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Waybread wrote:
I am happy to engage with you as well, Michael.
Geronimo!
Freudian interpretations of infant and childhood sexuality have been thoroughly discredited. You are probably familiar with Jeffrey Masson's or Florence Rush's critiques of Freud's work on childhood sexuality. Freud fabricated his seduction theory because he couldn't believe that respectable middle class men of Vienna would molest their own children, so he inverted his patients' recollections to claim that children fantasized about relations with the parent of the opposite sex.
While I'm by no means a supporter of Freudian psychology in toto, I do feel that you are throwing the baby out with the bath water here. Childhood sexuality as such is not anybody's imagination. Any man can tell you that as a boy they occasionally had a hard-on long before puberty ? and not alone from drinking Coke! :lol:

Whether you call it Libido or Kundalini ? sexual energy is at the base of the psyche. Even though sexuality unfolds in several gradual stages.

Restrictions start being set (inevitably, for social reasons) when the child is i.e. told not to touch certain parts of their body in the presence of others. A child may also emphatically perceive their parents' uneasy attitudes about sexual things, and draw their own conclusions.
I don't think we can overlook the role of culture. When I was a baby-boomer child growing up in the United States, there was a huge premium on young women's virginity at marriage. (Their marriages occurred, on average, at age 19.) It was all-too-convenient for self-serving young men with a modicum of education to claim that teen-aged girls were "sexually repressed" or "frigid" if they wouldn't reciprocate his overtures for the price of a date. The men's advances had something to do with libido, but a lot more to do with bragging-rights about their conquests.
Well, knowing about young men in general, it's probably safe to say that both factors must have played an at least equally weighted role.
Girls who got pregnant out of wedlock routinely had their babies taken away without their consent and given up for adoption. Strong, autonomous women who wouldn't play the domesticated, docile role were called "castrating females." The whole history of Freudian psychoanalysis in American gender relationships deserved to be soundly discarded.
I feel that you are letting personal bad experiences stand in the way of your scientific objectivity here. If you were to invalidate any religious/philosophical/psychological system on grounds of their inappropriate application at some stage, there wouldn't be much left. Why don't you start by throwing astrology out on the garbage!
We can find comparable restrictions on female behaviour around the globe today, notably in Islamic cultures. It won't do to claim that half a billion young women are sexually repressed, given the very real issues of cultural sanctions and young people's emotional development.
You seem to assume that a culture shapes an individual in a most basic manner. Yes, it does have a deep influence, to be sure ? but we didn't come here as blank pages, astrologically, karmically, and genetically. To what degree an individual is or is not in accordance with the behavioural band-width provided by their culture depends on that individual's nature. (All the more so in a time period when cultural/social systems are breaking apart - and new ones being created!) How they would relate to their cultural conditioning can be delineated from the positions and aspects of Jupiter and Saturn, specifically.

Your mentioning of Islamic culture is noteworthy, insofar issues of repressed and violently erupting sexuality are especially prevalent there! You also can't reduce this to, or separate it from, power issues, in my opinion. However, repression of the female is analogous to repression of ?libidinous nature? in general.
Where I think Jungian psychology can be very helpful to astrologers, whether traditional or modern, is the theory that people can become uncomfortable with certain character traits or behaviours that they see within themselves, that they dislike, and that they try to ignore or disown.

These traits and behaviours can be linked to particular planets. A young man, for example, who believes strongly in being macho and manly (as his culture defines it) might disown his moon and Venus natures. They become "shadow" material, and projected on actual women, whom he sees as weak, overly emotional (moon), and obsessed with clothes and hairstyles (Venus.)
At the risk of being somewhat politically incorrect, I would maintain that females psychologically express the archetypal Moon and Venus more pronouncedly than males, generally speaking, and I don't think it's all just due to conditioned social roles. It goes without saying that these expressions vary with the individual representative, and the birth chart will demonstrate this to a degree.

The projected shadow self in Jungian psychology is identified with one's sexual counterpart. In psychological astrology, it is associated with the Moon in her two major phases (Rudhyar); also with Venus in a male's chart, and Mars in a female's chart. But certainly much more is involved in actuality.
I think this type of projection is common with planets that oppose the sun.
The Sun representing the individual here, the opposition making for something like a 7th house relationship... That's worthy of consideration!
A traditional astrologer might find comparable behaviour with a deeply debilitated planet, for example.
An interesting idea as well. A debilitated planet as a part of oneself that tends to be unconscious, much like a little used and unconscious function of the psyche in Jungian psychology.
I think astrology can be helpful in recognizing that each human being comprises all of the planets in his chart, and seeking constructive ways to integrate them-- whether through modern or traditional techniques.

