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mermaidcamp

Keeping current in wellness, in and out of the water

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Tracking The Victim Archetype

October 27, 2016 5 Comments

birth chart

birth chart

Carolynn Myss defines the victim archetype in her Sacred Contracts course as one of the essential characters we all embody at some point in our lives.  There are four survival archetypes present in all of us representing life challenges and our methods of maintaining self-esteem.  These four are child, victim, saboteur, and prostitute.  The lesson each one offers pertains to use of power and self-image.  The child is needy, showing us good reason to strive for learning and independence.  The victim endures bullying of various kinds in order to learn courage.  Eventually the victim teaches us how to recognize and stand up to bullies.  The prostitute teaches the value of  maintaining  integrity.  Once the prostitute recognizes the folly of selling him or herself for support of others, individual mature ethics are developed.  The sabatuer archetype lets us know when we are working against our own best interests.  Self sabotage can be avoided once we learn to spot it.  These universal psychological traits can be traced through the stories of our lives, and interact with the other 8 archetypes in our make up.

I have gotten far enough in the course to have drawn my archetypal wheel, which is played out exactly like the wheel in an astrology chart.  The number 12 was chosen because it already has meaning in astrology.  In reality we all have more than 12 archetypes, an unknown number.  To make a practical study and apply it in a personal way the student is asked to identify the 8 most pronounced archetypes present in our lives.  Placing the archetype in a house creates a kind of map.  The combination of the house and the character tell a story about an aspect of our nature as it reacts with a certain aspect of our circumstances.

I find it interesting to compare the symbolic characters in my astrology chart with those in my archetypal wheel. My victim is in the 12th house, which rules self undoing and our unconscious.  In my astrology chart my 12th house is loaded.  It contains Venus, North Node, Jupiter and Mars.  If I believe these charts my shadow side must be a deeply intuitive victim.  It is very hard for me to see myself as a victim, although I have a normal life with ups and downs.  Our shadow is not our bad or undesirable part, but the part of ourselves about which we remain unaware. As I take up my course work I need to write essays about when and where I encountered these archetypes in my history.  I met them in others and played them all myself.  The goal of the course is to learn about the dynamics of the soul.  I have my work cut out for me on this victim essay.  It should prove to be very self revealing.  Have you ever studied the archetypes, gentle reader?  Astrology is based on archetypes assigned to each house and each planet.  The symbols represent characters we can recognize as actors in our world.  When you hear the word victim, who pops into your mind?

archetypal wheel

archetypal wheel

 

Philipp l Count of Katzenelnbogen

September 10, 2014 5 Comments

My 16th great-grandfather had an extremely lavish wedding when he wed my 16th great-grandmother. They had three children together and then the Pope gave Count Philipp a divorce. This divorce by Pope thing was popular at the time for nobility. His father, Johann IV, the Count of Katzenelnbogen, gave the world riesling grapes and wine. His sons died before he did, so the male line ended with his death.  One of the castles the family owned, Rheinfels, is the largest on the Rhine. Today there is still a ruin that can be visited. 

Rheinfels Castle (German: Burg Rheinfels) is a castle ruin located above the left (West) bank of the Rhein in Sankt Goar, Germany. It was started in 1245 by Count Diether V of Katzenelnbogen. After expansions, it was the largest fortress in the Middle Rhein Valley between Koblenz and Mainz. It was slighted by French Revolutionary Army troops in 1797. It is the largest castle overlooking the Rhine,and historically covered five times its current area.

