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Old Age: Journey into Simplicity
In this classic text on aging wisely, the renowned Jungian analyst Helen M. Luke reflects on the final journeys described in Homer’s Odyssey, Shakespeare’s King Lear and The Tempest, and T. S. Eliot’s Little Gidding, and also on suffering. In examining some of the great masterpieces of literature produced by writers at the ends of their lives, she elucidates the difference between growing old and disintegrating and encourages us to grow emotionally and mentally in this culminating stage of our own lives.
112 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1987
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
August 8, 2010
This is a brilliant book. Immediately upon beginning it I felt a slight disappointment about how short it seemed; five chapters and thin enough to throw in one’s purse. But soon I realized that there was more brilliance in the 112 pages preceding me than many of the books on spirituality, personal growth, or death and dying I’ve read in the past few years.
Helen Luke is a true Jungian in her use of literature to illustrate archetypal themes and stages of development along the human journey. I appreciated her references to Jung’s work and her articulation of elements of the journey towards wholeness such as owning one’s shadow, integrating the masculine and feminine, shedding one’s ego, and transforming pain into (the wisdom of) suffering.
Though it is evident she is a strong academe, her writing is elegant rather than pretentious. I found myself re-reading sentences and paragraphs and enthusiastically challenged by her pertinent and depthful insights. I was particularly struck by her concept of consciously “growing old”, rather than being dragged into the despair of “getting old”.
“What”, one might ask, “does someone MY age have to get out of this?”, if you are not later on in years. My answer is precisely what you would get out of any other excellent book on personal and spiritual growth and development…messages about the importance of letting go; releasing the desire and attachment of ego and giving in to the weightless emptiness of a space in which the Divine may enter:
“At every age, in every person, there comes a partial imprisonment, a disabling psychic wound, an unavoidable combination of circumstances, a weakness that we cannot banish, but must simply accept”.
The book is about aging, but its lessons of wisdom apply to any stage of growth in life.
If you are one who is loathe to face the subject of aging; of death, of letting go, give yourself a chance to let Helen Luke eloquently guide you through some of history’s greatest literature and the wisdom of poets to illuminate you to the paradox that you are alone yet not alone; empty yet whole…and to the knowledge that it is in our embrace of dying (letting go) that we truly live.
Helen Luke is a true Jungian in her use of literature to illustrate archetypal themes and stages of development along the human journey. I appreciated her references to Jung’s work and her articulation of elements of the journey towards wholeness such as owning one’s shadow, integrating the masculine and feminine, shedding one’s ego, and transforming pain into (the wisdom of) suffering.
Though it is evident she is a strong academe, her writing is elegant rather than pretentious. I found myself re-reading sentences and paragraphs and enthusiastically challenged by her pertinent and depthful insights. I was particularly struck by her concept of consciously “growing old”, rather than being dragged into the despair of “getting old”.
“What”, one might ask, “does someone MY age have to get out of this?”, if you are not later on in years. My answer is precisely what you would get out of any other excellent book on personal and spiritual growth and development…messages about the importance of letting go; releasing the desire and attachment of ego and giving in to the weightless emptiness of a space in which the Divine may enter:
“At every age, in every person, there comes a partial imprisonment, a disabling psychic wound, an unavoidable combination of circumstances, a weakness that we cannot banish, but must simply accept”.
The book is about aging, but its lessons of wisdom apply to any stage of growth in life.
If you are one who is loathe to face the subject of aging; of death, of letting go, give yourself a chance to let Helen Luke eloquently guide you through some of history’s greatest literature and the wisdom of poets to illuminate you to the paradox that you are alone yet not alone; empty yet whole…and to the knowledge that it is in our embrace of dying (letting go) that we truly live.
July 6, 2025
I share much of Luke’s idea of old age as a letting go. But her version of it is too mystical and also normative - as if people who don’t share/realize it have failed.
July 25, 2016
In Helen Luke's epilogue to the Odyssey, Odysseus eschews the traditional hero's stunts, and turns toward contemplation. Homer wrote an epilogue to the Odyssey and so did Dante, years later. Luke also offers a look at Shakespeare and the 'play'ful expression of old age.
The Odyssey
There are two epilogues to The Odyssey. One was written by Homer and the other many centuries later by Dante. They are alternative endings to the life of Odysseus, the hero, and the fact that the second was imagined so long after the original poem in no way invalidates it. All great stories are continued by those who respond to them, as long as their truth endures; and myths that cease to grow through the centuries will die. Dante had not even read The Odyssey (it is known that he did not read Greek), but he had heard the story.
Homer's epilogue is not actually narrated at the end of the poem, but prophesied about half-way through. It is told by Teiresias, the blind seer, who, when he meets odysseus at the border of Hades, describes the whole course of the journey that lies ahead for him. After telling of his possible homecoming and the end of his conflicts, Teiresias adds a last prophecy: there still remains for the hero another journey in his old age. He must set out once again from his home, but this time it will not be a sea journey, although he must carry with him a well-cut oar. Turning inland, he must travel on until he reaches a country where the people have never seen the sea, have never tasted salt, and know nothing about ships: he will recognize the right place when he meets a stranger, who, seeing the oar, will ask him about the "winnowing fan" he is carrying on his shoulder.
At this spot he is to halt and plant his oar firmly in the earth; then he must make a sacrifice to Poseidon -- "a ram, a bull, and a breeding boar" -- and when he returns home he must make "ceremonial offering" to all of the immortal gods in heaven -- to each of them in order.
