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"The animus remains a baffling, misunderstood force in women's psychology, but the fairytale ""Fitcher's Bird"" brings his ambivalent, wizardly power and his psychic aims as the spirit of individuation into view, reaching into rich alchemical symbolism to do so. The tale and its alchemical background are illuminated with dreams and psychic images from several women's lives, whose stories help us understand the profound personal and archetypal value of engaging creatively with the animus. Like the alchemical nature God, Mercurius, the animus is a life force, an archetype with two sides. His negative side is symbolized in ""Fitcher's Bird"" by a wizard's longtime ability to abduct maidens from their parental homes with barely a touch by dressing as a beggar and appealing to their charity. He displays a perverse dominance over the feminine that has built up in our traditional attitudes over the millennia and takes hold of women through their own participation in those attitudes. Taking them to his great house in the forest, the wizard promises young women riches for their obedience. But the maidens, like the wives of Bluebeard, predictably enter the one forbidden room and end up slaughtered-in ""Fitcher's Bird"" they are hewn limb from limb. Only one maiden is clever enough to pay attention to the gift the wizard's positive side offers-a simple egg, symbolizing the process of individuation when an ego nurtures a relationship with the unconscious. Switching her focus to the egg, the heroine redeems her sisters and at the end of the tale makes an appearance as the wondrous Fitcher's bird-an image for the archetypal feminine redeemed from dismemberment and disappearance."

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9781685031800

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"Laurel Howe is a Jungian analyst and sandplay therapist from Denver, Colorado. Her psychological research focuses on the development and redemption of the feminine principle in pre-biblical Levantine images, exegetical texts, alchemy, legend, fairy tales, and in the everyday work of analysis and individuation. She lectures in the United States and abroad, and her work appears in numerous publications. Her essay, ""Redeeming Mary Magdalene: Feminine Side of the Death and Resurrection Archetype"" appeared as a chapter in the Psychology Club of Z�rich's publication, Wisdom Has Built Her House: Psychological Aspects of the Feminine. The essay draws from the earliest interpretation of the Song of Songs by Hippolytus that compares Mary Magdalene to the Bride, excerpts from a medieval legend extolling Mary Magdalene's great love for Jesus Christ, and the writings of other Christian clerics, tracing Mary 's hidden yet meaningful role as partner to Jesus Christ in the resurrection. The writings of church fathers and clerics through the millennia even reveal how she has remained an active figure in in their imaginations, fulfilling the role of love goddess or anima of the church on an unconscious level.Laurel's book, War of the Ancient Dragon: Transformation of Violence in Sandplay follows the uncanny alchemical narratives of a five-year-old boy, a bully who burned and warred his way toward a healing adaptation. His work reveals the stages of alchemical transformation described by the ancients, including the redemption of his own feminine side. Laurel is a graduate of the Centre for Depth Psychology According to C.G. Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz, Z�rich and has lectured there numerous times. She has served on the boards of the C.G. Jung Institute of Colorado and the Sandplay Therapy Association of Colorado and continues as a faculty member for both groups."

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