Written in the first week of October, I originally began preparing this piece for a competition hosted by Antigone, an open forum for articles on the classics of Ancient Greece and Rome. Very heady stuff, worth checking out. Alas, the scope of my ambition for this particular piece went beyond the limits of the competition and so did the word count by quite a wide margin. But as they say, "Whatevs." I enjoyed the process and continued to tinker with the piece over the month as I put it into a respectable and presentable format. I would've published it sooner had my family and I not--finally!--succumbed to the scourge that is Covid-19 over the Halloween weekend. With our recoveries well under way, and without further delay, it is time at last to share my latest work. Enjoy! - DH
A final note:
The cover image is from Liber Novus, or The Red Book
, by C.G. Jung; it was created between the years of 1914 and 1930 but only published in 2009 as his heirs refused access to it for many years. It's a fascinating work and the particular image is one of many drawn by Jung that were inspired by mythic imagery, in particular creation myths. The closing image is adapted from the cover of The Path and the Right Way of Lao-Tse
, specifically Jung's copy from his personal library. I found both images in Sonu Shamdasani's C.G. Jung: A Biography in Books
, which is an in-depth exploration of Jung's life and work through the books that inspired him. Liber Novus is inspiring and intriguing to me for personal reasons apart from its artistic qualities and exploration of the human psyche through mythic and religious imagery and ideas, as I have been writing a book or two of my own along similar lines. I take comfort in Jung's estimation of his own work as I have considered that the same--should I ever finish it and get it published--will be said of mine: "To the superficial observer, it will appear like madness."
Keep writing.
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