When Odysseus is with Penelope on his first night of reunion, he tells her his story, warns her of this journey, and of the separation to be endured. So it is surprising that the poem ends with the intervention of Zeus that brought peace to the warring factions in Ithaca and a conclusion to Odysseus' fighting days, and no more is told of this strange last journey.
On the shore of the land of the Phaiakians, Odysseus is rescued and befriended by a truly human woman, the princess Nausicaa, who is one of the most enchanting young women in the stories of the world. Intelligent, courageous, wholly natural and spontaneous, but not at all naive, she has the dignity of the woman who can love without demand to possess. She has a human simplicity which is total delight after the spells and magical attractions of Circe and Calypso.
I like to think that Penelope in her youth had the same quality of light-hearted yet shrewd innocence, and that, after her long years of suffering and almost, but never quite, hopeless waiting, the laughter and innocence of maturity would be in her a source of strength to all whose lives she touched when, after Odysseus' last unrecorded journey, she would share with him the wisdom of the richly old.
Odysseus returns disguised as a beggar, and she reveals herself as a strategist every bit as intelligent as her husband, and even lets us glimpse her long hidden gift of laughter.
In the feminine psyche, the hidden power and profit motives are usually concerned with the shadow side of relationships, the subtle desire to possess and manipulate those close to us, or else to be supported, even possessed, by the love of others for the sake of protection from danger, loneliness, and responsibility. The unconscious in a man has similar problems of jealousy and possessiveness, but in the main his danger lies in the exercise of power in the outer world, whether as hero or magician. In our day, as a woman works and excels more and more in the spheres hitherto reserved for men, her power motives have become more visible in the operations of her animus, the personification of the masculine powers in her unconscious; therefore she must consciously watch the odyssey of her masculine creativity, and when she comes to the choice between the two possible 'last journeys' of the kind offered to Odysseus, it is for her, perhaps an even greater moment of danger. For if she chooses yet another voyage of achievement, still longing to be herself a hero or despising the inner feminine way of Penelope, the waiting, the weaving of the threads of life into the whole cloth of a shroud -- this time a joyful womb of death from which the new person may be born -- then her animus will cease to serve her creative spirit and will drag her down to another death.
It is essentially an inner journey for both woman and man alike: the forests, the jungles, the deserts, the times of weariness and despair. For Odysseus, the oar he carried grew to be a heavier burden, as the realization grew in his thought that the moment when he could be relieved of its weight would also be the moment of the final letting go of that which had held for him the meaning of his life. The horizon for such travelers shrinks and shrinks until they are stripped of all but the present moment -- then indeed it may expand into eternity.
King Lear
Lear: No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison:
We two alone will sing like birds, i'the cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too, -
Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out; -
And take upon's the mystery of things,
As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out,
In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones,
That ebb and flow by th'moon.
Surely in all the poetry of the world there could be no more profoundly beautiful, wise, and tender expression of the essence of old age, of the kind of life to which one may come in the last years if one has, like Lear, lived through and accepted all the passion and suffering, the darkness and light, the beauty and horror of one's experience of the world and of oneself.
Cordelia wishes to go out to meet the evil thing and confront it. Because she is young, this response is true and right. For the old, this is no longer the way - As a man grows old, his body weakens, his powers fail, his sight perhaps is dimmed, his hearing faces, his power to move around is taken from him. In one way or another, he is 'imprisoned,' and the moment of choice will come. Will he fight this confining process or will he go to meet it in the spirit of King Lear - embrace it with love, with eagerness even?
"He is growing old." We use the phrase indiscriminately about those who are in truth growing into old age, into the final flowering and meaning of their lives, and about those who are being dragged into it, protesting, resisting, crying out against their inevitable imprisonment.
The truth is that the blessing that the old may pass on to the young springs only out of that humility that is the fruit of wholeness, the humility that knows how to kneel, how to ask forgiveness. The kneeling is the blessing.
The exchange of blessings between one human being and another is the essence of life itself.
The proper occupations of old age: prayer, which is the quickening of the mind, the rooting of the attention in the ground of being; song, which is the expression of spontaneous joy in the harmony of the chaos; the 'telling of old tales,' which among all primitives was the supreme function of the old, who passed on the wisdom of the ancestor through the symbol, through the understanding of the dreams of the race that their long experience had taught them. And laughter!
All these four things are activities without purpose; any one of them is killed immediately by any hint of striving for achievement. They come to birth only in a heart freed from preoccupation with the goals of the ego, however 'spiritual' or lofty these goals may be. Shakespeare adds to this an image of listening - listening to the smallest concerns of those still caught in the goals of power. This imprisonment is never a shutting out, a rejection. Not only does the wise one listen, s/he responds: 'and we'll talk with them, too.'
It is not the function of the old to explain or to analyze or to impart information. To them comes the great opportunity of taking upon themselves the mystery of things, of become as it were, God's spies... the mysterium tremendum that is God.
Explanations and information, necessary as they are along the way, make clear only partial truths, and the danger of mistaking half-truths for truth itself cannot be exaggerated. The true mystery is the eternal paradox at the root of life itself - it s that which, instead of hiding truth, reveals the whole, not the part. So, when after having made every effort to understand, we are ready to take upon ourselves the mystery of things, then the most trivial of happenings is touched by wonder, and there may come to us, by grace, a moment of unclouded vision.
