July/August 2022 Alchemical Voice

This can be quite detrimental but it can also be a good
thing because it could make the healing process easier.
As I mentioned previously, I found my situation in
school quite scary. My stress subsided on Fridays and I
felt anxiety during the weekend but not fear. Sunday
night was always bad because it meant the end of the
weekend and Monday next morning. My family always
watched a show on television on Sunday nights. It was
a café style family program and very laid back. My
mum and dad loved it. I hated it because it was time for
bed after the show ended and then only mere hours
until Monday. The show had its own theme song and
for many years, simply hearing it would immediately
bring back the feeling of Monday fear within me.
There are film reels from the time of World War 1 that
show soldiers in hospitals receiving treatment for shell
shock or PTSD, as the modern term is. I particularly
think of a soldier who was shown an officers cap by a
nurse standing next to him. Instantaneously, the poor
man began to shake uncontrollably and quite violently.
The sight of the officer's cap triggered a memory of
being ordered to leave the relative safety of the trench
and “go over the top” to attack the enemy only to face
machine gun fire and witness his friends being shot to
pieces in the mayhem and madness of war. The sound
of the officer’s whistle could have the same effect.
Imagine many years later, if this man was invited to
see a football game and he heard the referee blow the
whistle...
Memories of fear from past events can possibly result
in the paralysing notion of “what if”? Suppose the
memory lies dormant, in the unconscious? Let us go
one step more and think about “memories” of fear
from past lives? What if something bad happened to
you in a previous incarnation? Could that trigger a
sense of fear in your present life? Maybe this could
explain a feeling of terrible unease that some people
feel in a certain situation or even with certain items?
Suppose you were murdered by someone stabbing you
with a bread knife in a past life. That could explain an
otherwise inexplicable fear of bread knives.
A very interesting question is if fear can be caused by
other peoples’ experiences and memories? Would it be
possible for someone to experience a seemingly
inexplicable fear as a consequence of a dramatic event
that happened to somebody else, somebody you do
not know or who is not even part of your own
demographic, cultural and regional background?
Such trauma could enter the collective unconscious
and affect other people. In such a case, fear could be
similar to an ancestral curse or even a collective curse
that affects the whole community. Some examples are
fear of snakes and wolves, fear of darkness and fear of
open spaces.
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