Psyche: Images and Shadows, Snakes and Mirrors

This section of Hillman most clearly, to me, seemed like a call to attend to the psyche, which I understand as that which is deeper, unspoken, intangible, non-literal, not obvious, and must be sought as opposed to the appearance and existence of the dayworld which is much more on a surface level, things taken at face value. The psyche is the ideation of the underworld, and therefore, we associate it with shadows, yet not normal shadows cast by light (because we must get to the more metaphoric kinds of understanding). Logically, Hillman asks,

How can there be shadows in the dark? The problem is very much like trying to sense the movement of one's own shadow. Trying to catch a glimmer in the shape behind the scenes [etymologically, Hillman says that the Greek versions of shadow "skia" and scene are related], to tune into what else is going on in what seems to be a natural action or simple conversation is precisely "trying to see shadows in the dark." It is to notice the fantasy in the moment, to witness the psyche's shadow play in our unconscious daily living. - 52, my emphasis

It is here that I feel Hillman is seconding the notion brought up in class relative to Frye: OF COURSE WE HAVE TO READ INTO THINGS, for this is how meaning is created, how meaning becomes, how we enter into the meaning of a text. Which moves me nicely back to the labyrinth. Two paragraphs down, Hillman writes,

So again, entering the underworld is like entering the mode of reflection, mirroring, which suggests that we may enter the underworld by means of reflection, by reflective means: pausing, pondering, change of pace, voice, or glance, dropping levels. Such reflection is less willed and directed; it is less determinedly introspective like a heroic descent into the underworld to see what is going on there. - 52

The labyrinth Daedelus designed for Minos required descent under the palace; other incarnations of labyrinth suggest descent into chaos or madness, the depths of human existence, the depth psychology of Hillman. In the film Uzumaki, this labyrinth imagery is further connected to the idea of mirroring, of reflection, when a character carefully places a mythically-infused mirror into a washing machine before going down to experience and die in its vortex. He also films himself doing this. As other characters are trying to decipher the meaning in this, they discover that the word transliterated "kagami" is the same, although written differently, set of syllables used to mean both mirror and snake, the snake's coils being a natural version of the uzumaki or spiral. The whole town in this film is slowly being sucked into or possessed by the uzumaki, something most are unable to recognize because they are living so fully on the surface, without a depth of and for reflection. Sometimes when we descend deep into reflection, we lose ourselves, we lose the dayworld in the spiralling, pulling interconnectedness. And that is as it should be, for as Hillman argues, we must leave the dayworld meanings behind us and seek the metaphoric in our underworld imaginings.