That Imagery of Thoth, Ma'at, and the Unconscious

The imagery of the Ibis is particularly important and delightful for me right now because I am deeply engrossed in reading Henri Ellenberger's classic,“The Discovery of the Unconscious.”

The bird obviously, easily, and naturally digs beneath the surface to get life-sustaining nourishment from the muck at the bottom.

So it fits that the ancient Egyptians would consider it to be sacred and it's heartwarming and delightful to think of them imaging Thoth (Hermes-Mercury) with the head of an Ibis! It gives me a feeling of immediate kinship with people thousands of years ago, as if they were right here now, in this room.

I've thought for many years about the image of Thoth's wife, Ma'at, as being Truth, symbolized by a feather. You often see an image in the Egyptian hieroglyphic writings of a person with a feather for a head and a person with an Ibis for a head.

Ma'at and Thoth

Here are two very simple images – an Ibis and a feather – that are yet profound, ancient and helpful symbols - truth is built up from very small strands like those of a feather, and discovering truth requires plunging beneath the surface into the hidden depths of the unconscious to retrieve nourishment.

People wear feathers on the head even today, even if it be only a very small one stuck into a hat band – a ancient symbol.

And there is that imagery of the Last Judgment with the Feather in one side of the scale and your soul in the other side, with this Ibis-headed Thoth standing right there taking note.

At the Great Hall of Judgement

I think being acquainted directly with the animals that are used as symbols gave old-time people a greater power to understand these symbols than we are able to possess, having little direct experience with those animals. Having some real life experience with sheep and goats, for example, makes their use as symbols in the Bible much more readiily accessible. Still, videos like the one of an Ibis' flight below are now easily available on the Internet at sites like YouTube, and I think that's a good thing.

Finally, the thought keeps coming up to me of how great it would have been if something was said to me during my long, difficult, expensive education about the meaning of just the Ibis and the Feather. I remember now the psychology course I took at university – it was filled with all kinds of “scientific” words about experiments and statistics and neurons and synapses and rats – none of it being of the slightest use in real life.

Michael Moore "Where to Invade Next"

I saw Michael Moore's new film, “Where to Invade Next,” this past week and was so excited about it that I decided to wait a few days to calm down before I wrote about it. I felt as I walked out of the theater that this must be the greatest movie of all time, maybe even the greatest art of all time.

Better than Bach or Michaelangelo? -  I thought: Maybe I need to get a little perspective on this! Maybe it seems so great because I am more able to see, and to appreciate, than I have ever been due to the lengthened and deepened reflection of my old age, or maybe due to my increasing “child-like” perception and rejuvenation.

Perhaps the film is just incomparable, but there remains a part of me that still thinks and feels that it doesn't get any better than this.

There is a relatively long segment in the film devoted to education in Finland and one of the split-second images now in my mind forever is the fleeting look of pity on the face of a Finnish teacher when she learns of what we do to U.S. school children.

The general idea of the film is that Michael visits nine countries outside the U.S. to find and to appropriate ways for the U.S. to deal with issues such as education, food, crime, maltreatment of women, banking, health care, and crippling views of human nature as unsocial.

It's anthropology, sociology, psychology, and art, and religion, and fun.

There is a scene at the end in Berlin with Moore and a friend looking at remains of the Wall. He notes how people just started taking hammers and chisels and chipped away at the Wall. He says that it's really very simple: “Hammer,” “Chisel.” Keep at it.

If you have seen “Where to Invade Next” or are thinking of seeing it, the following video is also worth seeing. It is of an interview in which he discusses the making of the film and its meaning.

Wall Street: “Their business model is fraud.”

Bernie Sanders said those words this last week about Wall Street when he was in Durham, New Hampshire: “Their business model is fraud.”

I recently saw the film, “The Big Short,” based on Michael Lewis' book, and came away from it with the same feelings as I had about Bernie's statement: “How can anyone not see it?”

Elizabeth Warren said not long ago that people do see it, very clearly. She said it directly, and simply, as is her way.

I hope and think that her observation is correct, but I also understand Mark Twain's observation of our remarkable ability to stumble over the truth and then to get up and to keep on running as if nothing had happened.