Practical "Unveiling"

Unveiling has been reaching an audience worldwide. Now, Unveiling fans can apply the "art of unveiling" to their lives - and to their dance. Alay'nya has taught women the art of Oriental dance through the Alay'nya Studio, which offers belly dance classes in North Virginia. Her book, Unveiling: The Inner Journey has been adopted by women worldwide as a women's body/mind/psyche/energy integration pathway guidebook. For those with an entrepreneurial bent, or those who are aspiring authors, Alay'nya (in her "daytime" persona as Alianna J. Maren, Ph.D.) has founded Mourning Dove Press, offering strategic guidance - and the possibility of publication under the MDP imprint - to those who want to sell more than the "expected" 200 copies of their works. Lessons learned while taking Unveiling to a world-wide audience are interpreted for others, using the time-honored principles taught by Sun Tzu in The Art of War.

Becoming a "Magician" Is Not Hogwarts-Easy!

Becoming a Magician - Not As Easy as Going to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!

Ah, if life were only so easy!

If all that we had to do - in order to become a functioning, real, practicing Magician - were to go to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (from the Harry Potter novels), we'd have a relatively straightforward task. Perhaps not always easy. (Think of the various nasty elements that Harry, Hermione, and Ron face each year.) However, our course of study would be laid out for us. All we'd have to do would be to attend the required classes, practice hard, and - hooray! - we'd emerge at the end, wand in hand, as a fully-fledged Magician.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

And maybe, we'd think, a bit of luck might be involved. Or at least the right genetics.

But what if each of us had Magician-potential?

What if for each of us, becoming a Magician was a core part of our life's work?

Those of you who have been following along will be familiar with the basic theme of this archetypal study: Our adult "life journey" follows a path laid out in the Kabbalah - really based on the Tree of Life. There is a simple, straightforward, and easy mapping of the various "stages" of our "life journey" into the Major Arcana of the Tarot.

(Sidenote: It may very well be that the Tarot system, including both Major and Minor Arcana, was invented to capture this Kabbalistic "life journey." The first Tarot decks came into being during the height of the Inquisition, when the Jewish people were being persecuted; being driven from their homes, forced to convert to Christianity, and often tortured and killed. This went on for hundreds of years. The possibility of all Jewish esoteric knowledge being lost would have given the Kabbalistic thought-leaders huge motivation to capture their essential teachings for future generations in a sort of "Purloined Letter" manner - hiding them in plain sight, so to speak. More on that in a later blogpost.)

Our adult "life journey" really has three stages. While I address all three within the pages of Unveiling: The Inner Journey, most of the posts in this series have focused on building a deeper understanding of the first stage; that which author Rachel Pollack (in Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom) calls The Worldly Sequence.

Prior to starting our adult "life journey," we are each in the role of the Fool. This doesn't mean that we are "foolish," per se. It just means that we are innocent; unknowing. We're like Bilbo Baggins, before he leaves the warm, safe, known realm of the Shire. Before he goes There and Back Again.

As a quick review, this first adult "life journey" takes us through six distinct steps, with a seventh providing a wrap-up or integration. In order, these are:

• Magician: Visionary and creative,
• High Priestess: Contemplative and intuitive,
• Empress: Nurturing and caring, all too often losing oneself as the focus becomes on meeting the needs of others,
• Emperor: Building and sustaining, from managing projects at work to running the home,
• Hierophant: Guru and guide; developing our Obi-wan Kenobi and Yoda aspects,
• Love-Goddess: Renamed Hathor in Unveiling (after the Egyptian goddess of love, romance, and pleasure in all its forms), and
• Winged Victory: Sometimes called the Chariot, we "pull together" the opposing forces of each of these powerful archetypes, harnessing them as needed to our strong sense of will.

Again, if all that we had to do was to cultivate each of these archetypes, in a nice and neat linear order, life would be easy.

But it's not.

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Simply getting from our starting place as the innocent Fool into being a powerful and effective Magician is in itself a huge challenge. Most people don't make it this far.

There's a reason for this.

Going from Fool to Magician is not simply taking a step on a garden path. It's not just enrolling for the first year of college. It is a profound, huge shift in the way-we-are in the world.

