Wilna van der Walt Practice

Month: July 2023

  • Trickster creates

    Trickster creates

    Feeling distressed, we might engage with a creative medium within a contained transitional space and be surprised to discover the reality of the living psyche, of unfamiliar content in the new creation, a message ‘from the deep.’

    “Trickster makes this world,” he creates playfully. (Lewis Hyde, 1998) He sits on the ‘border;’ he ‘opens or closes’ the connecting door between our inner and outer worlds. He re-members or dis-members, symbolizes or dissociates us. (Kalsched, 1997, p. 197)

    A playful approach to life’s difficulties allows one to play around with possibilities in difficult times, to adapt. A traumatized child has difficulty in relaxing and playing.

    Trickster makes this world, he makes links, he creates. He is the driving force in what Jung described as the Transcendent Function. This function aims at restoring inner imbalance. Therefore, if there is an emotional need and if we create the right circumstances, the trickster will come, because he wants to come.

    The conscious personality is goal-directed and has to adapt to the outer world; this is what it has to do. But this is often not beneficial to the whole or complete personality. Because it is mostly unconscious, it is not possible for the conscious personality to keep its own wholeness in mind. This imbalance then activates the trickster who tries to restore the balance, e.g. through a slip of the tongue, a dream image, or in symbolical creative work. The imbalance can also be mediated in the transference between analyst and analysand. (CW8:134-8)

    The creative play of the transitional space produces symbolical content. A symbol is an image of psychic energy, a complex fact, not fully understood by consciousness; it portrays “an objective visible meaning, behind which an invisible profounder meaning is hidden.” (Jacoby, 1957, p. 77) It brings together conscious and unconscious content. From a conscious point of view, it often appears as a paradox.

    When relating to it, inviting it into one’s real lived life, it nourishes immature wounded aspects of the personality, in turn supporting the process of individuation, of growing towards greater maturity.

    In symbolical creative work one may find a window on the unfolding, lifelong process of becoming.

  • Symbolism of Water

    Symbolism of Water

    We associate our emotional life with water. Without our world of emotions, we are stranded in a dry blazing desert, the world of one-sided mind. Logical thinking has its place but is often over emphasized in modern culture.

    Water flows together: our emotional life unites things. When cleansed, it is nourishing. Without water, no life is possible.

    Water is able to flow around an obstruction and flow on. It fills up the empty space and takes on its shape: it adapts.

    Water reflects light. When we are able to relate to our emotional life, we are better able to reflect upon ourselves and our lives. Mourning forms a central aspect of the process of self-acceptance. Grief allows the old life to become compost for the new.

    Water is the solvent: old structures, depleted of their content, may be dissolved in water. After a period of drought, rain brings a feeling of release, of relief of tension.

    Creation myths often tell us that water was the source from which everything originated. When a pregnant woman’s water breaks, birth is imminent. ‘The waters’ have been associated with the Great Mother symbolism since ancient times: the place of the waters is the Great Mother, and the place from which we might be reborn, renewed.

    Creation myths tell us about upper and lower waters. The waterfall connects the waters of above with the waters of below, it connects the higher values with the everyday world. The tree and the fountain likewise connect upper and lower; it draws up the water from below, the water of the earth, the well-springs of life, wisdom, and make it available to anyone who delve down deep enough within her/himself.

    A more conscious integrated perspective on life brings the possibility of compassion that is objectively contained, water with shape, also sometimes called Eros.

    Image credit: Lea van Rensburg

  • Symbolism of the Well

    Symbolism of the Well

    Wells have been associated with sacred ceremonial descent, ritually lived, for millennia. Like the holes in the ground, hand-dug by men and women over time, it resembles the development of consciousness over time. Over time, archetypal patterns of descent, linking above and below, ego and Self, became more fully known by humanity and potentially available to anyone who would ‘go down all the way’ to the roots, who ‘does not neglect the work.’ (1)

    All over the world, wells have been dug by hand at least since the ninth millennium BCE. (2) Human settlements have always been dependent for survival on a well with a fresh clear spring, so that social structures developed around it. We depend upon it.

    The symbolism of the well and the tree have something in common. The water of the well can be drawn up from the deep to serve life and growth in the community. In the same way, a tree draws up water through its roots and fibers from the deep in order to grow.

    The well conveys the idea that the nourishing wellsprings of life is available to all, no matter how desperate you are feeling. It is inexhaustible. It grows neither less nor more; it exists for one and all. Generations come and go, and all may enjoy life in its inexhaustible abundance. (2)

    A well needs to be maintained, cleaned, lined and so, also, the relationship to one’s deeper self. Through Jung’s psychology, the existence and mechanisms of this psychic structure was made conscious and accessible to any individual who felt called upon to undertake the work of descent. Then the inner relationship with one’s roots may be restored and the individual may find meaningful nourishment.

    Our modern world is dominated by rationality and superficiality resulting in loneliness and meaninglessness, but by restoring the relationship with one’s deeper personality one may draw from the wellsprings of Life to find meaningful containment and inner guidance from your own roots.

    1. I Ching, p. 185 – 6

    2. Wikipedia.org, well

  • Symbolism of the Tree

    Symbolism of the Tree

    The tree represents the manifestation of the life-force, of our ability to grow into greater maturity; when faced with an impossible life situation, one should not try to force anything, but ‘stay in one place and grow, like a tree.’ (Jung, Dream Seminars, 1929)

    Growing is a slow process. Only swamp plants shoot up overnight. Inner growth may enable one to outgrow and rise above a difficult life situation, to attain a more objective perspective and discover alternative options that may have been there all along. A very large tree may grow from a very small seed.

    The seed has to break open and grow towards the light, the higher values. Breaking open is painful, but necessary; without it there will be no growth. The tree roots us. Its roots stretch away into the darkness of the earth, into the shadow. Like the fountain, the tree may draw water from deep beneath the earth, from the well-springs of life, if the roots reach deep enough.

    A tree goes through seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter. After the death-like feeling of winter, stripping away the old, new life returns, blossoming, ripening our fruit. Animals and birds may be fed and sheltered. When the time comes again, we shed our beautiful autumn colors so that it may become compost for new life. Our lives circle continuously through periods of spring, summer, autumn, winter and spring again.