Keys are questions - questions are keys
Symbols of opening (and closing), knowledge and initiation.
Today’s post is a longer one so here’s a breakdown 🌀
impossible multitasking - willing to be slow going
deep listening and evocative dialogue - where the wise elders are at
questing (again), and knights liminal - what of the heroine?
quest-ioning - how to ask the right questions (spoiler, that’s not the point)
Listen to me read this article aloud below
I've been listening to Marion Woodman and Robert Johnson In Conversation. Jungian Psychology Through the Eyes of Two Masters.
Last year, I forgot to cancel my Audible membership, so I was automatically charged a hefty sum for an app I wasn’t using fully. Urrgggh. So, along with the dozen books I hadn't made time to listen to last year, I needed to buy another 12 to fulfil the subscription. I made a little promise that I wouldn’t let these languish and get dusty in the library, so I’ve been slowly (very slowly) making my way through.
A little each day … of 1 book … to completion.
I can’t multitask AT ALL (this is impossible for all of us btw 1), and unless it's fiction, I find it hard to just surrender to the experience to receive the ‘story’ - something I’m working on though. Letting go of the mind, and more allowing, and receptivity.
Anyway, at least 80% of my audiobooks are info-dense nonfiction, so I frequently stop and add notes as I go. I’m not a passive listener. Like I said, it’s slow going.
This YouTube link to Better Listen is the source for the audio I am listening to on Audible. It’s available to purchase there too.
Deep listening and dialogue - become privy to secrets
But back to Woodman and Johnson - I’m halfway through (on 1.3x speed) and gosh, it's such a joy! It’s giving me fly on the wall feelings - of being witness to secrets being revealed or truth unfolding.
These are my favourite sorts of dialogues and something I feel is rare today, despite the millions - or billions - of voices and conversations happening in the public sphere on podcasts and socials (see this great article for some related context on ‘Death of the Public Intellectual’).
We have two wise elders, sharing what they’ve lived and learnt, responding to each other without urgency, in depth and with apparent honesty, and vulnerability. Talking about ordinary things in extraordinary ways. It stirs something very deep in me , ooof. So good.
But Woodman and Johnson aren’t engaging in purely intellectual dialogue - although the intellect is present. True to the nature of their task, they speak with spirit and soul, dark and light, inner and outer, the energies of masc and fem dancing together.
— What would happen if you made time to deeply listen and respond in conversation? What would you ‘lose’? What might you ‘gain’?
Questing and knights liminal
I’m being evoked! Many threads are emerging as inspiration - as I pull on a few, it’s unlocking imagery, associations and memories. A couple of teeny moments are particularly evocative for today.
One is when Johnson is speaking about the Grail legend (a myth he has a particular affinity with) and quips that “Questing is a Western phenomenon [that] doesn’t exist in the East”.
Quest: “… a difficult journey towards a goal, often symbolic or allegorical … The object of a quest may also have supernatural properties, often leading the protagonist into other worlds and dimensions. The moral of a quest tale often centres on the changed character of the hero.”
from Wikipedia
He spent a big chunk of his life in India, so he may have direct experience of this, but I don’t want to make a faux pas and assume that what Johnson says is absolute. I can muse how the split between mind and body, spirit and soul, or the rise of Christianity may have contributed to a particular kind of Western seeking. But I won’t go down that rabbit hole right now.
But his comment speaks to a theme that has been emerging in my life and writing.
Last year, I went on a self-described quest to Colorado for training with Dr Estes, and then to journey onward to Croatia to fulfil some important family obligations and tend to ancestral wounds.
Here, on a rare face-to-camera reel on Instagram, I shared how bringing the energy of questing into your everyday routines can create an attitude of openness, curiosity for new experiences and perspective to enter, possibly even injections of joy.
And over the last 6 months, knights have been showing up more in the full moon tarot offerings; just last month, as well as last October, and last August.
In Western symbolism, Knights are a traditional, masculine image of a questing character who
Through their travels … experience various obstacles, tests, and lessons on their path to discover the thing … [a] thing … of spiritual significance and value (e.g. holy grail!) rather than a tangible object or definitive end point.
excerpt from last month’s full moon tarot on the Knight of Wands (as above)
This speaks to a soulful seeking that comes after some sort of loss, or surrender, or call to adventure. While it’s obvious to me now, I’ve only just clocked that knights are liminal characters - i.e travellers along the spiral path between what was, and the next thing.
