As Within, So Without

The Arian Baptistry in Ravenna

We are planning a trip to Parma, Italy in October. I have used this group (https://letseattheworld.com/course/lets-eat-parma-tour/) before to learn the art of French cooking, and it was a holiday bar none. I am hoping this trip will be equally as magical. This time I am going with my ‘foodie’ sister. We will immerse ourselves in an Italian cooking course, and eat cheese and drink wine under the warm autumnal Italian sun. It promises to be a trip of a lifetime. Travel. Not to be taken for granted. To have the opportunity to step outside one’s world and see life from a foreign and alien perspective is so enriching. I feel blessed with the chances travel has afforded me to glimpse wider horizons, inside and outside. To share this with my sister is an added treasure.

When in Italy, we hope to plan a day trip to Ravenna. I will do some research here for some upcoming presentations. Jung planted the seeds of this place in my mind many years ago. He spoke of his uncanny experiences at the Neonian Baptistery as “a most curious event in my life.” I read his encounter at Ravenna and I was instantly captivated. He writes:

“Since my experience in the baptistery in Ravenna, I have known with certainty that something interior can appear to be exterior, and that something exterior can appear to be interior. The actual walls of the baptistery, though they must have been seen by my physical eyes, were covered over by a vision of some altogether different sight which was as completely real as the unchanged baptismal font.”.
(C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Collins 1971)

So much of how we receive, experience, and process the world is as much an interior as it is an exterior reality. Jung saw and wrote about what he saw at Ravenna, only to discover later, that much of what he has witnessed was not consensual reality. Madness? Visionary? Mystical? We so much see things as we are rather than just as they are. Isn’t this part of the miracle of being human?

I got into a bit of a debate last week about the “truth or the lie” of Santa Claus. In a course on Saints and Sinners, with Morbid Anatomy, (www.morbidanatomy.org) where we explored the art history of relics, pilgrimage, martyrs, and saints, at the end of a long night there was brief discussion about the “myth of Santa Claus”. It seemed there was consensus in those that spoke up about how damaging it was to share this “lie” with children. I differed. I bit my tongue. I listened. I remained open to alternate experiences. And, then, just before the class concluded, I spoke up. I suggested that, of course Santa Claus exists. He is in our stories, rituals, and celebrations. To reduce this figure to truth or lie dichotomy is to miss the plot. The class ended abruptly and I can only hope I planted a seed to a wider perspective. What is interior does get concertized in the exterior. Stars guide wise magicians to humble stables. Shepherds witness heavenly choruses. And magic comes down the chimney unexpected in the night and leaves gifts of delight and imagination. Our dreams are to be taken seriously. They are the architects of our future.

What if we took seriously the narratives of the night? The fairytales? The uncanny? Whether they be compensatory nightmares arriving to wake us up and reorient us to the unfolding patterns of our unconsciousness, or possibilities planted as seeds in the fertile soil of imagination, dreams, stories, and visions do shape reality. We are told that they can even reprogram our cells and alter the neuro pathways in our brains! Whilst inside the Baptistery at Ravenna, Jung had the vision of “four great mosaic frescoes of incredible beauty,” which turned out to be nonexistent. Each depicted a baptism scene: one of St. Peter sinking into the sea and Jesus saving him; one of the Israelites in the Red Sea, when the water drowned the Egyptians; one of Naaman the Syrian bathing in the water and being cured of leprosy; and one of our Lord’s baptism. What Jung was “seeing” was either a bleed through of the archetypal pattern into the present, or a deep intuition projected onto mosaic marble. His visions, illuminated in the soft blue light of lapis lazuli, translated the ritual of baptism as both initiation and death. The ultimate paradox. So convinced was Jung that there was a profound psychological link between the ‘actual’ Baptismal Font at Ravenna and the ‘imagined’ frescoes, he developed a whole psychology to explore, understand, and articulate the link. To this deep exploration we are his heirs. Can it all be as simple as this: we either learn to trust the visions and dreams of psyche and walk toward new thresholds of reality, or we drown in our literal insistence and miss the miracles?

I am giving my attention and energy to miracles. To dreams of the night. To the veneration of saints. To prayer. To the uncanny visions that reach toward glorious en-affable beauty. See you in Italy! Goditi l’Italia!