Description
What happens when we find that our previous ways of understanding are no longer helpful? Energy ebbs, passion dims, we are no longer motivated to do what was once so engaging. This amounts to a crisis of faith, in the sense that our previous approach to life–one that gave meaning and purpose–no longer sustains us. In effect, the old king is dead. Somehow, we must reorient ourselves, renew our perceptions and paradigms, reshape our values.
This is a theme common to every culture, every analysis, every individual life. D. Stephenson Bond paints a picture of this journey through his exploration of C.G. Jung’s chapter on “Rex and Regina” in Mysterium Coniunctionsis. Comparing it with ceremonies of the renewal of the king in ancient Babylon, and always relating it to the challenge of contemporary life, he illuminates the all too familiar experience of those who find themselves at the beginning of an unknown, rocky road and are impelled to go forward.
