Liminality: An Opportunity for Magic

it's 32 degrees today and it's kind of warm 90 degrees in our reckoning and so I'm here sweltering and trying to gather myself to talk to you I keep in touch with revision mainly through Chris and Ewa and Sarah but I do hope that this will pass and we'll be together again in the flesh soon I assume that I won't assume but I guess that most of you will will be very familiar with the idea of liminality it's not a it's not an unusual thought at all but even so I'm going to do some basics and talk about it first for what it is in itself so linman in latin the word liman li m en means threshold it's it's like yes it's like being between two rooms as the threshold or that's one way of understanding between and that's one way that is it has been discussed professionally another way that it has been understood is that the liminal is the time and space that is outside your normal normal living so if we talk about liminality which originally was developed the idea was developed by anthropologists talking about tribal societies that people would be initiated perhaps young people might be initiated into adult life by being taken outside of the community going out into nature into the natural world and very often being left there for periods of time maybe in the mountains maybe you know for various reasons various reasons things to do and sometimes they would be buried in the ground or covered with leaves as a kind of ritual imaginal burial so that what they were doing was going through a death rebirth experience I think that's something to keep in mind when we talk about liminality that it's related to a number of other things that are very close to it maybe even part of it and one of those is death and rebirth a dying two to a life that you're familiar with and being reborn into something else think it would help to keep that idea in mind so the idea of liminality might also apply to time not just space and place so there are times that might be liminal I think a good example for most of us would be our birthday do you know what it's like when you wake up on your birthday I think at it for me it has been diminished a little over time but certainly when I was younger and even now you wake up and you realize this is a special day this is a special day it's your birthday and all during that day you may think of it and you may feel even physically that this is a different day it's it's something that takes you out of ordinary time it's not the same as yesterday and it's not the same as tomorrow and that specialness is not just that it's it's it's something you want to celebrate but it's them thinking of it it takes you out of time takes you into a place that you cannot find otherwise you can try the next day to feel the same about your birthday but you probably won't that ideas also are used in religions and this idea of liminality has certainly used in religious studies it's my field so it could be used in religion so there might be special days like a Christmas or New Year's or a Saints Day or special days in a church calendar or a liturgical calendar from any religion could be considered liminal I think Christmas is probably a good example that a lot of people whether they are they celebrate Christmas as a religious festival or not might feel now things are different people are singing these same songs over and over again and Christmas people give each other gifts they give each other gifts so that Christmas becomes an example of the way we could live where we would not be paying for everything it would be a gift economy that's what Christmas offers us so it's a very special day you probably wouldn't give those gifts to somebody in the middle of July but in on December 25th you might very well give gifts to a lot of people to several people and so what you do in that liminal period is often different from what you do in normal life that's something also to keep in mind do we try to understand what's going on in this liminal period of the coronavirus and also I'm thinking all along of those of us who do psychotherapy how to do psychotherapy in this particular time and maybe even think about psychotherapy itself as a liminal activity when you get down to it the illuminati takes place every day I mean there are different things that go on and probably you could see dreaming as a liminal period when you are in another place and then you wake up and you come back into normal life there are many many instances in life and I have a liminal quality I think some are more intense than others and so to talk about the liminality of this period of covent I think is is to say that we are in a very special particular maybe troublesome and challenging a liminal period and maybe thinking of it that way might help us deal with it that's my hope that's my thoughts that's why I want to talk to you about it so this idea the word itself comes from an anthropologist named van gana who developed this pattern that others have picked up and there with her own language a pattern that that he saw with liminality we're going back to the example of young people being initiated into community they might be taken away from their community so there is a separating there is a taking away from and that is the first step and once the person is taken away from community and from ordinary living they are then in a liminal place Joseph Campbell called that period adventure the time of adventure he got this idea from Van Canopus one another with anthropologists though who developed it more than anyone was Victor Turner Victor Turner yes I reminds me my own life in some ways his wife was very was very active and had some important things to say about liminality Edith Edith Turner and his son Frederick Turner Freddie's is also he's a poet and thank her a writer and I had occasion to work with him a few times