Marion Woodman Feminine anger cleanses; animus anger leaves me tense.
As I understand the virgin archetype, it is that aspect of the feminine, in man or in woman, that has the courage to Be and the flexibility to be always Becoming.
Rooted in the instincts, the virgin has a loving relationship to the Great Earth Mother.
But she is not herself the Great Mother.
Men and women who can consciously relate to this archetype do not make mothering synonymous with femininity, nor are they hampered by unconscious material from their own personal mothers.
They have been through the joy and the agony of the daily sorting of the seeds of their own feeling values in order to find out who they authentically are, and they continue to do so.
They are strong enough and pliable enough to surrender to the penetration of the Spirit and to bring the fruit of that union into consciousness.
Sorting the seeds is a daily process of ruthless honesty that allows us grain by grain to discover our Being.
The Latin verb esse means “to be”; thus in discovering our Being we are discovering our essence.
This is a monumental task when we have spent our lives Doing, especially when Doing has become an escape from Being because Being is experienced as nothingness.
Again and again we have to say to ourselves: What was my feeling in that situation—not my emotions, my feeling?
My emotions may support my feeling, but emotions are affective responses determined by complexes, momentary reactions to an immediate situation.
Feeling, on the other hand, evaluates what something is worth to me.
What am I willing to put energy into? What is no longer of value to me?
What did I really feel when the boss fed me Smarties today? I’ve always enjoyed them before, but today I felt him saying, “Be a good little girl. Keep quiet. Don’t bother me.”
Why am I depressed? (Follow the depression back to where I betrayed my own
feeling and turned my energy against myself).
Is it possible my lover is not the man I thought him to be? Does he see me at all?
Am I projecting my own inner man onto him? Am I forcing him to take responsibility for my undeveloped talents? Am I treating my body as my mother treated hers? Am I thinking like my father? Where am I blindly reacting as they did? Where am I still reacting childishly? Is my anger coming from my gut or from my head? Is it feminine anger or animus anger?
(Feminine anger cleanses; animus anger leaves me tense.)
Guided by the response of the unconscious as revealed in dreams, we differentiate grain from grain, question after question, until one day we find our own authentic voice.
