Pilgrimage to the Ancient Healing Sites of Greece: A Journey with Edward TickAuthor(s): John GianniniReviewed work(s):Source: The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal, Vol. 23, No. 1 (February 2004), pp.75-91Published by: University of California Press on behalf of The C.G. Jung Institute of San FranciscoStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jung.1.2004.23.1.75 .Accessed: 07/06/2012 10:08

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The San Francisco ]ung Institute Library]oumal, 2004, vol. 23, no. 1, 75-91.

Pilgrimage to the Ancient HealingSites of Greece: A Journey withEdward Tick

By John Giannini

At the very gate of paradise the descendants of Zeus haltedhere on the way to eternity to cast a last look earthward andsaw with the eyes of innocents that the earth is indeed whatthey always dreamed it to be: a place of beauty and joy andpeace. In his heart man is angelic; in his heart man is unitedwith the whole world.-Henry Miller, The Colossus of Ma1'oussi I

On February 8 th and 9[h of2002, my wife Rita Thomson andI heard Dr. Edward Tick discuss his book, The Practice ofDreamHealing,2 in which he describes and theorizes about the ancientdream-healing tradition of the wounded God Asklepios in Greeceand other parts of the Middle East and Italy. He also describesin his book, as he did in the workshop, spiritual trips he has takenwith persons seeking healing or new insights from dreams and theancient Greek mystery tradition. That tradition includes not onlythe Asklepions, which are the healing sites of Asklepios, but alsoDelphi and other oracle sites, as well as the Easter-like death andrebirth experiences of pilgrimages to Eleusis.

Tick began his Friday evening talk with the "Homeric Hymnto Asklepios."

Doctor of our ailing Asklepios, I begin your praise,Son of Apollo, awakened through Mother KoronisOf the Dorian Plains, daughter of King Flegion,Great to Humanity, soother of cruel suffering.And thus are you welcomed, Master.By this song I beseech you.

We were to recite this many times on the pilgrimage we decided

76 John Giannini

to take with Edward Tick in November of2002. Before discussingthis trip, I want to review Tick's book, reflecting on it in con­junction with several other books written about ancient andmodern Greece. Most analysts are aware of two of them from ourtraining days, one by C. A. Meier3 and the other by Carl Kerenyi.4

Some of us may have read Henry Miller's The Colossus ofMaroussiin which he describes his journeys in Greece. Finally, I want torelate some of my impressions of our group experience as wellas my perspective on the loss of this mystery tradition in the lightof patriarchal consciousness.

Tick's book is multi-faceted; he explores the ancient dreamincubation tradition itself, passionately and vividly describes thehealing sites, discusses his own feelings, relates the dream and lifeexperiences of participants, and finally gives breadth and depthto the healing theory from Jungian and modern alternative­medicine approaches. I will draw on three moments in his bookwhich describe the perimeters of his views on healing: his inclu­sion of the writings of C. A. Meier and Karl Kerenyi, his formu­lation of the healing process in that venerable tradition, and hisdescription of its main metaphors, the snake and the MotherGoddess.

Most Jungians are aware of C. A. Meier's little book onAsklepion dream incubation. Meier notes that the place of theincubation, the abaton, meant "tlle place not to be entered bythe unbidden." Tick points to its etymology, "impassable byfoot," or a difficult place of transition such as an impassablemountain or an unfordable river. This implied that the dreamseekers had first to humbly cleanse tllemselves before entering theroom where tlley would sleep and await their dream or vision.Sometimes this process would last for days or weeks at thesevenerable hospitals. 5 For Meier, the analytical relationship be­comes the contemporary abaton, and incubation meant for him"a means by which conditions were created in which healingdreams could happen."6 Such conditions involved what Jungcame to understand as a four-leveled process in analysis: confes­sion, interpretation, education, and transformation. Transforma­tion for Jung meant that both tlle client and the analyst wereinvolved in an overall belief system in which the transcendentarchetypal guide we call Self or Soul makes possible fundamentalchanges in the context of legitimate suffering or growing pains.This process requires a radical surrender of the ego in depth and

A Journey with Edward Tick 77

of an overall trust that we are living out the etymological meaningof both "consciousness" and "conscience." Both words comefrom the Latin, con-scientia, "a knowing or science with," or aco-knowing with the Self, which for Tung is "God within us." Inthe spirit of Asklepios, who was a crippled man, we are-bothanalysts and analysands-participants in the Asklepion archetypeas wounded healers and the healed. Meier's first clue that analystswere doing their work in harmony with this ancient Greek godcame from his study of the Greek physician, Galen, who calledhimself a therapeut of his "fatherly god Asklepios." His secondclue came from the dream of a female client, which consisted"entirely of the sentence 'the best thing he created isEpidauros,"'7 where we find one of the most famous of theAsklepions and which we visited with Tick.