not a lot but some times and and all of them were very caught up in this society of liminality and a-- and worked it very creatively so Viktor Turner's an important figure if you want to study the Illuminati more I'd recommend a couple of his books they're old now but they're very very useful I think one is called the ritual process and the other is called from ritual to theater and the subtitle is thus human seriousness of play the human seriousness of play so later on in a few minutes I want to talk to you about the relationship between liminality and play but that's that's a little bit later so to say play and the context talking to psychologists and I know that you study huh Winnicott I have to bring up by when it caught his ideas of play and also transitional objects I'd like to leave it up to you because I know that you're I'm sure better educated and went nakata work than I am but I've read many of his books and I you know I'm familiar with him and I would think that there's a close relationship between the transitional object and and this idea of liminality when it cut did say that he didn't want to reduce the idea of a transitional object to toy telling toy animals and things like that he wanted to he wanted to make the point that transitional objects are could be almost anything and and they're not so literal so I wonder if maybe that is not the whole idea of being this discovered time has some of that quality that when it got talks about the transitional object and also then would bring up the idea of play and his idea of play he did say that psychotherapy has to be played or it just doesn't work you know it has to be play once you get away from play and you force your client if there's some sort of compliance that was one of his words compliance then we have lost play well I would say we probably have lost liminality too because part of the what one of the things we do in in the middle of times is play serious play has Turner said okay so that's just something for you to think about and talk about some of the things related to play might be things like ceremony masks I want to talk about masks later because they are a big part of the Cobin times people wearing masks I think it's worth considering rather profoundly if we can deeply what masks are about and why people don't want to wear masks is something there I think it's a very deep very deep issue it's not just about not being totally they don't want to be told what to do I think it goes deeper than that so we'll get into that so there might be also relationship with the theatre so play and theater and sports all forms of play might be might help out what I put this might be closely connected to liminality and in fact let's take sport sports might might create a liminal time in a liminal place and when I say that I think about the the boundaries of sports that games many most games have boundaries so that you know that you're in the space of the boundary of the of the play rather than in normal ordinary life if you mistake that and you are really in trouble if you try to make some things along your life you would do in the middle of the game like start kicking a ball around in the wrong place probably wouldn't work very well so that boundary is important which takes us to the related idea of Temenos I don't think Temenos is the same as a liminality but they're obviously very closely related so that's something we can talk about together as well Taman Oz and the mentality originally Temenos referred to the to the area around a temple not the temple itself but the grounds of the temple so you know when you are approaching a temple now you know I've entered into the sacred space even though you're not in the temple that would be the terminus where some people some people might think of the actually the area of the temple as a Temenos to give them to use different ways but that's an interesting history interesting idea when we think about think about quarantine as a as creating a space a Temenos that we stay with them as part of this liminality and it intensifies the liminality to be in this Temenos so the what I'm trying to say is that when we isolate or when we socially distance or when we stay in our homes or as I did for about a month stay in my room because I was rather sick a few months ago that was liminality certainly that was being in a liminal place and it was also intensified into Temenos so this is a you can see we look at this experience of this illness that we are being taken whether we like it or not into these very deep profound areas that that connect up with anthropology but I think especially with the religions and and you know here's a general idea I wasn't thinking imagining but I feel that in this step psychology that we do this soul type of psychology that done that very frequently we get to a point where if you want to understand it you have to look at what the religions have done and you might say that the religions although their intention may have been different than any fact of religions have been doing archetypal psychology for a long time I'll get to that a little bit later too and the next thing I could add to it that is that I think there seems to be a relationship between liminality and soul when we talk about the soul we're talking about our experience of ourselves and of our world and we're talking about a depth approach to that experience we're looking poetically and imagistic aliy that's the whole idea archetypal psychology and so I think that this idea of liminality then can bring us directly into our soul approach to psychotherapy now we're not looking at normally an external behavior alone the psychologists interested are the therapists interested in the soul is trying to penetrate the boundaries of the normal and the literal and the concrete and the actual that we see around us that world then