Jean Shinoda Bolen

Three meaningful themes emerge in this account of one woman's midlife passage: the struggle for authenticity, the importance of naming experiences and sharing life stories, and the merging of masculine and feminine energies. It is empowering to read an account that implies, "This is my personal experience, and this is how I believe it reflects the experience of others." In liberating herself, Bolen seeks to liberate others, all the while encouraging women to share their thoughts and show more feelings, give words to their experiences so that no one need be alone. She shares the story of the disintegration of her marriage, and with surprisingly little detail manages to evoke feelings of recognition and understanding. She shares the story of her friend celebrating her menopause with separation from her husband and yielding her reproductive system to advanced cervical cancer that had invaded her lymph system, not yet knowing if she would be in the 50% who would survive for five years. There is a small cast of characters, yet without discussing menopause or hot flashes, Bolen describes a process that is common to many women at midlife. Not only is her journey one of hard-won insight, it is also a description of a real-life pilgrimage to sacred places. Her pilgrimage experience creates an archetype for menopausal women. Standing barefoot on the High Altar at Glastonbury, she experiences the merging of God and Goddess—the divine flow of masculine and feminine. A year later she looks back and knows that at that moment she was experiencing her last bleed—it was her moment of menopause. Her integration of the Grail story creates a work that should be just as meaningful to men as women, particularly the last half of the book. Powerful, comforting, loving. Each time I finish a book, I think of someone I know that would benefit from reading it. Crossing to Avalon goes on my list for "Everyone Over 40 and Nearly Everyone Else." show less

I read this book as a senior in college, and more than twenty years later I still come back to its wisdom and insights.

Bolen, a Jungian psychologist, uses seven Greek goddesses as archetypal templates to help women -- and men -- understand some of the powerful psychological patterns that operate in women's lives. She divides them into three categories: the vulnerable (Hera, Demeter, Persephone) who are defined by their relationships; the virgin (Hestia, Athena, Artemis) who are not defined show more by their relationships; and Aphrodite, whom she calls "The Alchemical Goddess" who has relationships but is not hurt by them in the way the vulnerable goddesses are. Each archetype has its strengths and riches, and each has its shadows and challenges.

While no one goddess sums up any one women, Bolen's illumination of how the ancient stories convey forces that remain part of our psyches today is extremely valuable. I highly recommend it. show less

Quantum physics has defined a basic unit of matter that makes up all things, both organic and inorganic, which is pure energy. The same unit of energy that is a part of your body today may, only days before, have been a part of a bird flying over Beijing or an Ethiopian villager. This "new" knowledge from modern physics sounds very much like the Tao—in Eastern philosophies, the "unifying principle in the universe to which everything in the world relates" (p. 3). The tao (lowercase) is the show more life path that is in harmony with the universe, the "path with heart" (p. xii). Jung believed that all people and all animate and inanimate objects are linked through a collective unconscious. Synchronicity, he said, was a connecting principle that manifests through "meaningful coincidences" (p. 6). Bolen proposes that synchronicity is the Tao of psychology; it relates the individual to the totality. She makes good use of anecdotes to explain Jung's layers of consciousness, the Jungian analytical tools of amplification and active imagination, and the difference between causality and synchronicity. Bolen has a gift for making clear Jungian concepts that seem obtuse or hazy in the hands of other writers. show less

I have a shelf of books that I have labeled “personal mythology.” By that I mean, books that apply insights from ancient mythology and folklore to today, to the psychology of individuals. Several of them let you classify yourself as to type. For example, there are the series by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette dealing with the warrior, king, lover, and magician (or shaman) within, those mature masculine archetypes. Then there are titles like these: The Maiden King by Robert Bly and show more Marion Woodman; Men and the Water of Life by Michael Meade; Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa P. Estés; The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By by Carol Pearson; and the like.

Probably my favorite among these books, however, is Gods in Everyman (Harper, 1988) by the psychiatrist, Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen. (Her previous books had been The Tao of Psychology and Goddesses in Everywoman, but the one I discovered first turned out to be the most meaningful one to me.) Using the pantheon of Greek gods, she explores the relationships between fathers and sons and identifies eight male types still prominent in human affairs today. Perhaps her most important chapter, of course, is the one entitled “Finding our Myths—Remembering Ourselves.” But before she arrives at that point, she works up the meanings of each of the eight gods. There are the three father archetypes: Zeus, god of the sky, who represents the realm of will and power; Poseidon, god of the sea, the realm of emotion and instinct; and Hades, god of the underworld, realm of the soul and the unconscious. Of course, there is a bit of all three in all men, especially those of us who become fathers ourselves and take on leadership or managerial roles.

But I must admit that it’s what she calls the “generation of the sons” that first captured my attention. Of course, I had always wanted to be an Apollo-type, god of the sun, hero and favorite son. I knew from early on that I was not cut out for that nor to be an Ares, god of war, that is a warrior, dancer, and womanizer. My father himself, I recognized, had been an Hephaestes, god of the forge, a craftsman, inventor, and loner, but he had always been frustrated in achieving fulfillment of his inner nature. I had inherited none of those genes at all. I knew that I might be a Hermes, the messenger god. In fact, I had done my best to become a communicator and traveler, even a trickster if the truth be known. But to my shock (and, at first, to my dismay), I discovered that in Dr. Bolen’s schemata, I fit better the Dionysus role, god of wine and revelry—the mystic, lover, wanderer.

The author devotes a chapter to each god/type. First, she tells the Olympian’s story; then she explores his archetypal patterns. Then she defines the male type associated with the god, from his early years and parents through adolescence and young adulthood, including such topics as work, relationships with women and with other men, sexuality, marriage, and fatherhood. She proceeds through the middle years and old age, always relating the type to stories of the Greek god. Finally, she concludes with psychological difficulties associated with the type and suggests ways for him to grow. For example, the Zeus character may be subject to a “might makes right mentality,” may fear the usurper, may maintain an emotional distance from others, and even become subject to images of grandiosity (“the emperor’s new clothes”).

She always develops interesting ways for the god/type to grow. For the Zeus man, for example, she says it is often a heart attack that fells him. “To save his life he needs to come down from the summit . . . . This man may finally get the message that [a heart condition] isn’t just a physical problem, but a physical expression of an emotional problem.” Even more interesting, she concludes the Zeus chapter with the unhealed wound of the Grail legend. “As long as his wound remains unhealed his kingdom will stay a wasteland.”

OK, OK, you say, this may all be too pat. On one level, I think of it as a kind of parlor game, not unlike the daily horoscope. You can read yourself into any one of the god types. But I recommend the book, especially to teachers and family men, for two reasons: it gives a fascinating new way to study and understand those old familiar stories we tell our children, and introduces new stories that we may not have heard before. Furthermore, it provides an engaging way to think about one’s own nature and one’s relations with others. I’ve learned to enjoy being a Bacchus; I’ve even learned to see his positive side and, more or less. control his weaknesses. And I was fortunate enough to marry a Demeter, but that’s another story. (Demeters raise Venus and Athena both to a new level! To me, Demeter is the ideal woman, but that’s a Bacchus speaking, you understand.)

By the way, I read placemats in Chinese restaurants too. I’m a rat. Rats do well to marry dragons. But Dr. Bolen’s books are a good bit more scientific than you might guess from my description. I rank her work well above the popular Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. At least for my own personal mythology. show less