Tick holds to the overall view of Meier, but he additionallydemonstrates in his book that actually visiting ancient healing sitesin Greece and experiencing there, even in the ruins, the relatedmyths as collective archetypes adds critical dimensions to healing.His book is primarily about the Asldepion tradition that lasted fora thousand years until rationalism began to minimize the mythsin Greece and Rome and, above all, when a Christian patriarchalfear of and hatred of paganism under Constantine led to thephysical destruction of these healing places in the fourth centuryCEo Modern pilgrims to Lourdes and Fatima, to Native Americanpower centers, to holy places in Israel and to Mecca have similarcleansing and healing experiences. However, the Asldepions, aswell as some Indian power centers, were unique in that the dreambecame the main transforming vessel for healing.

Tick asks, "How do images of Asklepios heal?"8 He answersby noting, "Psychologically, we are all made of images." I wouldadd, as Tung has often said, that all of psychology is made up ofimages and attitudes, that the images, in order to be healing, mustcontain transformers of emotionally-laden attitudes, that theymust be the agents that change crass or primary emotions intouseful energies as "emotional values," Tung's best description ofthe Feeling Function, which make possible vital relationships withothers and with our deeper Self.9 Tick knows and teaches thispassionate approach to the great mythic stories and dreamsthroughout his very important book. He holds that we mustrecover these very human, yet vital, spiritual dimensions if we areto survive on this earth. So in answering the above question, he

78 Jo11n Giannini

points out, in total agreement with Jung, that "In order to heal,we must have a direct experience that radically changes the imagesof consciousness so as to change the flow of energy to body andsoul evoked and directed by that imagery." Thinking, abstraction,and concepts can guide us, but they alone do not heal. We shouldnever approach Asldepios (or Christ or Buddha) as an abstraction.Tick quotes Hillman: "healing required in ancient times beingtouched by the God in person, or in his snake or dog form ....Asklepios and his healing appear simultaneously; the God is nota later conceptualization or allegory of the effect." I 0

Many of us have experienced these "gods" directly as arche­types in our dreams. However, in actual practice, we know thatmost of tllese dream epiphanies require either considerable nur­turing or a continuum of incubations. On the one hand, we needto confront tlle dangerous image, under tlle aegis of tlle Self,knowing that it will often change into a friend, guide, or lover.On the other hand, we allow benign and caring images that arewortllY of contemplation to remain witll us for years or for alifetime in our consciousness as supportive, encouraging, andhealing agents. Above all, we have learned to honor these personalmanifestations ofour inner divine resource, the Self, as our privateAsklepion, out of which mysterious and often synchronistic in­sights and moral imperatives regularly emerge.

Tick records tlle supreme trust that Galen, one of the greatscientists of tlle body and mind of his time, had in both theAsklepion and its dream tradition. Galen reports many examplesof how dreams revealed metllods for healing patients. He writes,"I have saved many people by applying a cure prescribed in adream."'! Tick continues, "while he was not a priest, he includedprayer and invocation as part of his methodology. "12 Galen, aboveall, had a sense of balance and proportion, an intuition about thenecessary affinity of tlle opposites tlut has resonances in Jung'stypology. He prescribed that a warrior type, possibly an Extra­verted Sensate Thinking person, write an ode or song, and tlutothers, obviously more Introverted Intuitive Feeling types, takeup hunting, horseback riding, or exercises in arms. 13

An intriguing facet of the Asklepion at Pergamum, now inTurkey, is the round temple behind tlle main temple that isdedicated to Telesphorus, a child-god associated with Asklepiosand even referred to as a son of the healing god. This mystical

A Journey with Edward Tick 79

image aided in the completion of the Asklepion healing. Jung wasso intrigued with him that he carved him, calling him one who"roams through the dark regions of this cosmos" and points theway to the "land of dreams."14 Kerenyi calls him the "the littlehooded nocturnal god."'S Kerenyi and Jung collaborated in writ­ing a book in which the main foci were the childhoods of thegods, the psychological meaning of the inner child, and thesignificance of the young maiden or Kore as Persephone. l6

Kerenyi speaks eloquently of this Greek consciousness of "mythicbeginnings," that is, the mystical return to primordial times, tothe childhood not only of humankind but to tl1e advent of cosmicexistence. Jung then comments on tl1e tl1ree temporal forms ofTelesphorus: the child ofthe past which includes all of prehistory,tl1e child of the present which balances anyone-sided conscious­ness we may be suffering, and the child of the future, one'syoutl1ful potential and inner dynamic purpose. Tick captures theinner virtues of the Child Archetype when he writes thatTelesphoros challenges us to surrender to our childlike parts andto sleep, to trust our hidden erotic and creative processes, to trustthe cyclical, death-rebirth nature of the disease process ... "17

Kerenyi, according to Tick, thinks that tl1is Child-god's name may"indicate the presence of death," and Tick reminds us that, "Intl1e dense ambiguity of the myth ... the ending of the diseaseprocess may either be healing or death, that death itself may behealing," 18 particularly if we surrender to the ongoing mystery ofour fate and the possibility of rebirtl1.

