Anne Maria Clarke - Tales of Wonder

LA DIVINA COMMEDIA - Dante Alighieri - IN QUEST OF PARADISE: An Afternoon with Anne Maria Clarke 29th Sept 2019

8/16/2019

LA DIVINA COMMEDIA - Dante Alighieri - IN QUEST OF PARADISE
An Afternoon
with
Anne Maria Clarke
29TH September 2019
2pm/6pm
www.rockbank.co.uk

“Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.”
―Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

A masterpiece of medieval literature!
Ground-breakingly written in Italian not Latin.
Beloved of the people.
A political satire of the day exposing corruption in Church & State.
But most of all a love story to equal that of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet & the tale of an archetypal journey into the darkest realms of the psyche in quest of freedom & spiritual illumination.
Join us as we peer into the mystery of Dante’s greatest work.

All Welcome

Other Dates:
Societa' Dante Alighieri
Evening Presentation
21st May 2020 Loughborogh UK
https://danteloughborough.vpweb.co.uk/

Subscribe to Anne Maria Clarke's YouTube channel
http://www.youtube.com/c/annemariaclarke
More fairy-stories, myths, legends and books by
Anne Maria Clarke
http://www.archivepublishing.co.uk /Transpersonal Books - Transpersonal Psychology. Understanding the Soul - Expanding Consciousness

www.annemariaclarke.net
http://www.annemariaclarke.net/blog

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The Assumption of the Virgin 15th August Reflections: Anne Maria Clarke

8/15/2019

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The Assumption of the Virgin
Reflections: Anne Maria Clarke
Featuring the painting: The Dornination & the Assumption of the Virgin by Fra Angelico
& music: Ave Maria: by Ashana

Today is the day 15th August, when still in numerous Catholic countries around the world, the moment of the Virgin's Assumption and her Coronation as Queen of Heaven is celebrated, and her statues are born aloft through the streets strewn with flowers.

It is a moment brim full of symbolism & significance: a moment long acknowledged and believed a spiritual truth as these gorgeous pre-renaissance paintings lovingly created by Fra Angelico show clearly but not one that was acknowledged by the church until 1954!

Whether we are religious or not, the moment has meaning for us all and most particularly for women, for it heralds the loosening of the grip of the great patriarchies and their long-time banishment from canon and creed of female deity. Remember Eve, and all the trouble she inadvertently stepped into to by eating the apple?

Well to cut a long an utterly fascinating story short - there’s a very real sense in which the Assumed Virgin is a far, far distant granddaughter of Eve being welcomed back to Paradise and regaining her lost divinity - for you see Eve was not just any girl, she was in her turn the granddaughter of countless classical and pre-classical goddesses from ancient times who over the centuries had gradually been stripped and dis - possessed of their power.

So you see 1954 was a momentous moment in time - and its why the 15th August really is worth celebrating.

The symbolism is immeasurably important and perhaps, as the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung has suggested,

‘the most significant event of the twentieth century.’

I have re-posted a video below from ASHANA who with her hauntingly beautiful voice and singing bowls has created the loveliest rendition of Ave Maria that I listen to often and which sooths my soul.

Much love
Anne Maria Clarke
x x x

Reference:
Ann Baring & Jules Cashford : Myth of the Goddess
The Dormination & Assumption of the Virgin: Fra Angelico
Ashana: Ave Maria

Subscribe to Anne Maria Clarke's YouTube channel
http://www.youtube.com/c/annemariaclarke
More fairy-stories, myths, legends and books by
Anne Maria Clarke
http://www.archivepublishing.co.uk /Transpersonal Books - Transpersonal Psychology. Understanding the Soul - Expanding Consciousness

www.annemariaclarke.net
http://www.annemariaclarke.net/blog

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The ALHAMBRA - the last days of Moorish Rule Anne Maria Clarke

7/20/2019

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The ALHAMBRA
the last days of Moorish Rule
Anne Maria Clarke

Sometime ago I had the pleasure of visiting the sublime palaces & gardens of the Alhambra in Granada, Southern Spain, where I now have family. My daughter’s partner, born & raised in the city spent the morning with us, introducing us to the wonder he loves & knows by heart & later, after returning home, I continued my explorations in order to create a presentation.
Yet somehow in the telling I overlooked what has always been for him a particularly cherished element of the story concerning the way in which this great fortress fell from Moorish hands. So, I want to take a moment to put things straight as it were & to tell this beautiful part of the story as it was meant to be told.

The legend tells that in order to preserve the wonders of the Alhambra, in order that they might not be destroyed in a final act of vengeance - as we so often see as the vanquished are driven from their previous strongholds - in order that ... and in the hope that even under different rule ... this great beauty might not be despoiled but instead might live on.... Boabdil, the final Sultan of Moorish Spain simply walked away…. and as he left this beloved city and its peoples’ he is reputed to have said to the incoming Spanish
royalty.

“These are the keys to paradise,”

He then lead his entourage high up over the Sierra Nevada mountains; and from there he is said to have taken one last longing, lingering look behind, before turning on his heels & with tears streaming down his face, walked away - never to return.

It had been his hope that those of his faith that were left behind would be treated in the same way as Jews and Christians had under Islamic rule. The latter had endured certain restrictions of course, especially after the 1100’s but had enjoyed considerable freedoms and had been permitted to maintain their religious institutions.Yet these were the days of Spanish emboldenment, and the incoming royalty had very different ideas and an agenda that was to shake the soul of the city to its core.

