* Published 1957; 2nd edn., 1970.
+ Published 1973.
* Published 1960.
+ Published 1961.
‡ Published 1956; 2nd edn., 1967. (65 plates, 43 text figures.)
* Published 1971.
+ Published 1953; 2nd edn., 1966.
‡ Published 1960 and edn., 1969.
* Published 1959; 2nd edn., 1968. (Part I: 79 plates, with 29 in colour.)
* Published 1964; 2nd edn., 1970. (8 plates.)
† Published 1958; 2nd edn., 1969.
* Published 1953; 2nd edn., completely revised, 1968. (270 illustrations.)
† Published 1968. (50 plates, 4 text figures.)
‡ Published 1963; 2nd edn., 1970. (10 plates.)
* Published 1966.
† Published 1954; 2nd edn., revised and augmented, 1966. (13 illustrations.)
‡ Published 1954.
BOLLINGEN SERIES XX
THE COLLECTED WORKS
OF
C. G. JUNG
VOLUME 9, PART 1
EDITORS
†SIR HERBERT READ
MICHAEL FORDHAM, F.R.C.PSYCH., HON. F.B.PS.S.
GERHARD ADLER, PH.D.
WILLIAM MCGUIRE,
executive editor
Mandala of a Modern Man
THE ARCHETYPES
AND THE
COLLECTIVE
UNCONSCIOUS
SECOND EDITION
C. G. JUNG
TRANSLATED BY R. F. C. HULL
BOLLINGEN SERIES XX
COPYRIGHT © 1959 BY BOLLINGEN FOUNDATION INC., NEW YORK, N.Y. NEW
MATERIAL COPYRIGHT © 1969 BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
1968
third printing, 1971
fourth printing, 1975
fifth printing, 1977
First Princeton / Bollingen Paperback printing, 1980
SECOND EDITION,
THIS EDITION IS BEING PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, AND IN ENGLAND BY ROUTLEDGE AND KEGAN
PAUL, LTD. IN THE AMERICAN EDITION, ALL THE VOLUMES COMPRISING THE
COLLECTED WORKS CONSTITUTE NUMBER XX IN BOLLINGEN SERIES,
SPONSORED BY BOLLINGEN FOUNDATION. THE PRESENT VOLUME IS NUMBER 9
OF THE COLLECTED WORKS AND WAS THE EIGHTH TO APPEAR. IT IS IN TWO
PARTS, PUBLISHED SEPARATELY, THIS BEING PART I.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 75-156
ISBN 0-691-09761-5
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MANUFACTURED IN THE U. S. A.
BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS AT PRINCETON, N. J.
EDITORIAL NOTE
The concept of archetypes and its correlate, that of the collective
unconscious, are among the better known theories developed by Professor
Jung. Their origins may be traced to his earliest publication, “On the
Psychology and Pathology of So-called Occult Phenomena” (1902),* in
which he described the fantasies of an hysterical medium. Intimations of the
concepts can be found in many of his subsequent writings, and gradually
tentative statements crystallized and were reformulated until a stable core of
theory was established.
Part I of Volume 9 consists of essays—written from 1933 onward—
describing and elaborating the two concepts. The volume is introduced by
three essays establishing the theoretical basis, followed by others describing
specific archetypes. The relation of these to the process of individuation is
defined in essays in the last section.
Part II of the volume, entitled Aion and published separately, is devoted to
a long monograph on the symbolism of the self as revealed in the “Christian
aeon.” Together the two parts give the nucleus of Jung’s work on the theory
and meaning of archetypes in relation to the psyche as a whole.
*
While the illustrations that accompany the last two papers are the same
subjects published with the Swiss versions in Gestaltungen des Unbewussten,
they have now been rephotographed and improved in presentation. It has
been possible to give the entire pictorial series illustrating “A Study in the
Process of Individuation” in colour and to add seven additional pictures,
which were chosen by the author from those in his possession (par. 616).
Several of the illustrations for “Concerning Mandala Symbolism,” also, are
now given in colour. Grateful acknowledgment is made to Mrs. Aniela Jaffé
and to Mrs. Margaret Schevill-Link for their kind assistance in connection
with the pictures. The frontispiece was published in the Swiss magazine Du
(April 1955), with the brief article by Professor Jung on mandalas which is
given in the appendix. This “Mandala of a Modern Man” was painted in
1916.
EDITORIAL NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION
Bibliographical citations and entries have been revised in the light of
subsequent publications in the Collected Works and essential corrections have
been made. Jung’s acknowledgment in his Memories, Dreams, Reflections of
having painted the mandala illustrated in the frontispiece, and four other
mandalas in this volume, is explained on page 355, n.1.
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
Grateful acknowledgment is made to those whose translations have been
consulted: Mr. W. S. Dell, for help derived from his translations of two
papers: “Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious” and “The Meaning of
Individuation” (here entitled “Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation”),
both published in The Integration of the Personality; Mrs. Cary F. Baynes
and Miss Ximena de Angulo, for permission to use, virtually unchanged, long
portions of their translations of “Psychological Aspects of the Mother
Archetype” and “Concerning Rebirth,” issued in Spring (New York), 1943
and 1944; and to Miss Hildegard Nagel, for reference to her translation of
“The Psychology of the Trickster-Figure,” in Spring, 1955.
VOLUME 9, PART I
ARCHETYPES AND THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
EDITORIAL NOTE
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
I
Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious
Translated from “Über die Archetypen des kollektiven Unbewussten,” Von
den Wurzeln des Bewusstseins (Zurich: Rascher, 1954).
The Concept of the Collective Unconscious
Originally published in English in the Journal of St. Bartholomew’s
Hospital (London), XLIV (1936/37).
Concerning the Archetypes, with Special Reference to the Anima Concept
Translated from “Über den Archetypus mit besonderer Berücksichtigung
des Animabegriffes,” Von den Wurzeln des Bewusstseins (Zurich: Rascher,
1954).
II
Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype
Translated from “Die psychologischen Aspekte des Mutter-Archetypus,”
Von den Wurzeln des Bewusstseins (Zurich: Rascher, 1954).
1. ON THE CONCEPT OF THE ARCHETYPE
2. THE MOTHER ARCHETYPE
3. THE MOTHER-COMPLEX
I.
The Mother-Complex of the Son
II. The Mother-Complex of the Daughter
a. Hypertrophy of the Maternal Element
b. Overdevelopment of Eros
c. Identity with the Mother
d. Resistance to the Mother
4. POSITIVE ASPECTS OF THE MOTHER-COMPLEX
I.
The Mother
II. The Overdeveloped Eros
III. The “Nothing-But” Daughter
IV. The Negative Mother-Complex
5. CONCLUSION
III
Concerning Rebirth
Translated from “Über Wiedergeburt,” Gestaltungen des Unbewussten
(Zurich: Rascher, 1950).
1. FORMS OF REBIRTH
2. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF REBIRTH
I.
Experience of the Transcendence of Life
a. Experiences Induced by Ritual
b. Immediate Experiences
II. Subjective Transformation
a. Diminution of Personality
b. Enlargement of Personality
c. Change of Internal Structure
d. Identification with a Group
e. Identification with a Cult-Hero
f. Magical Procedures
g. Technical Transformation
h. Natural Transformation (Individuation)
3. A TYPICAL SET OF SYMBOLS ILLUSTRATING
TRANSFORMATION
THE
PROCESS
OF
IV
The Psychology of the Child Archetype
Translated from “Zur Psychologie des Kind-Archetypus,” Einführung in
das Wesen der Mythologie (with K. Kerényi), 4th revised edition (Zurich:
Rhein-Verlag, 1951).
I. Introduction
II. The Psychology of the Child Archetype
1. The Archetype as a Link with the Past
2. The Function of the Archetype
3. The Futurity of the Archetype
4. Unity and Plurality of the Child Motif
5. Child God and Child Hero
III. The Special Phenomenology of the Child Archetype
1. The Abandonment of the Child
2. The Invincibility of the Child
3. The Hermaphroditism of the Child
4. The Child as Beginning and End
IV. Conclusion
The Psychological Aspects of the Kore
Translated from “Zum psychologischen Aspekt der Kore-Figur,”
Einführung in das Wesen der Mythologie (with K. Kerényi), 4th revised
edition (Zurich: Rhein-Verlag, 1951).
V
The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales
Translated from “Zur Phänomenologie des Geistes im Märchen,” Symbolik
des Geistes (Zurich: Rascher, 1948).
I. Concerning the Word “Spirit,”
II. Self-Representation of the Spirit in Dreams
III. The Spirit in Fairytales
IV. Theriomorphic Spirit Symbolism in Fairytales
V. Supplement
VI. Conclusion
On the Psychology of the Trickster-Figure
Translated from part 5 of Der Göttliche Schelm, by Paul Radin, with
commentaries by C. G. Jung and Karl Kerényi (Zurich: Rhein-Verlag, 1954).
VI
Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation
Originally written in English as “The Meaning of Individuation,” in The
Integration of the Personality (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1939;
London: Kegan Paul, 1940); here revised in accordance with the German
version, “Bewusstsein, Unbewusstes und Individuation,” Zentralblatt für
Psychotherapie und ihre Grenzgebiete (Leipzig), XI (1939).
A Study in the Process of Individuation
Translated from “Zur Empirie des Individuationsprozesses,” Gestaltungen
des Unbewussten (Zurich: Rascher, 1950).
Introductory
Picture 1
Picture 2
Picture 3
Picture 4
Picture 5
Picture 6
Picture 7
Picture 8
Picture 9
Picture 10
Picture 11
Pictures 12-24
Conclusion
Concerning Mandala Symbolism
Translated from “Über Mandalasymbolik,” Gestaltungen des Unbewussten
(Zurich: Rascher, 1950).
APPENDIX:
Mandalas
Translated from Du (Zurich), XV: 4 (April 1955).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Mandala of a Modern Man
frontispiece
Painting by C. G. Jung, 1916. The microcosmic enclosed within the
macrocosmic system of opposites. Macrocosm, top: boy in the winged egg,
Erikapaios or Phanes, the spiritual principle with triadic fire-symbol and
attributes; bottom, his dark adversary Abraxas, ruler of the physical world,
with double pentadic star of natural man and rebirth symbols. Microcosm,
left: snake with phallus, the procreative principle; right, dove of Holy Ghost
with double beaker of Sophia. Inner sun (jagged circle) encloses repetitions
of this system on a diminishing scale, with inner microcosm at the centre.
(From Du, Zurich, April 1955, where the mandala was reproduced. Cf.
Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 195, U.S.; 187, Brit.)
FOR “A STUDY IN THE PROCESS OF INDIVIDUATION”
Pictures 1–24
Water-colour or tempera paintings, as described in the text; from the
author’s collection
Fig. 1. Mandala from Böhme’s XL Questions concerning the Soule
(1620)
Fig. 2. Sketch of a picture from the year 1916
Fig. 3. Sketch of a drawing by a young woman patient with psychogenic
depression
Fig. 4. Neolithic relief from Tarxien, Malta
Fig. 5. Mandala by a woman patient
FOR “CONCERNING MANDALA SYMBOLISM”
Figures 1–54
As described in the text; mainly from the author’s collection
I
ARCHETYPES OF THE
COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS
______
THE CONCEPT OF THE
COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS
______
CONCERNING THE ARCHETYPES,
WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE
TO THE ANIMA CONCEPT
ARCHETYPES OF THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS1
[1]
The hypothesis of a collective unconscious belongs to the class of
ideas that people at first find strange but soon come to possess and use
as familiar conceptions. This has been the case with the concept of the
unconscious in general. After the philosophical idea of the unconscious,
in the form presented chiefly by Carus and von Hartmann, had gone
down under the overwhelming wave of materialism and empiricism,
leaving hardly a ripple behind it, it gradually reappeared in the scientific
domain of medical psychology.
[2]
At first the concept of the unconscious was limited to denoting the
state of repressed or forgotten contents. Even with Freud, who makes the
unconscious—at least metaphorically—take the stage as the acting
subject, it is really nothing but the gathering place of forgotten and
repressed contents, and has a functional significance thanks only to
these. For Freud, accordingly, the unconscious is of an exclusively
personal nature, although he was aware of its archaic and mythological
thought-forms.
2
[3]
A more or less superficial layer of the unconscious is undoubtedly
personal. I call it the personal unconscious. But this personal
unconscious rests upon a deeper layer, which does not derive from
personal experience and is not a personal acquisition but is inborn. This
deeper layer I call the collective unconscious. I have chosen the term
“collective” because this part of the unconscious is not individual but
universal; in contrast to the personal psyche, it has contents and modes
of behaviour that are more or less the same everywhere and in all
individuals. It is, in other words, identical in all men and thus constitutes
a common psychic substrate of a suprapersonal nature which is present
in every one of us.
[4]
Psychic existence can be recognized only by the presence of
contents that are capable of consciousness. We can therefore speak of an
unconscious only in so far as we are able to demonstrate its contents.
The contents of the personal unconscious are chiefly the feeling-toned
complexes, as they are called; they constitute the personal and private
side of psychic life. The contents of the collective unconscious, on the
other hand, are known as archetypes.
[5]
The term “archetype” occurs as early as Philo Judaeus, with
reference to the Imago Dei (God-image) in man. It can also be found in
Irenaeus, who says: “The creator of the world did not fashion these
things directly from himself but copied them from archetypes outside
himself.” In the Corpus Hermeticum, God is called τò άρχέτυπov φώς
(archetypal light). The term occurs several times in Dionysius the
Areopagite, as for instance in De caelesti hierarchia, II, 4: “immaterial
Archetypes,” and in De divinis nominibus, I, 6: “Archetypal stone.”
The term “archetype” is not found in St. Augustine, but the idea of it is.
Thus in De diversis quaestionibus LXXXIII he speaks of “ideae
principales, ‘which are themselves not formed … but are contained in
the divine understanding.’” “Archetype” is an explanatory paraphrase of
the Platonic
. For our purposes this term is apposite and helpful,
because it tells us that so far as the collective unconscious contents are
concerned we are dealing with archaic or—I would say—primordial
types, that is, with universal images that have existed since the remotest
times. The term “représentations collectives,” used by Lévy-Bruhl to
denote the symbolic figures in the primitive view of the world, could
easily be applied to unconscious contents as well, since it means
practically the same thing. Primitive tribal lore is concerned with
archetypes that have been modified in a special way. They are no longer
contents of the unconscious, but have already been changed into
conscious formulae taught according to tradition, generally in the form
of esoteric teaching. This last is a typical means of expression for the
transmission of collective contents originally derived from the
unconscious.
3
4
5
6
7
8
[6]
Another well-known expression of the archetypes is myth and
fairytale. But here too we are dealing with forms that have received a
specific stamp and have been handed down through long periods of
time. The term “archetype” thus applies only indirectly to the
“représentations collectives,” since it designates only those psychic
contents which have not yet been submitted to conscious elaboration and
are therefore an immediate datum of psychic experience. In this sense
there is a considerable difference between the archetype and the
historical formula that has evolved. Especially on the higher levels of
esoteric teaching the archetypes appear in a form that reveals quite
unmistakably the critical and evaluating influence of conscious
elaboration. Their immediate manifestation, as we encounter it in
dreams and visions, is much more individual, less understandable, and
more naïve than in myths, for example. The archetype is essentially an
unconscious content that is altered by becoming conscious and by being
perceived, and it takes its colour from the individual consciousness in
which it happens to appear.
9
[7]
What the word “archetype” means in the nominal sense is clear
enough, then, from its relations with myth, esoteric teaching, and
fairytale. But if we try to establish what an archetype is psychologically,
the matter becomes more complicated. So far mythologists have always
helped themselves out with solar, lunar, meteorological, vegetal, and
other ideas of the kind. The fact that myths are first and foremost
psychic phenomena that reveal the nature of the soul is something they
have absolutely refused to see until now. Primitive man is not much
interested in objective explanations of the obvious, but he has an
imperative need—or rather, his unconscious psyche has an irresistible
urge—to assimilate all outer sense experiences to inner, psychic events.
It is not enough for the primitive to see the sun rise and set; this external
observation must at the same time be a psychic happening: the sun in its
course must represent the fate of a god or hero who, in the last analysis,
dwells nowhere except in the soul of man. All the mythologized
processes of nature, such as summer and winter, the phases of the moon,
the rainy seasons, and so forth, are in no sense allegories of these
objective occurrences; rather they are symbolic expressions of the inner,
unconscious drama of the psyche which becomes accessible to man’s
consciousness by way of projection—that is, mirrored in the events of
nature. The projection is so fundamental that it has taken several
thousand years of civilization to detach it in some measure from its outer
object. In the case of astrology, for instance, this age-old “scientia
intuitiva” came to be branded as rank heresy because man had not yet
10
succeeded in making the psychological description of character
independent of the stars. Even today, people who still believe in
astrology fall almost without exception for the old superstitious
assumption of the influence of the stars. And yet anyone who can
calculate a horoscope should know that, since the days of Hipparchus of
Alexandria, the spring-point has been fixed at o° Aries, and that the
zodiac on which every horoscope is based is therefore quite arbitrary,
the spring-point having gradually advanced, since then, into the first
degrees of Pisces, owing to the precession of the equinoxes.
[8]
Primitive man impresses us so strongly with his subjectivity that
we should really have guessed long ago that myths refer to something
psychic. His knowledge of nature is essentially the language and outer
dress of an unconscious psychic process. But the very fact that this
process is unconscious gives us the reason why man has thought of
everything except the psyche in his attempts to explain myths. He
simply didn’t know that the psyche contains all the images that have
ever given rise to myths, and that our unconscious is an acting and
suffering subject with an inner drama which primitive man rediscovers,
by means of analogy, in the processes of nature both great and small.
11
[9]
“The stars of thine own fate lie in thy breast,” says Seni to
Wallenstein—a dictum that should satisfy all astrologers if we knew
even a little about the secrets of the heart. But for this, so far, men have
had little understanding. Nor would I dare to assert that things are any
better today.
[10]
12
Tribal lore is always sacred and dangerous. All esoteric teachings
seek to apprehend the unseen happenings in the psyche, and all claim
supreme authority for themselves. What is true of primitive lore is true
in even higher degree of the ruling world religions. They contain a
revealed knowledge that was originally hidden, and they set forth the
secrets of the soul in glorious images. Their temples and their sacred
writings proclaim in image and word the doctrine hallowed from of old,
making it accessible to every believing heart, every sensitive vision,
every farthest range of thought. Indeed, we are compelled to say that the
more beautiful, the more sublime, the more comprehensive the image
that has evolved and been handed down by tradition, the further
removed it is from individual experience. We can just feel our way into
it and sense something of it, but the original experience has been lost.
[11]
Why is psychology the youngest of the empirical sciences? Why
have we not long since discovered the unconscious and raised up its
treasure-house of eternal images? Simply because we had a religious
formula for everything psychic—and one that is far more beautiful and
comprehensive than immediate experience. Though the Christian view
of the world has paled for many people, the symbolic treasure-rooms of
the East are still full of marvels that can nourish for a long time to come
the passion for show and new clothes. What is more, these images—be
they Christian or Buddhist or what you will—are lovely, mysterious,
richly intuitive. Naturally, the more familiar we are with them the more
does constant usage polish them smooth, so that what remains is only
banal superficiality and meaningless paradox. The mystery of the Virgin
Birth, or the homoousia of the Son with the Father, or the Trinity which
is nevertheless not a triad—these no longer lend wings to any
philosophical fancy. They have stiffened into mere objects of belief. So
it is not surprising if the religious need, the believing mind, and the
philosophical speculations of the educated European are attracted by the
symbols of the East—those grandiose conceptions of divinity in India
and the abysms of Taoist philosophy in China—just as once before the
heart and mind of the men of antiquity were gripped by Christian ideas.
There are many Europeans who began by surrendering completely to the
influence of the Christian symbol until they landed themselves in a
Kierkegaardian neurosis, or whose relation to God, owing to the
progressive impoverishment of symbolism, developed into an
unbearably sophisticated I-You relationship—only to fall victims in
their turn to the magic and novelty of Eastern symbols. This surrender is
not necessarily a defeat; rather it proves the receptiveness and vitality of
the religious sense. We can observe much the same thing in the educated
Oriental, who not infrequently feels drawn to the Christian symbol or to
the science that is so unsuited to the Oriental mind, and even develops
an enviable understanding of them. That people should succumb to these
eternal images is entirely normal, in fact it is what these images are for.
They are meant to attract, to convince, to fascinate, and to overpower.
They are created out of the primal stuff of revelation and reflect the
ever-unique experience of divinity. That is why they always give man a
premonition of the divine while at the same time safeguarding him from
immediate experience of it. Thanks to the labours of the human spirit
over the centuries, these images have become embedded in a
comprehensive system of thought that ascribes an order to the world,
and are at the same time represented by a mighty, far-spread, and
venerable institution called the Church.
[12]
I can best illustrate my meaning by taking as an example the
Swiss mystic and hermit, Brother Nicholas of Flüe, who has recently
been canonized. Probably his most important religious experience was
the so-called Trinity Vision, which preoccupied him to such an extent
that he painted it, or had it painted, on the wall of his cell. The painting
is still preserved in the parish church at Sachseln. It is a mandala divided
into six parts, and in the centre is the crowned countenance of God. Now
we know that Brother Klaus investigated the nature of his vision with
the help of an illustrated devotional booklet by a German mystic, and
that he struggled to get his original experience into a form he could
understand. He occupied himself with it for years. This is what I call the
“elaboration” of the symbol. His reflections on the nature of the vision,
influenced as they were by the mystic diagrams he used as a guiding
thread, inevitably led him to the conclusion that he must have gazed
upon the Holy Trinity itself—the summum bonum, eternal love. This is
borne out by the “expurgated” version now in Sachseln.
13
[13]
The original experience, however, was entirely different. In his
ecstasy there was revealed to Brother Klaus a sight so terrible that his
own countenance was changed by it—so much so, indeed, that people
were terrified and felt afraid of him. What he had seen was a vision of
the utmost intensity. Woelflin, our oldest source, writes as follows:
14
All who came to him were filled with terror at the first glance. As to the
cause of this, he himself used to say that he had seen a piercing light
resembling a human face. At the sight of it he feared that his heart would
burst into little pieces. Therefore, overcome with terror, he instantly
turned his face away and fell to the ground. And that was the reason why
his face was now terrible to others.
[14]
This vision has rightly been compared with the one in
Revelation 1 : 13ff., that strange apocalyptic Christ-image, which for
sheer gruesomeness and singularity is surpassed only by the monstrous
15
seven-eyed lamb with seven horns (Rev. 5 : 6f.). It is certainly very
difficult to see what is the relationship between this figure and the Christ
of the gospels. Hence Brother Klaus’s vision was interpreted in a quite
definite way by the earliest sources. In 1508, the humanist Karl Bovillus
(Charles de Bouelles) wrote to a friend:
I wish to tell you of a vision which appeared to him in the sky, on a
night when the stars were shining and he stood in prayer and
contemplation. He saw the head of a human figure with a terrifying face,
full of wrath and threats.
16
[15]
This interpretation agrees perfectly with the modern amplification
furnished by Revelation 1 : 13. Nor should we forget Brother Klaus’s
other visions, for instance, of Christ in the bearskin, of God the Father
and God the Mother, and of himself as the Son. They exhibit features
which are very undogmatic indeed.
17
[16]
Traditionally this great vision was brought into connection with
the Trinity picture in the church at Sachseln, and so, likewise, was the
wheel symbolism in the so-called “Pilgrim’s Tract.” Brother Klaus, we
are told, showed the picture of the wheel to a visiting pilgrim. Evidently
this picture had preoccupied him for some time. Blanke is of the opinion
that, contrary to tradition, there is no connection between the vision and
the Trinity picture. This scepticism seems to me to go too far. There
must have been some reason for Brother Klaus’s interest in the wheel.
Visions like the one he had often cause mental confusion and
disintegration (witness the heart bursting “into little pieces”). We know
from experience that the protective circle, the mandala, is the traditional
antidote for chaotic states of mind. It is therefore only too clear why
Brother Klaus was fascinated by the symbol of the wheel. The
interpretation of the terrifying vision as an experience of God need not
be so wide of the mark either. The connection between the great vision
and the Trinity picture, and of both with the wheel-symbol, therefore
seems to me very probable on psychological grounds.
18
19
[17]
This vision, undoubtedly fearful and highly perturbing, which
burst like a volcano upon his religious view of the world, without any
dogmatic prelude and without exegetical commentary, naturally needed
a long labour of assimilation in order to fit it into the total structure of
the psyche and thus restore the disturbed psychic balance. Brother Klaus
came to terms with his experience on the basis of dogma, then firm as a
rock; and the dogma proved its powers of assimilation by turning
something horribly alive into the beautiful abstraction of the Trinity
idea. But the reconciliation might have taken place on a quite different
basis provided by the vision itself and its unearthly actuality—much to
the disadvantage of the Christian conception of God and no doubt to the
still greater disadvantage of Brother Klaus himself, who would then
have become not a saint but a heretic (if not a lunatic) and would
probably have ended his life at the stake.
[18]
This example demonstrates the use of the dogmatic symbol: it
formulates a tremendous and dangerously decisive psychic experience,
fittingly called an “experience of the Divine,” in a way that is tolerable
to our human understanding, without either limiting the scope of the
experience or doing damage to its overwhelming significance. The
vision of divine wrath, which we also meet in Jakob Böhme, ill accords
with the God of the New Testament, the loving Father in heaven, and for
this reason it might easily have become the source of an inner conflict.
That would have been quite in keeping with the spirit of the age—the
end of the fifteenth century, the time of Nicholas Cusanus, whose
formula of the “complexio oppositorum” actually anticipated the schism
that was imminent. Not long afterwards the Yahwistic conception of
God went through a series of rebirths in Protestantism. Yahweh is a
God-concept that contains the opposites in a still undivided state.
[19]
Brother Klaus put himself outside the beaten track of convention
and habit by leaving his home and family, living alone for years, and
gazing deep into the dark mirror, so that the wondrous and terrible boon
of original experience befell him. In this situation the dogmatic image of
divinity that had been developed over the centuries worked like a
healing draught. It helped him to assimilate the fatal incursion of an
archetypal image and so escape being torn asunder. Angelus Silesius
was not so fortunate; the inner conflict tore him to pieces, because in his
day the stability of the Church that dogma guarantees was already
shattered.
[20]
Jakob Böhme, too, knew a God of the “Wrath-fire,” a real Deus
absconditus. He was able to bridge the profound and agonizing
contradiction on the one hand by means of the Christian formula of
Father and Son and embody it speculatively in his view of the world—
which, though Gnostic, was in all essential points Christian. Otherwise
he would have become a dualist. On the other hand it was undoubtedly
alchemy, long brewing the union of opposites in secret, that came to his
aid. Nevertheless the opposition has left obvious traces in the mandala
appended to his XL Questions concerning the Soule, showing the nature
of the divinity. The mandala is divided into a dark and a light half, and
the semicircles that are drawn round them, instead of joining up to form
a ring, are turned back to back.
20
21
[21]
Dogma takes the place of the collective unconscious by
formulating its contents on a grand scale. The Catholic way of life is
completely unaware of psychological problems in this sense. Almost the
entire life of the collective unconscious has been channelled into the
dogmatic archetypal ideas and flows along like a well-controlled stream
in the symbolism of creed and ritual. It manifests itself in the inwardness
of the Catholic psyche. The collective unconscious, as we understand it
today, was never a matter of “psychology,” for before the Christian
Church existed there were the antique mysteries, and these reach back
into the grey mists of neolithic prehistory. Mankind has never lacked
powerful images to lend magical aid against all the uncanny things that
live in the depths of the psyche. Always the figures of the unconscious
were expressed in protecting and healing images and in this way were
expelled from the psyche into cosmic space.
[22]
The iconoclasm of the Reformation, however, quite literally made
a breach in the protective wall of sacred images, and since then one
image after another has crumbled away. They became dubious, for they
conflicted with awakening reason. Besides, people had long since
forgotten what they meant. Or had they really forgotten? Could it be that
men had never really known what they meant, and that only in recent
times did it occur to the Protestant part of mankind that actually we
haven’t the remotest conception of what is meant by the Virgin Birth,
the divinity of Christ, and the complexities of the Trinity? It almost
seems as if these images had just lived, and as if their living existence
had simply been accepted without question and without reflection, much
as everyone decorates Christmas trees or hides Easter eggs without ever
knowing what these customs mean. The fact is that archetypal images
are so packed with meaning in themselves that people never think of
asking what they really do mean. That the gods die from time to time is
due to man’s sudden discovery that they do not mean anything, that they
are made by human hands, useless idols of wood and stone. In reality,
however, he has merely discovered that up till then he has never thought
about his images at all. And when he starts thinking about them, he does
so with the help of what he calls “reason”—which in point of fact is
nothing more than the sum-total of all his prejudices and myopic views.
[23]
The history of Protestantism has been one of chronic iconoclasm.
One wall after another fell. And the work of destruction was not too
difficult once the authority of the Church had been shattered. We all
know how, in large things as in small, in general as well as in particular,
piece after piece collapsed, and how the alarming poverty of symbols
that is now the condition of our life came about. With that the power of
the Church has vanished too—a fortress robbed of its bastions and
casemates, a house whose walls have been plucked away, exposed to all
the winds of the world and to all dangers.
[24]
Although this is, properly speaking, a lamentable collapse that
offends our sense of history, the disintegration of Protestantism into
nearly four hundred denominations is yet a sure sign that the restlessness
continues. The Protestant is cast out into a state of defencelessness that
might well make the natural man shudder. His enlightened
consciousness, of course, refuses to take cognizance of this fact, and is
quietly looking elsewhere for what has been lost to Europe. We seek the
effective images, the thought-forms that satisfy the restlessness of heart
and mind, and we find the treasures of the East.
[25]
There is no objection to this, in and for itself. Nobody forced the
Romans to import Asiatic cults in bulk. If Christianity had really been—
as so often described—“alien” to the Germanic tribes, they could easily
have rejected it when the prestige of the Roman legions began to wane.
But Christianity had come to stay, because it fits in with the existing
archetypal pattern. In the course of the centuries, however, it turned into
something its founder might well have wondered at had he lived to see
it; and the Christianity of Negroes and other dark-skinned converts is
certainly an occasion for historical reflections. Why, then, should the
West not assimilate Eastern forms? The Romans too went to Eleusis,
Samothrace, and Egypt in order to get themselves initiated. In Egypt
there even seems to have been a regular tourist trade in this commodity.
[26]
The gods of Greece and Rome perished from the same disease as
did our Christian symbols: people discovered then, as today, that they
had no thoughts whatever on the subject. On the other hand, the gods of
the strangers still had unexhausted mana. Their names were weird and
incomprehensible and their deeds portentously dark—something
altogether different from the hackneyed chronique scandaleuse of
Olympus. At least one couldn’t understand the Asiatic symbols, and for
this reason they were not banal like the conventional gods. The fact that
people accepted the new as unthinkingly as they had rejected the old did
not become a problem at that time.
[27]
Is it becoming a problem today? Shall we be able to put on, like a
new suit of clothes, ready-made symbols grown on foreign soil,
saturated with foreign blood, spoken in a foreign tongue, nourished by a
foreign culture, interwoven with foreign history, and so resemble a
beggar who wraps himself in kingly raiment, a king who disguises
himself as a beggar? No doubt this is possible. Or is there something in
ourselves that commands us to go in for no mummeries, but perhaps
even to sew our garment ourselves?
[28]
I am convinced that the growing impoverishment of symbols has
a meaning. It is a development that has an inner consistency. Everything
that we have not thought about, and that has therefore been deprived of a
meaningful connection with our developing consciousness, has got lost.
If we now try to cover our nakedness with the gorgeous trappings of the
East, as the theosophists do, we would be playing our own history false.
A man does not sink down to beggary only to pose afterwards as an
Indian potentate. It seems to me that it would be far better stoutly to
avow our spiritual poverty, our symbol-lessness, instead of feigning a
legacy to which we are not the legitimate heirs at all. We are, surely, the
rightful heirs of Christian symbolism, but somehow we have squandered
this heritage. We have let the house our fathers built fall into decay, and
now we try to break into Oriental palaces that our fathers never knew.
Anyone who has lost the historical symbols and cannot be satisfied with
substitutes is certainly in a very difficult position today: before him there
yawns the void, and he turns away from it in horror. What is worse, the
vacuum gets filled with absurd political and social ideas, which one and
all are distinguished by their spiritual bleakness. But if he cannot get
along with these pedantic dogmatisms, he sees himself forced to be
serious for once with his alleged trust in God, though it usually turns out
that his fear of things going wrong if he did so is even more persuasive.
This fear is far from unjustified, for where God is closest the danger
seems greatest. It is dangerous to avow spiritual poverty, for the poor
man has desires, and whoever has desires calls down some fatality on
himself. A Swiss proverb puts it drastically: “Behind every rich man
stands a devil, and behind every poor man two.”
[29]
Just as in Christianity the vow of worldly poverty turned the mind
away from the riches of this earth, so spiritual poverty seeks to renounce
the false riches of the spirit in order to withdraw not only from the sorry
remnants—which today call themselves the Protestant church—of a
great past, but also from all the allurements of the odorous East; in
order, finally, to dwell with itself alone, where, in the cold light of
consciousness, the blank barrenness of the world reaches to the very
stars.
[30]
We have inherited this poverty from our fathers. I well remember
the confirmation lessons I received at the hands of my own father. The
catechism bored me unspeakably. One day I was turning over the pages
of my little book, in the hope of finding something interesting, when my
eye fell on the paragraphs about the Trinity. This interested me at once,
and I waited impatiently for the lessons to get to that section. But when
the longed-for lesson arrived, my father said: “We’ll skip this bit; I can’t
make head or tail of it myself.” With that my last hope was laid in the
grave. I admired my father’s honesty, but this did not alter the fact that
from then on all talk of religion bored me to death.
[31]
Our intellect has achieved the most tremendous things, but in the
meantime our spiritual dwelling has fallen into disrepair. We are
absolutely convinced that even with the aid of the latest and largest
reflecting telescope, now being built in America, men will discover
behind the farthest nebulae no fiery empyrean; and we know that our
eyes will wander despairingly through the dead emptiness of interstellar
space. Nor is it any better when mathematical physics reveals to us the
world of the infinitely small. In the end we dig up the wisdom of all ages
and peoples, only to find that everything most dear and precious to us
has already been said in the most superb language. Like greedy children
we stretch out our hands and think that, if only we could grasp it, we
would possess it too. But what we possess is no longer valid, and our
hands grow weary from the grasping, for riches lie everywhere, as far as
the eye can reach. All these possessions turn to water, and more than one
sorcerer’s apprentice has been drowned in the waters called up by
himself—if he did not first succumb to the saving delusion that this
wisdom was good and that was bad. It is from these adepts that there
come those terrifying invalids who think they have a prophetic mission.
For the artificial sundering of true and false wisdom creates a tension in
the psyche, and from this there arises a loneliness and a craving like that
of the morphine addict, who always hopes to find companions in his
vice.
[32]
When our natural inheritance has been dissipated, then the spirit
too, as Heraclitus says, has descended from its fiery heights. But when
spirit becomes heavy it turns to water, and with Luciferian presumption
the intellect usurps the seat where once the spirit was enthroned. The
spirit may legitimately claim the patria potestas over the soul; not so the
earth-born intellect, which is man’s sword or hammer, and not a creator
of spiritual worlds, a father of the soul. Hence Ludwig Klages and Max
Scheler were moderate enough in their attempts to rehabilitate the
spirit, for both were children of an age in which the spirit was no longer
up above but down below, no longer fire but water.
22
23
[33]
Therefore the way of the soul in search of its lost father—like
Sophia seeking Bythos—leads to the water, to the dark mirror that
reposes at its bottom. Whoever has elected for the state of spiritual
poverty, the true heritage of Protestantism carried to its logical
conclusion, goes the way of the soul that leads to the water. This water
is no figure of speech, but a living symbol of the dark psyche. I can best
illustrate this by a concrete example, one out of many:
[34]
A Protestant theologian often dreamed the same dream: He stood
on a mountain slope with a deep valley below, and in it a dark lake. He
knew in the dream that something had always prevented him from
approaching the lake. This time he resolved to go to the water. As he
approached the shore, everything grew dark and uncanny, and a gust of
wind suddenly rushed over the face of the water. He was seized by a
panic fear, and awoke.
[35]
This dream shows us the natural symbolism. The dreamer
descends into his own depths, and the way leads him to the mysterious
water. And now there occurs the miracle of the pool of Bethesda: an
angel comes down and touches the water, endowing it with healing
power. In the dream it is the wind, the pneuma, which bloweth where it
listeth. Man’s descent to the water is needed in order to evoke the
miracle of its coming to life. But the breath of the spirit rushing over the
dark water is uncanny, like everything whose cause we do not know—
since it is not ourselves. It hints at an unseen presence, a numen to
which neither human expectations nor the machinations of the will have
given life. It lives of itself, and a shudder runs through the man who
thought that “spirit” was merely what he believes, what he makes
himself, what is said in books, or what people talk about. But when it
happens spontaneously it is a spookish thing, and primitive fear seizes
the naïve mind. The elders of the Elgonyi tribe in Kenya gave me
exactly the same description of the nocturnal god whom they call the
“maker of fear.” “He comes to you,” they said, “like a cold gust of wind,
and you shudder, or he goes whistling round in the tall grass”—an
African Pan who glides among the reeds in the haunted noontide hour,
playing on his pipes and frightening the shepherds.
[36]
Thus, in the dream, the breath of the pneuma frightened another
pastor, a shepherd of the flock, who in the darkness of the night trod the
reed-grown shore in the deep valley of the psyche. Yes, that erstwhile
fiery spirit has made a descent to the realm of nature, to the trees and
rocks and the waters of the psyche, like the old man in Nietzsche’s
Zarathustra, who, wearied of humankind, withdrew into the forest to
growl with the bears in honour of the Creator.
[37]
We must surely go the way of the waters, which always tend
downward, if we would raise up the treasure, the precious heritage of the
father. In the Gnostic hymn to the soul, the son is sent forth by his
parents to seek the pearl that fell from the King’s crown. It lies at the
bottom of a deep well, guarded by a dragon, in the land of the Egyptians
—that land of fleshpots and drunkenness with all its material and
24
spiritual riches. The son and heir sets out to fetch the jewel, but forgets
himself and his task in the orgies of Egyptian worldliness, until a letter
from his father reminds him what his duty is. He then sets out for the
water and plunges into the dark depths of the well, where he finds the
pearl on the bottom, and in the end offers it to the highest divinity.
[38]
This hymn, ascribed to Bardesanes, dates from an age that
resembled ours in more than one respect. Mankind looked and waited,
and it was a fish—“levatus de profundo” (drawn from the deep) —that
became the symbol of the saviour, the bringer of healing.
25
[39]
As I wrote these lines, I received a letter from Vancouver, from a
person unknown to me. The writer is puzzled by his dreams, which are
always about water: “Almost every time I dream it is about water: either
I am having a bath, or the water-closet is overflowing, or a pipe is
bursting, or my home has drifted down to the water’s edge, or I see an
acquaintance about to sink into water, or I am trying to get out of water,
or I am having a bath and the tub is about to overflow,” etc.
[40]
Water is the commonest symbol for the unconscious. The lake in
the valley is the unconscious, which lies, as it were, underneath
consciousness, so that it is often referred to as the “subconscious,”
usually with the pejorative connotation of an inferior consciousness.
Water is the “valley spirit,” the water dragon of Tao, whose nature
resembles water—a yang embraced in the yin. Psychologically,
therefore, water means spirit that has become unconscious. So the dream
of the theologian is quite right in telling him that down by the water he
could experience the working of the living spirit like a miracle of
healing in the pool of Bethesda. The descent into the depths always
seems to precede the ascent. Thus another theologian dreamed that he
saw on a mountain a kind of Castle of the Grail. He went along a road
that seemed to lead straight to the foot of the mountain and up it. But as
he drew nearer he discovered to his great disappointment that a chasm
separated him from the mountain, a deep, darksome gorge with
underworldly water rushing along the bottom. A steep path led
downwards and toilsomely climbed up again on the other side. But the
prospect looked uninviting, and the dreamer awoke. Here again the
dreamer, thirsting for the shining heights, had first to descend into the
dark depths, and this proves to be the indispensable condition for
26
climbing any higher. The prudent man avoids the danger lurking in these
depths, but he also throws away the good which a bold but imprudent
venture might bring.
[41]
The statement made by the dream meets with violent resistance
from the conscious mind, which knows “spirit” only as something to be
found in the heights. “Spirit” always seems to come from above, while
from below comes everything that is sordid and worthless. For people
who think in this way, spirit means highest freedom, a soaring over the
depths, deliverance from the prison of the chthonic world, and hence a
refuge for all those timorous souls who do not want to become anything
different. But water is earthy and tangible, it is also the fluid of the
instinct-driven body, blood and the flowing of blood, the odour of the
beast, carnality heavy with passion. The unconscious is the psyche that
reaches down from the daylight of mentally and morally lucid
consciousness into the nervous system that for ages has been known as
the “sympathetic.” This does not govern perception and muscular
activity like the cerebrospinal system, and thus control the environment;
but, though functioning without sense-organs, it maintains the balance of
life and, through the mysterious paths of sympathetic excitation, not
only gives us knowledge of the innermost life of other beings but also
has an inner effect upon them. In this sense it is an extremely collective
system, the operative basis of all participation mystique, whereas the
cerebrospinal function reaches its high point in separating off the
specific qualities of the ego, and only apprehends surfaces and externals
—always through the medium of space. It experiences everything as an
outside, whereas the sympathetic system experiences everything as an
inside.
[42]
The unconscious is commonly regarded as a sort of incapsulated
fragment of our most personal and intimate life—something like what
the Bible calls the “heart” and considers the source of all evil thoughts.
In the chambers of the heart dwell the wicked blood-spirits, swift anger
and sensual weakness. This is how the unconscious looks when seen
from the conscious side. But consciousness appears to be essentially an
affair of the cerebrum, which sees everything separately and in isolation,
and therefore sees the unconscious in this way too, regarding it outright
as my unconscious. Hence it is generally believed that anyone who
descends into the unconscious gets into a suffocating atmosphere of
egocentric subjectivity, and in this blind alley is exposed to the attack of
all the ferocious beasts which the caverns of the psychic underworld are
supposed to harbour.
[43]
True, whoever looks into the mirror of the water will see first of
all his own face. Whoever goes to himself risks a confrontation with
himself. The mirror does not flatter, it faithfully shows whatever looks
into it; namely, the face we never show to the world because we cover it
with the persona, the mask of the actor. But the mirror lies behind the
mask and shows the true face.
[44]
This confrontation is the first test of courage on the inner way, a
test sufficient to frighten off most people, for the meeting with ourselves
belongs to the more unpleasant things that can be avoided so long as we
can project everything negative into the environment. But if we are able
to see our own shadow and can bear knowing about it, then a small part
of the problem has already been solved: we have at least brought up the
personal unconscious. The shadow is a living part of the personality and
therefore wants to live with it in some form. It cannot be argued out of
existence or rationalized into harmlessness. This problem is exceedingly
difficult, because it not only challenges the whole man, but reminds him
at the same time of his helplessness and ineffectuality. Strong natures—
or should one rather call them weak?—do not like to be reminded of
this, but prefer to think of themselves as heroes who are beyond good
and evil, and to cut the Gordian knot instead of untying it. Nevertheless,
the account has to be settled sooner or later. In the end one has to admit
that there are problems which one simply cannot solve on one’s own
resources. Such an admission has the advantage of being honest,
truthful, and in accord with reality, and this prepares the ground for a
compensatory reaction from the collective unconscious: you are now
more inclined to give heed to a helpful idea or intuition, or to notice
thoughts which had not been allowed to voice themselves before.
Perhaps you will pay attention to the dreams that visit you at such
moments, or will reflect on certain inner and outer occurrences that take
place just at this time. If you have an attitude of this kind, then the
helpful powers slumbering in the deeper strata of man’s nature can come
awake and intervene, for helplessness and weakness are the eternal
experience and the eternal problem of mankind. To this problem there is
also an eternal answer, otherwise it would have been all up with
humanity long ago. When you have done everything that could possibly
be done, the only thing that remains is what you could still do if only
you knew it. But how much do we know of ourselves? Precious little, to
judge by experience. Hence there is still a great deal of room left for the
unconscious. Prayer, as we know, calls for a very similar attitude and
therefore has much the same effect.
[45]
The necessary and needful reaction from the collective
unconscious expresses itself in archetypally formed ideas. The meeting
with oneself is, at first, the meeting with one’s own shadow. The shadow
is a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is
spared who goes down to the deep well. But one must learn to know
oneself in order to know who one is. For what comes after the door is,
surprisingly enough, a boundless expanse full of unprecedented
uncertainty, with apparently no inside and no outside, no above and no
below, no here and no there, no mine and no thine, no good and no bad.
It is the world of water, where all life floats in suspension; where the
realm of the sympathetic system, the soul of everything living, begins;
where I am indivisibly this and that; where I experience the other in
myself and the other-than-myself experiences me.