TICK'S HEALING FORMULA ACCORDING TO ASKLEPIOS

Now we can discuss one important aspect of our ancienthealing tradition that is in beautifi.11 harmony with a Jungianmethodology. According to Tick, the seekers of healing in ancientGreece were required to:

• Know and attend to their primal wound.• Integrate the wounding and the gifts of their parents. In

some way, they needed to understand their stories beginningwith childhood parental relationships. The great Greek sto­rytellers from Homer to Sophocles captured these elementalexperiences both in the families of mortals and the immortalones. The challenge has always been to recognize the primalhurts, without blaming and resenting, knowing full well thattheir parents also suffered early damage.

80 Tohn Giannini

- Accept and JVork JVith the primal marriage ofcreative anddestructive forces that is at the core of the human condition.Tung has written in many places of the conscious choices thatwe each can make that are either consonant with our natureand its creativity, or are opposed to our natural heritage andso become destructive. Further, when a threatening andfrightful figure emerges in the dream process, we are usuallycertain that the Self is presenting to us what I call a "holyexaggeration" that is meant to awaken our consciousness tosome past or present unfinished business. As in the movieGround Hog Day, we are apt to experience continual rep­etitions ofsuch nightmares until we finally realize the healinglight in the dream's darkness and confusion.

- Seek mentors to guide and complete their personality de­J1elopment. In the Asklepion, priests of this healing traditionwere ever-present to prepare the ritual baths, to lead inprayers and incantations, to attend to their psychological andphysical pains, to prepare them to enter the abaton to seeka healing dream, and then to help translate the dream meta­phors into ordinary insights and required actions.

- Surpass their mentors by adding their oJVn unique ingre­dients to the healing process. This is a crucial aspect of anyhealing work, in that the wounded healer, whether a priestof Asklepion or a contemporary therapist, must not imposehis views on the seeker. One of the most significant booksever written in Tungian circles is entitled POJVer in the HelpingProfessions, in which the author, Adoph GuggenbLihl-Craig,argues tlut tile helper must relate to me client from his ownhumble and vulnerable ground in which he knows that heis an unfinished human being. He is, tllereby, only a guideto the healing process, which occurs through the archetypaldynamics of the client. 19 Our inner Asklepios, Christ, orBuddha is me healer, not the therapist nor tile consciousnessof the client.

-Create sacred time and space within and beyond thetreatment room. This is an extension of the above injunction.You must find your inner Sabbath, your contemplative timeand inner place that allows the god-like archetypes to con­tinue their work.

-Support and guide the descent into tile womb of thewound. Here is the homeopatl1ic aspect of dream work andhealing, in which one must engage me illness, enter into itsvery bowels, and let healing images emerge. In a homeo­pathic approach, one finds a natural remedy that is like thedisease. We know it is working when the disease increases.Tung once said tllat homeopathy was the last of the alchemi­cal practices. He could have said mat of his psychology,

A Journey with Edward Tick

which, we see here, is in line with the ancient Asklepionpractice that demands that we face our challenges.

• Support and guide the descent into the renewing womb ofMother Earth. Mother Earth, or Gaia, is the archetypal femi­nine principle that includes above all, one's natural uncon­scious, which Jung has called, following Goethe, "the realmof the mothers. "20 Analysts know that acceptance of theunconscious is often accompanied by a powerful psychicresistance.

• Watch for and encourage connections with helping spiritsfrom the natural and spiritual realm. Asklepios had as histraditional helpers dogs, cocks, and serpents. In contempo­rary dream work, we often encounter dogs as symbols of theFeeling Function since they are "man's best friend," andcertainly snakes emerge as carriers of our deepest existentialfears and desires. We will see how important snakes are inthe goddess and Asklepion traditions.

