Essential for working with what is unknown is an attitude of unknowing. This leaves room for the phenomenon itself to speak. It alone may keep us from delusions.

Our consciousness today is less mystic than heroic, and we need incantations to summon Hypnos or Hermes to help us drop off to sleep, a ritual of prayer, toothbrushing and teddy bear, of masturbation, food cramming, and the late show, of nightcap and sleeping pill. The basic bedtime story of our culture is that to sleep is to dream and to dream is to enter the House of the Lord of the Dead, where our complexes lie in wait. We do not go gentle into that good night.

No friend or animal wants to be interpreted, even though it may cry for understanding.

And if I write, I’m burning inside, and freezing outside.

When I say the feminine, I don’t mean gender. I mean the feminine principle that is living—or suppressed—in both men and women.
-Marion Woodman