[46]
No, the collective unconscious is anything but an incapsulated
personal system; it is sheer objectivity, as wide as the world and open to
all the world. There I am the object of every subject, in complete
reversal of my ordinary consciousness, where I am always the subject
that has an object. There I am utterly one with the world, so much a part
of it that I forget all too easily who I really am. “Lost in oneself” is a
good way of describing this state. But this self is the world, if only a
consciousness could see it. That is why we must know who we are.
[47]
The unconscious no sooner touches us than we are it—we
become unconscious of ourselves. That is the age-old danger,
instinctively known and feared by primitive man, who himself stands so
very close to this pleroma. His consciousness is still uncertain, wobbling
on its feet. It is still childish, having just emerged from the primal
waters. A wave of the unconscious may easily roll over it, and then he
forgets who he was and does things that are strange to him. Hence
primitives are afraid of uncontrolled emotions, because consciousness
breaks down under them and gives way to possession. All man’s
strivings have therefore been directed towards the consolidation of
consciousness. This was the purpose of rite and dogma; they were dams
and walls to keep back the dangers of the unconscious, the “perils of the
soul.” Primitive rites consist accordingly in the exorcizing of spirits, the
lifting of spells, the averting of the evil omen, propitiation, purification,
and the production by sympathetic magic of helpful occurrences.
[48]
It is these barriers, erected in primitive times, that later became
the foundations of the Church. It is also these barriers that collapse when
the symbols become weak with age. Then the waters rise and boundless
catastrophes break over mankind. The religious leader of the Taos
pueblo, known as the Loco Tenente Gobernador, once said to me: “The
Americans should stop meddling with our religion, for when it dies and
we can no longer help the sun our Father to cross the sky, the Americans
and the whole world will learn something in ten years’ time, for then the
sun won’t rise any more.” In other words, night will fall, the light of
consciousness is extinguished, and the dark sea of the unconscious
breaks in.
[49]
Whether primitive or not, mankind always stands on the brink of
actions it performs itself but does not control. The whole world wants
peace and the whole world prepares for war, to take but one example.
Mankind is powerless against mankind, and the gods, as ever, show it
the ways of fate. Today we call the gods “factors,” which comes from
facere, ‘to make.’ The makers stand behind the wings of the worldtheatre. It is so in great things as in small. In the realm of consciousness
we are our own masters; we seem to be the “factors” themselves. But if
we step through the door of the shadow we discover with terror that we
are the objects of unseen factors. To know this is decidedly unpleasant,
for nothing is more disillusioning than the discovery of our own
inadequacy. It can even give rise to primitive panic, because, instead of
being believed in, the anxiously guarded supremacy of consciousness—
which is in truth one of the secrets of human success—is questioned in
the most dangerous way. But since ignorance is no guarantee of security,
and in fact only makes our insecurity still worse, it is probably better
despite our fear to know where the danger lies. To ask the right question
is already half the solution of a problem. At any rate we then know that
the greatest danger threatening us comes from the unpredictability of the
psyche’s reactions. Discerning persons have realized for some time that
external historical conditions, of whatever kind, are only occasions,
jumping-off grounds, for the real dangers that threaten our lives. These
are the present politico-social delusional systems. We should not regard
them causally, as necessary consequences of external conditions, but as
decisions precipitated by the collective unconscious.
[50]
This is a new problem. All ages before us have believed in gods
in some form or other. Only an unparalleled impoverishment of
symbolism could enable us to rediscover the gods as psychic factors,
that is, as archetypes of the unconscious. No doubt this discovery is
hardly credible at present. To be convinced, we need to have the
experience pictured in the dream of the theologian, for only then do we
experience the self-activity of the spirit moving over the waters. Since
the stars have fallen from heaven and our highest symbols have paled, a
secret life holds sway in the unconscious. That is why we have a
psychology today, and why we speak of the unconscious. All this would
be quite superfluous in an age or culture that possessed symbols.
Symbols are spirit from above, and under those conditions the spirit is
above too. Therefore it would be a foolish and senseless undertaking for
such people to wish to experience or investigate an unconscious that
contains nothing but the silent, undisturbed sway of nature. Our
unconscious, on the other hand, hides living water, spirit that has
become nature, and that is why it is disturbed. Heaven has become for us
the cosmic space of the physicists, and the divine empyrean a fair
memory of things that once were. But “the heart glows,” and a secret
unrest gnaws at the roots of our being. In the words of the Völuspa we
may ask:
What murmurs Wotan over Mimir’s head?
Already the spring boils …
[51]
Our concern with the unconscious has become a vital question for
us—a question of spiritual being or non-being. All those who have had
an experience like that mentioned in the dream know that the treasure
lies in the depths of the water and will try to salvage it. As they must
never forget who they are, they must on no account imperil their
consciousness. They will keep their standpoint firmly anchored to the
earth, and will thus—to preserve the metaphor—become fishers who
catch with hook and net what swims in the water. There may be
consummate fools who do not understand what fishermen do, but the
latter will not mistake the timeless meaning of their action, for the
symbol of their craft is many centuries older than the still unfaded story
of the Grail. But not every man is a fisherman. Sometimes this figure
remains arrested at an early, instinctive level, and then it is an otter, as
we know from Oskar Schmitz’s fairytales.
27
[52]
Whoever looks into the water sees his own image, but behind it
living creatures soon loom up; fishes, presumably, harmless dwellers of
the deep—harmless, if only the lake were not haunted. They are waterbeings of a peculiar sort. Sometimes a nixie gets into the fisherman’s
net, a female, half-human fish.
28
Nixies are entrancing creatures:
Half drew she him,
Half sank he down
And nevermore was seen.
[53]
The nixie is an even more instinctive version of a magical
feminine being whom I call the anima. She can also be a siren, melusina
(mermaid), wood-nymph, Grace, or Erlking’s daughter, or a lamia or
succubus, who infatuates young men and sucks the life out of them.
Moralizing critics will say that these figures are projections of soulful
emotional states and are nothing but worthless fantasies. One must admit
that there is a certain amount of truth in this. But is it the whole truth? Is
the nixie really nothing but a product of moral laxity? Were there not
such beings long ago, in an age when dawning human consciousness
was still wholly bound to nature? Surely there were spirits of forest,
field, and stream long before the question of moral conscience ever
existed. What is more, these beings were as much dreaded as adored, so
that their rather peculiar erotic charms were only one of their
characteristics. Man’s consciousness was then far simpler, and his
possession of it absurdly small. An unlimited amount of what we now
feel to be an integral part of our psychic being disports itself merrily for
the primitive in projections ranging far and wide.
29
[54]
The word “projection” is not really appropriate, for nothing has
been cast out of the psyche; rather, the psyche has attained its present
complexity by a series of acts of introjection. Its complexity has
increased in proportion to the despiritualization of nature. An alluring
nixie from the dim bygone is today called an “erotic fantasy,” and she
may complicate our psychic life in a most painful way. She comes upon
us just as a nixie might; she sits on top of us like a succubus; she
changes into all sorts of shapes like a witch, and in general displays an
unbearable independence that does not seem at all proper in a psychic
content. Occasionally she causes states of fascination that rival the best
bewitchment, or unleashes terrors in us not to be outdone by any
manifestation of the devil. She is a mischievous being who crosses our
path in numerous transformations and disguises, playing all kinds of
tricks on us, causing happy and unhappy delusions, depressions and
ecstasies, outbursts of affect, etc. Even in a state of reasonable
introjection the nixie has not laid aside her roguery. The witch has not
ceased to mix her vile potions of love and death; her magic poison has
been refined into intrigue and self-deception, unseen though none the
less dangerous for that.
[55]
But how do we dare to call this elfin being the “anima”? Anima
means soul and should designate something very wonderful and
immortal. Yet this was not always so. We should not forget that this
kind of soul is a dogmatic conception whose purpose it is to pin down
and capture something uncannily alive and active. The German word
Seele is closely related, via the Gothic form saiwalô, to the Greek word
, which means ‘quick-moving,’ ‘changeful of hue,’ ‘twinkling,’
something like a butterfly—ψνχή in Greek—which reels drunkenly from
flower to flower and lives on honey and love. In Gnostic typology the
ἂνθρωπος ψυχικός, ‘psychic man,’ is inferior to the πνευματικός,
‘spiritual man,’ and finally there are wicked souls who must roast in hell
for all eternity. Even the quite innocent soul of the unbaptized newborn
babe is deprived of the contemplation of God. Among primitives, the
soul is the magic breath of life (hence the term “anima”), or a flame. An
uncanonical saying of our Lord’s aptly declares: “Whoso is near unto
me is near to the fire.” For Heraclitus the soul at the highest level is fiery
and dry, because ψνχή as such is closely akin to “cool breath”—ψύχαειν
means ‘to breathe,’ ‘to blow’; ψνχρός and ψῡχoς mean ‘cold,’ ‘chill,’
‘damp.’
[56]
Being that has soul is living being. Soul is the living thing in
man, that which lives of itself and causes life. Therefore God breathed
into Adam a living breath, that he might live. With her cunning play of
illusions the soul lures into life the inertness of matter that does not want
to live. She makes us believe incredible things, that life may be lived.
She is full of snares and traps, in order that man should fall, should
reach the earth, entangle himself there, and stay caught, so that life
should be lived; as Eve in the garden of Eden could not rest content until
she had convinced Adam of the goodness of the forbidden apple. Were it
not for the leaping and twinkling of the soul, man would rot away in his
greatest passion, idleness. A certain kind of reasonableness is its
advocate, and a certain kind of morality adds its blessing. But to have
soul is the whole venture of life, for soul is a life-giving daemon who
plays his elfin game above and below human existence, for which
reason—in the realm of dogma—he is threatened and propitiated with
superhuman punishments and blessings that go far beyond the possible
deserts of human beings. Heaven and hell are the fates meted out to the
soul and not to civilized man, who in his nakedness and timidity would
have no idea of what to do with himself in a heavenly Jerusalem.
30
[57]
The anima is not the soul in the dogmatic sense, not an anima
rationalis, which is a philosophical conception, but a natural archetype
that satisfactorily sums up all the statements of the unconscious, of the
primitive mind, of the history of language and religion. It is a “factor” in
the proper sense of the word. Man cannot make it; on the contrary, it is
always the a priori element in his moods, reactions, impulses, and
whatever else is spontaneous in psychic life. It is something that lives of
itself, that makes us live; it is a life behind consciousness that cannot be
completely integrated with it, but from which, on the contrary,
consciousness arises. For, in the last analysis, psychic life is for the
greater part an unconscious life that surrounds consciousness on all sides
—a notion that is sufficiently obvious when one considers how much
unconscious preparation is needed, for instance, to register a senseimpression.
[58]
Although it seems as if the whole of our unconscious psychic life
could be ascribed to the anima, she is yet only one archetype among
many. Therefore, she is not characteristic of the unconscious in its
entirety. She is only one of its aspects. This is shown by the very fact of
her femininity. What is not—I, not masculine, is most probably
feminine, and because the not—I is felt as not belonging to me and
therefore as outside me, the anima-image is usually projected upon
women. Either sex is inhabited by the opposite sex up to a point, for,
biologically speaking, it is simply the greater number of masculine
genes that tips the scales in favour of masculinity. The smaller number
of feminine genes seems to form a feminine character, which usually
remains unconscious because of its subordinate position.
[59]
With the archetype of the anima we enter the realm of the gods,
or rather, the realm that metaphysics has reserved for itself. Everything
the anima touches becomes numinous—unconditional, dangerous,
taboo, magical. She is the serpent in the paradise of the harmless man
with good resolutions and still better intentions. She affords the most
convincing reasons for not prying into the unconscious, an occupation
that would break down our moral inhibitions and unleash forces that had
better been left unconscious and undisturbed. As usual, there is
something in what the anima says; for life in itself is not good only, it is
also bad. Because the anima wants life, she wants both good and bad.
These categories do not exist in the elfin realm. Bodily life as well as
psychic life have the impudence to get along much better without
conventional morality, and they often remain the healthier for it.
[60]
The anima believes in the καλόν κάγαθόν, the ‘beautiful and the
good,’ a primitive conception that antedates the discovery of the conflict
between aesthetics and morals. It took more than a thousand years of
Christian differentiation to make it clear that the good is not always the
beautiful and the beautiful not necessarily good. The paradox of this
marriage of ideas troubled the ancients as little as it does the primitives.
The anima is conservative and clings in the most exasperating fashion to
the ways of earlier humanity. She likes to appear in historic dress, with a
predilection for Greece and Egypt. In this connection we would mention
the classic anima stories of Rider Haggard and Pierre Benoît. The
Renaissance dream known as the Ipnerotomachia of Poliphilo, and
Goethe’s Faust, likewise reach deep into antiquity in order to find “le
vrai mot” for the situation. Poliphilo conjured up Queen Venus; Goethe,
31
Helen of Troy. Aniela Jaffé has sketched a lively picture of the anima
in the age of Biedermeier and the Romantics. If you want to know what
happens when the anima appears in modern society, I can warmly
recommend John Erskine’s Private Life of Helen of Troy. She is not a
shallow creation, for the breath of eternity lies over everything that is
really alive. The anima lives beyond all categories, and can therefore
dispense with blame as well as with praise. Since the beginning of time
man, with his wholesome animal instinct, has been engaged in combat
with his soul and its daemonism. If the soul were uniformly dark it
would be a simple matter. Unfortunately this is not so, for the anima can
appear also as an angel of light, a psychopomp who points the way to
the highest meaning, as we know from Faust.
32
[61]
If the encounter with the shadow is the “apprentice-piece” in the
individual’s development, then that with the anima is the “masterpiece.” The relation with the anima is again a test of courage, an ordeal
by fire for the spiritual and moral forces of man. We should never forget
that in dealing with the anima we are dealing with psychic facts which
have never been in man’s possession before, since they were always
found “outside” his psychic territory, so to speak, in the form of
projections. For the son, the anima is hidden in the dominating power of
the mother, and sometimes she leaves him with a sentimental attachment
that lasts throughout life and seriously impairs the fate of the adult. On
the other hand, she may spur him on to the highest flights. To the men of
antiquity the anima appeared as a goddess or a witch, while for medieval
man the goddess was replaced by the Queen of Heaven and Mother
Church. The desymbolized world of the Protestant produced first an
unhealthy sentimentality and then a sharpening of the moral conflict,
which, because it was so unbearable, led logically to Nietzsche’s
“beyond good and evil.” In centres of civilization this state shows itself
in the increasing insecurity of marriage. The American divorce rate has
been reached, if not exceeded, in many European countries, which
proves that the anima projects herself by preference on the opposite sex,
thus giving rise to magically complicated relationships. This fact, largely
because of its pathological consequences, has led to the growth of
modern psychology, which in its Freudian form cherishes the belief that
the essential cause of all disturbances is sexuality—a view that only
exacerbates the already existing conflict. There is a confusion here
33
between cause and effect. The sexual disturbance is by no means the
cause of neurotic difficulties, but is, like these, one of the pathological
effects of a maladaptation of consciousness, as when consciousness is
faced with situations and tasks to which it is not equal. Such a person
simply does not understand how the world has altered, and what his
attitude would have to be in order to adapt to it.
[62]
In dealing with the shadow or anima it is not sufficient just to
know about these concepts and to reflect on them. Nor can we ever
experience their content by feeling our way into them or by
appropriating other people’s feelings. It is no use at all to learn a list of
archetypes by heart. Archetypes are complexes of experience that come
upon us like fate, and their effects are felt in our most personal life. The
anima no longer crosses our path as a goddess, but, it may be, as an
intimately personal misadventure, or perhaps as our best venture. When,
for instance, a highly esteemed professor in his seventies abandons his
family and runs off with a young red-headed actress, we know that the
gods have claimed another victim. This is how daemonic power reveals
itself to us. Until not so long ago it would have been an easy matter to
do away with the young woman as a witch.
[63]
In my experience there are very many people of intelligence and
education who have no trouble in grasping the idea of the anima and her
relative autonomy, and can also understand the phenomenology of the
animus in women. Psychologists have more difficulties to overcome in
this respect, probably because they are under no compulsion to grapple
with the complex facts peculiar to the psychology of the unconscious. If
they are doctors as well, their somato-psychological thinking gets in the
way, with its assumption that psychological processes can be expressed
in intellectual, biological, or physiological terms. Psychology, however,
is neither biology nor physiology nor any other science than just this
knowledge of the psyche.
[64]
The picture I have drawn of the anima so far is not complete.
Although she may be the chaotic urge to life, something strangely
meaningful clings to her, a secret knowledge or hidden wisdom, which
contrasts most curiously with her irrational elfin nature. Here I would
like to refer again to the authors already cited. Rider Haggard calls She
“Wisdom’s Daughter”; Benoît’s Queen of Atlantis has an excellent
library that even contains a lost book of Plato. Helen of Troy, in her
reincarnation, is rescued from a Tyrian brothel by the wise Simon
Magus and accompanies him on his travels. I purposely refrained from
mentioning this thoroughly characteristic aspect of the anima earlier,
because the first encounter with her usually leads one to infer anything
rather than wisdom. This aspect appears only to the person who gets to
grips with her seriously. Only then, when this hard task has been faced,
does he come to realize more and more that behind all her cruel sporting
with human fate there lies something like a hidden purpose which seems
to reflect a superior knowledge of life’s laws. It is just the most
unexpected, the most terrifyingly chaotic things which reveal a deeper
meaning. And the more this meaning is recognized, the more the anima
loses her impetuous and compulsive character. Gradually breakwaters
are built against the surging of chaos, and the meaningful divides itself
from the meaningless. When sense and nonsense are no longer identical,
the force of chaos is weakened by their subtraction; sense is then endued
with the force of meaning, and nonsense with the force of
meaninglessness. In this way a new cosmos arises. This is not a new
discovery in the realm of medical psychology, but the age-old truth that
out of the richness of a man’s experience there comes a teaching which
the father can pass on to the son.
34
35
36
[65]
In elfin nature wisdom and folly appear as one and the same; and
they are one and the same as long as they are acted out by the anima.
Life is crazy and meaningful at once. And when we do not laugh over
the one aspect and speculate about the other, life is exceedingly drab,
and everything is reduced to the littlest scale. There is then little sense
and little nonsense either. When you come to think about it, nothing has
any meaning, for when there was nobody to think, there was nobody to
interpret what happened. Interpretations are only for those who don’t
understand; it is only the things we don’t understand that have any
meaning. Man woke up in a world he did not understand, and that is
why he tries to interpret it.
[66]
Thus the anima and life itself are meaningless in so far as they
offer no interpretation. Yet they have a nature that can be interpreted, for
in all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order, in all caprice
a fixed law, for everything that works is grounded on its opposite. It
takes man’s discriminating understanding, which breaks everything
down, into antinomial judgments, to recognize this. Once he comes to
grips with the anima, her chaotic capriciousness will give him cause to
suspect a secret order, to sense a plan, a meaning, a purpose over and
above her nature, or even—we might almost be tempted to say—to
“postulate” such a thing, though this would not be in accord with the
truth. For in actual reality we do not have at our command any power of
cool reflection, nor does any science or philosophy help us, and the
traditional teachings of religion do so only to a limited degree. We are
caught and entangled in aimless experience, and the judging intellect
with its categories proves itself powerless. Human interpretation fails,
for a turbulent life-situation has arisen that refuses to fit any of the
traditional meanings assigned to it. It is a moment of collapse. We sink
into a final depth—Apuleius calls it “a kind of voluntary death.” It is a
surrender of our own powers, not artificially willed but forced upon us
by nature; not a voluntary submission and humiliation decked in moral
garb but an utter and unmistakable defeat crowned with the panic fear of
demoralization. Only when all props and crutches are broken, and no
cover from the rear offers even the slightest hope of security, does it
become possible for us to experience an archetype that up till then had
lain hidden behind the meaningful nonsense played out by the anima.
This is the archetype of meaning, just as the anima is the archetype of
life itself.
[67]
It always seems to us as if meaning—compared with life—were
the younger event, because we assume, with some justification, that we
assign it of ourselves, and because we believe, equally rightly no doubt,
that the great world can get along without being interpreted. But how do
we assign meaning? From what source, in the last analysis, do we derive
meaning? The forms we use for assigning meaning are historical
categories that reach back into the mists of time—a fact we do not take
sufficiently into account. Interpretations make use of certain linguistic
matrices that are themselves derived from primordial images. From
whatever side we approach this question, everywhere we find ourselves
confronted with the history of language, with images and motifs that
lead straight back to the primitive wonder-world.
[68]
Take, for instance, the word “idea.” It goes back to the είδoς
concept of Plato, and the eternal ideas are primordial images stored up
ἐv ὑπερονρανίῳ το’πῳ (in a supracelestial place) as eternal, transcendent
forms. The eye of the seer perceives them as “imagines et lares,” or as
images in dreams and revelatory visions. Or let us take the concept of
energy, which is an interpretation of physical events. In earlier times it
was the secret fire of the alchemists, or phlogiston, or the heat-force
inherent in matter, like the “primal warmth” of the Stoics, or the
Heraclitean πῡρ ἀεί ζωον (ever-living fire), which borders on the
primitive notion of an all-pervading vital force, a power of growth and
magic healing that is generally called mana.
[69]
I will not go on needlessly giving examples. It is sufficient to
know that there is not a single important idea or view that does not
possess historical antecedents. Ultimately they are all founded on
primordial archetypal forms whose concreteness dates from a time when
consciousness did not think, but only perceived. “Thoughts” were
objects of inner perception, not thought at all, but sensed as external
phenomena—seen or heard, so to speak. Thought was essentially
revelation, not invented but forced upon us or bringing conviction
through its immediacy and actuality. Thinking of this kind precedes the
primitive ego-consciousness, and the latter is more its object than its
subject. But we ourselves have not yet climbed the last peak of
consciousness, so we also have a pre-existent thinking, of which we are
not aware so long as we are supported by traditional symbols—or, to put
it in the language of dreams, so long as the father or the king is not dead.
[70]
I would like to give you an example of how the unconscious
“thinks” and paves the way for solutions. It is the case of a young
theological student, whom I did not know personally. He was in great
straits because of his religious beliefs, and about this time he dreamed
the following dream:
37
[71]
He was standing in the presence of a handsome old man dressed
entirely in black. He knew it was the white magician. This personage
had just addressed him at considerable length, but the dreamer could no
longer remember what it was about. He had only retained the closing
words: “And for this we need the help of the black magician.” At that
moment the door opened and in came another old man exactly like the
first, except that he was dressed in white. He said to the white magician,
“I need your advice,” but threw a sidelong, questioning look at the
dreamer, whereupon the white magician answered: “You can speak
freely, he is an innocent.” The black magician then began to relate his
story. He had come from a distant land where something extraordinary
had happened. The country was ruled by an old king who felt his death
near. He—the king—had sought out a tomb for himself. For there were
in that land a great number of tombs from ancient times, and the king
had chosen the finest for himself. According to legend, a virgin had been
buried in it. The king caused the tomb to be opened, in order to get it
ready for use. But when the bones it contained were exposed to the light
of day, they suddenly took on life and changed into a black horse, which
at once fled into the desert and there vanished. The black magician had
heard of this story and immediately set forth in pursuit of the horse.
After a journey of many days, always on the tracks of the horse, he came
to the desert and crossed to the other side, where the grasslands began
again. There he met the horse grazing, and there also he came upon the
find on whose account he now needed the advice of the white magician.
For he had found the lost keys of paradise, and he did not know what to
do with them. At this exciting moment the dreamer awoke.
[72]
In the light of our earlier remarks the meaning of the dream is not
hard to guess: the old king is the ruling symbol that wants to go to its
eternal rest, and in the very place where similar “dominants” lie buried.
His choice falls, fittingly enough, on the grave of anima, who lies in the
death trance of a Sleeping Beauty so long as the king is alive—that is, so
long as a valid principle (Prince or princeps) regulates and expresses
life. But when the king draws to his end, she comes to life again and
changes into a black horse, which in Plato’s parable stands for the
unruliness of the passions. Anyone who follows this horse comes into
the desert, into a wild land remote from men—an image of spiritual and
moral isolation. But there lie the keys of paradise.
38
[73]
Now what is paradise? Clearly, the Garden of Eden with its twofaced tree of life and knowledge and its four streams. In the Christian
version it is also the heavenly city of the Apocalypse, which, like the
Garden of Eden, is conceived as a mandala. But the mandala is a symbol
of individuation. So it is the black magician who finds the keys to the
solution of the problems of belief weighing on the dreamer, the keys that
open the way of individuation. The contrast between desert and paradise
therefore signifies isolation as contrasted with individuation, or the
becoming of the self.
[74]
This part of the dream is a remarkable paraphrase of the
Oxyrhynchus sayings of Jesus, in which the way to the kingdom of
heaven is pointed out by animals, and where we find the admonition:
“Therefore know yourselves, for you are the city, and the city is the
kingdom.” It is also a paraphrase of the serpent of paradise who
persuaded our first parents to sin, and who finally leads to the
redemption of mankind through the Son of God. As we know, this
causal nexus gave rise to the Ophitic identification of the serpent with
the Σωτήρ (Saviour). The black horse and the black magician are halfevil elements whose relativity with respect to good is hinted at in the
exchange of garments. The two magicians are, indeed, two aspects of
the wise old man, the superior master and teacher, the archetype of the
spirit, who symbolizes the pre-existent meaning hidden in the chaos of
life. He is the father of the soul, and yet the soul, in some miraculous
manner, is also his virgin mother, for which reason he was called by the
alchemists the “first son of the mother.” The black magician and the
black horse correspond to the descent into darkness in the dreams
mentioned earlier.
39
[75]
What an unbearably hard lesson for a young student of theology!
Fortunately he was not in the least aware that the father of all prophets
had spoken to him in the dream and placed a great secret almost within
his grasp. One marvels at the inappropriateness of such occurrences.
Why this prodigality? But I have to admit that we do not know how this
dream affected the student in the long run, and I must emphasize that to
me, at least, the dream had a very great deal to say. It was not allowed to
get lost, even though the dreamer did not understand it.
[76]
The old man in this dream is obviously trying to show how good
and evil function together, presumably as an answer to the still
unresolved moral conflict in the Christian psyche. With this peculiar
relativization of opposites we find ourselves approaching nearer to the
ideas of the East, to the nirdvandva of Hindu philosophy, the freedom
from opposites, which is shown as a possible way of solving the conflict
through reconciliation. How perilously fraught with meaning this
Eastern relativity of good and evil is, can be seen from the Indian
aphoristic question: “Who takes longer to reach perfection, the man who
loves God, or the man who hates him?” And the answer is: “He who
loves God takes seven reincarnations to reach perfection, and he who
hates God takes only three, for he who hates God will think of him more
than he who loves him,” Freedom from opposites presupposes their
functional equivalence, and this offends our Christian feelings.
Nonetheless, as our dream example shows, the balanced co-operation of
moral opposites is a natural truth which has been recognized just as
naturally by the East. The clearest example of this is to be found in
Taoist philosophy. But in the Christian tradition, too, there are various
sayings that come very close to this standpoint. I need only remind you
of the parable of the unjust steward.
[77]
Our dream is by no means unique in this respect, for the tendency
to relativize opposites is a notable peculiarity of the unconscious One
must immediately add, however, that this is true only in cases of
exaggerated moral sensibility; in other cases the unconscious can insist
just as inexorably on the irreconcilability of the opposites. As a rule, the
standpoint of the unconscious is relative to the conscious attitude. We
can probably say, therefore, that our dream presupposes the specific
beliefs and doubts of a theological consciousness of Protestant
persuasion. This limits the statement of the dream to a definite set of
problems. But even with this paring down of its validity the dream
clearly demonstrates the superiority of its standpoint. Fittingly enough, it
expresses its meaning in the opinion and voice of a wise magician, who
goes back in direct line to the figure of the medicine man in primitive
society. He is, like the anima, an immortal daemon that pierces the
chaotic darknesses of brute life with the light of meaning. He is the
enlightener, the master and teacher, a psychopomp whose
personification even Nietzsche, that breaker of tablets, could not escape
—for he had called up his reincarnation in Zarathustra, the lofty spirit of
an almost Homeric age, as the carrier and mouthpiece of his own
“Dionysian” enlightenment and ecstasy. For him God was dead, but the
driving daemon of wisdom became as it were his bodily double. He
himself says:
Then one was changed to two
And Zarathustra passed me by.
[78]
Zarathustra is more for Nietzsche than a poetic figure; he is an
involuntary confession, a testament. Nietzsche too had lost his way in
the darknesses of a life that turned its back upon God and Christianity,
and that is why there came to him the revealer and enlightener, the
speaking fountainhead of his soul. Here is the source of the hieratic
language of Zarathustra, for that is the style of this archetype.
[79]
Modern man, in experiencing this archetype, comes to know that
most ancient form of thinking as an autonomous activity whose object
he is. Hermes Trismegistus or the Thoth of Hermetic literature, Orpheus,
the Poimandres (shepherd of men) and his near relation the Poimen of
Hermes, are other formulations of the same experience. If the name
“Lucifer” were not prejudicial, it would be a very suitable one for this
archetype. But I have been content to call it the archetype of the wise old
man, or of meaning. Like all archetypes it has a positive and a negative
aspect, though I don’t want to enter into this here. The reader will find a
detailed exposition of the two-facedness of the wise old man in “The
Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales.”
40
[80]
The three archetypes so far discussed—the shadow, the anima,
and the wise old man—are of a kind that can be directly experienced in
personified form. In the foregoing I tried to indicate the general
psychological conditions in which such an experience arises. But what I
conveyed were only abstract generalizations. One could, or rather
should, really give a description of the process as it occurs in immediate
experience. In the course of this process the archetypes appear as active
personalities in dreams and fantasies. But the process itself involves
another class of archetypes which one could call the archetypes of
transformation. They are not personalities, but are typical situations,
places, ways and means, that symbolize the kind of transformation in
question. Like the personalities, these archetypes are true and genuine
symbols that cannot be exhaustively interpreted, either as signs or as
allegories. They are genuine symbols precisely because they are
ambiguous, full of half-glimpsed meanings, and in the last resort
inexhaustible. The ground principles, the ἀρx ί, of the unconscious are
indescribable because of their wealth of reference, although in
themselves recognizable. The discriminating intellect naturally keeps on
trying to establish their singleness of meaning and thus misses the
essential point; for what we can above all establish as the one thing
consistent with their nature is their manifold meaning, their almost
limitless wealth of reference, which makes any unilateral formulation
impossible. Besides this, they are in principle paradoxical, just as for the
alchemists the spirit was conceived as “senex et iuvenis simul”—an old
man and a youth at once.
[81]
If one wants to form a picture of the symbolic process, the series
of pictures found in alchemy are good examples, though the symbols
they contain are for the most part traditional despite their often obscure
origin and significance. An excellent Eastern example is the Tantric
chakra system, or the mystical nerve system of Chinese yoga. It also
seems as if the set of pictures in the Tarot cards were distantly
descended from the archetypes of transformation, a view that has been
confirmed for me in a very enlightening lecture by Professor Bernoulli.
41
42
43
[82]
The symbolic process is an experience in images and of images.
Its development usually shows an enantiodromian structure like the text
of the I Ching, and so presents a rhythm of negative and positive, loss
and gain, dark and light. Its beginning is almost invariably characterized
by one’s getting stuck in a blind alley or in some impossible situation;
and its goal is, broadly speaking, illumination or higher consciousness,
by means of which the initial situation is overcome on a higher level. As
regards the time factor, the process may be compressed into a single
dream or into a short moment of experience, or it may extend over
months and years, depending on the nature of the initial situation, the
person involved in the process, and the goal to be reached. The wealth of
symbols naturally varies enormously from case to case. Although
everything is experienced in image form, i.e., symbolically, it is by no
means a question of fictitious dangers but of very real risks upon which
the fate of a whole life may depend. The chief danger is that of
succumbing to the fascinating influence of the archetypes, and this is
most likely to happen when the archetypal images are not made
conscious. If there is already a predisposition to psychosis, it may even
happen that the archetypal figures, which are endowed with a certain
autonomy anyway on account of their natural numinosity, will escape
from conscious control altogether and become completely independent,
thus producing the phenomena of possession. In the case of an animapossession, for instance, the patient will want to change himself into a
woman through self-castration, or he is afraid that something of the sort
will be done to him by force. The best-known example of this is
Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. Patients often discover a
whole anima mythology with numerous archaic motifs. A case of this
kind was published some time ago by Nelken. Another patient has
described his experiences himself and commented on them in a book. I
mention these examples because there are still people who think that the
archetypes are subjective chimeras of my own brain.
44
45
[83]
The things that come to light brutally in insanity remain hidden in
the background in neurosis, but they continue to influence consciousness
nonetheless. When, therefore, the analysis penetrates the background of
conscious phenomena, it discovers the same archetypal figures that
activate the deliriums of psychotics. Finally, there is any amount of
literary and historical evidence to prove that in the case of these
archetypes we are dealing with normal types of fantasy that occur
practically everywhere and not with the monstrous products of insanity.
The pathological element does not lie in the existence of these ideas, but
in the dissociation of consciousness that can no longer control the
unconscious. In all cases of dissociation it is therefore necessary to
integrate the unconscious into consciousness. This is a synthetic process
which I have termed the “individuation process.”
[84]
As a matter of fact, this process follows the natural course of life
—a life in which the individual becomes what he always was. Because
man has consciousness, a development of this kind does not run very
smoothly; often it is varied and disturbed, because consciousness
deviates again and again from its archetypal, instinctual foundation and
finds itself in opposition to it. There then arises the need for a synthesis
of the two positions. This amounts to psychotherapy even on the
primitive level, where it takes the form of restitution ceremonies. As
examples I would mention the identification of the Australian aborigines
with their ancestors in the alcheringa period, identification with the
“sons of the sun” among the Pueblos of Taos, the Helios apotheosis in
the Isis mysteries, and so on. Accordingly, the therapeutic method of
complex psychology consists on the one hand in making as fully
conscious as possible the constellated unconscious contents, and on the
other hand in synthetizing them with consciousness through the act of
recognition. Since, however, civilized man possesses a high degree of
dissociability and makes continual use of it in order to avoid every
possible risk, it is by no means a foregone conclusion that recognition
will be followed by the appropriate action. On the contrary, we have to
reckon with the singular ineffectiveness of recognition and must
therefore insist on a meaningful application of it. Recognition by itself
does not as a rule do this, nor does it imply, as such, any moral strength.
In these cases it becomes very clear how much the cure of neurosis is a
moral problem.
[85]
As the archetypes, like all numinous contents, are relatively
autonomous, they cannot be integrated simply by rational means, but
require a dialectical procedure, a real coming to terms with them, often
conducted by the patient in dialogue form, so that, without knowing it,
he puts into effect the alchemical definition of the meditatio: “an inner
colloquy with one’s good angel.” Usually the process runs a dramatic
course, with many ups and downs. It expresses itself in, or is
accompanied by, dream symbols that are related to the “représentations
collectives,” which in the form of mythological motifs have portrayed
psychic processes of transformation since the earliest times.
46
47
[86]
In the short space of a lecture I must content myself with giving
only a few examples of archetypes. I have chosen the ones that play the
chief part in an analysis of the masculine psyche, and have tried to give
you some idea of the transformation process in which they appear. Since
this lecture was first published, the figures of the shadow, anima, and
wise old man, together with the corresponding figures of the feminine
unconscious, have been dealt with in greater detail in my contributions
to the symbolism of the self, and the individuation process in its
relation to alchemical symbolism has also been subjected to closer
investigation.
48
49
THE CONCEPT OF THE
COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS1
[87]
Probably none of my empirical concepts has met with so much
misunderstanding as the idea of the collective unconscious. In what
follows I shall try to give (1) a definition of the concept, (2) a
description of what it means for psychology, (3) an explanation of the
method of proof, and (4) an example.
1. Definition
[88]
The collective unconscious is a part of the psyche which can be
negatively distinguished from a personal unconscious by the fact that it
does not, like the latter, owe its existence to personal experience and
consequently is not a personal acquisition. While the personal
unconscious is made up essentially of contents which have at one time
been conscious but which have disappeared from consciousness through
having been forgotten or repressed, the contents of the collective
unconscious have never been in consciousness, and therefore have never
been individually acquired, but owe their existence exclusively to
heredity. Whereas the personal unconscious consists for the most part of
complexes, the content of the collective unconscious is made up
essentially of archetypes.
[89]
The concept of the archetype, which is an indispensable correlate
of the idea of the collective unconscious, indicates the existence of
definite forms in the psyche which seem to be present always and
everywhere. Mythological research calls them “motifs”; in the
psychology of primitives they correspond to Lévy-Bruhl’s concept of
“représentations collectives,” and in the field of comparative religion
they have been defined by Hubert and Mauss as “categories of the
imagination.” Adolf Bastian long ago called them “elementary” or
“primordial thoughts.” From these references it should be clear enough
that my idea of the archetype—literally a pre-existent form—does not
stand alone but is something that is recognized and named in other fields
of knowledge.
[90]
My thesis, then, is as follows: In addition to our immediate
consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we
believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal
unconscious as an appendix), there exists a second psychic system of a
collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all
individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually
but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which
can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to
certain psychic contents.
2. The Psychological Meaning of the Collective Unconscious
[91]
Medical psychology, growing as it did out of professional
practice, insists on the personal nature of the psyche. By this I mean the
views of Freud and Adler. It is a psychology of the person, and its
aetiological or causal factors are regarded almost wholly as personal in
nature. Nonetheless, even this psychology is based on certain general
biological factors, for instance on the sexual instinct or on the urge for
self-assertion, which are by no means merely personal peculiarities. It is
forced to do this because it lays claim to being an explanatory science.
Neither of these views would deny the existence of a priori instincts
common to man and animals alike, or that they have a significant
influence on personal psychology. Yet instincts are impersonal,
universally distributed, hereditary factors of a dynamic or motivating
character, which very often fail so completely to reach consciousness
that modern psychotherapy is faced with the task of helping the patient
to become conscious of them. Moreover, the instincts are not vague and
indefinite by nature, but are specifically formed motive forces which,
long before there is any consciousness, and in spite of any degree of
consciousness later on, pursue their inherent goals. Consequently they
form very close analogies to the archetypes, so close, in fact, that there
is good reason for supposing that the archetypes are the unconscious
images of the instincts themselves, in other words, that they are patterns
of instinctual behaviour.
[92]
The hypothesis of the collective unconscious is, therefore, no
more daring than to assume there are instincts. One admits readily that
human activity is influenced to a high degree by instincts, quite apart
from the rational motivations of the conscious mind. So if the assertion
is made that our imagination, perception, and thinking are likewise
influenced by inborn and universally present formal elements, it seems
to me that a normally functioning intelligence can discover in this idea
just as much or just as little mysticism as in the theory of instincts.
Although this reproach of mysticism has frequently been levelled at my
concept, I must emphasize yet again that the concept of the collective
unconscious is neither a speculative nor a philosophical but an empirical
matter. The question is simply this: are there or are there not
unconscious, universal forms of this kind? If they exist, then there is a
region of the psyche which one can call the collective unconscious. It is
true that the diagnosis of the collective unconscious is not always an
easy task. It is not sufficient to point out the often obviously archetypal
nature of unconscious products, for these can just as well be derived
from acquisitions through language and education. Cryptomnesia should
also be ruled out, which it is almost impossible to do in certain cases. In
spite of all these difficulties, there remain enough individual instances
showing the autochthonous revival of mythological motifs to put the
matter beyond any reasonable doubt. But if such an unconscious exists
at all, psychological explanation must take account of it and submit
certain alleged personal aetiologies to sharper criticism.
[93]
What I mean can perhaps best be made clear by a concrete
example. You have probably read Freud’s discussion of a certain
picture by Leonardo da Vinci: St. Anne with the Virgin Mary and the
Christ-child. Freud interprets this remarkable picture in terms of the fact
that Leonardo himself had two mothers. This causality is personal. We
shall not linger over the fact that this picture is far from unique, nor over
the minor inaccuracy that St. Anne happens to be the grandmother of
Christ and not, as required by Freud’s interpretation, the mother, but
shall simply point out that interwoven with the apparently personal
psychology there is an impersonal motif well known to us from other
2
fields. This is the motif of the dual mother, an archetype to be found in
many variants in the field of mythology and comparative religion and
forming the basis of numerous “représentations collectives.” I might
mention, for instance, the motif of the dual descent, that is, descent from
human and divine parents, as in the case of Heracles, who received
immortality through being unwittingly adopted by Hera. What was a
myth in Greece was actually a ritual in Egypt: Pharaoh was both human
and divine by nature. In the birth chambers of the Egyptian temples
Pharaoh’s second, divine conception and birth is depicted on the walls;
he is “twice-born.” It is an idea that underlies all rebirth mysteries,
Christianity included. Christ himself is “twiceborn”: through his baptism
in the Jordan he was regenerated and reborn from water and spirit.
Consequently, in the Roman liturgy the font is designated the “uterus
ecclesiae,” and, as you can read in the Roman missal, it is called this
even today, in the “benediction of the font” on Holy Saturday before
Easter. Further, according to an early Christan-Gnostic idea, the spirit
which appeared in the form of a dove was interpreted as SophiaSapientia—Wisdom and the Mother of Christ. Thanks to this motif of
the dual birth, children today, instead of having good and evil fairies
who magically “adopt” them at birth with blessings or curses, are given
sponsors—a “godfather” and a “godmother.”
[94]
The idea of a second birth is found at all times and in all places.
In the earliest beginnings of medicine it was a magical means of healing;
in many religions it is the central mystical experience; it is the key idea
in medieval, occult philosophy, and, last but not least, it is an infantile
fantasy occurring in numberless children, large and small, who believe
that their parents are not their real parents but merely foster-parents to
whom they were handed over. Benvenuto Cellini also had this idea, as
he himself relates in his autobiography.
[95]
Now it is absolutely out of the question that all the individuals
who believe in a dual descent have in reality always had two mothers, or
conversely that those few who shared Leonardo’s fate have infected the
rest of humanity with their complex. Rather, one cannot avoid the
assumption that the universal occurrence of the dual-birth motif together
with the fantasy of the two mothers answers an omnipresent human need
which is reflected in these motifs. If Leonardo da Vinci did in fact
portray his two mothers in St. Anne and Mary—which I doubt—he
nonetheless was only expressing something which countless millions of
people before and after him have believed. The vulture symbol (which
Freud also discusses in the work mentioned) makes this view all the
more plausible. With some justification he quotes as the source of the
symbol the Hieroglyphica of Horapollo, a book much in use in
Leonardo’s time. There you read that vultures are female only and
symbolize the mother. They conceive through the wind (pneuma). This
word took on the meaning of “spirit” chiefly under the influence of
Christianity. Even in the account of the miracle at Pentecost the pneuma
still has the double meaning of wind and spirit. This fact, in my opinion,
points without doubt to Mary, who, a virgin by nature, conceived
through the pneuma, like a vulture. Furthermore, according to
Horapollo, the vulture also symbolizes Athene, who sprang, unbegotten,
directly from the head of Zeus, was a virgin, and knew only spiritual
motherhood. All this is really an allusion to Mary and the rebirth motif.
There is not a shadow of evidence that Leonardo meant anything else by
his picture. Even if it is correct to assume that he identified himself with
the Christ-child, he was in all probability representing the mythological
dual-mother motif and by no means his own personal prehistory. And
what about all the other artists who painted the same theme? Surely not
all of them had two mothers?
3
[96]
Let us now transpose Leonardo’s case to the field of the neuroses,
and assume that a patient with a mother complex is suffering from the
delusion that the cause of his neurosis lies in his having really had two
mothers. The personal interpretation would have to admit that he is right
—and yet it would be quite wrong. For in reality the cause of his
neurosis would lie in the reactivation of the dual-mother archetype, quite
regardless of whether he had one mother or two mothers, because, as we
have seen, this archetype functions individually and historically without
any reference to the relatively rare occurrence of dual motherhood.
[97]
In such a case, it is of course tempting to presuppose so simple
and personal a cause, yet the hypothesis is not only inexact but totally
false. It is admittedly difficult to understand how a dual-mother motif—
unknown to a physician trained only in medicine—could have so great a
determining power as to produce the effect of a traumatic condition. But
if we consider the tremendous powers that lie hidden in the mythological
and religious sphere in man, the aetiological significance of the
archetype appears less fantastic. In numerous cases of neurosis the cause
of the disturbance lies in the very fact that the psychic life of the patient
lacks the co-operation of these motive forces. Nevertheless a purely
personalistic psychology, by reducing everything to personal causes,
tries its level best to deny the existence of archetypal motifs and even
seeks to destroy them by personal analysis. I consider this a rather
dangerous procedure which cannot be justified medically. Today you
can judge better than you could twenty years ago the nature of the forces
involved. Can we not see how a whole nation is reviving an archaic
symbol, yes, even archaic religious forms, and how this mass emotion is
influencing and revolutionizing the life of the individual in a
catastrophic manner? The man of the past is alive in us today to a degree
undreamt of before the war, and in the last analysis what is the fate of
great nations but a summation of the psychic changes in individuals?
