AS DIFFICULT AS it is to learn to trust a mentor, it is even more arduous to break down our self suspicion. Do we have what it takes to break free of the entanglements of the Dark Wood - to melt with feeling-intellect the icy encrustations of Hell that keep us paralyzed in our self defeating patterns? We stare eyeball to eyeball at the antagonist within, sizing up our character and our chances of restoration.
THE LAST FIVE years have been comfortable. THE LAST FIVE Admitting this comes hard for someone with my intensity. An amiable life conjures images of being lazy, being part of a bovine collective, lulled asleep by consumerism and the mind-numbing drone of what my grandfather called “the idiot box” — the family TV set. I laugh as I write this staring at recent additions to that idiot box: a DVD player, a VCR, and Digital Surround Sound. That little distraction that once graced the center of the living room has taken over. My so-called room of living has evolved
Many people label Edgar Allan Poe a horror writer, plain and simple. For them, "The Pit and the Pendulum" is a tale about a victim of the Spanish Inquisition, its terror and atrocities. The readers of the 1843 edition of The Gift periodical, published in Philadelphia, were intrigued by the frightening drama and tension found in the literal telling of this tale. A more rewarding approach, one that is truer to its author's intention, is to perceive The Pit as a poem of consciousness. After pondering The Pit's meaning, I believe that the story's strength and uniqueness lies in the
Edgar Allan Poe's The Gold-Bug emphasizes the chasm between our perceptions and reality. Poe's ghoulish tone is not merely horror for the "gross out", as Stephen King calls it. The gothic elements in Poe serve the higher purpose of transforming our consciousness. One of the tell-tale signs of a Poe story is that truth is not easily accessible. When we confront reality it does not conform to our expectations. A metamorphosis, in the normal way of seeing things, takes place when we learn to question not only our general perceptions of subject but our own cherished convictions. Poe's horror supplies
We can't help being thirsty, moving toward the voice of water. Milk drinkers draw close to the mother. Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, shamans, everyone hears the intelligent sound and moves with thirst to meet it. - Jeladuddin Rumi (1207-1273) The Image Unveiled James Hillman, the founder of Archetypal Psychology, has become convinced that individual and corporate spiritual growth is made through the meditation on images. The image of what I refer to as Watershed Spirituality comes from the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel. It has to do with rejuvenating waters which make stagnant things fresh, have healing properties, and perpetuate life
KIRK SCHNEIDER IS an existentialist- psychologist interested in the transformative effect of horror literature on readers. He advocates a form of bibliotherapy using horror literature and cinema as a means of exploring our human condition, its limitations and its responsibilities. His book Horror and the Holy: Wisdom-Teachings of the Monster Tale separates horror into two categories: those tales like Dracula that constrict and imprison the consciousness, reducing it to a microcosm, and tales like Frankenstein that expand the consciousness, mirroring the macrocosmic dimension. In many horror stories there are elements of both tendencies but usually one or the other predominate.