• Foster and maintain utmost respect, concern for, and at­tention to dreaming in its broadest sense, to any and allmaterial surfacing from the personal and collective uncon­scious. Given a 5,OOO-year-old patriarchal culture which,typologically, has the features of an ESTJ or Extraverted,Sensate, Thinking, Judging makeup, the phenomena ofdreams are hardly front-and-center players, especially sincea dream consciousness has the opposite typological charac­teristics, that is, INFP or an Introverted, Intuitive, FeelingPerceptive configuration.

• Give and encourage giving the appropriate sacrifices forthe seeking and receiving of aid. Pilgrims seeking healingoften traveled hundreds of miles to an Asklepion, then fasted,prayed, and offered gifts to the attending priests. During theheight of the Eleusinian mysteries, Athenians walked a thirty­mile "holy path" to Eleusis, while fasting, singing, andpraying.

• Maintain or attend a sanctuary that maximizes the pos­sibility that these healing conditions can be met. The Asklepionsanctuary was certainly such a place. Psychically, C. A. Meiersaw that the therapeutic alliance could provide comparablehealing conditions, which include all of the above healingfactors and facets. Modern people have available a multitudeof retreats, classes, and workshops provided by both religiousand therapeutic groups, as well as traditional church com­munities. Tick includes in such "sanctuaries" alternativemedicines. Scientific medicine, even as practiced in the timeof Hippokrates, often assumes a Cartesian body-mind splitin which the body is considered a machine and, therefore,science avoids considering any psychological or spiritual

81

82 John Giannini

factors in the patient. As a result, Tick writes, "Questionsof meaning, purpose, destiny, and mortality, and of ourconnection to self, community, nature, and cosmos were leftto spiritual specialists. "21 "Sacred meclicine," Tick holds, "asmodeled by the Asklepian tradition, comes out of a veryclifferent mind-set.. .. Mind and body are coequal, fully in­terdependent, and inter-expressive. The body is not a ma­chine, but is rather a living carrier and container of soul onits journey through the world. The body is the material textof soul, on which soul inscribes its conditions as signs andsymptoms. "22

Given this eloquent statement of a possible new medicinein which body transmits to us its spiritual needs in the contextof a cosmic order, it is fitting to consider the other perimeter ofTick's book as he explores the Asklepion healing tradition withinthe context of a much more ancient human tradition, that of thegoddess in the Greek Minoan epoch. Here, in the Asklepiontemple and within the ancient goddess images, we encounteragain one of the greatest grounding and healing symbols, thesnake, whose length implies a phallic masculinity, whose sheddingof its skin signifies death and rebirth, and whose closeness to theearth and to all goddess traditions conjures up the dark healingand creative potentials of the feminine and maternal archetypes.

OUR JOURNEY

With, this discussion I will transit into the experiences thattwelve of us had with Tick in our sixteen-day journey in Greecein November of 2002. Our journey represented an extension ofthe existential experiences that readers have when they read Tick'sbook-because he has mastered the deeply felt and imaginativelyarticulated art of description in which he repeatedly asks thereader to envision the places to which we returned. We traveledfor two weeks in the southern part of Greece, beginning in Athensand ending on the island of Crete. Only Tick and another com­panion understood Greek, so they were important guides whenwe were in restaurants or seeking travel assistance.

From the beginning, we became a kind of process group aswe laid bare our reasons for taking this journey. Julie sought abetter understanding of her marriage in the light of a lost, ide­alized lover. She was also celebrating her survival of an accidentafter which her shattered face had required five years of recon-

A Journey with Edward Tick 83

structive surgety. Her nickname became "Shirley," in honor ofthe heroine of the movie, Shirley Valentine, who found her innerfreedom in the playful and sensual atmosphere of modern Greece.Margaret sought a healing of deep disappointments in both loveand work and at two points in our journey led us in rituals whichdeepened our process. We honored her beautiful, evolving spiritand her skill in creating healing ceremony. Regina brought apowerful, troubling dream to the Delphic oracle and came awaywith surprising insights. I sought courage and insight in un­derstanding and transforming my rage toward our ancient andcontemporary warrior culture. Ed, I learned, was equally passion­ate about this concern and freely wept as he felt its collectivemayhem. Alexis was asking for the inspiration to write aboutmankind's most precious heritage, the religious nature of theSoul. Pam longed for a surcease of sadness about the tragic deathof her daughter. Pam and Reginald came together on this sacredtrek, seeking a resolution to his traumatic experiences in Vietnam,his even more devastating post-traumatic stress syndrome, andmost of all, its damaging effect on their family life. We learnedthat he had traveled with Tick and others to Vietnam to face themonstrous memories of his wartime experience. At Mi Lai, theplace where hundreds of villagers were killed by rampagingAmerican soldiers, he met an old woman who as a young girl hadbeen shot seven times in that massacre, left in a shallow grave,and exhumed the next day by neighbors. She said to Reginald,"I forgive you. Tell the other men who were with you to comehere so I can forgive them too." Her simple spirituality and loveso resonated in me that it reawal<ened the healing power of the"thousand mothers" who embrace and forgive my inner angryand frightened warrior complexes. Another married couple,George and Gretchen, came to Greece, first of all, becauseGretchen was seeking to consolidate her identity as a gentle,private person. The differences between tllese two people canmost easily be described in type terms. She is an Introverted,Intuitive, Feeling, Perceptive (INFP) individual. Like so manyhaving her typology, she experiences an intensely painful sensi­tivity in body, mind, and spirit as she lives her life in our aggressiveand militant culture with its dominant Extraverted, Sensate,Thinking, Judging (ESTJ) characteristics, which are exactly op­posite to her type makeup. It came as no surprise that she

