In a few days it will be 8 March, International Women’s Day.

The feminine spirit of the world remains in chains, and until this spirit is freed, women, children and men will not be released from their historical suffering.

The final section of the seminar on the archetype of the Sacred Feminine and the Great Mother is devoted to this historical suffering. The link to the seminar is provided below.

There is a symbol in alchemical psychology called “the anima in chains,” or the soul in solitude, Anima Solo, referring to the captivity of the human soul: captivity within a job, a way of life, an ideology, a one-sided perspective, a destructive relationship or a negative emotion that has taken the soul prisoner. The process of alchemical psychology can be understood as freeing the soul from its chains through attaining the philosopher’s stone.

Many women believe that they are progressing in today’s world, but the truth, in this account, is that this apparent feminine power is still being moved by the invisible hands of masculinity. In a world whose civilisation is dominated by a hard masculine spirit, women’s progress may become little more than a deeper acceptance of masculine domination over their spirit and way of life within a masculine paradigm. This is why, even when successful, the modern woman may remain sad and still find her soul in chains.

The suppression and denial of the feminine spirit cultivates a deep anger in the darker regions of the psyche—a shadow that seeks only power and produces a form of women’s movement that itself relies on patriarchal methods and unbalanced masculine values.

Medusa has awakened again to immobilise, through her anger, every different heroic possibility within the psyche. In another and different image, for centuries women have embodied “Sleeping Beauty,” an eternal image of beauty asleep: a possibility that is not realised, beauty that does not enter the actual life of the world. The final section of Seminar Seven reflects upon a third path through which a free and powerful realisation may become possible.

Aydin Areta