Furthermore, this Fool-to-Magician transformation is really several giant steps, all rolled into one.

We can credit Carol S. Pearson, Ph.D., author of The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By, with discerning and elucidating the fullness, richness, and overall complexity of this huge life-transition.

The next few posts will develop this Fool-to-Magician journey in more detail. In fact, the next several posts will concentrate on the Magician archetype itself: what it is, how we get there. How to spot and discern "magicianship" - in ourselves and others. (It helps us to acknowledge our own successes, especially when we can see them as part of the bigger picture.) After suitable attention to the Magician, I'll return to the Emperor archetype. These two - Magician and Emperor - are a powerful duo. Leaders throughout government, military, industry, and non-profit sectors are largely composed of Emperor/Magician personalities; sometimes both archetypes rolled into one; often with partners or teams having strong Emperor and Magician representations.

However, as Dr. Pearson discovered, the Fool-to-Magician transition is not easy. It is a set of journeys within itself, and may be far more arduous and challenging than we would ever believe.

Thus, our first step - in developing ourselves as Magicians - is to study this Fool-to-Magician transition more completely. To "gird up our loins," so to speak, for a potentially long and difficult journey.

We note that in Pearson's diagram (shown above), there is a long distance between the Wanderer and the Magician. Going from one to the other doesn't happen overnight.

However, we recall a line from a poem in The Hobbit: "Not all those who wander are lost."

Even though we may have a long stage of "wandering," in order to discover and fulfill our Magician potential, this is part of doing the magical work itself.

The essence of magic is transformation: Creating something, essentially, from nothing; from the raw, primordial substrate of consciousness. Over the next several posts, I'll provide many examples: creating a cohesive work team where there had been only divisiveness and back-biting. Creating a major symphonic performance with a scanty budget and tired (but still enthusiastic) volunteer musicians. Envisioning and creating a new product, service, and/or marketing plan.

Most of the time, though, our biggest "magical" actions are done in transforming ourselves. We become more of a Magician as we are willing to relinquish the fierce grip of being a Martyr and/or a Warrior. We take an even bigger step as we are willing to step into the unknown, especially the unknown space of our inner selves, when we are willing to relinquish the safety and security of known roles. In this, we are going from Fool to Wanderer. And only then, can we take the most powerful step and go from Wanderer to Magician.

Dethroning the "Emperor"

Dethroning Our Inner Emperor - And Freeing Ourselves from Archetypal Dominance

The function of Emperors is to create empires.

That's simple, isn't it?

Their role in life - both as "external emperors" (in the "real world" of current events and history) and as "internal emperors" (our Emperor archetype) - is to create, build, and sustain empires. Their intent is to grow their empires, by whatever means possible. And to ensure that their empires "reign supreme" over all others.

Ghenghis Khan, creator and ruler of the Mongol empire, 1155-1227 AD

Think of some of the greatest Emperors that the world has known. Alexander the Great and Ghenghis Khan easily come to mind. Each of these built armies, waged war, and created empires that were - at that time - among the largest that the world has ever seen.

Successful emperors (those who build the largest and most solid empires) typically have not only an intense, committed, and long-term focus on empire-building, but also pursue their aims (as in the case of Genghis Khan) with "a combination of outstanding military tactics and merciless brutality."

The relevance of all of this to ourselves, we might ask?

We might have various Emperor-personas in our lives. A boss or co-worker who is unapologetically ambitious. Someone in a non-profit who uses every opportunity to get the spotlight on him or herself. Even a much-loved - albeit feared - family matriarch. All of these are Emperors in their own right.

We treat these people with due deference and respect - and typically, give them as wide a berth as possible. Most of the time, we find it easier to avoid these people, to simply "not deal" - because we know that they are more focused, cunning, and downright more driven than we will ever be.

But truly, it's not these "external emperors" that we need to worry about.

Our real concern should properly be with the Emperor that lurks inside each of us. In fact, the one that runs almost all aspects of our lives.

This is the Emperor that ruthless and merciless - to ourselves!

This is the Emperor that drives us to work until our health breaks; to ignore our own inner desperate pleadings for time for rest, for pleasure, for connection, for even a walk outside on a lovely spring day. This is the Emperor who chooses a life path of success, power, recognition, control - all, ultimately, based on ego.

