There is something that truly resonates as well as clearly contradicts the invisibility and unimoportance of the role of the mother. I feel that wisdom has been hidden from me, the wisom of the indigenous traces, like my paternal grandmothers need to reuse everything, to save and recycle into something else, dismissed by my mother as “cheap” and “stingy”. Understandably, as my mother grew up pennyless single mothered by my grandma, and the most important thing for her once she grew up was to make a lot of money and show everyone that you are wealthy by purchasing a lot of beautiful, expensive things. This also clearly demonstrates the influence of Economy on my mother, who did her MA in economy. My mother was bound to develop this way of thinking while studying economics if, accodring to Holten “it was in the division of economics and the market on the one side and morals and the family on the other that Smith made his mark. He defined (without wanting it, I suspect) the entire field of established economics.” Pg81 It was further misinterpreted by The Adam Smith Institute as a belief that “self-interested people will create the most economically efficient society. Unethical behaviour in the market is no longer criticised but seen as a necessity. Smith is used to argue that it is ‘rational’ and best for everyone in the long run to put themselves first.”Pg83 meaning obviously the financial gain first, above all else. Therefore, even thought my grandmother to me represented the “supernatural, priestess wisdom”, my mother dismissed that as “neurosis” and other mental problems because my grandmother was unable to “bring home the bacon” the way our great grandmother did. That said, my paternal grandmother, who lacked the talent and graceful creativity of my grandmother, was extremely resourceful: working as a teacher, caring for two sons and a useless husband(grandpa only worked for a bit, then spent the rest of his life reading newspapers in his room, only coming out for food and giving my grandma the money she made in installments) and as a grandmother spending a lot of time with me and my cousin making things, such as christmas decorations and hand knitted slippers. She also gave us loads of handmade, home remedies for things for xmas, which my mum dismissed as “useless, cheap garbage”. My grandma was not a saint, she was awful to my mum so I understand the resentment. But I do wonder, why am I drawn to all the handmade? Do I suddenly believe there is some kind of wisdom in that?
Pg.67
There was an enormous difference between my mother’s two personalities. That was why as a child I often had anxiety dreams about her. By day she was a loving mother, but at night she seemed uncanny. Then she was like one of those seers who is at the same time a strange animal, like a priestess in a bear’s cave. Archaic and ruthless; ruthless as truth and nature. At such moments she was the embodiment of what I have called the “natural mind.”3
3 The “natural mind” is the “mind which says absolurely straight and ruthless things.” (Seminar on Interpretation of Visions [Zurich, privately printed, 1940), v, 1.) “That is the sort of mind which springs from natural sources, and not from opinions taken from books; it wells up from the earth like a natural spring, and brings with it the peculiar wisdom of nature.” (Ibid., VI, 34.)
Pg.101
There was a kind of inner prohibition: one was not supposed to look into it too closely, nor ask what kind of substance was extracted from the air. As Goethe says of the Mothers, “Even to speak of them dismays the bold.”
Google:
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe used the phrase “Even to speak of them dismays the bold” in Faust: Part Two(1832) to highlight the sheer terror of the unknown. Spoken by Mephistopheles, it introduces “The Mothers,” who represent the formless, pre-existing void of creation—an abyss of primordial archetypes. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
The phrase captures the dread associated with these figures for several specific reasons:
- They Govern the Unexplorable: Mephistopheles describes the realm of the Mothers as existing “beyond the world of place or time”. Because human consciousness and language are tied to finite forms, confronting a realm of absolute nothingness and pure, formless potential terrifies the ego.
- The Fright of Reaching the Subconscious: In the psychological interpretations championed by Carl Jung, the Mothers symbolize the collective unconscious. Delving into these deepest psychic realms requires stripping away the structures of everyday reality, leaving the conscious mind (even of the “bold”) disoriented and vulnerable to psychic collapse.
••Proximity to Creation and Death: These goddesses hold the “embryo seeds” of all that has ever existed or will exist. Because they dictate the origins of life and hold the patterns of beauty and history, encountering them puts mortals face-to-face with the raw, uncontrollable forces of nature and the mysteries of birth and death