The rocket and the bomb can never at the last prevail over the golden butterfly. This was Shakespeare's ultimate certainty.
The Tempest
Now Prospero must face at last the great test to which all people come. Will s/he willingly and with full consent let go of his will to power when the moment arrives, as it does, at the height of his success?
"Forgive us... as we forgive..." Shakespeare's last three great plays are centered on the final redeeming power of forgiveness.
The ultimate experience of forgiveness brings a change of heart, a metanoia (a change in one's way of life resulting from penitence or spiritual conversion) of the spirit, after which every seeming injury, injustice, rejection, past, present or future, every so-called blow of fate, becomes, as it were, an essential note in the music of God, however discordant it may sound to our superficial hearing.
Dante describes the experience of remorse and repentance in his confrontation with his shadow when at the threshold of the Earthly Paradise he meets Beatrice and she shows him the darkness in his life. All sins are washed away and forgotten in the river Lethe, but this is not enough -- it is not yet forgiveness. He must still drink of the waters of Eunoe - the Spring of true knowing from which two rivers flow into the world. After this all the darkness, the weakness and the sin is again remembered but experienced with joy as essential to wholeness. Only then can he begin his last journey into the Paradiso toward the center where the final unity will be revealed. The Tempest is a story of the slow discovery by a highly gifted individual of the true nature of forgiveness.
William Blake:
He who bends to himself a joy
Doth the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses joy as it flies
Dwells in eternity's sunrise.
In each of us an image lives to be released - then bound in a new sense for the time during which the ego must take up responsibility for his fiery activity in our lives, and at last be set wholly free when the time comes.
We all have magical powers operating in us and influencing our environment - and they cease to be magical slowly through our lives in so far as we are able to see and recreate these unconscious images with the 'poet's eye' -- whether we are artists or writers or in whatever capacity we work in the outer world. From magical powers the images may, through conscious work and sacrifice, be transformed into creative living of the symbolic life, which leads us to self-knowledge and glimpses of the 'co-inherence' (Charles Williams' word) of all things.
If one doesn't break the staff of power and drown the magic book of spells, the 'winged life' is destroyed and the possibility of growth into death recedes. There may follow a desperate effort to hold on to youth and the past, to arrest the flow of the river of life as it approaches the ocean of eternity; or else the apathy of meaninglessness that Prospero feared may invade the psyche. So old age becomes decay, not in the natural sense of the cycle of life and death, but in the negative and horrible sense of disintegration and despair.
Passion is transmuted into compassion.
Prospero's to Ariel:
...My Ariel, - chick, -
That is thy charge: then to the elements
Be free, and fare thou well!
In the epilogue, we are aware of a startling paradox. The moment of letting go, of daring to stand alone, stripped of power and prestige, bereft of any sense of worth or superior knowledge, is at the same time the moment when such a person becomes conscious of his absolute need of 'the other' both in this world and in the Beyond.
A choice between two ways then lies ahead. We may either continue in our last years to cling to our past achievements and worn-out values, thus sinking eventually into complete dependence on others, on collective opinions, demands and attitudes; or we may confront our growing weakness and loss of energy, together with our past rejections, sins and blindness, and so approach that kind of free dependence on 'the other' which brings us to the meaning of forgiveness and to kinships with all things.
The experience of this kinship, this unity, has been described by great artists, poets, and mystics of all ages; and in our own century, voices of psychologists and quantum physicists. The reality of all life is, as it were, an unceasing dance on all levels of being, material, instinctual, psychic, and spiritual, in which every motion of the tiniest part, weaving patterns of exchange and transformation, affects the whole. It goes on in the particles of the material universe, in the lives of plants, insects, animals, in the eating and being eaten which maintain the balance of life and death in nature, in the play of opposites in the unconscious psyche; and finally, since the dawn of consciousness, it seems that there is a mystery at the center of all these movements of the dance. Then a recognition of the patterns of the dance becomes possible in our own lives, an intuition of the interdependence of each with all which is at the same time the gateway to freedom of spirit and the sunrise of eternity. There is no private salvation; exchange with the other is the door to the final awareness of the unity of all in the love which is the dance of creation.
Humanity's choice of consciousness - the knowledge of good and evil - was simultaneously God's choice of incarnation, death, and resurrection to the eternity of love. "O happy fault that wert the occasion for so great a redemption." - Liturgy for Easter Sunday
Carl Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963)
If he possesses a grain of wisdom, man will lay down his arms and name the unknown by the more unknown, "ignotum per ignotius [Latin for "the unknown by the more unknown") describes an explanation that is less familiar than the concept it would explain]: - that is, by the name of God. That is a confession of his subjection, his imperfection, and his dependence; but at the same time a testimony to his freedoom to choose between truth and error.
Give up all power to dominate, but retain in this powerless state, the basic intention of affirming joy and beauty.
Lao-tzu says: All are clear, I alone am clouded. This is the archetype of the old man who at the end, faces the growing realization that he knows nothing. Then comes the moment when either we succumb to despair -- or pass beyond all meaning and meaninglessness to that 'something else', which is the eternal in humanity and kinship.
Prayer, Forgiveness, Exchange, Mercy and Freedom. If we penetrate to their meaning for every human being we find light in the darkness of increasing age.
