Ourea, or the numinous presence of Allt-fawr

 

Capel y Gorlan, Cwmorthin

Numinous this, numinous that, all I know is that sometimes we are forced out of our skin. A moment in time that is different, where we are knocked sideways whether we would or not. 

That is what happened to me in Cwmorthin, near Capel y Gorlan (chapel in the sheep fold). It is a stiff walk up into the mouth of Cwmorthin, and then along the cwm to the tumbled down remains of the chapel. A  remote place in a deserted valley where the stillness soaked through the skin along with the damp. A silence so deep that even the grazing of the odd sheep on the far hillside could be felt; and then a sense of presence overwhelming. Something ancient. Something that had taken form both of itself and of the communion offered in the chapel, and, who knows, of older offering long before time was counted. Allt-fawr – its name a tribute to its size – a presence by it sheer wall of endless hill stretching up beyond the cloud, and wrapping the valley in its curve to the exclusion of all else. No wonder the Greeks thought such mountains to be gods, 'ourea', their brooding presence being so tangible. 

I sensed a fluidity over time in the presence. The last imprint on it being the close harmony hymns of the slate miners sung on their one day off. Their one day not under the ground. Miners who had hollowed out that vast hill. A slate mine 1500 feet from the top level down 25 floors of stale caverns to its lowest. 50 miles of tunnels and tramways all inside Allt-fawr, the mountain. A mine as big as the vastness of its name. The scars of the mining now fading as the mountain reclaimed them, wreathing them in rain soaked moss, lichen, bracken and grass. The soft tread of sheep being all that disturbed them now, and the chapel itself fallen to ruin. 

But still the presence persists, tentatively described by a word from a tongue alien to those Welsh hills – god? – and that from one who is no theist; hills that were used to hearing the word "Duw" sung with confidence in their embracing fold. 

The theologian Rudolf Otto was in want of a term to describe what he felt was special about religious experience, so he created 'numinous' from the Latin numen, meaning "arousing spiritual or religious emotion; mysterious or awe-inspiring."  Jung found Otto's term of great value, because he knew how such moments shone in the minds of his patients – they were touch-stones of religious experience; the access points where the safety and supposed sufficiency of the rational ran out and exposure to the spiritual happened. Once exposed the doorway was open to growth by incorporating the spiritual, the numinous, the religious, into the life of his patients, releasing them from their psychological malaise. They were suffering because they were shut off from deeper communion with life, often by their overdeveloped rationality, and their rejection of the mystical, the numinous, the religious.

In a letter to P.W. Martin (20 August 1945), the founder of the International Study Center of Applied Psychology in Oxted, England, C.G. Jung confirmed the centrality of numinous experience in his life and work: "It always seemed to me as if the real milestones were certain symbolic events characterized by a strong emotional tone. You are quite right, the main interest of my work is not concerned with the treatment of neuroses but rather with the approach to the numinous. But the fact is that the approach to the numinous is the real therapy and inasmuch as you attain to the numinous experiences you are released from the curse of pathology. Even the very disease takes on a numinous character" (Jung 1973, 1: 377). If one holds the classical Jungian view that the only genuine cure for neurosis is to grow out of it through pursuing individuation, then treatment based on this model would seem necessarily to include "the approach to the numinous," as Jung states so firmly in this letter.   [ Jung - Martin letter 1946 "On the Importance of Numinous Experience in the Alchemy of Individuation" Murray Stein, Ph.D.]

P W Martin was one of the main members of the Geneva Quaker-Jungian group to which Irene Pickard belonged. Her archive included papers by Martin. He was perhaps the most enthusiastic of the group, often travelled to Zürich to see Jung during the 1930s, and maintained contact with him after the war, gaining Jung's support over the establishment of the centre at Oxted.

Spiritual experiences, religious experiences, are not rational. They are something else; divine intoxication; divine madness; opening of the being; being touched; stopping the world: they are a door into another way of relating to the world; to another dimension of being. They have the authenticity of the moment of transport; they need no validation because in that moment they simply are.