It was the year 1492, the year Columbus and his men set sail for the New World. The Spanish were in conquering mood, with a sword in one hand and a bible in the other - emboldened after their triumphant re-possession of the Iberian Peninsula, after 800 years of Islamic rule - the crowning glory being the re-conquest of Granada and the taking of the exquisite Alhambra.
Ferdinand & Isabella, the catholic king and queen who then took up residence were ruthless in their crack down upon Muslims and Jews in the city. Any agreement the outgoing Sultan had brokered on behalf of his people was totally disregarded & abandoned. Instead, Granada, where once upon a time, Christians, Muslims & Jews lived and worked alongside one another now became the place where the merciless Spanish Inquisition set up its headquarters and where, under its auspices, thousands were forced to renounce their faiths and convert to Christianity or else be driven from the city.
The history, myths and legends surrounding the last Muslim ruler in Spain – whose surrender ended seven centuries of Islam at the heart of Western Europe – is the subject of a new book by Cambridge academic Elizabeth Drayson. The Moor’s Last Stand: The life of Boabdil, Muslim King of Granada.

According to her, Boabdil’s heroism, long repudiated by most historical commentators, is evident in his ability to recognise the futility of further resistance, and the choice he made in rejecting the further suffering, starvation and slaughter of his people. Instead, he bargained for the best terms of surrender possible, rejecting martyrdom and willingly sacrificing his reputation for the greater good.

“The loss of Granada is viewed by modern writers as a prelude to the repression of the Muslim world,” Drayson claims. “At a time when Europe is seeking a way of addressing issues of racial and religious intolerance, equality and freedom, we might look closely at the Spanish Muslim society of which Boabdil was the final heir, which successfully tackled some of these problems.

“Boabdil represents a last stand against religious intolerance, fanatical power, and cultural ignorance; his surrender of the city and kingdom of Granada symbolised the loss of the fertile cross-cultural creativity, renewal and coexistence born out of the Muslim conquest of Spain.”

The fall marked end of golden age of Islamic learning and refinement which had embodied and held sacred much of the wisdom of Classical Greece & Rome and in so doing, brought a level of civilisation to Europe commensurate with that of the Italian Renaissance.

Today, there are hardly any Jews or Muslims in Granada and the old town of Albayzin, where my new family live: yet the magnificent palaces of the Alhambra still stand proudly overlooking the city as if nothing has changed... and in the evenings as the sun sets over the mountains one can imagine the call to prayer echoing through the narrow, white clad streets, harmonising with the sweet chimes of church bells and the murmur of Jewish evening prayer.

Anne Maria Clarke
x x x

References
Elizabeth Drayson. The Moor’s Last Stand: The life of Boabdil, Muslim King

The Purging of Muslim Spain
John Edwards | Published in History Today Volume 67 Issue 11 November 2017

From Golden to Grim: Jewish Life in Muslim Spain
By Howard Sachar

Listen again to my first video about the sublimely beautiful Alhambra Palaces & Gardens
x x x

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The Forsaken Merman - Matthew Arnold - verse sung by Anne Maria Clarke

6/23/2019

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The Forsaken Merman - Matthew Arnold
verse sung by Anne Maria Clarke
Audio production David Johnson & Anne Maria Clarke

'Matthew Arnold's poem, "The Forsaken Merman," tells the story of a merman (a male version of a mermaid) and his human wife who live beneath the seas. The two have borne children and seem happy together. But one day the wife hears church bells at Easter and tells her husband that she must go. Thinking her visit is only a short one, he wishes her well. However, the wife never returns. The merman and his children emerge from the sea to seek her out. They find her sitting in her new home. She seems happy at first, but she often looks through her window upon the sea and sighs. The merman and his children call out for her once again to return, but to no avail. They leave her behind and return to their watery home.'

Come away, away children Come children, come down!
The hoarse wind blows coldly; Lights shine in the town.
She will start from her slumber When gusts shake the door;
She will hear the winds howling, Will hear the waves roar.
We shall see, while above us The waves roar and whirl,
A ceiling of amber, A pavement of pearl.
Singing: "Here came a mortal, But faithless was she!
And alone dwell for ever The kings of the sea."

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TOLKIEN - Film Review & Reflections on the life & work of the great man - annemariaclarke.net

5/19/2019

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TOLKIEN -Film Review & reflections upon the life & work of the great man - Anne Maria Clarke

TOLKIEN is an American biographical drama film directed by Dome Karukoski and written by David Gleeson and Stephen Beresford. It is about the early life of English professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The film stars Nicholas Hoult, Lily Collins, Colm Meaney, and Derek Jacobi. Released in the UK on May 3, 2019 and in the USA on May 10, 2019.

For Tolkien lovers any celebration of his life & work is an eagerly awaited event. No one of course, is capable of telling the definitive story, for that is known only by those who have lived it. So we must not be overly critical of well-intentioned attempts to do so. Those who have reviewed the film so far have not been particularly impressed. This is the first film to be released by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures under the recently acquired Fox Searchlight Pictures banner & one wonders if on some level sophisticated reviewers cannot quite bring themselves to endorse this first offering. The film has not been endorsed by the Tolkien family Estate either but neither was the Peter Jackson Trilogy of Lord of the Rings.

Be all this as it may be, I personally found it lovely, even whilst being aware that Tolkien himself was always at pains to spell out that his work was not allegorical in any way. Faery is an altogether different realm he told us & as independent & remote from the everyday as it is possible to be.

He was absolutely clear that he was ' recording ' rather than ' inventing' his tales. The characters & themes were not concocted, nor were they mirrors of his personal experiences, transposed onto a mythological landscape.