But we don't need evolutionary astrology of the "Suck it up, Princess" school to get there.
Hey, what's the matter? I continue to find myself agreeing with you! I do think that psychologically sensitive and philosophically sophisticated approaches to evolutionary astrology are possible, but I am in no position to say if they already exist in practice.

Michael

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Michael, I am not denying that children (of either sex) experience sexual feelings. They do and it is a normal part of their development. But this has little to do with Freud's theories of children developing sexual attachments to parents of the opposite sex, simply because he didn't want to believe that incest was occuring in nice middle class families.

And let's not stray from the topic of the OP. Incest causes all kinds of psychological scarring for the children who experience it; often for the rest of their lives. Children report feeling traumatized by the experience, not aroused by it.

But in Meyers's evolutionary astrology universe, incest is neither good nor bad because it would exist inside the "Saturn wall." It "just is," and probably is even good for the victims because the more difficult one's experience, the bigger the opportunity for spiritual growth. (I'm not making this up, he says as much on the podcast.)

According to this calculus, let's have a few hideous wars while we're at it: imagine the brilliant opportunities for evolutionary astrology when thousands of people get killed or maimed. Refugee camps would be wonderful opportunities for a little evolutionary astrology counseling. In fact, the UN might as well take rape off the list of war crimes now, because All is Fair in Love and War.

The more I think about Meyers's position, the less tenable it seems. As an American (even in the gun-happy South,) he benefits from living in a reasonably well-regulated society with a system of laws and ethical codes that limit the probability of a lot of really nasty things happening to him. Maybe life in northern Nigeria would be preferable, given the great opportunities for spiritual growth offered to those kidnapped (and still missing) school girls.

Since I don't believe in kundalini or karma in the sense of Hindusim or its New Age rip-offs, I'll let this sort of comment alone.

Libido is only one motivating factor in human behaviour, not the only one or necessarily even the primary one. Old guys do slow down considerably in their sexual urges, incidentally.

Michael, I don't know what universe you live in. Do you have children? As the mother of two (adult) children, I never taught them not to touch parts of their bodies in public or private. I guess they sort of figured it out. Girls and boys both need to be taught some type of restraint. Even in this sexually liberated era, young girls can still get pregnant, acquire STDs that can lead to serious reproductive health issues later, and commit suicide when their classmates start calling them the nasty names for sexually active girls, on Facebook.

I don't know what "bad personal experiences" you have in mind for me, as I never had a baby taken away for adoption, and thankfully my real career began after the early-sixties era of sexist psycho-babble. However, it didn't take much to be observant.

Yes, culture does shape people in the most basic ways. We have several different disciplines called social sciences (such as sociology) with a huge archive of solid research on the role of one's culture in personal development. This isn't to deny individuality by any means, but it is to say that you, Michael, are in large part a product of your ethnicity or nationality, socio-economic class, gender, age, and so on.

Joining a counter-culture or taking a contrarian view doesn't change this. Have you ever noticed how members of "rebel" groups tend to dress alike? Prefer the same sort of music, and so on? People are social animals.

You want to be very, very careful in generalizing about Muslims, who comprise about 1/4 of the world's entire population.

But by Meyers's calculus, condemning them for sexual repression lives within the "Saturn wall" in which there is no good or bad: things just happen.

I'm glad we found some points of agreement, Michael.

Hey, trust me.

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I just caught up on all the latest replies, I must say I find I agree with most of Waybread's points here. It seems so insane to me to consider thinking along the lines that victims of rape or childhood sexual abuse are as a result of their own sexual inhibitions and repressions. I find it very difficult to fathom how people defend this point of view.

Are we really speculating that people who are raped are merely sexually repressed? And children are also? I suppose toddlers or babies who cannot even speak yet are as well?
"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing" - Socrates

https://heavenlysphere.com/

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Thanks, Paul.
Paul wrote: ...

Are we really speculating that people who are raped are merely sexually repressed? And children are also? I suppose toddlers or babies who cannot even speak yet are as well?
This where the whole past-lives karma trope gets ugly. But not just karma, because Juaism and Christianity haven't done such a great job with theodicy (the problem of how a just and loving God permits evil things to happen to innocent children.)

Of course, I can see the benefit in not dwelling on horrid events in our pasts. If somebody does something despicable to me, that's one type of harm. If I obsess with it the rest of my life, then I'm harmed twice, the second time by myself.