is so well described by science but puts a pretty thick boundary around our thought so we I think try to have a different point of view and use a depth approach and a poetic approach in order to see the soul and we when we are in that realm of soul seems to me we're in a liminal place we have crossed the threshold and we could come back from that soul talk I feel this as a therapist I'm intensely involved in the soul work with a person and a therapy session and when it's over I do feel that I it's like I do open my door which is right behind here I open my door and I go out of it and I enter the normal world a regular world and I've crossed the threshold a literal threshold in this case the doorway and but I've also crossed this threshold that is the threshold into a new reality a different reality we are play and magic play a big role so I'll just mention something about that too for many many years for Wow since 1970 50 years I have been studying magic the magical tradition so maybe in northern work of Angela Boston London Angeles done wonderful work that's been you know in using focusing on some of the same people that I'm interested in working on natural magic and so I think that applies the idea of magic taking magic seriously this is not being a magician you know sleight of hand although there is a relationship and it's not really what I'm working with but rather being in the world magically rather than rationally and pragmatically but being in the world and having methods that are magical methods that are effective but are more imagistic more like synchronicity then than like some pragmatic action you want to perform and see a cause-and-effect relationship so in magic you don't really have caused an effect you do something that is more poetic more symbolic and that has an effect in the world so astrology is very a very important aspect of I shouldn't use the word aspect there very important part magic and so I would think that astrologers could really help us in this time of covet both to have a better sense of the larger appearance of this of this illness at this time this pandemic and also then to help us navigate it piece by piece that would be using magic the magic of course like religion is a form of play so another element in liminality that I think applies today is this idea of uncertainty Frederick Victor Turner frequently mentions this in his books on liminality that uncertainty is part of the experience see this is one of the things I'd like to explore further and you know today I'm just talking to you more not with from conclusions but exploring this idea and I expect you to go ahead and do some of it as well so uncertainty Heelys is one of the experiences that we might have in a liminal situation I think uncertainty is very very difficult aspect of Coleman to be able to live with uncertainty of course that's direct quote from John Keats to live with uncertainty negative capability to be able to live in mana to in uncertainty it is a is a skill for these times these liminal time it's to live on uncertainty not to be thrown by it not to have to rush into certainty it's very difficult I think this is one of the most difficult aspects of living now at this particular moment it's very easy to want to escape from the liminal pressures of this time see what I'm saying liminality has its own pressures and challenges that's why it's useful to think about it so if you are a psychotherapist and you see your clients having some difficulty with covin you might think about liminality and realize that some of what they're experiencing is the pressure of Illuminati itself and and I think that what you might also then keep in mind is the very origins of this notion of liminality that liminality starts out as a ritual of transformation of going from childhood to adulthood to becoming more mature to being transformed to entering community in an adult way think about covet in all those ways because this is what the mentality is about and when you are a therapist working with your client having these thoughts in mind understanding liminality in this larger sense than very particular sense might help you you might notice that some of the things that your client complains about and what you feel so I would say if you are if your client is feeling uncertainty the first thing you could do is examine yourself in the split second just go into yourself there and ask yourself are you feeling uncertain are you sharing this experience with you're glad are you trying to avoid it are you yourself in your own life trying to avoid the uncertainty are you trying to sneak out of the liminal place are you avoiding a transformation that is offered in this experience are you trying to get out of the threshold and back into normal life now here's where I want to mention a few couple examples of how we might try to avoid or get away from the liminal from the pressures of liminality one of them is one that Carl Jung CG Jung describes several times in his writing he talks about the regressive restoration of the persona maybe you know that Iggy he describes that several several of his of his writings the regressive restoration of the persona so if you're not familiar with that let me just in the describe it for a minute so regressive it's a regressive move it's a defense the regressive restoration of the persona is a defense it's a way of defending yourself against the pressures of the moment of what's going on and what I'm saying is that I think that we as therapists have to be careful at least we should notice where we are ourselves trying to get away from escape from the pressures of the liminality of kovat I think it's going on in the culture in a very big way but we too might make it into that avoiding the liminality that is given to us that is presented being presented to us it's like being in your personal life