Prayer, says Prospero, is the way to Mercy, to Forgiveness, to Freedom. This kind of prayer is not asking or longing or begging for a desired result. It is the kind of prayer that pierces through to Mercy, where the opposites unite in pardon - and reaches beyond every demand for results. Meister Eckhart once said that we must let go even of the demand to know eternity and God.
We all get what we basically desire. Intercession from the Latin inter cedere, means 'to yield between.' The crucifixion is the greatest image of this 'yielding between,' the total yielding of God between earth and heaven.
Jung said the worst thing is to take away neurotic suffering on the surface that could lead to greater consciousness of motives. The true healer is always an 'intercessor' not a remover of symptoms. To 'intercede' is close to the word to 'forgive' or 'pardon.'
Prayer is ultimately a state of being, not a specific intention. Mercy is the compassion - the suffering with all creation and God; it takes us beyond all need for specific pardon, freeing all faults.
The oldest known root of the word 'mercy' is probably the Etruscan merc, from which commerce and merchant are derived. It is connected with basic images of exchange - value given and received between people. Commerce, debased to commercialism, has lost much of its dignity, since it often signifies greed for money through dishonest efforts to destroy competitors. But the root, deepening through the French merci to grateful response and kindness of heart, and finally to the compassion and forgiveness, including all our share of darkness, whereby we are able to open ourselves to the Mercy. This is the ultimate exchange, that, when we come to a final letting go, may reveal to us the whole.
Thank you - frees all faults.
Even when unconsciously spoken, words have power. Courtesy is a mark of the presence of love.
We are only free when our fundamental motives are transformed.
The root of the word 'free' is 'pri', meaning quite simply 'love.' It is also the origin of our word 'friend' and the Nordic goddess, Frigg, and of her day, Friday - which has been for Christians the day of the crucifiction, from which freedom is born.
In recognition of the unknown origin, source and end, in which we 'live and move and have our being.
The Self lives only in the present moment.
We all do as much harm as good except when we are aware of the dance in which darkness is an essential part of healing, which is wholeness.
Dante in The Paradiso writes of the sound of the angels in the white rose as the humming of bees. It sounds through the entire universe.
The rose has no why, it flowers because it flowers. - Angelus Silesius
Suffering comes from the Latin ferre meaning 'to bear, to carry' and 'suffer' has a prefix 'sub' meaning 'under' - like 'undercarriage' - that which bears the weight of a vehicle. Contrast it with 'affliction, grief, depression' which bring images of weight bearing down. When we suffer, we carry the weight.
The only valid cure for any kind of depression lies in the acceptance of real suffering. Everything else is palliative, laying the foundation for the next depression.
All neuroses lie here, in the conflict between growth & freedom, and our incapacity or refusal to pay the price in suffering.
Real suffering belongs to innocence, not guilt.
Passion derives from the Latin passio, meaning suffering; it is used to define the sufferings of Christ. Commonly, the word applies to any emotion that goes beyond the bounds of reason, so one is in a state of 'enthusiasm,' which in its original meaning, is the state of being filled with the god - of anger, love or hate.
The Odyssey
There are two epilogues to The Odyssey. One was written by Homer and the other many centuries later by Dante. They are alternative endings to the life of Odysseus, the hero, and the fact that the second was imagined so long after the original poem in no way invalidates it. All great stories are continued by those who respond to them, as long as their truth endures; and myths that cease to grow through the centuries will die. Dante had not even read The Odyssey (it is known that he did not read Greek), but he had heard the story.
Homer's epilogue is not actually narrated at the end of the poem, but prophesied about half-way through. It is told by Teiresias, the blind seer, who, when he meets odysseus at the border of Hades, describes the whole course of the journey that lies ahead for him. After telling of his possible homecoming and the end of his conflicts, Teiresias adds a last prophecy: there still remains for the hero another journey in his old age. He must set out once again from his home, but this time it will not be a sea journey, although he must carry with him a well-cut oar. Turning inland, he must travel on until he reaches a country where the people have never seen the sea, have never tasted salt, and know nothing about ships: he will recognize the right place when he meets a stranger, who, seeing the oar, will ask him about the "winnowing fan" he is carrying on his shoulder.
At this spot he is to halt and plant his oar firmly in the earth; then he must make a sacrifice to Poseidon -- "a ram, a bull, and a breeding boar" -- and when he returns home he must make "ceremonial offering" to all of the immortal gods in heaven -- to each of them in order.
When Odysseus is with Penelope on his first night of reunion, he tells her his story, warns her of this journey, and of the separation to be endured. So it is surprising that the poem ends with the intervention of Zeus that brought peace to the warring factions in Ithaca and a conclusion to Odysseus' fighting days, and no more is told of this strange last journey.
On the shore of the land of the Phaiakians, Odysseus is rescued and befriended by a truly human woman, the princess Nausicaa, who is one of the most enchanting young women in the stories of the world. Intelligent, courageous, wholly natural and spontaneous, but not at all naive, she has the dignity of the woman who can love without demand to possess. She has a human simplicity which is total delight after the spells and magical attractions of Circe and Calypso.
I like to think that Penelope in her youth had the same quality of light-hearted yet shrewd innocence, and that, after her long years of suffering and almost, but never quite, hopeless waiting, the laughter and innocence of maturity would be in her a source of strength to all whose lives she touched when, after Odysseus' last unrecorded journey, she would share with him the wisdom of the richly old.