84 John Giannini

embraced as her ideal the goddess Persephone, who like Gretchenis portrayed in the Greek myth as a quiet and vulnerable maiden.George, her husband, is a serene, introspective scientist, whodeeply loves Gretchen, though given his strong Sensate Thinkingorientation, he has found it difficult to understand her. However,this trip into histolY and into the great religious archetypes,helped him, as he eventually acknowledged, to realize a deeperaffinity with his wife. Melanie was seeking an inner understandingof and empathy for a husband who had been sexually abused inchildhood. She had a powerful dream dealing with ugly sensualimages, which led her to consider facing these repugnant shadowsto diminish her internal anguish. Wilbur is a successful profes­sional and happily married man in his forties considering a careerchange. He is also concerned about one of his children who useddrugs but now has recovered and is successfully functioning incollege. Each of these people experienced substantial shifts in theirlife problems. In fact, now, more than one year later, they are stillindividually aware of the life-altering consequences of the intensehealing and insights of the trip.

For two weeks this group shared a meaningful and variedexperience. I have never been on an educational and spiritualjourney in a strange land that was so effectively, yet democrati­cally, planned. Each of us was free to skip any of the events, andsome of us did. Overall, however, we were consistently togetheras a group as we climbed in difficult geographical terrain, as wellas when one or more of us ventured into a more emotionallychaotic, inner landscape. Whether in our outer or inner places ofdifficulty, we were constantly supporting one another. These twoweeks were for me one of the most memorable episodes in myentire long life.

I do not want to explore our itineraty in any systematic way.Much of tlle journey, as I now remember it, consists of instantcamera-like pictures which are mine alone. We all agree that therewas one dismal event. On our first afternoon in Athens, when wewalked to the nearby ruins of a Roman Agora, or market place,a sudden cloudburst quickly turned tlle narrow streets into mini­streams and all of our shoes into wet sponges. In one lovelymoment, before this event, we visited a tiny thoLlsand-year-oldOrtllodox church at the center of a small plaza at the edge of tllemore ancient city, a beehive of stores and narrow streets. Mter

A Journey with Edward Tick 85

the downpour and during the remainder of the trip, the sky wasa deep azure, the atmosphere brilliant, and the nights studdedwith stars. At breakfast on the tenth floor of our hotel, we lookedacross to the immense limestone upthrust in the middle of thecity that is without doubt one of the most famous sites in theworld. We were suddenly viewing the Acropolis with the gracefulParthenon astride its immense back. Its presence seemed to emita living psychic energy. It was a spiritually important moment forme. Years ago, I had a dream in which I was on a high mountainplateau. I was aware of the awesome presence of God, invisibleto me but not to a group of teenagers who were in rualogue withthis Divinity. I looked to my left: across a vast valley and saw theilluminated remains of fabled ancient Greece, the Acropolis, andas I did this, I felt an immense sadness about patriarchy's terriblewars and their violations of not only other lives but also of sacredplaces. Then I crouched down to teach a mentally retarded childthe meaning of the word is.

In this simple word is I am reminded of my training inclassical Greek philosophy and in Christian theology. Both havealways drawn me to the great question of reconciling the Manyand the One that life presents to us; despite so many disparateexperiences and human differences, one senses an underlyingunity. In Greek thinking, the solution was first presented as waterand then air, without which nothing can survive. Then finallythere came the culminating awareness in such geniuses asSocrates, Plato, and Aristotle tlut we humans have an awarenesstlut we lmow that we know. That is, that we have in consciousnessa divine detachment in which one experiences Being) the expe­rience of existence or isness as the ultimate object ofconsciousness.In my view, tllis experience is the conscious realization of the Self,which is the unconscious ground in which all opposites are rec­onciled. One of the most important of tllese is the Many and theOne, which expresses itself in endless variety, including tlle SeWsOneness as the archetype of wholeness. In Christianity, tl1.isexperience of unity in diversity is expressed by Paul as one spiritualbody in which each person contributes as a member of the whole.