But the problem with evolutionary astrology is that there is a bigger picture or bigger pie in which relinquishing one's grievances occurs. This is only one slice. We need to think more about how societies function as a whole, and how to create societies in which little kids do not get violated; a world in which we acknowledge more reality and less imaginative constructs of the solar system.

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Sun Jun 29, 2014 7:14 pm
Michael Sternbach wrote: The projected shadow self in Jungian psychology is identified with one's sexual counterpart. In psychological astrology, it is associated with the Moon in her two major phases (Rudhyar); also with Venus in a male's chart, and Mars in a female's chart. But certainly much more is involved in actuality.
Hi Michael

I'm really interested in this statement you have made here. Can you provide some references in Jung's work which indicates that the the projected shadow self is identified with one's sexual counterpart - to be clear, I am not looking for a quote that shows that all our relationships could be hooks for projection, but specifically that the shadow is identified with the sexual counterpart. Also for Rudhyar. Also for whoever it is that says the same of Venus in a man's chart, and Mars in a woman's chart.

This runs contrary to what I understand, at least, psychological astrologers to say about the shadow self and my own understanding of what little of Jung I have read. My understanding is that any aspect of our psyche is liable to form part of the shadow side and projected on any hook which best suits the nature of that shadow side.
"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing" - Socrates

https://heavenlysphere.com/

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paul - july 1st post.

hi paul! i am going to let michael respond to this question you've asked him, but i would like to chime in on this anyway, as i find the concept of projection as applied to astrology a very interesting one. i hadn't noticed michael making that quote until you pointed it out this morning and haven't been following the conversation here.

i don't know where i picked this up, but the idea of projecting the feminine planets or masculine planets onto the opposite sex was an idea i picked up somewhere. i think the idea was something along the lines that a person would be attracted to a type of partner that best reflected those planets in one's chart. i also recall the idea that projecting saturn onto others was an idea that i picked up somewhere along the line too.. same deal for the outer planets.. i am not sure where i was given this idea, but it was a thought that i spent some time pondering and found a shred of truth to it. the problem with any shred of truth, is it is not enough to be universally applied.. it might have been liz greenes book 'saturn' that first got me thinking about how we might want to reject the parts of our consciousness that we found difficult to identify with. this can be applied any number of ways psychologically and extended using astrology symbolism..

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james_m wrote:it might have been liz greenes book 'saturn' that first got me thinking about how we might want to reject the parts of our consciousness that we found difficult to identify with. this can be applied any number of ways psychologically and extended using astrology symbolism..
Thanks for your thoughts James, I had hoped to be clear on this but just to clarify further, I am not questioning the projection of parts of our psyche we are uncomfortable with, I am in particular questioning that Jung relates this to the sexual counterpart, and Rudhyar to Moon phases etc.

My understanding is that anything under-individuated is (equally) open for being part of the shadow and ripe for projecting (when we find a suitable hook for that particular projection). It's the reference to the authors involved that I would be interested in reading in particular.
"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing" - Socrates

https://heavenlysphere.com/

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Hello Waybread,

re yours: Mon Jun 30, 2014 9:18 pm

It is really quite irrelevant to my reasoning if there is any validity to Freud's particular theory of childhood sexuality, or if this was really nothing more than a cover-up for abuse in respectable middle class family. Overall, the theory surrounding the Oedipus complex etc. seems quite dubious to me, I'd agree it's baloney. But I haven't studied Freudian psychology per se to any depth, and didn't mention it in this context in the first place, so I will leave the topic at that.

So we both agree that childhood sexuality as such exists. That evaluation and self-constraint of sexual behaviour also start in childhood, where so many of our later behavioural patterns are laid out, seems a logical assumption. Depending on the individual and their particular circumstances, the results can be guilt, shame, repression, and sexual neurosis. Wilhelm Reich thought of this as happening on a collective scale.

There is of course no doubt that ? more than anything else ? sexual abuse of children causes severe traumas and sexual disturbances difficult to heal.