Jung was a complete relativist at this point. He did not believe that only one source of the holy could have a healing influence. He did not subscribe to the view, for instance, that only Jesus can give us the salvation we need. Jung believed that the numinous could derive from countless sources, and religious traditions, from mythologies, cosmologies, esoteric systems, and arts and science. Moreover, he believed that the numinous is present, at least potentially, in common experience, and can be felt and made known through meaningful coincidence, synchronicity and an ‘inner’ relationship with the facts of the world. He did not believe that institutions of faith or creedal doctrines could regulate the spiritual experience, but that such experience occurs spontaneously, as we enlarge life with depth and commitment.   [David  Tacey: How to Read Jung: Granta Books, London, 2006]

Nor did Jung think that belief, whether inherited, inculcated or otherwise acquired, was any form of substitute for honestly accepted experience, of openness to the numinous:

When people say that they believe in the existence of God, it has never impressed me in the least. Either I know a thing and then I don’t need to believe it; or I believe it because I am not sure that I know it. I am well satisfied with the fact that I know experiences which I cannot avoid calling numinous or divine.    [ Jung in answer to Philp’s question #3: Is the God-archetype All?: H L Philp: Jung and the Problem of Evil: Rockliff, London, 1958]

Vranyo

A blatant lie that it is necessary to believe. A substitute truth that forms an integral part of a fabricated reality. Vranyo say much about the power of the networks that promotes them and are supported by them in turn. It is a Slavic word that says much about Russia's past. 

When we were in Ukraine, Yuri explained how it was during Soviet times: "They pretended to tell us the truth, and we pretended to believe them." An entire web of vranyo. 

Another description I came across recently, dating from 1983 by David Shipler in Russia: Broken Idols, Solemn Dreams: A Russian friend explained vranyo in this way: "You know I'm lying, and I know that you know, and you know that I know that you know, but I go ahead with a straight face, and you nod seriously and take notes."

When we were in Lviv and being shown round one of the folk museums we came across a pair of candelabra proudly displaying a sign below them saying A pair of bra. We couldn't help but giggle and comment on the mistranslation. The attendant looked sad. "Yes, I know" she said "All the English speakers giggle about it and tell us it is wrong, but the Director says we must keep it because that is what it says in the Department of Culture's manual." The power of vranyo. 

At worst they are official lies that it would be dangerous to disbelieve. Stalin's purges relied deeply on them, as did the Tsarist regime before his time. Authur Kustler's Darkness at Noon explores how it is to be trapped in a web of them. Both his inquisitors and Rubashov are aware that they live inside a spiders web of vranyo. However, this week's official vranyo must be believed, which is why Rubashov, someone who promoted yesterdays vranyo, must confess his guilt, and in doing so agree to the necessity of his own execution. 

When Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, declared himself victor the the election in 2020, the people came out on the streets because they were no longer prepared to play their part in that particular vranyo. His security forces explained to them why they should. Thousands have been arrested and suffered. Not playing your part in vranyo can have deadly consequences.

So what of the post-truth world of Donald Trump? They counted all the the votes, carefully, accurately. Then comes the big lie claiming that he won the election by a landslide, except in the eyes of many it is not a lie, not even an alternative truth, but the truth: his victory in spite of all of the evidence. In the minds of believers all that evidence simply proves just how successful the fraud was. The biggest electoral fraud ever. A conspiracy by the the deep state to thwart the ascension of the rightful victor.  A fraud so well executed that how it was done cannot be found out, even when challenged in the courts. But it was done – of that believers are sure: it has become an article of faith. And America steps into the world of post-truth, a world that blurs the distinctions between misinformation, disinformation and malinformation – the three disorders of information – and takes a step closer towards adding vranyo to the list. 

Fake, such a useful appellation when you wish to dismiss discomforting or challenging news; the dissonance between what you would like to be true and what you are being confronted with. Humans do not like dissonance. We work hard to dissipate it. It invites a blurring between belief and knowledge in order to make ourselves comfortable: comforting beliefs are so much more preferable than confronting discomforting truths. Belief may allow and element of choice, of choosing the comforting, because believing is not knowing. It has a degree of latitude; it might be so, it might be not so. Knowledge does not: there is no latitude. Beliefs may be plural because there is uncertainty. Knowledge is always singular: it is what is. Acquiring it is is hard work. It tests itself against reality. 

Has the consumer society engendered consumer truth? Versions the tests for which is that they sit comfortably with you. Fast food versions that need little effort to acquire and which are tested against how little discomfort they cause rather than against the hard edge of reality? 

Fake, ersatz, faux, fabricated, surrogate, facsimile, artificial, substitute, imitation, synthetic, false, mock, simulated, pseudo, sham, bogus, spurious, counterfeit, forged, pretended, manufactured, forgery, fraud, hoax: there are so many words with which to convey information distortion or substitution, but perhaps the worst modern concoction is 'alternative'. It invites the Schroedinger possibility of manifold truths about the same thing at the same time – but even Schroedinger knew the box would be opened and only one truth would remain – we simply would know which in advance. There is no such thing as an alternative truth. There are alternatives until the box is opened, but then reality rules, OK!

