"Heart Star" - Book Excerpt

In my long-in-progress book,  The Spiritual Mission of a Princess: Diana and the Return of the Heart, I often reference an anthology published months after Princess Diana's death...When A Princess Dies: Reflections from Jungian Analysts. In my chapter, "The Sight of Stars," I quote Renos Papadopoulos about distinctions of stars in the heavens and celebrities who have a 'star quality': 

Stars are self-sufficient and independent entities in so far as they shine from within and do not follow anybody else's orbit. It must have been these attributes of stars, in addition to their distant, mysterious and magic qualities, that have prompted people to describe certain celebrities as 'stars'.

Enjoy an excerpt of "The Sight of Stars" chapter....

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HEART STAR

She was a 'flawed' star and this brought her

closer to the people, who loved the idea 

 that a star could also be so near to them.

-Renos K. Papadopoulos, 

When A Princess Dies: 

Reflections from Jungian Analysts

“The etymology of the English word ‘star’ comes from a very old root with similar words in most ancient languages,” wrote Renos K. Papadopoulos in When a Princess Dies. However, the Greek version of the word, aster, “reveals an interesting twist.” It is related to the word teirea that translates to “‘the heavenly constellations, signs’…and to teras which is ‘a sign, wonder, marvel, of any appearance or event, in which men believed that they could see the finger of God, and read the future,’” Papadopoulos continued; “hence, teras also refers to ‘anything that serves as a divine sign or omen.’” Many viewed such ‘star signs’ and ‘divine omens’ in the life and death of Princess Diana.

An “incandescent star that illuminated both the earth and skies,” wrote Stewart Pearce about Diana, not seeing the Princess’ stardom as simply superficial celebrity, but saw her as a divinely-inspired being following her spiritual mission. Pearce, who spoke about his confidential position as a voice and presence coach during the last two years of Diana’s life, writes ardently about her celestial connections and “world saving” fate which was “set to illuminate the conviction of love, joy and charity….”

Oprah Winfrey wrote eloquently about how we are all precious human beings “given an almighty gift,” destined to live a life we love. And she also acknowledges there are those who shine a bit more brilliantly. “Then along comes an anointed one, who given the chance shines as brightly as the pole star. These are the shining ones who lead the way, and Diana was such a one!” Divinely touched, yet poignantly human.

photo by Mario Testino

The star-lit words used to describe Princess Diana in life and death: luminous, radiant, inner light, shining from within, incandescent—whether used literally or metaphorically—also suggested something of a spiritual nature. Just as such words also point to that person’s life being a guidepost of sorts, a sign, a message to pay attention, changes ahead. And for Diana, her message was through the heart, she was signaling the world that it was time for change. It was time for a return to love…and she was indeed shining a light to guide the way.

But there was another etymological twist Papadopoulos pointed out relating to Diana and her complex persona. Those ancient star-related words, teirea and teras, are related to the verb teiro which he defines as “to rub away: of the effects of pain, sorrow on body and mind…to suffer, to be distressed. This is the root of ‘trauma’, as well.” We see this in Diana and other celebrity stars. In addition to “the glitter and glamour there is often something ominous, even dark about them…likely to have traumatic histories.” Papadopoulos connected Diana’s star quality with her trauma this way: “Her sparkling disposition had a sense of tragedy about it, her splendor was closely associated with disarming simplicity, and her joy was almost visibly linked with her pain.”

Diana greeting and shaking
hands with AIDS patient.

Yet the other side of the meaning of teiro, Papadopoulos explained, is also a reference to “healing and rubbing away the effects of pain and anguish. In other words, in addition to their external twinkling grandeur, stars could be the agents of both distress and healing.” Clearly with Diana, healing was part of her spiritual mission in life and death. In life, she demonstrated the nature of loving touch and attention; when her death cracked open hearts around the world, a deep cleansing began in the soul of humanity. Diana’s “radiating shine,” as Papadopoulos defined it, spread far and wide, “affecting the widest possible variety of people”…no one was left out. And twenty or so years after her death, Diana’s sons, left traumatized and suffering as boys, found their way, through love, especially the loving support of their wives, to healing their own mental and emotional anguish—and courageously shared about their experiences as a healing gesture to help others find their way to wholeness, and to love.