It was his genuine humility that no doubt facilitated his entry into the realms of Faerie & his genius that enabled him to render it into literary form.

This being said - a writers personal experience of darkness, of falling into shadow as it were, of losing one's parents as a child, of coming so very close to death, & perhaps experiencing a kind of death of one's former self - which one imagines is the inner reality of war - is where the self can either built or destroyed & in this sense can facilitate the necessary empathy for understanding one's stories characters as they experience their own dark nights of the soul.

The film makers we are told were terribly hamstrung by their inability to reference scenes from previous films, their copyright being held by Warner Brothers, so their allusions to beloved scenes from the films in the interlacing of Tolkien's actual life with his stories were weaker than might have been & and perhaps a little clumsy in places. However if one knows the work from the books and is not fixated with the Peter Jackson rendering, one can fill in all the gaps quite adequately, as one clearly does when reading and sometimes what is not rendered visually can be more powerful, more intimate.

This is primarily a film about relationships, a period drama if you like about Tolkien's early life, the inspiration of his mother, his early friendship bonds, his love of antique languages and his relationship with Edith, who was to become his wife and lifelong companion. And this tale it tells most beautifully.

To my mind Nicholas Hoult & Lily Collins are very well cast. There is a sincerity to Hoult's performance, so very reminiscent of what one imagines the great man might have been like in real life. The kind of man who for over twenty years pretended to be Father Christmas & sent letters to his children every year from the North Pole regaling them with painstakingly illustrated tales of polar bears and the like set against remote snowclad mountains & the spectacular Northern lights. This was a man who in a very real sense, like his character Frodo was capable of carrying the Ring & against all odds of vanity & hubris, in spite of his obvious genius and this was a man who wholeheartedly fell in love with his teenage sweetheart & remained so for the rest of his life.

Both orphans living in the same lodgings as teenagers, they shared an immediate intimacy and even though their relationship was forbidden by Tolkien's guardian, the two held fast to their feelings and married shortly after Tolkien graduated from Oxford. It was Edith who nursed him back to health when he returned with trench fever from WW1 & some say it was she who inspired the writing of Luthien, as she danced in a hemlock glade during his convalescence. A scene romantically recreated for the film. Those who know the story of Luthien & Beren that pulses at the heart of Tolkien's Silmarillion will understand the significance of allusion. Those who have studied the great man's life by heart as it were will know too, the significance of the allusion in his personal and married life.

She was always my Elvin princess - he wrote to his sons after her death in 1971, two years before him - & she knew it.

There are numerous ways to tell a story. Some are simple & wholesome, for a mainstream audience, with a great dollop of quinessentially English beauty & romance, like a Merchant Ivory film might feature....yet sometimes this is just what is needed.

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The Conference of the Birds - adapted by Anne Maria Clarke

4/28/2019

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The Conference of the Birds
Adapted by Anne Maria Clarke
from the 12th Century Sufi Poem of
Farid ud-Din Attar

This story was first set down in the 12th century … it was a special, brief time in ways that made it somehow uncharacteristic of its epoch. It was then that the Grail Legends emerged in Europe and when Eleanor of Aquitaine established her liberal court whilst her son was away at the crusades within which the ideals of Courtly Love came into being and where Troubadours and all manner of artists and artistic endeavour flourished.
It was such a time as this that the Sufi poet Farid Mun- deem Attar set down his inspirational tale – THE CONFERENCE of the BIRDS.

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Tales of Healing

3/9/2019

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In these upcoming pages I would like to focus directly on of the notion of story as a vehicle for healing. I look forward to revisiting some of the tales already explored and to introducing new stories with this in mind.
Anne Maria Clarke
x x x

It seems that healing: the sort that can bring about deep & lasting change often takes place beyond the everyday – behind the scenes of what appears solid – in the realm of the imaginal – the mysterious dimension known through the ages to shamans, story-makers, musicians as well as to various types of modern day psychotherapists & healing practitioners who guide their clients into these dreamy, otherworldly realms – where things closer to the source of our pain can be observed from different perspectives – and what is discovered here – in these extra-ordinary realms - can be re-framed, re-configured so to speak so that that our experience of the ordinary, everyday present, past and future can be profoundly changed.

Sometimes as we go through life we suffer trauma of various sorts and in varying degrees. Our bodies and emotions are hurt but our souls too are often wounded and cannot move on and remain stuck or trapped if you like, energetically speaking. The rest of the self goes on, grows up and continues with life yet these parts, these fragments of the soul remain, often at the site of the trauma. Then the shaman or wise persons of the tribe are needed to return to these sites with their clients and to guide them back into consciousness, into the whole so to speak so that life may continue and healing can occur.

The ancient storytellers, themselves shamans and wise ones of their tribe assisted in this process through the gentle art of story making, enabling the listener to enter non - ordinary time, to view their predicament, transposed into a fairy-tale idiom, and to begin to understand the many different ways in which healing can be brought about.

THE EAGLE WOMAN - a tale of recovery after loss
An ancient north american folktale of miraculous healing through dance, song and the return of laughter after tragedy and sadness.
Music - Miffy's Harp - composed and performed by David Johnson

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Sacred Oak Tree Guided Meditation with Anne Maria Clarke

2/21/2019

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Sacred Oak Tree

Guided Meditation
with Anne Maria Clarke
x x x
Music Production David Johnson
Artist: Adragante Song Track: DM2012
https://www.jamendo.com/en/track/9414... This song is licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 - http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...