Odysseus returns disguised as a beggar, and she reveals herself as a strategist every bit as intelligent as her husband, and even lets us glimpse her long hidden gift of laughter.
In the feminine psyche, the hidden power and profit motives are usually concerned with the shadow side of relationships, the subtle desire to possess and manipulate those close to us, or else to be supported, even possessed, by the love of others for the sake of protection from danger, loneliness, and responsibility. The unconscious in a man has similar problems of jealousy and possessiveness, but in the main his danger lies in the exercise of power in the outer world, whether as hero or magician. In our day, as a woman works and excels more and more in the spheres hitherto reserved for men, her power motives have become more visible in the operations of her animus, the personification of the masculine powers in her unconscious; therefore she must consciously watch the odyssey of her masculine creativity, and when she comes to the choice between the two possible 'last journeys' of the kind offered to Odysseus, it is for her, perhaps an even greater moment of danger. For if she chooses yet another voyage of achievement, still longing to be herself a hero or despising the inner feminine way of Penelope, the waiting, the weaving of the threads of life into the whole cloth of a shroud -- this time a joyful womb of death from which the new person may be born -- then her animus will cease to serve her creative spirit and will drag her down to another death.
It is essentially an inner journey for both woman and man alike: the forests, the jungles, the deserts, the times of weariness and despair. For Odysseus, the oar he carried grew to be a heavier burden, as the realization grew in his thought that the moment when he could be relieved of its weight would also be the moment of the final letting go of that which had held for him the meaning of his life. The horizon for such travelers shrinks and shrinks until they are stripped of all but the present moment -- then indeed it may expand into eternity.
King Lear
Lear: No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison:
We two alone will sing like birds, i'the cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too, -
Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out; -
And take upon's the mystery of things,
As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out,
In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones,
That ebb and flow by th'moon.
Surely in all the poetry of the world there could be no more profoundly beautiful, wise, and tender expression of the essence of old age, of the kind of life to which one may come in the last years if one has, like Lear, lived through and accepted all the passion and suffering, the darkness and light, the beauty and horror of one's experience of the world and of oneself.
Cordelia wishes to go out to meet the evil thing and confront it. Because she is young, this response is true and right. For the old, this is no longer the way - As a man grows old, his body weakens, his powers fail, his sight perhaps is dimmed, his hearing faces, his power to move around is taken from him. In one way or another, he is 'imprisoned,' and the moment of choice will come. Will he fight this confining process or will he go to meet it in the spirit of King Lear - embrace it with love, with eagerness even?
"He is growing old." We use the phrase indiscriminately about those who are in truth growing into old age, into the final flowering and meaning of their lives, and about those who are being dragged into it, protesting, resisting, crying out against their inevitable imprisonment.
The truth is that the blessing that the old may pass on to the young springs only out of that humility that is the fruit of wholeness, the humility that knows how to kneel, how to ask forgiveness. The kneeling is the blessing.
The exchange of blessings between one human being and another is the essence of life itself.
The proper occupations of old age: prayer, which is the quickening of the mind, the rooting of the attention in the ground of being; song, which is the expression of spontaneous joy in the harmony of the chaos; the 'telling of old tales,' which among all primitives was the supreme function of the old, who passed on the wisdom of the ancestor through the symbol, through the understanding of the dreams of the race that their long experience had taught them. And laughter!
All these four things are activities without purpose; any one of them is killed immediately by any hint of striving for achievement. They come to birth only in a heart freed from preoccupation with the goals of the ego, however 'spiritual' or lofty these goals may be. Shakespeare adds to this an image of listening - listening to the smallest concerns of those still caught in the goals of power. This imprisonment is never a shutting out, a rejection. Not only does the wise one listen, s/he responds: 'and we'll talk with them, too.'
It is not the function of the old to explain or to analyze or to impart information. To them comes the great opportunity of taking upon themselves the mystery of things, of become as it were, God's spies... the mysterium tremendum that is God.
Explanations and information, necessary as they are along the way, make clear only partial truths, and the danger of mistaking half-truths for truth itself cannot be exaggerated. The true mystery is the eternal paradox at the root of life itself - it s that which, instead of hiding truth, reveals the whole, not the part. So, when after having made every effort to understand, we are ready to take upon ourselves the mystery of things, then the most trivial of happenings is touched by wonder, and there may come to us, by grace, a moment of unclouded vision.
The rocket and the bomb can never at the last prevail over the golden butterfly. This was Shakespeare's ultimate certainty.
The Tempest
Now Prospero must face at last the great test to which all people come. Will s/he willingly and with full consent let go of his will to power when the moment arrives, as it does, at the height of his success?
"Forgive us... as we forgive..." Shakespeare's last three great plays are centered on the final redeeming power of forgiveness.
The ultimate experience of forgiveness brings a change of heart, a metanoia (a change in one's way of life resulting from penitence or spiritual conversion) of the spirit, after which every seeming injury, injustice, rejection, past, present or future, every so-called blow of fate, becomes, as it were, an essential note in the music of God, however discordant it may sound to our superficial hearing.
Dante describes the experience of remorse and repentance in his confrontation with his shadow when at the threshold of the Earthly Paradise he meets Beatrice and she shows him the darkness in his life. All sins are washed away and forgotten in the river Lethe, but this is not enough -- it is not yet forgiveness. He must still drink of the waters of Eunoe - the Spring of true knowing from which two rivers flow into the world. After this all the darkness, the weakness and the sin is again remembered but experienced with joy as essential to wholeness. Only then can he begin his last journey into the Paradiso toward the center where the final unity will be revealed. The Tempest is a story of the slow discovery by a highly gifted individual of the true nature of forgiveness.
