I recently watched a fascinating film about the life of Jungian analyst Marion Woodman, known for her work on feminine psychology and addiction. The film features interviews with Marion by the mystic Andrew Harvey, covering the mysteries of death and rebirth, and how the soul grows through surrender, as illustrated by Marion’s life and her experience of anorexia. Here’s a clip from the film where she talks about the two Marions:

Dancing in the Flames is about the need to say yes to both sides of life – the dark and the light – in order to become whole and fully alive. You must embrace the darkness and the light because they’re inseparable parts of the whole. The earth itself is going through this same archetypal journey of death and rebirth:

“Death is essential to life. That’s Kali. Kali was death in the service of life. Death is going to happen often in your lifetime, or you’re going to go through a death of something in the soul. But out of that, something new will be born. That’s what I think about the earth right now. We are going through a death. But for that to manifest, something’s going to have to happen to the soul of human beings. And we’re going to go through anguish to get there.”

Kali, the dark feminine or black Madonna, works through paradox. She takes you down into death and then on into healing. The ego’s plans have to be destroyed in the dark night of the soul before you can be reborn. The dark goddess breaks you in order to make room for what Marion calls the genuine feminine and the genuine masculine to manifest.

“In my own life, as in everyone’s life, there have been many little deaths. When I look back on these experiences, each one of them made way for new life. Our planet itself is now facing such a death. A shedding of its outworn skin. If we can embrace the shift consciously, creatively rather than negatively, we will see new life stirring within us. Earth is one country and all of us are its citizens. My work, my life, is committed to the realisation of that reality.”

Here’s the trailer for the film:

Watch Dancing in the Flames online here