Illustration The Woman Redeemed by Trees
by Paula Schultz

Subscribe to Anne Maria Clarke's YouTube channel
http://www.youtube.com/c/annemariaclarke
More fairy-stories, myths, legends and books by
Anne Maria Clarke
http://www.archivepublishing.co.uk /Transpersonal Books - Transpersonal Psychology. Understanding the Soul - Expanding Consciousness

www.annemariaclarke.net
http://www.annemariaclarke.net/blog

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THE HERO & HEROINE'S JOURNEY An afternoon with Anne Maria Clarke 10th February 2019 Rock Bank Transpersonal Center UK

1/6/2019

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THE HERO & HEROINE'S JOURNEY

An afternoon with Anne Maria Clarke
10th February 2019
Rock Bank Transpersonal Center UK
www.rockbank.co.uk
www.hazel@rockbank.co.uk

The path begins at our bleakest moment. If we are lucky we will hear the call and instead of collapsing we will set off in quest of the first chink of light and onward into the unknown, searching & gathering with each step we take.

It will not be easy. This is the quest of heros & heroines, the brave and courageous....the ones who have gone before and returned with their great stories so that we through contemplation, might be guided through our own dark night of soul.

In deepening our understanding our beloved tales might reveal themselves as the precious gifts they are - like Galadriel's Light given to Frodo as he sets forth from Lothlorien on his perilous quest.

"May it be a light for you in dark places, says she,
where all other lights have gone out."

J.R.R. Tolkien: Lord of the Rings

x x x

Join us for an afternoon of exploration & contemplation.
14.00 - 18.00 pm
Everyone is Welcome
x x x

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The Sleeping Beauty - awakening the slumbering soul - with Anne Maria Clarke @ Rock Bank Transpersonal Center UK

12/20/2018

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ASLEEPING BEAUTY
Awakening the Slumbering Soul
A weekend with Anne Maria Clarke
Rock Bank Transpersonal Center UK
www.rockbank.co.uk
April 12th - 14th 2019
All Welcome

This weekend we can immerse ourselves in this lovely material, aware of the loss of the feminine. We shall be looking at some of the myths and legends that accompany our heroine: The Quest for the Holy Grail...Demeter & Persephone.....personal, yet how magical to re-visit them at a higher octave too, the collective and transpersonal. This weekend we shall weave in the experiential, finding ways to open doors to the 'Once-Upon-a-Time' of the individual in a way that reflects the imaginal approach of Rock Bank.

£130 (some concessions please enquire) Friday 6.00 for 6.30pm till 10.00 Saturday 9.30 for 10.00 am till 6.00 Sunday 9.30 for 10.00am till 2.00 Tea and coffee provided. Lunch ( pubs in village or bring your own) Overnight accomodaion available.

Subscribe to Anne Maria Clarke's YouTube channel http://www.youtube.com/c/annemariaclarke More fairy-stories, myths, legends and books by Anne Maria Clarke http://www.archivepublishing.co.uk /Transpersonal Books - Transpersonal Psychology. Understanding the Soul - Expanding Consciousness www.annemariaclarke.net http://www.annemariaclarke.net/blog www.annemariaclarke.net

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Mirror Mirror on the Wall - Anne Maria Clarke

11/23/2018

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Mirror Mirror on the Wall?
The transformation of the wicked Queen
Anne Maria Clarke

Moving into middle age is tricky. We are no longer Snow Whites' with hair as black as ebony, skin as white as snow and lips as red as blood....no longer Cinderallas' or all the other sweet heroine's with their impossibly tiny feet and innocent hearts.

Finding a way forward within the unfolding drama of life is hard when beauty fades. Yet as always the trusty fairytale helps by setting out the various routes before us.

"Mirror Mirror on the Wall," demands the jealous Queen.
"Who is the fairest of them all?"

You O Queen are fair 'tis true,
but Snow White is fairer far than you!

And so the descent into madness begins and the 'wicked' stepmother sets out to kill the youthful, beautiful Snow White.

There are many such tales of maladjusted Queens wringing their aging hands and hatching elaborate plots to maintain their positions as the lovliest, most loved and admired of all. Poor things! But in the end, after all the schemes, the poisoned apples, the deathly sleep spells and the like, the young pretenders always survive these jealous, insecure Queens.

The mirror never lies you see and nature cannot be checked. But there are other roles, other parts to inhabit and to thrive within, other routes to take not predicated upon the illusion of eternal physical beauty, routes based upon the nurturance of grace and surrender. This is not to say that older women cannot look good, of course not, but we must learn how to move aside when the young ones bloom around us instead of feeling wretched. We must shift, change and transmute or forever be unhappy and bitter and cold like these fairytale Queens' who despite all their efforts end up creating the exact opposite of what they intend.

Paradoxically you see, coming to terms with nature enhances beauty. Jealousy, hanging on, not letting go, fighting the seasons, refusing change is corrosive and this is partly what the faithful mirror reflects back to us.

Age appropriate behaviour on the other hand generates an altogether different kind of woman - one that is easy on herself. In fairytale and myth such characters are not hard to find. In the tale of Cinderella for example there is a kindly soul that all young girls grow up loving: the fairy god mother who magically appears when all seems lost and helps Cinderella realise her dream of going to the ball and dancing until midnight with her handsome prince.

This character's prime quality is kindness. She understands the unfolding drama in ways that the wicked, embittered Queen can never do. She stands aside you see - a pre-requisite of wisdom. She views the story as a whole, with all it's twists and turns and shifting and switching of places and thus behaves with clarity and integrity. No longer the central character of the tale as once she surely was - as perhaps we all were - she has evolved into this most magical of roles.

