Myths, fairytales and sacred texts are replete with stories of the amputated and sacrificed feminine. From Medusa to the Handless Maiden, from Iphegenia to Jepthah’s daughter, the feet, hands and heads of women and girls are routinely disposed of, often with narrative alacrity. In the fairytale of The Red Shoes, Karen, the orphaned girl, approaches the executioner and pleads with him to cut off her feet at the ankles. The lines that follow this horrific request are revealing.
“…and the executioner chopped off her feet with the red shoes, but the shoes danced with the small feet across the field into the deep forest.”
The objective psyche reveals itself in the world of myth and fairytale. In this particular tale, what has been cut off, still lives, albeit in the “deep forest” of the unconscious. This pattern of feminine amputation and sacrifice that is found throughout myth, fairytales and sacred stories from around the world, speaks to a psychic splitting in the collective unconscious. Yet these archetypal dismemberments live on, as obvious as the appropriation of Medusa’s severed head by Gucci, a contemporary fashion designer.
What do these dismembered appendages reveal to us about what has been split off within our own psyche, as well as from collective consciousness, for centuries? Consigned to the deep woods of the unconscious, what if this dismembered feminine could talk? What wisdom might she have to share? Is it possible to learn from The Handless Maiden how to collectively grow our own hands back and what is required of us to do that? Is it possible that our personal and possibly, collective individuation is dependent on precisely this?
This series will bring together Jungian scholars, authors and teachers to work with particular myths, fairytales and sacred stories from the perspective of discovering the inherent wisdom of the split-off archetypal feminine who has been relegated to the deep forest of the collective unconscious. The focus of these learning sessions will be on identifying what has been split off and understanding the symbolic and critical relevance of what this has to offer for all genders with regards to the personal and global challenges we face today.