William Blake:
He who bends to himself a joy
Doth the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses joy as it flies
Dwells in eternity's sunrise.
In each of us an image lives to be released - then bound in a new sense for the time during which the ego must take up responsibility for his fiery activity in our lives, and at last be set wholly free when the time comes.
We all have magical powers operating in us and influencing our environment - and they cease to be magical slowly through our lives in so far as we are able to see and recreate these unconscious images with the 'poet's eye' -- whether we are artists or writers or in whatever capacity we work in the outer world. From magical powers the images may, through conscious work and sacrifice, be transformed into creative living of the symbolic life, which leads us to self-knowledge and glimpses of the 'co-inherence' (Charles Williams' word) of all things.
If one doesn't break the staff of power and drown the magic book of spells, the 'winged life' is destroyed and the possibility of growth into death recedes. There may follow a desperate effort to hold on to youth and the past, to arrest the flow of the river of life as it approaches the ocean of eternity; or else the apathy of meaninglessness that Prospero feared may invade the psyche. So old age becomes decay, not in the natural sense of the cycle of life and death, but in the negative and horrible sense of disintegration and despair.
Passion is transmuted into compassion.
Prospero's to Ariel:
...My Ariel, - chick, -
That is thy charge: then to the elements
Be free, and fare thou well!
In the epilogue, we are aware of a startling paradox. The moment of letting go, of daring to stand alone, stripped of power and prestige, bereft of any sense of worth or superior knowledge, is at the same time the moment when such a person becomes conscious of his absolute need of 'the other' both in this world and in the Beyond.
A choice between two ways then lies ahead. We may either continue in our last years to cling to our past achievements and worn-out values, thus sinking eventually into complete dependence on others, on collective opinions, demands and attitudes; or we may confront our growing weakness and loss of energy, together with our past rejections, sins and blindness, and so approach that kind of free dependence on 'the other' which brings us to the meaning of forgiveness and to kinships with all things.
The experience of this kinship, this unity, has been described by great artists, poets, and mystics of all ages; and in our own century, voices of psychologists and quantum physicists. The reality of all life is, as it were, an unceasing dance on all levels of being, material, instinctual, psychic, and spiritual, in which every motion of the tiniest part, weaving patterns of exchange and transformation, affects the whole. It goes on in the particles of the material universe, in the lives of plants, insects, animals, in the eating and being eaten which maintain the balance of life and death in nature, in the play of opposites in the unconscious psyche; and finally, since the dawn of consciousness, it seems that there is a mystery at the center of all these movements of the dance. Then a recognition of the patterns of the dance becomes possible in our own lives, an intuition of the interdependence of each with all which is at the same time the gateway to freedom of spirit and the sunrise of eternity. There is no private salvation; exchange with the other is the door to the final awareness of the unity of all in the love which is the dance of creation.
Humanity's choice of consciousness - the knowledge of good and evil - was simultaneously God's choice of incarnation, death, and resurrection to the eternity of love. "O happy fault that wert the occasion for so great a redemption." - Liturgy for Easter Sunday
Carl Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963)
If he possesses a grain of wisdom, man will lay down his arms and name the unknown by the more unknown, "ignotum per ignotius [Latin for "the unknown by the more unknown") describes an explanation that is less familiar than the concept it would explain]: - that is, by the name of God. That is a confession of his subjection, his imperfection, and his dependence; but at the same time a testimony to his freedoom to choose between truth and error.
Give up all power to dominate, but retain in this powerless state, the basic intention of affirming joy and beauty.
Lao-tzu says: All are clear, I alone am clouded. This is the archetype of the old man who at the end, faces the growing realization that he knows nothing. Then comes the moment when either we succumb to despair -- or pass beyond all meaning and meaninglessness to that 'something else', which is the eternal in humanity and kinship.
Prayer, Forgiveness, Exchange, Mercy and Freedom. If we penetrate to their meaning for every human being we find light in the darkness of increasing age.
Prayer, says Prospero, is the way to Mercy, to Forgiveness, to Freedom. This kind of prayer is not asking or longing or begging for a desired result. It is the kind of prayer that pierces through to Mercy, where the opposites unite in pardon - and reaches beyond every demand for results. Meister Eckhart once said that we must let go even of the demand to know eternity and God.
We all get what we basically desire. Intercession from the Latin inter cedere, means 'to yield between.' The crucifixion is the greatest image of this 'yielding between,' the total yielding of God between earth and heaven.
Jung said the worst thing is to take away neurotic suffering on the surface that could lead to greater consciousness of motives. The true healer is always an 'intercessor' not a remover of symptoms. To 'intercede' is close to the word to 'forgive' or 'pardon.'
Prayer is ultimately a state of being, not a specific intention. Mercy is the compassion - the suffering with all creation and God; it takes us beyond all need for specific pardon, freeing all faults.
The oldest known root of the word 'mercy' is probably the Etruscan merc, from which commerce and merchant are derived. It is connected with basic images of exchange - value given and received between people. Commerce, debased to commercialism, has lost much of its dignity, since it often signifies greed for money through dishonest efforts to destroy competitors. But the root, deepening through the French merci to grateful response and kindness of heart, and finally to the compassion and forgiveness, including all our share of darkness, whereby we are able to open ourselves to the Mercy. This is the ultimate exchange, that, when we come to a final letting go, may reveal to us the whole.