and let's say you get an illness or you have an accident and you break a leg the life has given you something and you've got to deal with it you can't just keep saying oh I wish I could go back to what it was like before I broke my leg or had this illness that wishing to go back to what was normal doesn't do you any good what you have to do now is be with what life is giving you and that's what I'm saying about coda we as therapists I think first of all have to ask ourselves am i trying to avoid and escape the liminality of kovin the liminal pressures of kovin and then can I even if I am doing that it's very likely I am because most people would I'm trying maybe you probably catch yourself I do it myself saying I can't wait for things to be normal again that is the regressive restoration of the persona that's at events that's the defense against the liminality of government so what we could do is maybe help our clients be with the liminality and be affected by that and have to reassess things we know that there are a lot of very interesting things coming into the imagination out of covet this is a potential this is a time where we potentially could really change culture for the better we are getting ideas we've never had before the obvious one that we see I made a list of these so you can mention some of them I thought I have it here I guess I don't have some of the things that that we are doing that we are thinking of though are things like there are cities in this in this world now we know we know all these things that are no longer at nearly as polluted as they were the air is cleaner many cities are doing in India and in the United States I know and know what London it's like so that is something that's a huge transformation I cook up it's the impetus to change animals are coming to the foreground again I don't know if you've seen this in London I know you have animals in the city they're where I live I live if you could see over here I live in the forest and I live on a lake we are surrounded by animals and animals everywhere and they're coming out there they're no longer hiding us watching I was with our neighbors the other day sitting at some distance from each other having a little drink together in conversation and a rather large porcupine walked right into our group right into our midst they don't usually do that walked right into us and sat down with us it's not an unusual there's something unusual happening in the animal world there are so many things going on today that our change that we can look and say oh this is different this gives me an idea there's a potential transformation in there I'm not saying we're going to do all these things as they appear no I know we're not we'll go back to way things were but we those of us who are alert to the liminality of our situation might be able to capture those things that were learning in this in this period of time and bring them back into culture that would be that idea of Campbell and of an Gannett of departing from the normal being in a liminal place and then returning to community into the world but not going backwards but going forwards going into this new world that has been created out of our liminal experience the banality is a time of transformation this is what the anthropologists have been saying for what 80 years I think that I think Victor Turner was writing in 1940s and 50s so this is this is something I think really worth thinking about for ourselves that we can we can stay with uh with liminality stay with the liminal that's our job to be with our clients and allowing ourselves to be in that liminal place knowing that the whole idea of it is transformation one more thing I wanted to mention there I'm not going to be able to tell you everything I wrote a bunch of things up here but I did want to mention that about masks I think that the masks are very interesting of course they relate to the dye nation theater and to the use of masks and not only in Greek theater but also in not only in you know the Greeks but also many many other cultures use masks and then they use them in relation to these liminal rituals who are there they take young people out of there out of the village to be initiated so the mass can be very important and what did they do there's a lot of controversy about masks about what they are all about but seems to me it's pretty clear that the mask allows us to embody the spirits and the gods in our midst and a way to experience them ritually ritual is I define ritual as any action that speaks to the soul any action that speaks to the soul to me as a ritual so that's not just these dramatic rituals or religious rituals but we have various rituals in our lives our birthday parties our gatherings for drinks with the friends that is those are rituals and they speak to the soul you don't need you don't need those you don't need that those drinks you probably you don't even need to go and speak to your neighbor a certain friends but they are rituals the way we do them our ritual very ritualized that's important because of ritualizing those experiences brings the soul into play and that means we're in this realm of a liminal we're in the realm of the liminal when we do that and masks have a rule in theatre and in the Dionysian a human has written some wonderful passengers on the dynein experience I recommend them to you very very very highly I would say please go read Hillman on the Dionysian you can find them in two places in particular one in his book the myth of analysis which is a wonderful book not too easy to read but an excellent book and the last part of it he explores the Dionysian and he ends his book with the Tunisia his understanding of one of the things he says that I think is quite interesting he says that it's a mistake to think of the dying nation manya that's the Greek word that's used what happens