Abstract
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This research is an exploration into western feminine cultural shadow through the interviews of eight women from Belgium, France, Holland, Ireland, Poland, Turkey, and United States, who volunteered for espionage work such as couriers, weapons specialists, and saboteurs in the Second World War. Employing the intuitive inquiry method (Anderson, 2004) to examine the data collected (eight stories, one composite story and the researcher's overview) revealed the dark feminine lying silently in cultural shadow. As per intuitive inquiry, and based on a literature review of the great goddess, dark feminine, and shadow archetypes and women spies, the researcher's initial assumptions and presumptions were articulated. In the final analyses, 29 lenses were crafted into three sections: feminine cultural shadow, women espionage agents, and intuitive inquiry method. Important findings include: (a) feminine principle fullness is imprisoned in cultural shadow due to patriarchal cultural projection, and to feminine nature of quiet strength, nonegoic stance, and relational tendency; (b) the dark feminine is not about wildness, as the popular western literature would have us believe, but rather freedom; (c) through excavation of feminine cultural shadow, energy is released inviting the transmutation of the masculine principle and the unity of principles toward further transpersonal consciousness; (d) espionage women are ordinary women who are extraordinary in their capacity to pull on the feminine in cultural shadow. They were/are women who were/are liberated, possessing characteristics such as being insightful, strategic, silent, morally and physically strong, independent, adventuresome, antinomian, discerning, and compassionate; (e) culture acts on individuals, not unlike the ego, to express and repress aspects relevant to its container's drives; (f) intuitive inquiry, which deconstructs researcher bias, is a discerning method to use with historical accounts; and (g) intuitive inquiry acts as an elixir for furthering psycho-spiritual development within a depth psychology study. New directions to further transpersonal research are suggested, including a closer examination of the role of the dark feminine in the propensity of patriarchal culture to project its shadow resulting in the instigation of violence, destruction and the massive world wars.* *This dissertation is a compound document (contains both a paper copy and a CD as part of the dissertation). The CD requires the following system requirements: Adobe Acrobat.
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