As for Britain, an adept of the 50 shades of untruth is now its leader. According to one observer, he has perfected the art of lying, in fact he has mastered the use of error, omission, exaggeration, diminution, equivocation and flat denial. He has perfected casuistry, circumlocution, false equivalence, and false analogy. He is equally adept at the ironic jest, the fib and the grand lie; the weasel word and the half-truth; the hyperbolic lie, the obvious lie and the bullshit lie.

Poor truth has taken a battering in recent years. Post-modern sophistry has made it seem a hall of mirrors. It is not reality's problem: that is always singular. The moment we attempt to transpose it into words it become a plurality of possibles, but they are far from all equally good. Sifting to the best fit, the most authentic, is the service required. That is where the danger lies of generating alternatives; a stopping short of refining down to the singularity; of choosing to be blind to the evidence for reasons of political expediency, or in order to avoid the dissonance. 

In our world of political affairs, respect for truth is pivotal: edging towards that singularity matters. Discounting the weaker alternatives, screening out prejudices, watching for confirmation bias are all part of what is required. Truth is not what makes us feel comfortable: often it is what makes us feel uncomfortable. The blight of populist 'truth' and the lack of integrity shown by the holders of public office has led to the formation of organisations concern with returning truth in public affairs to where it belongs – as something fundamental to our democracy.

Neither America nor Britain have not yet passed from alternative-truth to vranyo. There is still choice to believe the alternative or reject the 'alternative', or even to insist on doing the hard work of finding the truth. With vranyo there is not. Such is the potential danger of not believing the vranyo that feigning authentic belief is a matter of survival: it is a way of life within the spider's web. In Russia vranyo has returned with a vengeance.

 

Wars are like fires

War is like a fire – if you do not put it out, it will burn itself out:  Sun Tzu, The Art of War 

The fact that Sun Tzu called his book of The Art of War speaks to how far wars are created by powerful elites for political gain, or as Carl von Clausewitz put it "War is a continuation of policy by other means". Means which inflict great suffering on populations, but little on the elites that command them into existence. Too often they are the play thing of bored autocrats or glory seeking politicians. They are too often attempts to alter the world to the likings of the powerful.  

But Sun Tzu's truth holds good: few wars end in a decisive victory that will 'put it out', but all too often end in a stalemate – the smouldering and smoking embers that all too easily can flare back up, but which have consumed and destroyed so much, mostly to no purpose. The exhausted combatants have then to be extricated by a protracted peace negotiation, during which the stalemate grinds on claiming lives.

Peace is often misunderstood as an absence of war, as if war was the normal default state and peace an aberration that fills in the gaps between. That is a hawk's vision of peace: a gap between wars to be tolerated whilst preparations are made for the next conflict, wherever it can be found. That is why we have a professional full time military – what other justification can there be for them? If there was never a next fire, there would be no need for a fire brigade?

The truth is peace is very much a constructed state that has to be built and maintained, just as wars have to be; but it takes a far greater amount of work and investment to maintain a war, far less to maintain peace. Besides, in peace societies and cultures flourish and become pluralistic, in wars they wither and become totalitarian – the single objective of survival and, ultimately, victory disciplining the society into a monoculture and justifying draconian controls. So much the better for leaders in war – they are massively elevated and empowered – so much the better for people in peace. Perhaps it is no wonder that leaders love to have war, or the fear of war, as a means of control and as the ultimate aggrandisement?

Investing in peace is very cost effective by comparison to the escalating cost of maintaining wars. That is because wars are indeed like fires. They need to be fed fuel, lots of fuel; and if defeat is to be avoided, the amount of fuel will increase up to a level that overwhelms and defeats the 'enemy'. (Isn't it interesting that we have a special word which legitimises lethal violence against those branded with the term?)

Much the same applies to the anticipation of war, which involves escalating expenditure on an armed peace. One might ask if armed peace is simply deferred war? That was certainly the logic that lead to the term 'cold war'. It also gives rise to what has been termed the Military-Industrial complex.

The peace theorist, Anatol Rapoport, suggests that there has been a decoupling of war making from the traditional goals of expressing and giving realisation to political power to that of a profession intent on perpetual preparation and organisation as a continual process. The military–industrial complex thus formed becomes a self perpetuating business with the military as consumers and the arms manufacturers as suppliers locked in what can be, at times, an economically cancerous cycle.

Reflecting on the post 1945 world economy, it is notable that for many years the two fastest growing and most successful economies were the two peace economies of the losers – Japan and Germany: they were not carrying the economic burden of high military expenditure.

The event horizon at the boundary between peace and war marks a complete shift in frames of reference. Many factors influence decisions in times of peace. There is much debate and disagreement about what should be invested in, what governments should or should not do, how much liberty might be enjoyed by people. All that stops the moment wars start. There is only one frame of reference for their duration – survival and, if possible, victory. 

