The masculine theology dominating western culture has devastated our earth and severed our relationship with the sacred. We can see the effects of this theology throughout history – how ‘the earth is cursed because of women,’ like the Book of Genesis tells us, or the persecution of wise women during the Inquisition, and how the distorted masculine continues to shape our reality today.
The Swiss scholar Carl G. Jung coined the term the ‘shadow’ to describe the parts of ourselves (or of God) that we disown and then project onto others. Jung shed light onto the concept of evil allowing us to understand the mechanism of the shadow on a personal and collective level. So the devil becomes the shadow side of God…Is there anything that is not God? Still, Judeo-Christian mythology suggests the existence of an independent evil principle, equal in power to the Creator.
I know this conversation is not going to help you pay the rent, but it’s important to understand the shamanic perspective on evil, and how it is described so elegantly by the Jungian notion of the Shadow. According to shamanic cosmology, nothing that needs to hide in the dark has any authentic power of its own. Evil exists, but only in the hearts of men and women, and what gives evil its power is fear.
Wow. Sit with that for a little while. Thus, when we practice fearlessness, we stop turning our demons into enemies and start turning them into allies. We begin to love our devils – the judgement, the impatience, the fear even…instead of fighting them.
We can begin the process of transforming or demons into allies by keeping a dream journal.