We may think that we've managed to elude the controlling grasp of our inner Emperor - and some of us have. However, a lack of worldly success does not always mean that our inner Emperor is dormant or absent. Rather, it can just as easily mean that we have enough internal conflict so that our Emperor can push us to great extents - but is constantly being hampered by internal "palace revolts."

So how do we discern our Emperor? And then, how do we "overthrow" him?

Even more, is "overthrowing" our Emperor what we really want? Or is there a way to "manage" our own internal Emperor, so that we are getting the "best out of the deal"?

Common sense, and a dose of practical wisdom, suggests that complete "dethronement" may not be entirely what we want.

We wouldn't have such a powerful inner archetype as our Emperor if it ("he") were not extremely useful.

What we're desiring, though, is not just a sense of balance, but really something more.

Our Emperor comes from ego. And ultimately, our ego is fear-driven.

Our real goal is to live beyond our egos; to live according to a higher vision and sense of purpose. We design to align ourselves more with God's will in our lives. This means changing our internal "power structure" somewhat.

Walt Kelly first used the quote "We Have Met The Enemy and He Is Us" on a poster for Earth Day in 1970.

There's that well-known saying; "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

Well, that "us" would be our own internal Emperor - the most powerful, determined, focused, and controlling of our six core power archetypes.

So how do we discern him? And how do we "dethrone" him? (That means - not remove completely, but get him into a useful and somewhat "subordinate" place?) That will be the subject of the next few blogs.

Yours with love -

Alay'nya

Is Your "Emperor" Ruling Your Life?

Is Your Inner Emperor Ruling Your Life? (And If So, What Can You Do?)

A gentle tyrant.

Perhaps, sometimes, even not-so-gentle.

Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor (1557-1619), painted by Hans von Aachen (1625).

We each have an inner Emperor.

Our Emperor mode, or archetype, is our "Project Manager" self. When we deal with cognitive, rational, "get-things-done" types of tasks - tasks often involving budgets, deadlines, and deliverables - we call on our inner Emperor.

Our inner Emperor is one of our six core power archetypes, and is often dominant. He (along with is compatriot, the Magician) tends to be a "resource hog."

We can't blame him; not really. Any good Project Manager, CEO, or President-of-Anything will charm, co-opt, or just plain commandeer any and every resource that he (or she) can find to get the job done. That's why they're paid the "big bucks." They get things done - and to hell with whose toes get stepped on in the process.

Our Emperor is all about - whatever he's "all about." This could be getting a law degree or a promotion at work. It could simply be getting a five-year-old's birthday party to come off successfully. Regardless, our inner Emperor is highly task-focused. And because "his" role is to get things done, at all costs, when he's in charge, no other archetypal mode gets much attention.

Our inner High Priestess wants to go for a walk, or even to get out of town for the weekend to simply chill? Sorry, but we're staying late at the office until the report is done.

Our inner Hathor wants some spa time? Later.

Our inner Empress wants to connect with girlfriends, or stay at home and cuddle? Again, later. Her needs get deferred in the face of the Emperor's overwhelming (perhaps even obsessive) task-focused nature.

Now don't get me wrong. We need our Emperor mode. This aspect of our psyche is essential to our well-being.

The challenge is that - for too many of us - we've allowed our inner Emperor to really become an inner Tyrant - gobbling up all of our time, all of our resources, and all of our energies. And then we find ourselves exhausted, frustrated, and just downright depressed and angry.

So how do we deal?

That will be the subject of the next several postings.

References

Soloman, Presidential Address to the Eastern Psychological Association, NYC, April, 1963.

Hestia - Our "Rest amd Recharge" Archetype - Part 2

Why We Need Some "Hestia Time"

 

It Was More Than "Just Winter"

Shortly after Thanksgiving, my father died. This, of course, was the "tipping point." But it was one event on top of several.

Within a single week, one housemate - someone with a severe medical condition - went into the hospital. Another, newly moving in, announced that she had quit her new job, would be unable to pay her security deposit, and would likely not have the next month's rent. Then, a tooth condition flared up, and it looked as though I'd need an emergency root canal.