The vortex of war sucks in resources and attention, just as raging fires draw in winds. A fact that the British relied on when setting fire to German cities or the Americans when they bombed Tokyo. The resultant firestorms creating infernos in which few could survive: those sheltering in cellars and basements being incinerated – even metal pots and pans melting. There is no discrimination in war as to who is killed and who survives: vulnerability alone determining fate. Anyone can be sucked into its vortex, regardless of their status. Wars kill babies, the elderly and the infirm as readily as they kill soldiers, especially as they are less able to escape from war's vorticities. The Americans even coined the term 'collateral damage' to help sanitise the truth that the innocent, the non-combatants, those unable to flee or to shelter, are routinely killed in war.

Economically, wars also suck in increasing amounts of resources, ultimately impoverishing the combatants and leaving them with debt burdens which may take generations to pay off. Britain's debt to the USA incurred prior and subsequent to the Lend-Lease – the agreement that allowed Britain unlimited credit for the duration of its war with Germany – only finally being paid off in 2006. Britain's part in the victory impoverished it for 60 years – a mere $3.75 billion at 2% interest ($40.5 billion plus interest at modern values). Some years Britain was so economically stretched that it could not even pay all the interest, let alone reduce the principle.

There is a sense in which wars could be regarded as a from of potlatch: countries investing in increasing stores of weapons until the stock piles are dissipated in a fest of violence. Acts which gains successful leaders considerable political kudos even whilst impoverishing their peoples. Exhortations as to the benefits of the sacrifices made to achieve victory being trumpeted by the very leaders who are usually the least at risk. 

War, famine, plague and death: the four horsemen of the apocalypse. No wonder they are so closely linked. War almost always bringing famine and plague in its wake; but unlike them, war is entirely man made – and one might add, man, not woman made. There is little history of armies of women facing each other off on battlefields, or their indulging in rape, pillage and wanton destruction: those are very much male prerogatives. 

War: commanded by the most privileged; fought by the least privileged; suffered by the most vulnerable. They are indeed the greatest of human failings.

Wars escalate to the level of violence necessary to obtain victory

Having stayed in Lviv for a month and given a couple of lectures at the university, I feel the awfulness of this war in a more personal way. My partner has far closer and longer connections with Lviv, going back some 18 years, and involving spells of teaching in the Department of Translation Studies at the university. She feels it far more: it involves people she knows, and places she knows. She has also seen a lot more of Ukraine, having taught in several universities as part of a poetry in performance and translation circuit. A connection she inherited from her mentor, Vera Rich, a translator honoured by the Ukrainians who awarded Vera their most prestigious medal in recognition of the services she had provided to Ukrainian culture.

I really hope that the war can be stopped, but I fear it will escalate to the level of violence necessary to obtain victory. That is one of the basic facts of war. Once started, there is only one criteria – victory or defeat. That is why they are so hard to stop, even though so many wars become bogged down in some kind of stalemate. The investment cost and the embitterment does not allow for easy extrication of the combatants.  

The Quaker, Jonathan Dymond (1796-1828), recognised the core problem inherent in war:

When nations are mutually exasperated, and armies are levied, and battles fought, does not every one know that with whatever motives of defence one party may have begun the contest, both in turn become aggressors? In the fury of slaughter soldiers do not attend, they cannot attend, to questions of aggression. Their business is destruction, and their business they will perform. If the army of defence obtains success, it soon becomes an army of aggression. Having repelled the invader, it begins to punish him. If a war has once begun, it is vain to talk of distinctions of aggression and defence. Moralists may talk of distinctions, but soldiers will make none; and none can be made: it is outside the limits of possibility.     (An inquiry into the Accordancy of War with the Principles of Christianity, and an Examination of the Philosophical Reasoning by which it is defended: with Observations on Some of the Causes of War and Some of Its Effects.1823)

Having lived through the Napoleonic wars, Dymond understood the fundamental truth for those engaged in war: "Their business is destruction, and their business they will preform." because they cannot do otherwise, for if they hesitate or relent, then they will be destroyed. The normal frames of moral reference are replaced by the need to survive and to win. Wars upend values: during them we give medals to murders and put peace-activist in prison.

That inevitable escalation of war was only too obvious during the Second World war. To obtain victory the allies were prepared to destroy dams, drowning thousands as a result, to fire-storm cities, or to use the ultimate weapon of destruction – the atomic bomb. The Soviet approach was to mass artillery and tanks to flatten everything in front of them. A tactic they used in more recently in Chechnya to reduce Grozny, making it, according the the United Nations, the most destroyed city on earth.

