Rachel Hillel: The Redemption of the Feminine Erotic Soul (1997)

Newlstter, FEBRUARY 1998

The Redemption of the Feminine Erotic Soul

Rachel Hillel

1997: Nicholas Hays, Inc., 151 pps.

Rachel Hillel is no stranger to Montreal audiences, having lectured to the C. G. Jung Society of Montreal, as she says in her acknowledgments, five times.

On meeting Rachel on the occasion of her first visit to the Society, what impressed us most was that here was a speaker who was truly present. Although she spoke from a prepared text on The Divinity Within, she began her presentation with a dream she had dreamt in anticipation of her visit.

In the material that followed on this occasion and on later visits, she enjoined us in her exploration of biblical sources for evidence of the feminine. As she uncovered psychological truths in traditional religious texts and in the roots of their Hebrew words, the fact that she had experienced a secular upbringing, devoid of formal religious training, only fuelled her enthusiasm.

Significantly, Rachel Hillel was not asking that we replace an exclusively masculine frame of reference with a feminine, but that we restore the feminine values that had been rejected by our western patriarchal culture and by individual consciousness.

The findings of The Redemption of the Feminine Erotic Soul are not inconsistent with her earlier work, but its starting point is not biblical heroines, who are to be the subject of a later book, but the dream material of a number of her women analysands. Many of the dreams, in Hillel’s view, have a collective significance.

One in particular holds interest for students of Jungian Psychology. The dreamer was in fact in the final stages of her training as a Jungian analyst.

Jung is an old man and obviously dying when he implores the dreamer to allow him to place his hand in her vagina so that he may be restored. Although shocked by his request, the dreamer reluctantly complies. Shortly after, not only is Jung alive, but “completely healed”.

After commenting on the choice of the vagina image to shock the dreamer into awareness, Hillel identifies it with the Goddess’s vulva - “the seat of life’s affirmation, an abode of desirousness and ecstatic passions.” She concludes her interpretation:

The dream’s telos, its purposeful meaning, is a statement. It is a containment within transpersonal feminine powers that can restore sacredness to an impoverished spirit which had shriveled into an intellect. Erotic-sensuality, divine passion, the mystery and vigor or the vulva carry the hope of transformative restoration for the “ailing king”.

Another dream which Hillel interprets from an individual perspective, also involves a vagina or sacred vulva. The dreamer, a successful psychotherapist, receives a professional visit from Mary, a healer, whose treatment consists of “applying a syringe to (the dreamer’s) vagina.” She injected, the dreamer recalls, “a gentle substance four times at evenly spaced points, thus forming the shape of a cross. Her touch felt cozy and wonderfully soothing. As I woke up I felt a sense of comfort and great peace.”

Mary, in the dreamer’s view, has remarkable healing talents which she protects by nurturing and taking care of herself to balance the demands made on her by others. She refuses to depart from a routine she has established of early bed time, prayer and meditation before dawn and restful noon hours devoted to walking, gardening, writing, dancing, singing and playing music.

The dreamer, like many women of her generation, has allowed her vocation to become all-consuming. There is little room in her world for family, friends and “life’s sponta-neous flow.” With this dream, Hillel concludes:

Nora’s psyche compensated for her alienated attitude by clearly indicating that she must cure her neglected femininity. In a present-day efficient ego like Nora’s, a feminine earthy centre--a vessel of sanctified sensuality is absent. The sacred vulva, the place where sensuality and sacredness are reconciled, needs to be healed. Mary enacted the arche-typal role of sacred priestess and applied a balm to Nora’s wounded vulva through the injections.

In contrast to the dreamer who is possessed uncon-sciously by the masculine onesidedness of contemporary feminism, father’s daughters are governed by the “shoulds” and “oughts” of masculine monotheism. Their individuality is marked by a polite, cooperative persona. Namely, ego and persona are one. Without access to their female instinctuality, they are unable to discriminate whom they should trust or suspect. Because they deny their shadows, their aggression tends to be projected on others who more often than not introject it and meet the expectations of these daughters of the Father.

Rachel Hillel’s position on the significance of dreams, “big” and small, is consistent with Jungian theory. Where she does differ from many practitioners, however, is on her insistence that if the analysand is reluctant to discuss a dream, that right must be respected. Moreover, experience has taught her that some “big dreams” touch on the per-sonal dilemmas of the analyst of which the analysand has no knowledge. Should the meaningful insights these offer be ignored, the consequences for the analyst’s process may be destructive.