How does all of this enter into the Greece experience? It hasto do with the many gods and goddesses of the Greek pantheonwhose images and presences we all felt, and our larger intuitivesense that somehow they are all epiphanies of tlle one entity that

86 John Giannini

is the universe, and the one unifYing archetypal principle thatanimates and yet transcends our cosmic existence. I felt tlus largeplay of opposites in the stunningly beautiful land of sky-piercingmountains, of many, vast olive-covered valleys, of craggy shoresand sparse beaches lining the bright blue waters of the AegeanSea.

We spent several hours in the Greek Agora in Athens thatcovers many blocks below tl1e Acropolis. We quickly learnedclimbing was the order of the day on a Greek pilgrimage. At onemoment, three of us were standing in front of a little temple,which is one of tl1e best-preserved ofall the buildings of tl1e Greekclassical period. It is dedicated to Hephaestus, tl1e woundedsnlith-god. Tick, Wilbur, and I were looking down on the largemarket area, when Tick said, "Down there, just below us, Socrateswould walk with Ius students and teach." We quietly took in thesudden image of this wise man whose ghost now haunts therubble of stone. Later, we visited tl1e site of a prison cut into acliff where Socrates was held prisoner, and, looking up to theAcropolis, we could see the ruins of a small building at the edgeof the great abutment where Socrates was tried. On this day wemounted the Acropolis, slowly, partially moving through neigh­borhood streets above the Agora until we headed up the greatwestern path. On top, we felt the mighty presence of thePartl1enon, a symbol of Greek democracy. On the way up, we firstsaw the stunningly beautiful portico of tl1e building called thePropylaea, whose roof is held up by six elegant goddess figures.We are reminded to what extent our life is sustained by themothers, wives, and other women in our lives, all of whomrepresent in some way Mother Earth, the feminine source thatnourishes us all.

The God, Asklepios, the main object of our journey, isaligned with tl1e goddess tradition in two fundamental ways. First,as tl1e dream healer, he draws his inspiration from the maternaldepth ofthe psyche. Secondly, he has the snake as his companion,as a reminder of the dark, healing potentials of our instincts aswell as the creative powers of Mother Earth. So the snake is carvedinto Asklepios's staff. This powerful creature is also seen in mosaicand carved images of the maternal goddess, encircling her neck,waist, and anns. We saw such statues particularly in Crete, butthey are found universally everywhere in tl1e ancient Great Mother

A Journey with Edward Tick 87

traditions. Also, since our focus is on a substantive dream tradi­tion, any depth psychologist lmows to what extent snakes showup in clients' dreams. Tick discusses many such dreams and givesan excellent sumnlary of the many meanings associated with thesnake in his Chapter 20.

I want to finish with a reflection on the ancient goddess andmaternal tradition in contrast to patriarchy. From all accounts ofhuman history, patriarchy has been the dominant ideology ofhuman kind for five thousand years. What is somewhat uncertainis the kind of worldview existing in the preceding epoch. For agrowing number of scholars, there is certainty: patriarchy waspreceded by thousands of years of a more peaceful society in theNeolithic agricultural period in which the mother goddess domi­nated. Some of these writings are Merlin Stone's When God Wasa Woman,23 Edwin O. James's The Cult of the Mother Goddess,24Marija Gimbutas's The Gods and Goddesses ofGld Europe,25 GerdaLerner's The Creation of Patriarchy,26 and Riane Eisler's TheChalice and the Blade.27 My interest is not so much in the his­torical facts, as in the attitudes that shape the psychologies of thesetwo worldviews. Patriarchal attitudes versus Goddess attitudes canbe partially summarized as follows: dominance-over in contrastto cooperation-with, exclusion in contrast to inclusion, preservingsocietal structures in contrast to furthering individual develop­ment, and alienation from body and nature in contrast to anaffinity with body and nature. In more personal terms, patriarchyis more head than heart, more oriented to high places than lowplaces, more extraverted than introverted, more sensate thanintuitive, more thinking than feeling, and more judging thanperceptive. In William James's term, patriarchy is more "tough­minded" than "tender-minded," and it values "doing" more than"being." As to the four human behaviors of work, love, play andpray, it values work over the other three. Overall, patriarchy valuesclarity in its either/or consciousness, in contrast to the moreobtuse, dark, and ambivalent both/and values of the feminineprinciple. Let the reader consider these differences as I describeseveral contrasting scenes in the Greek experience.