In the year 1435 the Rüsselsheim castle administrator Klaus Kleinfisch began a new wineyard. His annual account shows the purchase of riesling Setzreben for 22 shilling. This kind of wine had a higher quality than the other french wines, was more aromatic but also frost-resistant. His new choice was – wineyards can exist more than onehundred years – the turningpoint in winehistory. Up to this point the old documents only reported red, white or black wine according to their colour. Even in the year 1402 the electoral prince of mainz ordered to grow no other wines than his french wines. After the rüsselsheim vintage Riesling quickly showed up all the way down the river rhine. Up to the year 1600 riesling became top wine. In the castle of Darmstadt count Johann IV united the two most powerful counties of the “holy roman empire of the german nation” in one of the most beautiful medieval marriages of his son Philipp d. Ältere of Katzenelnbogen with countess Anna of Württemberg. Even his son-in-law landgrave Heinrich III of Hessen was enthusiastic about this amount of gold , silver and wine. In 1427 the 10 most important katzenelnbogen castles were consuming about 200 000 liters of wine a year and in 1436 storing 1.5 million l wine in mainz . The counts were remarkably rich supporting arts and could afford rewarding medieval singers like Walther von der Vogelweide with a diamond. They created the most powerful castle, the first undefeatable german “bollwerk” Auerbach, defended themselves on the largest german castle with the largest german wine-cellar the Rheinfels castle. They loved the power but were sophisticated. Thanks to their correct book-keeping we can read about their live, family affaires and trading. One vase of china and one tankard is all they left. But the writings tell us and still want to be searched.

They gave us the riesling wine, one symbol of pride worth to be honoured.

The successors may have formed a modern top wine out of the riesling plant, but the documented first grower of the most important german and one of the most important international wines was Johann IV, the Count of Katzenelnbogen.

Additional the county customs writer noticed the first bratwurst export to cologne in 1410, the records listed bratwurst for 1gulden on a boat loaded with wine. This is the first proof of the traditional german bratwurst. The size is defined by pork casings. The transport itself tells us katzenelnbogen bratwurst must have been widely known.

Philip I of Katzenelnbogen (1402 – 1479), also known “Philip the Elder” was Count of Katzenelnbogen from 1444 to 1479 and was the last male descendant of the Counts of Katzenelnbogen (his two sons died before him). His parents were John IV, Count of Katzenelnbogen (younger line) and Anne of Katzenelnbogen (older line), who merged the two lines of the family back together in 1402.

Marriage and issue
Philip married on 24 February 1422 in Darmstadt with Anna of Württemberg (1408–1471), daughter of Eberhard IV “the Younger” of Württemberg. In 1456, he obtained from the Pope a divorce from bed-and-board. In 1474 Philip married Anna of Nassau-Dillenburg.

Philip had three children with his first wife:

Philip the Younger (* 1427; † 27 February 1453), married in 1450 Ottilie of Nassau. In 1453 they had a daughter Ottilie of Katzenelnbogen.

Eberhard († 1456), canon of Cologne, was stabbed in Bruges (Flanders).

Anna (* 5 September 1443; † 16 February 1494), married in 1458 margrave Henry III of Hesse (15 October 1441 — 13 January 1483). In 1471, they had a son William III, who was the last male descendant of this line of the House of Hesse.

Legacy
In 1444 Philip initiated a major renovation of the collegiate church of Sankt Goar.
In 1449 he bought off the rights on St. Goar held by abbot John of the Abbey at Prüm.
In 1470 he handed Upper Katzenelnbogen and its seat Darmstadt to his son-in-law Henry III of Hesse.

Philip’s sons Eberhard and Philip the younger died before his death, so when Philip died in 1479, the Katzenelnbogen died out in the male line. The County of Katzenelnbogen fell to the Landgraviate of Hesse, which was ruled at the time by Philip’s son-in-law Henry III of Hesse in Marburg.

This article incorporates information from the German Wikipedia.