[98]
So far as a neurosis is really only a private affair, having its roots
exclusively in personal causes, archetypes play no role at all. But if it is
a question of a general incompatibility or an otherwise injurious
condition productive of neuroses in relatively large numbers of
individuals, then we must assume the presence of constellated
archetypes. Since neuroses are in most cases not just private concerns,
but social phenomena, we must assume that archetypes are constellated
in these cases too. The archetype corresponding to the situation is
activated, and as a result those explosive and dangerous forces hidden in
the archetype come into action, frequently with unpredictable
consequences. There is no lunacy people under the domination of an
archetype will not fall a prey to. If thirty years ago anyone had dared to
predict that our psychological development was tending towards a
revival of the medieval persecutions of the Jews, that Europe would
again tremble before the Roman fasces and the tramp of legions, that
people would once more give the Roman salute, as two thousand years
ago, and that instead of the Christian Cross an archaic swastika would
lure onward millions of warriors ready for death—why, that man would
have been hooted at as a mystical fool. And today? Surprising as it may
seem, all this absurdity is a horrible reality. Private life, private
aetiologies, and private neuroses have become almost a fiction in the
world of today. The man of the past who lived in a world of archaic
“représentations collectives” has risen again into very visible and
painfully real life, and this not only in a few unbalanced individuals but
in many millions of people.
[99]
There are as many archetypes as there are typical situations in
life. Endless repetition has engraved these experiences into our psychic
constitution, not in the form of images filled with content, but at first
only as forms without content, representing merely the possibility of a
certain type of perception and action. When a situation occurs which
corresponds to a given archetype, that archetype becomes activated and
a compulsiveness appears, which, like an instinctual drive, gains its way
against all reason and will, or else produces a conflict of pathological
dimensions, that is to say, a neurosis.
3. Method of Proof
[100]
We must now turn to the question of how the existence of archetypes
can be produce. Since archetypes are supposed to produce certain psychic
forms, we must discuss how and where one can get hold of the material
demonstrating these forms. The main source, then, is dreams, which have
the advantage of being involuntary, spontaneous products of the
unconscious psyche and are therefore pure products of nature not falsified
by any conscious purpose. By questioning the individual one can ascertain
which of the motifs appearing in the dream are known to him. From those
which are unknown to him we must naturally exclude all motifs which
might be known to him, as for instance—to revert to the case of Leonardo
—the vulture symbol. We are not sure whether Leonardo took this symbol
from Horapollo or not, although it would have been perfectly possible for
an educated person of that time, because in those days artists were
distinguished for their wide knowledge of the humanities. Therefore,
although the bird motif is an archetype par excellence, its existence in
Leonardo’s fantasy would still prove nothing. Consequently, we must look
for motifs which could not possibly be known to the dreamer and yet
behave functionally in his dream in such a manner as to coincide with the
functioning of the archetype known from historical sources.
[101]
Another source for the material we need is to be found in “active
imagination.” By this I mean a sequence of fantasies produced by
deliberate concentration. I have found that the existence of unrealized,
unconscious fantasies increases the frequency and intensity of dreams, and
that when these fantasies are made conscious the dreams change their
character and become weaker and less frequent. From this I have drawn
the conclusion that dreams often contain fantasies which “want” to become
conscious. The sources of dreams are often repressed instincts which have
a natural tendency to influence the conscious mind. In cases of this sort,
the patient is simply given the task of contemplating any one fragment of
fantasy that seems significant to him—a chance idea, perhaps, or
something he has become conscious of in a dream—until its context
becomes visible, that is to say, the relevant associative material in which it
is embedded. It is not a question of the “free association” recommended by
Freud for the purpose of dream-analysis, but of elaborating the fantasy by
observing the further fantasy material that adds itself to the fragment in a
natural manner.
[102]
This is not the place to enter upon a technical discussion of the
method. Suffice it to say that the resultant sequence of fantasies relieves
the unconscious and produces material rich in archetypal images and
associations. Obviously, this is a method that can only be used in certain
carefully selected cases. The method is not entirely without danger,
because it may carry the patient too far away from reality. A warning
against thoughtless application is therefore in place.
[103]
Finally, very interesting sources of archetypal material are to be
found in the delusions of paranoiacs, the fantasies observed in trancestates, and the dreams of early childhood, from the third to the fifth year.
Such material is available in profusion, but it is valueless unless one can
adduce convincing mythological parallels. It does not, of course, suffice
simply to connect a dream about a snake with the mythological
occurrence of snakes, for who is to guarantee that the functional
meaning of the snake in the dream is the same as in the mythological
setting? In order to draw a valid parallel, it is necessary to know the
functional meaning of the individual symbol, and then to find out
whether the apparently parallel mythological symbol has a similar
context and therefore the same functional meaning. Establishing such
facts not only requires lengthy and wearisome researches, but is also an
ungrateful subject for demonstration. As the symbols must not be torn
out of their context, one has to launch forth into exhaustive descriptions,
personal as well as symbological, and this is practically impossible in
the framework of a lecture. I have repeatedly tried it at the risk of
sending one half of my audience to sleep.
4. An Example
[104]
I am choosing as an example a case which, though already published,
I use again because its brevity makes it peculiarly suitable for illustration.
Moreover, I can add certain remarks which were omitted in the previous
publication.
4
[105]
About 1906 I came across a very curious delusion in a paranoid
schizophrenic who had been interned for many years. The patient had
suffered since his youth and was incurable. He had been educated at a
State school and been employed as a clerk in an office. He had no special
gifts, and I myself knew nothing of mythology or archaeology in those
days, so the situation was not in any way suspect. One day I found the
patient standing at the window, wagging his head and blinking into the
sun. He told me to do the same, for then I would see something very
interesting. When I asked him what he saw, he was astonished that I could
see nothing, and said: “Surely you see the sun’s penis—when I move my
head to and fro, it moves too, and that is where the wind comes from.”
Naturally I did not understand this strange idea in the least, but I made a
note of it. Then about four years later, during my mythological studies, I
came upon a book by the late Albrecht Dieterich, the well-known
philologist, which threw light on this fantasy. The work, published in
1910, deals with a Greek papyrus in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
Dieterich believed he had discovered a Mithraic ritual in one part of the
text. The text is undoubtedly a religious prescription for carrying out
certain incantations in which Mithras is named. It comes from the
Alexandrian school of mysticism and shows affinities with certain
passages in the Leiden papyri and the Corpus Hermeticum. In Dieterich’s
text we read the following directions:
5
Draw breath from the rays, draw in three times as strongly as you can
and you will feel yourself raised up and walking towards the height, and
you will seem to be in the middle of the aerial region.… The path of the
visible gods will appear through the disc of the sun, who is God my
father. Likewise the so-called tube, the origin of the ministering wind.
For you will see hanging down from the disc of the sun something that
looks like a tube. And towards the regions westward it is as though there
were an infinite east wind. But if the other wind should prevail towards
the regions of the east, you will in like manner see the vision veering in
that direction.
6
[106]
It is obviously the author’s intention to enable the reader to experience
the vision which he had, or which at least he believes in. The reader is to
be initiated into the inner religious experience either of the author, or—
what seems more likely—of one of those mystic communities of which
Philo Judaeus gives contemporary accounts. The fire- or sun-god here
invoked is a figure which has close historical parallels, for instance with
the Christ-figure of the Apocalypse. It is therefore a “représentation
collective,” as are also the ritual actions described, such as the imitating of
animal noises, etc. The vision is embedded in a religious context of a
distinctly ecstatic nature and describes a kind of initiation into mystic
experience of the Deity.
[107]
Our patient was about ten years older than I. In his megalomania, he
thought he was God and Christ in one person. His attitude towards me was
patronizing; he liked me probably because I was the only person with any
sympathy for his abstruse ideas. His delusions were mainly religious, and
when he invited me to blink into the sun like he did and waggle my head
he obviously wanted to let me share his vision. He played the role of the
mystic sage and I was the neophyte. He felt he was the sun-god himself,
creating the wind by wagging his head to and fro. The ritual transformation
into the Deity is attested by Apuleius in the Isis mysteries, and moreover in
the form of a Helios apotheosis. The meaning of the “ministering wind” is
probably the same as the procreative pneuma, which streams from the sungod into the soul and fructifies it. The association of sun and wind
frequently occurs in ancient symbolism.
[108]
It must now be shown that this is not a purely chance coincidence of
two isolated cases. We must therefore show that the idea of a wind-tube
connected with God or the sun exists independently of these two
testimonies and that it occurs at other times and in other places. Now there
are, as a matter of fact, medieval paintings that depict the fructification of
Mary with a tube or hose-pipe coming down from the throne of God and
passing into her body, and we can see the dove or the Christ-child flying
down it. The dove represents the fructifying agent, the wind of the Holy
Ghost.
[109]
Now it is quite out of the question that the patient could have had any
knowledge whatever of a Greek papyrus published four years later, and it
is in the highest degree unlikely that his vision had anything to do with the
rare medieval representations of the Conception, even if through some
incredibly improbable chance he had ever seen a copy of such a painting.
The patient was certified in his early twenties. He had never travelled. And
there is no such picture in the public art gallery in Zurich, his native town.
[110]
I mention this case not in order to prove that the vision is an archetype
but only to show you my method of procedure in the simplest possible
form. If we had only such cases, the task of investigation would be
relatively easy, but in reality the proof is much more complicated. First of
all, certain symbols have to be isolated clearly enough to be recognizable
as typical phenomena, not just matters of chance. This is done by
examining a series of dreams, say a few hundred, for typical figures, and
by observing their development in the series. The same method can be
applied to the products of active imagination. In this way it is possible to
establish certain continuities or modulations of one and the same figure.
You can select any figure which gives the impression of being an
archetype by its behaviour in the series of dreams or visions. If the
material at one’s disposal has been well observed and is sufficiently ample,
one can discover interesting facts about the variations undergone by a
single type. Not only the type itself but its variants too can be substantiated
by evidence from comparative mythology and ethnology. I have described
the method of investigation elsewhere and have also furnished the
necessary case material.
7
CONCERNING THE ARCHETYPES,
WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE
TO THE ANIMA CONCEPT1
[111]
Although modern man appears to believe that the non-empirical
approach to psychology is a thing of the past, his general attitude remains
very much the same as it was before, when psychology was identified with
some theory about the psyche. In academic circles, a drastic revolution in
methodology, initiated by Fechner and Wundt, was needed in order to
make clear to the scientific world that psychology was a field of
experience and not a philosophical theory. To the increasing materialism
of the late nineteenth century, however, it meant nothing that there had
once been an “experimental psychology,” to which we owe many
descriptions that are still valuable today. I have only to mention Dr.
Justinus Kernel’s Seherin von Prevorst. All “romantic” descriptions in
psychology were anathema to the new developments in scientific method.
The exaggerated expectations of this experimental laboratory science were
reflected in Fechner’s “psychophysics,” and its results today take the form
of “psychological tests” and a general shifting of the scientific standpoint
in favour of phenomenology.
2
3
4
5
[112]
Nevertheless, it cannot be maintained that the phenomenological point
of view has made much headway. Theory still plays far too great a role,
instead of being included in phenomenology as it should. Even Freud,
whose empirical attitude is beyond doubt, coupled his theory as a sine qua
non with his method, as if psychic phenomena had to be viewed in a
certain light in order to mean something. All the same, it was Freud who
cleared the ground for the investigation of complex phenomena, at least in
the field of neurosis. But the ground he cleared extended only so far as
certain basic physiological concepts permitted, so that it looked almost as
if psychology were an offshoot of the physiology of the instincts. This
limitation of psychology was very welcome to the materialistic outlook of
that time, nearly fifty years ago, and, despite our altered view of the world,
it still is in large measure today. It gives us not only the advantage of a
“delimited field of work,” but also an excellent excuse not to bother with
what goes on in a wider world.
[113]
Thus it was overlooked by the whole of medical psychology that a
psychology of the neuroses, such as Freud’s, is left hanging in mid air if it
lacks knowledge of a general phenomenology. It was also overlooked that
in the field of the neuroses Pierre Janet, even before Freud, had begun to
build up a descriptive methodology without loading it with too many
theoretical and philosophical assumptions. Biographical descriptions of
psychic phenomena, going beyond the strictly medical field, were
represented chiefly by the work of the philosopher Théodore Flournoy, of
Geneva, in his account of the psychology of an unusual personality. This
was followed by the first attempt at synthesis: William James’s Varieties
of Religious Experience (1902). I owe it mainly to these two investigators
that I learnt to understand the nature of psychic disturbances within the
setting of the human psyche as a whole. I myself did experimental work
for several years, but, through my intensive studies of the neuroses and
psychoses, I had to admit that, however desirable quantitative definitions
may be, it is impossible to do without qualitatively descriptive methods.
Medical psychology has recognized that the salient facts are
extraordinarily complex and can be grasped only through descriptions
based on case material. But this method presupposes freedom from
theoretical prejudice. Every science is descriptive at the point where it can
no longer proceed experimentally, without on that account ceasing to be
scientific. But an experimental science makes itself impossible when it
delimits its field of work in accordance with theoretical concepts. The
psyche does not come to an end where some physiological assumption or
other stops. In other words, in each individual case that we observe
scientifically, we have to consider the manifestations of the psyche in their
totality.
6
7
[114]
These reflections are essential when discussing an empirical
concept like that of the anima. As against the constantly reiterated
prejudice that this is a theoretical invention or—worse still—sheer
mythology, I must emphasize that the concept of the anima is a purely
empirical concept, whose sole purpose is to give a name to a group of
related or analogous psychic phenomena. The concept does no more and
means no more than, shall we say, the concept “arthropods,” which
includes all animals with articulated body and limbs and so gives a name
to this phenomenological group. The prejudice I have mentioned stems,
regrettable though this is, from ignorance. My critics are not acquainted
with the phenomena in question, for these lie mostly outside the pale of
merely medical knowledge, in a realm of universal human experience.
But the psyche, which the medical man has to do with, does not worry
about the limitations of his knowledge; it manifests a life of its own and
reacts to influences coming from every field of human experience. Its
nature shows itself not merely in the personal sphere, or in the
instinctual or social, but in phenomena of world-wide distribution. So if
we want to understand the psyche, we have to include the whole world.
For practical reasons we can, indeed must, delimit our fields of work,
but this should be done only with the conscious recognition of
limitation. The more complex the phenomena which we have to do with
in practical treatment, the wider must be our frame of reference and the
greater the corresponding knowledge.
[115]
Anyone, therefore, who does not know the universal distribution and
significance of the syzygy motif in the psychology of primitives, in
mythology, in comparative religion, and in the history of literature, can
hardly claim to say anything about the concept of the anima. His
knowledge of the psychology of the neuroses may give him some idea of
it, but it is only a knowledge of its general phenomenology that could open
his eyes to the real meaning of what he encounters in individual cases,
often in pathologically distorted form.
8
[116]
Although common prejudice still believes that the sole essential basis
of our knowledge is given exclusively from outside, and that “nihil est in
intellectu quod non antea fuerit in sensu,” it nevertheless remains true that
the thoroughly respectable atomic theory of Leucippus and Democritus
was not based on any observations of atomic fission but on a
“mythological” conception of smallest particles, which, as the smallest
animated parts, the soul-atoms, are known even to the still palaeolithic
inhabitants of central Australia. How much “soul” is projected into the
unknown in the world of external appearances is, of course, familiar to
9
anyone acquainted with the natural science and natural philosophy of the
ancients. It is, in fact, so much that we are absolutely incapable of saying
how the world is constituted in itself—and always shall be, since we are
obliged to convert physical events into psychic processes as soon as we
want to say anything about knowledge. But who can guarantee that this
conversion produces anything like an adequate “objective” picture of the
world? That could only be if the physical event were also a psychic one.
But a great distance still seems to separate us from such an assertion. Till
then, we must for better or worse content ourselves with the assumption
that the psyche supplies those images and forms which alone make
knowledge of objects possible.
[117]
These forms are generally supposed to be transmitted by tradition, so
that we speak of “atoms” today because we have heard, directly or
indirectly, of the atomic theory of Democritus. But where did Democritus,
or whoever first spoke of minimal constitutive elements, hear of atoms?
This notion had its origin in archetypal ideas, that is, in primordial images
which were never reflections of physical events but are spontaneous
products of the psychic factor. Despite the materialistic tendency to
understand the psyche as a mere reflection or imprint of physical and
chemical processes, there is not a single proof of this hypothesis. Quite the
contrary, innumerable facts prove that the psyche translates physical
processes into sequences of images which have hardly any recognizable
connection with the objective process. The materialistic hypothesis is
much too bold and flies in the face of experience with almost metaphysical
presumption. The only thing that can be established with certainty, in the
present state of our knowledge, is our ignorance of the nature of the
psyche. There is thus no ground at all for regarding the psyche as
something secondary or as an epiphenomenon; on the contrary, there is
every reason to regard it, at least hypothetically, as a factor sui generis,
and to go on doing so until it has been sufficiently proved that psychic
processes can be fabricated in a retort. We have laughed at the claims of
the alchemists to be able to manufacture a lapis philosophorum consisting
of body, soul, and spirit, as impossible, hence we should stop dragging
along with us the logical consequence of this medieval assumption, namely
the materialistic prejudice regarding the psyche, as though it were a proven
fact.
[118]
It will not be so easy to reduce complex psychic facts to a chemical
formula. Hence the psychic factor must, ex hypothesi, be regarded for the
present as an autonomous reality of enigmatic character, primarily
because, judging from all we know, it appears to be essentially different
from physicochemical processes. Even if we do not ultimately know what
its substantiality is, this is equally true of physical objects and of matter in
general. So if we regard the psyche as an independent factor, we must
logically conclude that there is a psychic life which is not subject to the
caprices of our will. If, then, those qualities of elusiveness, superficiality,
shadowiness, and indeed of futility attach to anything psychic, this is
primarily true of the subjective psychic, i.e., the contents of consciousness,
but not of the objective psychic, the unconscious, which is an a priori
conditioning factor of consciousness and its contents. From the
unconscious there emanate determining influences which, independently
of tradition, guarantee in every single individual a similarity and even a
sameness of experience, and also of the way it is represented
imaginatively. One of the main proofs of this is the almost universal
parallelism between mythological motifs, which, on account of their
quality as primordial images, I have called archetypes.
[ll9]
One of these archetypes, which is of paramount practical
importance for the psychotherapist, I have named the anima. This Latin
expression is meant to connote something that should not be confused
with any dogmatic Christian idea of the soul or with any of the previous
philosophical conceptions of it. If one wishes to form anything like a
concrete conception of what this term covers, one would do better to go
back to a classical author like Macrobius, or to classical Chinese
philosophy, where the anima (p’o or kuei) is regarded as the feminine
and chthonic part of the soul. A parallel of this kind always runs the risk
of metaphysical concretism, which I do my best to avoid, though any
attempt at graphic description is bound to succumb to it up to a point.
For we are dealing here not with an abstract concept but with an
empirical one, and the form in which it appears necessarily clings to it,
so that it cannot be described at all except in terms of its specific
phenomenology.
10
11
[120]
Unperturbed by the philosophical pros and cons of the age, a scientific
psychology must regard those transcendental intuitions that sprang from
the human mind in all ages as projections, that is, as psychic contents that
were extrapolated in metaphysical space and hypostatized. We encounter
the anima historically above all in the divine syzygies, the male-female
pairs of deities. These reach down, on the one side, into the obscurities of
primitive mythology, and up, on the other, into the philosophical
speculations of Gnosticism and of classical Chinese philosophy, where
the cosmogonic pair of concepts are designated yang (masculine) and yin
(feminine). We can safely assert that these syzygies are as universal as the
existence of man and woman. From this fact we may reasonably conclude
that man’s imagination is bound by this motif, so that he was largely
compelled to project it again and again, at all times and in all places.
12
13
14
15
16
[121]
Now, as we know from psychotherapeutic experience, projection is an
unconscious, automatic process whereby a content that is unconscious to
the subject transfers itself to an object, so that it seems to belong to that
object. The projection ceases the moment it becomes conscious, that is to
say when it is seen as belonging to the subject. Thus the polytheistic
heaven of the ancients owes its depotentiation not least to the view first
propounded by Euhemeros, who maintained that the gods were nothing
but reflections of human character. It is indeed easy to show that the divine
pair is simply an idealization of the parents or of some other human
couple, which for some reason appeared in heaven. This assumption would
be simple enough if projection were not an unconscious process but were a
conscious intention. It would generally be supposed that one’s own parents
are the best known of all individuals, the ones of which the subject is most
conscious. But precisely for this reason they could not be projected,
because projection always contains something of which the subject is not
conscious and which seems not to belong to him. The image of the parents
is the very one that could be projected least, because it is too conscious.
17
18
[122]
In reality, however, it is just the parental imagos that seem to be
projected most frequently, a fact so obvious that one could almost draw the
conclusion that it is precisely the conscious contents which are projected.
This can be seen most plainly in cases of transference, where it is perfectly
clear to the patient that the father-imago (or even the mother-imago) is
projected on to the analyst and he even sees through the incest-fantasies
bound up with them, without, however, being freed from the reactive
effect of his projection, i.e., from the transference. In other words, he
behaves exactly as if he had not seen through his projection at all.
Experience shows that projection is never conscious: projections are
always there first and are recognized afterwards. We must therefore
assume that, over and above the incest-fantasy, highly emotional contents
are still bound up with the parental imagos and need to be made conscious.
They are obviously more difficult to make conscious than the incestfantasies, which are supposed to have been repressed through violent
resistance and to be unconscious for that reason. Supposing this view is
correct, we are driven to the conclusion that besides the incest-fantasy
there must be contents which are repressed through a still greater
resistance. Since it is difficult to imagine anything more repellent than
incest, we find ourselves rather at a loss to answer this question.
[123]
If we let practical experience speak, it tells us that, apart from the
incest-fantasy, religious ideas are associated with the parental imagos. I do
not need to cite historical proofs of this, as they are known to all. But what
about the alleged objectionableness of religious associations?
[124]
Someone once observed that in ordinary society it is more
embarrassing to talk about God at table than to tell a risqué story. Indeed,
for many people it is more bearable to admit their sexual fantasies than to
be forced to confess that their analyst is a saviour, for the former are
biologically legitimate, whereas the latter instance is definitely
pathological, and this is something we greatly fear. It seems to me,
however, that we make too much of “resistance.” The phenomena in
question can be explained just as easily by lack of imagination and
reflectiveness, which makes the act of conscious realization so difficult for
the patient. He may perhaps have no particular resistance to religious
ideas, only the thought has never occurred to him that he could seriously
regard his analyst as a God or saviour. Mere reason alone is sufficient to
protect him from such illusions. But he is less slow to assume that his
analyst thinks himself one. When one is dogmatic oneself, it is notoriously
easy to take other people for prophets and founders of religions.
[125]
Now religious ideas, as history shows, are charged with an extremely
suggestive, emotional power. Among them I naturally reckon all
représentations collectives, everything that we learn from the history of
religion, and anything that has an “-ism” attached to it. The latter is only a
modern variant of the denominational religions. A man may be convinced
in all good faith that he has no religious ideas, but no one can fall so far
away from humanity that he no longer has any dominating représentation
collective. His very materialism, atheism, communism, socialism,
liberalism, intellectualism, existentialism, or what not, testifies against his
innocence. Somewhere or other, overtly or covertly, he is possessed by a
supraordinate idea.
[126]
The psychologist knows how much religious ideas have to do with the
parental imagos. History has preserved overwhelming evidence of this,
quite apart from modern medical findings, which have even led certain
people to suppose that the relationship to the parents is the real origin of
religious ideas. This hypothesis is based on very poor knowledge of the
facts. In the first place, one should not simply translate the family
psychology of modern man into a context of primitive conditions, where
things are so very different; secondly, one should beware of ill-considered
tribal-father and primal-horde fantasies; thirdly and most importantly, one
should have the most accurate knowledge of the phenomenology of
religious experience, which is a subject in itself. Psychological
investigations in this field have so far not fulfilled any of these three
conditions.
[127]
The only thing we know positively from psychological experience is
that theistic ideas are associated with the parental imagos, and that our
patients are mostly unconscious of them. If the corresponding projections
cannot be withdrawn through insight, then we have every reason to suspect
the presence of emotional contents of a religious nature, regardless of the
rationalistic resistance of the patient.
[128]
So far as we have any information about man, we know that he has
always and everywhere been under the influence of dominating ideas. Any
one who alleges that he is not can immediately be suspected of having
exchanged a known form of belief for a variant which is less known both
to himself and to others. Instead of theism he is a devotee of atheism,
instead of Dionysus he favours the more modern Mithras, and instead of
heaven he seeks paradise on earth.
[129]
A man without a dominating représentation collective would be a
thoroughly abnormal phenomenon. But such a person exists only in the
fantasies of isolated individuals who are deluded about themselves. They
are mistaken not only about the existence of religious ideas, but also and
more especially about their intensity. The archetype behind a religious idea
has, like every instinct, its specific energy, which it does not lose even if
the conscious mind ignores it. Just as it can be assumed with the greatest
probability that every man possesses all the average human functions and
qualities, so we may expect the presence of normal religious factors, the
archetypes, and this expectation does not prove fallacious. Any one who
succeeds in putting off the mantle of faith can do so only because another
lies close to hand. No one can escape the prejudice of being human.
[130]
The représentations collectives have a dominating power, so it is not
surprising that they are repressed with the most intense resistance. When
repressed, they do not hide behind any trifling thing but behind ideas and
figures that have already become problematical for other reasons, and
intensify and complicate their dubious nature. For instance, everything that
we would like, in infantile fashion, to attribute to our parents or blame
them for is blown up to fantastic proportions from this secret source, and
for this reason it remains an open question how much of the ill-reputed
incest-fantasy is to be taken seriously. Behind the parental pair, or pair of
lovers, lie contents of extreme tension which are not apperceived in
consciousness and can therefore become perceptible only through
projection. That projections of this kind do actually occur and are not just
traditional opinions is attested by historical documents. These show that
syzygies were projected which were in complete contradiction to the
traditional beliefs, and that they were often experienced in the form of a
vision.
19
[131]
One of the most instructive examples in this respect is the vision of
the recently canonized Nicholas of Flüe, a Swiss mystic of the fifteenth
century, of whose visions we possess reports by his contemporaries. In
the visions that marked his initiation into the state of adoption by God,
God appeared in dual form, once as a majestic father and once as a
majestic mother. This representation could not be more unorthodox, since
the Church had eliminated the feminine element from the Trinity a
thousand years earlier as heretical. Brother Klaus was a simple unlettered
peasant who doubtless had received none but the approved Church
teaching, and was certainly not acquainted with the Gnostic interpretation
of the Holy Ghost as the feminine and motherly Sophia. His so-called
20
21
Trinity Vision is at the same time a perfect example of the intensity of
projected contents. Brother Klaus’s psychological situation was eminently
suited to a projection of this kind, for his conscious idea of God was so
little in accord with the unconscious content that the latter had to appear in
the form of an alien and shattering experience. We must conclude from
this that it was not the traditional idea of God but, on the contrary, an
“heretical” image that realized itself in visionary form; an archetypal
interpretation which came to life again spontaneously, independently of
tradition. It was the archetype of the divine pair, the syzygy.
22
[132]
There is a very similar case in the visions of Guillaume de
Digulleville, which are described in Le Pèlerinage de l’âme. He saw God
in the highest heaven as the King on a shining round throne, and beside
him sat the Queen of Heaven on a throne of brown crystal. For a monk of
the Cistercian Order, which as we know is distinguished for its severity,
this vision is exceedingly heretical. So here again the condition for
projection is fulfilled.
23
[133]
Another impressive account of the syzygy vision can be found in the
work of Edward Maitland, who wrote the biography of Anna Kingsford.
There he describes in detail his own experience of God, which, like that of
Brother Klaus, consisted in a vision of light. He says: “This was … God as
the Lord, proving by His duality that God is Substance as well as Force,
Love as well as Will, feminine as well as masculine, Mother as well as
Father.”
24
[134]
These few examples may suffice to characterize the experience of
projection and those features of it which are independent of tradition. We
can hardly get round the hypothesis that an emotionally charged content is
lying ready in the unconscious and springs into projection at a certain
moment. This content is the syzygy motif, and it expresses the fact that a
masculine element is always paired with a feminine one. The wide
distribution and extraordinary emotionality of this motif prove that it is a
fundamental psychic factor of great practical importance, no matter
whether the individual psychotherapist or psychologist understands where
and in what way it influences his special field of work. Microbes, as we
know, played their dangerous role long before they were discovered.
[135]
As I have said, it is natural to suspect the parental pair in all syzygies.
The feminine part, the mother, corresponds to the anima. But since, for the
reasons discussed above, consciousness of the object prevents its
projection, there is nothing for it but to assume that parents are also the
least known of all human beings, and consequently that an unconscious
reflection of the parental pair exists which is as unlike them, as utterly
alien and incommensurable, as a man compared with a god. It would be
conceivable, and has as we know been asserted, that the unconscious
reflection is none other than the image of father and mother that was
acquired in early childhood, overvalued, and later repressed on account of
the incest-fantasy associated with it. This hypothesis presupposes that the
image was once conscious, otherwise it could not have been “repressed.” It
also presupposes that the act of moral repression has itself become
unconscious, for otherwise the act would remain preserved in
consciousness together with the memory of the repressive moral reaction,
from which the nature of the thing repressed could easily be recognized. I
do not want to enlarge on these misgivings, but would merely like to
emphasize that there is general agreement on one point: that the parental
imago comes into existence not in the pre-puberal period or at a time when
consciousness is more or less developed, but in the initial stages between
the first and fourth year, when consciousness does not show any real
continuity and is characterized by a kind of island-like discontinuity. The
ego-relationship that is required for continuity of consciousness is present
only in part, so that a large proportion of psychic life at this stage runs on
in a state which can only be described as relatively unconscious. At all
events it is a state which would give the impression of a somnambulistic,
dream, or twilight state if observed in an adult. These states, as we know
from the observation of small children, are always characterized by an
apperception of reality filled with fantasies. The fantasy-images outweigh
the influence of sensory stimuli and mould them into conformity with a
pre-existing psychic image.
[136]
It is in my view a great mistake to suppose that the psyche of a newborn child is a tabula rasa in the sense that there is absolutely nothing in it.
In so far as the child is born with a differentiated brain that is
predetermined by heredity and therefore individualized, it meets sensory
stimuli coming from outside not with any aptitudes, but with specific ones,
and this necessarily results in a particular, individual choice and pattern of
apperception. These aptitudes can be shown to be inherited instincts and
preformed patterns, the latter being the a priori and formal conditions of
apperception that are based on instinct. Their presence gives the world of
the child and the dreamer its anthropomorphic stamp. They are the
archetypes, which direct all fantasy activity into its appointed paths and in
this way produce, in the fantasy-images of children’s dreams as well as in
the delusions of schizophrenia, astonishing mythological parallels such as
can also be found, though in lesser degree, in the dreams of normal persons
and neurotics. It is not, therefore, a question of inherited ideas but of
inherited possibilities of ideas. Nor are they individual acquisitions but, in
the main, common to all, as can be seen from the universal occurrence of
the archetypes.
25
[137]
Just as the archetypes occur on the ethnological level as myths, so also
they are found in every individual, and their effect is always strongest, that
is, they anthropomorphize reality most, where consciousness is weakest
and most restricted, and where fantasy can overrun the facts of the outer
world. This condition is undoubtedly present in the child during the first
years of its life. It therefore seems to me more probable that the archetypal
form of the divine syzygy first covers up and assimilates the image of the
real parents until, with increasing consciousness, the real figures of the
parents are perceived—often to the child’s disappointment. Nobody knows
better than the psychotherapist that the mythologizing of the parents is
often pursued far into adulthood and is given up only with the greatest
resistance.
[138]
I remember a case that was presented to me as the victim of a highgrade mother and castration complex, which had still not been overcome in
spite of psychoanalysis. Without any hint from me, the man had made
some drawings which showed the mother first as a superhuman being, and
then as a figure of woe, with bloody mutilations. I was especially struck by
the fact that a castration had obviously been performed on the mother, for
in front of her gory genitals lay the cut-off male sexual organs. The
drawings clearly represented a diminishing climax: first the mother was a
divine hermaphrodite, who then, through the son’s disappointing
experience of reality, was robbed of its androgynous, Platonic perfection
and changed into the woeful figure of an ordinary old woman. Thus from
the very beginning, from the son’s earliest childhood, the mother was
assimilated to the archetypal idea of the syzygy, or conjunction of male
and female, and for this reason appeared perfect and superhuman. The
latter quality invariably attaches to the archetype and explains why the
archetype appears strange and as if not belonging to consciousness, and
also why, if the subject identifies with it, it often causes a devastating
change of personality, generally in the form of megalomania or its
opposite.
26
[139]
The son’s disappointment effected a castration of the hermaphroditic
mother: this was the patient’s so-called castration complex. He had
tumbled down from his childhood Olympus and was no longer the sonhero of a divine mother. His so-called fear of castration was fear of real
life, which refused to come up to his erstwhile childish expectations, and
everywhere lacked that mythological meaning which he still dimly
remembered from his earliest youth. His life was, in the truest sense of the
word, “godless.” And that, for him—though he did not realize it—meant a
dire loss of hope and energy. He thought of himself as “castrated,” which
is a very plausible neurotic misunderstanding—so plausible that it could
even be turned into a theory of neurosis.
[140]
Because people have always feared that the connection with the
instinctive, archetypal stage of consciousness might get lost in the course
of life, the custom has long since been adopted of giving the new-born
child, in addition to his bodily parents, two godparents, a “godfather” and a
“godmother,” who are supposed to be responsible for the spiritual welfare
of their godchild. They represent the pair of gods who appear at its birth,
thus illustrating the “dual birth” motif.
27
The anima image, which lends the mother such superhuman glamour
in the eyes of the son, gradually becomes tarnished by commonplace
reality and sinks back into the unconscious, but without in any way
losing its original tension and instinctivity. It is ready to spring out and
project itself at the first opportunity, the moment a woman makes an
impression that is out of the ordinary. We then have Goethe’s
experience with Frau von Stein, and its repercussions in the figures of
Mignon and Gretchen, all over again. In the case of Gretchen, Goethe
also showed us the whole underlying “metaphysic.” The love life of a
man reveals the psychology of this archetype in the form either of
boundless fascination, overvaluation, and infatuation, or of misogyny in
all its gradations and variants, none of which can be explained by the
real nature of the “object” in question, but only by a transference of the
mother complex. The complex, however, was caused in the first place
by the assimilation of the mother (in itself a normal and ubiquitous
phenomenon) to the pre-existent, feminine side of an archetypal “malefemale” pair of opposites, and secondly by an abnormal delay in
detaching from the primordial image of the mother. Actually, nobody
can stand the total loss of the archetype. When that happens, it gives rise
to that frightful “discontent in our culture,” where nobody feels at home
because a “father” and “mother” are missing. Everyone knows the
provisions that religion has always made in this respect. Unfortunately
there are very many people who thoughtlessly go on asking whether
these provisions are “true,” when it is really a question of a
psychological need. Nothing is achieved by explaining them away
rationalistically.
[142]
When projected, the anima always has a feminine form with definite
characteristics. This empirical finding does not mean that the archetype is
constituted like that in itself. The male-female syzygy is only one among
the possible pairs of opposites, albeit the most important one in practice
and the commonest. It has numerous connections with other pairs which
do not display any sex differences at all and can therefore be put into the
sexual category only by main force. These connections, with their
manifold shades of meaning, are found more particularly in Kundalini
yoga, in Gnosticism, and above all in alchemical philosophy, quite apart
from the spontaneous fantasy-products in neurotic and psychotic case
material. When one carefully considers this accumulation of data, it begins
to seem probable that an archetype in its quiescent, unprojected state has
no exactly determinable form but is in itself an indefinite structure which
can assume definite forms only in projection.
28
[143]
29
30
This seems to contradict the concept of a “type.” If I am not mistaken,
it not only seems but actually is a contradiction. Empirically speaking, we
are dealing all the time with “types,” definite forms that can be named and
distinguished. But as soon as you divest these types of the phenomenology
presented by the case material, and try to examine them in relation to other
archetypal forms, they branch out into such far-reaching ramifications in
the history of symbols that one comes to the conclusion that the basic
psychic elements are infinitely varied and ever changing, so as utterly to
defy our powers of imagination. The empiricist must therefore content
himself with a theoretical “as if.” In this respect he is no worse off than the
atomic physicist, even though his method is not based on quantitative
measurement but is a morphologically descriptive one.
[144]
The anima is a factor of the utmost importance in the psychology of a
man wherever emotions and affects are at work. She intensifies,
exaggerates, falsifies, and mythologizes all emotional relations with his
work and with other people of both sexes. The resultant fantasies and
entanglements are all her doing. When the anima is strongly constellated,
she softens the man’s character and makes him touchy, irritable, moody,
jealous, vain, and unadjusted. He is then in a state of “discontent” and
spreads discontent all around him. Sometimes the man’s relationship to the
woman who has caught his anima accounts for the existence of this
syndrome.
[145]
The anima, as I have remarked elsewhere, has not escaped the
attentions of the poets. There are excellent descriptions of her, which at the
same time tell us about the symbolic context in which the archetype is
usually embedded. I give first place to Rider Haggard’s novels She, The
Return of She, and Wisdom’s Daughter, and Benoît’s L’ Atlantide. Benoît
was accused of plagiarizing Rider Haggard, because the two accounts are
disconcertingly alike. But it seems he was able to acquit himself of this
charge. Spitteler’s Prometheus contains some very subtle observations,
too, and his novel Imago gives an admirable description of projection.
[146]
31
The question of therapy is a problem that cannot be disposed of in a
few words. It was not my intention to deal with it here, but I would like to
outline my point of view. Younger people, who have not yet reached the
middle of life (around the age of 35), can bear even the total loss of the
anima without injury. The important thing at this stage is for a man to be a
man. The growing youth must be able to free himself from the anima
fascination of his mother. There are exceptions, notably artists, where the
problem often takes a different turn; also homosexuality, which is usually
characterized by identity with the anima. In view of the recognized
frequency of this phenomenon, its interpretation as a pathological
perversion is very dubious. The psychological findings show that it is
rather a matter of incomplete detachment from the hermaphroditic
archetype, coupled with a distinct resistance to identify with the role of a
one-sided sexual being. Such a disposition should not be adjudged
negative in all circumstances, in so far as it preserves the archetype of the
Original Man, which a one-sided sexual being has, up to a point, lost.
[147]
After the middle of life, however, permanent loss of the anima means
a diminution of vitality, of flexibility, and of human kindness. The result,
as a rule, is premature rigidity, crustiness, stereotypy, fanatical onesidedness, obstinacy, pedantry, or else resignation, weariness, sloppiness,
irresponsibility, and finally a childish ramollissement with a tendency to
alcohol. After middle life, therefore, the connection with the archetypal
sphere of experience should if possible be re-established.
32
II
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF THE
MOTHER ARCHETYPE
[First published as a lecture, “Die psychologischen Aspekte des
Mutterarchetypus,” in Eranos-Jahrbuch 1938. Later revised and published in
Von den Wurzeln des Bewusstseins (Zurich, 1954). The present translation is
of the latter, but it is also based partially on a translation of the 1938 version
by Cary F. Baynes and Ximena de Angulo, privately issued in Spring (New
York), 1943.—EDITORS.]
1. ON THE CONCEPT OF THE ARCHETYPE
[148]
The concept of the Great Mother belongs to the field of comparative
religion and embraces widely varying types of mother-goddess. The
concept itself is of no immediate concern to psychology, because the
image of a Great Mother in this form is rarely encountered in practice, and
then only under very special conditions. The symbol is obviously a
derivative of the mother archetype. If we venture to investigate the
background of the Great Mother image from the standpoint of psychology,
then the mother archetype, as the more inclusive of the two, must form the
basis of our discussion. Though lengthy discussion of the concept of an
archetype is hardly necessary at this stage, some preliminary remarks of a
general nature may not be out of place.
[149]
In former times, despite some dissenting opinion and the influence of
Aristotle, it was not too difficult to understand Plato’s conception of the
Idea as supraordinate and pre-existent to all phenomena. “Archetype,” far
from being a modern term, was already in use before the time of St.
Augustine, and was synonymous with “Idea” in the Platonic usage. When
the Corpus Hermeticum, which probably dates from the third century,
describes God as τò àρέéτυπov φς, the ‘archetypal light,’ it expresses the idea
that he is the prototype of all light; that is to say, pre-existent and
supraordinate to the phenomenon “light.” Were I a philosopher, I should
continue in this Platonic strain and say: Somewhere, in “a place beyond the
skies,” there is a prototype or primordial image of the mother that is preexistent and supraordinate to all phenomena in which the “maternal,” in
the broadest sense of the term, is manifest. But I am an empiricist, not a
philosopher; I cannot let myself presuppose that my peculiar temperament,
my own attitude to intellectual problems, is universally valid. Apparently
this is an assumption in which only the philosopher may indulge, who
always takes it for granted that his own disposition and attitude are
universal, and will not recognize the fact, if he can avoid it, that his
“personal equation” conditions his philosophy. As an empiricist, I must
point out that there is a temperament which regards ideas as real entities
and not merely as nomina. It so happens—by the merest accident, one
might say—that for the past two hundred years we have been living in an
age in which it has become unpopular or even unintelligible to suppose
that ideas could be anything but nomina. Anyone who continues to think as
Plato did must pay for his anachronism by seeing the “supracelestial,” i.e.,
metaphysical, essence of the Idea relegated to the unverifiable realm of
faith and superstition, or charitably left to the poet. Once again, in the ageold controversy over universals, the nominalistic standpoint has triumphed
over the realistic, and the Idea has evaporated into a mere flatus vocis. This
change was accompanied—and, indeed, to a considerable degree caused—
by the marked rise of empiricism, the advantages of which were only too
obvious to the intellect. Since that time the Idea is no longer something a
priori, but is secondary and derived. Naturally, the new nominalism
promptly claimed universal validity for itself in spite of the fact that it, too,
is based on a definite and limited thesis coloured by temperament. This
thesis runs as follows: we accept as valid anything that comes from outside
and can be verified. The ideal instance is verification by experiment. The
antithesis is: we accept as valid anything that comes from inside and
cannot be verified. The hopelessness of this position is obvious. Greek
natural philosophy with its interest in matter, together with Aristotelian
reasoning, has achieved a belated but overwhelming victory over Plato.
[150]
Yet every victory contains the germ of future defeat. In our own day
signs foreshadowing a change of attitude are rapidly increasing.
Significantly enough, it is Kant’s doctrine of categories, more than
anything else, that destroys in embryo every attempt to revive metaphysics
in the old sense of the word, but at the same time paves the way for a
rebirth of the Platonic spirit. If it be true that there can be no metaphysics
transcending human reason, it is no less true that there can be no empirical
knowledge that is not already caught and limited by the a priori structure
of cognition. During the century and a half that have elapsed since the
appearance of the Critique of Pure Reason, the conviction has gradually
gained ground that thinking, understanding, and reasoning cannot be
regarded as independent processes subject only to the eternal laws of logic,
but that they are psychic functions co-ordinated with the personality and
subordinate to it. We no longer ask, “Has this or that been seen, heard,
handled, weighed, counted, thought, and found to be logical?” We ask
instead, “Who saw, heard, or thought?” Beginning with “the personal
equation” in the observation and measurement of minimal processes, this
critical attitude has gone on to the creation of an empirical psychology
such as no time before ours has known. Today we are convinced that in all
fields of knowledge psychological premises exist which exert a decisive
influence upon the choice of material, the method of investigation, the
nature of the conclusions, and the formulation of hypotheses and theories.
We have even come to believe that Kant’s personality was a decisive
conditioning factor of his Critique of Pure Reason. Not only our
philosophers, but our own predilections in philosophy, and even what we
are fond of calling our “best” truths are affected, if not dangerously
undermined, by this recognition of a personal premise. All creative
freedom, we cry out, is taken away from us! What? Can it be possible that
a man only thinks or says or does what he himself is?
[151]
Provided that we do not again exaggerate and so fall a victim to
unrestrained “psychologizing,” it seems to me that the critical standpoint
here defined is inescapable. It constitutes the essence, origin, and method
of modern psychology. There is an a priori factor in all human activities,
namely the inborn, preconscious and unconscious individual structure of
the psyche. The preconscious psyche—for example, that of a new-born
infant—is not an empty vessel into which, under favourable conditions,
practically anything can be poured. On the contrary, it is a tremendously
complicated, sharply defined individual entity which appears
indeterminate to us only because we cannot see it directly. But the moment
the first visible manifestations of psychic life begin to appear, one would
have to be blind not to recognize their individual character, that is, the
unique personality behind them. It is hardly possible to suppose that all
these details come into being only at the moment in which they appear.
When it is a case of morbid predispositions already present in the parents,
we infer hereditary transmission through the germ-plasm; it would not
occur to us to regard epilepsy in the child of an epileptic mother as an
unaccountable mutation. Again, we explain by heredity the gifts and
talents which can be traced back through whole generations. We explain in
the same way the reappearance of complicated instinctive actions in
animals that have never set eyes on their parents and therefore could not
possibly have been “taught” by them.