Thank you - frees all faults.
Even when unconsciously spoken, words have power. Courtesy is a mark of the presence of love.
We are only free when our fundamental motives are transformed.
The root of the word 'free' is 'pri', meaning quite simply 'love.' It is also the origin of our word 'friend' and the Nordic goddess, Frigg, and of her day, Friday - which has been for Christians the day of the crucifiction, from which freedom is born.
In recognition of the unknown origin, source and end, in which we 'live and move and have our being.
The Self lives only in the present moment.
We all do as much harm as good except when we are aware of the dance in which darkness is an essential part of healing, which is wholeness.
Dante in The Paradiso writes of the sound of the angels in the white rose as the humming of bees. It sounds through the entire universe.
The rose has no why, it flowers because it flowers. - Angelus Silesius
Suffering comes from the Latin ferre meaning 'to bear, to carry' and 'suffer' has a prefix 'sub' meaning 'under' - like 'undercarriage' - that which bears the weight of a vehicle. Contrast it with 'affliction, grief, depression' which bring images of weight bearing down. When we suffer, we carry the weight.
The only valid cure for any kind of depression lies in the acceptance of real suffering. Everything else is palliative, laying the foundation for the next depression.
All neuroses lie here, in the conflict between growth & freedom, and our incapacity or refusal to pay the price in suffering.
Real suffering belongs to innocence, not guilt.
Passion derives from the Latin passio, meaning suffering; it is used to define the sufferings of Christ. Commonly, the word applies to any emotion that goes beyond the bounds of reason, so one is in a state of 'enthusiasm,' which in its original meaning, is the state of being filled with the god - of anger, love or hate.
April 25, 2021
4.5 stars
I am no Jungian scholar or disciple, so some of the context was lost on me in these essays by Helen M. Luke. I didn't realize that these would be literary essays, but they are so much more than that. They are discourses, almost sermons. I plan to find a copy of this so I can come back to it and mark it up. It was too much to digest in one sitting. I loved The Odyssey epilogue and now find I will need to read The Tempest ASAP. Here are the literary works she uses in this book:
The Odyssey
King Lear
The Tempest (by far the longest in this book)
Little Gidding
And then a final discourse on suffering.
If you are interested in the intersection of literature and spiritual transcendence (e.g. through Religion or Jungian studies), you will probably find this book rewarding. Others will likely be bored to tears. I do recommend reading the works above before reading the corresponding essays but it is not strictly necessary.
I am no Jungian scholar or disciple, so some of the context was lost on me in these essays by Helen M. Luke. I didn't realize that these would be literary essays, but they are so much more than that. They are discourses, almost sermons. I plan to find a copy of this so I can come back to it and mark it up. It was too much to digest in one sitting. I loved The Odyssey epilogue and now find I will need to read The Tempest ASAP. Here are the literary works she uses in this book:
The Odyssey
King Lear
The Tempest (by far the longest in this book)
Little Gidding
And then a final discourse on suffering.
If you are interested in the intersection of literature and spiritual transcendence (e.g. through Religion or Jungian studies), you will probably find this book rewarding. Others will likely be bored to tears. I do recommend reading the works above before reading the corresponding essays but it is not strictly necessary.
September 14, 2010
I really enjoyed thinking about the aging process within the frame of literature. Helen Luke (jungian analyst) looks at characters from literature (odessyus, king lear, prospero etc.). It is interestinig that so many of the works she chose were written by these authors at the end of their life. What is presented is a view of old age as a process and a place that is not an end or an antichamber for the next life, but a space that leaves room for growth even when one is facing the end of their life. In a society that undervalues (or is downright fearful of) old age, Luke's analysis brings hope that there are "gifts" waiting for us despite the reality of aging.
"in old age wandering on a trail of beaut lively may
I walk
In old age: wndering on a trail of bauty living
shsin msy I walk.
It is finished in beauty."
-and Merican Indian "Nightway " chant
"in old age wandering on a trail of beaut lively may
I walk
In old age: wndering on a trail of bauty living
shsin msy I walk.
It is finished in beauty."
-and Merican Indian "Nightway " chant
February 15, 2018
A very short book with 5 thoughtful essays. The chapter on Prospero was particularly good.
From the Introduction: " Drawing on the masterworks of Home, Dante, Shakespeare and T.S. Eliot; reading those works with an understanding formed through years of absorbing and reflecting upon the insights of Carl Jung...", "The choice... (should we choose to *grow* old, instead of merely sinking into the aging process)"
From the Introduction: " Drawing on the masterworks of Home, Dante, Shakespeare and T.S. Eliot; reading those works with an understanding formed through years of absorbing and reflecting upon the insights of Carl Jung...", "The choice... (should we choose to *grow* old, instead of merely sinking into the aging process)"
November 18, 2017
Wisdom
Helen Luke was among the most prolific and poetic of Jungian writers. In this, her last work, she integrates themes from great literature, philosophy, and psychology to explore the inner experience of a well-lived life in old age. This book is a gem.
Helen Luke was among the most prolific and poetic of Jungian writers. In this, her last work, she integrates themes from great literature, philosophy, and psychology to explore the inner experience of a well-lived life in old age. This book is a gem.