Philipp l Count of Katzenelnbogen (1402 – 1479)
is my 16th great grandfather
Philipp VonKatzenelnbogen (1427 – 1453)
son of Philipp l Count of Katzenelnbogen
Ottilie Countess Katzenelnbogen vonKatzenelnbogen (1453 – 1517)
daughter of Philipp VonKatzenelnbogen
Beatrix Zahringen (1492 – 1535)
daughter of Ottilie Countess Katzenelnbogen vonKatzenelnbogen
Sabine Grafin VonSimmern (1528 – 1578)
daughter of Beatrix Zahringen
Marie L Egmond (1564 – 1584)
daughter of Sabine Grafin VonSimmern
Richard Sears (1590 – 1676)
son of Marie L Egmond
Silas Sears (1638 – 1697)
son of Richard Sears
Silas Sears (1661 – 1732)
son of Silas Sears
Sarah Sears (1697 – 1785)
daughter of Silas Sears
Sarah Hamblin (1721 – 1814)
daughter of Sarah Sears
Mercy Hazen (1747 – 1819)
daughter of Sarah Hamblin
Martha Mead (1784 – 1860)
daughter of Mercy Hazen
Abner Morse (1808 – 1838)
son of Martha Mead
Daniel Rowland Morse (1838 – 1910)
son of Abner Morse
Jason A Morse (1862 – 1932)
son of Daniel Rowland Morse
Ernest Abner Morse (1890 – 1965)
son of Jason A Morse
Richard Arden Morse (1920 – 2004)
son of Ernest Abner Morse
Pamela Morse
I am the daughter of Richard Arden Morse
Katzenelnbogen originated as a castle built on a promontory over the river Lahn around 1095. The lords of the castle became important local magnates, acquiring during the centuries some key and highly lucrative customs rights on the Rhine. The Counts of Katzenelnbogen also built Burg Neukatzenelnbogen and Burg Rheinfels on the Rhine. The German family died out in 1479, while the Austrian lineage continued, and the county became disputed between Hesse and Nassau. In 1557, the former finally won, but when Hesse was split due to the testament of Philipp the Magnanimous, Katzenelnbogen was split as well, between Hesse-Darmstadt and the small new secondary principality of Hesse-Rheinfels. When the latter line expired in 1583, its property went to Hesse-Kassel (or Hesse-Cassel), which added the inherited part of Katzenelnbogen to its side-line principality of Hesse-Rotenburg. After the Congress of Vienna, this part of Katzenelnbogen was given to Nassau in exchange for property that had been taken away from it; after the War of 1866, with all Nassau, it became part of Prussia.

In 1945, Hesse-Darmstadt was united with most of the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau, which included the former Hesse-Kassel along with Nassau and the formerly Free City of Frankfurt, to form the federal state of Hesse. Thus, Hesse now includes the larger part of former county of Katzenelnbogen. A smaller part of Nassau, including the old castle and village bearing the name of Katzenelnbogen, ended up as part of Rhineland-Palatinate (part of the Rhein-Lahn and Westerwaldkreis districts). One of the titles of the Queen of the Netherlands (the House of Orange-Nassau) is that of Countess of Katzenelnbogen.

Etymology
The name Katzenelnbogen derives from the old Cattimelibocus. It consists of the ancient Germanic tribal name of the Chatti and Melibokus, the Roman name of any mountains, like the Harz or the Teutoburg Forest. Over the centuries the name changed to Katzenelnbogen: “cat’s elbow”.

History of wine
In the history of wine, Katzenelnbogen is famous for the first documentation of Riesling grapes in the world: this was in 1435, when the storage inventory of Count John IV of Katzenelnbogen, a member of the Holy Roman high nobility, lists the purchase of vines of “Rieslingen”.

The Prince Archetype

March 21, 2013 4 Comments

 

In literature and mythology the prince is an archetypal figure. In drama or our lives the prince represents one who must take the mysterious and trying journey to become king. His dark shadow companion is the wanderer, who never accepts reposnsibility and continues to avoid the dignity and responsibility of his royal inheritance. They look a bit like William and Harry, honestly.  The prince can be charming or dark in his presentation.  He may complete his journey and become king, but there is no guarantee.

Carl Jung identified 4 masculine archetypes, and made the assertion that to be whole man must be in touch with all of them.  He also explained the bi-polar potential inherent in each character.  They are described as shadow and positive qualities.  The soul embarks on an epic journey to mature on earth.  The heroes and Prince Charmings of our lives have lessons to teach as well as to learn.  When you think of this archetype who pops into your thoughts?  Americans have some pretty wild versions of the prince from Disney to the artist formerly and once again known as Prince.  How do we know when our American prince becomes a king?  tricky..