If there is no military victory – and there seldom is – then some sort of substitute victory may be manufactured, as at Versailles in 1919. Its imposition was only achieved by the mass starvation of the German population after the armistice of 11/11/18. The lack of military victory begat the need for victory by enforced starvation, to be followed by reparations designed to ensure the economic crushing of Germany: a Carthaginian peace.

If Putin wins, then a process of cultural erasure will follow – his version of a Carthaginian peace – which may be worse than it was in Soviet times. The Soviets regarded Ukrainian as suspect and dangerous, limiting its use and making Russian the official language and the language of education above elementary levels. Translation into and out of Ukrainian was severely limited and controlled. Putin has denied the legitimacy of Ukrainian identity and will enforce even more thorough Russification. The refrain we heard over and over again when we were in the Ukraine was "Please don't let the Russians came back" precisely because Ukrainians do not want to be submerged beneath the weight of Russian cultural dominance.

It can hardly be a surprise that my lectures on the survival of Welsh went down well: the parallels were too obvious.

Finding the narrative line

Irene Pickard (née Speller),  started her adult life as a personal secretary, one of the few occupations open to 'respectable' young women in 1911. The typewriter was a real instrument of female emancipation. Its mastery, along with the other secretarial skills, enabling a degree of income and independence, perhaps even entrée into homes and lives of the socially 'superior'. In the class ridden society of La Belle Époque it was one of the few opportunities for a girl to 'better' herself, to enter worlds which her birth might not have given her access to.

Fortunately for posterity, Irene never lost the secretarial habit of making copies and filing. That is how her archive came about. It was composed of a mass of documents created between 1911 and 1982, a library of over 100 volumes on Jungian related themes, a box of personal letters between Rendel Harris and herself, articles in two periodicals, one published on each side of the Atlantic, along with a number of pamphlets written by her husband, Bertram, and others. 

When I first encountered what Irene had referred to as her 'compost heap' it was obvious that hidden within was a remarkable story. The problem was finding a narrative line which would give it order.

First there was the biographic frame of lives lived in Britain, Switzerland and the USA, and identifying who the main persona were, their relationships, the nature of the work they were engaged with, and how Quakerism related to their lives. Then there was the task of identifying the chronology –  which document belong to when. But what was central was the story of Irene's infatuation with Jung as a complement and argumentation to her Quakerism. And not just Irene, but the other members of the Quaker-Jungian group in Geneva too. An infatuation that would prove to have traceable consequences on both sides of the Atlantic up until the present.

As I familiarised myself with the archive, what became apparent was that Irene and the others had gone through a learning process with identifiable stages.

First came a preparatory stage, which put them in Geneva in between the wars and explained why they were there. A stage dominated by the theme of peace-work, but also by how Irene and Bertram came together as a couple.

Then came their introduction to Jung, which led to an intense phase of exploration and assimilation of his ideas. A period which according to Irene produced "the most intensive and far reaching study group I have ever known".

What followed in the later 1930s was a period of accommodation as the impact of Jung's ideas on their lives and faith were worked through, set against the the deteriorating international situation.

That led to a stage of dissemination starting during the Second World War, as the now scattered group shared what they had learned with the wider Quaker community and beyond. Dissemination that continued for years in the aftermath of the war as Irene and Bertram once more returned to Geneva to pick up the threads of their peace-work.

Finally there was a stage of consequences as the wider Quaker world absorbed what was being shared and undertook their own explorations and discoveries, and evaluated the the significance of Jung to their lives and faith.

Following that pattern of development allowed chapters to emerge and take their place. 

All that was needed was to add a few chapters to provide context and to trace the development of the peace work Bertram was engaged with. No small matter for someone who became something of a hub for the efforts of so many of the NGOs in Geneva, and who played a part in the founding the the United Nations, and became one of the first members of its secretariat, mirroring the role he had created for himself before the war as the spokes person for the NGOs to the League of Nations. 

The interweave of the twin themes of living out the peace-testimony – the Bertram theme – whilst comprehending and deepening spirituality due to Jung – the Irene theme – formed the two voices of a fugue that was their shared life, and the two themes that run through the book.

Preliminary: (What is) Quakerism; Re-visioning Quakerism – Harris, Jones and Rowntree; 1914 – a World Ripped Asunder; Well met at Woodbrooke; The Peace Testimony; Quaker responses to the 'Great War' and its Aftermath; Peace-work in Geneva. 

Exploration and assimilation: Encountering Jung's Ideas; Tina Keller-Jenny's Exposition; Meeting with Jung in Zürich ; The Letters; Many papers were written and read; Reactions – H G Wood and Howard Collier.