[152]
Nowadays we have to start with the hypothesis that, so far as
predisposition is concerned, there is no essential difference between man
and all other creatures. Like every animal, he possesses a preformed
psyche which breeds true to his species and which, on closer examination,
reveals distinct features traceable to family antecedents. We have not the
slightest reason to suppose that there are certain human activities or
functions that could be exempted from this rule. We are unable to form
any idea of what those dispositions or aptitudes are which make instinctive
actions in animals possible. And it is just as impossible for us to know the
nature of the preconscious psychic disposition that enables a child to react
in a human manner. We can only suppose that his behaviour results from
patterns of functioning, which I have described as images. The term
“image” is intended to express not only the form of the activity taking
place, but the typical situation in which the activity is released. These
images are “primordial” images in so far as they are peculiar to whole
species, and if they ever “originated” their origin must have coincided at
least with the beginning of the species. They are the “human quality” of
the human being, the specifically human form his activities take. This
specific form is hereditary and is already present in the germ-plasm. The
idea that it is not inherited but comes into being in every child anew would
be just as preposterous as the primitive belief that the sun which rises in
the morning is a different sun from that which set the evening before.
1
[153]
Since everything psychic is preformed, this must also be true of the
individual functions, especially those which derive directly from the
unconscious predisposition. The most important of these is creative
fantasy. In the products of fantasy the primordial images are made visible,
and it is here that the concept of the archetype finds its specific
application. I do not claim to have been the first to point out this fact. The
honour belongs to Plato. The first investigator in the field of ethnology to
draw attention to the widespread occurrence of certain “elementary ideas”
was Adolf Bastian. Two later investigators, Hubert and Mauss, followers
of Dürkheim, speak of “categories” of the imagination. And it was no less
an authority than Hermann Usener who first recognized unconscious
preformation under the guise of “unconscious thinking.” If I have any
share in these discoveries, it consists in my having shown that archetypes
are not disseminated only by tradition, language, and migration, but that
they can rearise spontaneously, at any time, at any place, and without any
outside influence.
2
3
[154]
The far-reaching implications of this statement must not be
overlooked. For it means that there are present in every psyche forms
which are unconscious but nonetheless active—living dispositions, ideas in
the Platonic sense, that preform and continually influence our thoughts and
feelings and actions.
[155]
Again and again I encounter the mistaken notion that an archetype is
determined in regard to its content, in other words that it is a kind of
unconscious idea (if such an expression be admissible). It is necessary to
point out once more that archetypes are not determined as regards their
content, but only as regards their form and then only to a very limited
degree. A primordial image is determined as to its content only when it has
become conscious and is therefore filled out with the material of conscious
experience. Its form, however, as I have explained elsewhere, might
perhaps be compared to the axial system of a crystal, which, as it were,
preforms the crystalline structure in the mother liquid, although it has no
material existence of its own. This first appears according to the specific
way in which the ions and molecules aggregate. The archetype in itself is
empty and purely formal, nothing but a facultas praeformandi, a.
possibility of representation which is given a priori. The representations
themselves are not inherited, only the forms, and in that respect they
correspond in every way to the instincts, which are also determined in
form only. The existence of the instincts can no more be proved than the
existence of the archetypes, so long as they do not manifest themselves
concretely. With regard to the definiteness of the form, our comparison
with the crystal is illuminating inasmuch as the axial system determines
only the stereometric structure but not the concrete form of the individual
crystal. This may be either large or small, and it may vary endlessly by
reason of the different size of its planes or by the growing together of two
crystals. The only thing that remains constant is the axial system, or rather,
the invariable geometric proportions underlying it. The same is true of the
archetype. In principle, it can be named and has an invariable nucleus of
meaning—but always only in principle, never as regards its concrete
manifestation. In the same way, the specific appearance of the motherimage at any given time cannot be deduced from the mother archetype
alone, but depends on innumerable other factors.
2. THE MOTHER ARCHETYPE
Like any other archetype, the mother archetype appears under an almost
infinite variety of aspects. I mention here only some of the more
characteristic. First in importance are the personal mother and grandmother,
stepmother and mother-in-law; then any woman with whom a relationship
exists—for example, a nurse or governess or perhaps a remote ancestress.
Then there are what might be termed mothers in a figurative sense. To this
category belongs the goddess, and especially the Mother of God, the Virgin,
and Sophia. Mythology offers many variations of the mother archetype, as for
instance the mother who reappears as the maiden in the myth of Demeter and
Kore; or the mother who is also the beloved, as in the Cybele-Attis myth.
Other symbols of the mother in a figurative sense appear in things
representing the goal of our longing for redemption, such as Paradise, the
Kingdom of God, the Heavenly Jerusalem. Many things arousing devotion or
feelings of awe, as for instance the Church, university, city or country,
heaven, earth, the woods, the sea or any still waters, matter even, the
underworld and the moon, can be mother-symbols. The archetype is often
associated with things and places standing for fertility and fruitfulness: the
cornucopia, a ploughed field, a garden. It can be attached to a rock, a cave, a
tree, a spring, a deep well, or to various vessels such as the baptismal font, or
to vessel-shaped flowers like the rose or the lotus. Because of the protection
it implies, the magic circle or mandala can be a form of mother archetype.
Hollow objects such as ovens and cooking vessels are associated with the
mother archetype, and, of course, the uterus, yoni, and anything of a like
shape. Added to this list there are many animals, such as the cow, hare, and
helpful animals in general.
[157]
All these symbols can have a positive, favourable meaning or a
negative, evil meaning. An ambivalent aspect is seen in the goddesses of
fate (Moira, Graeae, Norns). Evil symbols are the witch, the dragon (or
any devouring and entwining animal, such as a large fish or a serpent), the
grave, the sarcophagus, deep water, death, nightmares and bogies
(Empusa, Lilith, etc.). This list is not, of course, complete; it presents only
the most important features of the mother archetype.
[158]
The qualities associated with it are maternal solicitude and sympathy;
the magic authority of the female; the wisdom and spiritual exaltation that
transcend reason; any helpful instinct or impulse; all that is benign, all that
cherishes and sustains, that fosters growth and fertility. The place of magic
transformation and rebirth, together with the underworld and its
inhabitants, are presided over by the mother. On the negative side the
mother archetype may connote anything secret, hidden, dark; the abyss, the
world of the dead, anything that devours, seduces, and poisons, that is
terrifying and inescapable like fate. All these attributes of the mother
archetype have been fully described and documented in my book Symbols
of Transformation. There I formulated the ambivalence of these attributes
as “the loving and the terrible mother.” Perhaps the historical example of
the dual nature of the mother most familiar to us is the Virgin Mary, who
is not only the Lord’s mother, but also, according to the medieval
allegories, his cross. In India, “the loving and terrible mother” is the
paradoxical Kali. Sankhya philosophy has elaborated the mother archetype
into the concept of prakrti (matter) and assigned to it the three gunas or
fundamental attributes: sattva, rajas, tamas: goodness, passion, and
darkness. These are three essential aspects of the mother: her cherishing
and nourishing goodness, her orgiastic emotionality, and her Stygian
depths. The special feature of the philosophical myth, which shows Prakrti
dancing before Purusha in order to remind him of “discriminating
knowledge,” does not belong to the mother archetype but to the archetype
of the anima, which in a man’s psychology invariably appears, at first,
mingled with the mother-image.
1
[159]
Although the figure of the mother as it appears in folklore is more or
less universal, this image changes markedly when it appears in the
individual psyche. In treating patients one is at first impressed, and indeed
arrested, by the apparent significance of the personal mother. This figure
of the personal mother looms so large in all personalistic psychologies
that, as we know, they never got beyond it, even in theory, to other
important aetiological factors. My own view differs from that of other
medico-psychological theories principally in that I attribute to the personal
mother only a limited aetiological significance. That is to say, all those
influences which the literature describes as being exerted on the children
do not come from the mother herself, but rather from the archetype
projected upon her, which gives her a mythological background and
invests her with authority and numinosity. The aetiological and traumatic
effects produced by the mother must be divided into two groups: (1) those
corresponding to traits of character or attitudes actually present in the
mother, and (2) those referring to traits which the mother only seems to
possess, the reality being composed of more or less fantastic (i.e.,
archetypal) projections on the part of the child. Freud himself had already
seen that the real aetiology of neuroses does not lie in traumatic effects, as
he at first suspected, but in a peculiar development of infantile fantasy.
This is not to deny that such a development can be traced back to
disturbing influences emanating from the mother. I myself make it a rule to
look first for the cause of infantile neuroses in the mother, as I know from
experience that a child is much more likely to develop normally than
neurotically, and that in the great majority of cases definite causes of
disturbances can be found in the parents, especially in the mother. The
contents of the child’s abnormal fantasies can be referred to the personal
mother only in part, since they often contain clear and unmistakable
allusions which could not possibly have reference to human beings. This is
especially true where definitely mythological products are concerned, as is
frequently the case in infantile phobias where the mother may appear as a
wild beast, a witch, a spectre, an ogre, a hermaphrodite, and so on. It must
be borne in mind, however, that such fantasies are not always of
unmistakably mythological origin, and even if they are, they may not
always be rooted in the unconscious archetype but may have been
occasioned by fairytales or accidental remarks. A thorough investigation is
therefore indicated in each case. For practical reasons, such an
investigation cannot be made so readily with children as with adults, who
almost invariably transfer their fantasies to the physician during treatment
—or, to be more precise, the fantasies are projected upon him
automatically.
2
[160]
When that happens, nothing is gained by brushing them aside as
ridiculous, for archetypes are among the inalienable assets of every
psyche. They form the “treasure in the realm of shadowy thoughts” of
which Kant spoke, and of which we have ample evidence in the countless
treasure motifs of mythology. An archetype is in no sense just an annoying
prejudice; it becomes so only when it is in the wrong place. In themselves,
archetypal images are among the highest values of the human psyche; they
have peopled the heavens of all races from time immemorial. To discard
them as valueless would be a distinct loss. Our task is not, therefore, to
deny the archetype, but to dissolve the projections, in order to restore their
contents to the individual who has involuntarily lost them by projecting
them outside himself.
3. THE MOTHER-COMPLEX
[161]
The mother archetype forms the foundation of the so-called mothercomplex. It is an open question whether a mother-complex can develop
without the mother having taken part in its formation as a demonstrable
causal factor. My own experience leads me to believe that the mother
always plays an active part in the origin of the disturbance, especially in
infantile neuroses or in neuroses whose aetiology undoubtedly dates back
to early childhood. In any event, the child’s instincts are disturbed, and this
constellates archetypes which, in their turn, produce fantasies that come
between the child and its mother as an alien and often frightening element.
Thus, if the children of an overanxious mother regularly dream that she is
a terrifying animal or a witch, these experiences point to a split in the
child’s psyche that predisposes it to a neurosis.
I. THE MOTHER-COMPLEX OF THE SON
[162]
The effects of the mother-complex differ according to whether it
appears in a son or a daughter. Typical effects on the son are
homosexuality and Don Juanism, and sometimes also impotence. In
homosexuality, the son’s entire heterosexuality is tied to the mother in an
unconscious form; in Don Juanism, he unconsciously seeks his mother in
every woman he meets. The effects of a mother-complex on the son may
be seen in the ideology of the Cybele and Attis type: self-castration,
madness, and early death. Because of the difference in sex, a son’s mothercomplex does not appear in pure form. This is the reason why in every
masculine mother-complex, side by side with the mother archetype, a
significant role is played by the image of the man’s sexual counterpart, the
anima. The mother is the first feminine being with whom the man-to-be
comes in contact, and she cannot help playing, overtly or covertly,
consciously or unconsciously, upon the son’s masculinity, just as the son
in his turn grows increasingly aware of his mother’s femininity, or
unconsciously responds to it by instinct. In the case of the son, therefore,
the simple relationships of identity or of resistance and differentiation are
continually cut across by erotic attraction or repulsion, which complicates
1
matters very considerably. I do not mean to say that for this reason the
mother-complex of a son ought to be regarded as more serious than that of
a daughter. The investigation of these complex psychic phenomena is still
in the pioneer stage. Comparisons will not become feasible until we have
some statistics at our disposal, and of these, so far, there is no sign.
[163]
Only in the daughter is the mother-complex clear and uncomplicated.
Here we have to do either with an overdevelopment of feminine instincts
indirectly caused by the mother, or with a weakening of them to the point
of complete extinction. In the first case, the preponderance of instinct
makes the daughter unconscious of her own personality; in the latter, the
instincts are projected upon the mother. For the present we must content
ourselves with the statement that in the daughter a mother-complex either
unduly stimulates or else inhibits the feminine instinct, and that in the son
it injures the masculine instinct through an unnatural sexualization.
[164]
Since a “mother-complex” is a concept borrowed from
psychopathology, it is always associated with the idea of injury and illness.
But if we take the concept out of its narrow psychopathological setting and
give it a wider connotation, we can see that it has positive effects as well.
Thus a man with a mother-complex may have a finely differentiated Eros
instead of, or in addition to, homosexuality. (Something of this sort is
suggested by Plato in his Symposium.) This gives him a great capacity for
friendship, which often creates ties of astonishing tenderness between men
and may even rescue friendship between the sexes from the limbo of the
impossible. He may have good taste and an aesthetic sense which are
fostered by the presence of a feminine streak. Then he may be supremely
gifted as a teacher because of his almost feminine insight and tact. He is
likely to have a feeling for history, and to be conservative in the best sense
and cherish the values of the past. Often he is endowed with a wealth of
religious feelings, which help to bring the ecclesia spiritualis into reality;
and a spiritual receptivity which makes him responsive to revelation.
2
[165]
In the same way, what in its negative aspect is Don Juanism can
appear positively as bold and resolute manliness; ambitious striving after
the highest goals; opposition to all stupidity, narrow-mindedness, injustice,
and laziness; willingness to make sacrifices for what is regarded as right,
sometimes bordering on heroism; perseverance, inflexibility and toughness
of will; a curiosity that does not shrink even from the riddles of the
universe; and finally, a revolutionary spirit which strives to put a new face
upon the world.
[166]
All these possibilities are reflected in the mythological motifs
enumerated earlier as different aspects of the mother archetype. As I have
already dealt with the mother-complex of the son, including the anima
complication, elsewhere, and my present theme is the archetype of the
mother, in the following discussion I shall relegate masculine psychology
to the background.
II. THE MOTHER-COMPLEX OF THE DAUGHTER3
[167]
(a) Hypertrophy of the Maternal Element.—We have noted that in the
daughter the mother-complex leads either to a hypertrophy of the feminine
side or to its atrophy. The exaggeration of the feminine side means an
intensification of all female instincts, above all the maternal instinct. The
negative aspect is seen in the woman whose only goal is childbirth. To her
the husband is obviously of secondary importance; he is first and foremost
the instrument of procreation, and she regards him merely as an object to
be looked after, along with children, poor relations, cats, dogs, and
household furniture. Even her own personality is of secondary importance;
she often remains entirely unconscious of it, for her life is lived in and
through others, in more or less complete identification with all the objects
of her care. First she gives birth to the children, and from then on she
clings to them, for without them she has no existence whatsoever. Like
Demeter, she compels the gods by her stubborn persistence to grant her the
right of possession over her daughter. Her Eros develops exclusively as a
maternal relationship while remaining unconscious as a personal one. An
unconscious Eros always expresses itself as will to power. Women of this
type, though continually “living for others,” are, as a matter of fact, unable
to make any real sacrifice. Driven by ruthless will to power and a fanatical
insistence on their own maternal rights, they often succeed in annihilating
not only their own personality but also the personal lives of their children.
The less conscious such a mother is of her own personality, the greater and
the more violent is her unconscious will to power. For many such women
Baubo rather than Demeter would be the appropriate symbol. The mind is
not cultivated for its own sake but usually remains in its original condition,
altogether primitive, unrelated, and ruthless, but also as true, and
sometimes as profound, as Nature herself. She herself does not know this
4
5
and is therefore unable to appreciate the wittiness of her mind or to marvel
philosophically at its profundity; like as not she will immediately forget
what she has said.
[168]
(b) Overdevelopment of Eros.—It by no means follows that the
complex induced in a daughter by such a mother must necessarily result in
hypertrophy of the maternal instinct. Quite the contrary, this instinct may
be wiped out altogether. As a substitute, an overdeveloped Eros results,
and this almost invariably leads to an unconscious incestuous relationship
with the father. The intensified Eros places an abnormal emphasis on the
personality of others. Jealousy of the mother and the desire to outdo her
become the leitmotifs of subsequent undertakings, which are often
disastrous. A woman of this type loves romantic and sensational episodes
for their own sake, and is interested in married men, less for themselves
than for the fact that they are married and so give her an opportunity to
wreck a marriage, that being the whole point of her manoeuvre. Once the
goal is attained, her interest evaporates for lack of any maternal instinct,
and then it will be someone else’s turn. This type is noted for its
remarkable unconsciousness. Such women really seem to be utterly blind
to what they are doing, which is anything but advantageous either for
themselves or for their victims. I need hardly point out that for men with a
passive Eros this type offers an excellent hook for anima projections.
6
7
8
[169]
(c) Identity with the Mother.—It a mother-complex in a woman does
not produce an overdeveloped Eros, it leads to identification with the
mother and to paralysis of the daughter’s feminine initiative. A complete
projection of her personality on to the mother then takes place, owing to
the fact that she is unconscious both of her maternal instinct and of her
Eros. Everything which reminds her of motherhood, responsibility,
personal relationships, and erotic demands arouses feelings of inferiority
and compels her to run away—to her mother, naturally, who lives to
perfection everything that seems unattainable to her daughter. As a sort of
superwoman (admired involuntarily by the daughter), the mother lives out
for her beforehand all that the girl might have lived for herself. She is
content to cling to her mother in selfless devotion, while at the same time
unconsciously striving, almost against her will, to tyrannize over her,
naturally under the mask of complete loyalty and devotion. The daughter
leads a shadow-existence, often visibly sucked dry by her mother, and she
prolongs her mother’s life by a sort of continuous blood transfusion. These
bloodless maidens are by no means immune to marriage. On the contrary,
despite their shadowiness and passivity, they command a high price on the
marriage market. First, they are so empty that a man is free to impute to
them anything he fancies. In addition, they are so unconscious that the
unconscious puts out countless invisible feelers, veritable octopustentacles, that suck up all masculine projections; and this pleases men
enormously. All that feminine indefiniteness is the longed-for counterpart
of male decisiveness and single-mindedness, which can be satisfactorily
achieved only if a man can get rid of everything doubtful, ambiguous,
vague, and muddled by projecting it upon some charming example of
feminine innocence. Because of the woman’s characteristic passivity, and
the feelings of inferiority which make her continually play the injured
innocent, the man finds himself cast in an attractive role: he has the
privilege of putting up with the familiar feminine foibles with real
superiority, and yet with forbearance, like a true knight. (Fortunately, he
remains ignorant of the fact that these deficiencies consist largely of his
own projections.) The girl’s notorious helplessness is a special attraction.
She is so much an appendage of her mother that she can only flutter
confusedly when a man approaches. She just doesn’t know a thing. She is
so inexperienced, so terribly in need of help, that even the gentlest swain
becomes a daring abductor who brutally robs a loving mother of her
daughter. Such a marvellous opportunity to pass himself off as a gay
Lothario does not occur every day and therefore acts as a strong incentive.
This was how Pluto abducted Persephone from the inconsolable Demeter.
But, by a decree of the gods, he had to surrender his wife every year to his
mother-in-law for the summer season. (The attentive reader will note that
such legends do not come about by chance!)
9
[170]
(d) Resistance to the Mother.— These three extreme types are linked
together by many intermediate stages, of which I shall mention only one
important example. In the particular intermediate type I have in mind, the
problem is less an overdevelopment or an inhibition of the feminine
instincts than an overwhelming resistance to maternal supremacy, often to
the exclusion of all else. It is the supreme example of the negative mothercomplex. The motto of this type is: Anything, so long as it is not like
Mother! On one hand we have a fascination which never reaches the point
of identification; on the other, an intensification of Eros which exhausts
itself in jealous resistance. This kind of daughter knows what she does not
want, but is usually completely at sea as to what she would choose as her
own fate. All her instincts are concentrated on the mother in the negative
form of resistance and are therefore of no use to her in building her own
life. Should she get as far as marrying, either the marriage will be used for
the sole purpose of escaping from her mother, or else a diabolical fate will
present her with a husband who shares all the essential traits of her
mother’s character. All instinctive processes meet with unexpected
difficulties; either sexuality does not function properly, or the children are
unwanted, or maternal duties seem unbearable, or the demands of marital
life are responded to with impatience and irritation. This is quite natural,
since none of it has anything to do with the realities of life when stubborn
resistance to the power of the mother in every form has come to be life’s
dominating aim. In such cases one can often see the attributes of the
mother archetype demonstrated in every detail. For example, the mother as
representative of the family (or clan) causes either violent resistances or
complete indifference to anything that comes under the head of family,
community, society, convention, and the like. Resistance to the mother as
uterus often manifests itself in menstrual disturbances, failure of
conception, abhorrence of pregnancy, hemorrhages and excessive vomiting
during pregnancy, miscarriages, and so on. The mother as materia,
‘matter,’ may be at the back of these women’s impatience with objects,
their clumsy handling of tools and crockery and bad taste in clothes.
[171]
Again, resistance to the mother can sometimes result in a spontaneous
development of intellect for the purpose of creating a sphere of interest in
which the mother has no place. This development springs from the
daughter’s own needs and not at all for the sake of a man whom she would
like to impress or dazzle by a semblance of intellectual comradeship. Its
real purpose is to break the mother’s power by intellectual criticism and
superior knowledge, so as to enumerate to her all her stupidities, mistakes
in logic, and educational shortcomings. Intellectual development is often
accompanied by the emergence of masculine traits in general.
4. POSITIVE ASPECTS OF THE MOTHER-COMPLEX
I. THE MOTHER
[172]
The positive aspect of the first type of complex, namely the
overdevelopment of the maternal instinct, is identical with that well-known
image of the mother which has been glorified in all ages and all tongues.
This is the mother-love which is one of the most moving and unforgettable
memories of cur lives, the mysterious root of all growth and change; the
love that means homecoming, shelter, and the long silence from which
everything begins and in which everything ends. Intimately known and yet
strange like Nature, lovingly tender and yet cruel like fate, joyous and
untiring giver of life—mater dolorosa and mute implacable portal that
closes upon the dead. Mother is mother-love, my experience and my secret.
Why risk saying too much, too much that is false and inadequate and
beside the point, about that human being who was our mother, the
accidental carrier of that great experience which includes herself and
myself and all mankind, and indeed the whole of created nature, the
experience of life whose children we are? The attempt to say these things
has always been made, and probably always will be; but a sensitive person
cannot in all fairness load that enormous burden of meaning,
responsibility, duty, heaven and hell, on to the shoulders of one frail and
fallible human being—so deserving of love, indulgence, understanding,
and forgiveness—who was our mother. He knows that the mother carries
for us that inborn image of the mater natura and mater spiritualis, of the
totality of life of which we are a small and helpless part. Nor should we
hesitate for one moment to relieve the human mother of this appalling
burden, for our own sakes as well as hers. It is just this massive weight of
meaning that ties us to the mother and chains her to her child, to the
physical and mental detriment of both. A mother-complex is not got rid of
by blindly reducing the mother to human proportions. Besides that we run
the risk of dissolving the experience “Mother” into atoms, thus destroying
something supremely valuable and throwing away the golden key which a
good fairy laid in our cradle. That is why mankind has always instinctively
added the pre-existent divine pair to the personal parents—the “god”-
father and “god”-mother of the newborn child—so that, from sheer
unconsciousness or shortsighted rationalism, he should never forget
himself so far as to invest his own parents with divinity.
[173]
The archetype is really far less a scientific problem than an urgent
question of psychic hygiene. Even if all proofs of the existence of
archetypes were lacking, and all the clever people in the world succeeded
in convincing us that such a thing could not possibly exist, we would have
to invent them forthwith in order to keep our highest and most important
values from disappearing into the unconscious. For when these fall into the
unconscious the whole elemental force of the original experience is lost.
What then appears in its place is fixation on the mother-imago; and when
this has been sufficiently rationalized and “corrected,” we are tied fast to
human reason and condemned from then on to believe exclusively in what
is rational. That is a virtue and an advantage on the one hand, but on the
other a limitation and impoverishment, for it brings us nearer to the
bleakness of doctrinairism and “enlightenment.” This Déesse Raison emits
a deceptive light which illuminates only what we know already, but
spreads a darkness over all those things which it would be most needful for
us to know and become conscious of. The more independent “reason”
pretends to be, the more it turns into sheer intellectuality which puts
doctrine in the place of reality and shows us man not as he is but how it
wants him to be.
[174]
Whether he understands them or not, man must remain conscious of
the world of the archetypes, because in it he is still a part of Nature and is
connected with his own roots. A view of the world or a social order that
cuts him off from the primordial images of life not only is no culture at all
but, in increasing degree, is a prison or a stable. If the primordial images
remain conscious in some form or other, the energy that belongs to them
can flow freely into man. But when it is no longer possible to maintain
contact with them, then the tremendous sum of energy stored up in these
images, which is also the source of the fascination underlying the infantile
parental complex, falls back into the unconscious. The unconscious then
becomes charged with a force that acts as an irresistible vis a tergo to
whatever view or idea or tendency our intellect may choose to dangle
enticingly before our desiring eyes. In this way man is delivered over to
his conscious side, and reason becomes the arbiter of right and wrong, of
good and evil. I am far from wishing to belittle the divine gift of reason,
man’s highest faculty. But in the role of absolute tyrant it has no meaning
—no more than light would have in a world where its counterpart,
darkness, was absent. Man would do well to heed the wise counsel of the
mother and obey the inexorable law of nature which sets limits to every
being. He ought never to forget that the world exists only because
opposing forces are held in equilibrium. So, too, the rational is
counterbalanced by the irrational, and what is planned and purposed by
what is.
[175]
This excursion into the realm of generalities was unavoidable, because
the mother is the first world of the child and the last world of the adult. We
are all wrapped as her children in the mantle of this great Isis. But let us
now return to the different types of feminine mother-complex. It may seem
strange that I am devoting so much more time to the mother-complex in
woman than to its counterpart in man. The reason for this has already been
mentioned: in a man, the mother-complex is never “pure,” it is always
mixed with the anima archetype, and the consequence is that a man’s
statements about the mother are always emotionally prejudiced in the
sense of showing “animosity.” Only in women is it possible to examine the
effects of the mother archetype without admixture of animosity, and even
this has prospects of success only when no compensating animus has
developed.
II. THE OVERDEVELOPED EROS
[176]
I drew a very unfavourable picture of this type as we encounter it in
the field of psychopathology. But this type, uninviting as it appears, also
has positive aspects which society could ill afford to do without. Indeed,
behind what is possibly the worst effect of this attitude, the unscrupulous
wrecking of marriages, we can see an extremely significant and purposeful
arrangement of nature. This type often develops in reaction to a mother
who is wholly a thrall of nature, purely instinctive and therefore alldevouring. Such a mother is an anachronism, a throw-back to a primitive
state of matriarchy where the man leads an insipid existence as a mere
procreator and serf of the soil. The reactive intensification of the
daughter’s Eros is aimed at some man who ought to be rescued from the
preponderance of the female-maternal element in his life. A woman of this
type instinctively intervenes when provoked by the unconsciousness of the
marriage partner. She will disturb that comfortable ease so dangerous to
the personality of a man but frequently regarded by him as marital
faithfulness. This complacency leads to blank unconsciousness of his own
personality and to those supposedly ideal marriages where he is nothing
but Dad and she is nothing but Mom, and they even call each other that.
This is a slippery path that can easily degrade marriage to the level of a
mere breeding-pen.
[177]
A woman of this type directs the burning ray of her Eros upon a man
whose life is stifled by maternal solicitude, and by doing so she arouses a
moral conflict. Yet without this there can be no consciousness of
personality. “But why on earth,” you may ask, “should it be necessary for
man to achieve, by hook or by crook, a higher level of consciousness?”
This is truly the crucial question, and I do not find the answer easy. Instead
of a real answer I can only make a confession of faith: I believe that, after
thousands and millions of years, someone had to realize that this
wonderful world of mountains and oceans, suns and moons, galaxies and
nebulae, plants and animals, exists. From a low hill in the Athi plains of
East Africa I once watched the vast herds of wild animals grazing in
soundless stillness, as they had done from time immemorial, touched only
by the breath of a primeval world. I felt then as if I were the first man, the
first creature, to know that all this is. The entire world round me was still
in its primeval state; it did not know that it was. And then, in that one
moment in which I came to know, the world sprang into being; without
that moment it would never have been. All Nature seeks this goal and finds
it fulfilled in man, but only in the most highly developed and most fully
conscious man. Every advance, even the smallest, along this path of
conscious realization adds that much to the world.
[178]
There is no consciousness without discrimination of opposites. This is
the paternal principle, the Logos, which eternally struggles to extricate
itself from the primal warmth and primal darkness of the maternal womb;
in a word, from unconsciousness. Divine curiosity yearns to be born and
does not shrink from conflict, suffering, or sin. Unconsciousness is the
primal sin, evil itself, for the Logos. Therefore its first creative act of
liberation is matricide, and the spirit that dared all heights and all depths
must, as Synesius says, suffer the divine punishment, enchainment on the
rocks of the Caucasus. Nothing can exist without its opposite; the two were
one in the beginning and will be one again in the end. Consciousness can
only exist through continual recognition of the unconscious, just as
everything that lives must pass through many deaths.
[179]
The stirring up of conflict is a Luciferian virtue in the true sense of the
word. Conflict engenders fire, the fire of affects and emotions, and like
every other fire it has two aspects, that of combustion and that of creating
light. On the one hand, emotion is the alchemical fire whose warmth
brings everything into existence and whose heat burns all superfluities to
ashes (omnes superfluitates comburit). But on the other hand, emotion is
the moment when steel meets flint and a spark is struck forth, for emotion
is the chief source of consciousness. There is no change from darkness to
light or from inertia to movement without emotion.
[180]
The woman whose fate it is to be a disturbing element is not solely
destructive, except in pathological cases. Normally the disturber is herself
caught in the disturbance; the worker of change is herself changed, and the
glare of the fire she ignites both illuminates and enlightens all the victims
of the entanglement. What seemed a senseless upheaval becomes a process
of purification:
So that all that is vain
Might dwindle and wane.
1
[181]
If a woman of this type remains unconscious of the meaning of her
function, if she does not know that she is
Part of that power which would
Ever work evil but engenders good,
2
she will herself perish by the sword she brings. But consciousness
transforms her into a deliverer and redeemer.
III. THE “NOTHING-BUT” DAUGHTER
[182]
The woman of the third type, who is so identified with the mother that
her own instincts are paralysed through projection, need not on that
account remain a hopeless nonentity forever. On the contrary, if she is at
all normal, there is a good chance of the empty vessel being filled by a
potent anima projection. Indeed, the fate of such a woman depends on this
eventuality; she can never find herself at all, not even approximately,
without a man’s help; she has to be literally abducted or stolen from her
mother. Moreover, she must play the role mapped out for her for a long
time and with great effort, until she actually comes to loathe it. In this way
she may perhaps discover who she really is. Such women may become
devoted and self-sacrificing wives of husbands whose whole existence
turns on their identification with a profession or a great talent, but who, for
the rest, are unconscious and remain so. Since they are nothing but masks
themselves, the wife, too, must be able to play the accompanying part with
a semblance of naturalness. But these women sometimes have valuable
gifts which remained undeveloped only because they were entirely
unconscious of their own personality. They may project the gift or talent
upon a husband who lacks it himself, and then we have the spectacle of a
totally insignificant man who seemed to have no chance whatsoever
suddenly soaring as if on a magic carpet to the highest summits of
achievement. Cherchez la femme, and you have the secret of his success.
These women remind me—if I may be forgiven the impolite comparison—
of hefty great bitches who turn tail before the smallest cur simply because
he is a terrible male and it never occurs to them to bite him.
[183]
Finally, it should be remarked that emptiness is a great feminine
secret. It is something absolutely alien to man; the chasm, the unplumbed
depths, the yin. The pitifulness of this vacuous nonentity goes to his heart
(I speak here as a man), and one is tempted to say that this constitutes the
whole “mystery” of woman. Such a female is fate itself. A man may say
what he likes about it; be for it or against it, or both at once; in the end he
falls, absurdly happy, into this pit, or, if he doesn’t, he has missed and
bungled his only chance of making a man of himself. In the first case one
cannot disprove his foolish good luck to him, and in the second one cannot
make his misfortune seem plausible. “The Mothers, the Mothers, how
eerily it sounds!” With this sigh, which seals the capitulation of the male
as he approaches the realm of the Mothers, we will turn to the fourth type.
3
IV. THE NEGATIVE MOTHER-COMPLEX
[184]
As a pathological phenomenon this type is an unpleasant, exacting,
and anything but satisfactory partner for her husband, since she rebels in
every fibre of her being against everything that springs from natural soil.
However, there is no reason why increasing experience of life should not
teach her a thing or two, so that for a start she gives up fighting the mother
in the personal and restricted sense. But even at her best she will remain
hostile to all that is dark, unclear, and ambiguous, and will cultivate and
emphasize everything certain and clear and reasonable. Excelling her more
feminine sister in her objectivity and coolness of judgment, she may
become the friend, sister, and competent adviser of her husband. Her own
masculine aspirations make it possible for her to have a human
understanding of the individuality of her husband quite transcending the
realm of the erotic. The woman with this type of mother-complex probably
has the best chance of all to make her marriage an outstanding success
during the second half of life. But this is true only if she succeeds in
overcoming the hell of “nothing but femininity,” the chaos of the maternal
womb, which is her greatest danger because of her negative complex. As
we know, a complex can be really overcome only if it is lived out to the
full. In other words, if we are to develop further we have to draw to us and
drink down to the very dregs what, because of our complexes, we have
held at a distance.
[185]
This type started out in the world with averted face, like Lot’s wife
looking back on Sodom and Gomorrah. And all the while the world and
life pass by her like a dream—an annoying source of illusions,
disappointments, and irritations, all of which are due solely to the fact that
she cannot bring herself to look straight ahead for once. Because of her
merely unconscious, reactive attitude toward reality, her life actually
becomes dominated by what she fought hardest against—the exclusively
maternal feminine aspect. But if she should later turn her face, she will see
the world for the first time, so to speak, in the light of maturity, and see it
embellished with all the colours and enchanting wonders of youth, and
sometimes even of childhood. It is a vision that brings knowledge and
discovery of truth, the indispensable prerequisite for consciousness. A part
of life was lost, but the meaning of life has been salvaged for her.
[186]
The woman who fights against her father still has the possibility of
leading an instinctive, feminine existence, because she rejects only what is
alien to her. But when she fights against the mother she may, at the risk of
injury to her instincts, attain to greater consciousness, because in
repudiating the mother she repudiates all that is obscure, instinctive,
ambiguous, and unconscious in her own nature. Thanks to her lucidity,
objectivity, and masculinity, a woman of this type is frequently found in
important positions in which her tardily discovered maternal quality,
guided by a cool intelligence, exerts a most beneficial influence. This rare
combination of womanliness and masculine understanding proves valuable
in the realm of intimate relationships as well as in practical matters. As the
spiritual guide and adviser of a man, such a woman, unknown to the world,
may play a highly influential part. Owing to her qualities, the masculine
mind finds this type easier to understand than women with other forms of
mother-complex, and for this reason men often favour her with the
projection of positive mother-complexes. The excessively feminine
woman terrifies men who have a mother-complex characterized by great
sensitivity. But this woman is not frightening to a man, because she builds
bridges for the masculine mind over which he can safely guide his feelings
to the opposite shore. Her clarity of understanding inspires him with
confidence, a factor not to be underrated and one that is absent from the
relationship between a man and a woman much more often than one might
think. The man’s Eros does not lead upward only but downward into that
uncanny dark world of Hecate and Kali, which is a horror to any
intellectual man. The understanding possessed by this type of woman will
be a guiding star to him in the darkness and seemingly unending mazes of
life.
5. CONCLUSION
[187]
From what has been said it should be clear that in the last analysis all
the statements of mythology on this subject as well as the observed effects
of the mother-complex, when stripped of their confusing detail, point to
the unconscious as their place of origin. How else could it have occurred to
man to divide the cosmos, on the analogy of day and night, summer and
winter, into a bright day-world and a dark night-world peopled with
fabulous monsters, unless he had the prototype of such a division in
himself, in the polarity between the conscious and the invisible and
unknowable unconscious? Primitive man’s perception of objects is
conditioned only partly by the objective behaviour of the things
themselves, whereas a much greater part is often played by intrapsychic
facts which are not related to the external objects except by way of
projection. This is due to the simple fact that the primitive has not yet
experienced that ascetic discipline of mind known to us as the critique of
knowledge. To him the world is a more or less fluid phenomenon within
the stream of his own fantasy, where subject and object are
undifferentiated and in a state of mutual interpenetration. “All that is
outside, also is inside,” we could say with Goethe. But this “inside,” which
modern rationalism is so eager to derive from “outside,” has an a priori
structure of its own that antedates all conscious experience. It is quite
impossible to conceive how “experience” in the widest sense, or, for that
matter, anything psychic, could originate exclusively in the outside world.
The psyche is part of the inmost mystery of life, and it has its own peculiar
structure and form like every other organism. Whether this psychic
structure and its elements, the archetypes, ever “originated” at all is a
metaphysical question and therefore unanswerable. The structure is
something given, the precondition that is found to be present in every case.
And this is the mother, the matrix-the form into which all experience is
poured. The father, on the other hand, represents the dynamism of the
archetype, for the archetype consists of both—form and energy.
1
[188]
The carrier of the archetype is in the first place the personal mother,
because the child lives at first in complete participation with her, in a state
of unconscious identity. She is the psychic as well as the physical
precondition of the child. With the awakening of ego-consciousness the
participation gradually weakens, and consciousness begins to enter into
opposition to the unconscious, its own precondition. This leads to
differentiation of the ego from the mother, whose personal peculiarities
gradually become more distinct. All the fabulous and mysterious qualities
attaching to her image begin to fall away and are transferred to the person
closest to her, for instance the grandmother. As the mother of the mother,
she is “greater” than the latter; she is in truth the “grand” or “Great
Mother.” Not infrequently she assumes the attributes of wisdom as well as
those of a witch. For the further the archetype recedes from consciousness
and the clearer the latter becomes, the more distinctly does the archetype
assume mythological features. The transition from mother to grandmother
means that the archetype is elevated to a higher rank. This is clearly
demonstrated in a notion held by the Bataks. The funeral sacrifice in
honour of a dead father is modest, consisting of ordinary food. But if the
son has a son of his own, then the father has become a grandfather and has
consequently attained a more dignified status in the Beyond, and very
important offerings are made to him.
2
[189]
As the distance between conscious and unconscious increases, the
grandmother’s more exalted rank transforms her into a “Great Mother,”
and it frequently happens that the opposites contained in this image split
apart. We then get a good fairy and a wicked fairy, or a benevolent
goddess and one who is malevolent and dangerous. In Western antiquity
and especially in Eastern cultures the opposites often remain united in the
same figure, though this paradox does not disturb the primitive mind in the
least. The legends about the gods are as full of contradictions as are their
moral characters. In the West, the paradoxical behaviour and moral
ambivalence of the gods scandalized people even in antiquity and gave rise
to criticism that led finally to a devaluation of the Olympians on the one
hand and to their philosophical interpretation on the other. The clearest
expression of this is the Christian reformation of the Jewish concept of the
Deity: the morally ambiguous Yahweh became an exclusively good God,
while everything evil was united in the devil. It seems as if the
development of the feeling function in Western man forced a choice on
him which led to the moral splitting of the divinity into two halves. In the
East the predominantly intuitive intellectual attitude left no room for
feeling values, and the gods—Kali is a case in point—could retain their
original paradoxical morality undisturbed. Thus Kali is representative of
the East and the Madonna of the West. The latter has entirely lost the
shadow that still distantly followed her in the allegories of the Middle
Ages. It was relegated to the hell of popular imagination, where it now
leads an insignificant existence as the devil’s grandmother. Thanks to the
development of feeling-values, the splendour of the “light” god has been
enhanced beyond measure, but the darkness supposedly represented by the
devil has localized itself in man. This strange development was
precipitated chiefly by the fact that Christianity, terrified of Manichaean
dualism, strove to preserve its monotheism by main force. But since the
reality of darkness and evil could not be denied, there was no alternative
but to make man responsible for it. Even the devil was largely, if not
entirely, abolished, with the result that this metaphysical figure, who at one
time was an integral part of the Deity, was introjected into man, who
thereupon became the real carrier of the mysterium iniquitatis: “omne
bonum a Deo, omne malum ab homine.” In recent times this development
has suffered a diabolical reverse, and the wolf in sheep’s clothing now
goes about whispering in our ear that evil is really nothing but a
misunderstanding of good and an effective instrument of progress. We
think that the world of darkness has thus been abolished for good and all,
and nobody realizes what a poisoning this is of man’s soul. In this way he
turns himself into the devil, for the devil is half of the archetype whose
irresistible power makes even unbelievers ejaculate “Oh God!” on every
suitable and unsuitable occasion. If one can possibly avoid it, one ought
never to identify with an archetype, for, as psychopathology and certain
contemporary events show, the consequences are terrifying.
3
[190]
Western man has sunk to such a low level spiritually that he even has
to deny the apotheosis of untamed and untameable psychic power—the
divinity itself—so that, after swallowing evil, he may possess himself of
the good as well. If you read Nietzsche’s Zarathustra with attention and
psychological understanding, you will see that he has described with rare
consistency and with the passion of a truly religious person the psychology
of the “Superman” for whom God is dead, and who is himself burst
asunder because he tried to imprison the divine paradox within the narrow
framework of the mortal man. Goethe has wisely said: “What terror then
shall seize the Superman!”—and was rewarded with a supercilious smile
from the Philistines. His glorification of the Mother who is great enough to
include in herself both the Queen of Heaven and Maria Aegyptiaca is
supreme wisdom and profoundly significant for anyone willing to reflect
upon it. But what can one expect in an age when the official spokesmen of
Christianity publicly announce their in ability to understand the
foundations of religious experience! I extract the following sentence from
an article by a Protestant theologian: “We understand ourselves—whether
naturalistically or idealistically—to be homogeneous creatures who are
not so peculiarly divided that alien forces can intervene in our inner life,
as the New Testament supposes.” (Italics mine.) The author is evidently
unacquainted with the fact that science demonstrated the lability and
dissociability of consciousness more than half a century ago and proved it
by experiment. Our conscious intentions are continually disturbed and
thwarted, to a greater or lesser degree, by unconscious intrusions whose
causes are at first strange to us. The psyche is far from being a
homogeneous unit—on the contrary, it is a boiling cauldron of
contradictory impulses, inhibitions, and affects, and for many people the
conflict between them is so insupportable that they even wish for the
deliverance preached by theologians. Deliverance from what? Obviously,
from a highly questionable psychic state. The unity of consciousness or of
the so-called personality is not a reality at all but a desideratum. I still have
a vivid memory of a certain philosopher who also raved about this unity
and used to consult me about his neurosis: he was obsessed by the idea that
he was suffering from cancer. I do not know how many specialists he had
consulted already, and how many X-ray pictures he had had made. They
all assured him that he had no cancer. He himself told me: “I know I have
no cancer, but I still could have one.” Who is responsible for this
“imaginary” idea? He certainly did not make it himself; it was forced on
him by an “alien” power. There is little to choose between this state and
that of the man possessed in the New Testament. Now whether you believe
in a demon of the air or in a factor in the unconscious that plays diabolical
tricks on you is all one to me. The fact that man’s imagined unity is
menaced by alien powers remains the same in either case. Theologians
would do better to take account for once of these psychological facts than
to go on “demythologizing” them with rationalistic explanations that are a
hundred years behind the times.
4
*
[191]
I have tried in the foregoing to give a survey of the psychic
phenomena that may be attributed to the predominance of the motherimage. Although I have not always drawn attention to them, my reader will
presumably have had no difficulty in recognizing those features which
characterize the Great Mother mythologically, even when they appear
under the guise of personalistic psychology. When we ask patients who are
particularly influenced by the mother-image to express in words or
pictures what “Mother” means to them—be it positive or negative—we
invariably get symbolical figures which must be regarded as direct
analogies of the mythological mother-image. These analogies take us into
a field that still requires a great deal more work of elucidation. At any rate,
I personally do not feel able to say anything definitive about it. If,
nevertheless, I venture to offer a few suggestions, they should be regarded
as altogether provisional and tentative.
[192]
Above all, I should like to point out that the mother-image in a man’s
psychology is entirely different in character from a woman’s. For a
woman, the mother typifies her own conscious life as conditioned by her
sex. But for a man the mother typifies something alien, which he has yet to
experience and which is filled with the imagery latent in the unconscious.
For this reason, if for no other, the mother-image of a man is essentially
different from a woman’s. The mother has from the outset a decidedly
symbolical significance for a man, which probably accounts for his strong
tendency to idealize her. Idealization is a hidden apotropaism; one
idealizes whenever there is a secret fear to be exorcized. What is feared is
the unconscious and its magical influence.