Mood Magic-Forgiveness

January 23, 2013 10 Comments

To alter your mood is to change your world. When you are happy and you know it you attract and notice joyful  people and events around you. When other emotions dominate your mental landscape you notice others in the same boat, whatever the boat happens to be. One way to describe the mutual misery bonding is woundology. This term was coined by Carolyn Myss to explain how and why people retain rather than heal from their wounds.  Contentment is not always possible, but clear intentions can be.

Pity and compassion are not the same.  Solicitation of pity requires that you also pity others and the outrageous fortune they encounter.  Pity is a currency of pain, highest value being placed on the heaviest suffering. The journey to well being involves mind, body and spirit.  The distinction between seeking power through pity and creating well being through compassion is key to living a full life.  If information and data were the source of good health we would all be very healthy.  The element of forgiveness unlocks the possibility of a happy and healthy future.

Navigating Backwards

December 9, 2012 4 Comments

sunken treasure of dreams

sunken treasure of dreams

Studying one’s ancestry one learns history once and for all. Any abstracts become clear when you chart your own pedigree. Any dates memorized come to life when you find out what your own ancestors were doing at those times. I am always a big proponent of being present in the moment, but historical knowledge helps me appreciate the present.  The belief in intuition is enhanced when the timeless soul is given room to move. Calendars and clocks are maps of time that match the heavens in a very precise way.  The full meaning of the heavens is impossible to capture in a clock.  If you can view your life from a higher place time is less relevant than it appears to be in your rear view mirror.  Meditation is the path to truth beyond time.

I am all the way a navigator. I have flown many miles in private planes navigating from the air, do very well with driving, or public transportation. Reading maps and finding different kinds of maps has always been a fascination for me. Historical maps and charts of the heavens are of particular interest. I am learning with precision how to navigate backwards by means of the family tree. My study of Sacred Contracts teaches me to align with time in a much broader spiritual sense.

Memory and dreams reconstruct time as well as facts.  Often by repeating a story that is highly revised and edited for the ego’s best light we create a strong reality that never existed or has a chance of being true in real time.  Our poetic dreamy visions of ourselves and others are the pageant we produce in order to learn our life lessons.  Each one of us produces and directs the archetypal dramas in which we live.  We act in the dramas of others, as do they in ours, but we only witness tiny segments of other people’s story. In dreams we only see faces we have seen in our waking lives.  In dreams we deconstruct and revise the archetypes and their roles in our own big picture.

Looking at the symbolic as well as the scientific meaning of the past I see above and below are forever linked just as the past and the future.  They have no meaning without their partners, like the border crossers and the migra.  Our lessons are repeated in time, but are not done in a logical worldly sequence.  If we believe in divine order it would be wise to honor and make some contact with it.  In this way we can avoid swimming against the current , struggling to arrive in a place we have already been. Deep meaning is found by reading the treasure maps in our dreams.

Alchemist Archetype

October 29, 2012 2 Comments

fermentation at home

fermentation at home

In my study of the archetypes I have procrastinated badly around the character of the alchemist. I have homework that involves writing to the archetypes and tracking them in my own life. When I arrived at the second house of my own chart and found this character I stalled. Maybe I stalled, or maybe I needed a few months to consider what the alchemist does. Doing the journal project I found a few people in my past who represent this aspect of life, some of whom had not come to mind for decades before I asked myself to find them.  I readily accept that this is part of me, but the definition of what it is and how I use it became a blank and a mystery.  This requires great discipline.  I must handle it with great respect or drop the entire curriculum.  The distillation of time and space is the realm of the alchemist.  I have been involved in it all my life.  I  still have a big interest in all the mystery schools and twirling Sufis in all of history.

