Over the weekend I indulged in a nice hot bath and read Jung's Aspects of the Masculine. The thing that struck me the most was Jung's comments on the "problem" of male homosexuality. The kindest thing he had to say was that among students, it wasn't a bad thing for them to experiment with.
Given that Dr Jung's comments were from essays written before he had formalized his theory of the collective unconscious, and given that I was reading essays from 1905-1930, I wondered what Jungians have to say about homosexuality in general and gay men today. (Note to self: time to hit some peer-reviewed materials...)
The other thing that struck me were his comments on transference, fathers, and gods. Jung presented a patient's dream. She was on a hill overlooking a field of grain. The mountain grew into a kind of god, who cradled her in his arms. The wind blew, and the dreamer was rocked in the arms of the god while the fields of grain waved.
Jung seemed more interested in how the dreamer had made a connection between wind and spirit -- but the passage made me wonder if the need to gender our deities, and the tendency to confound our parents and our gods is a part of a kind of cultural transference process.
And thinking about this particular dream more, it seems so Neo-Pagan to me; I wish I knew more about the (presumably) Judeo-Christian woman who dreamed it. What about her upbringing enabled her to have a vision of "Father Earth" ?
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