October 20, 2021
Old Age is a poignant, short study of the gifts of growing older from a Jungian perspective. Luke uses Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, and TS Eliot to enhance her thoughts. As we can make meaning out of the suffering, the challenges, and the darkness in our lives, we can move to peace, mercy, and joy in the last third of our lives. Accepting the opposites which conflict us or that we repress or bury is an essential practice. I felt a relief and joy in reading Old Age. All the personal growth, the making my unconscious conscious, and accepting the middle ground of the opposites is all worth the journey.
August 21, 2025
"In these five essays, Helen Luke writes about classic texts with an easy grace that belies the depth and precision of her thoughts on the transformative mysteries of old age and suffering. We feel her much as she describes Nausicaa: 'a truly human woman . . . Intelligent, courageous . . . not at all naive, she has already the dignity of the woman who can love without demand to possess.'"
~~back cover
The classic texts are: The Odyssey; King Lear; The Tempest; Little Gidding. The last essay, "Suffering," is written by the author. Personally, I found the delving into these works off putting -- not anything I could relate to.
~~back cover
The classic texts are: The Odyssey; King Lear; The Tempest; Little Gidding. The last essay, "Suffering," is written by the author. Personally, I found the delving into these works off putting -- not anything I could relate to.
September 24, 2017
Using The Odyssey, King Lear, The Tempest and Little Gidding, Helen Luke brilliantly deals with the aging process; the need to ask forgiveness, to let go of the needs of the ego to compete and achieve, allowing the true self to emerge. Her final chapter looks at the true meaning of suffering and how it leads to compassion, the lightening of the burdens of others, and finally, to joy. I loved her wisdom and insights and if I had any criticism at all, it would be of the frequent appearance of typos in the kindle version. Other than that, it was a superb read.
April 2, 2021
Lots and lots of rambling and quotes from 'the greats'....like an old crusty English Teacher more absorbed with hearing herself than anything else so yawn....and, meh
Didn't find any helpful or interesting nuggets re old age in reading this book...just.... endless musings.
Skimmed over most.
Didn't find any helpful or interesting nuggets re old age in reading this book...just.... endless musings.
Skimmed over most.
May 19, 2022
Oh my goodness!
This magnificent little book is one of the simplest and most profound that I have ever read. In fact, it is so soul moving that I cannot find words to describe it. If you are a person who finds meaning in the inner workings of the soul and true joy in symbol’s capacity to reveal the depths, this book should be a dog-eared companion on your way.
This magnificent little book is one of the simplest and most profound that I have ever read. In fact, it is so soul moving that I cannot find words to describe it. If you are a person who finds meaning in the inner workings of the soul and true joy in symbol’s capacity to reveal the depths, this book should be a dog-eared companion on your way.
December 25, 2023
Well written and Insightful Book
This book is brief but very well written with a lot of good insights into aging. I will re-read several times because there is a lot to take in and to internalize.
This book is brief but very well written with a lot of good insights into aging. I will re-read several times because there is a lot to take in and to internalize.
April 5, 2018
simplistic
May 6, 2023
A little treasure from a lover of Jung, Shakespeare, and the contemplative path. Helen Luke's writings on mercy have had a profound impact on me. I'm glad to have finally read them at their source.
March 6, 2025
Marvellous. I caught glimpses of truth reading this through for the first time, but it is a book to meditate on. I couldn’t grasp its meaning for me in a first reading.
March 5, 2017
Enjoyed the dive back into Jungian perceptions and philosophy, not to mention the literary classics to which the author turns for illumination. Liked it so much I bought my own copy!
December 2, 2009
Shakespeare's The Tempest. Little Gidding by T.S. Eliot. The Odyessy.
All provide clues as to the questions we must answer as we age. The last chapter on suffering took a different bent. When we suffer for the sake of love, or offer it for love, there is some action at the heart of life. Etty Hillesum would agree.
All provide clues as to the questions we must answer as we age. The last chapter on suffering took a different bent. When we suffer for the sake of love, or offer it for love, there is some action at the heart of life. Etty Hillesum would agree.
January 10, 2011
Compared to childhood, 'old age' is uncharted. Helen Luke illuminates the tasks of my time of life, using the tales of Shakespeare and others as the inspiration, and without leaving the realm of mystery. You don't need to wait for old age to take up the task of living into simplicity.
March 8, 2014
Beautiful, beautiful book by a Jungian psychologist in which the author uses classics such as "The Odyssy" and "The Tempest " to illuminate and I do mean illuminate the aging process. Not an easy read but I hope I will read it at least once more in my lifetime.
December 19, 2014
Did NOT want to read this book, but it was book club so I had to. It is short, very academic but really gave me a lot to think about. Also the book club discussion was excellent, we all saw it from different views. It articulates what goes on as you age, as your parents age.
October 8, 2015
I read this book for my book group. It is so interesting, and so dense, that we have decided to re-read it, and go through each chapter, one at a time over a series of months, trying to glean what is in her beautiful analogies.
August 27, 2009
Reflections from Homer's Odyssey, King Lear, The Tempest, and Little Gidding.
May 29, 2012
I first read this in 1987 but only now do I fully appreciate how profound Luke is in her selections and interpretations of Lear and the Odyssey --it is a great book.
April 13, 2014
After reading as my grandfather once said, "So many wonderful things to think about."
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