Dear Friend,
This painting by Raffaelo is entitled, “The Voyage of Galatea.” The image reminded me of the approaching New Year so I offer it to you as a gift to celebrate your soul and honor the gathering moment.
Philostratus the Elder, a Greek rhetorician who lived in the 3nd century A.D. wrote this of Galatea: “The nymph sports on the peaceful sea, driving a team of four dolphins yoked together and working in harmony; and maiden-daughters of Triton, Galatea's servants, guide them, curving them in if they try to do anything mischievous or contrary to the rein. She holds over her head against the wind a light scarf of sea-purple to provide a shade for herself and a sail for her chariot, and from it a kind of radiance falls upon her forehead and her head, though no white more charming than the bloom on her cheek…Her foot, with the graceful part that ends in it, is painted as on the sea, my boy, and it lightly touches the water as if it were the rudder guiding her chariot. Her eyes are wonderful, for they have a kind of distant look that travels as far as the sea extends.” Galatea, like you, has that distant look that travels “as far as the sea extends.” Here you are on the New Year’s threshold, having crossed the seas of time, having embarked on a great voyage of the past year of your life that has required courage, heart, synchronicities or meaningful chances, and a radiant spirit! And just think about all those who have so devotedly accompanied you, supported you!
You have dared to sail into the uncharted waters of your own psychological depths and into the places of the psyche that would have been drawn with sea monsters on ancient maps with the indication “Here be dragons” at the edges of the mapmakers’ then-known world! You have likely encountered all the Tritons of life trying to both awaken your interest and desire in new experiences and also paradoxically threatening to take you away from your journey towards your greater destination: your true self. The Galatea of Raffaelo’s image is surrounded by Erotes, little emissaries of love and desire, likely aiming to awaken you to all your gifts, possibilities, and potentials. Perhaps the Galatea you have encountered is reserved, private, not easily revealing herself and entering Love’s precincts: that sacred place of emotional risk-taking and intimacy which requires surrender, trust, disclosure, and longing to more fully connect to one’s inner life and feelings as well as to the inner life of any relationship. Galatea’s destiny and our own, it seems, is to be pierced by Love’s arrows, feel the emotions’ sacred demands and not flee or escape them. How else do we truly persevere in serving ourselves, each other, and the common good?
Triton’s maiden-daughters try to keep her pure, emotionally-distant, on course, but the Triton-men seek the spontaneous embrace between emotion and trust, between intimacy and revelation of heart. The dolphins and the seahorses bring the deep-feeling that animals know, the compassionate feeling seen in the darkness of their profound animal-eyes. They know, they suffer, they give themselves so genuinely to the now, this living moment! We learn from them, enter our emotional body, feel their healing presence—these emotions and feelings that come to us with guidance and support when our lives feel as overwhelming as the ocean itself!
Let yourself be moved by how you have boldly risked entering your life experiences, and how you have also risked entering into the lives and psyches of those who have joined you on the year’s journey. And be moved by how love has been reciprocated back to you from those who have felt your caring presence: this returning love forms the arrows aimed at Galatea in the painting, gifts to further awaken you, encourage you, embolden you to go even further into uncharted experiences, interactions, and phenomena of the psyche.
Dreams, like all the sea-folk and sea-creatures accompanying Galatea, are such living phenomena swimming, appearing, blessing, sometimes shaking you up as surprising and unexpected synchronicities, but always seeking to serve your higher process, take you further on your journey of life and as a person seeking to serve Conscious Love and relate to others personally, uniquely, and heartfully. Dreams are those figures blowing mightily on the conch shells to announce the coming year’s approach of greater consciousness and self-knowledge, greater entrance into the glorious mysteries of eros-relatedness and fully-felt feeling! Hear them! Listen and attune to their oneiric message sounded out for those who would take note…like you!
The Tritons are embracing the sea-maidens, the sea-maidens are embracing the Tritons. Love is in the air! How can healing movement come except through the witnessing, blessing, and discernment arising through inwardly-experienced love from the Divine that authorizes you—not through detached, formulaic, prescribed techniques and validation only through external measures of your value, your affirmation by collective groups, and your official certification by outer authorizing bodies!
May your journey be uniquely amazing, rich in wonderfully meaningful stories and experiences! May you always return from your life’s voyages and your calling’s adventures with the very smile we see in Galatea’s face, that smile on your face when you have stayed true to Divine direction and collaboration and when you have truly served others and the common good, leaving joy and meaning as a marvelous painting artfully created in the souls all around you!
Galatea is welcoming the ever-arriving initiations of Eros in your life with warm receptivity and witnessing affirmation! She knows that your encounter with her beautiful yet tremendous watery-depths will make and is making your soul exquisite, cultivated, responsive, refined, and powerfully capable of creating an enduring difference in all those beings and creatures, all these psyches and spirits, all these people with all their unique sufferings and destinies, and all of us who are here right now, living in this moment of time and history, and crossing the threshold into the New Year and the quiet dawning of the future’s holy approach.
Fair thee well in the New Year, Friend, and as mariners put it: May you have fair winds and following seas!
George Viney, Psy.D., MFT, is a Jungian/Archetypal therapist, magician, poet, writer, and storyteller in Los Angeles whose creative calling and endeavors are all reverently in service to the wedding of Eros and Psyche, Love and the Soul, within and without!