5
[193]
Whereas for a man the mother is ipso facto symbolical, for a woman
she becomes a symbol only in the course of her psychological
development. Experience reveals the striking fact that the Urania type of
mother-image predominates in masculine psychology, whereas in a woman
the chthonic type, or Earth Mother, is the most frequent. During the
manifest phase of the archetype an almost complete identification takes
place. A woman can identify directly with the Earth Mother, but a man
cannot (except in psychotic cases). As mythology shows, one of the
peculiarities of the Great Mother is that she frequently appears paired with
her male counterpart. Accordingly the man identifies with the son-lover on
whom the grace of Sophia has descended, with a puer aeternus or a filius
sapientiae. But the companion of the chthonic mother is the exact
opposite: an ithyphallic Hermes (the Egyptian Bes) or a lingam. In India
this symbol is of the highest spiritual significance, and in the West Hermes
is one of the most contradictory figures of Hellenistic syncretism, which
was the source of extremely important spiritual developments in Western
civilization. He is also the god of revelation, and in the unofficial nature
philosophy of the early Middle Ages he is nothing less than the worldcreating Nous itself. This mystery has perhaps found its finest expression
in the words of the Tabula smaragdina: “omne superius sicut inferius” (as
it is above, so it is below).
[194]
It is a psychological fact that as soon as we touch on these
identifications we enter the realm of the syzygies, the paired opposites,
where the One is never separated from the Other, its antithesis. It is a field
of personal experience which leads directly to the experience of
individuation, the attainment of the self. A vast number of symbols for this
process could be mustered from the medieval literature of the West and
even more from the storehouses of Oriental wisdom, but in this matter
words and ideas count for little. Indeed, they may become dangerous
bypaths and false trails. In this still very obscure field of psychological
experience, where we are in direct contact, so to speak, with the archetype,
its psychic power is felt in full force. This realm is so entirely one of
immediate experience that it cannot be captured by any formula, but can
only be hinted at to one who already knows. He will need no explanations
to understand what was the tension of opposites expressed by Apuleius in
his magnificent prayer to the Queen of Heaven, when he associates
“heavenly Venus” with “Proserpina, who strikest terror with midnight
ululations”: it was the terrifying paradox of the primordial mother-image.
6
*
[195]
When, in 1938, I originally wrote this paper, I naturally did not know
that twelve years later the Christian version of the mother archetype would
be elevated to the rank of a dogmatic truth. The Christian “Queen of
Heaven” has, obviously, shed all her Olympian qualities except for her
brightness, goodness, and eternality; and even her human body, the thing
most prone to gross material corruption, has put on an ethereal
incorruptibility. The richly varied allegories of the Mother of God have
nevertheless retained some connection with her pagan prefigurations in Isis
(Io) and Semele. Not only are Isis and the Horus-child iconological
exemplars, but the ascension of Semele, the originally mortal mother of
Dionysus, likewise anticipates the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin.
Further, this son of Semele is a dying and resurgent god and the youngest
of the Olympians. Semele herself seems to have been an earth-goddess,
just as the Virgin Mary is the earth from which Christ was born. This being
so, the question naturally arises for the psychologist: what has become of
the characteristic relation of the mother-image to the earth, darkness, the
abysmal side of the bodily man with his animal passions and instinctual
nature, and to “matter” in general? The declaration of the dogma comes at
a time when the achievements of science and technology, combined with a
rationalistic and materialistic view of the world, threaten the spiritual and
psychic heritage of man with instant annihilation. Humanity is arming
itself, in dread and fascinated horror, for a stupendous crime.
Circumstances might easily arise when the hydrogen bomb would have to
be used and the unthinkably frightful deed became unavoidable in
legitimate self-defence. In striking contrast to this disastrous turn of
events, the Mother of God is now enthroned in heaven; indeed, her
Assumption has actually been interpreted as a deliberate counterstroke to
the materialistic doctrinairism that provoked the chthonic powers into
revolt. Just as Christ’s appearance in his own day created a real devil and
adversary of God out of what was originally a son of God dwelling in
heaven, so now, conversely, a heavenly figure has split off from her
original chthonic realm and taken up a counter-position to the titanic forces
of the earth and the underworld that have been unleashed. In the same way
that the Mother of God was divested of all the essential qualities of
materiality, matter became completely de-souled, and this at a time when
physics is pushing forward to insights which, if they do not exactly “dematerialize” matter, at least endue it with properties of its own and make
its relation to the psyche a problem that can no longer be shelved. For just
as the tremendous advancement of science led at first to a premature
dethronement of mind and to an equally ill-considered deification of
matter, so it is this same urge for scientific knowledge that is now
attempting to bridge the huge gulf that has opened out between the two
Weltanschauungen. The psychologist inclines to see in the dogma of the
Assumption a symbol which, in a sense, anticipates this whole
development. For him the relationship to the earth and to matter is one of
the inalienable qualities of the mother archetype. So that when a figure that
is conditioned by this archetype is represented as having been taken up
into heaven, the realm of the spirit, this indicates a union of earth and
heaven, or of matter and spirit. The approach of natural science will almost
certainly be from the other direction: it will see in matter itself the
equivalent of spirit, but this “spirit” will appear divested of all, or at any
rate most, of its known qualities, just as earthly matter was stripped of its
specific characteristics when it staged its entry into heaven. Nevertheless,
the way will gradually be cleared for a union of the two principles.
[196]
Understood concretely, the Assumption is the absolute opposite of
materialism. Taken in this sense, it is a counterstroke that does nothing to
diminish the tension between the opposites, but drives it to extremes.
[197]
Understood symbolically, however, the Assumption of the body is a
recognition and acknowledgment of matter, which in the last resort was
identified with evil only because of an overwhelmingly “pneumatic”
tendency in man. In themselves, spirit and matter are neutral, or rather,
“utriusque capax”—that is, capable of what man calls good or evil.
Although as names they are exceedingly relative, underlying them are very
real opposites that are part of the energic structure of the physical and of
the psychic world, and without them no existence of any kind could be
established. There is no position without its negation. In spite or just
because of their extreme opposition, neither can exist without the other. It
is exactly as formulated in classical Chinese philosophy: yang (the light,
warm, dry, masculine principle) contains within it the seed of yin (the dark,
cold, moist, feminine principle), and vice versa. Matter therefore would
contain the seed of spirit and spirit the seed of matter. The long-known
“synchronistic” phenomena that have now been statistically confirmed by
Rhine’s experiments point, to all appearances, in this direction. The
“psychization” of matter puts the absolute immateriality of spirit in
question, since this would then have to be accorded a kind of
substantiality. The dogma of the Assumption, proclaimed in an age
suffering from the greatest political schism history has ever known, is a
compensating symptom that reflects the strivings of science for a uniform
7
world-picture. In a certain sense, both developments were anticipated by
alchemy in the hieros gamos of opposites, but only in symbolic form.
Nevertheless, the symbol has the great advantage of being able to unite
heterogeneous or even incommensurable factors in a single image. With
the decline of alchemy the symbolical unity of spirit and matter fell apart,
with the result that modern man finds himself uprooted and alienated in a
de-souled world.
[198]
The alchemist saw the union of opposites under the symbol of the tree,
and it is therefore not surprising that the unconscious of present-day man,
who no longer feels at home in his world and can base his existence
neither on the past that is no more nor on the future that is yet to be, should
hark back to the symbol of the cosmic tree rooted in this world and
growing up to heaven—the tree that is also man. In the history of symbols
this tree is described as the way of life itself, a growing into that which
eternally is and does not change; which springs from the union of
opposites and, by its eternal presence, also makes that union possible. It
seems as if it were only through an experience of symbolic reality that
man, vainly seeking his own “existence” and making a philosophy out of
it, can find his way back to a world in which he is no longer a stranger.
III
CONCERNING REBIRTH
This paper represents the substance of a lecture which I delivered on the
spur of the moment at the Eranos meeting in 1939. In putting it into written
form I have made use of the stenographic notes which were taken at the
meeting. Certain portions had to be omitted, chiefly because the requirements
of a printed text are different from those of the spoken word. However, so far
as possible, I have carried out my original intention of summing up the
content of my lecture on the theme of rebirth, and have also endeavoured to
reproduce my analysis of the Eighteenth Sura of the Koran as an example of
a rebirth mystery. I have added some references to source material, which the
reader may welcome. My summary does not purport to be more than a survey
of a field of knowledge which can only be treated very superficially in the
framework of a lecture.—C. G. J.
[First published as a lecture, “Die verschiedenen Aspekte der
Wiedergeburt,” in Eranos-Jahrbuch 1939 (Zurich, 1940). Revised and
expanded as “Über Wiedergeburt,” Gestaltungen des Unbewussten (Zurich,
1950), from which the present translation is made.—EDITORS.]
1. FORMS OF REBIRTH
[199]
The concept of rebirth is not always used in the same sense. Since this
concept has various aspects, it may be useful to review its different
meanings. The five different forms which I am going to enumerate could
probably be added to if one were to go into greater detail, but I venture to
think that my definitions cover at least the cardinal meanings. In the first
part of my exposition, I give a brief summary of the different forms of
rebirth, while the second part presents its various psychological aspects. In
the third part, I give an example of a rebirth mystery from the Koran.
[200]
1. Metempsychosis. The first of the five aspects of rebirth to which I
should like to draw attention is that of metempsychosis, or transmigration
of souls. According to this view, one’s life is prolonged in time by passing
through different bodily existences; or, from another point of view, it is a
life-sequence interrupted by different reincarnations. Even in Buddhism,
where this doctrine is of particular importance—the Buddha himself
experienced a very long sequence of such rebirths—it is by no means
certain whether continuity of personality is guaranteed or not: there may be
only a continuity of karma. The Buddha’s disciples put this question to
him during his lifetime, but he never made any definite statement as to
whether there is or is not a continuity of personality.
1
[201]
2. Reincarnation. This concept of rebirth necessarily implies the
continuity of personality. Here the human personality is regarded as
continuous and accessible to memory, so that, when one is incarnated or
born, one is able, at least potentially, to remember that one has lived
through previous existences and that these existences were one’s own, i.e.,
that they had the same ego-form as the present life. As a rule, reincarnation
means rebirth in a human body.
[202]
3. Resurrection. This means a re-establishment of human existence
after death. A new element enters here: that of the change, transmutation,
or transformation of one’s being. The change may be either essential, in
the sense that the resurrected being is a different one; or nonessential, in
the sense that only the general conditions of existence have changed, as
when one finds oneself in a different place or in a body which is
differently constituted. It may be a carnal body, as in the Christian
assumption that this body will be resurrected. On a higher level, the
process is no longer understood in a gross material sense; it is assumed that
the resurrection of the dead is the raising up of the corpus glorificationis,
the “subtle body,” in the state of incorruptibility.
[203]
4. Rebirth (renovatio). The fourth form concerns rebirth in the strict
sense; that is to say, rebirth within the span of individual life. The English
word rebirth is the exact equivalent of the German Wiedergeburt, but the
French language seems to lack a term having the peculiar meaning of
“rebirth.” This word has a special flavour; its whole atmosphere suggests
the idea of renovatio, renewal, or even of improvement brought about by
magical means. Rebirth may be a renewal without any change of being,
inasmuch as the personality which is renewed is not changed in its
essential nature, but only its functions, or parts of the personality, are
subjected to healing, strengthening, or improvement. Thus even bodily ills
may be healed through rebirth ceremonies.
[204]
Another aspect of this fourth form is essential transformation, i.e.,
total rebirth of the individual. Here the renewal implies a change of his
essential nature, and may be called a transmutation. As examples we may
mention the transformation of a mortal into an immortal being, of a
corporeal into a spiritual being, and of a human into a divine being. Wellknown prototypes of this change are the transfiguration and ascension of
Christ, and the assumption of the Mother of God into heaven after her
death, together with her body. Similar conceptions are to be found in Part
II of Goethe’s Faust; for instance, the transformation of Faust into the boy
and then into Doctor Marianus.
[205]
5. Participation in the process of transformation. The fifth and last
form is indirect rebirth. Here the transformation is brought about not
directly, by passing through death and rebirth oneself, but indirectly, by
participating in a process of transformation which is conceived of as taking
place outside the individual. In other words, one has to witness, or take
part in, some rite of transformation. This rite may be a ceremony such as
the Mass, where there is a transformation of substances. Through his
presence at the rite the individual participates in divine grace. Similar
transformations of the Deity are to be found in the pagan mysteries; there
too the initiate sharing the experience is vouchsafed the gift of grace, as we
know from the Eleusinian mysteries. A case in point is the confession of
the initiate in the Eleusinian mysteries, who praises the grace conferred
through the certainty of immortality.
2
2. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF REBIRTH
[206]
Rebirth is not a process that we can in any way observe. We can
neither measure nor weigh nor photograph it. It is entirely beyond sense
perception. We have to do here with a purely psychic reality, which is
transmitted to us only indirectly through personal statements. One speaks
of rebirth; one professes rebirth; one is filled with rebirth. This we accept
as sufficiently real. We are not concerned here with the question: is rebirth
a tangible process of some sort? We have to be content with its psychic
reality. I hasten to add that I am not alluding to the vulgar notion that
anything “psychic” is either nothing at all or at best even more tenuous
than a gas. Quite the contrary; I am of the opinion that the psyche is the
most tremendous fact of human life. Indeed, it is the mother of all human
facts; of civilization and of its destroyer, war. All this is at first psychic
and invisible. So long as it is “merely” psychic it cannot be experienced by
the senses, but is nonetheless indisputably real. The mere fact that people
talk about rebirth, and that there is such a concept at all, means that a store
of psychic experiences designated by that term must actually exist. What
these experiences are like we can only infer from the statements that have
been made about them. So, if we want to find out what rebirth really is, we
must turn to history in order to ascertain what “rebirth” has been
understood to mean.
[207]
Rebirth is an affirmation that must be counted among the primordial
affirmations of mankind. These primordial affirmations are based on what
I call archetypes. In view of the fact that all affirmations relating to the
sphere of the suprasensual are, in the last analysis, invariably determined
by archetypes, it is not surprising that a concurrence of affirmations
concerning rebirth can be found among the most widely differing peoples.
There must be psychic events underlying these affirmations which it is the
business of psychology to discuss—without entering into all the
metaphysical and philosophical assumptions regarding their significance.
In order to obtain a general view of their phenomenology, it is necessary to
sketch the whole field of transformation experiences in sharper outline.
Two main groups of experience may be distinguished: that of the
transcendence of life, and that of one’s own transformation.
I. EXPERIENCE OF THE TRANSCENDENCE OF LIFE
[208]
a. Experiences induced by ritual. By the “transcendence of life” I
mean those aforementioned experiences of the initiate who takes part in a
sacred rite which reveals to him the perpetual continuation of life through
transformation and renewal. In these mystery-dramas the transcendence of
life, as distinct from its momentary concrete manifestations, is usually
represented by the fateful transformations—death and rebirth—of a god or
a godlike hero. The initiate may either be a mere witness of the divine
drama or take part in it or be moved by it, or he may see himself identified
through the ritual action with the god. In this case, what really matters is
that an objective substance or form of life is ritually transformed through
some process going on independently, while the initiate is influenced,
impressed, “consecrated,” or granted “divine grace” on the mere ground of
his presence or participation. The transformation process takes place not
within him but outside him, although he may become involved in it. The
initiate who ritually enacts the slaying, dismemberment, and scattering of
Osiris, and afterwards his resurrection in the green wheat, experiences in
this way the permanence and continuity of life, which outlasts all changes
of form and, phoenix-like, continually rises anew from its own ashes. This
participation in the ritual event gives rise, among other effects, to that hope
of immortality which is characteristic of the Eleusinian mysteries.
1
[209]
A living example of the mystery drama representing the permanence
as well as the transformation of life is the Mass. If we observe the
congregation during this sacred rite we note all degrees of participation,
from mere indifferent attendance to the profoundest emotion. The groups
of men standing about near the exit, who are obviously engaged in every
sort of worldly conversation, crossing themselves and genuflecting in a
purely mechanical way—even they, despite their inattention, participate in
the sacral action by their mere presence in this place where grace abounds.
The Mass is an extramundane and extratemporal act in which Christ is
sacrificed and then resurrected in the transformed substances; and this rite
of his sacrificial death is not a repetition of the historical event but the
original, unique, and eternal act. The experience of the Mass is therefore a
participation in the transcendence of life, which overcomes all bounds of
space and time. It is a moment of eternity in time.
2
[210]
b. Immediate Experiences. All that the mystery drama represents and
brings about in the spectator may also occur in the form of a spontaneous,
ecstatic, or visionary experience, without any ritual. Nietzsche’s Noontide
Vision is a classic example of this kind. Nietzsche, as we know,
substitutes for the Christian mystery the myth of Dionysus-Zagreus, who
was dismembered and came to life again. His experience has the character
of a Dionysian nature myth: the Deity appears in the garb of Nature, as
classical antiquity saw it, and the moment of eternity is the noonday hour,
sacred to Pan: “Hath time flown away? Do I not fall? Have I not fallen—
hark!—into the well of eternity?” Even the “golden ring,” the “ring of
return,” appears to him as a promise of resurrection and life. It is just as if
Nietzsche had been present at a performance of the mysteries.
3
4
5
[211]
Many mystic experiences have a similar character: they represent an
action in which the spectator becomes involved though his nature is not
necessarily changed. In the same way, the most beautiful and impressive
dreams often have no lasting or transformative effect on the dreamer. He
may be impressed by them, but he does not necessarily see any problem in
them. The event then naturally remains “outside,” like a ritual action
performed by others. These more aesthetic forms of experience must be
carefully distinguished from those which indubitably involve a change of
one’s nature.
II. SUBJECTIVE TRANSFORMATION
[212]
Transformations of personality are by no means rare occurrences.
Indeed, they play a considerable role in psychopathology, although they
are rather different from the mystical experiences just discussed, which are
not easily accessible to psychological investigation. However, the
phenomena we are now about to examine belong to a sphere quite familiar
to psychology.
[213]
a. Diminution of personality. An example of the alteration of
personality in the sense of diminution is furnished by what is known in
primitive psychology as “loss of soul.” The peculiar condition covered by
this term is accounted for in the mind of the primitive by the supposition
that a soul has gone off, just like a dog that runs away from his master
overnight. It is then the task of the medicine-man to fetch the fugitive
back. Often the loss occurs suddenly and manifests itself in a general
malaise. The phenomenon is closely connected with the nature of primitive
consciousness, which lacks the firm coherence of our own. We have
control of our will power, but the primitive has not. Complicated exercises
are needed if he is to pull himself together for any activity that is conscious
and intentional and not just emotional and instinctive. Our consciousness is
safer and more dependable in this respect; but occasionally something
similar can happen to civilized man, only he does not describe it as “loss of
soul” but as an “abaissement du niveau mental,” Janet’s apt term for this
phenomenon. It is a slackening of the tensity of consciousness, which
might be compared to a low barometric reading, presaging bad weather.
The tonus has given way, and this is felt subjectively as listlessness,
moroseness, and depression. One no longer has any wish or courage to
face the tasks of the day. One feels like lead, because no part of one’s body
seems willing to move, and this is due to the fact that one no longer has
any disposable energy. This well-known phenomenon corresponds to the
primitive’s loss of soul. The listlessness and paralysis of will can go so far
that the whole personality falls apart, so to speak, and consciousness loses
its unity; the individual parts of the personality make themselves
independent and thus escape from the control of the conscious mind, as in
the case of anaesthetic areas or systematic amnesias. The latter are well
known as hysterical “loss of function” phenomena. This medical term is
analogous to the primitive loss of soul.
6
7
[214]
Abaissement du niveau mental can be the result of physical and mental
fatigue, bodily illness, violent emotions, and shock, of which the last has a
particularly deleterious effect on one’s self-assurance. The abaissement
always has a restrictive influence on the personality as a whole. It reduces
one’s self-confidence and the spirit of enterprise, and, as a result of
increasing ego-centricity, narrows the mental horizon. In the end it may
lead to the development of an essentially negative personality, which
means that a falsification of the original personality has supervened.
[215]
b. Enlargement of personality. The personality is seldom, in the
beginning, what it will be later on. For this reason the possibility of
enlarging it exists, at least during the first half of life. The enlargement
may be effected through an accretion from without, by new vital contents
finding their way into the personality from outside and being assimilated.
In this way a considerable increase of personality may be experienced. We
therefore tend to assume that this increase comes only from without, thus
justifying the prejudice that one becomes a personality by stuffing into
oneself as much as possible from outside. But the more assiduously we
follow this recipe, and the more stubbornly we believe that all increase has
to come from without, the greater becomes our inner poverty. Therefore, if
some great idea takes hold of us from outside, we must understand that it
takes hold of us only because something in us responds to it and goes out
to meet it. Richness of mind consists in mental receptivity, not in the
accumulation of possessions. What comes to us from outside, and, for that
matter, everything that rises up from within, can only be made our own if
we are capable of an inner amplitude equal to that of the incoming content.
Real increase of personality means consciousness of an enlargement that
flows from inner sources. Without psychic depth we can never be
adequately related to the magnitude of our object. It has therefore been
said quite truly that a man grows with the greatness of his task. But he
must have within himself the capacity to grow; otherwise even the most
difficult task is of no benefit to him. More likely he will be shattered by it.
[216]
A classic example of enlargement is Nietzsche’s encounter with
Zarathustra, which made of the critic and aphorist a tragic poet and
prophet. Another example is St. Paul, who, on his way to Damascus, was
suddenly confronted by Christ. True though it may be that this Christ of St.
Paul’s would hardly have been possible without the historical Jesus, the
apparition of Christ came to St. Paul not from the historical Jesus but from
the depths of his own unconscious.
[217]
When a summit of life is reached, when the bud unfolds and from the
lesser the greater emerges, then, as Nietzsche says, “One becomes Two,”
and the greater figure, which one always was but which remained
invisible, appears to the lesser personality with the force of a revelation.
He who is truly and hopelessly little will always drag the revelation of the
greater down to the level of his littleness, and will never understand that
the day of judgment for his littleness has dawned. But the man who is
inwardly great will know that the long expected friend of his soul, the
immortal one, has now really come, “to lead captivity captive”; that is, to
seize hold of him by whom this immortal had always been confined and
held prisoner, and to make his life flow into that greater life—a moment of
deadliest peril! Nietzsche’s prophetic vision of the Tightrope Walker
8
9
reveals the awful danger that lies in having a “tightrope-walking” attitude
towards an event to which St. Paul gave the most exalted name he could
find.
[218]
Christ himself is the perfect symbol of the hidden immortal within the
mortal man. Ordinarily this problem is symbolized by a dual motif such
as the Dioscuri, one of whom is mortal and the other immortal. An Indian
parallel is the parable of the two friends:
10
Behold, upon the selfsame tree,
Two birds, fast-bound companions, sit.
This one enjoys the ripened fruit,
The other looks, but does not eat.
On such a tree my spirit crouched,
Deluded by its powerlessness,
Till seeing with joy how great its Lord,
It found from sorrow swift release….11
[219]
Another notable parallel is the Islamic legend of the meeting of Moses
and Khidr, to which I shall return later on. Naturally the transformation of
personality in this enlarging sense does not occur only in the form of such
highly significant experiences. There is no lack of more trivial instances, a
list of which could easily be compiled from the clinical history of neurotic
patients. Indeed, any case where the recognition of a greater personality
seems to burst an iron ring round the heart must be included in this
category.
12
13
[220]
c. Change of internal structure. We now come to changes of
personality which imply neither enlargement nor diminution but a
structural alteration. One of the most important forms is the phenomenon
of possession: some content, an idea or a part of the personality, obtains
mastery of the individual for one reason or another. The contents which
thus take possession appear as peculiar convictions, idiosyncrasies,
stubborn plans, and so forth. As a rule, they are not open to correction.
One has to be an especially good friend of the possessed person and
willing to put up with almost anything if one is to attempt to deal with such
a condition. I am not prepared to lay down any hard and fast line of
demarcation between possession and paranoia. Possession can be
formulated as identity of the ego-personality with a complex.
14
[221]
A common instance of this is identity with the persona, which is the
individual’s system of adaptation to, or the manner he assumes in dealing
with, the world. Every calling or profession, for example, has its own
characteristic persona. It is easy to study these things nowadays, when the
photographs of public personalities so frequently appear in the press. A
certain kind of behaviour is forced on them by the world, and professional
people endeavour to come up to these expectations. Only, the danger is
that they become identical with their personas—the professor with his textbook, the tenor with his voice. Then the damage is done; henceforth he
lives exclusively against the background of his own biography. For by that
time it is written: “… then he went to such and such a place and said this
or that,” etc. The garment of Deianeira has grown fast to his skin, and a
desperate decision like that of Heracles is needed if he is to tear this
Nessus shirt from his body and step into the consuming fire of the flame of
immortality, in order to transform himself into what he really is. One could
say, with a little exaggeration, that the persona is that which in reality one
is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is. In any case the
temptation to be what one seems to be is great, because the persona is
usually rewarded in cash.
15
[222]
There are still other factors which may take possession of the
individual, one of the most important being the so-called “inferior
function.” This is not the place to enter into a detailed discussion of this
problem; I should only like to point out that the inferior function is
practically identical with the dark side of the human personality. The
darkness which clings to every personality is the door into the unconscious
and the gateway of dreams, from which those two twilight figures, the
shadow and the anima, step into our nightly visions or, remaining
invisible, take possession of our ego-consciousness. A man who is
possessed by his shadow is always standing in his own light and falling
into his own traps. Whenever possible, he prefers to make an unfavourable
impression on others. In the long run luck is always against him, because
he is living below his own level and at best only attains what does not suit
him. And if there is no doorstep for him to stumble over, he manufactures
one for himself and then fondly believes he has done something useful.
16
[223]
Possession caused by the anima or animus presents a different
picture. Above all, this transformation of personality gives prominence
to those traits which are characteristic of the opposite sex; in man the
feminine traits, and in woman the masculine. In the state of possession
both figures lose their charm and their values; they retain them only
when they are turned away from the world, in the introverted state, when
they serve as bridges to the unconscious. Turned towards the world, the
anima is fickle, capricious, moody, uncontrolled and emotional,
sometimes gifted with daemonic intuitions, ruthless, malicious,
untruthful, bitchy, double-faced, and mystical. The animus is obstinate,
harping on principles, laying down the law, dogmatic, world-reforming,
theoretic, word-mongering, argumentative, and domineering. Both
alike have bad taste: the anima surrounds herself with inferior people,
and the animus lets himself be taken in by second-rate thinking.
17
18
[224]
Another form of structural change concerns certain unusual
observations about which I speak only with the utmost reserve. I refer to
states of possession in which the possession is caused by something that
could perhaps most fitly be described as an “ancestral soul,” by which I
mean the soul of some definite forebear. For all practical purposes, such
cases may be regarded as striking instances of identification with deceased
persons. (Naturally, the phenomena of identity only occur after the
“ancestor’s” death.) My attention was first drawn to such possibilities by
Léon Daudet’s confused but ingenious book L’Hérédo. Daudet supposes
that, in the structure of the personality, there are ancestral elements which
under certain conditions may suddenly come to the fore. The individual is
then precipitately thrust into an ancestral role. Now we know that ancestral
roles play a very important part in primitive psychology. Not only are
ancestral spirits supposed to be reincarnated in children, but an attempt is
made to implant them into the child by naming him after an ancestor. So,
too, primitives try to change themselves back into their ancestors by means
of certain rites. I would mention especially the Australian conception of
the alcheringamijina, ancestral souls, half man and half animal, whose
reactivation through religious rites is of the greatest functional significance
for the life of the tribe. Ideas of this sort, dating back to the Stone Age,
were widely diffused, as may be seen from numerous other traces that can
be found elsewhere. It is therefore not improbable that these primordial
forms of experience may recur even today as cases of identification with
ancestral souls, and I believe I have seen such cases.
19
[225]
d. Identification with a group. We shall now discuss another form of
transformation experience which I would call identification with a group.
More accurately speaking, it is the identification of an individual with a
number of people who, as a group, have a collective experience of
transformation. This special psychological situation must not be confused
with participation in a transformation rite, which, though performed before
an audience, does not in any way depend upon group identity or
necessarily give rise to it. To experience transformation in a group and to
experience it in oneself are two totally different things. If any considerable
group of persons are united and identified with one another by a particular
frame of mind, the resultant transformation experience bears only a very
remote resemblance to the experience of individual transformation. A
group experience takes place on a lower level of consciousness than the
experience of an individual. This is due to the fact that, when many people
gather together to share one common emotion, the total psyche emerging
from the group is below the level of the individual psyche. If it is a very
large group, the collective psyche will be more like the psyche of an
animal, which is the reason why the ethical attitude of large organizations
is always doubtful. The psychology of a large crowd inevitably sinks to the
level of mob psychology. If, therefore, I have a so-called collective
experience as a member of a group, it takes place on a lower level of
consciousness than if I had the experience by myself alone. That is why
this group experience is very much more frequent than an individual
experience of transformation. It is also much easier to achieve, because the
presence of so many people together exerts great suggestive force. The
individual in a crowd easily becomes the victim of his own suggestibility.
It is only necessary for something to happen, for instance a proposal
backed by the whole crowd, and we too are all for it, even if the proposal
is immoral. In the crowd one feels no responsibility, but also no fear.
20
[226]
Thus identification with the group is a simple and easy path to follow,
but the group experience goes no deeper than the level of one’s own mind
in that state. It does work a change in you, but the change does not last. On
the contrary, you must have continual recourse to mass intoxication in
order to consolidate the experience and your belief in it. But as soon as you
are removed from the crowd, you are a different person again and unable
to reproduce the previous state of mind. The mass is swayed by
participation mystique, which is nothing other than an unconscious
identity. Supposing, for example, you go to the theatre: glance meets
glance, everybody observes everybody else, so that all those who are
present are caught up in an invisible web of mutual unconscious
relationship. If this condition increases, one literally feels borne along by
the universal wave of identity with others. It may be a pleasant feeling—
one sheep among ten thousand! Again, if I feel that this crowd is a great
and wonderful unity, I am a hero, exalted along with the group. When I am
myself again, I discover that I am Mr. So-and-So, and that I live in such
and such a street, on the third floor. I also find that the whole affair was
really most delightful, and I hope it will take place again tomorrow so that
I may once more feel myself to be a whole nation, which is much better
than being just plain Mr. X. Since this is such an easy and convenient way
of raising one’s personality to a more exalted rank, mankind has always
formed groups which made collective experiences of transformation—
often of an ecstatic nature—possible. The regressive identification with
lower and more primitive states of consciousness is invariably
accompanied by a heightened sense of life; hence the quickening effect of
regressive identifications with half-animal ancestors in the Stone Age.
21
[227]
The inevitable psychological regression within the group is partially
counteracted by ritual, that is to say through a cult ceremony which makes
the solemn performance of sacred events the centre of group activity and
prevents the crowd from relapsing into unconscious instinctuality. By
engaging the individual’s interest and attention, the ritual makes it possible
for him to have a comparatively individual experience even within the
group and so to remain more or less conscious. But if there is no relation to
a centre which expresses the unconscious through its symbolism, the mass
psyche inevitably becomes the hypnotic focus of fascination, drawing
everyone under its spell. That is why masses are always breeding-grounds
of psychic epidemics, the events in Germany being a classic example of
this.
22
[228]
It will be objected to this essentially negative evaluation of mass
psychology that there are also positive experiences, for instance a positive
enthusiasm which spurs the individual to noble deeds, or an equally
positive feeling of human solidarity. Facts of this kind should not be
denied. The group can give the individual a courage, a bearing, and a
dignity which may easily get lost in isolation. It can awaken within him the
memory of being a man among men. But that does not prevent something
else from being added which he would not possess as an individual. Such
unearned gifts may seem a special favour of the moment, but in the long
run there is a danger of the gift becoming a loss, since human nature has a
weak habit of taking gifts for granted; in times of necessity we demand
them as a right instead of making the effort to obtain them ourselves. One
sees this, unfortunately, only too plainly in the tendency to demand
everything from the State, without reflecting that the State consists of
those very individuals who make the demands. The logical development of
this tendency leads to Communism, where each individual enslaves the
community and the latter is represented by a dictator, the slave-owner. All
primitive tribes characterized by a communistic order of society also have
a chieftain over them with unlimited powers. The Communist State is
nothing other than an absolute monarchy in which there are no subjects,
but only serfs.
[229]
e. Identification with a cult-hero. Another important identification
underlying the transformation experience is that with the god or hero who
is transformed in the sacred ritual. Many cult ceremonies are expressly
intended to bring this identity about, an obvious example being the
Metamorphosis of Apuleius. The initiate, an ordinary human being, is
elected to be Helios; he is crowned with a crown of palms and clad in the
mystic mantle, whereupon the assembled crowd pays homage to him. The
suggestion of the crowd brings about his identity with the god. The
participation of the community can also take place in the following way:
there is no apotheosis of the initiate, but the sacred action is recited, and
then, in the course of long periods of time, psychic changes gradually
occur in the individual participants. The Osiris cult offers an excellent
example of this. At first only Pharaoh participated in the transformation of
the god, since he alone “had an Osiris”; but later the nobles of the Empire
acquired an Osiris too, and finally this development culminated in the
Christian idea that everyone has an immortal soul and shares directly in the
Godhead. In Christianity the development was carried still further when
the outer God or Christ gradually became the inner Christ of the individual
believer, remaining one and the same though dwelling in many. This truth
had already been anticipated by the psychology of totemism: many
exemplars of the totem animal are killed and consumed during the totem
meals, and yet it is only the One who is being eaten, just as there is only
one Christ-child and one Santa Claus.
[230]
In the mysteries, the individual undergoes an indirect transformation
through his participation in the fate of the god. The transformation
experience is also an indirect one in the Christian Church, inasmuch as it is
brought about by participation in something acted or recited. Here the first
form, the dromenon, is characteristic of the richly developed ritual of the
Catholic Church; the second form, the recitation, the “Word” or “gospel,”
is practised in the “preaching of the Word” in Protestantism.
[231]
f. Magical procedures. A further form of transformation is achieved
through a rite used directly for this purpose. Instead of the transformation
experience coming to one through participation in the rite, the rite is used
for the express purpose of effecting the transformation. It thus becomes a
sort of technique to which one submits oneself. For instance, a man is ill
and consequently needs to be “renewed.” The renewal must “happen” to
him from outside, and to bring this about, he is pulled through a hole in the
wall at the head of his sick-bed, and now he is reborn; or he is given
another name and thereby another soul, and then the demons no longer
recognize him; or he has to pass through a symbolical death; or,
grotesquely enough, he is pulled through a leathern cow, which devours
him, so to speak, in front and then expels him behind; or he undergoes an
ablution or baptismal bath and miraculously changes into a semi-divine
being with a new character and an altered metaphysical destiny.
[232]
g. Technical transformation. Besides the use of the rite in the magical
sense, there are still other special techniques in which, in addition to the
grace inherent in the rite, the personal endeavour of the initiate is needed
in order to achieve the intended purpose. It is a transformation experience
induced by technical means. The exercises known in the East as yoga and
in the West as exercitia spiritualia come into this category. These
exercises represent special techniques prescribed in advance and intended
to achieve a definite psychic effect, or at least to promote it. This is true
both of Eastern yoga and of the methods practised in the West. They are,
therefore, technical procedures in the fullest sense of the word;
elaborations of the originally natural processes of transformation. The
natural or spontaneous transformations that occurred earlier, before there
were any historical examples to follow, were thus replaced by techniques
designed to induce the transformation by imitating this same sequence of
events. I will try to give an idea of the way such techniques may have
23
originated by relating a fairy story:
[233]
There was once a queer old man who lived in a cave, where he had
sought refuge from the noise of the villages. He was reputed to be a
sorcerer, and therefore he had disciples who hoped to learn the art of
sorcery from him. But he himself was not thinking of any such thing. He
was only seeking to know what it was that he did not know, but which, he
felt certain, was always happening. After meditating for a very long time
on that which is beyond meditation, he saw no other way of escape from
his predicament than to take a piece of red chalk and draw all kinds of
diagrams on the walls of his cave, in order to find out what that which he
did not know might look like. After many attempts he hit on the circle.
“That’s right,” he felt, “and now for a quadrangle inside it!”—which made
it better still. His disciples were curious; but all they could make out was
that the old man was up to something, and they would have given anything
to know what he was doing. But when they asked him: “What are you
doing there?” he made no reply. Then they discovered the diagrams on the
wall and said: “That’s it!”—and they all imitated the diagrams. But in so
doing they turned the whole process upside down, without noticing it: they
anticipated the result in the hope of making the process repeat itself which
had led to that result. This is how it happened then and how it still happens
today.
[234]
h. Natural transformation (individuation). As I have pointed out, in
addition to the technical processes of transformation there are also natural
transformations. All ideas of rebirth are founded on this fact. Nature
herself demands a death and a rebirth. As the alchemist Democritus says:
“Nature rejoices in nature, nature subdues nature, nature rules over
nature.” There are natural transformation processes which simply happen
to us, whether we like it or not, and whether we know it or not. These
processes develop considerable psychic effects, which would be sufficient
in themselves to make any thoughtful person ask himself what really
happened to him. Like the old man in our fairytale, he, too, will draw
mandalas and seek shelter in their protective circle; in the perplexity and
anguish of his self-chosen prison, which he had deemed a refuge, he is
transformed into a being akin to the gods. Mandalas are birth-places,
vessels of birth in the most literal sense, lotus-flowers in which a Buddha
comes to life. Sitting in the lotus-seat, the yogi sees himself transfigured
into an immortal.
[235]
Natural transformation processes announce themselves mainly in
dreams. Elsewhere I have presented a series of dream-symbols of the
process of individuation. They were dreams which without exception
exhibited rebirth symbolism. In this particular case there was a longdrawn-out process of inner transformation and rebirth into another being.
This “other being” is the other person in ourselves—that larger and greater
personality maturing within us, whom we have already met as the inner
friend of the soul. That is why we take comfort whenever we find the
friend and companion depicted in a ritual, an example being the friendship
between Mithras and the sun-god. This relationship is a mystery to the
scientific intellect, because the intellect is accustomed to regard these
things unsympathetically. But if it made allowance for feeling, we would
discover that it is the friend whom the sun-god takes with him on his
chariot, as shown in the monuments. It is the representation of a friendship
between two men which is simply the outer reflection of an inner fact: it
reveals our relationship to that inner friend of the soul into whom Nature
herself would like to change us—that other person who we also are and yet
can never attain to completely. We are that pair of Dioscuri, one of whom
is mortal and the other immortal, and who, though always together, can
never be made completely one. The transformation processes strive to
approximate them to one another, but our consciousness is aware of
resistances, because the other person seems strange and uncanny, and
because we cannot get accustomed to the idea that we are not absolute
master in our own house. We should prefer to be always “I” and nothing
else. But we are confronted with that inner friend or foe, and whether he is
our friend or our foe depends on ourselves.
24
[236]
You need not be insane to hear his voice. On the contrary, it is the
simplest and most natural thing imaginable. For instance, you can ask
yourself a question to which “he” gives answer. The discussion is then
carried on as in any other conversation. You can describe it as mere
“associating” or “talking to oneself,” or as a “meditation” in the sense used
by the old alchemists, who referred to their interlocutor as aliquem alium
internum, ‘a certain other one, within.’ This form of colloquy with the
friend of the soul was even admitted by Ignatius Loyola into the technique
of his Exercitia spiritualia, but with the limiting condition that only the
25
26
person meditating is allowed to speak, whereas the inner responses are
passed over as being merely human and therefore to be repudiated. This
state of things has continued down to the present day. It is no longer a
moral or metaphysical prejudice, but—what is much worse—an
intellectual one. The “voice” is explained as nothing but “associating,”
pursued in a witless way and running on and on without sense or purpose,
like the works of a clock that has no dial. Or we say “It is only my own
thoughts!” even if, on closer inspection, it should turn out that they are
thoughts which we either reject or had never consciously thought at all—as
if everything psychic that is glimpsed by the ego had always formed part
of it! Naturally this hybris serves the useful purpose of maintaining the
supremacy of ego-consciousness, which must be safeguarded against
dissolution into the unconscious. But it breaks down ignominiously if ever
the unconscious should choose to let some nonsensical idea become an
obsession or to produce other psychogenic symptoms, for which we would
not like to accept responsibility on any account.
[237]
Our attitude towards this inner voice alternates between two extremes:
it is regarded either as undiluted nonsense or as the voice of God. It does
not seem to occur to any one that there might be something valuable in
between. The “other” may be just as one-sided in one way as the ego is in
another. And yet the conflict between them may give rise to truth and
meaning—but only if the ego is willing to grant the other its rightful
personality. It has, of course, a personality anyway, just as have the voices
of insane people; but a real colloquy becomes possible only when the ego
acknowledges the existence of a partner to the discussion. This cannot be
expected of everyone, because, after all, not everyone is a fit subject for
exercitia spiritualia. Nor can it be called a colloquy if one speaks only to
oneself or only addresses the other, as is the case with George Sand in her
conversations with a “spiritual friend”: for thirty pages she talks
exclusively to herself while one waits in vain for the other to reply. The
colloquy of the exercitia may be followed by that silent grace in which the
modern doubter no longer believes. But what if it were the supplicated
Christ himself who gave immediate answer in the words of the sinful
human heart? What fearful abysses of doubt would then be opened? What
madness should we not then have to fear? From this one can understand
that images of the gods are better mute, and that ego-consciousness had
better believe in its own supremacy rather than go on “associating.” One
26a
can also understand why that inner friend so often seems to be our enemy,
and why he is so far off and his voice so low. For he who is near to him “is
near to the fire.”
[238]
Something of this sort may have been in the mind of the alchemist
who wrote: “Choose for your Stone him through whom kings are honoured
in their crowns, and through whom physicians heal their sick, for he is near
to the fire.” The alchemists projected the inner event into an outer figure,
so for them the inner friend appeared in the form of the “Stone,” of which
the Tractatus aureus says: “Understand, ye sons of the wise, what this
exceeding precious Stone crieth out to you: Protect me and I will protect
thee. Give me what is mine that I may help thee.” To this a scholiast adds:
“The seeker after truth hears both the Stone and the Philosopher speaking
as if out of one mouth.” The Philosopher is Hermes, and the Stone is
identical with Mercurius, the Latin Hermes. From the earliest times,
Hermes was the mystagogue and psychopomp of the alchemists, their
friend and counsellor, who leads them to the goal of their work. He is “like
a teacher mediating between the stone and the disciple.” To others the
friend appears in the shape of Christ or Khidr or a visible or invisible guru,
or some other personal guide or leader figure. In this case the colloquy is
distinctly one-sided: there is no inner dialogue, but instead the response
appears as the action of the other, i.e., as an outward event. The alchemists
saw it in the transformation of the chemical substance. So if one of them
sought transformation, he discovered it outside in matter, whose
transformation cried out to him, as it were, “I am the transformation!” But
some were clever enough to know, “It is my own transformation—not a
personal transformation, but the transformation of what is mortal in me
into what is immortal. It shakes off the mortal husk that I am and awakens
to a life of its own; it mounts the sun-barge and may take me with it.”
27
28
29
30
31
32
[239]
This is a very ancient idea. In Upper Egypt, near Aswan, I once saw
an ancient Egyptian tomb that had just been opened. Just behind the
entrance-door was a little basket made of reeds, containing the withered
body of a new-born infant, wrapped in rags. Evidently the wife of one of
the workmen had hastily laid the body of her dead child in the nobleman’s
tomb at the last moment, hoping that, when he entered the sun-barge in
order to rise anew, it might share in his salvation, because it had been
buried in the holy precinct within reach of divine grace.
3. A TYPICAL SET OF SYMBOLS ILLUSTRATING
THE PROCESS OF TRANSFORMATION
[240]
I have chosen as an example a figure which plays a great role in
Islamic mysticism, namely Khidr, “the Verdant One.” He appears in the
Eighteenth Sura of the Koran, entitled “The Cave.” This entire Sura is
taken up with a rebirth mystery. The cave is the place of rebirth, that secret
cavity in which one is shut up in order to be incubated and renewed. The
Koran says of it: “You might have seen the rising sun decline to the right
of their cavern, and as it set, go past them on the left, while they [the Seven
Sleepers] stayed in the middle.” The “middle” is the centre where the jewel
reposes, where the incubation or the sacrificial rite or the transformation
takes place. The most beautiful development of this symbolism is to be
found on Mithraic altarpieces and in alchemical pictures of the
transformative substance, which is always shown between sun and moon.
Representations of the crucifixion frequently follow the same type, and a
similar symbolical arrangement is also found in the transformation or
healing ceremonies of the Navahos. Just such a place of the centre or of
transformation is the cave in which those seven had gone to sleep, little
thinking that they would experience there a prolongation of life verging on
immortality. When they awoke, they had slept 309 years.
1
2
3
4
[241]
The legend has the following meaning: Anyone who gets into that
cave, that is to say into the cave which everyone has in himself, or into the
darkness that lies behind consciousness, will find himself involved in an—
at first—unconscious process of transformation. By penetrating into the
unconscious he makes a connection with his unconscious contents. This
may result in a momentous change of personality in the positive or
negative sense. The transformation is often interpreted as a prolongation of
the natural span of life or as an earnest of immortality. The former is the
case with many alchemists, notably Paracelsus (in his treatise De vita
longa ), and the latter is exemplified in the Eleusinian mysteries.
