The Polyimagical Realm I must note that as primarily a painter at the time of composing this work (1986) I was also painting "angels." They were in figure what I have called personatypes and simulated, imitated realities, yet arch and beyond typification (typos) in content. This ambiguity is in fact the subject of this book. The simultaneity of image and immanence is not a problem, except we have no credible concept for simultaneity, or complementarity, and by which ambivalence prevails as the earmark of reality. Now, in the year 2004 it is the least I can say for showing the differences that only analytically repose in mutually exclusive camps, that of C.G. Jung's rigorous and extensive amplification of Freud's Psychoanalytic and the new Post Modern wave of James Hillman's Archetypal Psychology and its polytheistic trimmings. In that case the many gods earn a capital "G" and in contention with the One God. But speaking as both a painter and a poet I can only fall back on an experiential standpoint, something reminded by Plato 2500 years ago in his Ion dialogue: "and therefore God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know that they speak not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us." Bernard X. Bovasso Spring, 2005

THE MASCULINE QUEST FOR THE WHITENESS The telestic nature of the Masculine Mysteries served as the medium for The Whiteness which, in its generality, points directly to a representation of Death and the masculine drive to achieve union of the Self at the last stop in life: the divine after-life unity otherwise known as God or Allah, or, as Jung psychologically paraphrased it, the Unus Mundus . For Freud this unity was called Eros, as simply "life drive," in his distinction between Eros and Thanatos. For Jung it included the Unus Mundus as final and everlasting Oneness. For Goethe it was perhaps a return to the All and which, of course, is no-place at all, i.e., u-topos. For Herman Melville it was expressed through his Capt. Ahab who was joined in final unity with the great white whale. Today we may recognize as much in the suicidal martyr. In all cases the quest for The Whiteness expressed a haste to prematurely achieve final perfection. Such drives, for the most part were, at least typically, fit for men except for its feminine demeanor exemplified by the animus of the feminine psychology, a woman's inner and largely unconscious "maleness." In all cases, the color of all color and exclusively male quest for Final Perfection I must treat with regard to its form as only inferentially metaphysical and theological. But the content in fact addressed what Jung referred to as the imago dei: God as the psychological rather than the metaphysical Self. From this less than theological standpoint the Deity, as Melville noted in his Moby Dick, was concealed beneath the veil of Whiteness. . The above polarities I have generalized as The Whiteness, the heroic masculine thanatic trieb (death instinct)and The Blackness as Eros and the creative feminine proclivity for "life" and endopsychic perception. In the first part of this work, however, I start out with a more naive and narrative approach. I then move on to more complex metapsychological speculations and not the least of which is my notice and notation of word and number synchronicties. Bernard X. Bovasso Saugerties, New York. Front cover design by the author

Jung and His Other

The name Philemon has reached public notice as much as the name of its author, Analytical Psychologist Prof. Dr. C.G. Jung. This is not so odd considering that more is publicly known about the man Jung on a multi-dimen sional level than many a celebrity in recent histo ry. Much has been re vealed for all to see from the level of depth, breadth and intensity that not only includes his pioneer work in Depth Psychology but the more recent publication of his secretive creative endeavors now broadcast in a lavish facsimile edition of his original closet composed Red Book: as if suddenly the man of mind and his science of the psyche is brushed aside for the man of fabulous fantasy magic. That would be to say the man Jung has been eclipsed by his own imaginary man, Philemon.
Who is Philemon and by what power does he take stage center? Jung did not have to answer this question involving his successor because he insisted that the "all his life" closet work be made public only posthumously, almost as if to publicly reveal this other of his life as in fact a prognostication of his afterlife. Accordingly, in his fantasy he listens to the voices of the dead, a theme that I have extended in wider application to the world scene and the origins of Western culture since the founding of Alexandria "where the East meets the West" by Alexander the Great of ancient Albania (Illyria)

