Back from the Borderline

Are we thinking ourselves into a new dark age?

We’ve spent the better part of seventy years trying to understand ourselves through psychology. We know about attachment styles, childhood trauma, unconscious motivations, and all the reasons we supposedly behave the way we do. We’ve diagnosed our exes, analyzed our childhoods, and built an entire industry around the promise that knowing ourselves better will help us live better lives. And yet, despite everything we’ve learned, we seem increasingly unsure about what makes life meaningful in the first place.

In 1957, an American psychologist called Ira Progoff wrote an introduction to a medieval Christian mystical text called The Cloud of Unknowing. He was troubled by how readily modern psychology dismissed centuries of knowledge about the human mind simply because that knowledge came from religious traditions. Reading his observations nearly seventy years later, I was struck by how little some of our underlying assumptions have changed, even as psychology has gained so much influence over the way we understand ourselves.

His writing got me thinking about the history of psychology, the decline of Christianity’s influence in the West, and something I’ve been describing as spiritual homelessness. We’ve gained considerable freedom to decide what we believe and how we want to live. But we’ve also inherited the responsibility of figuring out what any of it is for. Psychology has offered us ways to understand our suffering, while the bigger questions about meaning and how we ought to live remain unsettled.
Meanwhile, self-understanding has grown into a very profitable business. There’s now a psychological explanation available for almost every uncomfortable feeling or disappointing relationship, usually followed by a book, a course, or another video promising to help us understand ourselves a little better. And the more time we spend searching for answers, the more money there is to be made from keeping us searching.

This episode explores why we’re so uncomfortable with uncertainty, how psychology came to occupy such a central place in Western life, and whether our endless search for explanations is making us any wiser.

There’s a certain irony in all of this. We tend to look back at the Middle Ages as a time when people understood very little about the world. Yet medieval Christian mystics were already asking questions about the limits of human knowledge that our own culture seems increasingly reluctant to face.

We know a great deal about how the human mind works. We seem far less certain about what makes a life worth living. I wonder whether the next great intellectual revolution might involve revisiting some of the things we were so confident we’d outgrown.

STUDY COMPANION | RECOMMENDED READING

The Cloud of Unknowing — Anonymous, translated by Ira Progoff (1957)
New Seeds of Contemplation — Thomas Merton (1962)
Open Mind, Open Heart — Thomas Keating (1986)
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind — Shunryu Suzuki (1970)
The Book of Not Knowing — Peter Ralston (2010)
The Interior Castle — Teresa of Ávila (1577)

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EXPLORE MORE ON PATREON: Back from the Borderline is an independent podcast exploring depth psychology and mysticism. My Patreon archive contains hundreds of exclusive episodes, including extensive investigations of the subjects explored with Anne. Browse the Collections tab to explore the archive and support future conversations. Check it all out at https://www.patreon.com/c/backfromtheborderline.

WANT SOMEWHERE TO TAKE WHAT THIS EPISODE BROUGHT UP FOR YOU? Try MOODS → MOODS is my reflective intelligence platform for dream work, tarot, symbolic reflection, and deeper inner inquiry. Bring it a dream, a question, something happening in your life, or an idea from the podcast you want to spend more time with. You can start free for 7 days at go.moods.world/podcast.
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We’ve learned so much about healing, but have we learned how to love?

After eight conversations with 95-year-old Jungian analyst and author Anne Baring, I found myself questioning some of the beliefs I’d spent years defending, including my own understanding of spiritual development.

In this deeply personal epilogue, I’m reflecting on our generation’s hunger for spiritual wisdom, the temptation to romanticize forgotten traditions, and a culture increasingly fascinated with extraordinary experiences while struggling with the much quieter work of personal transformation. We’ll explore the spiritual ego, the sacred marriage, and why understanding ourselves so thoroughly can sometimes prevent us from being changed.