5
[242]
Those seven sleepers indicate by their sacred number that they are
gods, who are transformed during sleep and thereby enjoy eternal youth.
6
7
This helps us to understand at the outset that we are dealing with a mystery
legend. The fate of the numinous figures recorded in it grips the hearer,
because the story gives expression to parallel processes in his own
unconscious which in that way are integrated with consciousness again.
The repristination of the original state is tantamount to attaining once more
the freshness of youth.
[243]
The story of the sleepers is followed by some moral observations
which appear to have no connection with it. But this apparent irrelevance
is deceptive. In reality, these edifying comments are just what are needed
by those who cannot be reborn themselves and have to be content with
moral conduct, that is to say with adherence to the law. Very often
behaviour prescribed by rule is a substitute for spiritual transformation.
These edifying observations are then followed by the story of Moses and
his servant Joshua ben Nun:
8
And Moses said to his servant: “I will not cease from my wanderings
until I have reached the place where the two seas meet, even though I journey
for eighty years.”
But when they had reached the place where the two seas meet, they forgot
their fish, and it took its way through a stream to the sea.
And when they had journeyed past this place, Moses said to his servant:
“Bring us our breakfast, for we are weary from this journey.”
But the other replied: “See what has befallen me! When we were resting
there by the rock, I forgot the fish. Only Satan can have put it out of my
mind, and in wondrous fashion it took its way to the sea.”
Then Moses said: “That is the place we seek.” And they went back the way
they had come. And they found one of Our servants, whom We had endowed
with Our grace and Our wisdom. Moses said to him: “Shall I follow you, that
you may teach me for my guidance some of the wisdom you have learnt?”
But he answered: “You will not bear with me, for how should you bear
patiently with things you cannot comprehend?”
Moses said: “If Allah wills, you shall find me patient; I shall not in
anything disobey you.”
He said: “If you are bent on following me, you must ask no question about
anything till I myself speak to you concerning it.”
The two set forth, but as soon as they embarked, Moses’ companion bored
a hole in the bottom of the ship.
“A strange thing you have done!” exclaimed Moses. “Is it to drown her
passengers that you have bored a hole in her?”
“Did I not tell you,” he replied, “that you would not bear with me?”
“Pardon my forgetfulness,” said Moses. “Do not be angry with me on this
account.”
They journeyed on until they fell in with a certain youth. Moses’
companion slew him, and Moses said: “You have killed an innocent man who
has done no harm. Surely you have committed a wicked crime.”
“Did I not tell you,” he replied, “that you would not bear with me?”
Moses said: “If ever I question you again, abandon me; for then I should
deserve it.”
They travelled on until they came to a certain city. They asked the people
for some food, but the people declined to receive them as their guests. There
they found a wall on the point of falling down. The other raised it up, and
Moses said: “Had you wished, you could have demanded payment for your
labours.”
“Now the time has arrived when we must part,” said the other. “But first I
will explain to you those acts of mine which you could not bear with in
patience.
“Know that the ship belonged to some poor fishermen. I damaged it
because in their rear was a king who was taking every ship by force.
“As for the youth, his parents both are true believers, and we feared lest he
should plague them with his wickedness and unbelief. It was our wish that
their Lord should grant them another in his place, a son more righteous and
more filial.
“As for the wall, it belonged to two orphan boys in the city whose father
was an honest man. Beneath it their treasure is buried. Your Lord decreed in
His mercy that they should dig out their treasure when they grew to
manhood. What I did was not done by caprice. That is the meaning of the
things you could not bear with in patience.”
[244]
This story is an amplification and elucidation of the legend of the
seven sleepers and the problem of rebirth. Moses is the man who seeks, the
man on the “quest.” On this pilgrimage he is accompanied by his
“shadow,” the “servant” or “lower” man (pneumatikos and sarkikos in two
individuals). Joshua is the son of Nun, which is a name for “fish,”
suggesting that Joshua had his origin in the depths of the waters, in the
darkness of the shadow-world. The critical place is reached “where the two
seas meet,” which is interpreted as the isthmus of Suez, where the Western
and the Eastern seas come close together. In other words, it is that “place
of the middle” which we have already met in the symbolic preamble, but
whose significance was not recognized at first by the man and his shadow.
They had “forgotten their fish,” the humble source of nourishment. The
fish refers to Nun, the father of the shadow, of the carnal man, who comes
from the dark world of the Creator. For the fish came alive again and leapt
out of the basket in order to find its way back to its homeland, the sea. In
other words, the animal ancestor and creator of life separates himself from
the conscious man, an event which amounts to loss of the instinctive
psyche. This process is a symptom of dissociation well known in the
psychopathology of the neuroses; it is always connected with onesidedness of the conscious attitude. In view of the fact, however, that
neurotic phenomena are nothing but exaggerations of normal processes, it
is not to be wondered at that very similar phenomena can also be found
within the scope of the normal. It is a question of that well-known “loss of
soul” among primitives, as described above in the section on diminution of
the personality; in scientific language, an abaissement du niveau mental.
9
[245]
Moses and his servant soon notice what has happened. Moses had sat
down, “worn out” and hungry. Evidently he had a feeling of insufficiency,
for which a physiological explanation is given. Fatigue is one of the most
regular symptoms of loss of energy or libido. The entire process represents
something very typical, namely the failure to recognize a moment of
crucial importance, a motif which we encounter in a great variety of
mythical forms. Moses realizes that he has unconsciously found the source
of life and then lost it again, which we might well regard as a remarkable
intuition. The fish they had intended to eat is a content of the unconscious,
by which the connection with the origin is re-established. He is the reborn
one, who has awakened to new life. This came to pass, as the
commentaries say, through the contact with the water of life: by slipping
back into the sea, the fish once more becomes a content of the
unconscious, and its offspring are distinguished by having only one eye
and half a head.
10
[246]
The alchemists, too, speak of a strange fish in the sea, the “round fish
lacking bones and skin,” which symbolizes the “round element,” the germ
of the “animate stone,” of the filius philosophorum. The water of life has
its parallel in the aqua permanens of alchemy. This water is extolled as
“vivifying,” besides which it has the property of dissolving all solids and
coagulating all liquids. The Koran commentaries state that, on the spot
where the fish disappeared, the sea was turned to solid ground, whereon
the tracks of the fish could still be seen. On the island thus formed Khidr
was sitting, in the place of the middle. A mystical interpretation says that
he was sitting “on a throne consisting of light, between the upper and the
lower sea,” again in the middle position. The appearance of Khidr seems
to be mysteriously connected with the disappearance of the fish. It looks
almost as if he himself had been the fish. This conjecture is supported by
the fact that the commentaries relegate the source of life to the “place of
darkness.” The depths of the sea are dark (mare tenebrositatis). The
darkness has its parallel in the alchemical nigredo, which occurs after the
coniunctio, when the female takes the male into herself. From the nigredo
issues the Stone, the symbol of the immortal self; moreover, its first
appearance is likened to “fish eyes.”
11
12
13
14
15
16
[247]
Khidr may well be a symbol of the self. His qualities signalize
him as such: he is said to have been born in a cave, i.e., in darkness. He
is the “Long-lived One,” who continually renews himself, like Elijah.
Like Osiris, he is dismembered at the end of time, by Antichrist, but is
able to restore himself to life. He is analogous to the Second Adam, with
whom the reanimated fish is identified; he is a counsellor, a Paraclete,
“Brother Khidr.” Anyway Moses accepts him as a higher consciousness
and looks up to him for instruction. Then follow those incomprehensible
deeds which show how ego-consciousness reacts to the superior
guidance of the self through the twists and turns of fate. To the initiate
who is capable of transformation it is a comforting tale; to the obedient
believer, an exhortation not to murmur against Allah’s incomprehensible
omnipotence. Khidr symbolizes not only the higher wisdom but also a
way of acting which is in accord with this wisdom and transcends
reason.
17
[248]
Anyone hearing such a mystery tale will recognize himself in the
questing Moses and the forgetful Joshua, and the tale shows him how the
immortality-bringing rebirth comes about. Characteristically, it is neither
Moses nor Joshua who is transformed, but the forgotten fish. Where the
fish disappears, there is the birthplace of Khidr. The immortal being issues
from something humble and forgotten, indeed, from a wholly improbable
source. This is the familiar motif of the hero’s birth and need not be
documented here. Anyone who knows the Bible will think of Isaiah
53:2ff., where the “servant of God” is described, and of the gospel stories
of the Nativity. The nourishing character of the transformative substance
or deity is borne out by numerous cult-legends: Christ is the bread, Osiris
the wheat, Mondamin the maize, etc. These symbols coincide with a
psychic fact which obviously, from the point of view of consciousness, has
the significance merely of something to be assimilated, but whose real
nature is overlooked. The fish symbol shows immediately what this is: it is
the “nourishing” influence of unconscious contents, which maintain the
vitality of consciousness by a continual influx of energy; for consciousness
does not produce its energy by itself. What is capable of transformation is
just this root of consciousness, which—inconspicuous and almost invisible
(i.e., unconscious) though it is—provides consciousness with all its energy.
Since the unconscious gives us the feeling that it is something alien, a nonego, it is quite natural that it should be symbolized by an alien figure.
Thus, on the one hand, it is the most insignificant of things, while on the
other, so far as it potentially contains that “round” wholeness which
consciousness lacks, it is the most significant of all. This “round” thing is
the great treasure that lies hidden in the cave of the unconscious, and its
personification is this personal being who represents the higher unity of
conscious and unconscious. It is a figure comparable to Hiranyagarbha,
Purusha, Atman, and the mystic Buddha. For this reason I have elected to
call it the “self,” by which I understand a psychic totality and at the same
time a centre, neither of which coincides with the ego but includes it, just
as a larger circle encloses a smaller one.
18
19
[249]
The intuition of immortality which makes itself felt during the
transformation is connected with the peculiar nature of the unconscious. It
is, in a sense, non-spatial and non-temporal. The empirical proof of this is
the occurrence of so-called telepathic phenomena, which are still denied by
hypersceptical critics, although in reality they are much more common
than is generally supposed. The feeling of immortality, it seems to me,
has its origin in a peculiar feeling of extension in space and time, and I am
20
inclined to regard the deification rites in the mysteries as a projection of
this same psychic phenomenon.
[250]
The character of the self as a personality comes out very plainly in the
Khidr legend. This feature is most strikingly expressed in the non-Koranic
stories about Khidr, of which Vollers gives some telling examples. During
my trip through Kenya, the headman of our safari was a Somali who had
been brought up in the Sufi faith. To him Khidr was in every way a living
person, and he assured me that I might at any time meet Khidr, because I
was, as he put it, a M’tu-ya-kitabu, a ‘man of the Book,’ meaning the
Koran. He had gathered from our talks that I knew the Koran better than he
did himself (which was, by the way, not saying a great deal). For this
reason he regarded me as “islamu.” He told me I might meet Khidr in the
street in the shape of a man, or he might appear to me during the night as a
pure white light, or—he smilingly picked a blade of grass—the Verdant
One might even look like that. He said he himself had once been
comforted and helped by Khidr, when he could not find a job after the war
and was suffering want. One night, while he slept, he dreamt he saw a
bright white light near the door and he knew it was Khidr. Quickly leaping
to his feet (in the dream), he reverentially saluted him with the words
salem aleikum, ‘peace be with you,’ and then he knew that his wish would
be fulfilled. He added that a few days later he was offered the post as
headman of a safari by a firm of outfitters in Nairobi.
21
[251]
This shows that, even in our own day, Khidr still lives on in the
religion of the people, as friend, adviser, comforter, and teacher of
revealed wisdom. The position assigned to him by dogma was, according
to my Somali, that of maleika kwanza-ya-mungu, ‘First Angel of God’—a
sort of “Angel of the Face,” an angelos in the true sense of the word, a
messenger.
[252]
Khidr’s character as a friend explains the subsequent part of the
Eighteenth Sura, which reads as follows:
They will ask you about Dhulqarnein. Say: “I will give you an account
of him.
“We made him mighty in the land and gave him means to achieve all
things. He journeyed on a certain road until he reached the West and saw the
sun setting in a pool of black mud. Hard by he found a certain people.
“‘Dhulqarnein,’ We said, ‘you must either punish them or show them
kindness.’
“He replied: ‘The wicked We shall surely punish. Then they shall return to
their Lord and be sternly punished by Him. As for those that have faith and
do good works, we shall bestow on them a rich reward and deal indulgently
with them.’
“He then journeyed along another road until he reached the East and saw
the sun rising upon a people whom We had utterly exposed to its flaming
rays. So he did; and We had full knowledge of all the forces at his command.
“Then he followed yet another route until he came between the Two
Mountains and found a people who could barely understand a word.
‘Dhulqarnein,’ they said, ‘Gog and Magog are ravaging this land. Build us a
rampart against them and we will pay you tribute.’
“He replied: ‘The power which my Lord has given me is better than any
tribute. Lend me a force of labourers, and I will raise a rampart between you
and them. Come, bring me blocks of iron.’
“He dammed up the valley between the Two Mountains, and said: ‘Ply
your bellows.’ And when the iron blocks were red with heat, he said: ‘Bring
me molten brass to pour on them.’
“Gog and Magog could not scale it, nor could they dig their way through
it. He said: ‘This is a blessing from my Lord. But when my Lord’s promise is
fulfilled, He will level it to dust. The promise of my Lord is true.’”
On that day We will let them come in tumultuous throngs. The Trumpet
shall be sounded and We will gather them all together.
On that day Hell shall be laid bare before the unbelievers, who have turned
a blind eye to My admonition and a deaf ear to My warning.
[253]
We see here another instance of that lack of coherence which is not
uncommon in the Koran. How are we to account for this apparently abrupt
transition to Dhulqarnein, the Two-horned One, that is to say, Alexander
the Great? Apart from the unheard-of anachronism (Mohammed’s
chronology in general leaves much to be desired), one does not quite
understand why Alexander is brought in here at all. But it has to be borne
in mind that Khidr and Dhulqarnein are the great pair of friends, altogether
comparable to the Dioscuri, as Vollers rightly emphasizes. The
psychological connection may therefore be presumed to be as follows:
Moses has had a profoundly moving experience of the self, which brought
unconscious processes before his eyes with overwhelming clarity.
Afterwards, when he comes to his people, the Jews, who are counted
among the infidels, and wants to tell them about his experience, he prefers
to use the form of a mystery legend. Instead of speaking about himself, he
speaks about the Two-horned One. Since Moses himself is also “horned,”
the substitution of Dhulqarnein appears plausible. Then he has to relate the
history of this friendship and describe how Khidr helped his friend.
Dhulqarnein makes his way to the setting of the sun and then to its rising.
That is, he describes the way of the renewal of the sun, through death and
darkness to a new resurrection. All this again indicates that it is Khidr who
not only stands by man in his bodily needs but also helps him to attain
rebirth. The Koran, it is true, makes no distinction in this narrative
between Allah, who is speaking in the first person plural, and Khidr. But it
is clear that this section is simply a continuation of the helpful actions
described previously, from which it is evident that Khidr is a
symbolization or “incarnation” of Allah. The friendship between Khidr
and Alexander plays an especially prominent part in the commentaries, as
does also the connection with the prophet Elijah. Vollers does not hesitate
to extend the comparison to that other pair of friends, Gilgamesh and
Enkidu.
22
23
[254]
To sum up, then: Moses has to recount the deeds of the two friends to
his people in the manner of an impersonal mystery legend. Psychologically
this means that the transformation has to be described or felt as happening
to the “other.” Although it is Moses himself who, in his experience with
Khidr, stands in Dhulqarnein’s place, he has to name the latter instead of
himself in telling the story. This can hardly be accidental, for the great
psychic danger which is always connected with individuation, or the
development of the self, lies in the identification of ego-consciousness
with the self. This produces an inflation which threatens consciousness
with dissolution. All the more primitive or older cultures show a fine sense
for the “perils of the soul” and for the dangerousness and general
unreliability of the gods. That is, they have not yet lost their psychic
instinct for the barely perceptible and yet vital processes going on in the
background, which can hardly be said of our modern culture. To be sure,
we have before our eyes as a warning just such a pair of friends distorted
by inflation—Nietzsche and Zarathustra—but the warning has not been
heeded. And what are we to make of Faust and Mephistopheles? The
Faustian hybris is already the first step towards madness. The fact that the
unimpressive beginning of the transformation in Faust is a dog and not an
edible fish, and that the transformed figure is the devil and not a wise
friend, “endowed with Our grace and Our wisdom,” might, I am inclined
to think, offer a key to our understanding of the highly enigmatic
Germanic soul.
[255]
Without entering into other details of the text, I would like to draw
attention to one more point: the building of the rampart against Gog and
Magog (also known as Yajuj and Majuj). This motif is a repetition of
Khidr’s last deed in the previous episode, the rebuilding of the town wall.
But this time the wall is to be a strong defence against Gog and Magog.
The passage may possibly refer to Revelation 20:7f. (AV):
And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of
his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four
quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together for battle:
the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up on the
breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and
the beloved city.
[256]
Here Dhulqarnein takes over the role of Khidr and builds an
unscalable rampart for the people living “between Two Mountains.” This
is obviously the same place in the middle which is to be protected against
Gog and Magog, the featureless, hostile masses. Psychologically, it is
again a question of the self, enthroned in the place of the middle, and
referred to in Revelation as the beloved city (Jerusalem, the centre of the
earth). The self is the hero, threatened already at birth by envious
collective forces; the jewel that is coveted by all and arouses jealous strife;
and finally the god who is dismembered by the old, evil power of darkness.
In its psychological meaning, individuation is an opus contra naturam,
which creates a horror vacui in the collective layer and is only too likely to
collapse under the impact of the collective forces of the psyche. The
mystery legend of the two helpful friends promises protection to him who
has found the jewel on his quest. But there will come a time when, in
accordance with Allah’s providence, even the iron rampart will fall to
pieces, namely, on the day when the world comes to an end, or
psychologically speaking, when individual consciousness is extinguished
24
in the waters of darkness, that is to say when a subjective end of the world
is experienced. By this is meant the moment when consciousness sinks
back into the darkness from which it originally emerged, like Khidr’s
island: the moment of death.
[257]
The legend then continues along eschatological lines: on that day (the
day of the Last Judgment) the light returns to eternal light and the darkness
to eternal darkness. The opposites are separated and a timeless state of
permanence sets in, which, because of the absolute separation of opposites,
is nevertheless one of supreme tension and therefore corresponds to the
improbable initial state. This is in contrast to the view which sees the end
as a complexio oppositorum.
[258]
With this prospect of eternity, Paradise, and Hell the Eighteenth Sura
comes to an end. In spite of its apparently disconnected and allusive
character, it gives an almost perfect picture of a psychic transformation or
rebirth which today, with our greater psychological insight, we would
recognize as an individuation process. Because of the great age of the
legend and the Islamic prophet’s primitive cast of mind, the process takes
place entirely outside the sphere of consciousness and is projected in the
form of a mystery legend of a friend or a pair of friends and the deeds they
perform. That is why it is all so allusive and lacking in logical sequence.
Nevertheless, the legend expresses the obscure archetype of transformation
so admirably that the passionate religious eros of the Arab finds it
completely satisfying. It is for this reason that the figure of Khidr plays
such an important part in Islamic mysticism.
IV
THE PSYCHOLOGY
OF THE CHILD ARCHETYPE
______
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS
OF THE KORE
[These two studies were first published, under the respective titles “Zur
Psychologie des Kind-Archetypus” and “Zum psychologischen Aspekt der
Kore-Figur,” in two small volumes: Das göttliche Kind (Albae Vigiliae
VI/VII, Amsterdam and Leipzig, 1940) and Das göttliche Mädchen (same
series, VIII/IX, 1941). Each volume contained a companion essay by K.
Kerényi. The two volumes were united, with additional material by Professor
Kerényi, under the title Einführung in das Wesen der Mythologie
(Amsterdam, Leipzig, and Zurich, 1941). This combined volume was
translated by R. F. C. Hull as Essays on a Science of Mythology (Bollingen
Series XXII; New York, 1949), of which the London (1950) edition was
titled Introduction to a Science of Mythology; the text of the two studies here
presented is a revision of that of 1949/50. The complete German volume was
published in a new edition in 1951. In 1963, the English version appeared in
Harper Torchbooks (New York; paperback), with the present Jung translation
and a revised Kerényi translation.—EDITORS.]
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CHILD ARCHETYPE
I. INTRODUCTION
[259]
The author of the companion essay on the mythology of the “child” or
the child god has asked me for a psychological commentary on the subject
of his investigations. I am glad to accede to his request, although the
undertaking seems to me no small venture in view of the great significance
of the child motif in mythology. Kerényi himself has enlarged upon the
occurrence of this motif in Greece and Rome, with parallels drawn from
Indian, Finnish, ‘and other sources, thus indicating that the presentation of
the theme would allow of yet further extensions. Though a comprehensive
description would contribute nothing decisive in principle, it would
nevertheless produce an overwhelming impression of the world-wide
incidence and frequency of the motif. The customary treatment of
mythological motifs so far in separate departments of science, such as
philology, ethnology, the history of civilization, and comparative religion,
was not exactly a help to us in recognizing their universality; and the
psychological problems raised by this universality could easily be shelved
by hypotheses of migration. Consequently Adolf Bastian’s ideas met with
little success in their day. Even then there was sufficient empirical material
available to permit far-reaching psychological conclusions, but the
necessary premises were lacking. Although the psychological knowledge
of that time included myth-formation in its province—witness Wundt’s
Völkerpsychologie—it was not in a position to demonstrate this same
process as a living function actually present in the psyche of civilized man,
any more than it could understand mythological motifs as structural
elements of the psyche. True to its history, when psychology was
metaphysics first of all, then the study of the senses and their functions,
and then of the conscious mind and its functions, psychology identified its
proper subject with the conscious psyche and its contents and thus
completely overlooked the existence of a nonconscious psyche. Although
1
2
various philosophers, among them Leibniz, Kant, and Schelling, had
already pointed very clearly to the problem of the dark side of the psyche,
it was a physician who felt impelled, from his scientific and medical
experience, to point to the unconscious as the essential basis of the psyche.
This was C. G. Carus, the authority whom Eduard von Hartmann
followed. In recent times it was, once again, medical psychology that
approached the problem of the unconscious without philosophical
preconceptions. It became clear from many separate investigations that the
psychopathology of the neuroses and of many psychoses cannot dispense
with the hypothesis of a dark side of the psyche, i.e., the unconscious. It is
the same with the psychology of dreams, which is really the terra
intermedia between normal and pathological psychology. In the dream, as
in the products of psychoses, there are numberless interconnections to
which one can find parallels only in mythological associations of ideas (or
perhaps in certain poetic creations which are often characterized by a
borrowing, not always conscious, from myths). Had thorough investigation
shown that in the majority of such cases it was simply a matter of forgotten
knowledge, the physician would not have gone to the trouble of making
extensive researches into individual and collective parallels. But, in point
of fact, typical mythologems were observed among individuals to whom
all knowledge of this kind was absolutely out of the question, and where
indirect derivation from religious ideas that might have been known to
them, or from popular figures of speech, was impossible. Such
conclusions forced us to assume that we must be dealing with
“autochthonous” revivals independent of all tradition, and, consequently,
that “myth-forming” structural elements must be present in the
unconscious psyche.
3
4
5
[260]
These products are never (or at least very seldom) myths with a
definite form, but rather mythological components which, because of
their typical nature, we can call “motifs,” “primordial images,” types or
—as I have named them—archetypes. The child archetype is an
excellent example. Today we can hazard the formula that the archetypes
appear in myths and fairytales just as they do in dreams and in the
products of psychotic fantasy. The medium in which they are embedded
is, in the former case, an ordered and for the most part immediately
understandable context, but in the latter case a generally unintelligible,
irrational, not to say delirious sequence of images which nonetheless
does not lack a certain hidden coherence. In the individual, the
archetypes appear as involuntary manifestations of unconscious
processes whose existence and meaning can only be inferred, whereas
the myth deals with traditional forms of incalculable age. They hark
back to a prehistoric world whose spiritual preconceptions and general
conditions we can still observe today among existing primitives. Myths
on this level are as a rule tribal history handed down from generation to
generation by word of mouth. Primitive mentality differs from the
civilized chiefly in that the conscious mind is far less developed in scope
and intensity. Functions such as thinking, willing, etc. are not yet
differentiated; they are pre-conscious, and in the case of thinking, for
instance, this shows itself in the circumstance that the primitive does not
think consciously, but that thoughts appear. The primitive cannot assert
that he thinks; it is rather that “something thinks in him.” The
spontaneity of the act of thinking does not lie, causally, in his conscious
mind, but in his unconscious. Moreover, he is incapable of any
conscious effort of will; he must put himself beforehand into the “mood
of willing,” or let himself be put—hence his rites d’entrée et de sortie.
His consciousness is menaced by an almighty unconscious: hence his
fear of magical influences which may cross his path at any moment; and
for this reason, too, he is surrounded by unknown forces and must adjust
himself to them as best he can. Owing to the chronic twilight state of his
consciousness, it is often next to impossible to find out whether he
merely dreamed something or whether he really experienced it. The
spontaneous manifestation of the unconscious and its archetypes
intrudes everywhere into his conscious mind, and the mythical world of
his ancestors—for instance, the alchera or bugari of the Australian
aborigines—is a reality equal if not superior to the material world. It is
not the world as we know it that speaks out of his unconscious, but the
unknown world of the psyche, of which we know that it mirrors our
empirical world only in part, and that, for the other part, it moulds this
empirical world in accordance with its own psychic assumptions. The
archetype does not proceed from physical facts, but describes how the
psyche experiences the physical fact, and in so doing the psyche often
behaves so autocratically that it denies tangible reality or makes
statements that fly in the face of it.
6
[261]
The primitive mentality does not invent myths, it experiences them.
Myths are original revelations of the preconscious psyche, involuntary
statements about unconscious psychic happenings, and anything but
allegories of physical processes. Such allegories would be an idle
amusement for an unscientific intellect. Myths, on the contrary, have a
vital meaning. Not merely do they represent, they are the psychic life of
the primitive tribe, which immediately falls to pieces and decays when it
loses its mythological heritage, like a man who has lost his soul. A tribe’s
mythology is its living religion, whose loss is always and everywhere,
even among the civilized, a moral catastrophe. But religion is a vital link
with psychic processes independent of and beyond consciousness, in the
dark hinterland of the psyche. Many of these unconscious processes may
be indirectly occasioned by consciousness, but never by conscious choice.
Others appear to arise spontaneously, that is to say, from no discernible or
demonstrable conscious cause.
7
[262]
Modern psychology treats the products of unconscious fantasyactivity as self-portraits of what is going on in the unconscious, or as
statements of the unconscious psyche about itself. They fall into two
categories. First, fantasies (including dreams) of a personal character,
which go back unquestionably to personal experiences, things forgotten
or repressed, and can thus be completely explained by individual
anamnesis. Second, fantasies (including dreams) of an impersonal
character, which cannot be reduced to experiences in the individual’s
past, and thus cannot be explained as something individually acquired.
These fantasy-images undoubtedly have their closest analogues in
mythological types. We must therefore assume that they correspond to
certain collective (and not personal) structural elements of the human
psyche in general, and, like the morphological elements of the human
body, are inherited. Although tradition and transmission by migration
certainly play a part, there are, as we have said, very many cases that
cannot be accounted for in this way and drive us to the hypothesis of
“autochthonous revival.” These cases are so numerous that we are
obliged to assume the existence of a collective psychic substratum. I
have called this the collective unconscious.
[263]
The products of this second category resemble the types of structures
to be met with in myth and fairytale so much that we must regard them as
related. It is therefore wholly within the realm of possibility that both, the
mythological types as well as the individual types, arise under quite similar
conditions. As already mentioned, the fantasy-products of the second
category (as also those of the first) arise in a state of reduced intensity of
consciousness (in dreams, delirium, reveries, visions, etc.). In all these
states the check put upon unconscious contents by the concentration of the
conscious mind ceases, so that the hitherto unconscious material streams,
as though from opened side-sluices, into the field of consciousness. This
mode of origination is the general rule.
8
[264]
Reduced intensity of consciousness and absence of concentration and
attention, Janet’s abaissement du niveau mental, correspond pretty exactly
to the primitive state of consciousness in which, we must suppose, myths
were originally formed. It is therefore exceedingly probable that the
mythological archetypes, too, made their appearance in much the same
manner as the manifestations of archetypal structures among individuals
today.
[265]
The methodological principle in accordance with which psychology
treats the products of the unconscious is this: Contents of an archetypal
character are manifestations of processes in the collective unconscious.
Hence they do not refer to anything that is or has been conscious, but to
something essentially unconscious. In the last analysis, therefore, it is
impossible to say what they refer to. Every interpretation necessarily
remains an “as-if.” The ultimate core of meaning may be circumscribed,
but not described. Even so, the bare circumscription denotes an essential
step forward in our knowledge of the pre-conscious structure of the
psyche, which was already in existence when there was as yet no unity of
personality (even today the primitive is not securely possessed of it) and
no consciousness at all. We can also observe this pre-conscious state in
early childhood, and as a matter of fact it is the dreams of this early period
that not infrequently bring extremely remarkable archetypal contents to
light.
9
[266]
If, then, we proceed in accordance with the above principle, there is
no longer any question whether a myth refers to the sun or the moon, the
father or the mother, sexuality or fire or water; all it does is to circumscribe
and give an approximate description of an unconscious core of meaning.
The ultimate meaning of this nucleus was never conscious and never will
be. It was, and still is, only interpreted, and every interpretation that comes
anywhere near the hidden sense (or, from the point of view of scientific
intellect, nonsense, which comes to the same thing) has always, right from
the beginning, laid claim not only to absolute truth and validity but to
instant reverence and religious devotion. Archetypes were, and still are,
living psychic forces that demand to be taken seriously, and they have a
strange way of making sure of their effect. Always they were the bringers
of protection and salvation, and their violation has as its consequence the
“perils of the soul” known to us from the psychology of primitives.
Moreover, they are the unfailing causes of neurotic and even psychotic
disorders, behaving exactly like neglected or maltreated physical organs or
organic functional systems.
[267]
An archetypal content expresses itself, first and foremost, in
metaphors. If such a content should speak of the sun and identify with it
the lion, the king, the hoard of gold guarded by the dragon, or the power
that makes for the life and health of man, it is neither the one thing nor the
other, but the unknown third thing that finds more or less adequate
expression in all these similes, yet—to the perpetual vexation of the
intellect—remains unknown and not to be fitted into a formula. For this
reason the scientific intellect is always inclined to put on airs of
enlightenment in the hope of banishing the spectre once and for all.
Whether its endeavours were called euhemerism, or Christian apologetics,
or Enlightenment in the narrow sense, or Positivism, there was always a
myth hiding behind it, in new and disconcerting garb, which then,
following the ancient and venerable pattern, gave itself out as ultimate
truth. In reality we can never legitimately cut loose from our archetypal
foundations unless we are prepared to pay the price of a neurosis, any
more than we can rid ourselves of our body and its organs without
committing suicide. If we cannot deny the archetypes or otherwise
neutralize them, we are confronted, at every new stage in the
differentiation of consciousness to which civilization attains, with the task
of finding a new interpretation appropriate to this stage, in order to
connect the life of the past that still exists in us with the life of the present,
which threatens to slip away from it. If this link-up does not take place, a
kind of rootless consciousness comes into being no longer oriented to the
past, a consciousness which succumbs helplessly to all manner of
suggestions and, in practice, is susceptible to psychic epidemics. With the
loss of the past, now become “insignificant,” devalued, and incapable of
revaluation, the saviour is lost too, for the saviour is either the insignificant
thing itself or else arises out of it. Over and over again in the
“metamorphosis of the gods” he rises up as the prophet or first-born of a
new generation and appears unexpectedly in the unlikeliest places (sprung
from a stone, tree, furrow, water, etc.) and in ambiguous form (Tom
Thumb, dwarf, child, animal, and so on).
[268]
This archetype of the “child god” is extremely widespread and
intimately bound up with all the other mythological aspects of the child
motif. It is hardly necessary to allude to the still living “Christ-child,” who,
in the legend of Saint Christopher, also has the typical feature of being
“smaller than small and bigger than big.” In folklore the child motif
appears in the guise of the dwarf or the elf as personifications of the hidden
forces of nature. To this sphere also belongs the little metal man of late
antiquity, the áνθρωπáριον, who, till far into the Middle Ages, on the one
hand inhabited the mine-shafts, and on the other represented the
alchemical metals, above all Mercurius reborn in perfect form (as the
hermaphrodite, filius sapientiae, or in-fans noster). Thanks to the
religious interpretation of the “child,” a fair amount of evidence has come
down to us from the Middle Ages showing that the “child” was not merely
a traditional figure, but a vision spontaneously experienced (as a so-called
“irruption of the unconscious”). I would mention Meister Eckhart’s vision
of the “naked boy” and the dream of Brother Eustachius. Interesting
accounts of these spontaneous experiences are also to be found in English
ghost-stories, where we read of the vision of a “Radiant Boy” said to have
been seen in a place where there are Roman remains. This apparition was
supposed to be of evil omen. It almost looks as though we were dealing
with the figure of a puer aeternus who had become inauspicious through
“metamorphosis,” or in other words had shared the fate of the classical and
the Germanic gods, who have all become bugbears. The mystical character
of the experience is also confirmed in Part II of Goethe’s Faust, where
Faust himself is transformed into a boy and admitted into the “choir of
blessed youths,” this being the “larval stage” of Doctor Marianus.
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
[269]
In the strange tale called Das Reich ohne Raum, by Bruno Goetz, a
puer aeternus named Fo (= Buddha) appears with whole troops of
“unholy” boys of evil significance. (Contemporary parallels are better let
alone.) I mention this instance only to demonstrate the enduring vitality of
the child archetype.
[270]
The child motif not infrequently occurs in the field of
psychopathology. The “imaginary” child is common among women with
mental disorders and is usually interpreted in a Christian sense. Homunculi
also appear, as in the famous Schreber case, where they come in swarms
and plague the sufferer. But the clearest and most significant manifestation
of the child motif in the therapy of neuroses is in the maturation process of
personality induced by the analysis of the unconscious, which I have
termed the process of individuation. Here we are confronted with
preconscious processes which, in the form of more or less well-formed
fantasies, gradually pass over into the conscious mind, or become
conscious as dreams, or, lastly, are made conscious through the method of
active imagination. This material is rich in archetypal motifs, among them
frequently that of the child. Often the child is formed after the Christian
model; more often, though, it develops from earlier, altogether nonChristian levels—that is to say, out of chthonic animals such as crocodiles,
dragons, serpents, or monkeys. Sometimes the child appears in the cup of a
flower, or out of a golden egg, or as the centre of a mandala. In dreams it
often appears as the dreamer’s son or daughter or as a boy, youth, or young
girl; occasionally it seems to be of exotic origin, Indian or Chinese, with a
dusky skin, or, appearing more cosmically, surrounded by stars or with a
starry coronet; or as the king’s son or the witch’s child with daemonic
attributes. Seen as a special instance of “the treasure hard to attain” motif,
the child motif is extremely variable and assumes all manner of shapes,
such as the jewel, the pearl, the flower, the chalice, the golden egg, the
quaternity, the golden ball, and so on. It can be interchanged with these
and similar images almost without limit.
17
18
19
20
II. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CHILD ARCHETYPE
1. The Archetype as a Link with the Past
[271]
As to the psychology of our theme I must point out that every
statement going beyond the purely phenomenal aspects of an archetype
lays itself open to the criticism we have expressed above. Not for a
moment dare we succumb to the illusion that an archetype can be finally
explained and disposed of. Even the best attempts at explanation are only
more or less successful translations into another metaphorical language.
(Indeed, language itself is only an image.) The most we can do is to dream
the myth onwards and give it a modern dress. And whatever explanation or
interpretation does to it, we do to our own souls as well, with
corresponding results for our own well-being. The archetype—let us never
forget this—is a psychic organ present in all of us. A bad explanation
means a correspondingly bad attitude to this organ, which may thus be
injured. But the ultimate sufferer is the bad interpreter himself. Hence the
“explanation” should always be such that the functional significance of the
archetype remains unimpaired, so that an adequate and meaningful
connection between the conscious mind and the archetypes is assured. For
the archetype is an element of our psychic structure and thus a vital and
necessary component in our psychic economy. It represents or personifies
certain instinctive data of the dark, primitive psyche, the real but invisible
roots of consciousness. Of what elementary importance the connection
with these roots is, we see from the preoccupation of the primitive
mentality with certain “magic” factors, which are nothing less than what
we would call archetypes. This original form of religio (“linking back”) is
the essence, the working basis of all religious life even today, and always
will be, whatever future form this life may take.
[272]
There is no “rational” substitute for the archetype any more than there
is for the cerebellum or the kidneys. We can examine the physical organs
anatomically, histologically, and embryologically. This would correspond
to an outline of archetypal phenomenology and its presentation in terms of
comparative history. But we only arrive at the meaning of a physical organ
when we begin to ask teleological questions. Hence the query arises: What
is the biological purpose of the archetype? Just as physiology answers such
a question for the body, so it is the business of psychology to answer it for
the archetype.
[273]
Statements like “The child motif is a vestigial memory of one’s own
childhood” and similar explanations merely beg the question. But if,
giving this proposition a slight twist, we were to say, “The child motif is a
picture of certain forgotten things in our childhood,” we are getting closer
to the truth. Since, however, the archetype is always an image belonging to
the whole human race and not merely to the individual, we might put it
better this way: “The child motif represents the preconscious, childhood
aspect of the collective psyche.”
21
[274]
We shall not go wrong if we take this statement for the time being
historically, on the analogy of certain psychological experiences which
show that certain phases in an individual’s life can become autonomous,
can personify themselves to the extent that they result in a vision of oneself
—for instance, one sees oneself as a child. Visionary experiences of this
kind, whether they occur in dreams or in the waking state, are, as we
know, conditional on a dissociation having previously taken place between
past and present. Such dissociations come about because of various
incompatibilities; for instance, a man’s present state may have come into
conflict with his childhood state, or he may have violently sundered
himself from his original character in the interests of some arbitrary
persona more in keeping with his ambitions. He has thus become
unchildlike and artificial, and has lost his roots. All this presents a
favourable opportunity for an equally vehement confrontation with the
primary truth.
22
[275]
In view of the fact that men have not yet ceased to make statements
about the child god, we may perhaps extend the individual analogy to the
life of mankind and say in conclusion that humanity, too, probably always
comes into conflict with its childhood conditions, that is, with its original,
unconscious, and instinctive state, and that the danger of the kind of
conflict which induces the vision of the “child” actually exists. Religious
observances, i.e., the retelling and ritual repetition of the mythical event,
consequently serve the purpose of bringing the image of childhood, and
everything connected with it, again and again before the eyes of the
conscious mind so that the link with the original condition may not be
broken.
2. The Function of the Archetype
[276]
The child motif represents not only something that existed in the
distant past but also something that exists now; that is to say, it is not just a
vestige but a system functioning in the present whose purpose is to
compensate or correct, in a meaningful manner, the inevitable onesidednesses and extravagances of the conscious mind. It is in the nature of
the conscious mind to concentrate on relatively few contents and to raise
them to the highest pitch of clarity. A necessary result and precondition is
the exclusion of other potential contents of consciousness. The exclusion is
bound to bring about a certain one-sidedness of the conscious contents.
Since the differentiated consciousness of civilized man has been granted
an effective instrument for the practical realization of its contents through
the dynamics of his will, there is all the more danger, the more he trains his
will, of his getting lost in one-sidedness and deviating further and further
from the laws and roots of his being. This means, on the one hand, the
possibility of human freedom, but on the other it is a source of endless
transgressions against one’s instincts. Accordingly, primitive man, being
closer to his instincts, like the animal, is characterized by fear of novelty
and adherence to tradition. To our way of thinking he is painfully
backward, whereas we exalt progress. But our progressiveness, though it
may result in a great many delightful wish-fulfilments, piles up an equally
gigantic Promethean debt which has to be paid off from time to time in the
form of hideous catastrophes. For ages man has dreamed of flying, and all
we have got for it is saturation bombing! We smile today at the Christian
hope of a life beyond the grave, and yet we often fall into chiliasms a
hundred times more ridiculous than the notion of a happy Hereafter. Our
differentiated consciousness is in continual danger of being uprooted;
hence it needs compensation through the still existing state of childhood.
[277]
The symptoms of compensation are described, from the progressive
point of view, in scarcely flattering terms. Since, to the superficial eye, it
looks like a retarding operation, people speak of inertia, backwardness,
scepticism, fault-finding, conservatism, timidity, pettiness, and so on. But
inasmuch as man has, in high degree, the capacity for cutting himself off
from his own roots, he may also be swept uncritically to catastrophe by his
dangerous one-sidedness. The retarding ideal is always more primitive,
more natural (in the good sense as in the bad), and more “moral” in that it
keeps faith with law and tradition. The progressive ideal is always more
abstract, more unnatural, and less “moral” in that it demands disloyalty to
tradition. Progress enforced by will is always convulsive. Backwardness
may be closer to naturalness, but in its turn it is always menaced by painful
awakenings. The older view of things realized that progress is only
possible Deo concedente, thus proving itself conscious of the opposites
and repeating the age-old rites d’entrée et de sortie on a higher plane. The
more differentiated consciousness becomes, the greater the danger of
severance from the root-condition. Complete severance comes when the
Deo concedente is forgotten. Now it is an axiom of psychology that when
a part of the psyche is split off from consciousness it is only apparently
inactivated; in actual fact it brings about a possession of the personality,
with the result that the individual’s aims are falsified in the interests of the
split-off part. If, then, the childhood state of the collective psyche is
repressed to the point of total exclusion, the unconscious content
overwhelms the conscious aim and inhibits, falsifies, even destroys its
realization. Viable progress only comes from the co-operation of both.
3. The Futurity of the Archetype
[278]
One of the essential features of the child motif is its futurity. The child
is potential future. Hence the occurrence of the child motif in the
psychology of the individual signifies as a rule an anticipation of future
developments, even though at first sight it may seem like a retrospective
configuration. Life is a flux, a flowing into the future, and not a stoppage
or a backwash. It is therefore not surprising that so many of the
mythological saviours are child gods. This agrees exactly with our
experience of the psychology of the individual, which shows that the
“child” paves the way for a future change of personality. In the
individuation process, it anticipates the figure that comes from the
synthesis of conscious and unconscious elements in the personality. It is
therefore a symbol which unites the opposites; a mediator, bringer of
healing, that is, one who makes whole. Because it has this meaning, the
child motif is capable of the numerous transformations mentioned above: it
can be expressed by roundness, the circle or sphere, or else by the
quaternity as another form of wholeness. I have called this wholeness that
transcends consciousness the “self.” The goal of the individuation process
is the synthesis of the self. From another point of view the term
“entelechy” might be preferable to “synthesis.” There is an empirical
reason why “entelechy” is, in certain conditions, more fitting: the symbols
of wholeness frequently occur at the beginning of the individuation
process, indeed they can often be observed in the first dreams of early
infancy. This observation says much for the a priori existence of potential
wholeness, and on this account the idea of entelechy instantly
recommends itself. But in so far as the individuation process occurs,
23
24
25
26
empirically speaking, as a synthesis, it looks, paradoxically enough, as if
something already existent were being put together. From this point of
view, the term “synthesis” is also applicable.
4. Unity and Plurality of the Child Motif
[279]
In the manifold phenomenology of the “child” we have to distinguish
between the unity and plurality of its respective manifestations. Where, for
instance, numerous homunculi, dwarfs, boys, etc., appear, having no
individual characteristics at all, there is the probability of a dissociation.
Such forms are therefore found especially in schizophrenia, which is
essentially a fragmentation of personality. The many children then
represent the products of its dissolution. But if the plurality occurs in
normal people, then it is the representation of an as yet incomplete
synthesis of personality. The personality (viz., the “self”) is still in the
plural stage, i.e., an ego may be present, but it cannot experience its
wholeness within the framework of its own personality, only within the
community of the family, tribe, or nation; it is still in the stage of
unconscious identification with the plurality of the group. The Church
takes due account of this widespread condition in her doctrine of the
corpus mysticum, of which the individual is by nature a member.
[280]
If, however, the child motif appears in the form of a unity, we are
dealing with an unconscious and provisionally complete synthesis of the
personality, which in practice, like everything unconscious, signifies no
more than a possibility.
5. Child God and Child Hero
[281]
Sometimes the “child” looks more like a child god, sometimes more
like a young hero. Common to both types is the miraculous birth and the
adversities of early childhood—abandonment and danger through
persecution. The god is by nature wholly supernatural; the hero’s nature is
human but raised to the limit of the supernatural—he is “semi-divine.”
