QAnon is a recent iteration of a historical pattern: Romans persecuted Christians, Christians libeled Jews, and citizenries hunted witches. When existing social structures break down, psychological splitting ensues in an effort to counteract fear and re-establish certainty. Collective projections demonize a selected ‘other’ and tend toward lurid attributions of badness: pedophilia, blood drinking, and devil worship.
At the same time collectives project their need for leadership and unity onto a leader, investing the person with larger-than-life qualities. The mythic unconscious creates a dualistic division between ‘above and below’– religious purity and righteousness versus ‘beasts of darkness,’ especially sex and aggression. Depth psychology focuses on the middle ground of soul, the realm of potential human wholeness. Without spiritual bypasses or fiends we may own our sexual, psychological and spiritual realities and develop a symbolic understanding of the myths we live in.
Here’s the dream we analyze:
“I found myself in an enormous mansion, entirely empty; it was like a Jane Austen ball room. I was alone. A man with an Afro and a baby in a baby Bjorn walked past one of the many giant windows, snow behind him. He saw me and looked petrified. Running inside, he wanted to know what I was doing there, saying that this was the devil’s house. The town had gotten together years before and killed the devil. A prophecy was made that the next person to enter the house would be the devil. He said the townspeople now wanted the devil back because they were fighting so much more now, getting divorces, as they no longer had anyone to blame for their problems. I said I didn’t want to be the devil and protested. Then my vision went black and I saw the silhouette of four distinct animal faces rushing toward me. The only one I remember is the goat.”
REFERENCES
Bradley Tepaske
http://jungiananalyst.org/bradley_tepaske_phd.htm
Bradley Tepaske’s publications can be found at:
Poem: Sometimes a Wild God by Tom Hirons
https://tomhirons.com/poetry/sometimes-a-wild-god
RESOURCES
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The concept of cannibalism is that of devouring. Fantasies of cannibalism are really about a deep desire for gnosis, one-ness and integration….a ravenous desire for oneness with those things that one needs for one’s wholeness but which have become elusive…being constellated or projected out as “other” and also repressed deeply within. It is not therefore unusual that cannibalism is a perennial image.
Eating children might be thought of as an effort to re-integrate the innocent lost child within us….completing the circle or cycle of life..and therefore is an image of an effort to regain immortality. This recalls the rumors of the roasting and eating children associated with the cult of Moloch of the ancient Phoenicians at Carthage…we remember that Carthage ended by being razed to the ground with the Romans salting the earth so that the rival would never be able to return. Mostly Rome just wanted to eliminate its great rival, but it was able to justify the brutality against Carthage through this same group of images.
This collective constellating of these archetypal themes seems to be accompanying of the arising of a new consciousness…one where there is a re-unifying of the old dualities.. body/mind, dark/light, masculine/feminine..etc. It is perhaps the ultimate upsetting of the cosmological apple cart…. and who among us is not feeling some major apprehension at the emerging such a profound unknown and the disintegration of almost all that went before and which we hold onto. It is little wonder that this gives rise to these mass psychoses such as QAnon…
You three, and this time four, continue to offer up such rich compost to digest and integrate. Thank you Joseph for the poem.
I was wondering if the dreamer might be in danger of being overwhelmed by unconscious dynamisms. Perhaps her conscious attitude should be built up with simple day-to-day strategies for living her life and steer clear of the depths for now.
Thank you for your podcasts. Here’s something from Jung written just a few years before his death, foreseeing accurately the Black Lives Matter movement:
“What will become of our civilization, and of man himself, if the hydrogen bombs begin to go off, or if the spiritual and moral darkness of State absolutism should spread over Europe?
We have no reason to take this threat lightly. Everywhere in the West there are subversive minorities who, sheltered by our humanitarianism and our sense of justice, hold the incendiary torches ready, with nothing to stop the spread of their ideas except the critical reason of a single, fairly intelligent, mentally stable stratum of the population. One should not, however, overestimate the thickness of this stratum. It varies from country to country in accordance with national temperament. Also, it is regionally dependent on public education and is subject to the influence of acutely disturbing factors of a political and economic nature….one could on an optimistic estimate put its upper limit at about 40 percent of the electorate. A rather more pessimistic view would not be unjustified either, since the gift of reason and critical reflection is not one of man’s outstanding peculiarities, and even where it exists it proves to be wavering and inconstant, the more so, as a rule, the bigger the political groups are. The mass crushes out the insight and reflection that are still possible with the individual, and this necessarily leads to doctrinaire and authoritarian tyranny if ever the constitutional State should succumb to a fit of weakness.
Rational argument can be conducted with some prospect of success only so long as the emotionality of a given situation does not exceed a certain critical degree. If the affective temperature rises above this level, the possibility of reason’s having any effect ceases and its place is taken by slogans and chimerical wish-fantasies. That is to say, a sort of collective possession results which rapidly develops into a psychic epidemic.”
Thank you all for your insights into our psyches…!!! Great discussions and bounce off of each others ideas, concepts, wisdoms, etc. Im so happy to find https://www.thisjungianlife.com as a strong reference to listen to for “comforts” and just knowing many people care, but “we” are not sure how to accept the conversations & communications within. Great comments here too on this episode 137. Thanks, mic