Appearing when all hope is lost, free from personal desire to help Cinderella escape her life of drudgery and attain her true destiny. With a wiggle of her magic wand she moves the tale toward it's Happy Ending. A humble pumpkin is changed into a fairy coach, six white mice become horses, a seventh a footman and Cinderella's rags are transformed into the most beautiful ball gown ever imagined.

This is mothering in it's highest octave. A most worthy state to which we can all aspire with enthusiasm.

The rewards are great for all concerned - for by these ways - even the most distressed wicked Queen can be redeemed so that when next she looks into the mirror of her soul it can reply most joyously.

"Snow White is still fairer by far than thee.
Yet you, Oh Queen have changed,
the lines of bitterness have softened on your face.
Your heart is at ease.
You have become kind!"

Anne Maria Clarke
x x x

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One Thousand & One Nights - adapted & narrated by Anne Maria Clarke

10/28/2018

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One Thousand & One Nights
adapted & narrated by Anne Maria Clarke
Title Music: The Lion Goddess
written & performed by
Anne Maria Clarke with David Johnson

This is the story of Scheherazade, the greatest storyteller in the world, who enchanted the cruel Sulton with her tales of wonder and thus preserved her life for One Thousand & One Nights

It is a tale of betrayal, loss and cruelty yet also of healing and eventual forgiveness. It gives us an opportunity to ponder difficult themes as we marvel at the wit & ingenuity of Scheherazade and to ask ourselves if we might be able to bring light into such a place of darkness and to forgive one such as the Sultan who has committed such terrible crimes?

Anne Maria Clarke
x x x

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Tolkien: Maker of Middle Earth: Anne Maria Clarke: part two

7/21/2018

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Part Two: July
In this video I explore Tolkien's Imaginal Realm & ask the question: was he really the Maker of Middle Earth or more of a visitor, an honoured guest & recorder of this most mysterious realm? ( text below)
audio recording: David Johnson

Tolkien: Maker of Middle Earth?
Anne Maria Clarke explores Tolkien's Imaginal Realm
Part Two

J.R.R Tolkien is almost universally regarded as the Maker of Middle Earth and yet he would not have bestowed such a title upon himself. He regarded himself more as a honoured guest within the region rather than it's creator.

The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all mannerof beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords. In that realm a man may, perhaps, count himself fortunate to have wandered, but its very richness and strangeness tie the tongue of a traveller who would report them. And while he is there it is dangerous for him to ask too many
questions, lest the gates should be shut and the keys be lost.

Tolkien: Essay on Fairy-stories

Looked at in this way fairy – stories clearly open a door into another realm and those who pass through, even for a moment, step beyond their time and maybe, even beyond time itself.

Yet what is this realm, this mysterious other dimension ...far away and ever near – and who are the characters that inhabit it?

Tolkien named it Faerie, a realm of power he said and fantasy is the means of entering it. Carl Jung, the Swiss analyst called it the collective unconscious, to be reached via his notion of active imagination, whilst Henry Corban, the Suffi inspired French philosopher called it the imaginal or mundus imaginalis reached in prayer and meditation.

A philologist, a psychiatrist and a philosopher yet quite clearly visionary artists too, drawn through powerful experience, deep into the transpersonal, into the mystic.

They arose in my mind as 'given' things,

Tolkien wrote to his son Christopher about his tales,

and as they came, separately, so too the links grew. An absorbing, though continually interrupted labour. Yet always I had the sense of recording what was already 'there', somewhere: not of inventing.

J.R.R.Tolkien: Letters

He regarded the resulting tales and paintings as a combination of inspiration and invention based upon his travels and discoveries within the realm. The intersection between the two he regarded as a fusion field of sorts within which the magic of his creations, or sub- creations as he preferred to say, occurred. Always he had the sense of being guided in his endeavours by something greater than himself. His task as he saw it was to stay attuned to that power so that the reader or viewer of the paintings might experience these things as intended.

Writing to W.H, Auden he repeated what he had said to his son.

I dare say something had been going on in the 'unciousness'
for some time and that accounts for my feelings throughout that I was not inventing but recording...imperfectly...and had at times to wait for what really happened to come through.

J.R.R. Tolkien: Letters

In Carl Jung's exquisite, hand written Red Book ( published 2009) that looks more like a medieval illuminated manuscript than a work of recent times, he recounts deeply personal visions and encounters with apparently autonomous aspects of the collective and transpersonal akin to those encountered by Tolkien.

When he began setting these things down around 1915 he was at a stage of his life when he felt he had lost contact with his soul and had set out to re-discover it.

My soul, where are you? Do you hear me?
I speak. I call you
Are you there?

Much to his surprise and initial consternation, he was met with a reply.

Several characters appeared and spoke most notably a wise old man, a spirit guide of sorts, named Philemon, who had appeared in Ovid's Metamorphosis and in Geothe's Faust, a character not unlike Tolkien's Gandalf.

Later Jung said.

[Philemon] was simply a superior knowledge, and he taught me psychological objectivity and the actuality of the soul. He formulated and expressed everything which I had never thought.

He deemed Philemon and other such characters to be aspects within the psyche, which he could produce but which could also produce themselves, as having their own life. They were for him therefore both psychological and metaphysical and set the scene if you like for his theory of the collective unconscious, a vast realm he explained,

replete with archetypes and active principles that interacted between that source and human consciousness.
crystalinks.com

Of these brief years between 1913 and 1916 Jung writes

The years when I pursued the inner images, were the most important time of my life. Everything else is to be derived from this. Everything later was merely the outer classification, scientific elaboration and integration into life. But the numinous beginning that contained everything was then.

