Lust in the Marriage Bed

...there's another huge element here that I haven't touched on and that is the shadow side. Often, the creative masculine comes from the shadow side... And certainly, the strength of the feminine comes from the shadow side.  For most of us, the shadow is in the body.  We've been told for centuries that the body is bad, it's evil, it's got to do with the serpent, nature is not to be trusted and sexuality is filthy.  So, to deal with that shadow side is to go into the dream and often a figure like Mary Magdalene appears.  And her hair is all down and wild and she's just so beaten in the woods.  She's still in the world of nature.  And often her partner is a wild man like John the Baptist. Or like a Christ figure, often he has huge scars on him, so that something has happened that he has been beaten.  These two figures appear out in some outcast world.  Remember the energy that we bury is the energy that will become our salvation. The energy of the new consciousness can eventually be brought into the conscious reality.  This is part of the new consciousness that comes with that inner marriage...

...this process that we're talking about goes on outside the collective.  As does the feminine:  the Mary Magdalene figure, trying to bring in the body, trying to live the lust in the marriage bed.  The husband, who has always idealized her, always seen her up on a pedestal, and is terrified to express his own lust with this creature who belongs up in the sky.  And the woman wants the expression of both the lust and the love, so does the man.  But how to bring it together?  That's what we're talking about.  How to experience that within one relationship instead of two.

Transcribed from the taped series, Sitting By the Well by Marion Woodman.

  Songs referenced: 

Lust