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JUNG AND AGING

Alice O. Howell

As I approach my 90th Birthday, and having first heard of Jung in Switzerland at the age of 16 (74 years ago!). I consider myself somewhat qualified to address this subject. As some of you already know I am also an “Analytical Astrologer†whose life work has been dedicated to the value of many aspects of that discipline. This is especially true of the aspect of aging.

First, in defense of both Jung and many Jungian analysts, there is finally a new respect being given to viewing astrology as a symbolic language of archetypal processes that unites the visible and invisible worlds and the individual’s chart as a description of the unique way an individual will be likely to process experience.

With this in mind let it be understood that the planet Saturn, both in the actual heavens and our inner cosmos, rules the process of aging. As an archetype, Saturn in mythology stands positively as the Wise Old Man, and negatively as the very Devil! He is the archetype par excellence for Wisdom.

It takes this planet approximately 28½ years to transit the entire horoscope, thus the average life span of an individual fits roughly into three parts. (As I am undergoing my personal 4th Saturn Return, I consider myself an experiment in this matter!)

I. In general the first 30 years of any individual’s life would seem to be gathering of that mixture of both positive and negative life experiences, or karma from previous existences. The incoming soul appears to have little choice in the factors of childhood; parents, siblings or lack of them, neighbors, friends, environment, etc. Some are fortunate and others may even be desperate. As I write, I think of a friend I have never met but with whom I correspond regularly whose motif in life closely matches my own: the search for love and wisdom. He was born with an afflicted Saturn and I was born with Saturn exalted in Libra. Both of us shared those two same life long longings. Briefly summed up, he was a European orphan caught up in the worst of WWII, yet never giving up the search nor feeling vengeful towards the people who neglected or persecuted him. I, by contrast, was not an orphan but was abandoned over and over again through necessity by my traveling parents. I lived in 36 countries, never in one place for more than three months (except for time at boarding schools). I didn’t even know that water didn’t boil over until I was 16 years old, so unfamiliar with home life was I! However my circumstances were very luxurious by comparison to my friend.

I was blessed by hearing of Jung at a young age and reading him in both German and English, and finally by meeting my first professional Jungian analyst in 1972, Brewster Beach. He visited me socially for the first time and exclaimed “My God, why aren’t you teaching this!†So he invited me to lecture to one of his classes at the C.G. Jung Foundation in New York, and the rest is history. I ended up teaching there and after lecturing at the Jungian Centennial Celebration at Notre Dame, I quit my teaching in private schools, and my lifetime career was launched.

From these two examples and perhaps you, thinking of your own, you will agree you had little choice of circumstances of your early life. What really matters is not what happen to us but how we react to it.

II. Technically explained, any horoscope cast is an ongoing unfolding entity. The natal chart remains fixed but it unfolds every day by progression, and is affected by the daily, monthly and yearly transits of all the planets. These form our psychological weather Thus, as Saturn slowly transits one’s chart there may often come a crisis and an awakening of greater consciousness. It takes approx 28+ years for this complete cycle to occur. Suddenly one feels “oldâ€. I can honestly say I felt older on my first Saturn Return [to its natal placement] than I do today (currently experiencing my 4th)! As Jung pointed out the last third of life can be infinitely richer and is far more important than the first. The second third, 30 to 60, offers exciting new applications of whatever one has harvested from the first. There is always some new application, freshness and freedom of choice of what comes next. The only constant, often unconscious, is responsibility for one’s actions.

Saint and Sinner, both have freedom of choice. As the historian Arnold Toynbee pointed out: civilizations succeed or fail according to the way they re-act to circumstances. And Jung makes this very clear referring to the life of every individual. Reacting positively to difficult circumstances takes spiritual guts! And, if you are reading these words, you have already made the right choice! As I look back over my own life I bless both Toynbee and Jung for their wise advice. Just remember, it’s not what happens to you but how you react to it that determines the outcome!

This simple truth is the basic advice of most every religion and just makes common sense. This is also the wisdom conveyed for centuries by myths and fairytales. It is as simple as this: if you touch a hot stove your fingers will feel it. The great wisdom of the Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus which says, “As above, so below†has a corollary: “As below, so above.†To me this indicates that there is wisdom all around us – nothing is hidden, it is we who are blind. The clue is that these archetypal processes work on different levels of our reality, yet they are analogous. A child’s over-reaction to a broken doll may be evoking a long lost memory of the death of a child.

Years ago, I had a dream of Jung, who winked at me and said this: “Just remember, always consider the obvious!†Etymologically, ‘obvious’ comes from the Latin ob via [on the road]. Agrippa, an alchemist, I believe was the one who said that the Philosopher’s Stone is “lying on the roadâ€. Nothing is hidden, we are blind,

I will never forget the wisdom of a first grade boy who considered the obvious when he said, “A bowl that is right side up can be filled but a not a bowl that is upside downâ€. The profundity of this simple truth implies that an open mind can be filled but not a closed one. As this happened during a discussion in a children’s religious service, it led to a lively discussion. Another Sunday, a little girl pointed out that it takes a while to wind up a ball of string but no time at all to drop it! I have been so impressed by the wisdom of children that I researched the matter. I came across a long lost treasure in the stacks of the Redwood Library in Newport, RI., back in the ‘50’s. It was A. Bronson Alcott’s Conversations with Children on the Gospel . He was the father of Louisa May, author of Little Women, and a Concord Transcendentalist friend of Thoreau and Emerson. This book, first published in 1841, I reprinted as How Like an Angel Came I Down. The connection I am trying to make is that the profound verbatim comments quoted in this book by children of 7-10 years of age are comparable to the wisdom of some of humanity’s greatest philosophers, proving that the Unconscious of us all is ageless! Jung, himself, wrote:

The unconscious psyche of the child is truly limitless in extent and of incalculable age.

III. There is no better reminder for our youth-centered world than Jung’s casual remark that the most valuable period in life is Old Age. It is here he implies that the combination of values acquired in the first and second parts of our lives culminate and ideally, as from the fruit tree, the apples of our personal insights and wisdom fall as gifts to the collective unconscious. Taking the tree of life literally, every tree depends on root (1st stage), growth (2nd), and giving forth (3rd) and looking back on the millennia of mankind one can see nature’s wisdom in recycling – also knows as resurrection.

Theodor Kazantsakis wrote of a man who requested of an almond tree: “Speak to me of love!â€, and the tree blossomed!

..

Consider the waste of a whole generation, shunted off to nursing homes, or retiring to Florida to play shuffleboard, and deprived in so many cases of offering the drop of a life’s essence to the collective. Every human life has some unique gem to add for the rest of us. We desperately need to respect our elders and listen to them. We might have something worthy of sharing!

So, it truly seems that there is a menu to history. Perhaps it lists the values hidden in human old age.

Alice O. Howell hopes to be 90 this year of 2012.