Carl Jung: on the Red Book

In allowing such phenonema to speak: says James Hillman the American post Jungian analyst, Jung shifted the field of inquiry funementally away from the empirical toward what might be apprehended - rightly in Hillman's view - as poetic and phenomenological.

Poetry is the only appropriate language for matters of the psyche, he says, the only language - save music and the sacred arts capable of rendering the mystery of the soul.

Henry Corbin - Mundus Imaginalis

Between the last degree of time and the first degree of eternity....

This beautiful quotation that I've heard many times on the lips of my editor & teacher Hazel Marshall, introduced me to the sublime ideas of Henry Corbin and his notion of the mundus imaginalis, the realm seemingly to close to Faerie and even aspects of Jung's great collective.

Here he is writing about storytelling within the Suffi tradition in which stories, open doors to the imaginal realm and become initiations for teller and listener alike.

The mystical recital says what cannot be said or make itself known ....in any other way.... for the mystic does not recount a story, he is that story...but it is story that breaks visible history, since it is the passage to that which is hidden from the appearences of this world. The mystic is the object of this meta-historic story because it is in him that it takes place and this is why he is at the same time his agent, the actor and active subject.
Henry Corbin

Else where Cobin quotes the Suffi wisdom tradition in which it is held that,

The reciter, the deed recited and the hero of the recital are one sole and single reality and this takes place in every being, according to the measure of each being.

Corbin's Suffi storyteller, Jung and Tolkien have all clearly attuned to something of a much higher order, like maybe Dante did in the Divine Comedy, or William Blake and the English Romantics in their own visionary outpourings.

Joseph Campbell, the great mythographer is quite clear about how such offerings comes into being. They are glimpsed from above he says by those highly attuned souls who then render their experiences into poetic form.

The visionary experiences of both Jung and Tolkien took place over relatively short periods of time when for both men writes Dr Lance S. Owens, the doors to the other realms were blown wide open. It is a testement to the sanity of both men that they were not overwhelmed by the flood of experience. Both men we know spent the rest of their lives attempting to work through and integrate the material generated during these intensely creative years.

Humility

The thresholds of such realms are not always easy to cross. All the more reason then to enlist the help of a guide. Myth, legend and fairytale are replete with guardian characters, not unlike Philemon, Gandalf and Virgil. Often a ritual cleansing must be undertaken before access to the mysteries may be gained. We must remove our shoes so to speak, shift our focus away from our everyday consciousness, as these aventurers have clearly done before us.

Yet humility is the quality most required in such endeavours and reverence too. It is not to be assumed that one might pass there and back again merely at will. For this is sacred ground, as Corbin reveals and sometimes we might not be able to match its frequency. We are spiritual beings of course - yet we are flesh and blood creatures too.....and so it is not always easy. The perils and pitfalls of hubris are ever present in such endeavours and so humility is our only true safeguard.

Grace

Only ever by grace did Tolkien believe he was admitted to Faerie – only ever by grace had he come and gone since he was a young man in the trenches of World War One, when he had first begun to set things down to accompany the Elven languages he was developing – and later as he convalesced back in England with his beloved Edith looking after him – what wondrous light filled days they must have been – paradoxically – for they existed hand in hand with great grief and loss – and yet the comings and goings went on and on - and it must have seemed as if they would go on forever – but it was not to be – and eventually the light dimmed and his excursions became fewer and fewer until at last they were no more.

Then there was only the memory of what had been.

Much later, toward the end of his life, the short tale of Smith of Wootten Major came to him and he set it down in earnest. It was to be the last tale he wrote before his death in 1973. Some say it's auto – biographical in a way. Who knows! It certainly concerns the adventures of one such soul, the Smith's son, fortunate to come and go between Faerie and the everyday world by means of a fay-star discovered in a children's party cake – and it concerns the necessity too, many years later of giving up that star so that another might know its magic.

I will not spoil the tale for those who have not yet encountered it but I will tell a little of it's wonders; for at the end of all his travels, Star Brow, as he became known, not only has his memories - but the gift of a Living Flower also, a keepsake given to him by a beautiful Elven maiden with whom he once danced in the Vale of Evermorn. He did not know it at the time but she was the Fairy Queen herself, the anima mundi if you like, Soul of the World.

The flower did not wither nor grow dim; and they kept it as a sercet and a treasure. The smith made a little casket with a key for it, and there it lay and was handed down for many generations in his kin; and those who inherited the key would at times open the casket and look long at the Living Flower, till the casket closed again: the time of it's shutting was not theirs to choose.

Tolkien: Smith of Wootton Major

Grace you see: only ever by Grace.

So have a mind to the words of this great man if ever you should wander in the deep, deep realms of Faery – and savour it whilst you can - lest the gates should be shut and the keys be lost.