Within another week, a housemate (yes, the same one who couldn't pay security or rent) lit a fire in the fireplace. The flue was open, but it was cold - and she started up a fire of magnificent proportions. Naturally, the smoke went into the room, instead of up the cold chimney flue. We had smoke throughout, as never before. I was faced with the somewhat daunting task of repainting the entire living room.

This combination - of grief over my father's passing, of simply too much stress from external events, and the onset of winter - kicked me firmly into a combination of High Priestess and Hestia modes.

High Priestess and Hestia - Two Natural Complements

High Priestess, by Mari-Na

Our High Priestess, as we know, is our contemplative and intuitive mode. This is where we take a spiritual retreat, or even just take a long walk. We need our High Priestess to find the "calm spot" within ourselves.

Our High Priestess is a necessary complement to our visionary, creative Magician mode. Without some reflective time, we find it difficult to tap into our inspirations and creativity. This is why our High Priestess is the second major archetype we encounter in our first adult life journey. Within the Major Arcana of the Tarot, she is Card II, and immediately follows the Magician (Card I).

Since our High Priestess plays such an important role in our lives, we often miss the important corollary of our Hestia mode.

Hestia - Our "Hearth and Home" Goddess

Hestia image created by Katlyn Breene, permission requested.

She [Hestia] is the Goddess of the hearth flame and temple flame, and at every public or private ritual, the first offering was always made to her. Upon marrying, a new bride would carry fire from her mother's home to the new, symbolizing the Goddess's presence blessing her new family. Hestia is the symbol of the sanctity of home, of home as temple and refuge, and of the fire of life contained within each place that honors her. (Text from Lunaea.)

"Mend, Tend, Befriend": How Women Deal with Stress

Shelley E. Taylor, Ph.D., has led breakthrough research uncovering how women's typical stress-responses are different from men's. In her book, The Tending Instinct, she found that "tending and befriending" behaviors - those that involve bonding - are part of women's natural responses to stress. However, it was also Taylor who coined the phrase "mend, tend, and befriend." The "mending" part, and also our "tending," may refer to our physical environment as well as our emotional landscape.

Emotional bonding behaviors - whether caring for a child, a husband, a friend, or a pet - or even having lunch with girlfriends or phone call with a long-distance sibling or friend - help to produce oxytocin. Oxytocin is a "feel-good" neurohormone, and is important in many aspects of our lives. However, to "feel good," we also need other hormones. Dopamine helps us to feel the zest and juiciness of life, and serotonin is soothing and calming.

Archetypes and Neurohormones: A Strange and Useful Relation

Although it is very simplistic, we can make an "overarching" correlation between certain of our archetypes and the brain "states" that we wish to induce with each of these archetypal modes.

• Empress - our "tend and befriend" mode - strongly correlated with oxytocin-inducing behaviors,
• High Priestess - intuitive and contemplative - and least well-understood in terms of neurohormonal correlates, but most likely linked to anything that is serotonin producing (and hence the strong association with the Hestia archetype)
• Hestia - the "mend" part of our "mend, tend, and befriend" stress-coping strategies - less emotionally-connected than Empress, and much more focused on the "calming" (serotonin-producing) activities of cleaning house, mending items, and generally keeping order, and
• Hathor (the Love Goddess) - focusing on sensual pleasure, love and romantic passion - a "dopamine-focused" (feeling exuberant and ecstatic) archetype.

Hestia and House-Cleaning: Breaking Through the Winter Doldrums

Alana Morales, writing for the online Mommie's Magazine, shares that house-cleaning helps relieve stress. She's not alone in this, as even the Mayo Clinic offers activity (such as house-cleaning), as a means of stress reduction.

Laura, a writer for Radiant Recovery, describes how she found that house-cleaning helped her to reduce stress . A friend and colleague pointed out the relation between cleaning, stress reduction, and seratonin.

She wrote:

That when OCD gets really bad you can not stop the need to clean that one spot on the table or keep washing your hands or organizing the silverware drawer or whatever.

And, here is the kicker, she said how do you feel after you clean or neaten the things up that bother you? I thought for a moment and said, I feel much , much better. A sense of relief...and calm.

She said that is because you just got some serotonin. The act of cleaning, or repetitively doing something calms you down which produces a small amount of serotonin.

