Healing and Empowering the Feminine
A Labyrinth Journey
Sylvia Shaindel Senensky
Chiron Publications, 2003,194 p.p.

Click here to see review on the web site of Sylvia Senensky, Jungian Analyst

“There are two ways of entering the underworld”, warns Sylvia Senensky, M.Ed., and Zurich-trained Jungian analyst practising in Toronto. ”We either make a conscious choice to respond to the call like Inanna and Theseus or we can be ‘raped’ into it the way Persephone was.” We ignore the call at our peril.

In a section of Part l entitled About the Labyrinth, Senensky, a graduate of Jean Houston’s training program in the Cultivation of Human Capacities, discusses the history of the labyrinth as a powerful healing agent and urges her readers to take advantage of this ancient tool. Replete with graphs and photographs, Part l of Healing and Empowering the Feminine describes the early history of labyrinths showing a variety of complicated arrangements of this ancient webwork that so accurately embodies our own circumvolution of back and forth movement to personal transformation.

It is interesting to view artwork of two labyrinths side by side, the first a simple seven circuit Cretan one from early times and the other a more complex eleven circuit Chartres labyrinth. Senensky posits the possibility that the latter one elaborates the psyche’s development since primitive times. Suggesting that the labyrinth could well reflect Jung’s idea of pre-existant pathways in the psyche, she points out that we actually embody labyrinthine organs such as the winding course of the brain and the circuitous intestines.

In Part 2, The Labyrinth: A Journey into the Feminine, Senensky illustrates the Feminine by what it is and what it is not. Its form, she contends, is labyrinthine:

“The Feminine is about process and relationship. It is about playing, experimenting, doing several things at once. It is not goal-oriented, although there may be a goal towards which we are heading. It is the process of getting to the goal that is all important. The twists and turns, the forward and backward movement of the labyrinth, the dancing between the quadrants, the act of allowing the unexpected to affect your journey, the still point at the center – that is static and containing while honouring the rhythms and movement of life and death – all form an exquisite portrayal of how Feminine energy manifests itself.”  

In the audio series of her collected lectures Sitting By the Well (Shambala), Marion Woodman concurs:

“The Feminine is Conscious Virgin, Conscious Mother and Conscious Crone. This is process, paradox, surrender, presence, receptivity, synchronicity, intentionality, being-ness, and freedom from the power complex. The Feminine creates the image and embodies it as she processes towards wholeness.”
 

Definitions, however, must not become rigid. For example, the women’s group to which Senensky belongs resisted limiting itself to the polar opposites of Light Madonna and Black Madonna – and created the Red Madonna to suit their needs. It is important to remain alert to the new and not to hide behind the safe constructs of definition. How can we unravel our own truths trussed to the old forms that once hurt us so much?

Similarly, during her recent lecture ‘The Art of Archetypal Psychology’, Ginette Paris, author of Pagan Grace and Pagan Meditations, celebrated the creativity inherent to Greek mythology because it is open to the unexpected. Its highly charged, unpredictable material embodies surprise. She elaborated:
 

“It is extremely important to understand that it is not the concept that is most important, but the image. Never ask the analytical Why because that is you trying to satisfy your need to find both refuge and power by categorizing and by defining. Instead, focus on the image, the how, what, who and where of the image in order to gain new insight. You must be fearless.”
 

Senensky believes that all wounding is about interior Feminine discord and states that it is in transforming the bartered and betrayed energies within and integrating the healthy Feminine and Masculine aspects that not only healing but creativity occurs. An inside job, the work cannot be appropriated elsewhere. She cites poet Adrienne Rich:

“ I refuse to become a seeker for cures: Everything that has ever helped me has come through what already lay stored in me. Old things, diffuse, untamed, lay strong across my heart. This is from where my strength comes…”  

Senensky insists the Goddess of Life and Death brooks no dissent. Her realm is one of absolutes. Truth will not be altered or modified to suit our particularities even though, paradoxically, each of us must create our own brand of it. Senensky suggests that this is why there is, in many fairy tales, an initiate who must perform a seemingly impossible task before gaining entry to the cave. Senensky tells a tale, originating from the island of Malekula in
the New Hebrides, of a dead man who meets the Devouring Ghost Le-Hev-Hev at the mouth of her cave. Upon seeing him, she traces a labyrinth in the sand and quickly erases half of it. If the dead man, - whose task it is to memorize the design in waking life and then complete the missing half - fails to do so, then she simply eats him. He disappears forever. If, however, he is successful he gains entry into the cave and the afterlife. However brutal it seems, truth must remain uncompromised. It is the seekers of authenticity who must change or be consumed by
their own internalized negativity.  

Part 3 features electric examples of Greek mythology about which Senensky points out recognizable aspects of fear and love. Immediately following each myth she provides a present day experience that corresponds with the ancient allegory. This back and forth between past and present experience renders the book itself labyrinthine in style – one that is highly instructive.

Repeatedly, Senensky suggests the labyrinth as both tool and container with which to cope as one moves to its centre, the place of personal transformation. In the Epilogue, she records how radical change manifests by detailing some of the blessings the Conscious Feminine is confidently conferring upon the planet today.

Senensky generously refers her readers to the authors who have most touched her and even summarizes central ideas of their work, explaining how their ideas have guided her. Healing and Empowering the Feminine is an excellent source of vital information for those wishing to learn about the Feminine both in its ignored and conscious states.

An excellent labyrinthine read, it walks back and forth with us to a gentle place of strong encouragement.