An interview with Evi Volfa Vestergaard, Ph.D. by Bonnie Bright, Ph.D.
Three of 4 Americans profess a minimum of one paranormal perception, research present, together with a perception in ghosts, witches, or different magical entities.¹ There is a specific style of folklore narratives referred to as mythological legends, I not too long ago discovered, that are tales relayed as actual experiences by actual folks, and which at all times contain paranormal parts such as extremely uncommon animals or ghosts. These particular sorts of folklore narratives usually are not historic, notes Evija Vestergaard, Ph.D., who researches mythological legends and hyperlinks them to up to date tradition; quite they’re about on a regular basis folks and their on a regular basis experiences, which simply occur to contain these incredible creatures or parts.
Swiss folklorist Max Luthi speculated on why these two various kinds of narratives, mythological legends folktales, have co-existed, Evi instructed me not too long ago in an interview collectively. While folktales have a tendency to be extra heroic, and often have comfortable endings, mythological legends have a tendency to be non-heroic. In truth, mythological legends are linked to what’s referred to in depth psychology as the “shadow” since they typically are about elements of ourselves we wouldn’t need anybody to find out about. Either method, there’s a “need of the soul” at work in each, which may reveal highly effective views on particular person shadow, group trauma, and cultural complexes.
During our dialog, Evi shared a mythological legend associated to her personal native nation and tradition of Latvia, which concerned a farmer who drove to the capital as a result of he wished to purchase a dragon. The farmer went into slightly store the place dragons had been bought, the story goes, and the shopkeeper gave him a bundle wrapped in paper, and instructed him there was a dragon inside. The farmer gladly paid and left, however on the way in which dwelling, he acquired very curious and determined to open the bundle so he might see the dragon. Upon doing so, he was stunned and upset to uncover the bundle contained horse dung as a substitute. The farmer was so incensed, he threw the bundle into the forest.
Remember, Evi declared upon recounting this story, this was a real story that really occurred to somebody. That is what makes the style so distinctive. When she first heard this story, she was reminded of one thing C.G. Jung mentioned: that Mercurius is present in a dung heap. Mercurius, she factors out, is the shadow content material of the psyche. It may be each disturbing and repulsive, however it can be a fertile, nourishing floor for one thing new.
Evi goes on to relate a dream that she had when she first began researching mythological legends throughout her research at Pacifica Graduate Institute. In the dream, she was visiting her father (who in actuality handed away when she was 14). Her dream father was cooking some sort of green-brown mass that seemed very unappetizing, and she thought to herself (within the dream) that she ought to go discover the “missing ingredient.” Upon considering the dream, Evi in the end interpreted it to imply that she was being given a job by psyche to discover out what these mythological legends had been actually about. What was that inexperienced mass, horse dung, or dragon that was hiding in these tales?
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