While the god, especially in his close affinity with the symbolic animal,
personifies the collective unconscious which is not yet integrated into a
human being, the hero’s supernaturalness includes human nature and thus
represents a synthesis of the (“divine,” i.e., not yet humanized)
unconscious and human consciousness. Consequently he signifies the
potential anticipation of an individuation process which is approaching
wholeness.
[282]
For this reason the various “child”-fates may be regarded as
illustrating the kind of psychic events that occur in the entelechy or genesis
of the “self.” The “miraculous birth” tries to depict the way in which this
genesis is experienced. Since it is a psychic genesis, everything must
happen non-empirically, e.g., by means of a virgin birth, or by miraculous
conception, or by birth from unnatural organs. The motifs of
“insignificance,” exposure, abandonment, danger, etc. try to show how
precarious is the psychic possibility of wholeness, that is, the enormous
difficulties to be met with in attaining this “highest good.” They also
signify the powerlessness and helplessness of the life-urge which subjects
every growing thing to the law of maximum self-fulfilment, while at the
same time the environmental influences place all sorts of insuperable
obstacles in the way of individuation. More especially the threat to one’s
inmost self from dragons and serpents points to the danger of the newly
acquired consciousness being swallowed up again by the instinctive
psyche, the unconscious. The lower vertebrates have from earliest times
been favourite symbols of the collective psychic substratum, which is
localized anatomically in the subcortical centres, the cerebellum and the
spinal cord. These organs constitute the snake. Snake-dreams usually
occur, therefore, when the conscious mind is deviating from its instinctual
basis.
27
28
[283]
The motif of “smaller than small yet bigger than big” complements
the impotence of the child by means of its equally miraculous deeds. This
paradox is the essence of the hero and runs through his whole destiny like
a red thread. He can cope with the greatest perils, yet, in the end,
something quite insignificant is his undoing: Baldur perishes because of
the mistletoe, Maui because of the laughter of a little bird, Siegfried
because of his one vulnerable spot, Heracles because of his wife’s gift,
others because of common treachery, and so on.
[284]
The hero’s main feat is to overcome the monster of darkness: it is the
long-hoped-for and expected triumph of consciousness over the
unconscious. Day and light are synonyms for consciousness, night and
dark for the unconscious. The coming of consciousness was probably the
most tremendous experience of primeval times, for with it a world came
into being whose existence no one had suspected before. “And God said:
‘Let there be light!’” is the projection of that immemorial experience of the
separation of the conscious from the unconscious. Even among primitives
today the possession of a soul is a precarious thing, and the “loss of soul” a
typical psychic malady which drives primitive medicine to all sorts of
psychotherapeutic measures. Hence the “child” distinguishes itself by
deeds which point to the conquest of the dark.
III. THE SPECIAL PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE CHILD ARCHETYPE
1. The Abandonment of the Child
[285]
Abandonment, exposure, danger, etc. are all elaborations of the
“child’s” insignificant beginnings and of its mysterious and miraculous
birth. This statement describes a certain psychic experience of a creative
nature, whose object is the emergence of a new and as yet unknown
content. In the psychology of the individual there is always, at such
moments, an agonizing situation of conflict from which there seems to be
no way out—at least for the conscious mind, since as far as this is
concerned, tertium non datur. But out of this collision of opposites the
unconscious psyche always creates a third thing of an irrational nature,
which the conscious mind neither expects nor understands. It presents
itself in a form that is neither a straight “yes” nor a straight “no,” and is
consequently rejected by both. For the conscious mind knows nothing
beyond the opposites and, as a result, has no knowledge of the thing that
unites them. Since, however, the solution of the conflict through the union
of opposites is of vital importance, and is moreover the very thing that the
conscious mind is longing for, some inkling of the creative act, and of the
significance of it, nevertheless gets through. From this comes the
numinous character of the “child.” A meaningful but unknown content
always has a secret fascination for the conscious mind. The new
configuration is a nascent whole; it is on the way to wholeness, at least in
so far as it excels in “wholeness” the conscious mind when torn by
opposites and surpasses it in completeness. For this reason all uniting
symbols have a redemptive significance.
29
[286]
Out of this situation the “child” emerges as a symbolic content,
manifestly separated or even isolated from its background (the mother),
but sometimes including the mother in its perilous situation, threatened on
the one hand by the negative attitude of the conscious mind and on the
other by the horror vacui of the unconscious, which is quite ready to
swallow up all its progeny, since it produces them only in play, and
destruction is an inescapable part of its play. Nothing in all the world
welcomes this new birth, although it is the most precious fruit of Mother
Nature herself, the most pregnant with the future, signifying a higher stage
of self-realization. That is why Nature, the world of the instincts, takes the
“child” under its wing: it is nourished or protected by animals.
[287]
“Child” means something evolving towards independence. This it
cannot do without detaching itself from its origins: abandonment is
therefore a necessary condition, not just a concomitant symptom. The
conflict is not to be overcome by the conscious mind remaining caught
between the opposites, and for this very reason it needs a symbol to point
out the necessity of detaching itself from its origins. Because the symbol of
the “child” fascinates and grips the conscious mind, its redemptive effect
passes over into consciousness and brings about that separation from the
conflict-situation which the conscious mind by itself was unable to
achieve. The symbol anticipates a nascent state of consciousness. So long
as this is not actually in being, the “child” remains a mythological
projection which requires religious repetition and renewal by ritual. The
Christ Child, for instance, is a religious necessity only so long as the
majority of men are incapable of giving psychological reality to the saying:
“Except ye become as little children….” Since all such developments and
transitions are extraordinarily difficult and dangerous, it is no wonder that
figures of this kind persist for hundreds or even thousands of years.
Everything that man should, and yet cannot, be or do—be it in a positive
or negative sense—lives on as a mythological figure and anticipation
alongside his consciousness, either as a religious projection or—what is
still more dangerous—as unconscious contents which then project
themselves spontaneously into incongruous objects, e.g., hygienic and
other “salvationist” doctrines or practices. All these are so many
rationalized substitutes for mythology, and their unnaturalness does more
harm than good.
[288]
The conflict-situation that offers no way out, the sort of situation that
produces the “child” as the irrational third, is of course a formula
appropriate only to a psychological, that is, modern stage of development.
It is not strictly applicable to the psychic life of primitives, if only because
primitive man’s childlike range of consciousness still excludes a whole
world of possible psychic experiences. Seen on the nature-level of the
primitive, our modern moral conflict is still an objective calamity that
threatens life itself. Hence not a few child-figures are culture-heroes and
thus identified with things that promote culture, e.g., fire, metal, corn,
maize, etc. As bringers of light, that is, enlargers of consciousness, they
overcome darkness, which is to say that they overcome the earlier
unconscious state. Higher consciousness, or knowledge going beyond our
present-day consciousness, is equivalent to being all alone in the world.
This loneliness expresses the conflict between the bearer or symbol of
higher consciousness and his surroundings. The conquerors of darkness go
far back into primeval times, and, together with many other legends, prove
that there once existed a state of original psychic distress, namely
unconsciousness. Hence in all probability the “irrational” fear which
primitive man has of the dark even today. I found a form of religion among
a tribe living on Mount Elgon that corresponded to pantheistic optimism.
Their optimistic mood was, however, always in abeyance between six
o’clock in the evening and six o’clock in the morning, during which time it
was replaced by fear, for in the night the dark being Ayik has his dominion
—the “Maker of Fear.” During the daytime there were no monster snakes
anywhere in the vicinity, but at night they were lurking on every path. At
night the whole of mythology was let loose.
30
2. The Invincibility of the Child
[289]
It is a striking paradox in all child myths that the “child” is on the one
hand delivered helpless into the power of terrible enemies and in continual
danger of extinction, while on the other he possesses powers far exceeding
those of ordinary humanity. This is closely related to the psychological
fact that though the child may be “insignificant,” unknown, “a mere child,”
he is also divine. From the conscious standpoint we seem to be dealing
with an insignificant content that has no releasing, let alone redeeming,
character. The conscious mind is caught in its conflict-situation, and the
combatant forces seem so overwhelming that the “child” as an isolated
content bears no relation to the conscious factors. It is therefore easily
overlooked and falls back into the unconscious. At least, this is what we
should have to fear if things turned out according to our conscious
expectations. Myth, however, emphasizes that it is not so, but that the
“child” is endowed with superior powers and, despite all dangers, will
unexpectedly pull through. The “child” is born out of the womb of the
unconscious, begotten out of the depths of human nature, or rather out of
living Nature herself. It is a personification of vital forces quite outside the
limited range of our conscious mind; of ways and possibilities of which
our one-sided conscious mind knows nothing; a wholeness which
embraces the very depths of Nature. It represents the strongest, the most
ineluctable urge in every being, namely the urge to realize itself. It is, as it
were, an incarnation of the inability to do otherwise, equipped with all the
powers of nature and instinct, whereas the conscious mind is always
getting caught up in its supposed ability to do otherwise. The urge and
compulsion to self-realization is a law of nature and thus of invincible
power, even though its effect, at the start, is insignificant and improbable.
Its power is revealed in the miraculous deeds of the child hero, and later in
the athla (‘works’) of the bondsman or thrall (of the Heracles type), where,
although the hero has outgrown the impotence of the “child,” he is still in a
menial position. The figure of the thrall generally leads up to the real
epiphany of the semi-divine hero. Oddly enough, we have a similar
modulation of themes in alchemy—in the synonyms for the lapis. As the
materia prima, it is the lapis exilis et vilis. As a substance in process of
transmutation, it is servus rubeus or fugitivus; and finally, in its true
apotheosis, it attains the dignity of a filius sapientiae or deus terrenus, a
“light above all lights,” a power that contains in itself all the powers of the
upper and nether regions. It becomes a corpus glorificatum which enjoys
everlasting incorruptibility and is therefore a panacea (“bringer of
healing”). The size and invincibility of the “child” are bound up in Hindu
speculation with the nature of the atman, which corresponds to the
“smaller than small yet bigger than big” motif. As an individual
phenomenon, the self is “smaller than small”; as the equivalent of the
cosmos, it is “bigger than big.” The self, regarded as the counter-pole of
the world, its “absolutely other,” is the sine qua non of all empirical
knowledge and consciousness of subject and object. Only because of this
psychic “otherness” is consciousness possible at all. Identity does not
31
make consciousness possible; it is only separation, detachment, and
agonizing confrontation through opposition that produce consciousness
and insight. Hindu introspection recognized this psychological fact very
early and consequently equated the subject of cognition with the subject of
ontology in general. In accordance with the predominantly introverted
attitude of Indian thinking, the object lost the attribute of absolute reality
and, in some systems, became a mere illusion. The Greek-Occidental type
of mind could not free itself from the conviction of the world’s absolute
existence—at the cost, however, of the cosmic significance of the self.
Even today Western man finds it hard to see the psychological necessity
for a transcendental subject of cognition as the counter-pole of the
empirical universe, although the postulate of a world-confronting self, at
least as a point of reflection, is a logical necessity. Regardless of
philosophy’s perpetual attitude of dissent or only half-hearted assent, there
is always a compensating tendency in our unconscious psyche to produce a
symbol of the self in its cosmic significance. These efforts take on the
archetypal forms of the hero myth such as can be observed in almost any
individuation process.
[290]
The phenomenology of the “child’s” birth always points back to an
original psychological state of non-recognition, i.e., of darkness or
twilight, of non-differentiation between subject and object, of unconscious
identity of man and the universe. This phase of non-differentiation
produces the golden egg, which is both man and universe and yet neither,
but an irrational third. To the twilight consciousness of primitive man it
seems as if the egg came out of the womb of the wide world and were,
accordingly, a cosmic, objective, external occurrence. To a differentiated
consciousness, on the other hand, it seems evident that this egg is nothing
but a symbol thrown up by the psyche or—what is even worse—a fanciful
speculation and therefore “nothing but” a primitive phantasm to which no
“reality” of any kind attaches. Present-day medical psychology, however,
thinks somewhat differently about these “phantasms.” It knows only too
well what dire disturbances of the bodily functions and what devastating
psychic consequences can flow from “mere” fantasies. “Fantasies” are the
natural expressions of the life of the unconscious. But since the
unconscious is the psyche of all the body’s autonomous functional
complexes, its “fantasies” have an aetiological significance that is not to be
despised. From the psychopathology of the individuation process we know
that the formation of symbols is frequently associated with physical
disorders of a psychic origin, which in some cases are felt as decidedly
“real.” In medicine, fantasies are real things with which the
psychotherapist has to reckon very seriously indeed. He cannot therefore
deprive of all justification those primitive phantasms whose content is so
real that it is projected upon the external world. In the last analysis the
human body, too, is built of the stuff of the world, the very stuff wherein
fantasies become visible; indeed, without it they could not be experienced
at all. Without this stuff they would be like a sort of abstract crystalline
lattice in a solution where the crystallization process had not yet started.
[291]
The symbols of the self arise in the depths of the body and they
express its materiality every bit as much as the structure of the perceiving
consciousness. The symbol is thus a living body, corpus et anima; hence
the “child” is such an apt formula for the symbol. The uniqueness of the
psyche can never enter wholly into reality, it can only be realized
approximately, though it still remains the absolute basis of all
consciousness. The deeper “layers” of the psyche lose their individual
uniqueness as they retreat farther and farther into darkness. “Lower down,”
that is to say as they approach the autonomous functional systems, they
become increasingly collective until they are universalized and
extinguished in the body’s materiality, i.e., in chemical substances. The
body’s carbon is simply carbon. Hence “at bottom” the psyche is simply
“world.” In this sense I hold Kerényi to be absolutely right when he says
that in the symbol the world itself is speaking. The more archaic and
“deeper,” that is the more physiological, the symbol is, the more collective
and universal, the more “material” it is. The more abstract, differentiated,
and specific it is, and the more its nature approximates to conscious
uniqueness and individuality, the more it sloughs off its universal
character. Having finally attained full consciousness, it runs the risk of
becoming a mere allegory which nowhere oversteps the bounds of
conscious comprehension, and is then exposed to all sorts of attempts at
rationalistic and therefore inadequate explanation.
3. The Hermaphroditism of the Child
[292]
It is a remarkable fact that perhaps the majority of cosmogonic gods
are of a bisexual nature. The hermaphrodite means nothing less than a
union of the strongest and most striking opposites. In the first place this
union refers back to a primitive state of mind, a twilight where differences
and contrasts were either barely separated or completely merged. With
increasing clarity of consciousness, however, the opposites draw more and
more distinctly and irreconcilably apart. If, therefore, the hermaphrodite
were only a product of primitive non-differentiation, we would have to
expect that it would soon be eliminated with increasing civilization. This is
by no means the case; on the contrary, man’s imagination has been
preoccupied with this idea over and over again on the high and even the
highest levels of culture, as we can see from the late Greek and syncretic
philosophy of Gnosticism. The hermaphroditic rebis has an important part
to play in the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages. And in our own day
we hear of Christ’s androgyny in Catholic mysticism.
32
[293]
We can no longer be dealing, then, with the continued existence of a
primitive phantasm, or with an original contamination of opposites.
Rather, as we can see from medieval writings, the primordial idea has
become a symbol of the creative union of opposites, a “uniting symbol” in
the literal sense. In its functional significance the symbol no longer points
back, but forward to a goal not yet reached. Notwithstanding its
monstrosity, the hermaphrodite has gradually turned into a subduer of
conflicts and a bringer of healing, and it acquired this meaning in relatively
early phases of civilization. This vital meaning explains why the image of
the hermaphrodite did not fade out in primeval times but, on the contrary,
was able to assert itself with increasing profundity of symbolic content for
thousands of years. The fact that an idea so utterly archaic could rise to
such exalted heights of meaning not only points to the vitality of
archetypal ideas, it also demonstrates the rightness of the principle that the
archetype, because of its power to unite opposites, mediates between the
unconscious substratum and the conscious mind. It throws a bridge
between present-day consciousness, always in danger of losing its roots,
and the natural, unconscious, instinctive wholeness of primeval times.
Through this mediation the uniqueness, peculiarity, and one-sidedness of
our present individual consciousness are linked up again with its natural,
racial roots. Progress and development are ideals not lightly to be rejected,
but they lose all meaning if man only arrives at his new state as a fragment
of himself, having left his essential hinterland behind him in the shadow of
the unconscious, in a state of primitivity or, indeed, barbarism. The
33
conscious mind, split off from its origins, incapable of realizing the
meaning of the new state, then relapses all too easily into a situation far
worse than the one from which the innovation was intended to free it
—exempla sunt odiosa! It was Friedrich Schiller who first had an inkling
of this problem; but neither his contemporaries nor his successors were
capable of drawing any conclusions. Instead, people incline more than ever
to educate children and nothing more. I therefore suspect that the furor
paedogogicus is a god-sent method of by-passing the central problem
touched on by Schiller, namely the education of the educator. Children are
educated by what the grownup is and not by what he says. The popular
faith in words is a veritable disease of the mind, for a superstition of this
sort always leads farther and farther away from man’s foundations and
seduces people into a disastrous identification of the personality with
whatever slogan may be in vogue. Meanwhile everything that has been
overcome and left behind by so-called “progress” sinks deeper and deeper
into the unconscious, from which there re-emerges in the end the primitive
condition of identity with the mass. Instead of the expected progress, this
condition now becomes reality.
[294]
As civilization develops, the bisexual primordial being turns into a
symbol of the unity of personality, a symbol of the self, where the war of
opposites finds peace. In this way the primordial being becomes the distant
goal of man’s self-development, having been from the very beginning a
projection of his unconscious wholeness. Wholeness consists in the union
of the conscious and the unconscious personality. Just as every individual
derives from masculine and feminine genes, and the sex is determined by
the predominance of the corresponding genes, so in the psyche it is only
the conscious mind, in a man, that has the masculine sign, while the
unconscious is by nature feminine. The reverse is true in the case of a
woman. All I have done in my anima theory is to rediscover and
reformulate this fact. It had long been known.
34
[295]
The idea of the coniunctio of male and female, which became almost a
technical term in Hermetic philosophy, appears in Gnosticism as the
mysterium iniquitatis, probably not uninfluenced by the Old Testament
“divine marriage” as performed, for instance, by Hosea. Such things are
hinted at not only by certain traditional customs, but by the quotation
from the Gospel according to the Egyptians in the second epistle of
35
36
Clement: “When the two shall be one, the outside as the inside, and the
male with the female neither male nor female.” Clement of Alexandria
introduces this logion with the words: “When ye have trampled on the
garment of shame (with thy feet)…,” which probably refers to the body;
for Clement as well as Cassian (from whom the quotation was taken over),
and the pseudo-Clement, too, interpreted the words in a spiritual sense, in
contrast to the Gnostics, who would seem to have taken the coniunctio all
too literally. They took care, however, through the practice of abortion and
other restrictions, that the biological meaning of their acts did not swamp
the religious significance of the rite. While, in Church mysticism, the
primordial image of the hieros gamos was sublimated on a lofty plane and
only occasionally—as for instance with Mechthild of Magdeburg —
approached the physical sphere in emotional intensity, for the rest of the
world it remained very much alive and continued to be the object of
especial psychic preoccupation. In this respect the symbolical drawings of
Opicinus de Canistris afford us an interesting glimpse of the way in which
this primordial image was instrumental in uniting opposites, even in a
pathological state. On the other hand, in the Hermetic philosophy that
throve in the Middle Ages the coniunctio was performed wholly in the
physical realm in the admittedly abstract theory of the coniugium solis et
lunae, which despite this drawback gave the creative imagination much
occasion for anthropomorphic flights.
37
38
39
40
[296]
Such being the state of affairs, it is readily understandable that the
primordial image of the hermaphrodite should reappear in modern
psychology in the guise of the male-female antithesis, in other words as
male consciousness and personified female unconscious. But the
psychological process of bringing things to consciousness has complicated
the picture considerably. Whereas the old science was almost exclusively a
field in which only the man’s unconscious could project itself, the new
psychology had to acknowledge the existence of an autonomous female
psyche as well. Here the case is reversed, and a feminine consciousness
confronts a masculine personification of the unconscious, which can no
longer be called anima but animus. This discovery also complicates the
problem of the coniunctio.
[297]
Originally this archetype played its part entirely in the field of fertility
magic and thus remained for a very long time a purely biological
phenomenon with no other purpose than that of fecundation. But even in
early antiquity the symbolical meaning of the act seems to have increased.
Thus, for example, the physical performance of the hieros gamos as a
sacred rite not only became a mystery—it faded to a mere conjecture. As
we have seen, Gnosticism, too, endeavoured in all seriousness to
subordinate the physiological to the metaphysical. Finally, the Church
severed the coniunctio from the physical realm altogether, and natural
philosophy turned it into an abstract theoria. These developments meant
the gradual transformation of the archetype into a psychological process
which, in theory, we can call a combination of conscious and unconscious
processes. In practice, however, it is not so simple, because as a rule the
feminine unconscious of a man is projected upon a feminine partner, and
the masculine unconscious of a woman is projected upon a man. The
elucidation of these problems is a special branch of psychology and has no
part in a discussion of the mythological hermaphrodite.
41
4. The Child as Beginning and End
[298]
Faust, after his death, is received as a boy into the “choir of blessed
youths.” I do not know whether Goethe was referring, with this peculiar
idea, to the cupids on antique grave-stones. It is not unthinkable. The
figure of the cucullatus points to the hooded, that is, the invisible one, the
genius of the departed, who reappears in the child-like frolics of a new life,
surrounded by the sea-forms of dolphins and tritons. The sea is the
favourite symbol for the unconscious, the mother of all that lives. Just as
the “child” is, in certain circumstances (e.g., in the case of Hermes and the
Dactyls), closely related to the phallus, symbol of the begetter, so it comes
up again in the sepulchral phallus, symbol of a renewed begetting.
[299]
The “child” is therefore renatus in novam infantiam. It is thus both
beginning and end, an initial and a terminal creature. The initial creature
existed before man was, and the terminal creature will be when man is not.
Psychologically speaking, this means that the “child” symbolizes the preconscious and the post-conscious essence of man. His pre-conscious
essence is the unconscious state of earliest childhood; his post-conscious
essence is an anticipation by analogy of life after death. In this idea the allembracing nature of psychic wholeness is expressed. Wholeness is never
comprised within the compass of the conscious mind—it includes the
indefinite and indefinable extent of the unconscious as well. Wholeness,
empirically speaking, is therefore of immeasurable extent, older and
younger than consciousness and enfolding it in time and space. This is no
speculation, but an immediate psychic experience. Not only is the
conscious process continually accompanied, it is often guided, helped, or
interrupted, by unconscious happenings. The child had a psychic life
before it had consciousness. Even the adult still says and does things
whose significance he realizes only later, if ever. And yet he said them and
did them as if he knew what they meant. Our dreams are continually
saying things beyond our conscious comprehension (which is why they are
so useful in the therapy of neuroses). We have intimations and intuitions
from unknown sources. Fears, moods, plans, and hopes come to us with no
visible causation. These concrete experiences are at the bottom of our
feeling that we know ourselves very little; at the bottom, too, of the painful
conjecture that we might have surprises in store for ourselves.
[300]
Primitive man is no puzzle to himself. The question “What is man?” is
the question that man has always kept until last. Primitive man has so
much psyche outside his conscious mind that the experience of something
psychic outside him is far more familiar to him than to us. Consciousness
hedged about by psychic powers, sustained or threatened or deluded by
them, is the age-old experience of mankind. This experience has projected
itself into the archetype of the child, which expresses man’s wholeness.
The “child” is all that is abandoned and exposed and at the same time
divinely powerful; the insignificant, dubious beginning, and the triumphal
end. The “eternal child” in man is an indescribable experience, an
incongruity, a handicap, and a divine prerogative; an imponderable that
determines the ultimate worth or worthlessness of a personality.
IV. CONCLUSION
[301]
I am aware that a psychological commentary on the child archetype
without detailed documentation must remain a mere sketch. But since this
is virgin territory for the psychologist, my main endeavour has been to
stake out the possible extent of the problems raised by our archetype and to
describe, at least cursorily, its different aspects. Clear-cut distinctions and
strict formulations are quite impossible in this field, seeing that a kind of
fluid interpenetration belongs to the very nature of all archetypes. They
can only be roughly circumscribed at best. Their living meaning comes out
more from their presentation as a whole than from a single formulation.
Every attempt to focus them more sharply is immediately punished by the
intangible core of meaning losing its luminosity. No archetype can be
reduced to a simple formula. It is a vessel which we can never empty, and
never fill. It has a potential existence only, and when it takes shape in
matter it is no longer what it was. It persists throughout the ages and
requires interpreting ever anew. The archetypes are the imperishable
elements of the unconscious, but they change their shape continually.
[302]
It is a well-nigh hopeless undertaking to tear a single archetype out of
the living tissue of the psyche; but despite their interwovenness they do
form units of meaning that can be apprehended intuitively. Psychology, as
one of the many expressions of psychic life, operates with ideas which in
their turn are derived from archetypal structures and thus generate a
somewhat more abstract kind of myth. Psychology therefore translates the
archaic speech of myth into a modern mythologem—not yet, of course,
recognized as such—which constitutes one element of the myth “science.”
This seemingly hopeless undertaking is a living and lived myth, satisfying
to persons of a corresponding temperament, indeed beneficial in so far as
they have been cut off from their psychic origins by neurotic dissociation.
[303]
As a matter of experience, we meet the child archetype in spontaneous
and in therapeutically induced individuation processes. The first
manifestation of the “child” is as a rule a totally unconscious phenomenon.
Here the patient identifies himself with his personal infantilism. Then,
under the influence of therapy, we get a more or less gradual separation
from and objectification of the “child,” that is, the identity breaks down
and is accompanied by an intensification (sometimes technically induced)
of fantasy, with the result that archaic or mythological features become
increasingly apparent. Further transformations run true to the hero myth.
The theme of “mighty feats” is generally absent, but on the other hand the
mythical dangers play all the greater part. At this stage there is usually
another identification, this time with the hero, whose role is attractive for a
variety of reasons. The identification is often extremely stubborn and
dangerous to the psychic equilibrium. If it can be broken down and if
consciousness can be reduced to human proportions, the figure of the hero
can gradually be differentiated into a symbol of the self.
[304]
In practical reality, however, it is of course not enough for the patient
merely to know about such developments; what counts is his experience of
the various transformations. The initial stage of personal infantilism
presents the picture of an “abandoned” or “misunderstood” and unjustly
treated child with overweening pretensions. The epiphany of the hero (the
second identification) shows itself in a corresponding inflation: the
colossal pretension grows into a conviction that one is something
extraordinary, or else the impossibility of the pretension ever being
fulfilled only proves one’s own inferiority, which is favourable to the role
of the heroic sufferer (a negative inflation). In spite of their
contradictoriness, both forms are identical, because conscious
megalomania is balanced by unconscious compensatory inferiority and
conscious inferiority by unconscious megalomania (you never get one
without the other). Once the reef of the second identification has been
successfully circumnavigated, conscious processes can be cleanly
separated from the unconscious, and the latter observed objectively. This
leads to the possibility of an accommodation with the unconscious, and
thus to a possible synthesis of the conscious and unconscious elements of
knowledge and action. This in turn leads to a shifting of the centre of
personality from the ego to the self.
42
[305]
In this psychological framework the motifs of abandonment,
invincibility, hermaphroditism, and beginning and end take their place as
distinct categories of experience and understanding.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF THE KORE
[306]
Not only is the figure of Demeter and the Kore in its threefold aspect
as maiden, mother, and Hecate not unknown to the psychology of the
unconscious, it is even something of a practical problem. The “Kore” has
her psychological counterpart in those archetypes which I have called the
self or supraordinate personality on the one hand, and the anima on the
other. In order to explain these figures, with which I cannot assume all
readers to be familiar, I must begin with some remarks of a general nature.
[307]
The psychologist has to contend with the same difficulties as the
mythologist when an exact definition or clear and concise information is
demanded of him. The picture is concrete, clear, and subject to no
misunderstandings only when it is seen in its habitual context. In this form
it tells us everything it contains. But as soon as one tries to abstract the
“real essence” of the picture, the whole thing becomes cloudy and
indistinct. In order to understand its living function, we must let it remain
an organic thing in all its complexity and not try to examine the anatomy
of its corpse in the manner of the scientist, or the archaeology of its ruins
in the manner of the historian. Naturally this is not to deny the justification
of such methods when applied in their proper place.
[308]
In view of the enormous complexity of psychic phenomena, a purely
phenomenological point of view is, and will be for a long time, the only
possible one and the only one with any prospect of success. “Whence”
things come and “what” they are, these, particularly in the field of
psychology, are questions which are apt to call forth untimely attempts at
explanation. Such speculations are moreover based far more on
unconscious philosophical premises than on the nature of the phenomena
themselves. Psychic phenomena occasioned by unconscious processes are
so rich and so multifarious that I prefer to describe my findings and
observations and, where possible, to classify them—that is, to arrange
them under certain definite types. That is the method of natural science,
and it is applied wherever we have to do with multifarious and still
unorganized material. One may question the utility or the appropriateness
of the categories or types used in the arrangement, but not the correctness
of the method itself.
[309]
Since for years I have been observing and investigating the products
of the unconscious in the widest sense of the word, namely dreams,
fantasies, visions, and delusions of the insane, I have not been able to
avoid recognizing certain regularities, that is, types. There are types of
situations and types of figures that repeat themselves frequently and have a
corresponding meaning. I therefore employ the term “motif” to designate
these repetitions. Thus there are not only typical dreams but typical motifs
in the dreams. These may, as we have said, be situations or figures. Among
the latter there are human figures that can be arranged under a series of
archetypes, the chief of them being, according to my suggestion, the
shadow, the wise old man, the child (including the child hero), the mother
(“Primordial Mother” and “Earth Mother”) as a supraordinate personality
(“daemonic” because supraordinate), and her counterpart the maiden, and
lastly the anima in man and the animus in woman.
1
[310]
The above types are far from exhausting all the statistical regularities
in this respect. The figure of the Kore that interests us here belongs, when
observed in a man, to the anima type; and when observed in a woman to
the type of supraordinate personality. It is an essential characteristic of
psychic figures that they are duplex or at least capable of duplication; at all
events they are bipolar and oscillate between their positive and negative
meanings. Thus the “supraordinate” personality can appear in a despicable
and distorted form, like for instance Mephistopheles, who is really more
positive as a personality than the vapid and unthinking careerist Faust.
Another negative figure is the Tom Thumb or Tom Dumb of the folktales.
The figure corresponding to the Kore in a woman is generally a double
one, i.e., a mother and a maiden, which is to say that she appears now as
the one, now as the other. From this I would conclude, for a start, that in
the formation of the Demeter-Kore myth the feminine influence so far
outweighed the masculine that the latter had practically no significance.
The man’s role in the Demeter myth is really only that of seducer or
conqueror.
[311]
As a matter of practical observation, the Kore often appears in woman
as an unknown young girl, not infrequently as Gretchen or the unmarried
mother. Another frequent modulation is the dancer, who is often formed
by borrowings from classical knowledge, in which case the “maiden”
appears as the corybant, maenad, or nymph. An occasional variant is the
nixie or water-sprite, who betrays her superhuman nature by her fishtail.
Sometimes the Kore- and mother-figures slither down altogether to the
animal kingdom, the favourite representatives then being the cat or the
snake or the bear, or else some black monster of the underworld like the
crocodile, or other salamander-like, saurian creatures. The maiden’s
helplessness exposes her to all sorts of dangers, for instance of being
devoured by reptiles or ritually slaughtered like a beast of sacrifice. Often
there are bloody, cruel, and even obscene orgies to which the innocent
child falls victim. Sometimes it is a true nekyia, a descent into Hades and a
quest for the “treasure hard to attain,” occasionally connected with
orgiastic sexual rites or offerings of menstrual blood to the moon. Oddly
enough, the various tortures and obscenities are carried out by an “Earth
Mother.” There are drinkings of blood and bathings in blood, also
crucifixions. The maiden who crops up in case histories differs not
inconsiderably from the vaguely flower-like Kore in that the modern figure
is more sharply delineated and not nearly so “unconscious,” as the
following examples will show.
2
3
4
[312]
The figures corresponding to Demeter and Hecate are supra-ordinate,
not to say over-life-size “Mothers” ranging from the Pietà type to the
Baubo type. The unconscious, which acts as a counterbalance to woman’s
conventional innocuousness, proves to be highly inventive in this latter
respect. I can recall only very few cases where Demeter’s own noble figure
in its pure form breaks through as an image rising spontaneously from the
unconscious. I remember a case, in fact, where a maiden-goddess appears
clad all in purest white, but carrying a black monkey in her arms. The
Earth Mother is always chthonic and is occasionally related to the moon,
either through the blood-sacrifice already mentioned, or through a childsacrifice, or else because she is adorned with a sickle moon. In pictorial or
plastic representations the Mother is dark deepening to black, or red (these
being her principal colours), and with a primitive or animal expression of
face; in form she not infrequently resembles the neolithic ideal of the
“Venus” of Brassempouy or that of Willendorf, or again the sleeper of Hal
5
Saflieni. Now and then I have come across multiple breasts, arranged like
those of a sow. The Earth Mother plays an important part in the woman’s
unconscious, for all her manifestations are described as “powerful.” This
shows that in such cases the Earth Mother element in the conscious mind is
abnormally weak and requires strengthening.
6
[313]
In view of all this it is, I admit, hardly understandable why such
figures should be reckoned as belonging to the type of “supraordinate
personality.” In a scientific investigation, however, one has to disregard
moral or aesthetic prejudices and let the facts speak for themselves. The
maiden is often described as not altogether human in the usual sense; she is
either of unknown or peculiar origin, or she looks strange or undergoes
strange experiences, from which one is forced to infer the maiden’s
extraordinary, myth-like nature. Equally and still more strikingly, the Earth
Mother is a divine being—in the classical sense. Moreover, she does not
by any means always appear in the guise of Baubo, but, for instance, more
like Queen Venus in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, though she is
invariably heavy with destiny. The often unaesthetic forms of the Earth
Mother are in keeping with a prejudice of the modern feminine
unconscious; this prejudice was lacking in antiquity. The underworld
nature of Hecate, who is closely connected with Demeter, and
Persephone’s fate both point nevertheless to the dark side of the human
psyche, though not to the same extent as the modern material.
[314]
The “supraordinate personality” is the total man, i.e., man as he really
is, not as he appears to himself. To this wholeness the unconscious psyche
also belongs, which has its requirements and needs just as consciousness
has. I do not want to interpret the unconscious personalistically and assert,
for instance, that fantasy-images like those described above are the “wishfulfilments” due to repression. These images were as such never conscious
and consequently could never have been repressed. I understand the
unconscious rather as an impersonal psyche common to all men, even
though it expresses itself through a personal consciousness. When anyone
breathes, his breathing is not a phenomenon to be interpreted personally.
The mythological images belong to the structure of the unconscious and
are an impersonal possession; in fact, the great majority of men are far
more possessed by them than possessing them. Images like those described
above give rise under certain conditions to corresponding disturbances and
symptoms, and it is then the task of medical therapy to find out whether
and how and to what extent these impulses can be integrated with the
conscious personality, or whether they are a secondary phenomenon which
some defective orientation of consciousness has brought out of its normal
potential state into actuality. Both possibilities exist in practice.
[315]
I usually describe the supraordinate personality as the “self,” thus
making a sharp distinction between the ego, which, as is well known,
extends only as far as the conscious mind, and the whole of the personality,
which includes the unconscious as well as the conscious component. The
ego is thus related to the self as part to whole. To that extent the self is
supraordinate. Moreover, the self is felt empirically not as subject but as
object, and this by reason of its unconscious component, which can only
come to consciousness indirectly, by way of projection. Because of its
unconscious component the self is so far removed from the conscious mind
that it can only be partially expressed by human figures; the other part of it
has to be expressed by objective, abstract symbols. The human figures are
father and son, mother and daughter, king and queen, god and goddess.
Theriomorphic symbols are the dragon, snake, elephant, lion, bear, and
other powerful animals, or again the spider, crab, butterfly, beetle, worm,
etc. Plant symbols are generally flowers (lotus and rose). These lead on to
geometrical figures like the circle, the sphere, the square, the quaternity,
the clock, the firmament, and so on. The indefinite extent of the
unconscious component makes a comprehensive description of the human
personality impossible. Accordingly, the unconscious supplements the
picture with living figures ranging from the animal to the divine, as the
two extremes outside man, and rounds out the animal extreme, through the
addition of vegetable and inorganic abstractions, into a microcosm. These
addenda have a high frequency in anthropomorphic divinities, where they
appear as “attributes.”
7
[316]
Demeter and Kore, mother and daughter, extend the feminine
consciousness both upwards and downwards. They add an “older and
younger,” “stronger and weaker” dimension to it and widen out the
narrowly limited conscious mind bound in space and time, giving it
intimations of a greater and more comprehensive personality which has a
share in the eternal course of things. We can hardly suppose that myth and
mystery were invented for any conscious purpose; it seems much more
likely that they were the involuntary revelation of a psychic, but
unconscious, pre-condition. The psyche pre-existent to consciousness (e.g.,
in the child) participates in the maternal psyche on the one hand, while on
the other it reaches across to the daughter psyche. We could therefore say
that every mother contains her daughter in herself and every daughter her
mother, and that every woman extends backwards into her mother and
forwards into her daughter. This participation and intermingling give rise
to that peculiar uncertainty as regards time: a woman lives earlier as a
mother, later as a daughter. The conscious experience of these ties
produces the feeling that her life is spread out over generations—the first
step towards the immediate experience and conviction of being outside
time, which brings with it a feeling of immortality. The individual’s life is
elevated into a type, indeed it becomes the archetype of woman’s fate in
general. This leads to a restoration or apocatastasis of the lives of her
ancestors, who now, through the bridge of the momentary individual, pass
down into the generations of the future. An experience of this kind gives
the individual a place and a meaning in the life of the generations, so that
all unnecessary obstacles are cleared out of the way of the life-stream that
is to flow through her. At the same time the individual is rescued from her
isolation and restored to wholeness. All ritual preoccupation with
archetypes ultimately has this aim and this result.
[317]
It is immediately clear to the psychologist what cathartic and at the
same rejuvenating effects must flow from the Demeter cult into the
feminine psyche, and what a lack of psychic hygiene characterizes our
culture, which no longer knows the kind of wholesome experience
afforded by Eleusinian emotions.
[318]
I take full account of the fact that not only the psychologically minded
layman but the professional psychologist and psychiatrist as well, and even
the psychotherapist, do not possess an adequate knowledge of their
patients’ archetypal material, in so far as they have not specially
investigated this aspect of the phenomenology of the unconscious. For it is
precisely in the field of psychiatric and psychotherapeutic observation that
we frequently meet with cases characterized by a rich crop of archetypal
symbols. Since the necessary historical knowledge is lacking to the
physician observing them, he is not in a position to perceive the
parallelism between his observations and the findings of anthropology and
8
the humane sciences in general. Conversely, an expert in mythology and
comparative religion is as a rule no psychiatrist and consequently does not
know that his mythologems are still fresh and living—for instance, in
dreams and visions—in the hidden recesses of our most personal life,
which we would on no account deliver up to scientific dissection. The
archetypal material is therefore the great unknown, and it requires special
study and preparation even to collect such material.
[319]
It does not seem to me superfluous to give a number of examples from
my case histories which bring out the occurrence of archetypal images in
dreams or fantasies. Time and again with my public I come across the
difficulty that they imagine illustration by “a few examples” to be the
simplest thing in the world. In actual fact it is almost impossible, with a
few words and one or two images torn out of their context, to demonstrate
anything. This only works when dealing with an expert. What Perseus has
to do with the Gorgon’s head would never occur to anyone who did not
know the myth. So it is with the individual images: they need a context,
and the context is not only a myth but an individual anamnesis. Such
contexts, however, are of enormous extent. Anything like a complete series
of images would require for its proper presentation a book of about two
hundred pages. My own investigation of the Miller fantasies gives some
idea of this. It is therefore with the greatest hesitation that I make the
attempt to illustrate from case-histories. The material I shall use comes
partly from normal, partly from slightly neurotic, persons. It is part dream,
part vision, or dream mixed with vision. These “visions” are far from
being hallucinations or ecstatic states; they are spontaneous, visual images
of fantasy or so-called active imagination. The latter is a method (devised
by myself) of introspection for observing the stream of interior images.
One concentrates one’s attention on some impressive but unintelligible
dream-image, or on a spontaneous visual impression, and observes the
changes taking place in it. Meanwhile, of course, all criticism must be
suspended and the happenings observed and noted with absolute
objectivity. Obviously, too, the objection that the whole thing is “arbitrary”
or “thought up” must be set aside, since it springs from the anxiety of an
ego-consciousness which brooks no master besides itself in its own house.
In other words, it is the inhibition exerted by the conscious mind on the
unconscious.
9
[320]
Under these conditions, long and often very dramatic series of
fantasies ensue. The advantage of this method is that it brings a mass of
unconscious material to light. Drawing, painting, and modelling can be
used to the same end. Once a visual series has become dramatic, it can
easily pass over into the auditive or linguistic sphere and give rise to
dialogues and the like. With slightly pathological individuals, and
particularly in the not infrequent cases of latent schizophrenia, the method
may, in certain circumstances, prove to be rather dangerous and therefore
requires medical control. It is based on a deliberate weakening of the
conscious mind and its inhibiting effect, which either limits or suppresses
the unconscious. The aim of the method is naturally therapeutic in the first
place, while in the second it also furnishes rich empirical material. Some
of our examples are taken from this. They differ from dreams only by
reason of their better form, which comes from the fact that the contents
were perceived not by a dreaming but by a waking consciousness. The
examples are from women in middle life.
1. Case X (spontaneous visual impressions, in chronological order)
[321]
i. “I saw a white bird with outstretched wings. It alighted on the figure
of a woman, clad in blue, who sat there like an antique statue. The bird
perched on her hand, and in it she held a grain of wheat. The bird took it
in its beak and flew into the sky again.”
[322]
For this X painted a picture: a blue-clad, archaically simple “Mother”figure on a white marble base. Her maternity is emphasized by the large
breasts.
[323]
ii. A bull lifts a child up from the ground and carries it to the antique
statue of a woman. A naked young girl with a wreath of flowers in her hair
appears, riding on a white bull. She takes the child and throws it into the
air like a ball and catches it again. The white bull carries them both to a
temple. The girl lays the child on the ground, and so on (initiation
follows).
[324]
In this picture the maiden appears, rather in the form of Europa. (Here
a certain school knowledge is being made use of.) Her nakedness and the
wreath of flowers point to Dionysian abandonment. The game of ball with
the child is the motif of some secret rite which always has to do with
“child-sacrifice.” (Cf. the accusations of ritual murder levelled by the
pagans against the Christians and by the Christians against the Jews and
Gnostics; also the Phoenician child-sacrifices, rumours about the Black
Mass, etc., and “the ball-game in church.”)
10
[325]
iii. “I saw a golden pig on a pedestal. Beast-like beings danced round
it in a circle. We made haste to dig a hole in the ground. I reached in and
found water. Then a man appeared in a golden carriage. He jumped into
the hole and began swaying back and forth, as if dancing…. I swayed in
rhythm with him. Then he suddenly leaped out of the hole, raped me, and
got me with child.”
[326]
X is identical with the young girl, who often appears as a youth, too.
This youth is an animus-figure, the embodiment of the masculine element
in a woman. Youth and young girl together form a syzygy or coniunctio
which symbolizes the essence of wholeness (as also does the Platonic
hermaphrodite, who later became the symbol of perfected wholeness in
alchemical philosophy). X evidently dances with the rest, hence “we made
haste.” The parallel with the motifs stressed by Kerényi seems to me
remarkable.
[327]
iv. “I saw a beautiful youth with golden cymbals, dancing and leaping
in joy and abandonment…. Finally he fell to the ground and buried his
face in the flowers. Then he sank into the lap of a very old mother. After a
time he got up and jumped into the water, where he sported like a
dolphin…. I saw that his hair was golden. Now we were leaping together,
hand in hand. So we came to a gorge….” In leaping the gorge the youth
falls into the chasm. X is left alone and comes to a river where a white seahorse is waiting for her with a golden boat.
[328]
In this scene X is the youth; therefore he disappears later, leaving her
the sole heroine of the story. She is the child of the “very old mother,” and
is also the dolphin, the youth lost in the gorge, and the bride evidently
expected by Poseidon. The peculiar overlapping and displacement of
motifs in all this individual material is about the same as in the
mythological variants. X found the youth in the lap of the mother so
impressive that she painted a picture of it. The figure is the same as in item
i; only, instead of the grain of wheat in her hand, there is the body of the
youth lying completely exhausted in the lap of the gigantic mother.
[329]
v. There now follows a sacrifice of sheep, during which a game of ball
is likewise played with the sacrificial animal. The participants smear
themselves with the sacrificial blood, and afterwards bathe in the pulsing
gore. X is thereupon transformed into a plant.
[330]
vi. After that X comes to a den of snakes, and the snakes wind all
round her.
[331]
vii. In a den of snakes beneath the sea there is a divine woman,
asleep. (She is shown in the picture as much larger than the others.) She is
wearing a blood-red garment that covers only the lower half of her body.
She has a dark skin, full red lips, and seems to be of great physical
strength. She kisses X, who is obviously in the role of the young girl, and
hands her as a present to the many men who are standing by, etc.