These conversations with Anne have affected me in ways I never anticipated. Some of the most meaningful lessons came from experiences we never recorded.
This episode stands on its own, but I recommend listening to the full series for a deeper understanding of the ideas explored here.

LISTEN TO THE COMPLETE ANNE BARING SERIES

This is the ninth and final installment of my series with Anne Baring. Across eight conversations, we explore the history of the feminine divine, Sophia, Mary Magdalene, Christian mysticism, and the sacred marriage.

If you’re new to the series, I recommend starting with Part 1: The Forgotten Feminine Face of God.

EXPLORE ANNE BARING’S WORK

This series draws primarily on Anne’s book, Divine Wisdom and the Holy Spirit: The Forgotten Feminine Face of God.
Listen to Anne’s complete audiobook for free on YouTube, narrated by Anne herself.

Explore Anne’s books and research on her official website.

FURTHER READING

For listeners who’d like to investigate some of the ideas discussed in this epilogue:

Valentin Tomberg, Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism
Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life
Richard Rohr and Andreas Ebert, The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective
Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul
Jessie L. Weston, From Ritual to Romance

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EXPLORE MORE ON PATREON: Back from the Borderline is an independent podcast exploring depth psychology and mysticism. My Patreon archive contains hundreds of exclusive episodes, including extensive investigations of the subjects explored with Anne. Browse the Collections tab to explore the archive and support future conversations. Check it all out at https://www.patreon.com/c/backfromtheborderline.

WANT SOMEWHERE TO TAKE WHAT THIS EPISODE BROUGHT UP FOR YOU? Try MOODS → MOODS is my reflective intelligence platform for dream work, tarot, symbolic reflection, and deeper inner inquiry. Bring it a dream, a question, something happening in your life, or an idea from the podcast you want to spend more time with. You can start free for 7 days at go.moods.world/podcast.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For seven conversations, Anne Baring and I have been investigating the forgotten feminine face of God. We’ve explored Sophia, Mary Magdalene, the Grail, and the religious traditions that preserved aspects of the sacred feminine. Now, in our eighth and final conversation, we’re asking what all of that knowledge is supposed to do to us.

We start at Chartres Cathedral in France, where a medieval labyrinth invites pilgrims to walk toward its center before returning to the world. From there, Anne and I explore the neglected wisdom of the heart, the relationship between childhood wounds and religious ideas about guilt, and the sacred marriage, or hieros gamos, as a way of understanding the divisions within ourselves.

After months of investigating religious history, we find ourselves confronting a much more personal question. How do we allow these teachings to change the way we live?

This is Part 8 of an eight-part series. New listeners are encouraged to start with Part 1. Next week, I’ll return with a personal epilogue reflecting on how my own thinking has changed throughout these conversations.

EXPLORE ANNE BARING’S WORK: This series draws on Anne Baring’s book, Divine Wisdom and the Holy Spirit: The Forgotten Feminine Face of God. You can listen to the complete audiobook for free on YouTube, narrated by Anne herself, and explore her books and research on her official website at annebaring.com.

MY TWELVE PART SERIES ON CHILDHOOD EMOTIONAL NEGLECT: Click here to start episode 1.

BOOKS & FURTHER READING

Anne Baring & Jules Cashford: The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image
Banafsheh Sayyad: Dance of Oneness: Embody Love and Luminosity to Transform Your Life
Peter Kingsley: In the Dark Places of Wisdom
Neale Donald Walsch: Conversations with God (audiobook edition discussed in the episode)
Charles Spencer: A Very Private School

PLACES & PRACTICES

Chartres Cathedral: Medieval labyrinth and rose windows
HeartMath Institute: Heart-focused contemplative practices
Sufi whirling: Sacred dance tradition discussed by Anne

ORGANIZATIONS MENTIONED: Ubiquity University | Humanity’s Team | The Shift Network

EXPLORE MORE ON PATREON: Back from the Borderline is an independent podcast exploring depth psychology and mysticism. My Patreon archive contains hundreds of exclusive episodes, including extensive investigations of the subjects explored with Anne. Browse the Collections tab to explore the archive and support future conversations. Check it all out at https://www.patreon.com/c/backfromtheborderline.

