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The above double rainbow was captured this afternoon, the afternoon following the Jung-Fire email discussion being notified by Jennifer Howell of the passing of her mother, Alice O. Howell.
Alice was the group’s mentor and maven. She was a master teacher, astrologer, Jungian, poet, philosopher, contemplative, adventurer, and all of this is mere litany of dedication in the light of her being a carrier of feminine wisdom for every moment of her ninety-one years.
A colleague in the group sent a link to Alice’s Credo IX Aberduffy Day. In this post Alice wrote:
I want to add a comforting observation of a Tibetan lama I met. He said that the English language makes a grievous error in making antonyms oflife/death. They should be birth/death, which are both a part of a greater Life. He then drew a circle with a horizontal diameter, put birth on the left and death on the right. In the upper hemisphere “unmanifest Life” and in the lower “manifest Life.” To me this is an important insight and worth sharing.
Just as the ego cannot define “God” through the duality of consciousness, it cannot describe life after death, but at the center (Self/Divine Guest) of the circle we can get glimpses because there we may remember . . . Paracelsus said “Let nature be your guide!” Nature recycles. Nothing gets wasted. Scorpio rules death and resurrection and recycling.
Alice wrote many books. The two most influential for me were The Web in the Sea, Jung, Sophia and the Geometry of the Soul, and The Dove In the Stone, Finding the Sacred in the Commonplace. [Amazon]
I’ll have more to say about Alice sometime sooner rather than later. (I argued with her a lot over the years. We had one great phone call twelve or so years ago.) I’m sad and, as well, gladdened by her daughter’s report of Alice’s happy Aberduffy Day surrounded by loved ones.
Biography (2006)
I am now an old lady of 83 and have lived quite an unusual life. From the age of 5 to 25, I never lived in a home but grew up in hotels and boarding schools abroad, never more than 3 mos. in one place. By the time I was 15, I had been in over 30 countries, so the adventures of Teak in my THE BEEJUM BOOK are mostly autobiographical. By contrast, when I came back to the U.S. and married an artist and had 4 children, we never went out to dinner in 19 years! I taught children for 18 years and eventually, thanks to a lifetime of study, I went on to teach at Jung Institutes and to lecture worldwide on the value of seeing astrology as a symbolic language of archetypal processes and the individual chart as a unique description of how a person is likely to process experience and thus a helpful diagnostic tool as well as a guide to spiritual growth. Two of my books THE DOVE IN THE STONE and THE WEB IN THE SEA are devoted to the reemergence of feminine wisdom and are set on the Isle of Iona in the Scottish Hebrides.
The 8 books I offer have all been written since I was 60 years old which should encourage other late-bloomers! My second and beloved husband Walter Andersen gave me a computer and the encouragement! My books are all easy to read, as my mission in life, is to convey serious ideas as simply as possible with humor and delight.I am indebted to the wonderful teachers of all kinds, too numerous to mention here.
I am now a widow and live in an old house in a hamlet of 800 souls in the Berkshires of New England surrounded by beauty. As I had a stroke 8 years ago, I am handicapped and cannot use my right hand, but keep in touch with the world through a Jungian group on the Internet. I am helped by the proximity of one of my daughters and her husband. Am now the proud grandmother of 10 grandchildren and 2 1/2 great-grands. I live with a remarkable pussycat Bunky and am resigned to being eccentric but not yet cackling!
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