Wisewoman WisdomWalk™

"In primitive tribes we observe that the old people almost always are the guardians of the mysteries and the laws..."

Here psychologist Carl Jung comments on the meaning of the second half of life as a necessary time of, "illumination of the self:"

"We might compare masculinity and feminity and their psychic components to a definite store of substances of which, for the first half of life, unequal use is made...This change is even more noticable in the psychic realm than in the physical."

"How often it happens that a man of forty-five or fifty winds up his business, and the wife then dons the trousers and opens a little shop where he perhaps performs the duties of handyman...very often these changes are accompanied by all sorts of catastrophes in marriage, for it is not hard to imagine what will happen when the husband discovers his tender feelings and the wife her sharpness of mind."

"The worst of it is that intelligent and cultivated people live their lives without even knowing of the possibility of such transformations. Wholly unprepared, they embark upon the second half of their life. Or are there perhaps colleges for forty-year-olds which prepare them for their coming life and its demands as the ordinary colleges introduce our young people to a knowledge of the world? No, thoroughly unprepared we take the step into the afternoon of life; worse still, we take this step with the false assumption that our truths and ideals will serve us as hitherto."

"But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the programme of life's morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie. After having lavished its light upon the world, the sun withdraws its rays in order to illuminate itself. Instead of doing likewise, many old people prefer to be hypochondriacs, niggards, pedants, applauders of the past or else eternal adolescents—all lamentable substitutes for the illumination of self, but inevitable consequences of the delusion that the second half of life must be governed by the principles of the first..."

From The Portable Jung, The Stages of Life, Carl Jung, pp.16-18

WORKSHOPS

• Wisewoman WisdomWalk: 7 Sacred Path Initiations of the Spiderwoman Clan
  

YOUR WISDOM WALK:
A HERO/HEROINE'S JOURNEY

"Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human manifestation..."
Joseph Campbell, Hero with a Thousand Faces

Joseph Campbell described the hero's journey as a journey to the center of yourself, an inner journey to wholeness and understanding.

Your entire life is your hero's journey. It is also the journey of the soul: you are asked to face your life's call, your primal wounds, and the blessings that come from deep within those wounds.

And at the end of your life, you have the opportunity to look back at the path you've walked with wonder, awe, and compassionate understanding.

WHO IS A WISEWOMAN?

• "To be a crone is about inner development not outward appearance. A crone is a woman who has wisdom, compassion, humor, courage and vitality. She has a sense of truly being herself, can express what she knows and feels, and take action when need be. She does not avert her eyes or numb her mind from reality. She can see the flaws and imperfections in herself and others, but the light in which she sees is not harsh or judgmental. She has learned to trust herself to know what she knows...These crone qualities are not acquired overnight."
  Jean Shinoda Bolen

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