Sacred Marriage: A Fusion of Instinct, Spirit, and Grit
This Jungian Life Podcast
Joseph Lee, Deborah Stewart, Lisa Marchiano
4.7 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 2 February 2023
⏱️ 84 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Marriage is a mystery woven into the fabric of time. A 4,000-year-old contract etched in stone bears witness to its timeless significance. But what is the meaning behind this union of two souls?
Jung saw the definition of marriage as an alchemy of instinct and divinity, a blending of the physical and the spiritual. It is a bond that extends beyond legal and familial ties into the realm of the sacred.
The purpose of marriage is a journey of individuation, a chance for each partner to grow and flourish within the embrace of a supportive union - it is a crucible of transformation. Tempered by our shadow, it can forge us into our best selves.
In marriage, we embark on a dance with our beloved, discovering new parts of ourselves with each step. But as time passes and our projections fade, we must pass through disappointment and conflict.
But as Jung saw it, these difficulties are opportunities for internal work, leading to the transformation of emotional connection into conscious relationships. The purpose of marriage is not just to provide comfort and security but to nurture personal growth.
We can see marriage as a symphony, where each partner's individual growth is intertwined with the growth of the relationship, and view it as a sacred bond, where each partner maintains their unique identity while being strengthened by the union.
What is marriage? It's a journey through the wilds of the human soul, a union that brings us closer to our true selves. This podcast episode explores the complicated and layered world of marriage through a Jungian lens.
Join us on a journey to the heart of this mystery, where the definition, purpose, and meaning of marriage are waiting to be uncovered. Let us answer the question, what is marriage together?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello listeners, this is Lisa Marchiano and I wanted to let you know that I am going to be running a women's retreat. |
| 0:07.0 | It's a weekend of fairy tales and yoga and it will be April 20th through 23rd in the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania. |
| 0:17.0 | It should be a really beautiful spot at a really beautiful time of year. |
| 0:22.0 | There will be a couple dozen of us that will meet together and work intensively with fairy tales. |
| 0:30.0 | We'll do lots of yoga and we'll also have a lot of fun. |
| 0:34.0 | I ran one of these in the fall and it was really an incredible experience for me and I hope for everyone else too. |
| 0:41.0 | So if you want to learn more about that you can go to my website, LisaMarchiano.com and click on Wellspring Women's Retreat. I hope to see you there. |
| 0:52.0 | Welcome to this Jungian Life. |
| 0:55.0 | Three good friends and Jungian analysts, LisaMarchiano, Deborah Stewart and Joseph Lee invite you to join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings a psychological perspective to important issues of the day. |
| 1:10.0 | I'm LisaMarchiano and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia. |
| 1:14.0 | I'm Joseph Lee and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia. |
| 1:19.0 | I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst and Cape Cod. |
| 1:29.0 | Today we're going to explore the ideas, archetypes and history of marriage. |
| 1:39.0 | We know that the first marriage contract that we have evidence of came about 2000 years BC in Samaria, marriage contracts, iconography around marriage, fills the pyramids, cathedrals, mosaics, uncovered in Pompeii. |
| 2:05.0 | There is something in the human psyche that gravitates towards this style of relationship and as Jungians, any human behavior that repeats itself across all cultures and across time, most likely has an archetypal matrix in it and around it. |
| 2:31.0 | Jung was very interested in this symbolically. He talked about the high roasts, gamus, the sacred marriage which shows up in mythology all the time and the union of opposites in alchemy. |
| 2:48.0 | So there's so much to say, so many different perspectives and we're going to jump right into the bath and see what we can make sense of. |
| 3:00.0 | Okay, but before we jump into the bath, I just want to remind everyone that we have a Patreon and that's a place where you can support us with a small monthly donation and in exchange for that you get our eternal gratitude and also you get a chance to ask us questions or send in a dream and we actually produce little mini episodes every single week for our patrons. |
| 3:28.0 | And depending on your level of support, you might get a weekly extra episode that includes a dream or an answer to a question or you might get a monthly extra episode. |
| 3:38.0 | So we welcome you to go to our website and you'll see under podcasts. There's a place for become a patron and just consider supporting us. We'd really appreciate that. Thank you. |
| 3:49.0 | So marriage as a contemporary phenomena is very interesting. It seems to be changing, reformulating in a lot of different ways. |
| 4:05.0 | People establish civil marriages and reconfigure them in all kinds of ways like adding in consensual non-monogamy. |
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