Planet Waves

Inner Goddess, Inner Gaze

by Eric Francis Coppolino and illustrations by Emil Alzamora, August 31, 2009

In August, I was invited to present a seminar at the American Psychological Association (APA) conference based on my photography called “The Inner Goddess and the Inner Gaze.” My presentation, given in Toronto on August 7, explored the phenomenon of the inner feminine, or anima, and its relationship to both men and women in our journey of growth and healing through the use of mirrors and photography.

Since I am not a psychologist, my presentation was co-sponsored by one: Dr. Christine Farber, a longtime Planet Waves reader, who was my astrology student from the Omega Institute.

My photography project, called Book of Blue, is an indirect outgrowth of my work as an astrologer, though expressed in photographs and intimate essays. As an astrologer, I have written and worked primarily with and for women, and in the process have explored my perceptions of women, studied the paths of their lives and done my best to understand their choices and values. I have always been conscious that part of why I am doing this work is to heal my relationship with my mother and with all women; and part of it is to be of service to women in response to a lifelong calling.

Book of Blue is about the use of visual imagery to heal the self-image of women, in the eyes of both men and women. We all agree that we are overwhelmed with idealized, reconstructed images of young women, and these cause disturbances in our ability to perceive women for who they are. More often than not, the personhood of women is robbed by false images and ideas about womanhood. One of our biggest psychological challenges as a society involves men who cannot embrace their inner feminine and women who cannot embrace their inner masculine. The result is a lot of projection; we tend to see the ‘opposite’ sex as something that exists exclusively outside of us—despite many feelings and experiences calling us in.

You might say that I am a woman-identified man. Given the choice of who is more ‘my kind’ of person, as in who I feel more like, I certainly feel like I have far more in common with most women than with most men. Yet in much the same way that relationships among women are fragmented by mistrust and competition, I noticed something similar in my own relationships that I set about working to resolve. The healing process largely facilitated by my work on Book of Blue has involved repairing a sense of alienation and isolation that has gradually given way to an atmosphere of communication and contact.