The Myths of Death, Rebirth, and Resurrection - The Wisdom of the Serpent

Author: Joseph L Henderson
Publisher: New Age Books
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 262
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8178220318

Description

This is a classic work in analytical psychology that offers crucial insights on the meaning of death symbolism and its inevitably accompanying rebirth and resurrection symbolism. This material is the next step after the hero myth and provides an understanding on how not to use the hero myth as a psychology of mastery.

The tribal initiation of the shaman, the archetype of the serpent, exemplifies the death of the self and rebirth into transcendent, "unknowable" life. Henderson and Oakes trace the images and patterns of spiritual initiation in religious rituals and myths of resurrection, poems and epics, the cycle of nature, and universal human responses in art dreaming. The authors dramatize the metamorphosis from a common experience of death's inevitability into a transcendent freedom beyond the individual's limitations.