All right, let's look at some of your comments now. :brows

Waybread wrote:
The more I think about Meyers's position, the less tenable it seems. As an American (even in the gun-happy South,) he benefits from living in a reasonably well-regulated society with a system of laws and ethical codes that limit the probability of a lot of really nasty things happening to him. Maybe life in northern Nigeria would be preferable, given the great opportunities for spiritual growth offered to those kidnapped (and still missing) school girls.
Waybread, really... There is nothing preferable over something else! :D

In fairness, it would be best if Eric could reply to these comments by himself, and I encourage him to join the discussion, if Chris has suggested it to him.
Libido is only one motivating factor in human behaviour, not the only one or necessarily even the primary one. Old guys do slow down considerably in their sexual urges, incidentally.
That's exactly because their vital force is decreasing! The Chinese tradition (Hi, Ming!) agrees with this. In an identical conception, the so-called primary ch'i is stored in the kidneys and closely linked with the sexual organs. But feel free to let this sort of comment alone, please!
Michael, I don't know what universe you live in.
Oh, that's a tough one. I'm still trying to figure it out myself. :???:
Do you have children?
No, not so far. (At least not to my knowledge.) :lol: That may be because I'm (arguably) a barren sign...
As the mother of two (adult) children, I never taught them not to touch parts of their bodies in public or private. I guess they sort of figured it out.
All the better!
Girls and boys both need to be taught some type of restraint. Even in this sexually liberated era, young girls can still get pregnant, acquire STDs that can lead to serious reproductive health issues later, ...
Yes, there can be good reasons for Saturnian restraints sometimes. One of them being that wondrous invention called the condom...
... and commit suicide when their classmates start calling them the nasty names for sexually active girls, on Facebook.
Why don't you teach them to erect defensive Saturnian walls to the insults of those stupid philistines?
I don't know what "bad personal experiences" you have in mind for me, as I never had a baby taken away for adoption, and thankfully my real career began after the early-sixties era of sexist psycho-babble. However, it didn't take much to be observant.
I see... I guess I mistook your overall humanistic concern for personally suffered damage, then.
Yes, culture does shape people in the most basic ways. We have several different disciplines called social sciences (such as sociology) with a huge archive of solid research on the role of one's culture in personal development. This isn't to deny individuality by any means, but it is to say that you, Michael, are in large part a product of your ethnicity or nationality, socio-economic class, gender, age, and so on.
I don't deny this ? certainly, Hollywood culture played an important part in the earlier stages of my development! What I don't agree with is that cultural influences affect our basic instinctual drives very much, other than containing them. Culture is in a way antithetical to Nature. This can take on the form of various kinds of repressions.
Joining a counter-culture or taking a contrarian view doesn't change this. Have you ever noticed how members of "rebel" groups tend to dress alike? Prefer the same sort of music, and so on? People are social animals.
No doubt. Uranian revolution is always followed by new structure - for better or worse.
You want to be very, very careful in generalizing about Muslims, who comprise about 1/4 of the world's entire population.
I agree, generalizations should be avoided. I simply think that the sexual restriction quite typical of Islamic (as well as other) societies contributes to problems like rape and domestic violence. Speaking from personal therapeutic experience with doers as well as victims.
But by Meyers's calculus, condemning them for sexual repression lives within the "Saturn wall" in which there is no good or bad: things just happen.
Personally, I don't condemn anybody, I only observe and apply my psycho-logic. Nor do I subscribe to Eric's outlook without substantial reservations.
I'm glad we found some points of agreement, Michael.
I'm not sure how it would affect the bets they are making on us over on the Sport&Speculation forum (or so I have heard) but I agree with you on this, too, Waybread! :D
Hey, trust me.
Would I be talking with you otherwise...


Re yours: Mon Jun 30, 2014 9:18 pm
This where the whole past-lives karma trope gets ugly. But not just karma, because Juaism and Christianity haven't done such a great job with theodicy (the problem of how a just and loving God permits evil things to happen to innocent children.)
This sounds an awful lot as if you are making a generalization about 1/3 of the world population...

I would maintain that a sound concept of reincarnation can be helpful in explaining and releasing certain hardships. What impressed me as a philosophically more sophisticated view of the topic is the one presented in the Seth books channelled by Jane Roberts.
Of course, I can see the benefit in not dwelling on horrid events in our pasts. If somebody does something despicable to me, that's one type of harm. If I obsess with it the rest of my life, then I'm harmed twice, the second time by myself.
Wisely spoken, Waybread.
But the problem with evolutionary astrology is that there is a bigger picture or bigger pie in which relinquishing one's grievances occurs. This is only one slice.
Agreed.
We need to think more about how societies function as a whole, and how to create societies in which little kids do not get violated; a world in which we acknowledge more reality and less imaginative constructs of the solar system.
You mean, let's get down to nitty-gritty social enhancement efforts rather than wasting time on stupid astrology? Why can't we have one as well as the other?

Not all of us have Aquarius written all over their banner! But for that matter... The alternative movement of the sixties which revolutionized Western society is interwoven with the New Age movement. The latter evolved to an important degree around Theosophist authors like Alice A. Bailey and Dane Rudhyar.

