Honoring the Diamond Body Mysteries: Pregnant Darkness & Birth of the Light Body: A Lecture With Monika Wikman

Tonight, we will explore depth psychology’s true inheritance in the full round of life, death, and the beyond:  the Diamond Body mysteries. Honoring the descent mysteries and the Archetypal Mothers of the Nigredo, we will explore the birth of emerging connection with the light and with experiences of the resurrection body, the light body.

Drawing from dreams, the work of Jung, Yeats, and Henri Corbin, along with experiences from the recent death process of my partner, Tom Elsner, I will weave threads in image, symbol, myth, dream, and embodied experience to honor in some small way the mystery of the Diamond Body.

“Die before we die.” We all know the line in depth psychology; it is the cornerstone of all transformation. And here, from my point of view, is its twin: “In dying discover the light body before we literally die as well.”

My hope is that by tuning in together to this material from real life and death processes, near-death experiences, and the works of these luminaries, we will create a place of reflection for the value of cultivating the subtle body.

By its very nature, this work is done for the good of the world soul. The dismemberment-rememberment forces of the psyche, so present in the order-disorder paradox, touch our lives more strongly as our collective problem is mounting. Our work with our own little piece of Earth, our own vessel of consciousness as an offering for the good of the world, for the good of the collective unconscious, is real. The need to give life to the religious instincts in the psyche comes to us with growing urgency now. The creation of the shared field together this evening is also part of this offering. (See Nathan Schwartz Salant’s book, The Order Disorder Paradox.)

Yeats’ question is ever more alive as a burning question of our age: “What rough beast its hour come round at last slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?” What is happening with the collective unconscious and the changing god image as madness in culture mounts? Appreciating the “rough beast” and the way it is emerging now as demonic greed and militaristic fascism, many of us feel the need to make fresh offerings to the spirit of the depths to help balance consciousness and the collective unconscious. This alchemical contemplative work with the Nigredo Mysteries and the Diamond Body is of utmost value.  It allows the axis to the transcendent to grow both individually and in relationship and allows new transmutations of spirit to happen. It allows consciousness to tune in with the One who knows better the way with and through what is to come.