Indeed, being an advocate for mental health has become the main focus of Prince Harry's work, using his 'star' quality to draw attention to the well-being of others. ~

{Goddess Journey} - Part One

This is the first of three excerpts from the “Goddess Journey” chapter of my book-in-progress (tentatively titled) A Memory of Love: The Spiritual Journey of a Princess. Enjoy....xo 

GODDESS JOURNEY 

{Part One}

“Diana was an ascendant female,” explained Jungian scholar Josephine Evetts-Secker, “who could flout both the patriarchy and matriarchal order, fulfilling and negating feminist ideals; lauded as independent woman by some and by others castigated as a Barbie-doll princess.” Naturally charismatic with “star quality,” Diana attracted a variety of stars from the entertainment world—Elton John, Pavarotti and Freddie Mercury (there’s a story of Diana going clubbing, in disguise, with Queen's lead singer and his pals)—just as she befriended well-known people who were “aspirants to justice” like Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa. Writing in her essay “The People’s Princess,” Evett-Secker continued: “She bridged the glittery world of fashion and the seat of Establishment power. She was as much the female trickster as goddess; so seen, so mysterious, hiding quixotically behind apparent transparency; unconsciously manipulating concealment and revelations, echoing archaic mystery conventions.” 

Like many scholars from the Jungian school of thought, Evetts-Secker compared Diana to various goddess archetypes. To Aphrodite, who “dissolved resistance” and inspired a dynamic of “an ancient strategy, through love to power.” To “girlish Persephone” because of Diana’s playfulness while tiptoeing around danger, and to Demeter as “the raging mother protecting her sons from public assault by those who wanted to peddle their images.”

As a daughter, sister, friend, bride, princess, wife, mother, divorcée, lover, fashion-plate, healer and ambassador, Diana’s life stages, her womanly rites of passages, were lived out in a world arena for all to see. And since her life was and still is examined like few others, its complexity offers an intriguing milieu, connecting the spirit of all women. “Diana was a divided, unhappy and bewildered Princess,” Evett-Secker added, “as well as an ebullient beauty, graceful, opulent and full of vivid, if vulnerable and threatened, life.”

Or as counselor Steffan Vanel stated in his book, Charles and Diana, An Inside Story: An Astrological-Karmic View: “Diana embodied a complexity of contradictions which would enable virtually everyone to see and hear their own story or agenda in her life.” Diana’s contradictions were indeed our own. 

Ann Shearer, writing through a Jungian lens about her observances of Diana’s memorial service, noted the paradoxical images used about the late princess, from powerful goddess to helpless victim. “And here is a central paradox: the forces of unity that ‘Diana’ became grew the stronger for the very complexity of contradictions she contained. As we learned more of her real and fictitious selves,” Shearer continued in her “Tales of the Unfolding Feminine” essay, “and the legends around her grew, she carried for us an incontestable truth: that we humans must struggle with a mass of inconsistencies within ourselves and somehow learn to honour them.”

Another Jungian analyst, Ian Alister, shared this take in his essay “Your Cheating Heart” from When A Princess Dies: 

An extraordinary feature of Diana’s life, from her engagement to her death, was the extent of public exposure, providing many personal details and characteristics which could act as pegs for our own individual projections. It had all the qualities of a soap opera except that this was real. We could watch this drama which involved the suffering and sacrifice of a person who carries a symbolic charge for most of us, whether consciously or not. We can feel it, think about it, and try to relate it to continuous psychological processes within us. To make sense of it in this way, to give it meaning, is part of our struggle to make body and mind whole. 

Perhaps that was a gift of Diana’s life, in support of both women and men, then and now, to “make sense of” and to honor our “whole”—body, mind and spirit. And, in turn, a deepening of soul. It’s an inner journey calling forth our wise intuitive intelligence and a depth of feminine-grounded compassion, tapping into mythological longings and long-ago legends that can reveal a magnificent peeling-away-of-layers kind of journey. A journey where we all can hear the call of the goddess.

In the words of Rumi, the thirteenth-century Sufi mystic: “There’s a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen to it, as the personal self breaks open.” Such a break open of self holds the possibility of an extraordinary rite of passage into an intimate journey, measured only by the level of our courage, where we just might discover the authentic spirit of, for men, the empathetic side of masculinity, and for women, the authentic spirit of our womanliness, indeed, our own goddess nature. Not unlike one princess-swirled exploration in all its archetypal glory once upon a time.

[Part Two next time, “The Reappearing Goddess”...then Part Three, “Glorious Inanna”]