Women, Stress, and Serotonin

For women, stress, depression, and serotonin levels are often linked.

We can, to some extent, improve our serotonin levels with certain kinds of foods, with exercise (which produces endorphins), and with sufficient sleep and even light-boxes (during winter).

Upcoming: Hestia Strategies

In the next blogpost, I'll share how we can consciously invoke the Hestia archetype into our lives, calling upon the "sacredness" of house-cleaning - of deliberately using our "mend and tend" instincts - to help us deal with stress. This can even help us deal with more difficult situations - such as sharp emotional life-changes, including major losses and transitions.

Related Blogs

Hestia - Our "Rest and Recharge" Archetype - Part 2

Masculine vs. Feminine - Core Archetypes

Your Masculine and Feminine Core Archetypes: How Are They Different?

 

Have you wondered yet how much you really need the archetypes of the "other gender" in your life? That is, if you're a man, have you wondered how much you "really need" the four core feminine archetypes? And if you're a woman, have you wondered how much you "really need" the masculine qualities in your life?

Yin and Yang not only embody classic masculine and feminine qualities, but each carries the "seed" of one within the other

If so, you're not alone.

 

Congratulations - You've Found One of the Top Blog Posts in The Unveiling Journey

Congratulations!

Whether by luck or by design, you've come to the fourth most popular blogpost in The Unveiling Journey since the blog was started in 2007. (The six "most popular" blogs are selected by statistics current as of October 22, 2013. This one is actually the best on this topic to date.)

Since then, we've moved the entire blog series to a new location.

Here are some great reading choices:

• The Unveiling Journey - the most recent blog (we keep getting better!),
• Six Top Blog Posts for The Unveiling Journey - top six as of October 22, 2013 - gives links to this blog post plus five more (including the one I'd recommend the most), and
• The Masculine vs. Feminine - Core Archetypes - the rest of this post (the one that you started reading here just now).

 

Why the Transition to a New Blog Site?

• Better Intralinking: You'll find related blogposts easier (look at the end of this post on the new site for good links),
• Better Categories and Tags: Interested in a related topic? Want to see what else is covered? Look in the right-hand sidebar on the new site - check out the Categories (main topics) and Tags (people, books, events, and sub-topics), and
• Improved Resources: Look for a Resources Page (main header menu); it will give you a different kind of access to related topics - from the antecedents (books inspiring this ongoing work) to future directions.

 

See you over there - and thank you!

 

Alay'nya (Alianna J. Maren, Ph.D.)

 

Post edited and content moved to The Unveiling Journey website, specifically to the The Masculine vs. Feminine - Core Archetypes blogpost on Tuesday, October 22, 2013. Original post February 12, 2013.

Core Archetypes Year-Long Study Guide - The "Big Picture"

Your Master Plan for Understanding and Integrating Each of the Core Power Archetypes

Suppose that you've been studying - and using - the power of archetypes in your life for a while now. What will make this year the year in which you achieve personal mastery? What will make this year your breakthrough year, and launch you to a new level of personal success and victory?

You may already understand that as we grow, we go through archetypal "growth stages." Perhaps no one explains this better than Carol Pearson, in The Hero Within. She walks us through how we go from the not-so-empowered Innocent to the fully-empowered Magician.

You may also know, from reading Caroline Myss's Sacred Contracts, that we simultaneously access and use several different archetypes. In fact, she has us select "current" and "desired" archetypes from a roster of a few dozen possibilities.

With all these great teachings, there is still something missing when we seek to fully capture the power of archetypes in our lives - the power to be in the right frame of mind for different tasks, relationships, and intentions. This "something missing" was actually laid out for us in the first seven cards of the Tarot's Major Arcana.

A Master Plan That Goes Back Thousands of Years

The background story tells us that this knowledge actually has a much older provenance than we may have thought. The earliest known Tarot decks are several hundred years old. However, the Major Arcana are based directly on the twenty-two "pathways" connecting "spheres" (Sephiroth) in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. The Kabbalistic written tradition goes back for hundreds of years; the oral tradition to perhaps a couple of thousand of years. And since the Tree of Life is the earliest known base for esoteric teachings in our culture, the origins may even be earlier. The Tree of Life is mentioned in the earliest known human writings.

