Behind the repressed darkness and the personal shadow - that which has been and is rotting and that which is not yet and is germinating - is the archetypal darkness, the principle of not-being, which has been named and described as the Devil, as Evil, as Original Sin, as Death, as Nothingness. -- James Hillman
It belongs to the depth of the religious spirit to have felt forsaken, even by God. -- Alfred North Whitehead
The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintained their neutrality. -- Dante
[A male shadow figure] the Wild Man encourages a trust in what is below: the lower half of our body, our genitals, our legs and ankles, our inadequacies, the soles of our feet, the animal ancestors, the Earth itself, the treasures in the Earth, the dead long buried there, the stubborn richness to which we descend. "Water prefers low places," says the Tao Te Ching, which is a true Wild Man book. -- Robert Bly
The human devil resides in the pit of the belly... Carnal pleasure is the main temptation the devil uses to lure the ego into the abyss of hell. Against this catastrophe the terrified ego strives to maintain control of the body at all costs. Consciousness, associated with the ego, becomes opposed to the unconscious or the body as the repository of the dark forces. -- Alexander Lowen
All bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following errors:
- That man has two real existing principles: a body & a soul.
- That energy, called evil, is alone from the body: & that reason, called good, is alone from the soul.
- That God will torment man in enernity for following his energies.
- Man has no body distinct from his soul: for that called body is a portion of soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of soul in this age.
- Energy is the only life, and is from the body; and reason is the bound or outward circumference of energy.
- Energy is eternal delight.
-- Blake
Don Juan pointed directly to a boulder in front of us. "Look at the shadow of that boulder," he said. "The shadow is the boulder, and yet it isn't. To observe the boulder in order to know what the boulder is, is doing, but to observe its shadow is not-doing."
"Shadows are like doors, the doors of not-doing. You may say that there is movement in them, or you may say that the lines of the world are shown in them, or you may say that feelings come from them."
-- Carlos Castaneda
A Political leader was walking out one sunny day, when he observed his Shadow leaving him and walking rapidly away."Come back here, you scoundrel," he cried.
"If I had been a scoundrel," answered the Shadow, increasing its speed, "I should not have left you."
-- Ambrose Bierce
Every move they make is a message from outside, a shadow marking their shape, information about them. We'll take it. -- Lois McMaster Bujold, Borders of Infinity
Being is a mystery, being is concealment, but there is meaning beyond the mystery. the meaning beyond the mystery seeks to come to expression. The destiny of human beings is to articulate what is concealed. The diving seeks to be disclosed in the human. -- Abraham Joshua Heschel, Who Is Man, 1965
To talk of the body as more than the shadow is to relinquish the pessimism of the twentieth century and take heart, once more affirming the living being of man. -- John P. Conger