If we look at all the ways magic and nature have been combined the most common use is to cure.  Medicine has included alchemy, which was derived from basic observation of nature.  If you go into an 800 year old pharmacy in Europe you will see the astrological signs on the wall, and the snake delivering the water used to take your pills. The unbroken tradition of magic linked to medicine thrives in places where the folk medicine still uses native plants and elements to cure.  Indigenous peoples around the world do this without referring to alchemy in the European sense.

Since I am also interested in the DNA, the contribution made by the ancestors to my composite, I notice the few doctors or pharmacists who appear in my tree.  On my mother’s side before 1400 a couple of generations of nice Jewish doctors lived and worked in northern Spain during the time when Jews, Christians, and Arabs all thrived in a multi cultural party of intellectual delight.  Joshua ben Ibn Vives al Lorca was my 15th great grandfather.

IBN VIVES AL-LORQUI (OF LORCA), JOSEPH BEN JOSHUA:      By : Richard Gottheil   Meyer Kayserling  Spanish physician; died before 1372; father of Joshua ben Joseph ibn Vives al-Lorqui. He revised Tibbon’s translation of Moses Maimonides’ “Millot Higgayon” and dedicated the revision to his pupil Ezra ben Solomon ibn Gatigno. He wrote also the “Sefer Yesodot.”G. M. K.

His son Joseph was also a famous  physician in Spain.  These ancestors qualify as alchemists for many reasons.  They had the presence of mind to move to Sicily before the Spanish Inquisition.  Due to their great talents as musical instrument makers and musicians, Henry the 8th imported Anthony (1511-1574)  from Venice  to England to play in the royal court. They used the wisdom they had to use time and space to their advantage.  They turned danger into survival.

Joshua ben Joseph/Joseph ben Joshua ibn Vives Al Lorqui (1370 – 1408)
is your 15th great grandfather
Son of Joshua ben Joseph/Joseph ben Joshua
Son of Joshua ben ibn
Son of Julus
Son of Santo
Son of Maestro Jeronimo “DeDasi”
Daughter of Anthony
Son of Lucreece Lucretia
Son of John Thomas
Daughter of Sampson
Daughter of Elizabeth
Son of Martha
Daughter of David
Daughter of Minerva Truly
Daughter of Sarah E
Son of Lucinda Jane
Daughter of George Harvey
is the daughter of Ruby Lee

Satya

September 26, 2012 1 Comment

ST Teresa of Avila

Truth and the relationship one has with it are both elements of  discernment. Each person has a reality that is colored by the limits placed on observation. I have noticed that Americans have been trending toward believing what can be seen has value, whereas what is invisible has no merit or value.  When presented with a choice of money or wisdom it would be very common for most to choose money as a solution to any problem.  If we only consider short term solutions, money does come in handy.  If we look at how the problem to be solved now has arisen we often find there has been misuse of finances.  If no new wisdom arrives with new funding, this problem will very likely to expand to the extent that the new funding allows.

Some of you are naturally thinking of politics, but that is not my subject today.  Satya, or the truth that is love, exists.  It has no need to be believed in order to continue being true.  The details, and the attention given to the infinitesimal either hide or make clear what is true.  You are a detective in your own life.  You not only choose your environment and the people you encounter, but you fill in all the details by focusing on some while ignoring others.  When I loose an object in my office and start to hunt for it I never cease to be amazed by what I find while searching.  The longer it takes me to find the desired object, the more I am able to sort, file, dump, and make clear what is in there all the time. Clearing away the outdated, the insignificant, and the garbage makes a new level of truth exist between my office and me.

St Teresa of Avila was a woman determined to see the divine in the details of life.  Interesting to me is that her focus on every little tiny thing eventually brought her a big fat vision of Interior Castles.  I take this to mean that when and if I finally clear out all the junk in my life I too will see my interior wealth.  I already prize teaching over money, but St. Teresa is hinting at something even more elaborate and permanent.  I am sure that the stern Teresa could never have allowed her office to become such a mess.  She does give hope in her quote, “To reach something good it is very useful to have gone astray, and thus acquire experience.”  This is very good news.  There may well be castles under all this junk.