WANT SOMEWHERE TO TAKE WHAT THIS EPISODE BROUGHT UP FOR YOU? Try MOODS → MOODS is my reflective intelligence platform for dream work, tarot, symbolic reflection, and deeper inner inquiry. Bring it a dream, a question, something happening in your life, or an idea from the podcast you want to spend more time with. You can start free for 7 days at moods.world.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In medieval southern France, a woman stood up during a religious debate and challenged the men who claimed the authority to speak for God. A Catholic cleric told her to return to her spinning, because theology was no business of hers. Her identity was Esclarmonde de Foix, and she belonged to a Christian religious culture in which women could teach, exercise spiritual authority and administer sacred rites.

This is Part 7 of my series with Anne Baring, a writer and Jungian analyst who has spent decades studying Christian mysticism and the forgotten feminine dimension of divinity. If you’re new to the series, I recommend starting with Part 1, The Forgotten Feminine Face of God.

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In the last episode, Anne and I explored the Black Madonna, the Grail and the possibility that teachings associated with Miriam Magdalene survived in medieval France. Now we enter the Languedoc and the world of the Cathars, a Christian religious movement whose beliefs brought them into direct conflict with Rome.
Through Esclarmonde’s life, Anne introduces us to a society where women could participate in theological debate and religious leadership, and where Christianity was understood in ways that would eventually be condemned as heresy.

The Catholic Church launched a crusade against these communities in 1209. What followed remains one of the most devastating episodes in medieval European religious history. Anne believes the Cathars may have preserved teachings associated with early Gnostic Christianity and Mary Magdalene.

After our conversation, I return with some personal reflections, including the extraordinary experiences that first led me toward Esclarmonde years before these interviews. I also discuss recent reading that has challenged some of my own assumptions about Catharism and made me reconsider how easily we can romanticize the religious past.

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EXPLORE ANNE BARING’S WORK

This series draws on Anne Baring’s book, Divine Wisdom and the Holy Spirit: The Forgotten Feminine Face of God. You can listen to the complete audiobook for free on YouTube, narrated by Anne herself, and explore her books and research on her official website at annebaring.com.

STUDY COMPANION

✦ John and Caitlín Matthews, Walkers Between the Worlds
✦ Arthur Guirdham, research on Cathar reincarnation and past-life memory
✦ Jehanne de Quillan, The Gospel of the Beloved Companion
✦ Gilles Quispel, research on Gnosticism and the Apocryphon of John
✦ Margaret Barker, research on First Temple theology and Divine Wisdom
✦ Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief
✦ Peter Kingsley, In the Dark Places of Wisdom

EARLY CHRISTIAN AND CATHAR TEXTS

☿ The Apocryphon of John
☿ Liber de duobus principiis (The Book of Two Principles)
☿ The consolamentum, the Cathar rite of spiritual baptism

RELATED LISTENING

✦ This Episode Isn’t About UFOs, It’s About You (Part 1)
✦ This Episode Isn’t About UFOs, It’s About You (Part 2)

The first two episodes document the synchronicities and experiences that eventually led me toward Esclarmonde and Anne’s research. Buckle in, it’s a wild ride.

SOURCE NOTE: This conversation moves between documented history, medieval legend and esoteric interpretation. Some of Anne’s proposed connections remain speculative. I’ve included these resources so you can investigate the evidence and reach your own conclusions.

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WANT MORE BFTB? Join the paid membership → https://www.patreon.com/backfromtheborderline. There are hundreds of private episodes going back to 2021, plus new Premium audio, House of Cards (my ongoing Rider-Waite-Smith tarot study).