In short, it is very likely that a certain "esoteric teaching" - based on mastering six core power archetypes - goes back at least hundreds, and possibly thousands, of years.

Three factors stand out when we undertake this "journey":

• The six core power archetypes (together with two reserve battery archetypes) match directly to three of the four "dimensions" used by Carl Jung in creating his Psychological Types,
• There is a certain order for study and master, and
• There is an "endgame" - that is, we don't want to just master these archetypes in isolation; we desire the ability to pull on each one (or several) as needed. That is true mastery, and it is our goal as well.

 

What is Our Master Plan?

As with all big intentions, it helps us to have a "game plan."

 

Our "game plan" is that over the course of a year, we will spend each semi-quarter on each archetype. Integration, we trust, will be something that we take up as we go along. (We may choose to repeat this study for a few years, each time gaining greater levels of insight and refinement,)

A second - yet very important - aspect of our "game plan" is that we're tying in our intellectual and practical archetype study with our "lab work" - our daily practice of energy exercises and dance movements. We tie all of these together with the appropriate "season", using the traditional Western esoteric approach of assigning and "element" to each "season."

• Winter: Season of Earth (pentacles, the physical body, a "feminine" season),
• Spring:Season of Air (swords, the mind, a "masculine" season),
• Summer: Season of Fire (rods, the spirit, a "masculine" season), and
• Autumn: Season of Water (cups, the emotional realm, a "feminine" season).

 

Master Plan Overview

Each "element" has a set of qualities associated with it, and a particular focus of attention. Our archetypal study curriculum focuses on intellectual study combined with reflection and exercises that highlight each of the specific "archetypes" for the given semi-quarter. When we combine this with pathworking, we add in elements of spiritual discipline, emotional release work, energy cultivation exercises, and (of course) dance movements and techniques and choreography.

The archetypes that we will consider, are (in order):

Winter Quarter - Season of Earth (Pentacles, a "Feminine" Season)

• High Priestess: Dec. 21 - Jan 31 Being contemplative and intuitive, a time for gazing into the fire, creating a "vision board" for the coming year, and being open to "dream-time", and
• Hestia (a reserve battery archetype): Feb 1 - Mar 20 Spring-cleaning - for our homes and our psyches; the classic "wax on, wax off" approach to opening our minds for insight and guidance.

 

Spring Quarter - Season of Air (Swords, a "Masculine" Season)

• Magician: Mar. 21 - April 30 Being a visionary, creating reality according to your "big dream", and
• Emperor: May 1 - June 20 Bringing your desired reality into fruition; business plans, project management, process flows, stabilizing your "empire."

 

Summer Quarter - Season of Fire (Rods, a "Masculine" Season)

• Green Man (a reserve battery archetype): June 21 - July 31 Escape to the "great outdoors," breaking out of the molds that civilization puts on us, and
• Hierophant: Aug 1 - Sept. 20 Becoming a guru/guide for those younger than us - either in years or in skills and understanding.

 

Autumn Quarter - Season of Water (Cups, a "Feminine" Season)

• Hathor (The "Love Goddess"): Sept. 21 - Oct 30 Reveling in sensual beauty and pleasure, and
• Empress: Oct. 31 - Dec. 20 Connecting, loving, nurturing - sending out Christmas cards and gifts, holiday entertaining, time with family, friends, and loved ones.

 

Putting the Master Plan Into Action

For this coming year, each semi-quarter will be devoted to the appropriate archetype. I'll offer resources and guidance, and as you feel led, you can follow up at will. Resources will include:

• Guest Bloggers: Special invited guests for each different core archetype - Giving you insights from the "best of the best," together with real-life stories from others who've achieved amazing results in different areas of their lives,
• Suggested Readings: Links to books and online resources - Get greater depth, and
• Exercises and Checklists (Strictly optional): What to do to get the most out of each archetypal focus.

From time to time, I'll write about the integration process - how we can combine two or more archetypes to create "mastery" for ourselves in different life situations. I'll also point the way to what happens after this level of mastery. (Yes, mastery comes in levels - and the whole work with archetypes is simply the first level. However, it's the level where we need a good foundation before advancing to anything else.)

So here's to you, with very best wishes for an absolutely awesome coming year!