Archetypes in Dreams

July 29, 2012

I am studying a modern version of Carl Jung’s archetypes for a glimpse into the intuitive world. I have always thought that every person has intuitive gifts of various kinds that could be considered talents. My teacher is Caroline Myss, who works as a medical intuitive. I am fascinated by the subject matter as well as the teaching style of Ms Myss. I assumed that in CMED…the on line and in person institute, we would learn protocol to teach us to interpret the archetype wheels of others as a skill. While this is all true it has been revealed that her belief is that everyone has an equal ability to sharpen intuition and heal others. The difference is practice, study, and a steady, perpetual, spiritual aspiration.

I have needed to change my routine to make this study a priority and a dedicated practice.  There is a need to do a lot of written work to make the natures of your own archetypes known to you.  I have just started my dream journal, which must be right next to the bed with the mini book light and pen attached so I can write with as little fuss as possible when I awaken.  I managed a few words today, but know I will improve.  I have studied my own dreams with a dream journal before.   A long time ago I even practiced lucid dreaming.  These skills drop away like a foreign language not spoken. I know how well one can improve both memory and details of the dream world by intending to do it, and staying steady with a practice.

I have in the past done written explorations and interview exercises with everything from dead professors to my own body parts.  I once took an extensive course in “Inner Child” that required the child respond to questions by writing with the non dominant hand. I was very surprised at the accuracy of the answers, if not the handwriting, of my various inner children.  Now my task is to recognize the 12 dominant archetypes active in my life, place them in a timeline in my life, then interview them to know more about them.  In an effort to disobey the homework assignments I quickly skimmed the materials and did no assignments as I read and listened to the work the teachers have put into the class.  I have gone as for as I can as a rebel.  Written assignments are the heart of the work, therefore the teacher in my 11th house has to step up now to create an atmosphere of  discipline.  This is clearly not a matter to leave to my rebel, hedonist, detective, alchemist, shape shifter, or magical child.  I am starting to notice this is like  strength and flexibility for the soul.  Core strength, range of motion, and balance in the mental, emotional, and spiritual realms are skills that can be developed through practice. Even in our dreams we can work toward greater understanding and integration.

Archetypes

July 17, 2012

The Power of Myth

I have begun an in-depth study of archetypes with Caroline Myss, a favorite author. She has recorded the lessons and homework for an on line course entitled Sacred Contracts, based on her popular book of the same name. As a home student I have already done a few things out of order, which seems to go along with my choice of the rebel in my core archetype group. I am a teacher, another one of my core archetypes, but this is balanced by the rebel not exactly following any orders ever.  It is fascinating and will eventually make me follow all the sequences in order because I really do want to learn to teach this subject.

The process I am learning is based in part on the kind of Jungian analysis that takes years with a therapist to achieve  big expensive revelations. The archetypes used by Jung, and also made popular by Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers, and PBS, are similar to the gods in any pantheon. They are primal forces, and active participants in the journey of the soul.  When I was about 40 a friend gave me a book about analysis and archetypes and proclaimed that I am definitely Aphrodite.  With this intro, I read the book and agreed with my friend.  I don’t remember much about the book, but am sure I was not enough involved with the depth of the subject at that time to be able correlate what I read with my life experience.  I just liked the idea that my friend saw me as Aphrodite.

Now as I honestly remember and become familiar with these players on the karmic stage I am struck with how powerful they can be.  I am in the very beginning of an understanding that is changing the way I perceive time, space, and matter.  I feel that I am expanding my way of looking at phenomena.  Usually one needs to look back over time to notice profound change.  This one I am  doing on purpose.  Since the purpose is to discover the purpose of my life, I thought it best to do it on purpose.  I have done similar studies and reading before so I feel appropriately warmed up to the task.  I love being a student, and this subject matter suits me perfectly.

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