a town-contained area where I have a long ancestry, and yet feel that I belong in Cornwall and long for it. I am currently trying to decide whether I have to move, alone. Its tough. I'm interested in what you say about the inner principle having to be met.
It's reminiscent of what Marion Woodman speaks to regarding finding the symbolic/metaphorical component behind compulsive behaviors:
“I always try to grasp the metaphor at the root of an addiction. That varies. With food, it can be mother; with alcohol, spirit; with cocaine, light; with sex, union. Mother, spirit, light, union – these can be archetypal images of the soul’s search for what it needs. If we fail to understand the soul’s yearning, then we concretize and become compulsively driven toward an object that cannot satisfy the soul’s longing.”
Without that inner principle being recognize, we overly concretize, literalize the psychological impulse (somatically, behaviorally, etc). It's really helped me look at certain issues/desires/compulsions in a new way.
You mention Marion just as I've been reading her! In my dreams there is black amorphous swirling cloud and then the spider/Medusa image appears, all legs which means she can skuttle quickly, and grotesque green slug like body, with writhing spiders for hair instead of snakes. Marion writes about the death mother archetype as a medusa killing stare and that seems to be what I'm confronting, stopping me in my tracks, not allowing me any further in the labyrinth to find what I need to find. And yet, in my druidic ritual work with Hekate, I am on the deep downward pathways into underground caverns and feel that I have to keep going. The whole thing induces scary panic attack feelings that are difficult to metabolise. So, the quote you have helpfully mentioned encourages me to look again at root metaphors that are occurring in this search for a lost inner self and see if there is one that really stands out as dreams are raising several symbolic figures, terrains, and feelings. Many thanks.
I relate to a lot of what you've written here, Deryn. I first heard of the death mother archetype from my therapist, who worked with Marion. I wrote about some of those insights and ideas in this older post: https://www.theartemisian.com/p/gazing-in-a-reflective-shield
thanks, I'll check that post out.
another image: the labyrinth
Ohh, I'd like to hear more on this. What of the labyrinth specifically? Is there a sense of ever leaving it, like Theseus with the support of Ariadne as guide? Is it the twists and turns as we venture towards the center, but never truly finding the end?
I'm searching for a lost little Deryn, so the labyrinth has a rather particular value for me as a defence mechanism place; one where monsters can suddenly emerge, where lights can go out, where archetypal forms from the collective unconscious lurk because there's a strong force in me that doesn't want me to find her. But the path has to be walked and I feel she is sleeping somewhere within. Quite possible that it doesn't end, I don't know. All I know at the moment is that it is a place of steep descents and dark narrow paths. Have you read Susanna Clarke's Piranesi. It speaks strongly to me at the moment.
Thanks for sharing, it sounds like a difficult inward journey, with many potential rewards. When dealing with such charged psychological dynamics, I find it helpful to consider how these images and symbols manifest mythically, ritualistically. The labyrinth in Greek mythology is created as a place to contain and trap the minotaur (whose story is very tragic and complicated). But, we also see many ritualistic uses of labyrinths in religious sites. A way to do an embodied, walking meditation, to drop into prayer, to contemplate. It's such a rich symbol.
I have not read Piranesi, I will check it out!
Man, I felt every bit of this. Beautifully written. My world was shaken from its foundation around five years ago too and my sense of “home” changed forever. I finally started living a life awake and making a home within myself for the first time. 💛
It's incredible what can come from times of extreme destabilization. It can feel so catastrophic in the moment, at least, for me it often was. And yet, these opportunities arise for new life, for that home within. That is a gift, through it all. Thanks for sharing your experience :)
Great work Alyssa! I enjoy how you weave your personal stories into each letter.
Lately my definition of home has been about returning to self & nature, connecting more deeply with my inner well & creative capacity, finding ways to stay connected with my heritage as someone who is far from home.
It’s been about realising that inner peace, not looking for it in outwards achievements. Approaching life in a more embodied way & moving towards wholeness.
I’ve been re-reading David Whyte’s poem “The House of Belonging” as I explore my own definition of home, I love his line “this is where I want to love all the things it has taken me so long to learn to love.”
I’m curious if there are any movies/TV shows you’d say portray this archetypal yearning for home as you describe it here? Any you’ve enjoyed or would recommend?
Thank you!
The Lord of the Rings comes to mind, specifically Frodo's story. There seems to be this deep desire to return back to the Shire, a place of safety, a simpler time. But the journey with the ring fundamentally changes him. Even when he finally returns, things are not the same, and he has to build a relationship to something deeper and more transcendent to find peace.