Dreams of this nature are experienced by the analyst as synchronistic. A fourfold experience of synchronistic happenings which occurred a number of years ago, are described by Rachel Hillel at some length. It was Epiphany week. Epiphany, we are reminded, comes from the Greek and Latin word epiphanis meaning “the showing forth”.

These “light bringers”, or manifestations of the divine, occur at the darkest time of the year. Yet it was not the birth of a masculine deity that was being celebrated by the Magi bearing gifts, but “a female deity in all her glorious sensual features” who, unheralded and unplanned, chose to make her appearance.

The week began for the author when she drove to her local New England town with a lengthy shopping list, beginning with the bookbinder. She never made it to the bookbinder. Instead, her attention was caught by the sign of a fancy lingerie store, Gazebo, which she had passed unnoticed many times before. On entering Gazebo, Hillel recalls:

Spellbound, I was instantly transported to an earthly paradise. A great variety of refined textures bewitched me, a feast to the tactile and visual senses. The radiant beauty and the luxury everywhere were stunning, luring me into touching and trying on an abundance of the finest linen, silk and lace for hours. A daring color profusion, an entire array of shades and hues, unfolded before my eyes: the regal glow of gold and silver, voluptuous iridescent brilliance, pale, soothing tones ... Bewitched, enthralled by the discovery of the Gazebo, a name that connotes great vistas, I alternated between looking, touching, trying on garments, and buying.

The Gazebo experience was followed later in Epiphany week by a visit to a New York skincare salon operated by Miriam who, it soon became apparent, was a priestess in the service of the Goddess. Seized by feminine archetypal contents, she compulsively lived them out in her practice as a cosmetician.

The third event happened on the evening following Miriam’s ministrations when Hillel attended a performance of Richard Wagner’s opera, Tannhauser. Although Wagner as a product of his time condemned the erotic-sensual realm in the libretto of his opera, his music compensates. There, erotic-sensuality is portrayed “as sublime, fascinating and elating.” The opposites in Tannhauser are spirit and flesh, or virgin and whore, represented by the chaste Elisabeth and the Goddess Venus. Yet there is no reconciliation, but a one-dimensional split on the side of nineteenth century Christian values.

Two thoughts in particular remained with Hillel as she left the performance. Because Venus as a goddess is unmediated by a human container, it is impossible for Tannhauser to relate to her. Elisabeth, in contrast, is a mortal woman with whom a love relationship is possible. “Thus, in principle, the two realms, erotic-sensuality versus Christian ethics, as presented in the opera, do not offer equal partnership.”

The other thought concerns the Pope’s staff. If Tannhauser’s repentance is accepted, it is to sprout green leaves. Miraculously, this happens, thus affirming Wagner’s faith in the vigour of instinctual life.

The fourth event of Epiphany week, revolving around that same theme of erotic-sensuality, involved a patient who had been in analysis with Hillel for over a year. She brought three consecutive dreams.

In the first dream, Sally notices a small statue of Aphrodite in her garden. It is her duty to recover it. Although she suffers from severe allergies which make the garden out of bounds to her, without hesitation, she picks up the statue and brings it to her living quarters.

In the second dream, Sally is in bed with her husband, when she notices a photograph of Aphrodite on the wall. She suddenly becomes aware that it is her birthright to initiate sex. Having acted on her desires, she realizes that she is being true to herself and is “no longer shy about (her) animal lust.”

The last dream, which Sally later denied having dreamt, was brief: “I teach prostitution at the college.” In commenting on the dream and its denial, Hillel states that Sally had not yet learnt to take dreams symbolically, rather than literally, and that “her shame at admitting sexual lust (was) too great.” Because this was early in Sally’s analysis, she decided to collude with her patient’s denial and await the return of this theme at a later stage. In support of her decision, Hillel writes:

The unconscious tends to repeat significant themes: thus with no pressure, no coercing of premature interpretations, inner maturation processes allow the transformation required to accept “shadowy”, until now, matters. They lose their tremendum, their terrifying hold, their “devilish” numinous qualities.

—Alice Johnston