The Greening of Oneself

In North Carolina, where I live, spring is trying to make an early entrance. A week or so of balmy weather enticed buds to pop out on trees and sprouts of flowers to push their heads through the soil. Then another cold front hit with hard frosts followed by 30-something degree rain. The seasons seem to be battling it out. Winter isn't quite ready to give up its grip, but spring is eager to be here. Of course, this is nothing new to us; it happens rather regularly this time of year. Plants will begin to bud or even blossom, and then they will be nipped by late frosts and occasionally even a freak ice or snowstorm. It's a part of nature here - the way things are.

Mythological stories reflecting the cyclical nature of things and the inherent conflicts abound. In Egyptian mythology Seth killed Osiris and later dismembered him, but in the end Isis re-members him, and he returns in cyclical fashion, giving us a scenario of death and rebirth. In Europe particularly, but not exclusively, the Green Man emerged as a character reflecting this agricultural cycle. John Matthews describes him as "a mythological archetype representing the spiritual intelligence of nature... a mythic hero who transcends death to bring us the wisdom of the Otherworld; ...a mysterious challenger who demands that we look again at our connection with the world around us." (Matthews, p.6)

So what does this have to do with anything Jungian and our personal psychological journeys? In her book, Alchemy, Marie-Louise von Franz says, "The only way the Self can manifest is through conflict: to meet one's insoluble and eternal conflict is to meet God, which would be the end of the ego and all its blather. That is the moment of surrender... It is consciousness that creates the split and says either-or." (von Franz, p.137). At the moment I am reflecting upon the work of both Matthews and von Franz and asking again what all this is saying about the path of individuation.

It seems to me that the spiritual wisdom and intelligence of nature reflected in the Green Man tells us that cycles and the death-rebirth theme are significant to us on more than just a seasons of the year level, for we see them not only in nature but in religions the world over. And the history of religious ideas mirrors the development of consciousness in humankind. Individually we are the microcosm of what is happening with civilization as the macrocosm. So it is only natural that "seasons" will cycle in our individual processes, and at times when change is occurring, there may be conflict, the old not quite wanting to let go but the new trying to emerge.

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