Welcoming Home Your Beloved through the Alchemy of Body Wisdom

Abstract: The body is a grace filled eco-system that houses our inner environment, from cells to soul. Our Beloved is the daimon described by Moreno, Jung and Hillman as the god or sprit who acts as an emissary between the worlds of heaven and earth, guiding and supporting our sacred natures. In this workshop we will invoke your daimon’s energy, through guided body imagery, yoga and shiatsu exercises that enliven your body, calm the spirit and welcome home your Beloved. We will then create a psychodramatic enactment to ‘cook up’ your personal alchemical transformation for self-healing that improvises the skills for more depth and compassion for loving relationships. This personal development workshop will emphasize Moreno’s vision of an enriched role development that includes the cellular consciousness and wisdom of the body. Participants will learn specific body-oriented exercises suitable to groups as well as the philosophical background of the daimon. The alchemical elixir of spontaneity and creativity strengthened by your body’s wisdom and psychodrama’s relationship repair provides a holistic and centered home for your body and soul.

Psychological alchemists, Jung, Moreno, and Hillman, all shared the purpose of discovering one’s daimon, a god or spirit that joins a person at birth and travels with him or her throughout his or her lifetime to assist in personal alchemy. Plato writes about these inner gods in his description of theos:

“They are the envoys and interpreters that play between heaven and earth, flying upward with our worship and our prayers, and descending with the heavenly answers and commandments. Since they are between the two estates they weld both sides together and merge them into the great whole. They form the medium of the prophetic arts, of the priestly rites of sacrifice, initiation, and incantation, of divination, and of sorcery. For the divine will not mingle directly with the human and it is only through the mediation of the spirit world that man can have any intercourse whether waking or sleeping with the gods. There are many spirits, and many kinds of spirits, and Love is one of them.”

~ Maria-Louise von Franz, 1980 p. 108

In 1918 Moreno was editor-in-chief for Daimon, a monthly journal of existential philosophy based on the daimon, the inner genius that Plato and Socrates had described. Moreno in his formative years reinterpreted the daimon into the “double.” Moreno as alchemist saw the double as a role that accompanies a protagonist throughout the drama and that later becomes internalized as a healthy intrapsychic role. Jung saw the daimon as a catalytic bridge between the ego and the authentic self. The daimon, as inner voice was critical in offering insights, receiving wise counsel, and connecting us to our divine natures.

Jung (1960) in his alchemical texts described the Conjunctio, or conjunction, as the king, who is the alchemical fire, uniting with the queen, who represents the loving attitude that supports the process. This conjunction is true tele in the relationship; psychodramatically the director, protagonist and the group approach the spirit of transformation first through sociometric entrainment and secondly with body aware warm-ups that provide the foundation for the psychodramatic enactments which enliven both an individual’s and a group’s healing of relationships. Combining body awareness and refined body wisdom as the base natural elements, with the protagonist’s dross and the group’s containment creates the alchemical fire for the kiln of psychodramatic repair. Thus psychodramatic body alchemy provides the psychodramatist with more tools for regenerating one’s soul gold integrating with the self in the body, forged in the fire of love provided by a conscious personal and community alchemical transformation.

Jean Houston, Sacred Psychologist describes the beloved as Pothos the yearning for a sacred reunion with our ‘other imaginal self’ or with what is divine within us, mirrored through the great archetypes of spiritual divinity. She asks, “Who is your double in the extended realm of the soul?”

James Hillman shares his theory of the acorn that we are born with the microcosm of the embodied self similarly as an acorn contains the blueprint for a mighty oak tree. Hillman, Moreno, Jung and Houston all share the philosophy that we are born with this potential for a personal wholeness, which is held in trust and support by the daimon, our soul’s beacon which accompanies and helps us to refine our fullest development. However in order to bring forth one’s potential requires “spontaneity to enter the creatively endowed” (1953, 1993, p.11) in order to release the genius within us.

Bibliography

• Hillman, J. (1992). Emotion: A comprehensive phenomenology of theories and their meaning for therapy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
• Houston, J. (1990) The Search for the Beloved, Journeys in sacred psychology. Northhamptonshire, England: Crucible, Aquarian Press
• Jung, C. (1960). Alchemical Studies, Collected works, Vol. 13. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Jung, C. (1960). Mysterium Coniunctionis, Collected works, Vol. 14. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Moreno, J. L. (1993). Who Shall Survive? (Student ed.) Roanoke: Royal Publishing.
• Von-Franz, M. L. (1979). Projection and re-collection in Jungian psychology. Reflections of the soul. La Salle, IL: Open Court.
• Von Franz, M. L. (1980). Alchemy: An introduction to the symbolism of psychology. Toronto: Inner City Books.