“What aspects of my Shadow are begging for the light of day in this trial that I am suffering.”
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(Sort of, this reading transcends the time element)For those who don’t speak Jungian, put simply, the Shadow is that underdeveloped, ostensibly inferior, and darker part of our Self, kept hidden....Sorry, everyone has one, and you don’t get to kill it.
Thus, the dragon in old mythologies is not really the Shadow, it’s the fear of the Shadow, the Shadow lies behind the dragon or in its gutted belly. In fact, it’s a treasure chest because it contains energies that we can integrate for a more creative life. But, through the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (i.e. Life), we learn to suppress and fear this seemingly ugly duckling in our Selves. It is those aspects we don't let the world see, and we don't like to see in the Mirror. Jung wrote of the Shadow:
“When we must deal with problems, we instinctively resist trying the way that leads through obscurity and darkness. We wish to hear only of unequivocal results, and completely forget that these results can only be brought about when we have ventured into and emerged again from the darkness…Anyone who perceives his shadow and his light simultaneously sees himself from two sides and thus gets in the middle.”
So, the conscious Ego likes to keep the Shadow duct-taped, bound, and in the basement. But, like many Hallowe’en characters, the qualities of the Shadow are not evil, just suppressed and un-integrated: For example, one Hallowe'en, I costumed as Luca the Gypsy Man, my best woman friend went as Paprika my Gypsy wife. (We thought the "spice girl" name was clever.) We weren't evil-scary, but still exploring our personalities through the guise of a socially-sanctioned holiday.
One of my favorite movies, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, demonstrates an American Southern town of Savannah, Georgia dripping in dirty little secrets, but white-washed in gentility. It’s a parade of Egos and Shadows. One of my favorite quotes is from a character Minerva (and imagine it spoken in that American Georgian Southern accent, unique to the US South, which is elegant, slow and measured, with long vowels uttered like we have all this lazy summer day to talk): “To understand the living, you got to commune with the dead.” Minerva was obviously a Jungian, even if not a grammarian.
Back to the reading: I see Le Diable’s torch aptly nodding to the idea of the Shadow, as a torch produces shadows on a cave wall. The Ego, La Justice, stands ready to defend, ever-alert to do the right thing, holding the knife and fork in just the right way, and heaven knows, she's not slouching in her chair. Her sword blocks Le Diable, but her scales offer possibility of integration of the "other side of the tracks".
The Shadows seem to be Le Toille (reversed) and Le Soleil, and they are “covered” by a nice coat of paint of La Maison Dieu and Temperance. But, that's only what I see.
The querent is a psychotherapist colleague, who is presently in very much psychic exhaustion and emotional pain, apparently coming out of a relationship that he struggled to nurture, then wrestled with like Jacob with the Angel, and now he realizes how he has neglected his own garden. Being Jung-informed, he spoke in metaphors, saying he is being dismembered like the Pagan Kings of old, as their body parts were then planted in the fields for a rich harvest. The soil is indeed rich, but wet, saturated with Springtime rains, as if there's not enough earth deep enough to absorb the water. He's ready for some seeds to sprout.
Ideas? Back to the question, what does the Shadow know ???