Much love

Anne Maria Clarke

x x x

See also: Tolkien: On Fairy-Stories
Anne Maria Clarke explores
Tolkien's Master Class

http://www.annemariaclarke.net/blog/tolkien-m…

References
J.R.R. Tolkien:
On Fairy-Stories
Letters
Smith of Wootten Major
Dr Lance S. Owens: Tolkien: An Imaginative Life
https://youtu.be/SuDJ2JzfBT8
Carl Jung: The Red Book
James Hillman - The Red Book: Jung and the Profoundly Personal
https://youtu.be/CBQWN0fL430
Carl Gustav Jung and The Red Book," an all-day symposium, features presentations by prominent Jungian scholars.
https://youtu.be/SAURpBfGA1I
Becca Tarnas:The Back of Beyond: The Red Books of C.G. Jung and J.R.R. Tolkien
PhD Defense by Becca S. Tarnas
https://youtu.be/3soOYajHUBM
Henry Corbin: Mundus Imaginalis John Carey -
The Role of the Grail in Henry Corbin's Thought
https://youtu.be/6dgzeVOUe7M

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Tolkien: Maker of Middle Earth Bodleian Library Oxford UK June/October 2018

6/3/2018

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Tolkien: Maker of Middle-Earth
Anne Maria Clarke @ the Bodlelian Libray Oxford
Part One

On the 1st of June this year I had the very great privilege of attending the opening day of a major new exhibition about J.R.R. Tolkien at the Bodleian libray, Oxford. The city was full of Tolkien enthusiasts the day before when I arrived with my husband. On the way in we drove by 20 Northmoor Road, the quiet leafy street just outside the city where Tolkien had lived with his family between 1930 and 1947 and from where he wrote the Hobbit & much of The Lord of the Rings. Whilst we were parked, discreetly we hoped on the opposite side of the road, several other cars pulled up and people emerged briefly with cameras to take photos before continuing on their way. Our central hotel too was full of those who had come especially from all over the world and we overheard several fascinating conversations about the great man, whose appeal as we know is universal. Nearly one hundred thousand exhibition tickets we were told, have been booked in advance.

*******
The Bodleian library, under the direction of curator and Tolkien archivist, Catherine Mcllwaine has created a wonderful exhibition. A ' once in a life time event' announced the Telegraph, and for fans, it is indeed a treat.

One enters via a hallway onto whose surfaces familiar maps and images from the tales have been brilliantly projected as illuminated animations, effectively drawing you in so to speak, to the terrain of Middle Earth. The interior of the exhibition is replete with treasures and curiosities of all kinds, ordinary and extra-ordinary alike. Tolkien's old desk and chair for example, intricate doodles on faded newspaper crossword pages, overlaid with Tolkien's exquisite calligraphy and snippets of obscure Elven phrases.....clearly works of art in their own right. There are photos and details of his childhood and early education, his time in the army during the First World War, the love of his life Edith and their four children: progressing sequentially through to his time as an Oxford Don and the beginnings of his writing, illustration and consolidation of his Elven languages of which astoundingly, there were sixteen. There are audio recordings too, featuring classic and well-loved Elven phrases and a large central 3D map of Middle Earth illuminating the route taken by Frodo and his companions from the Shire, through Rivendell and Lothlorien to Mordor.

Particularly charming are the hand-written pages and illustrations from Tolkien's Letters from Father Christmas which he wrote and illustrated for his children for a full twenty-three years.

There are letters from fans including the Queen of Denmark, Joni Mitchell and Iris Murdock, all in praise and wonderment at his achievements.

Prominently featured are Tolkien's own illustrations of his work, several of which have been enlarged and projected onto the walls. His original covers for three parts of The Lord of the Rings are displayed alongside his delightful Book of Ishness and some original manuscript from his founding epic The Silmarillion, all of which so perfectly depict the magical realms in a way which as in the writing, exhibit his unique capacity to juxtapose utterly sublime and visionary themes with the humble everyday concerns and comforts of life, like the importance of the hobbits second breakfast. He renders both with finesse and an almost transcendent lucidity.

Judging from snippets of conversations overheard as we made our around, it seemed to me as if each person had their own very personal thing going on, their own deep and intimate connection with the landscape and characters of Middle Earth - as if they had personally traversed the difficult terrain, experienced the terrors, exhilarations and profound beauty of that world. And I marvelled at Tolkien's great genius at being able to realise and to animate such a realm and convey it simultaneously into our collective and deeply intimate and private worlds.

He wanted to create a new mythology some have said, one rooted in the landscape of Britain and in the Northern countries to which he felt such affinity. It is abundantly clear and has been so for many years, that he suceeded in doing just that.

A clever, clever man without doubt, an Oxford don, philologist, medievalist, creator of languages....and yet....his sucesss as a person, a husband and father as well as an author is rooted not only in these scholarly attributes but in his connection to and his deep humility in relation to something far greater than himself, as the following little story reveals.

Tolkien once received a letter from a reader who said that although he himself had very little faith, the world Tolkien wrote of seemed permeated with such a quality....

which seems to be everywhere without a visible source like light from an invisible lamp....and this gives me great comfort.

Tolkien replied as follows:

I can only answer that of his own sanity no man can securely judge....I can only say that if santity inhabits his work or a pervading light illumines it then it does not come from him, but through him and you would not perceive it in these terms unless it was with you also.

It is this most generous and inclusive recognition (to which I would like to return in part two) that marks Tolkien out as a man of real wisdom and that imbues his work with a purity all too rare in our contemporary world.

To be continued.....

Anne Maria Clarke
x x x
tolkien.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/

Weston Library
Broad Street
Oxford OX1 3BG
Dates1 June – 28 October 2018
Exhibition hours Mon-Sat 10AM – 5PM
Sun 11AM – 5PM

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Pilgrimage to the Black Madonna of Czetochowa ( YouTube version) Anne Maria Clarke

5/1/2018

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Black Virgins, found mostly in France, Spain, Switzerland and Poland are widely believed to be ‘a survival and a continuation under a new name and a new religion, of the goddesses of the classical world.’ Goddesses like the Shulamite whose poignant voice opens the sublime Song of Songs in the Old Testament.

‘I am black and I am beautiful, O ye daughters of Jerusalem.’

