“To separate masculine and feminine is unnatural. Their struggle to come together is the struggle toward consciousness,
a process in which we slowly come to understand what, in the unconscious, always already is.”
– Marion Woodman (The Maiden King)
Asher Packman brings us his perspective on the necessity of masculine and feminine reunion, both within and without, for individual consciousness and the healing of the world. He examines it through the lens of Robert Bly and Marion Woodman’s 1999 treatise of an ancient Russian fairytale, The Maiden King. At its essence, this is a tale about the return of powerful feminine energy into the world. It is woven of an absent father, a possessive stepmother, a false tutor and a boy overwhelmed by a beautiful maiden. When the young man’s response has her retreating in anger, he must go on a quest of self-discovery. Asher will cover the immature masculine tendency toward impotence in the full face of the feminine, corresponding traits in the feminine such as rage, and being at ease with oppositional thinking, which even the lecture title invokes.