Accommodation: The Rising Tide of Fascism; Reconciliation, Relief and Refugees; The Calm before the Storm; The Looming Storm; Belief in an Age of Analysis; The Last Gasps of the League; Escape. 

Dissemination: Peace-makers in a time of war: The Aftermath of War: The Road back to Geneva: The Women's International Forum and the Friday Club; After Aion – Irene's Dark Night of the Soul: Answer to Job: P W Martin and the Experiment in Depth: Elined, Irene and the Inward Light: Martin Buber, Marjorie Martin & Piet Englesman; The Various Light; Pierre Lacout – God is Silence: Peace as a Process; The Godmothers – Elined: The Godmothers – Irene.

Consequences:  Jungian Ripples in America: Jungian Ripples in Britain: The Living Myth.

Those are the working titles and the pattern of chapters.

The War in its Effects upon Women by H M Swanwick, August 1916

Three themes emerged from researching Irene Pickard's archive: Quakerism, Jung and peace-work. If it was not for the peace-work the Pickards would not have been in Geneva, and the Irene may never have been exposed to Jung's ideas with such intensity, and certainly would never have met the man himself, nor, one expects, ever been in correspondence with him nor been on friendly terms with his wife, Emma Jung, herself a significant analyst. 

Emma Jung's visits to Geneva to talk to the Geneva Quakers was one of the key events deepening Irene's appreciation of Jung's psychology and its importance to her Quakerism. For Irene, it opened up the inner workings of the mind and gave life and validity to her faith. It placed it on a 'scientific' footing as an essential part of being a complete and psychologically healthy individual. Contrary to the Marxists or to the Positivists – both prevalent philosophies at the time – religion was neither the 'opium of the people' nor vacuous nonsense: it was, according to Jung, essential to the process of successful individuation (to becoming an increasingly mature and balanced individual).

However, it was not analytical psychology that had brought Irene to Geneva but peace-work. It was where the League of Nations was which put it at the heart of the efforts to build a new way of working internationally that might prevent another catastrophe like the First World War. It was why the Quakers had decided to open a centre near John Calvin's cathedral in the old town, and why they decided to appoint Bertram Pickard as its first full time secretary, with Irene as the warden of a proposed student hostel for young Quakers studying International Relations at the University – the first university courses of this kind in the world.

What made the Quakers adamant that they needed to have a voice in Geneva was their experience of the war. Many had been so much at odds with mainstream sentiment, so much in conflict with the authorities over such issues as conscription, and had reacted to the war so much at variance with the dominant patriotism – working to alleviate the suffering caused rather than compounding the suffering by participation – that they felt impelled to aid, in any way they could, steps taken to construct a permanent peace. 

Living out the Peace Testimony under the duress of a world war had not been a comfortable experience. It had tested many Friends to breaking point and had led some to abandon the Society. Helping to construct a peaceful future would need considerable investment in the opportunities for collaborative working with those outside the Society. That was the model that had allowed the Quakers to have such an impact in the abolitionist movement: it amplified their concern by finding and working with allies.

Once such ally was Helena Swanwick (1864 – 1939). She had been active in the women's suffrage movement, but resigned over the Suffragette's active support for the war effort, and particularly their decision not to take part in the Women's Peace Congress at the Hague in 1915. 

In 1916 she published her inflammatory condemnation of men, as makers of the war, for their blindness towards its effects on women, who suffered inordinately but had no voice. War was pre-eminently the doing of men. She also condemned her erstwhile companions in the British suffrage movement for their lack of compassion for the impact of war on women in the conflict zones: 

… although [British women] suffer like all the other women by the death and maiming of their men, they are curiously removed from the stunning effects of war on their own soil. Their grown men die, it is true, too young and very dear. But they do not see their babies killed by the thousands; they do not see their daughters outraged; they do not have their homesteads and fields defiled and burned and blown to atoms; they do not have to take part in those hideous retreats of women and children and sick and old, starving and dying on the cruel roads: they do not bear their babies to the sound of cannon … [The War in its Effect upon Women, August 1916]

She shared with the Quaker an understanding of war as tragedy and as a massive failure of human governance. She even suggest that women should ask themselves –

… whether men are so made that periodical wars are necessary for their bodily and spiritual health. Many people tell them so, and sometimes, in bewildered amaze at all the suffering brought about for what seem trumpery reasons, women will feel inclined to think that, after all, men fight because they like fighting; they always will like fighting; they always will do what they like. 