This is a personal the story of a pilgrimage taken to Poland's own highly revered Black Madonna of Czetochowa.

Written & Presented by
Anne Maria Clarke
Audio Production
David Johnson
Title Music
Prelude in C J.S.Bach
(BWV 846) Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Subscribe to Anne Maria Clarke's YouTube channel
http://www.youtube.com/c/annemariaclarke
More fairy-stories, myths, legends and books by
Anne Maria Clarke
www.archivepublishing.co.uk/Transpersonal Books - Transpersonal Psychology. Understanding the Soul - Expanding Consciousness
www.annemariaclarke.net
www.annemariaclarke.net/blog

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LA DIVINA COMMEDIA - Dante Alighieri - IN QUEST OF PARADISE: An Afternoon with Anne Maria Clarke 29th Sept 2019

LA DIVINA COMMEDIA - Dante Alighieri - IN QUEST OF PARADISE
An Afternoon
with
Anne Maria Clarke
29TH September 2019
2pm/6pm
www.rockbank.co.uk

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& music: Ave Maria: by Ashana

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the last days of Moorish Rule
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verse sung by Anne Maria Clarke
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Farid ud-Din Attar

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Awakening the Slumbering Soul
A weekend with Anne Maria Clarke
Rock Bank Transpersonal Center UK
www.rockbank.co.uk
April 12th - 14th 2019
All Welcome

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The transformation of the wicked Queen
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adapted & narrated by Anne Maria Clarke
Title Music: The Lion Goddess
written & performed by
Anne Maria Clarke with David Johnson

Keep up to date with Anne Maria Clarke's blog

Tolkien: Maker of Middle Earth: Anne Maria Clarke: part two

Tolkien: Maker of Middle Earth?
Anne Maria Clarke explores Tolkien's Imaginal Realm
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Grace

Tolkien: Maker of Middle Earth Bodleian Library Oxford UK June/October 2018

Tolkien: Maker of Middle-Earth
Anne Maria Clarke @ the Bodlelian Libray Oxford
Part One

Pilgrimage to the Black Madonna of Czetochowa ( YouTube version) Anne Maria Clarke

Anne Maria Clarke is a writer and storyteller of myths, legends and fairy - stories.

Archives

LA DIVINA COMMEDIA - Dante Alighieri - IN QUEST OF PARADISEAn Afternoon with Anne Maria Clarke29TH September 20192pm/6pmwww.rockbank.co.uk

The Assumption of the VirginReflections: Anne Maria ClarkeFeaturing the painting: The Dornination & the Assumption of the Virgin by Fra Angelico& music: Ave Maria: by Ashana

The ALHAMBRAthe last days of Moorish RuleAnne Maria Clarke

The Forsaken Merman - Matthew Arnoldverse sung by Anne Maria ClarkeAudio production David Johnson & Anne Maria Clarke

TOLKIEN -Film Review & reflections upon the life & work of the great man - Anne Maria Clarke

The Conference of the BirdsAdapted by Anne Maria Clarkefrom the 12th Century Sufi Poem ofFarid ud-Din Attar

Sacred Oak Tree

THE HERO & HEROINE'S JOURNEY

ASLEEPING BEAUTYAwakening the Slumbering SoulA weekend with Anne Maria ClarkeRock Bank Transpersonal Center UKwww.rockbank.co.ukApril 12th - 14th 2019 All Welcome

Mirror Mirror on the Wall?The transformation of the wicked Queen Anne Maria Clarke

One Thousand & One Nightsadapted & narrated by Anne Maria Clarke Title Music: The Lion Goddesswritten & performed by Anne Maria Clarke with David Johnson

Keep up to date with Anne Maria Clarke's blog

Tolkien: Maker of Middle Earth?Anne Maria Clarke explores Tolkien's Imaginal RealmPart Two

Grace

Tolkien: Maker of Middle-EarthAnne Maria Clarke @ the Bodlelian Libray OxfordPart One

Anne Maria Clarke is a writer and storyteller of myths, legends and fairy - stories.

Archives

LA DIVINA COMMEDIA - Dante Alighieri - IN QUEST OF PARADISE
An Afternoon
with
Anne Maria Clarke
29TH September 2019
2pm/6pm
www.rockbank.co.uk

The Assumption of the Virgin
Reflections: Anne Maria Clarke
Featuring the painting: The Dornination & the Assumption of the Virgin by Fra Angelico
& music: Ave Maria: by Ashana

The ALHAMBRA
the last days of Moorish Rule
Anne Maria Clarke

The Forsaken Merman - Matthew Arnold
verse sung by Anne Maria Clarke
Audio production David Johnson & Anne Maria Clarke

The Conference of the Birds
Adapted by Anne Maria Clarke
from the 12th Century Sufi Poem of
Farid ud-Din Attar

ASLEEPING BEAUTY
Awakening the Slumbering Soul
A weekend with Anne Maria Clarke
Rock Bank Transpersonal Center UK
www.rockbank.co.uk
April 12th - 14th 2019
All Welcome

Mirror Mirror on the Wall?
The transformation of the wicked Queen
Anne Maria Clarke

One Thousand & One Nights
adapted & narrated by Anne Maria Clarke
Title Music: The Lion Goddess
written & performed by
Anne Maria Clarke with David Johnson

Tolkien: Maker of Middle Earth?
Anne Maria Clarke explores Tolkien's Imaginal Realm
Part Two

Tolkien: Maker of Middle-Earth
Anne Maria Clarke @ the Bodlelian Libray Oxford
Part One