Quotes from Marion Woodman

Once we get used to listening to our dreams, our whole body responds like a musical instrument.

At the very point of vulnerability is where the surrender takes place-that is where the god enters. The god comes through the wound.

s past history and stand alone.

A life that is truly lived is constantly burning away the veils of illusion, gradually revealing the essence of the individual.

The harder we look at our aches and ailments, the more we will be startled by the painful truths they are trying to convey about our dangerously disembodied way of life.

Storytelling is at the heart of life. As a child, I was never bored because I could always get on with my story.

How does it feel to say no to the one man to whom you have always said yes? How does it feel when you stand up to him and reject all he has never questioned?

As a symbol, the Crone had to be suppressed by patriarchal religions because her power 'overruled the will even of Heavenly Father Zeus.' She controlled the cycles of life and death. She was the Mother of God, the Nurturer of God, and, as a Crone, the Slayer of God. While Christianity retained the feminine as Virgin and Mother, it eliminated her role as Crone.

So long as she is obedient to a mother—actual or internal—who unconsciously wishes to annihilate her, she is in a state of possession by the witch; she will have to differentiate herself out from that witch in order to live her own life.

The word 'feminine,' as I understand it, has very little to do with gender, nor is woman the custodian of femininity. Both men and women are searching for their pregnant virgin. She is the part of us who is outcast, the part who comes to consciousness through going into darkness, mining our leaden darkness, until we bring her silver out.

Reading ancient myths and fairy tales can be very helpful because these stories came spontaneously from people who had not studied psychology. The stories came straight out of their unconscious and, therefore, show us how the unconscious works unimpeded by conscious intervention. The images are clear and stark. For those of us who are interested in why we do what we do when we want to do the opposite, the stories are gold mines of information.

Why put them through the danger of the fire? And then, I heard, as though it spoke, the voice of the guardian-head: Each piece must go through the fire. The cowl, the wings, the pneuma, the source, the flow. All must go the way that I have gone. Each may crack in the process, as I have cracked. But look, the crack has healed. I did not break. Without the fire, the piece is untested, unlived, raw. Each must go through the fire.

In the absence of role models for the new feminine in our culture, the Goddess speaks through dreams and creative imagination, giving guidance to those who chose to listen.

The way to healing an addiction lies in finding a connection between body and soul.

Kundalini power, the symbol of raising the energy coiled at the base of the spine upward through the chakras, is called by Sri Chinmoy, 'the power of the Supreme Goddess.' Repressed or coiled in a circle, she can be poisonous both to the body and the psyche, but once risen and standing upright, she is beneficent. The power of the serpent, rightly understood, is one of the ways the Goddess overcomes duality.

If we are blindly living out an archetype, we are not containing our own life. We are possessed, and possession acts as a magnet on unconscious people in our environment. A life that is being truly lived is constantly burning away the veils of illusion, gradually revealing the essence of the individual.

Healing needs listening with the inner ear, stopping the incessant blather, listening.

What I learned is the difference between of destiny and fate. We are all fated to die. Destiny is recognizing the radiance of the soul that, even when faced with human impossibility, loves all of life. Fate is the death we owe to Nature. Destiny is the life we own to soul.

Whether we like it or not, one of our tasks on this earth is to work with the opposites through different levels of consciousness until body, soul and spirit resonate together. Initiation rites, experienced at the appropriate times in our lives, burn off what is no longer relevant, opening our eyes to new possibilities of our own uniqueness. They tear off the protective veils of illusion until at last we are strong enough to stand in our own naked truth.

Living by principles is not living your own life. It is easier to try to be better than you are than to be who you are.

Change means change. We may have all the insights, but if we do not incarnate them, they are all in vain.

To strive for perfection is to kill love because perfection does not recognize humanity.

The mystery of God touches us - or does not - in the smallest details: giving a strawberry, with love; receiving a touch, with love; sharing the snapdragon red of an autumn sunset, with love.

To love unconditionally requires no contracts, bargains or agreements.