in Dionysus we get ammonia like even if you drink several glasses of wine you might feel some a dilation Manya the men he says this is madness it is not insanity sended such an interesting idea he says so many people write about the die nation as though it were insanity it is not he says it is a very very cultured experience it's a way of being in culture and community and in friendship and in love the Dionysian and so it's a very much part of a cultured and what unaware could I use I'm a very thoughtful human life the dye nation but it is madness but madness has a role in it all Plato sentence they you know say that there are madness as there are Magnus's that are that are extremely useful to us the madness of love he said is so important it's in a very important way to be mad the madness of religion he said was very important the madness of prophecy and being able to see things and that kind of man this astrology would be a kind of madness in that regard there are different forms of madness and their positive Plato's and I think that's what Hillman is getting and he's good plainness always anyway and he says that about the dying asian so the masks that we are wearing think about them think about this for a minute or I'm just going to suggest this from the next time you're in a group and people are wearing masks aside from aside from the literal scientific reason for the masks to keep you know to keep your your breath and any anything that comes out of your mouth to yourself think about the experience of masks isn't this why people some people don't want to wear masks ananova system there's an England as it is for us I do know I have seen that there are people objecting to masks here we have a strong strong eye reaction against where I messed what is it because people don't want to be healthy I don't think so I think there's something going on it's not just because they don't want to look weird or they don't want to know where it's a good word talk not because they feel weak but maybe see the thing about the Dionysian is that it breaks down gender that's one of the that's one of the aspects of dynein reality in general human explores this very nicely in this these two books I said a myth of analysis and the other one is healing healing fictions that's another place you can not find here's a very good insights into the Dionysian there's so many bad things written about the Dionysian by Greek scholars as well I don't think they get it so many of them so be cautious when we read about the die nation but but here we are whether the code that has taken us into this Dian Asian reality of the mask and it seems to me that it's well you you look next time you're with a group wearing masks or with somebody else notice not the physical side but notice your emotional reaction or where your fantasy has taken notice what's going on here kind of a theatrical experience what is that what is happening why are some people and easy about wearing a mask what do you feel when you put a mask on even if it's for health reasons it's still a Dionysian mask you can't you can't get away from that we are still into the realm of masks we're still into the liminal place where masks are used by people to to help in the process of transformation so I think that's something I haven't developed here for you today it would take too long but it's something I give you I'm giving you a project so I was like I'd love for you to and to do some research and writing thought maybe conversations about these things maybe you've already had discussions about masks I don't know but it's really worth exploring to see this in a deeper way sort of an archetypal analysis of masks instead of just that physical literal one and you know if you want to if you really want to see how the Dionysian plays is being played out again it's very strong in America I don't know if it's the same there I think that I'm sure there's some of it wait a separate they have a public figure is that really bring things up into a huge huge form anyway another aspect of it besides sadness is think about the connecting kovin with Euripides play Bach I I think that would be a very good play to read these days of course is a good play to read at all times but Baca is just an incredible incredible playing so here's this man that this whose name means sadness you know pain pain is ends Pentheus and he's the ruler of his town the bacilli and Dionysus has come that's what he does he's a stranger he's called the stranger and Dionysus comes as a stranger and he captivates so many many of the people of Pentheus of city and he takes them out of the city for ritual dance and orgy does that liminality is absolutely clear Dionysus takes people out but to go there you have to dress you have to cross dress you have to you have to blur if not erase the gender division you've got to get rid of gender to get out there and Pentheus thinks this is so horrible I mean he's he has profound disgust and what he sees going on there and the play opens with these two old guys Tiresias and Cadmus they decide they're going to put on women's clothes and go out and join the Theia the ritual so they do that they put on the suit they put on women's clothes and they go out and the Pentheus is absolutely disgusting can he really he wants to bring all his militant forced to fight it and of course this is what we see today about Corvette I think we see people who are strongly resistant to masks are to other methods of dealing with Corbett because I think what they're doing they're they're in that position of Pentheus I think the Buckeye would really help us understand what's going on today Inara and our various societies in dealing with this global pandemic so I think Mary I think it's five minutes I think that's up so I cover a lot of territory I didn't think I'd have enough to talk to you about but I