Bernard X Bovasso

May 21, 2012

Jung and His Other

The name Philemon has reached public notice as much as the name of its author, Analytical Psychologist Prof. Dr. C.G. Jung. This is not so odd considering that more is publicly known about the man Jung on a multi-dimen sional level than many a celebrity in recent histo ry. Much has been re vealed for all to see from the level of depth, breadth and intensity that not only includes his pioneer work in Depth Psychology but the more recent publication of his secretive creative endeavors now broadcast in a lavish facsimile edition of his original closet composed Red Book: as if suddenly the man of mind and his science of the psyche is brushed aside for the man of fabulous fantasy magic. That would be to say the man Jung has been eclipsed by his own imaginary man, Philemon.
Who is Philemon and by what power does he take stage center? Jung did not have to answer this question involving his successor because he insisted that the "all his life" closet work be made public only posthumously, almost as if to publicly reveal this other of his life as in fact a prognostication of his afterlife. Accordingly, in his fantasy he listens to the voices of the dead, a theme that I have extended in wider application to the world scene and the origins of Western culture since the founding of Alexandria "where the East meets the West" by Alexander the Great of ancient Albania (Illyria)

Bernard X Bovasso

May 21, 2012

"The present work combines two different forms but of similar content: a poetic form and a dramatic form noted as "closet" drama because intended for reading rather than a staged production. In both cases erotic content is presented in allusion to a variety of metaphors overlapped in the erotic play of opposites. Any literal erotic content is thus ambivalent insofar as the sublime aspect of cuniunctio competes with its common and familiar demonstrations.

THE MASCULINE QUEST FOR THE WHITENESS The telestic nature of the Masculine Mysteries served as the medium for The Whiteness which, in its generality, points directly to a representation of Death and the masculine drive to achieve union of the Self at the last stop in life: the divine after-life unity otherwise known as God or Allah, or, as Jung psychologically paraphrased it, the Unus Mundus . For Freud this unity was called Eros, as simply "life drive," in his distinction between Eros and Thanatos. For Jung it included the Unus Mundus as final and everlasting Oneness. For Goethe it was perhaps a return to the All and which, of course, is no-place at all, i.e., u-topos. For Herman Melville it was expressed through his Capt. Ahab who was joined in final unity with the great white whale. Today we may recognize as much in the suicidal martyr. In all cases the quest for The Whiteness expressed a haste to prematurely achieve final perfection. Such drives, for the most part were, at least typically, fit for men except for its feminine demeanor exemplified by the animus of the feminine psychology, a woman's inner and largely unconscious "maleness." In all cases, the color of all color and exclusively male quest for Final Perfection I must treat with regard to its form as only inferentially metaphysical and theological. But the content in fact addressed what Jung referred to as the imago dei: God as the psychological rather than the metaphysical Self. From this less than theological standpoint the Deity, as Melville noted in his Moby Dick, was concealed beneath the veil of Whiteness. . The above polarities I have generalized as The Whiteness, the heroic masculine thanatic trieb (death instinct)and The Blackness as Eros and the creative feminine proclivity for "life" and endopsychic perception. In the first part of this work, however, I start out with a more naive and narrative approach. I then move on to more complex metapsychological speculations and not the least of which is my notice and notation of word and number synchronicties. Bernard X. Bovasso Saugerties, New York. Front cover design by the author

The Polyimagical Realm I must note that as primarily a painter at the time of composing this work (1986) I was also painting "angels." They were in figure what I have called personatypes and simulated, imitated realities, yet arch and beyond typification (typos) in content. This ambiguity is in fact the subject of this book. The simultaneity of image and immanence is not a problem, except we have no credible concept for simultaneity, or complementarity, and by which ambivalence prevails as the earmark of reality. Now, in the year 2004 it is the least I can say for showing the differences that only analytically repose in mutually exclusive camps, that of C.G. Jung's rigorous and extensive amplification of Freud's Psychoanalytic and the new Post Modern wave of James Hillman's Archetypal Psychology and its polytheistic trimmings. In that case the many gods earn a capital "G" and in contention with the One God. But speaking as both a painter and a poet I can only fall back on an experiential standpoint, something reminded by Plato 2500 years ago in his Ion dialogue: "and therefore God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know that they speak not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us." Bernard X. Bovasso Spring, 2005