Are there any movies or TV shows that come to mind for you with these themes?
A homerun on "Home." Thank you
Thanks, James!
From age 8 onwards I’ve had a fantasy of spending a month by myself writing in a thatched roof cottage by the sea in Wales, seeing people only in the evenings at the pub I can walk to for fresh bread and stew. It’s a well developed fantasy - lace curtains blowing in the breeze off the ocean, manuscript pages piling up on the scarred wooden farm table perfectly positioned for light and view of the water.
My ancestry is Scottish, not Welsh so no idea where that detail came from, but visualizing that setting always felt to me like a homecoming, that I would be who I am meant to be in that place. Fast forward many decades of living the exact opposite life — people-filled, on a stage leading workshops and giving keynotes, yes to writing - 6 books - all traditionally published so deadlines galore and writing on planes and in hotel rooms, grabbing fast foods to gulp down before getting back to work. Very far from my Welsh dream.
Then I started analysis, and I found Hestia as the guiding energy in my life. There’s a wonderful chapter about her in a book Hillman edited called ‘Facing the Gods’. Have you seen it, Alyssa? From Hestia I learned about inner home. And five years ago I found the external representation. I now live in an 1837 stone cottage by the St. Lawrence Seaway. Hestia’s symbol is on the cast iron address plate. This is Hestia’s Cottage. It meets every important piece of my fantasy and, it turns out, is far more comfortable and luxurious than those thatched roof cottages!
Beautiful writing, Alyssa.
Karen, thank you for sharing this personal story. What I love is how a fantasy and internal yearning was made manifest outwardly. That feels like a beautiful linking between inner and outer home. Rather than purely seeking it in one place or the other, they coalesce, a true coniunctio :)
I have heard good things about Facing the Gods but have yet to read it myself. Putting that on my list. Have you read Hillman's Mythic Figures? He has a great chapter on Hestia in that volume.
I haven’t read Mythic Figures. Putting it on my list! The chapter in Facing the Gods is by Barbara Kirksey and is titled, “Hestia: A Background of Psychological Focusing.” I’ve realized that this post is a few months old, but if you have need of Hestia material sooner than later, let me know and I can get the chapter to you.
Thank you for the offer. I'm planning to buy it in my next used book purchase. It's been recommended to me a few times, this is the push I need to get it in hand!
And thank you! Looking forward to getting stuck in 🫶🏻
I loved this ✨
Thank you, Fiona :)
Home for me has always been found in the colour green, like pale Icelandic moss, the silver shadows play of birch leaves and rivers. I feel home surrendering to the flow of life and my heart (in those special moments of homecoming when the head is not trying to control) and in stories of nymphs, sovereignty goddesses and shining ones.
Oh, I just love that sense of home found in the varying colors of green. How beautiful! Any particular nymph or grouping of nymphs you feel drawn to?
I used to feel connected to the green nymphs and draiads, to Daphne (although I usually ran towards relationships rather than away from men haha) and it only clicked until I read the elucidation that my soul home seems to be the well maidens, of whom I personally believe some - after being mistreated and disrespected - made it into the forests and became nymphs, not fully fae anymore but also not fully human. I am currently writing on a short story or modern faerytale about this, hoping to give a different layer of meaning to the usually just frolicking and dancing birch tree nymphs.
Do you have any insights on the potential origins of the sirens/meneads/nymphs in Greek mythology that could be more profound than the common conception? As I stumbled upon a short paragraph in Stuart Hardys mine maiden book on the theory of goddess and priestesses cults predating them and they were turned by patriarchy into side kicks to god/esses so to say
Nothing comes to mind initially regarding sirens/maenads/nymphs for potential origins. But it does remind me of Christine Downing's work. She has some great scholarship and books on the great goddesses and some of their origins. I'm not sure if she has spoken about nymphs, but that may be a place to look!
Your short story work sounds fascinating, lovely to give these figures new life and meaning.
Fantastic tip, thank you very much.
You're welcome :)
Greek not green nymphs that was supposed to say 😂
Sometimes I think you are speaking directly to me. I, too destabilized it all to find my home and I realised home was the rich, complex and warm inner world that I have.
So many of these experiences are universal. I'm amazed each time when others find resonance in my writing, as it can often be very personal, but it speaks to how common these challenges and opportunities of life are.
Also, welcome to the membership here at The Artemisian, Susan. Thank you so much for your support :)