In Athens, we experienced the presence of Zeus and theother male gods at the top of the Acropolis, followed by a visitto our first Asklepion down in the valley along the side of thegreat rock upthrust. We traveled into a Southern valley covered

88 John Giannini

with olive trees as far as the eyes could see. Suddenly, we arrivedat another upthrust amidst the orchards. This was the site of thecitadel of Tiryns, an excellent example of palatial architecture inthe Mycenaean period of the Bronze Age. What stands out forall to observe is the great muscular rock walls that surround thesite of the palace, an evident physical as well as metaphoricalcharacteristic of a militant, patriarchal age. From its ramparts wecould see in the distant horizon still another upthrust topped bythe ruins of a fortress, another example of a warrior culture thatcontrolled and dominated from its heights the surrounding ag­ricultural valley. Mother Nature here is under the thralldom ofa masculine defensive and dominating consciousness.

In contrast, we later traveled on the Island of Crete to thePalace ofKnossos, built during the Minoan period and consideredthe last of the Neolithic goddess traditions in that part of Europe.When we arrived at the site, we did not find it on a hill but downin the valley. Its buildings, partially reconstructed by the Englisharcheologist Sir Arthur Evans, are set in a large, open court, totallydevoid of any fortifications. One experiences the affinity of itsstructures with the surrounding fields of olives. Signs of thegoddess are everywhere-in little statuettes, the remains of acolossal statue of the Goddess, and a tablet revealing a cult titled"My Lady of the Labyrinth." This latter apparently refers to the"lablYs" or double ax images, considered a sacred symbol of theMinoan religion. The labyrinth invites us into a circuitous journeyto the Center of the psyche. At Knossos, we also saw the famousdolphin fresco located in the Queen's quarters. The image of fivedolphins frolicking in the sea captures another aspect of thefeminine archetype, the depth and mystery of the Soul/Self in tlleunconSClOUS.

Delphi, tlle site of the famous orades, also awakens reflectionon the difference between the Mother Goddess and patriarchalattitudes. Delphi is located on tlle side of Mt. Parnassus, fromwhich we had a vast view of surrounding valleys and distantmountains. The original orade, a young female, intuitive psychic,was located deep down tlUs site's valley, at the sanctuary ofAthena. She was associated with a divine tradition that precededthe male gods and even Athena, that of Ge or Mother Earth, who,according to the myths, gave birtll to the other gods and god­desses. There is evidence tlnt tlus ancient earth goddess was

A Journey with Edward Tick 89

worshiped at the sanctuary, which now, though in ruins, can beseen as an elegant circular structure with three standing columns.In contrast, when Apollo and patriarchy began to dominate, theoracle was moved to a rectangular temple dedicated to this malegod and constructed up the mountain. In dreams, as well as inthese ancient sites, the masculine is invariably in a high place andthe feminine is in the valley below.

The most famous of the Asklepios temples is at Epidaurus,and here we spent considerable time at its famous theater, wherewe each stood at a central place on its great stage, our voicesmiraculously amplified while we experienced its vibrations in ourbodies. Several of us recited poetry, Alexis read from HenryMiller's The Colossus of Maroussi, Gretchen proclaimed over andover again, "I am Persephone." Here Tick had once heard andfelt with intense emotion the ancient Greek play, The Women ofTroy, about women who had suffered and mourned the deathsnot only of their men but also of their enemies. In the centuriesof warfare following Troy into our immediate century, in whichthe United States has already fought two wars in Mganistan andIraq, we also wail with all women and the feminine in all menas we decry the endless killing and cultural destructions thataccompany such wars. Whether it is a Hussein and other tyrantskilling and paralyzing with fear its own people, the Talibandestroying the two colossal statues of the Buddha, the plunderersin Bagdad looting their colleges and hospitals, or the "allies" withtheir "air power," both hapless soldiers and helpless civilians arekilled and maimed.

In a spirit of prayer and reflection, we traveled to a pointwhere we walked a bit of the ancient "Sacred Road" that led fromAthens to Eleusis, the goal of the late September EleusinianMysteries. The pilgrims of old fasted, sang, and prayed on thisday-long journey, and then experienced rites of death and rebirthat Eleusis. It was here that patriarchy, in the figure of the godHades, asserted its power over the feminine when he captured andbrought down to his middle-earth the virgin Persephone, daugh­ter of the goddess Demeter. Demeter as a Mother Nature Deityresponded by inflicting on humanity such a great drought andinfertility that Zeus forced the goddess and god to compromise.Persephone would remain with Hades for one third of the year,from late Fall through Winter, and then, as a metaphor for new

90 Jaim Giannini

life and fertility, Persephone would return to Demeter in eachSpring and Summer.

