The Alchemist's Question for Women

The answer to the spiritual questions of sex and love for the successful woman comes from the perspective of astrology, alchemy and Carl Jung. Taken with an understanding of Jungian discoveries I will combine easy-to-follow astrological indicators to enable women to choose from a newly drawn palette of the many Feminine Strengths. These are the tools of authentic, feminine leadership. The point is not to just heal ourselves, but to watch for proof of that healing via our relationships and encounters. We may later extend this very healing to larger groups. But it all begins at home.

With over 30 years as an astrologer, I am a witness to the inner conflict of the Woman of the World who must cope with the Dragons of Business, then return to her lair to face either her loneliness, or the spouse who cannot relate. A double-bind exists for women who have acheived success but who are isolated from emotionally satisfying intimacy.

Follow my hub as we explore:

• What dreams of hot sex may really mean for a woman and why they are not what they seem.
• How to "Talk back" to the inner gods, take control of the compulsions of the unconscious.
• How to Locate the true feminine powers of attraction.
• Overcome obsessions that "tweak" with your sex life.
• Find effective tools of the "inner work" based on your personal (astrology) planetary data.
• Learn the "basics" of Jung’s concepts, to reveal the puppet strings which land us in an empty bed.
• Think and perceive "outside the box" of the collective unconscious.
• How metaphor, myth and symbol informs dreams and compulsiveness.
• To release confining ego positions, including former definitions of femininity and feminism to allow a second person some room on the stage of your life.

The Quest: A Mythological Perspective

The Eros and Psyche myth, familiar to all, is a story of labors preliminary to the quest for love.

When Psyche decides to identify the lover who has come to her in clandestine and secret visits, she betrays their former agreement to keep his identity a secret. She indeed, “Kills the dream love” when she lights the lamp to see, but spills a drop of the hot oil on his sleeping body.

Eros flees, but now Psyche knows it is he that she loves. Psyche must now labor (against his mother, Venus!) to recover this relationship. True to the mythological story, many successful women also live with their “dream lover.” Like Psyche, most modern women also have nightly visits from an erotic “animus figure,” as discovered by Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961). However, this “dream lover” dominates, and protects his hold on women by his jealous and shrill tones which may repulse effective relating.

It may go uninterrupted until the modern woman realizes she is miserable. This myth parallels a wide-spread problem observed at end of the millennium but mentioned only rarely. It is a “hold” which affects culture in general, thus is something both obvious and insidious because it is mostly unconscious.

The competitive, compulsively edgy, even bitchy “animus” of a woman’s psychology disguises this Inner Man residing in the unconscious. I call him the Dream Lover because he specializes in seducing women by the millions. He is an autonomous function of the collective unconscious.

Yet, by recognizing this Dream Lover, modern women may liberate some psychological energy for other matters. More importantly, the realized Animus becomes her most helpful ally in relationships.

She can fall in love, finally.