However, she thinks it is only a half truth, as:

… the mind of man should be equal to the task of directing and transforming this instinct (to fight) to the common good. By the prodigious development of mechanical and chemical resources, men have perhaps forged the weapons that will teach them that they must kill war. For it seems that unless man will kill war, industrial and military machinery will kill man.

Helena went on in 1919 to be a founding member of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom [WILPF]. The league had grown out of Jane Addams's peace movement via the International Congress of Women. It appointed Emily Greene Balch as its first International Secretary-Treasurer, with its headquarters in Geneva.

Emily soon came into contact with the small Quaker community in Geneva, and became a member in 1921, saying: 

Religion seems to me one of the most interesting things in life, one of the most puzzling, richest and thrilling fields of human thought and speculation... religious experience and thought need also a light a day and sunshine and a companionable sharing with others of which it seems to me there is generally too little ... The Quaker worship at its best seems to me give opportunities for this sort of sharing without profanation.     [Randall, Improper Bostonian, p. 60]

Emily Greene Balch was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946 for her work with the WILPF. One of three Nobel prize winners associated between the wars with that small Quaker Meeting in Geneva.

In 1924 Helena Swanwick severed as substitute delegate to the League of Nations on behalf of Britain, and between 1928 and 1931, during the build up to the disarmament conference, as part of the Labour British Empire delegation.

During both those periods Helena would have connected with Emily Greene Balch and others on the network of peace activists in the city, including many from the Quaker Meeting. During her second spell that network was joined by Bertram and Irene Pickard. Bertram in particular played a very prominent part in the network. In 1929 he was appointed as Honorary Secretary to the newly formed Fédération Internationale des Institutions Internationales Etablies à Genèva [FIIG] an umbrella organisation bringing together all the non-governmental organisations [NGOs] in the city. He also became Chairman of the Disarmament Committee of the Christian International Organisations in Geneva. He made himself very much the hub of the peace activist network. 

There was a fascination in researches springing from Irene's archive, to see how apparently diverse people interwove their lives because of the networks they became part of. How they gravitated towards each other because of their commitment to one or other ideal. The network of committed peace activists in Geneva was no exception. 

I first came across Helena Swanwick in Katherine Storr's book Exuded from the Record: Women, Refugees and Relief 1914-15 whilst researching outwards from Irene's archive into its historical context. References in Katherine Storr's book led me to finding a copy of Helena's 1916 booklet, which I then used as an example of divergent attitudes to the war. It was only later that I discovered that she was connected to Emily Greene Balch via the WILPF, and had been involved in peace work in Geneva. Writing based on an archive is very much like fitting pieces into a jigsaw, but where so many pieces are hopelessly lost for ever, or others do not turn up until late.

Jung’s five stages of psycho-cultural development

Being an Eva Koch Scholar at Woodbrooke was an utter indulgence in being able to completely immerse oneself in a chosen subject: unlimited access to the library; supportive tutors; the other scholars to discuss ideas and relax with; Woodbrooke's wonderful gardens to wander and contemplate in; the support and friendship of the FiRs (Friends in Residence) and of the staff; being provided with three meals a day and a private en-suite room; nothing to do but study  – what could possibly be better?

In return you are encouraged to share the fruits of your researches with the wider Quaker community. My time at Woodbrooke was only part of what proved to be a six year process, that also involved using Friends House Library in London and visiting the Quaker United Nations Office in Geneva in order to see the archives of the Switzerland Yearly Meeting. The result has the working title Jung, the Quakers and Hitler, the text of which is now in the hands of a publisher. 

This blog is in part about the process of research and writing – the incidental discoveries and surprises on the way, as well as the challenges – but also about how that has affected me. It is a way of my processing and reflecting on the impact – something that is still ongoing. You cannot explore the psycho-spiritual journeys of your subjects without shadowing that yourself. 

I was already using this blog to explore my own spiritual journey before encountering Irene Pickard's archive. The avalanche of material that inundated me as a result of that encounter has carried me to many places that I would never have chosen: I had too many prejudices, too many barriers, too much spiritual hurt and antipathy. 

Alison Bush, who invited me to look at Irene's archive, introduced me to N, a friend of hers and a Jungian Psychologist, who was studying for a doctorate at the University of Essex at that time. Alison suspected I would need a Jungian mentor if I was to make sense of her mother's archive. Indeed she was right. 

It just so happened that, eighteen months later, whilst luxuriating in my time at Woodbrooke, N was one of the two tutors running a Jungian weekend course there – Dreaming Jung. I signed up. 