:shock: Oops, it looks like I can't help engaging with you!

Michael

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Paul wrote:Sun Jun 29, 2014 7:14 pm
Michael Sternbach wrote: The projected shadow self in Jungian psychology is identified with one's sexual counterpart. In psychological astrology, it is associated with the Moon in her two major phases (Rudhyar); also with Venus in a male's chart, and Mars in a female's chart. But certainly much more is involved in actuality.
Hi Michael

I'm really interested in this statement you have made here. Can you provide some references in Jung's work which indicates that the the projected shadow self is identified with one's sexual counterpart - to be clear, I am not looking for a quote that shows that all our relationships could be hooks for projection, but specifically that the shadow is identified with the sexual counterpart. Also for Rudhyar. Also for whoever it is that says the same of Venus in a man's chart, and Mars in a woman's chart.

....
I think this is basic animus/anima stuff, and it was designed for heterosexual people, so far as I can tell.

In a horoscope, I think any planet but the sun can appear as shadow material, notably planets opposite the sun or ascendant.

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Michael, I appreciate your interest in my posts, but I am not sure where this is getting us in terms of staying on-topic with the OP.

Much of this thread concerns whether a woman should be OK if not thrilled with being raped, because the bigger her problem, the "more grist for the mill" in accepting it, in order to forward her spiritual advancement. I don't think Meyers's comment actually hinged on sexuality, however. By his reasoning, a soldier should be happy to have his legs blown off in a land mine, because his injuries occurred within the Saturn Wall, where nothing is good or bad. Events just happen.

Most rapes are not about powerful sexual attraction for the victim, but are the means whereby the rapist registers his power and domination over a weaker, vulnerable subject.

If I read your posts correctly, you seem to imply that sexual repression is rampant in society and that sexually repressed people tend to attract sexual assaults.

There is no evidence for this. First of all, you would have to define your diagnostic for sexual repression vs. intelligent navigation through life. Sexually repressed people (assuming we find individuals who fit your definition) would probably be less likely to put themselves in harm's way. Ask an anthropologist, because any society of which I'm aware has sexual taboos of one sort or another. A 20-something into polyamory for teenagers is hardly the arbiter of repression.

There is no evidence for your basic assumption, that personal repression (of any sort, I should think) necessarily attracts violence.

Moreover, psychoanalysts who write most of the stuff on human development see troubled people, not happy people.

The older ones like Reich studied at special institutions of higher learning for psychoanalysts, primarily because they knew that mainline universities would find their untested theories to lack critical rigour. Reich's controversial theories of sexuality are discredited by mainstream therapists today, thank goodness. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich

Libido is but one of multiple and crucial human drives. It is very age-related. Astrological charts and old-fashioned experience further indicate that it varies widely in intensity from person to person. Do you put yourself into situations that are life-threatening or dangerous? (For example, through extreme sports? Or having to drive at night in the mountains in a blizzard white-out?) Trust me, sex isn't going to be uppermost on your mind when this happens. As a new mother, my primary motivation was the nurturing and safety of my babies. When you haven't eaten or drunk water for a long time, hunger and thirst become paramount. Have you ever been sufficiently cold that your only thought was how to get warm? What about the last time you had food poisoning?

We moderns are fortunate in that most of our basic needs, comfort, and personal safety are looked-after; but this was hardly the case with our ancestors until the last century or so.

Sorry, Michael, but in my universe some things are preferable to other things. And actually in Meyers' universe, as well. Being oh-so-enlightened is preferable to being stuck in the Garden of Good And Evil behind the Saturn Wall, according to his thinking. I find your response to the abduction of the Nigerian school girls to be callous in the extreme. You don't become more enlightened by losing your sensitivity to human suffering.

Since I don't believe in concepts like "vital force" or "ch'i" perhaps it's best if we stay on the topic of the OP.

I encourage you to probe more deeply into the role of your culture and society in shaping who you are. This one isn't up for speculation. We could discuss how culture interprets and directs basic human drives of its members. Rebellion against one's culture or society is nevertheless constrained by it and shaped by it. You don't rebel against nothing, or against a society different from the one you inhabit.

I read all of the Jane Roberts Seth books I could find in the 1990s, and my recollection is that Seth confirmed reincarnation, but not a Hindu or Hindu-derived interpretation of karma. You can have reincarnation without attaching karma to it. (See the book by Jim Tucker, Return to Life.)

I don't counter-pose positive social enhancement against astrology, but against the type of evolutionary astrology implied by the podcast.