In a recent (and new upcoming) course, I spoke of the domain of the Initiated Woman archetype as being in that same liminal space.
— How might a heroine’s quest differ from that of the hero?
Living the Quest-ions.
Another teeny moment that stirred is when Woodman states (once more in the context of the Grail myth and the ailing Fisher King):
“You don’t have to be wise, you only have to ask”.
This is in reference to Parsival - a hero-knight but also a fool character - who fails to ask the King the essential question that might ease his suffering.
Ultimately, the essential question does not mean the right question. In the myth, it wasn’t the nature of the question that was the key. In some versions of the myth, the healing of the King happened because Parsival asked a question.
You just have to being willing to ask. Woodman continues to say that
“...asking the question serves the purpose of making something conscious”
Similarly, in the Bluebeard folk tale (in my opinion, one of the most essential and important fairytales for women, especially), the youngest daughter marries the mesmerising Bluebeard, who gives her the keys to all the rooms in his castle, but with the instruction to never open the door to one forbidden room.
Like a good “naughty” girl, she defies him and uses her key to open the forbidden door, and is confronted with the horror of the truth. That she has married a predator, and that annihilation is her fate if she does not act.
Keys then, are questions - questions are keys
Both hold the symbol of opening (and closing), knowledge and initiation. Questions-keys unlock, they reveal secrets, and give access to hidden material. It follows then that if we ask, we have to be willing to face what is shown us.
To ask a question can be a risk. The knowledge or truth may be benign, wonderful, ugly, or terrible. It may change the course of your life.
This is often the opposite of how we have been conditioned. Which is to believe and do what you are told - without question, look the other way, dull your instincts that ask - What’s going on here? What’s true?
Don’t ask.
If you obey, you will be guaranteed a safe, quiet, uneventful life. It's natural to want this kind of safety, but it’s come at a great cost. And so perhaps we are back to what is peculiar about the Western quest - to follow a call, to what’s been lost through the separation of our deeper selves and that which is bigger than us - God, or Greater, or the Mystery.
Forget the answer - Live the question
Last thing …. on this spiral thread
It's no coincidence that a key is the logo for this Substack. If you’ve been following my writing or attended workshops, you’ll know I use QUESTIONS and prompts a lot. They’re a vital feature in how I like to dialogue and teach. My intention is that they act as activations for you, to unlock inner wisdom.
But … I recognise that the number of questions I posit can be overwhelming, and it's something I’m working with.
I see how I try to cover too many bases, a kind of anxiety and hope that I can offer you all value, and a desire that maybe one of the key-questions will be the ‘right ’ one to help unlock the ‘right’ door, to remedy your particular ailment (Hmmm … wounded healer?, right!).
I must remember, it can be enough to just ask. But also on the flipside of the question could be pressure to come up with a good answer.
Michael Meade has said, “A good question has most of the answer in it” (again no pressure to curate the perfect key). So I find it immensely helpful to remember that the point isn’t to find the ultimate correct answer. It’s enough to live the question (I first heard this from James Hollis)
Perhaps the only vital questions that have no ultimate answer are:
… Who am I? What am I here for? and then
… Am I willing to do what I am being asked by Greater, to do?
So start there. Use your key, ask it.
And let the answer unfold in life as you keep turning towards and responding to what's been revealed in the moment … and then the next moment, and then the next moment …
Much love
Mendy 🖤
🗝️Work with me 1-1 (online)
🌀Explore the Rites of Passage for girls and women
References and Footnotes
Marion Woodman and Robert Johnson In Conversation. Jungian Psychology Through the Eyes of Two Masters via Better Listen or Audible
Michael Meade in Initiations of Self and Soul via Mosaic Voices
James Hollis. Living an examined life. Wisdom for the second half of the journey.
On multitasking: the truth is none of us can multitask very well; it's well documented in neuropsychology studies that we can’t do so without sacrificing efficiency or quality.