Meeting ‘The Death Mother Archetype’

Meeting ‘The Death Mother Archetype’

In a wide-ranging conversation, Sara Avant Stover and I explored Death Mother from several perspectives. Sara’s own insights prompted me to move between different areas of my research, and our exchange encompassed trauma psychology, Jungian analysis, anthropology, evolution and personal experience

Being Animal

I knew that I was an animal. I had studied ecology and understood that I was part of the web of life. I had studied evolution and understood the processes that had forged humankind. But my understanding came from books, and it was not until I lived in Tanzania that it became real to my own body and mind.

My animal body

How my understanding of the world and my place in it, was forever changed by moonlight and mosquitoes.

Sensing my primate self

How I came to know my evolutionary heritage from inside the fibres of my muscles and the immediacy of my senses.