On the Saturday evening, the participants were let loose in the art room to prepare props for the role play that was to happen the following morning. I am a terrible participant on courses – far too undisciplined and anarchic. I inveigled N to sneak off and have a cup of coffee with me so that I could discuss with her some of the difficulties I was having understanding Jung. As it happened, one of the other Eva Koch scholars, who was a Professor of 'The Science of Religion' at a European University, was by the self service bar. The wonder of liminal spaces is that they can be the most dynamic and creative spaces of all. What transpired between the three of us was one of the most profound discussions about the nature of belief I have ever encountered. It even drew an audience of fascinated onlookers. The meat of it was N's explanation of Jung's five stages of psycho-cultural development, as she called them, if I understood her correctly.

Psycho-cultural because Jung was suggesting that they were stages both of cultural development, resulting from evolutions in the collective unconscious, and stages in individuation, in the maturation of the individual psyche. 

The stages could be seen in the history of religions and the societies that embraced them because they were manifestations of the collective unconscious which set the milieu and climate in which the individual unconscious was marinated: it was its growth media. The conscious self grew out of the individual unconscious, but also fed into it, just as the individual's words and actions fed into the collective unconscious through their impact on others. There is a dynamic and evolutionary process at play between the publicly conscious, privately conscious, individually unconscious and collectively unconscious levels. This is why Jung could talk of a mass-psychosis having overcome the German people under Hitler. Hitler was a product of that mass-psychosis, but he also fed into it, intensifying it and giving it shape, substance and direction.

At an individual level, the five stages may be witnessed as a child grows into adulthood and, if they are not blocked along the way, then matures on through life, often via a mid-life crisis, to reach a deeper and fuller realisation of the 'self' (their total being). A more benign state that is reconciled with the fact of their impending death. Too often individuals become stuck at some point on this path of individuation, or even regress, and are likely to become damaging to themselves or others: an all too common fate! Individuation can involve a great deal of hard work and struggle, often marked by crises and breakdowns. 

Later that evening, before going to bed, I made a note of what I thought the five stages were. The problem with profound conversations is that they can also be ephemeral. The following list is my late night distillation of what I understood.

Jung’s five stages of psycho-cultural development:

1. The pantheistic god: god as everything: god is the tree, etc.

2. The panoptic god: god is spirits in things: god is in the tree, but is not the tree itself.
 Nature as a lens through which to see god.
   
3. The transcendent god: god is above everything looking down and controlling: god the lawgiver, the all-seeing, etc: the god of judgement.

4. The death of god: there is no god: the bubble of the illusion is burst: an entirely secular world: a godless, god-free world. [c.f: if you meet Buddha on the road, kill him.]
 Secularism, not atheism, replaces religion. The progression is agnosticism, atheism, secularism: the complete disenchantment of life.
   
5. The projected god: god as the spiritual relationship we feel with the tree, etc: god as our participation mystique with the universe and the realisation of that mystique as a felt, experienced reality. The re-enchantment of life by discovering the outwards reaching of our inward spiritual centre (the god-archetype – the deep centre – the 'selbst').
   

In terms of European history, stages one and two correspond to the increasingly mythologised paganism of the pre-Christian period, evolving from "nature is god" to "the gods are present in nature" – genus loci – but also above nature – the Olympian gods. Stage three comes with the appropriation of the Jewish god, Yahweh, as "God the Father" of Christianity.  Stage four is a consequence of the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution – the redundancy of God! – followed by the shock of the two World Wars – the intolerability of a God that would allow suffering on that scale. The extent to which the 'death of god' is spreading can be judged from the decline in participation in religion in the UK, perhaps the country that has progressed furthest in the fourth stage. Similar declines can be charted across the rest of Europe and in North America. The beginnings of the fifth stage can be observed in an increase in spiritual questing. The fourth stage creates a hunger, a longing, a need. The fifth stage sees people seeking to satisfy that need. The rise of New Age spirituality and of increasing interest in a sanitised Buddhism, indicated by the proliferation of Buddha statues in gardens or as household ornaments, or an ersatz Hinduism that focuses on Yoga and mediation set against a vague Brahman(ish) background, are indicators of the onset of the fifth stage. 

For me, I certainly suffered stage four. The proffered God of my culture was not just dead, but hammered to death with rigorous logic and spurned with revulsion: the twin shadows of the holocaust and of Hiroshima falling over the dwindling remnants of 'the god of love' revealing it to be the 'god of infinite hypocrisy'. However, there was a unacknowledged need, a discomfort, that gave rise to my attempting to deconstruct Zen just as I had deconstructed Christianity. Silly me: of course Zen was going to win – it was me that was deconstructed! That opened me to a wider questing, which came to rest where I am now: disciplined by sitting regularly in the gathered silence of a Quaker community and beginning to allow that re-enchantment, that discovery of the outwards reaching of an inward spiritual centre.