think that's probably enough for a conversation I'd love to have a conversation with you I know we have to have it in writing but I teach that way all the time and I think it works very well hey um thank you very much Thomas that was very wide-ranging very rich and I'm gonna have to watch the recording to sort of digest all of it but there are some there are couple of questions that have come up so somebody's I posed the question when if ever does liminality end and aren't we really saying that liminality or uncertainty is the human condition I think it's one of these situations where you you can know you know that it has always ended the mental situations usually our period of time in a particular place so we know that the end we know that people have had been endemics before I would just read the other day of Queen Elizabeth the first going out to Windsor Park to to get away from London to get away from the pandemic and her time and then setting up tremendous penalties for people who came from London to go out there to you noted that who might penetrate her safety and she was creating a attempt a liminal space just in doing that going exactly according to what the anthropologist described liminality as you know going out there and creating your own space so I think that we know that these things have happened in the past that they have ended and we can assume that this one will end we don't know for sure but it probably will end but I don't think that to really be in the liminal place you're allowed to think about that much I think that is an escape I think it's a little closer to Jung's idea of the regressive restoration we want to restore the normal we say when will this end give me a sense that it's going to be over with I can handle it that means don't let me feel the pressure of the liminality save me from that pressure and you know I think what we're being taught by the anthropologist says that that pressure is part of our transformation okay thank you so another question someone is asking for a bit more about is um the concept of religion is a form of clay and I wonder if you could say a bit more about that yes this has been written about a great deal I'd say about 20-30 years ago there were a number of books ever published about play very seriously about play philosophy of play and some of them referred to religion as play and maybe you know David Miller who's done a lot of writing and areas that you would be interested in David Miller wrote a book called games and gods and games which is about the relation between religion and play he doesn't develop his own theory there much but he surveys what people have thought and written about it's an old book but I it's very alive I would recommend that to you on the subject another book written by an old friend of mine I haven't seen in a long time Linda Sexson it's a book and called ordinarily sacred ordinarily sacred and it's about the how religion display a form of play and she writes very beautifully and way about playful way about how religion yes play and you know all you have to do is think about oh you know people dress up in these costumes to go out and have their rituals in religion they have a Temenos they have their time and they have their place which is very similar to a sporting Temenos you know you have your place you go into your door as you go through it the world is not the same inside of church or at unless it is outside same as when you go onto a football pitch Peter you know you're in a different space you cross the line you are now in the Temenos so religions have many many instances of this she in particular and then Linda section talks about boxes she has a whole chapter in the book on box and so how religions use various forms of boxes as part of their ritual and then whenever we use boxes we aren't really we are engaging in a kind of quasi religious act like keeping things in boxes like when you let's say keep letters in a box and put them in your attic or basement or somewhere you put them somewhere in your house to keep that would be a religious act in a way quasi religious act and it's based on what religions do formally anyway they do this in formal ways so that's how it's a kind of play you take care of your things and you store them and you you go and get them sometimes isn't that rather playful to go and look up some things you put in a box for many years open them up that's a rather playful moment to open these things up or you might want to put a time capsule in your home we've done that and our family many times you put a little box in the ground outside your home so that maybe one day someone might just come along and find it with the photographs and writing say you put in there it's play it's a form a play but it's meaningful play it's very meaningful and at all is part of religious practice thank you I'm aware of being very moved I have a box with things from my children but a thirty forty years old that's very important isn't it yeah thank you it's really touched me there's a couple of kind of related questions which is around ways of being with with liminality bearing the pressure of it and is there an acceptance of liminality that's in conflict with the idea of will and its place in overcoming adversity how do you see the balance between that yes well you know fortunately those of us who do this work I think follow a kind of polytheistic psychology which means we can do more than one thing at a time and one of the things we can do is let the liminality affect us and transform us and take us through an initiation that's really what it is it's an initiation a process from being at one level of experience and one identity to another which when you assume the other one is more mature and bigger and you are more part of community that's that's what they all say that that's what all these rituals are about