As a Jungian analyst, I have been exposed to all of thesemyths. However, when I visited Greece, I experienced not onlynine thousand years of our human civilization, but also a moreintimate communion with the great figures of Greek mythology;these images came alive in the atmosphere of their conceptionwithin the creative minds of the ancient story-tellers, mosaic andfresco artists, sculptors, and architects. In this atmosphere and incompanionship with our fellow travelers, I realized in sixteen daysa journey of great beauty, love and truth, as well as the immenseshadow of humankind-the tragic ugliness, hatred, and false­hood, especially as these play out in the one-sidedness of a pa­triarchy that becomes a fundamentalist addiction afflicting all ofus as we seek to adapt to its rigid demands and confront its hiddenshadows.

We experienced all of this in a final pilgrimage during ourlast night in Greece when, in Crete's central city, Herakleion, wevisited the grave of the famous Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis.The Greek Orthodox Church had refused to bury him in their"sacred" cemeteries because of his daring explorations of life andreligion, and because his writings did not fit their orthodoxy. Thechurch could not assimilate the passion that profoundly quickensand yet transcends the human, especially in his book, The LastTemptation of Christ. Kazantzakis wrote about his passion in theopening paragraph of this great novel: "This nostalgia for God[in Jesus Christ], at once so mysterious and so real, has openedin me large wounds and also large flowing springs."28 In reactionto the official Church's stiff-mindedness, the infuriated citizensof Crete buried him on a beautiful lmoll in Harakleion's centralpark, which, along with the ancient sites, has become one of themost beloved shrines to the human and divine spirit in Greece.The great writer's courageous elan is etched in his epitaph'spiercing lines: "I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free."We celebrated his life with prayers, reflections, and song. Wilburled us in a song written by David Roth, the chorus of which weall sang:

May the Light of Love be shining deep within your spiritMay the Lord of Mercy clear the path and show the way

A Journey with Edward Tick

May the Horn of Plenty sound 'til everyone can hear itMay the Light of Love be with you every day.29

91

As Henry Miller said: "In his heart man is angelic; in his heartman is united with the whole world. "30

ENDNOTES

1 Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi, New York, New DirectionsBooks, 1941, 162.

2 Edward Tick, The Practice of Dream Healing: Bringing Ancient GreekMysteries into Modern Medicine, Wheaton, IL, Quest Books, 2001. A previousreview by Mary Ellen O'Hare-Lavin appeared in this journal, 22:1, 2003,55­60.

3 C. A. Meier, Ancient Incubation and Modern Psychotherapy, Evanston,IL, Northwestern University Press, 1949/1969.

4 Carl Kerenyi, Asklepios: Archetypal Image of the PhysicianJs Existence(trans. Ralph Manheim), Bollingen Series LXV: Studies of Archetypal Imagesin Greek Religions, New York, Pantheon, 1959.

5 Tick, 4-5.6 Tick, 255.7 Tick, 169.8 Tick, 162.9 C. G. Jung, Man and His Symbols, New York, Dell, 1964, 90.10 Tick, 162.11 Tick, 127.12 Tick, 127.13 Tick 12814 As quote'd in Tick, 122.15 Tick 12216 C. d. Ju~g and C. Kerenyi, Essays on a Science ofMythology: The Myth

of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis, Princeton, N.}., PrincetonUniversity Press, 1949/revised 1969.

17 Tick, 123.18 Tick, 123.19 Adolph Guggenbiihl-Craig, POlVer in the Helping Professions, New York,

Spring Publications, 1971.20 Jung quotes Goethe: "Mephistopheles: ...The key will smell the right

place from all others: Follow it down, it leads you to the Mothers!" Jung thencomments, "The 'realm of the Mothers' has not a few connections with thewomb, ... with the matrix, which frequently symbolizes the creative aspect ofthe unconscious ... " C. G. Jung, CW 5, " 180, 182.

21 Tick, 156-157.22 Tick 15823 Merlin S~one, When God Was A Woman, New York, Harcourt Brace

Jovanovich, 1976.24 Edwin O. James, The Cult of the Mother Goddess: An Archeological and

Documentary Study, London, Thames and Hudson, 1959.25 Marija Gimbutas, Gods and Goddesses ofOld Europe, Berkeley, Univer­

sity of California Press, 1982.26 Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy, New York and Oxford,

Oxford University Press, 1986.27 Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future, San

Francisco, Harper and Row, 1987.28 Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ, New York, Simon

and Shuster, 1960/1998, 1.29 David Roth, "May the Light ofLove: Thanksgiving Song, Communion

Song," unpublished, March 2000.30 Miller, 163.