| My finding Sally is a soul journey that sought my banished childhood imaginary companion. Early childhood necessity prompted a cognizant relationship with my Angel, and I discovered an enigmatic imaginary playmate named Sally. I then had to close my imaginary door because Sally was not real or visible to adults. Sally's luminous presence vanished when I said she could no longer come to play under the maple tree. The complexities of this loss led to further woundings that have taken a lifetime to understand, grieve, and ultimately heal.;Finding Sally through the archetype of the Angel involves a study of the thinly veiled imaginal space of grace, transcendence, and archetypal Angelic energy that separates the worlds of spirit and matter (Corbin, 1984/1995). I address the Angelic function of the guardian spirits of animals, ancestors, and Mary (Mother Mary and Mary Magdalene) as the Wisdom of Sophia in scholarly research, dreams, and imagination. Research modalities include the heuristic approach of Moustakas (1990), Corbin's (1984/1995) spiritual hermeneutic of ta'wil (bringing back), Bachelard's (1960/1969) notion of doubling, poetic reverie, and word dreaming, along with the Jungian shadow. I employ an erotic method of alchemical hermeneutics of mutual seduction and loving engagement with the subject (Romanyshyn & Goodchild, 2003) and spiral through the myths of Inanna, Cinderella, Vasilisa, and the Shulamite Bride of the Song of Songs as they are poetically addressed in a circling (Addison, 1989) and continually deepening process by which I connect the dots left as glimmers of Angel.;I engage the Angel through the mundus imaginalis (Corbin, 1984/1995) and imagine a watery carriage with wheels of fire to transport me as I find Sally through numinous dream images, synchronicities, the imagination as reality (Avens, 1980), and deep unconscious ancestral memories of Other. Kabbalah as perception of beauty in seeking the Angel, an icon known as the Mandylion of Edessa, and the iconic restoration of my mother's antique doll are tended. Imaginal glimpses into Jerusalem as mystical Bride, Chartres Cathedral as living stone, elemental nature spirits, the Black Virgin, Mary, and Elijah are all viewed through an Angelic lens. Maya Angelou, Kali, Black Sarah, St. Nicholas, and other dazzling shadow figures emanate from the stars, with sock monkeys and Holy Fools as Angel in a labyrinthine process. I surprisingly discover my banished imaginary Sally to be a very real and numinous emanation of the Judaic Shekhinah (Scholem, 1991), and a final surprise from the Angel is discovering my Jewish ancestral roots, and how these ancestral memories have colored my dreams with starry footprints in the night. Sally continues to lead me in an ongoing engagement with the Divine Feminine. Thank you, Sally. You are love. |