the liminal rituals are about becoming more intensely connected to community you can certainly have will it's the will to help people get through this people who are sick and their medical workers doing so much they mean I'd like to add the Illuminati quite so much we we are looking at it differently in trying to see it a different level what is happening and at another level altogether we have to fight this and we have to find a ways to to save ourselves and to work to save people from dying certainly certainly we have to do them but we can do all these things at once I'm talking today to psychologists I think or people interested in these things know what a depth point of view and so I'm offering what I think is an alternative but it does not take away other other ways of responding to it thank you so there's a couple of questions I think relating not only to the fact that we're in a time of covert but also other massive social economic and environmental upheavals and the the sense in which we were on multiple thresholds and I wondered if you could say anything about the challenge of it's not a single it's not a single lemon it's it's it's multiples or are they different manifestations of the same one what would your view on them well I think they are multiple I think that's right but the fact is every day in our lives were faced with multiple liminality we're always fake every time you wake up I think you are you are leaving the liminal space of dream to enter life again that's a challenge and usually the dreams are a challenge they may be more challenging at times than others you may have a nightmare and you have to deal with that you may have a very wonderful dream that feels very good so then you have to make the transition into ordinary life so there's always a challenge involved but that's only one so you get up you wake up in the morning and you go into your day and then I know for me I may have to do I may have to I may be scheduled to do an hour of psychotherapy my enter certainly a little space for that that's a I think a very intense and liminal space so I go into that space for a while right so I spend a good part of my day writing so I have to enter that space liminal space of the writer I can't write if I don't enter the liminal space I go into that place where the muse lives I have to be there I can't do it on my own if I'm in normal if I'm in a normal state I can't write what comes out is is so pragmatic and so stiff I could never get a book published so I have to be in that place where the angels are where the muses are where they speak and so there's another liminal space so here I am probably up awake for two hours in my day and I've been in two liminal places very strong ones and I have more to come so there's there's a number of linked questions we probably have time for maybe two more so there are there are various questions around magic and what magic means to you like the relationship between magic and therapy and just kind of could you say a little bit more about that sure um magic is is really it's a bit complex but it's it's it's a way of being in the world and being effective it's a way of being effective where you don't do what you're doing through cause and effect or through ordinary tools and through a rasher fourth rational means no I learned a great deal of my magic from John Dee who was a Londoner and he came by the way um I don't know if you know he was yeah he was very helpful to Queen Elizabeth going back to Queen Elizabeth the first and she there's a story that she actually came to visit him at his house I can't quite imagine that Queen Elizabeth the first going to visit this person's house instead of having him come to her but that's what the story is and he advised her he advised people these navigators how to how to leave home and go out onto the oceans and come back safely he advised them how did the advise them with this this is an obsidian stone it's not on my desk because I always have it on my desk you can see a stone very much like this at the British Museum it has a little display of John Dee's artifacts I understand lately recently there's been some question about them but I think that they're accurate this is a obsidian piece of obsidian that you look into now John Dee said he looked into it too to have help from the Angels and this is now I'm getting I may be leaving you I don't know but the angels you know to me ain't very very and John D for John D they were not not literal beings flying through the sky but but powers you know like human talks about the gods and goddesses as powers powers and the world in life that we imagined that we give names to and give image to he said john d said that this stone would help him conjure the angel get the angels who would help him with the answers he needed to problems that people brought i can understand that because i use this with my family all the time they all often ask me to they let everybody can see and i guess into those stones very well but i happen to be able to do it i don't know why my family are very intuitive but they don't they don't quite that method doesn't work very well for them but it does for me so i can look into that stone and really get an awful lot of information than ideas and judgments and I trust what I get from that more than just sitting down and thinking my own thoughts so magic is a way of trying to use that this is what Pacino said my Celia Pacino who developed some magic in the Renaissance he said it's um it's using ordinary materials ordinary objects for their power for the power that we don't usually think about or know about like how many people would pick up a stone and think this is going to decent help me decide what job to take next but it can if you use it in this in the way of magic and we have a long tradition there's a long European tradition of magic going