Thoughts By Venus_Daily (Moon-Neptune)

[Venus_Daily]

I took Women and Gender studies this semester as an elective, and although I disliked the fact that it was taught from an exclusively liberal perspective, some aspects still helped me to achieve an outflowing of catharsis, especially when my Moon/Neptune progressed square came to exactitude. Under this influence, I was inspired to write a term paper about Jung's interpretation of the Anima in popular culture and dissect its three most basic manifestations, the seductive maiden (Marylin Monroe) mother (Virgin Mary) and the crone (Medusa). I got a ton of praise for it, from people saying it was so good that it seemed plagiarized, but one comment I got the most frequently was that the paper and its title seemed very appealing or attention-grabbing. This sort of incited me to remember how one of the primary influences in Monroe's chart responsible for shaping her into a modern-day Anima figure was her Moon Neptune opposition close to the horizon in Capricorn/Cancer, respectively. Since I was a child, I was a huge fan of Monroe, I don't know if it's because of my Leo Sun or Venus/Neptune/Jupiter aspect, but she managed to fascinate me even before I knew about her death.
So, also, while writing this paper, I experienced the emotionally raw and unbalancing influence of Moon/Neptune, and it really brought to the surface a lot of my issues about body image and self-esteem. While doing some edits on my paper, I had an unexplainably hard time writing about the Virgin Mary, but I got through it. That same night (the night before last), I decided that I had enough with feeling the way I do all the time about myself.

I fell asleep, and keep in mind, I never remember my dreams, but this night I did. I had a very vivid dream that my fraternal aunt and I were talking about how her husband was such bad luck, and as he approached, we both through salt over our shoulders. For some reason, the salt stood out so much in my dream, it fell over my shoulder in slow motion. So, I decided to research Jung's interpretation of salt as an archetype, and this was the first thing I came across.

Jung's alchemical writings are exercises in hermeneutics, interpretations grounded in his intuition that in their philosophic treatises in the nature of chemical materials, the alchemists projected psychological processes onto matter. Much of the unconscious masculine nature was the substance sulphur, which contributed to the fiery character of Sol. But in the formation of the man's lunar unconscious, which had a feminine character, the root substance appeared to be salt, associated throughout human history with tears. Jung's understanding of the importance of experiences of bitter appointment in the development of the anima reaches beyond lie traditional Christian emphasis on suffering and sacrifice embodied in the Virgin Mary to the more seasoned femininity of the Gnostic Sophia, who personifies earth wisdom.

http://www.jungian.info/library.cfm?idsLibrary=4
The only negative drawback to Jung's theory of the Anima is that he hypothesized that because women identify with it consciously, it's not given that much expression in the unconsciousness.

[Jim Eshelman]

This is quite good work. Good going! Especially the alchemical analyses and research.

On one point, I'd never actually thought of that Moon-Neptune as part of Marilyn's seductive quality. I don't disagree (not at all); it just never crossed my mind. I've seen her strong Venus (Taurus with Venus culminating), I knew the importance of the angular Moon for the "sexpot" figure, but when turning to Moon-Neptune I had always thought of it as part of the larger Moon-Saturn-Neptune which showed her damaged upbringing, her difficulties leading to profound depression, and her eventual suicide.

But you, of course, are right that it was also part of what made her seductive image immortal. There is elegant simplicity in noting that she has Moon, Venus, and Neptune as her three foreground planets.

On your last sentence about the low presence of Anima in women's conscious minds, remember than the Anima (as defined by Jung) isn't just the female part of the psyche: It doesn't have that wholeness. It is, rather, a female-themed part of the unconscious consequent to it being disowned, denied, etc. Therefore it is more likely to be an active unconscious force in men (who are more likely to dismiss, disown, or under-develop that part of their psyche) than in women (who are more likely to consciously own more of it, so that it doesn't have to pathologize). The goal, of course, is wholeness.

[Venus_Daily]

Thank you Jim, as always, your opinions, as well as everyone here on the forum are greatly appreciated. Like Astrology, it's odd how Jung's concepts of archetypes still remain a bit obscure even in fields where you would expect for them to be ubiquitous. I guess humanity is just still not ready for reintegration on a conscious level.