WANT SOMEWHERE TO TAKE WHAT THIS EPISODE BROUGHT UP FOR YOU? Try MOODS → https://www.moods.world/

MOODS is my reflective intelligence platform for dream work, tarot, symbolic reflection, and deeper inner inquiry. Bring it a dream, a question, something happening in your life, or an idea from the podcast you want to spend more time with. You can start free for 7 days at moods.world.
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A spiritual teacher dies, her community has to continue without her, and centuries later the written record can no longer tell us exactly how her teachings moved from one generation to the next. What, if anything, survives?

This is Part 6 of my multi-part series with Anne Baring, a writer and Jungian analyst who has spent decades studying Divine Wisdom, Christian mysticism and the feminine dimension of divinity. Each conversation can stand on its own, but they build on one another. If you’re new to the series, I recommend starting with Part 1, The Forgotten Feminine Face of God.

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Last week, we focused on Miriam Magdalene and early Christian writings that present her as a woman with spiritual authority of her own. This week, Anne takes us west.

In the tradition Anne works with, Miriam travels to Gaul after Yeshua’s death and spends the rest of her life teaching there. After her death, the historical record gets much harder to follow. Centuries pass before medieval France gives us another dense concentration of religious images, stories and devotional practices that Anne believes deserve serious examination.

That gap sits at the center of this episode. A book can be confiscated or burned, while people can continue visiting a statue, singing to her, asking her for healing and teaching their children to make the same pilgrimage. How much religious knowledge can survive that way, even when later generations no longer fully understand what earlier generations were preserving?

Anne takes us into the Black Madonna tradition, sacred caves and medieval devotion, and later into the Grail stories and the wounded king whose dying country can only recover when someone finally asks about his suffering. We also spend time with the Lady of courtly love and an old attempt to teach men trained for war another relationship with women and power.

After Anne and I finished recording, I kept reading Jessie L. Weston’s From Ritual to Romance, which Anne recommends during our conversation. I discovered that I had misunderstood an important piece of the Grail material we had just discussed. I come back after the interview to tell you what I found, why it changed the way I hear the Grail story, and why I’m now wondering how often a culture keeps the image, ritual or story while slowly forgetting how earlier generations understood it.

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EXPLORE ANNE BARING’S WORK

This series draws on Anne Baring’s book, Divine Wisdom and the Holy Spirit: The Forgotten Feminine Face of God. You can listen to the complete audiobook for free on YouTube, narrated by Anne herself, and explore her books and research on her official website at annebaring.com.

SUBMIT A PRAYER INTENTION AT THE GROTTO OF MARY MAGDALENE

The Dominican friars who care for the Grotto of Sainte-Baume in southern France, traditionally believed to be where Mary Magdalene spent her final years, welcome prayer intentions from people around the world. You can submit yours through their website, and it will be passed along to the friars. ** ⁠Submit your prayer intention here **

STUDY COMPANION
✦ Jessie L. Weston, From Ritual to Romance
✦ Annine van der Meer, research on the Black Madonna and Mary Magdalene
✦ Peter Kingsley, In the Dark Places of Wisdom
✦ James George Frazer, The Golden Bough

PEOPLE AND TRADITIONS DISCUSSED
☿ Black Madonna devotion
☿ Parmenides and ancient incubation rites
☿ Chrétien de Troyes and the Grail romances
☿ Eleanor of Aquitaine, troubadours and courtly love
☿ The Knights Templar, Sufism and medieval intellectual exchange
☿ The wounded king and the Waste Land

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WANT MORE BFTB? Join the paid membership → https://www.patreon.com/backfromtheborderline

WANT SOMEWHERE TO TAKE WHAT THIS EPISODE BROUGHT UP FOR YOU? Try MOODS → https://www.moods.world/ MOODS is my reflective intelligence platform for dream work, tarot, symbolic reflection, and deeper inner inquiry. You can start free for 7 days at moods.world.
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