back beyond mycelium Fujino who was the 15th century Italy through I'll mention a few through the abbot truth Aeneas and Germany Cornelius Agrippa also a very fine magician and John D and Paracelsus and Robert Fludd other Londoner Robert Fludd was a magician and lemarcus so we have as long tradition in Europe especially this magic that to me is very much in tune with the psychology that we are doing but I know it's a kind of a practical application of that psychology and it fits in very well with liminality because when you when I look in this stone in order for it to be effective I can't be in a normal frame of mind I have to enter another space I have to be in some sort of I hate thieves who were but some sort of light trance in order for it to work and that's a liminal space there's also been quite a lot of interest around this whole idea of masks and masking and one suggestion that maybe that the resistance to the masks the plastic masks of a lack of playfulness that they remind us of sickness and make us scared I'm just wondering if there's a there's a kind of general desire to hear a little bit more from you about oh sure the mask is our you know they are frightening and if you if you have ever been in or see any rituals or masks are used and dance and drum they're not not too Pleasant I mean use it are quite challenging frightening scary eerie so I don't think it's unusual for a mess to have that effect I don't think they have to be playful quite the Dionysian it's not so playful I mean there's a very very large dark side to it may have some playfulness to it but it's very dark so I don't think that takes away from them from the mask and I think the point more is I would say myself I mean I would say that if we could look at the mask when you see it used when you see people using the mask and you're with people wearing them or when you yourself are putting a mask on simply to think more about the the effect on your emotions and fantasy and imagination than to just look at it practically I think that's the big step to take and for you it may take you may think this isn't playful enough and I certainly don't want to say that's not correct that very well could be I don't know the answers to these things but I I would ask you though to to consider that there's more going on with wearing masks than the practical and to explore that in a lot of different ways just keep exploring it there aren't so many books written about masks and I missioner a lot of studies have been done on masks there's so much to do so people have many many ideas of what masks are about but I would suggest that you help us all in this time of copán by taking our conversations to a different level not just the level of the physical and the medical the medical as physical and and bring us into the realm of imagination to images and narrative and story and to the gods and goddesses and to the angel Santa magic to bring us to those areas because this is where we can deal with them with soul with a soul a human soul otherwise we are dealing with koban as if it were some kind of purely physical thing and to do that is inhumane it's not human we need a soul for our activity to be human so I would say let's bring more humanity into our reaction to comb it by I thinking more about the soul thank you that feels like a very good place to bring this bit to a conclusion so I'm Mary do you want to come in from liminal space there you are Thank You Nikki for holding those questions I mean one or two that didn't quite but perhaps they need to wait in the liminality of our new answer coming so Thomas - thank you for coming and bringing I don't know how you even imagine that you wouldn't have enough to say to us because it feels that you've just spread a wide wide blanket tapestry of many things to make sense of covert and particularly the mention of soul stones but you look into yes angels and magic and as seeing through into something else you asked at one point are we leaving you at this point hey no no no this is revision we do this kind of stuff then we welcome anything that takes us deeper into into the soulful so a huge thank to you to you for coming along and and being the patron it's a funny word you know it's but it's the looker after who belongs and who cares for and our thanks to you thank you I like belonging and thank you for asking me means a great deal to me to be able to talk to you all yeah well when I when I wrote you you know it was one of these whimsical looking into a dark stone of thinking I'm wonderful Thomas Moore is at this point of code and and let's let's bring him back and I actually asked you for quite a bundle seeing the going was good I don't know if you remember that but and I will come back to you and this doesn't tie you up because revision that is is putting on or not putting on but offering something called soul online and this is going to be an event that will go out of house or transpersonal therapists looking at soulful themes some of which we've heard about and some of which we are exploring including the black life matters where does that sit in the seat of soul and I'm looking at these how do we do this bringing in a soulful perspective and how do we do it through this machine that we're on and at one point Thomas and I don't know if you remember this you did agree to talk and tail that event but I will give you permission and in the liminal to say that was a while ago but there is an offer that's why thank you yeah that's good so just to say that and to remind us all that there's an opportunity here we're going to stop the recording just stop that at this point and

Channel: Re-Vision – Centre for Integrative Psychosynthesis

Views: 5,854

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Id: TslNJRsGZwU

Length: 62min 14sec (3734 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 22 2020