[332]
This chthonic goddess is the typical Earth Mother as she appears in so
many modern fantasies.
[333]
viii. As X emerged from the depths and saw the light again, she
experienced a kind of illumination: white flames played about her head as
she walked through waving fields of grain.
[334]
With this picture the Mother-episode ended. Although there is not the
slightest trace of any known myth being repeated, the motifs and the
connections between them are all familiar to us from mythology. These
images present themselves spontaneously and are based on no conscious
knowledge whatever. I have applied the method of active imagination to
myself over a long time and have observed numerous symbols and
symbolic associations which in many cases I was only able to verify years
afterwards in texts of whose existence I was totally ignorant. It is the same
with dreams. Some years ago I dreamed for example that: I was climbing
slowly and toilsomely up a mountain. When I had reached, as I imagined,
the top, I found that I was standing on the edge of a plateau. The crest that
represented the real top of the mountain only rose far off in the distance.
Night was coming on, and I saw, on the dark slope opposite, a brook
flowing down with a metallic shimmer, and two paths leading upwards,
one to the left, the other to the right, winding like serpents. On the crest, to
the right, there was a hotel. Down below, the brook ran to the left with a
bridge leading across.
[335]
Not long afterwards I discovered the following “allegory” in an
obscure alchemical treatise. In his Speculativae philosophiae the
Frankfurt physician Gerard Dorn, who lived in the second half of the
sixteenth century, describes the “Mundi peregrinatio, quam erroris viam
appellamus” (Tour of the world, which we call the way of error) on the one
hand and the “Via veritatis” on the other. Of the first way the author says:
11
The human race, whose nature it is to resist God, does not cease to ask
how it may, by its own efforts, escape the pitfalls which it has laid for
itself. But it does not ask help from Him on whom alone depends every
gift of mercy. Hence it has come about that men have built for
themselves a great Workshop on the left-hand side of the road …
presided over by Industry. After this has been attained, they turn aside
from Industry and bend their steps towards the second region of the
world, making their crossing on the bridge of infirmity…. But because
the good God desires to draw them back. He allows their infirmities to
rule over them; then, seeking as before a remedy in themselves
[industry!], they flock to the great Hospital likewise built on the left,
presided over by Medicine. Here there is a great multitude of
apothecaries, surgeons, and physicians, [etc.].
12
[336]
Of the “way of truth,” which is the “right” way, our author says: “…
you will come to the camp of Wisdom and on being received there, you
will be refreshed with food far more powerful than before.” Even the
brook is there: “… a stream of living water flowing with such wonderful
artifice from the mountain peak. (From the Fountain of Wisdom the waters
gush forth.)”
13
[337]
An important difference, compared with my dream, is that here, apart
from the situation of the hotel being reversed, the river of Wisdom is on
the right and not, as in my dream, in the middle of the picture.
[338]
It is evident that in my dream we are not dealing with any known
“myth” but with a group of ideas which might easily have been regarded as
“individual,” i.e., unique. A thorough analysis, however, could show
without difficulty that it is an archetypal image such as can be reproduced
over and over again in any age and any place. But I must admit that the
archetypal nature of the dream-image only became clear to me when I read
Dorn. These and similar incidents I have observed repeatedly not only in
myself but in my patients. But, as this example shows, it needs special
attention if such parallels are not to be missed.
[339]
The antique Mother-image is not exhausted with the figure of
Demeter. It also expresses itself in Cybele-Artemis. The next case points in
this direction.
2. Case Y (dreams)
[340]
i. “I am wandering over a great mountain; the way is lonely, wild, and
difficult. A woman comes down from the sky to accompany and help me.
She is all bright with light hair and shining eyes. Now and then she
vanishes. After going on for some time alone I notice that I have left my
stick somewhere, and must turn back to fetch it. To do this I have to pass a
terrible monster, an enormous bear. When I came this way the first time I
had to pass it, but then the sky-woman protected me. Just as I am passing
the beast and he is about to come at me, she stands beside me again, and
at her look the bear lies down quietly and lets us pass. Then the skywoman vanishes.”
[341]
Here we have a maternally protective goddess related to bears, a kind
of Diana or the Gallo-Roman Dea Artio. The sky-woman is the positive,
the bear the negative aspect of the “supraordinate personality,” which
extends the conscious human being upwards into the celestial and
downwards into the animal regions.
[342]
ii. “We go through a door into a tower-like room, where we climb a
long flight of steps. On one of the topmost steps I read an inscription: ‘Vis
ut sis.’ The steps end in a temple situated on the crest of a wooded
mountain, and there is no other approach. It is the shrine of Ursanna, the
bear-goddess and Mother of God in one. The temple is of red stone.
Bloody sacrifices are offered there. Animals are standing about the altar.
In order to enter the temple precincts one has to be transformed into an
animal—a beast of the forest. The temple has the form of a cross with
equal arms and a circular space in the middle, which is not roofed, so that
one can look straight up at the sky and the constellation of the Bear. On
the altar in the middle of the open space there stands the moon-bowl, from
which smoke or vapour continually rises. There is also a huge image of the
goddess, but it cannot be seen clearly. The worshippers, who have been
changed into animals and to whom I also belong, have to touch the
goddess’s foot with their own foot, whereupon the image gives them a sign
or an oracular utterance like ‘Vis ut sis.’”
[343]
In this dream the bear-goddess emerges plainly, although her statue
“cannot be seen clearly.” The relationship to the self, the supraordinate
personality, is indicated not only by the oracle “Vis ut sis” but by the
quaternity and the circular central precinct of the temple. From ancient
times any relationship to the stars has always symbolized eternity. The
soul comes “from the stars” and returns to the stellar regions. “Ursanna’s”
relation to the moon is indicated by the “moon-bowl.”
[344]
The moon-goddess also appears in children’s dreams. A girl who grew
up in peculiarly difficult psychic circumstances had a recurrent dream
between her seventh and tenth years: “The moon-lady was always waiting
for me down by the water at the landing-stage, to take me to her island.”
Unfortunately she could never remember what happened there, but it was
so beautiful that she often prayed she might have this dream again.
Although, as is evident, the two dreamers are not identical, the island motif
also occurred in the previous dream as the inaccessible mountain crest.
[345]
Thirty years later, the dreamer of the moon-lady had a dramatic
fantasy:
[346]
“I am climbing a steep dark mountain, on top of which stands a domed
castle. I enter and go up a winding stairway to the left. Arriving inside the
dome, I find myself in the presence of a woman wearing a head-dress of
cow’s horns. I recognize her immediately as the moon-lady of my
childhood dreams. At her behest I look to the right and see a dazzlingly
bright sun shining on the other side of a deep chasm. Over the chasm
stretches a narrow, transparent bridge, upon which I step, conscious of the
fact that in no circumstances must I look down. An uncanny fear seizes me,
and I hesitate. Treachery seems to be in the air, but at last I go across and
stand before the sun. The sun speaks: ‘If you can approach me nine times
without being burned, all will be well.’ But I grow more and more afraid,
finally I do look down, and I see a black tentacle like that of an octopus
groping towards me from underneath the sun. I step back in fright and
plunge into the abyss. But instead of being dashed to pieces I lie in the
arms of the Earth Mother. When I try to look into her face, she turns to
clay, and I find myself lying on the earth.”
[347]
It is remarkable how the beginning of this fantasy agrees with the
dream. The moon-lady above is clearly distinguished from the Earth
Mother below. The former urges the dreamer to her somewhat perilous
adventure with the sun; the latter catches her protectively in her maternal
arms. The dreamer, as the one in danger, would therefore seem to be in the
role of the Kore.
[348]
Let us now turn back to our dream-series:
[349]
iii. Y sees two pictures in a dream, painted by the Scandinavian
painter Hermann Christian Lund.
I. “The first picture is of a Scandinavian peasant room. Peasant girls
in gay costumes are walking about arm in arm (that is, in a row). The
middle one is smaller than the rest and, besides this, has a hump and
keeps turning her head back. This, together with her peculiar glance,
gives her a witchlike look.”
II. “The second picture shows a dragon with its neck stretched out
over the whole picture and especially over a girl, who is in the dragon’s
power and cannot move, for as soon as she moves, the dragon, which
can make its body big or little at will, moves too; and when the girl
wants to get away it simply stretches out its neck over her, and so
catches her again. Strangely enough, the girl has no face, at least I
couldn’t see it.”
[350]
The painter is an invention of the dream. The animus often appears as
a painter or has some kind of projection apparatus, or is a cinema-operator
or owner of a picture-gallery. All this refers to the animus as the function
mediating between conscious and unconscious: the unconscious contains
pictures which are transmitted, that is, made manifest, by the animus,
either as fantasies or, unconsciously, in the patient’s own life and actions.
The animus-projection gives rise to fantasied relations of love and hatred
for “heroes” or “demons.” The favourite victims are tenors, artists, moviestars, athletic champions, etc. In the first picture the maiden is
characterized as demonic, with a hump and an evil look “over her
shoulder.” (Hence amulets against the evil eye are often worn by
primitives on the nape of the neck, for the vulnerable spot is at the back,
where you can’t see.)
[351]
In the second picture the “maiden” is portrayed as the innocent victim
of the monster. Just as before there was a relationship of identity between
the sky-woman and the bear, so here between the young girl and the
dragon—which in practical life is often rather more than just a bad joke.
Here it signifies a widening of the conscious personality, i.e., through the
helplessness of the victim on the one hand and the dangers of the
humpback’s evil eye and the dragon’s might on the other.
[352]
iv (part dream, part visual imagination). “A magician is demonstrating
his tricks to an Indian prince. He produces a beautiful young girl from
under a cloth. She is a dancer, who has the power to change her shape or
at least hold her audience spell-bound by faultless illusion. During the
dance she dissolves with the music into a swarm of bees. Then she changes
into a leopard, then into a jet of water, then into an octopus that has
twined itself about a young pearl-fisher. Between times, she takes human
form again at the dramatic moment. She appears as a she-ass bearing two
baskets of wonderful fruits. Then she becomes a many-coloured peacock.
The prince is beside himself with delight and calls her to him. But she
dances on, now naked, and even tears the skin from her body, and finally
falls down—a naked skeleton. This is buried, but at night a lily grows out
of the grave, and from its cup there rises a white lady, who floats slowly up
to the sky.”
[353]
This piece describes the successive transformations of the illusionist
(artistry in illusion being a specifically feminine talent) until she becomes
a transfigured personality. The fantasy was not invented as a sort of
allegory; it was part dream, part spontaneous imagery.
[354]
v. “I am in a church made of grey sandstone. The apse is built rather
high. Near the tabernacle a girl in a red dress is hanging on the stone
cross of the window. (Suicide?)”
[355]
Just as in the preceding cases the sacrifice of a child or a sheep played
a part, so here the sacrifice of the maiden hanging on the “cross.” The
death of the dancer is also to be understood in this sense, for these maidens
are always doomed to die, because their exclusive domination of the
feminine psyche hinders the individuation process, that is, the maturation
of personality. The “maiden” corresponds to the anima of the man and
makes use of it to gain her natural ends, in which illusion plays the greatest
role imaginable. But as long as a woman is content to be a femme à
homme, she has no feminine individuality. She is empty and merely glitters
—a welcome vessel for masculine projections. Woman as a personality,
however, is a very different thing: here illusion no longer works. So that
when the question of personality arises, which is as a rule the painful fact
of the second half of life, the childish form of the self disappears too.
[356]
All that remains for me now is to describe the Kore as observable in
man, the anima. Since a man’s wholeness, in so far as he is not
constitutionally homosexual, can only be a masculine personality, the
feminine figure of the anima cannot be catalogued as a type of
supraordinate personality but requires a different evaluation and position.
In the products of unconscious activity, the anima appears equally as
maiden and mother, which is why a personalistic interpretation always
reduces her to the personal mother or some other female person. The real
meaning of the figure naturally gets lost in the process, as is inevitably the
case with all these reductive interpretations whether in the sphere of the
psychology of the unconscious or of mythology. The innumerable attempts
that have been made in the sphere of mythology to interpret gods and
heroes in a solar, lunar, astral, or meteorological sense contribute nothing
of importance to the understanding of them; on the contrary, they all put us
on a false track. When, therefore, in dreams and other spontaneous
products, we meet with an unknown female figure whose significance
oscillates between the extremes of goddess and whore, it is advisable to let
her keep her independence and not reduce her arbitrarily to something
known. If the unconscious shows her as an “unknown,” this attribute
should not be got rid of by main force with a view to arriving at a
“rational” interpretation. Like the “supraordinate personality,” the anima is
bipolar and can therefore appear positive one moment and negative the
next; now young, now old; now mother, now maiden; now a good fairy,
now a witch; now a saint, now a whore. Besides this ambivalence, the
anima also has “occult” connections with “mysteries,” with the world of
darkness in general, and for that reason she often has a religious tinge.
Whenever she emerges with some degree of clarity, she always has a
peculiar relationship to time: as a rule she is more or less immortal,
because outside time. Writers who have tried their hand at this figure have
never failed to stress the anima’s peculiarity in this respect. I would refer
to the classic descriptions in Rider Haggard’s She and The Return of She,
in Pierre Benoît’s L’Atlantide, and above all in the novel of the young
American author, William M. Sloane, To Walk the Night. In all these
accounts, the anima is outside time as we know it and consequently
immensely old or a being who belongs to a different order of things.
[357]
Since we can no longer or only partially express the archetypes of the
unconscious by means of figures in which we religiously believe, they
lapse into unconsciousness again and hence are unconsciously projected
upon more or less suitable human personalities. To the young boy a clearly
discernible anima-form appears in his mother, and this lends her the
radiance of power and superiority or else a daemonic aura of even greater
fascination. But because of the anima’s ambivalence, the projection can be
entirely negative. Much of the fear which the female sex arouses in men is
due to the projection of the anima-image. An infantile man generally has a
maternal anima; an adult man, the figure of a younger woman. The senile
man finds compensation in a very young girl, or even a child.
[3. Case Z]
[358]
The anima also has affinities with animals, which symbolize her
characteristics. Thus she can appear as a snake or a tiger or a bird. I quote
by way of example a dream-series that contains transformations of this
kind:
14
[359]
i. A white bird perches on a table. Suddenly it changes into a fairhaired seven-year-old girl and just as suddenly back into a bird, which
now speaks with a human voice.
[360]
ii. In an underground house, which is really the underworld, there
lives an old magician and prophet with his “daughter.” She is, however,
not really his daughter; she is a dancer, a very loose person, but is blind
and seeks healing.
[361]
iii. A lonely house in a wood, where an old scholar is living. Suddenly
his daughter appears, a kind of ghost, complaining that people only look
upon her as a figment of fancy.
[362]
iv. On the façade of a church there is a Gothic Madonna, who is
alive and is the “unknown and yet known woman.” Instead of a child,
she holds in her arms a sort of flame or a snake or a dragon.
[363]
v. A black-clad “countess” kneels in a dark chapel. Her dress is hung
with costly pearls. She has red hair, and there is something uncanny about
her. Moreover, she is surrounded by the spirits of the dead.
[364]
vi. A female snake comports herself tenderly and insinuatingly,
speaking with a human voice. She is only “accidentally” shaped like a
snake.
[365]
vii. A bird speaks with the same voice, but shows herself helpful by
trying to rescue the dreamer from a dangerous situation.
[366]
viii. The unknown woman sits, like the dreamer, on the tip of a
church-spire and stares at him uncannily across the abyss.
[367]
ix. The unknown woman suddenly appears as an old female attendant
in an underground public lavatory with a temperature of 40° below zero.
[368]
x. The unknown woman leaves the house as a petite bourgeoise with a
female relation, and in her place there is suddenly an over-life-size
goddess clad in blue, looking like Athene.
[369]
xi. Then she appears in a church, taking the place of the altar, still
over-life-size but with veiled face.
[370]
In all these dreams the central figure is a mysterious feminine being
with qualities like those of no woman known to the dreamer. The unknown
is described as such in the dreams themselves, and reveals her
extraordinary nature firstly by her power to change shape and secondly by
her paradoxical ambivalence. Every conceivable shade of meaning glitters
in her, from the highest to the lowest.
15
[371]
Dream i shows the anima as elflike, i.e., only partially human. She can
just as well be a bird, which means that she may belong wholly to nature
and can vanish (i.e., become unconscious) from the human sphere (i.e.,
consciousness).
[372]
Dream ii shows the unknown woman as a mythological figure from
the beyond (the unconscious). She is the soror or filia mystica of a
hierophant or “philosopher,” evidently a parallel to those mystic syzygies
which are to be met with in the figures of Simon Magus and Helen,
Zosimus and Theosebeia, Comarius and Cleopatra, etc. Our dream-figure
fits in best with Helen. A really admirable description of anima-
psychology in a woman is to be found in Erskine’s Helen of Troy.
[373]
Dream iii presents the same theme, but on a more “fairytale-like”
plane. Here the anima is shown as rather spookish.
[374]
Dream iv brings the anima nearer to the Mother of God. The “child”
refers to the mystic speculations on the subject of the redemptive serpent
and the “fiery” nature of the redeemer.
[375]
In dream v, the anima is visualized somewhat romantically as the
“distinguished” fascinating woman, who nevertheless has dealings with
spirits.
[376]
Dreams vi and vii bring theriomorphic variations. The anima’s
identity is at once apparent to the dreamer because of the voice and what it
says. The anima has “accidentally” taken the form of a snake, just as in
dream i she changed with the greatest ease into a bird and back again. As a
snake, she is playing the negative role, as a bird the positive.
[377]
Dream viii shows the dreamer confronted with his anima. This takes
place high above the ground (i.e., above human reality). Obviously it is a
case of dangerous fascination by the anima.
[378]
Dream ix signifies the anima’s deep plunge into an extremely
“subordinate” position, where the last trace of fascination has gone and
only human sympathy is left.
[379]
Dream x shows the paradoxical double nature of the anima: banal
mediocrity and Olympian divinity.
[380]
Dream xi restores the anima to the Christian church, not as an icon but
as the altar itself. The altar is the place of sacrifice and also the receptacle
for consecrated relics.
[381]
To throw even a moderate light on all these anima associations would
require special and very extensive investigation, which would be out of
place here because, as we have already said, the anima has only an indirect
bearing on the interpretation of the Kore figure. I have presented this
dream-series simply for the purpose of giving the reader some idea of the
empirical material on which the idea of the anima is based. From this
series and others like it we get an average picture of that strange factor
which has such an important part to play in the masculine psyche, and
16
which naïve presumption invariably identifies with certain women,
imputing to them all the illusions that swarm in the male Eros.
[382]
It seems clear enough that the man’s anima found occasion for
projection in the Demeter cult. The Kore doomed to her subterranean fate,
the two-faced mother, and the theriomorphic aspects of both afforded the
anima ample opportunity to reflect herself, shimmering and equivocal, in
the Eleusinian cult, or rather to experience herself there and fill the
celebrants with her unearthly essence, to their lasting gain. For a man,
anima experiences are always of immense and abiding significance.
[383]
But the Demeter-Kore myth is far too feminine to have been merely
the result of an anima-projection. Although the anima can, as we have said,
experience herself in Demeter-Kore, she is yet of a wholly different nature.
She is in the highest degree femme à homme, whereas Demeter-Kore exists
on the plane of mother-daughter experience, which is alien to man and
shuts him out. In fact, the psychology of the Demeter cult bears all the
features of a matriarchal order of society, where the man is an
indispensable but on the whole disturbing factor.
V
THE PHENOMENOLOGY
OF THE SPIRIT IN FAIRYTALES
______
ON THE PSYCHOLOGY
OF THE TRICKSTER-FIGURE
THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE SPIRIT IN
FAIRYTALES1
[384]
One of the unbreakable rules in scientific research is to take an object
as known only so far as the inquirer is in a position to make scientifically
valid statements about it. “Valid” in this sense simply means what can be
verified by facts. The object of inquiry is the natural phenomenon. Now in
psychology, one of the most important phenomena is the statement, and in
particular its form and content, the latter aspect being perhaps the more
significant with regard to the nature of the psyche. The first task that
ordinarily presents itself is the description and arrangement of events, then
comes the closer examination into the laws of their living behaviour. To
inquire into the substance of what has been observed is possible in natural
science only where there is an Archimedean point outside. For the psyche,
no such outside standpoint exists—only the psyche can observe the
psyche. Consequently, knowledge of the psychic substance is impossible
for us, at least with the means at present available. This does not rule out
the possibility that the atomic physics of the future may supply us with the
said Archimedean point. For the time being, however, our subtlest
lucubrations can establish no more than is expressed in the statement: this
is how the psyche behaves. The honest investigator will piously refrain
from meddling with questions of substance. I do not think it superfluous to
acquaint my reader with the necessary limitations that psychology
voluntarily imposes on itself, for he will then be in a position to appreciate
the phenomenological standpoint of modern psychology, which is not
always understood. This standpoint does not exclude the existence of faith,
conviction, and experienced certainties of whatever description, nor does it
contest their possible validity. Great as is their importance for the
individual and for collective life, psychology completely lacks the means
to prove their validity in the scientific sense. One may lament this
incapacity on the part of science, but that does not enable it to jump over
its own shadow.
I. CONCERNING THE WORD ‘SPIRIT’
[385]
The word “spirit” possesses such a wide range of application that it
requires considerable effort to make clear to oneself all the things it can
mean. Spirit, we say, is the principle that stands in opposition to matter. By
this we understand an immaterial substance or form of existence which on
the highest and most universal level is called “God.” We imagine this
immaterial substance also as the vehicle of psychic phenomena or even of
life itself. In contradiction to this view there stands the antithesis: spirit and
nature. Here the concept of spirit is restricted to the supernatural or antinatural, and has lost its substantial connection with psyche and life. A
similar restriction is implied in Spinoza’s view that spirit is an attribute of
the One Substance. Hylozoism goes even further, taking spirit to be a
quality of matter.
[386]
A very widespread view conceives spirit as a higher and psyche as a
lower principle of activity, and conversely the alchemists thought of spirit
as the ligamentum animae et corporis, obviously regarding it as a spiritus
vegetativus (the later life-spirit or nerve-spirit). Equally common is the
view that spirit and psyche are essentially the same and can be separated
only arbitrarily. Wundt takes spirit as “the inner being, regardless of any
connection with an outer being.” Others restrict spirit to certain psychic
capacities or functions or qualities, such as the capacity to think and reason
in contradistinction to the more “soulful” sentiments. Here spirit means the
sum-total of all the phenomena of rational thought, or of the intellect,
including the will, memory, imagination, creative power, and aspirations
motivated by ideals. Spirit has the further connotation of sprightliness, as
when we say that a person is “spirited,” meaning that he is versatile and
full of ideas, with a brilliant, witty, and surprising turn of mind. Again,
spirit denotes a certain attitude or the principle underlying it, for instance,
one is “educated in the spirit of Pestalozzi,” or one says that the “spirit of
Weimar is the immortal German heritage.” A special instance is the timespirit, or spirit of the age, which stands for the principle and motive force
behind certain views, judgments, and actions of a collective nature. Then
there is the “objective spirit,” by which is meant the whole stock of man’s
cultural possessions with particular regard to his intellectual and religious
achievements.
2
[387]
As linguistic usage shows, spirit in the sense of an attitude has
unmistakable leanings towards personification: the spirit of Pestalozzi can
also be taken concretistically as his ghost or imago, just as the spirits of
Weimar are the personal spectres of Goethe and Schiller; for spirit still has
the spookish meaning of the soul of one departed. The “cold breath of the
spirits” points on the one hand to the ancient affinity of ψυχή with ψυχóς
and ψūχος, which both mean ‘cold,’ and on the other hand to the original
meaning of πνεūμα, which simply denoted ‘air in motion’; and in the same
way animus and anima were connected with áνεμος, ‘wind.’ The German
word Geist probably has more to do with something frothing, effervescing,
or fermenting; hence affinities with Gischt (foam), Gäscht (yeast), ghost,
and also with the emotional ghastly and aghast, are not to be rejected.
From time immemorial emotion has been regarded as possession, which is
why we still say today, of a hot-tempered person, that he is possessed of a
devil or that an evil spirit has entered into him. Just as, according to the
old view, the spirits or souls of the dead are of a subtle disposition like a
vapour or a smoke, so to the alchemist spiritus was a subtle, volatile,
active, and vivifying essence, such as alcohol was understood to be, and all
the arcane substances. On this level, spirit includes spirits of salts, spirits
of ammonia, formic spirit, etc.
3
[388]
This score or so of meanings and shades of meaning attributable to the
word “spirit” make it difficult for the psychologist to delimit his subject
conceptually, but on the other hand they lighten the task of describing it,
since the many different aspects go to form a vivid and concrete picture of
the phenomenon in question. We are concerned with a functional complex
which originally, on the primitive level, was felt as an invisible, breathlike
“presence.” William James has given us a lively account of this primordial
phenomenon in his Varieties of Religious Experience. Another well-known
example is the wind of the Pentecostal miracle. The primitive mentality
finds it quite natural to personify the invisible presence as a ghost or
demon. The souls or spirits of the dead are identical with the psychic
activity of the living; they merely continue it. The view that the psyche is a
spirit is implicit in this. When therefore something psychic happens in the
individual which he feels as belonging to himself, that something is his
own spirit. But if anything psychic happens which seems to him strange,
then it is somebody else’s spirit, and it may be causing a possession. The
spirit in the first case corresponds to the subjective attitude, in the latter
case to public opinion, to the time-spirit, or to the original, not yet human,
anthropoid disposition which we also call the unconscious.
[389]
In keeping with its original wind-nature, spirit is always an active,
winged, swift-moving being as well as that which vivifies, stimulates,
incites, fires, and inspires. To put it in modern language, spirit is the
dynamic principle, forming for that very reason the classical antithesis of
matter—the antithesis, that is, of its stasis and inertia. Basically it is the
contrast between life and death The subsequent differentiation of this
contrast leads to the actually very remarkable opposition of spirit and
nature. Even though spirit is regarded as essentially alive and enlivening,
one cannot really feel nature as unspiritual and dead. We must therefore be
dealing here with the (Christian) postulate of a spirit whose life is so vastly
superior to the life of nature that in comparison with it the latter is no
better than death.
[390]
This special development in man’s idea of spirit rests on the
recognition that its invisible presence is a psychic phenomenon, i.e., one’s
own spirit, and that this consists not only of uprushes of life but of formal
products too. Among the first, the most prominent are the images and
shadowy presentations that occupy our inner field of vision; among the
second, thinking and reason, which organize the world of images. In this
way a transcendent spirit superimposed itself upon the original, natural
life-spirit and even swung over to the opposite position, as though the
latter were merely naturalistic. The transcendent spirit became the
supranatural and transmundane cosmic principle of order and as such was
given the name of “God,” or at least it became an attribute of the One
Substance (as in Spinoza) or one Person of the Godhead (as in
Christianity).
[391]
The corresponding development of spirit in the reverse, hylozoistic
direction—a maiori ad minus—took place under anti-Christian auspices in
materialism. The premise underlying this reaction is the exclusive certainty
of the spirit’s identity with psychic functions, whose dependence upon
brain and metabolism became increasingly clear. One had only to give the
One Substance another name and call it “matter” to produce the idea of a
spirit which was entirely dependent on nutrition and environment, and
whose highest form was the intellect or reason. This meant that the original
pneumatic presence had taken up its abode in man’s physiology, and a
writer like Klages could arraign the spirit as the “adversary of the soul.”
For it was into this latter concept that the original spontaneity of the spirit
withdrew after it had been degraded to a servile attribute of matter.
Somewhere or other the deus ex machina quality of spirit had to be
preserved—if not in the spirit itself, then in its synonym the soul, that
glancing, Aeolian thing, elusive as a butterfly (anima, ψυχή).
4
5
[392]
Even though the materialistic conception of the spirit did not prevail
everywhere, it still persisted, outside the sphere of religion, in the realm of
conscious phenomena. Spirit as “subjective spirit” came to mean a purely
endopsychic phenomenon, while “objective spirit” did not mean the
universal spirit, or God, but merely the sum total of intellectual and
cultural possessions which make up our human institutions and the content
of our libraries. Spirit had forfeited its original nature, its autonomy and
spontaneity over a very wide area, with the solitary exception of the
religious field, where, at least in principle, its pristine character remained
unimpaired.
In this résumé we have described an entity which presents itself to us
as an immediate psychic phenomenon distinguished from other
psychisms whose existence is naïvely believed to be causally dependent
upon physical influences. A connection between spirit and physical
conditions is not immediately apparent, and for this reason it was
credited with immateriality to a much higher degree than was the case
with psychic phenomena in the narrower sense. Not only is a certain
physical dependence attributed to the latter, but they are themselves
thought of as possessing a kind of materiality, as the idea of the subtle
body and the Chinese kuei-soul clearly show. In view of the intimate
connection that exists between certain psychic processes and their
physical parallels we cannot very well accept the total immateriality of
the psyche. As against this, the consensus omnium insists on the
immateriality of spirit, though not everyone would agree that it also has
a reality of its own. It is, however, not easy to see why our hypothetical
“matter,” which looks quite different from what it did even thirty years
ago, alone should be real, and spirit not. Although the idea of
immateriality does not in itself exclude that of reality, popular opinion
invariably associates reality with materiality. Spirit and matter may well
be forms of one and the same transcendental being. For instance the
Tantrists, with as much right, say that matter is nothing other than the
concreteness of God’s thoughts. The sole immediate reality is the
psychic reality of conscious contents, which are as it were labelled with
a spiritual or material origin as the case may be.
[393]
The hallmarks of spirit are, firstly, the principle of spontaneous
movement and activity; secondly, the spontaneous capacity to produce
images independently of sense perception; and thirdly, the autonomous
and sovereign manipulation of these images. This spiritual entity
approaches primitive man from outside; but with increasing development it
gets lodged in man’s consciousness and becomes a subordinate function,
thus apparently forfeiting its original character of autonomy. That
character is now retained only in the most conservative views, namely in
the religions. The descent of spirit into the sphere of human consciousness
is expressed in the myth of the divine νοūς caught in the embrace of ϕúσις.
This process, continuing over the ages, is probably an unavoidable
necessity, and the religions would find themselves in a very forlorn
situation if they believed in the attempt to hold up evolution. Their task, if
they are well advised, is not to impede the ineluctable march of events, but
to guide it in such a way that it can proceed without fatal injury to the soul.
The religions should therefore constantly recall to us the origin and
original character of the spirit, lest man should forget what he is drawing
into himself and with what he is filling his consciousness. He himself did
not create the spirit, rather the spirit makes him creative, always spurring
him on, giving him lucky ideas, staying power, “enthusiasm” and
“inspiration.” So much, indeed, does it permeate his whole being that he is
in gravest danger of thinking that he actually created the spirit and that he
“has” it. In reality, however, the primordial phenomenon of the spirit takes
possession of him, and, while appearing to be the willing object of human
intentions, it binds his freedom, just as the physical world does, with a
thousand chains and becomes an obsessive idée-force. Spirit threatens the
naïve-minded man with inflation, of which our own times have given us
the most horribly instructive examples. The danger becomes all the greater
the more our interest fastens upon external objects and the more we forget
that the differentiation of our relation to nature should go hand in hand
with a correspondingly differentiated relation to the spirit, so as to
establish the necessary balance. If the outer object is not offset by an inner,
unbridled materialism results, coupled with maniacal arrogance or else the
extinction of the autonomous personality, which is in any case the ideal of
the totalitarian mass state.
[394]
As can readily be seen, the common modern idea of spirit ill accords
with the Christian view, which regards it as the sum-mum bonum, as God
himself. To be sure, there is also the idea of an evil spirit. But the modern
idea cannot be equated with that either, since for us spirit is not necessarily
evil; we would have to call it morally indifferent or neutral. When the
Bible says “God is spirit,” it sounds more like the definition of a substance,
or like a qualification. But the devil too, it seems, is endowed with the
same peculiar spiritual substance, albeit an evil and corrupt one. The
original identity of substance is still expressed in the idea of the fallen
angel, as well as in the close connection between Jehovah and Satan in the
Old Testament. There may be an echo of this primitive connection in the
Lord’s Prayer, where we say “Lead us not into temptation”—for is not this
really the business of the tempter, the devil himself?
[395]
This brings us to a point we have not considered at all in the course of
our observations so far. We have availed ourselves of cultural and
everyday conceptions which are the product of human consciousness and
its reflections, in order to form a picture of the psychic modes of
manifestation of the factor “spirit.” But we have yet to consider that
because of its original autonomy, about which there can be no doubt in the
psychological sense, the spirit is quite capable of staging its own
manifestations spontaneously.
6
II. SELF-REPRESENTATION OF THE SPIRIT IN DREAMS
[396]
The psychic manifestations of the spirit indicate at once that they are
of an archetypal nature—in other words, the phenomenon we call spirit
depends on the existence of an autonomous primordial image which is
universally present in the preconscious makeup of the human psyche. As
usual, I first came up against this problem when investigating the dreams
of my patients. It struck me that a certain kind of father-complex has a
“spiritual” character, so to speak, in the sense that the father-image gives
rise to statements, actions, tendencies, impulses, opinions, etc., to which
one could hardly deny the attribute “spiritual.” In men, a positive fathercomplex very often produces a certain credulity with regard to authority
and a distinct willingness to bow down before all spiritual dogmas and
values; while in women, it induces the liveliest spiritual aspirations and
interests. In dreams, it is always the father-figure from whom the decisive
convictions, prohibitions, and wise counsels emanate. The invisibility of
this source is frequently emphasized by the fact that it consists simply of
an authoritative voice which passes final judgments. Mostly, therefore, it
is the figure of a “wise old man” who symbolizes the spiritual factor.
Sometimes the part is played by a “real” spirit, namely the ghost of one
dead, or, more rarely, by grotesque gnomelike figures or talking animals.
The dwarf forms are found, at least in my experience, mainly in women;
hence it seems to me logical that in Ernst Barlach’s play Der tote Tag
(1912), the gnomelike figure of Steissbart (“Rumpbeard”) is associated
with the mother, just as Bes is associated with the mother-goddess at
Karnak. In both sexes the spirit can also take the form of a boy or a youth.
In women he corresponds to the so-called “positive” animus who indicates
the possibility of conscious spiritual effort. In men his meaning is not so
simple. He can be positive, in which case he signifies the “higher”
personality, the self or filius regius as conceived by the alchemists. But he
can also be negative, and then he signifies the infantile shadow. In both
cases the boy means some form of spirit. Graybeard and boy belong
together. The pair of them play a considerable role in alchemy as symbols
of Mercurius.
7
8
9
10
[397]
It can never be established with one-hundred-per-cent certainty
whether the spirit-figures in dreams are morally good. Very often they
show all the signs of duplicity, if not of outright malice. I must emphasize,
however, that the grand plan on which the unconscious life of the psyche is
constructed is so inaccessible to our understanding that we can never know
what evil may not be necessary in order to produce good by
enantiodromia, and what good may very possibly lead to evil. Sometimes
the probate spiritus recommended by John cannot, with the best will in the
world, be anything other than a cautious and patient waiting to see how
things will finally turn out.
[398]
The figure of the wise old man can appear so plastically, not only in
dreams but also in visionary meditation (or what we call active
imagination”), that, as is sometimes apparently the case in India, it takes
over the role of a guru. The wise old man appears in dreams in the guise
of a magician, doctor, priest, teacher, professor, grandfather, or any other
11
person possessing authority. The archetype of spirit in the shape of a man,
hobgoblin, or animal always appears in a situation where insight,
understanding, good advice, determination, planning, etc., are needed but
cannot be mustered on one’s own resources. The archetype compensates
this state of spiritual deficiency by contents designed to fill the gap. An
excellent example of this is the dream about the white and black
magicians, which tried to compensate the spiritual difficulties of a young
theological student. I did not know the dreamer myself, so the question of
my personal influence is ruled out. He dreamed he was standing in the
presence of a sublime hieratic figure called the “white magician,” who
was nevertheless clothed in a long black robe. This magician had just
ended a lengthy discourse with the words “And for that we require the
help of the black magician.” Then the door suddenly opened and another
old man came in, the “black magician,” who however was dressed in a
white robe. He too looked noble and sublime. The black magician
evidently wanted to speak with the white, but hesitated to do so in the
presence of the dreamer. At that the white magician, pointing to the
dreamer, said, “Speak, he is an innocent.” So the black magician began to
relate a strange story of how he had found the lost keys of Paradise and
did not know how to use them. He had, he said, come to the white
magician for an explanation of the secret of the keys. He told him that the
king of the country in which he lived was seeking a suitable tomb for
himself. His subjects had chanced to dig up an old sarcophagus containing
the mortal remains of a virgin. The king opened the sarcophagus, threw
away the bones, and had the empty sarcophagus buried again for later
use. But no sooner had the bones seen the light of day than the being to
whom they once had belonged—the virgin—changed into a black horse
that galloped off into the desert. The black magician pursued it across the
sandy wastes and beyond, and there after many vicissitudes and difficulties
he found the lost keys of Paradise. That was the end of his story, and also,
unfortunately, of the dream.
[399]
Here the compensation certainly did not fall out as the dreamer would
wish, by handing him a solution on a plate; rather it confronted him with a
problem to which I have already alluded, and one which life is always
bringing us up against: namely, the uncertainty of all moral valuation, the
bewildering interplay of good and evil, and the remorseless concatenation
of guilt, suffering, and redemption. This path to the primordial religious
experience is the right one, but how many can recognize it? It is like a still
small voice, and it sounds from afar. It is ambiguous, questionable, dark,
presaging danger and hazardous adventure; a razor-edged path, to be
trodden for God’s sake only, without assurance and without sanction.
III. THE SPIRIT IN FAIRYTALES
[400]
I would gladly present the reader with some more modern dreammaterial, but I fear that the individualism of dreams would make too high a
demand upon our exposition and would claim more space than is here at
our disposal. We shall therefore turn to folklore, where we need not get
involved in the grim confrontations and entanglements of individual case
histories and can observe the variations of the spirit motif without having
to consider conditions that are more or less unique. In myths and fairytales,
as in dreams, the psyche tells its own story, and the interplay of the
archetypes is revealed in its natural setting as “formation, transformation /
the eternal Mind’s eternal recreation.”
[401]
The frequency with which the spirit-type appears as an old man is
about the same in fairytales as in dreams. The old man always appears
when the hero is in a hopeless and desperate situation from which only
profound reflection or a lucky idea—in other words, a spiritual function or
an endopsychic automatism of some kind—can extricate him. But since,
for internal and external reasons, the hero cannot accomplish this himself,
the knowledge needed to compensate the deficiency comes in the form of a
personified thought, i.e., in the shape of this sagacious and helpful old
man. An Estonian fairytale, for instance, tells how an ill-treated little
orphan boy who had let a cow escape was afraid to return home again for
fear of more punishment. So he ran away, chancing to luck. He naturally
got himself into a hopeless situation, with no visible way out. Exhausted,
he fell into a deep sleep. When he awoke, “it seemed to him that he had
something liquid in his mouth, and he saw a little old man with a long grey
beard standing before him, who was in the act of replacing the stopper in
his little milk-flask. ‘Give me some more to drink,’ begged the boy. ‘You
have had enough for today,’ replied the old man. ‘If my path had not
chanced to lead me to you, that would assuredly have been your last sleep,
for when I found you, you were half dead.’ Then the old man asked the
boy who he was and where he wanted to go. The boy recounted everything
he could remember happening to him up to the beating he had received the
12
13
previous evening. ‘My dear child,’ said the old man, ‘you are no better and
no worse off than many others whose dear protectors and comforters rest
in their coffins under the earth. You can no longer turn back. Now that you
have run away, you must seek a new fortune in the world. As I have
neither house nor home, nor wife nor child, I cannot take further care of
you, but I will give you some good advice for nothing.’”
[402]
So far the old man has been expressing no more than what the boy, the
hero of the tale, could have thought out for himself. Having given way to
the stress of emotion and simply run off like that into the blue, he would at
least have had to reflect that he needed food. It would also have been
necessary, at such a moment, to consider his position. The whole story of
his life up to the recent past would then have passed before his mind, as is
usual in such cases. An anamnesis of this kind is a purposeful process
whose aim is to gather the assets of the whole personality together at the
critical moment, when all one’s spiritual and physical forces are
challenged, and with this united strength to fling open the door of the
future. No one can help the boy to do this; he has to rely entirely on
himself. There is no going back. This realization will give the necessary
resolution to his actions. By forcing him to face the issue, the old man
saves him the trouble of making up his mind. Indeed the old man is
himself this purposeful reflection and concentration of moral and physical
forces that comes about spontaneously in the psychic space outside
consciousness when conscious thought is not yet—or is no longer—
possible. The concentration and tension of psychic forces have something
about them that always looks like magic: they develop an unexpected
power of endurance which is often superior to the conscious effort of will.
One can observe this experimentally in the artificial concentration induced
by hypnosis: in my demonstrations I used regularly to put an hysteric, of
weak bodily build, into a deep hypnotic sleep and then get her to lie with
the back of her head on one chair and her heels resting on another, stiff as
a board, and leave her there for about a minute. Her pulse would gradually
go up to 90. A husky young athlete among the students tried in vain to
imitate this feat with a conscious effort of will. He collapsed in the middle
with his pulse racing at 120.
[403]
When the clever old man had brought the boy to this point he could
begin his good advice, i.e., the situation no longer looked hopeless. He
advised him to continue his wanderings, always to the eastward, where
after seven years he would reach the great mountain that betokened his
good fortune. The bigness and tallness of the mountain are allusions to his
adult personality. Concentration of his powers brings assurance and is
therefore the best guarantee of success. From now on he will lack for
nothing. “Take my scrip and my flask,” says the old man, “and each day
you will find in them all the food and drink you need.” At the same time he
gave him a burdock leaf that could change into a boat whenever the boy
had to cross water.
14
15
[404]
Often the old man in fairytales asks questions like who? why?
whence? and whither? for the purpose of inducing self-reflection and
mobilizing the moral forces, and more often still he gives the necessary
magical talisman, the unexpected and improbable power to succeed,
which is one of the peculiarities of the unified personality in good or bad
alike. But the intervention of the old man—the spontaneous objectivation
of the archetype—would seem to be equally indispensable, since the
conscious will by itself is hardly ever capable of uniting the personality to
the point where it acquires this extraordinary power to succeed. For that,
not only in fairytales but in life generally, the objective intervention of the
archetype is needed, which checks the purely affective reactions with a
chain of inner confrontations and realizations. These cause the who?
where? how? why? to emerge clearly and in this wise bring knowledge of
the immediate situation as well as of the goal. The resultant enlightenment
and untying of the fatal tangle often has something positively magical
about it—an experience not unknown to the psychotherapist.
16
17
[405]
The tendency of the old man to set one thinking also takes the form of
urging people to “sleep on it.” Thus he says to the girl who is searching for
her lost brothers: “Lie down: morning is cleverer than evening.” He also
sees through the gloomy situation of the hero who has got himself into
trouble, or at least can give him such information as will help him on his
journey. To this end he makes ready use of animals, particularly birds. To
the prince who has gone in search of the kingdom of heaven the old hermit
says: “I have lived here for three hundred years, but never yet has anybody
asked me about the kingdom of heaven. I cannot tell you myself; but up
there, on another floor of the house, live all kinds of birds, and they can
surely tell you.” The old man knows what roads lead to the goal and
18
19
points them out to the hero. He warns of dangers to come and supplies the
means of meeting them effectively. For instance, he tells the boy who has
gone to fetch the silver water that the well is guarded by a lion who has the
deceptive trick of sleeping with his eyes open and watching with his eyes
shut; or he counsels the youth who is riding to a magic fountain in order
to fetch the healing draught for the king, only to draw the water at a trot
because of the lurking witches who lasso everybody that comes to the
fountain. He charges the princess whose lover has been changed into a
werewolf to make a fire and put a cauldron of tar over it. Then she must
plunge her beloved white lily into the boiling tar, and when the werewolf
comes, she must empty the cauldron over its head, which will release her
lover from the spell. Occasionally the old man is a very critical old man,
as in the Caucasian tale of the youngest prince who wanted to build a
flawless church for his father, so as to inherit the kingdom. This he does,
and nobody can discover a single flaw, but then an old man comes along
and says, “That’s a fine church you’ve built, to be sure! What a pity the
main wall is a bit crooked!” The prince has the church pulled down again
and builds a new one, but here too the old man discovers a flaw, and so on
for the third time.
20
21
22
23
24
[406]
The old man thus represents knowledge, reflection, insight, wisdom,
cleverness, and intuition on the one hand, and on the other, moral qualities
such as goodwill and readiness to help, which make his “spiritual”
character sufficiently plain. Since the archetype is an autonomous content
of the unconscious, the fairytale, which usually concretizes the archetypes,
can cause the old man to appear in a dream in much the same way as
happens in modern dreams. In a Balkan tale the old man appears to the
hard-pressed hero in a dream and gives him good advice about
accomplishing the impossible tasks that have been imposed upon him.
His relation to the unconscious is clearly expressed in one Russian
fairytale, where he is called the “King of the Forest.” As the peasant sat
down wearily on a tree stump, a little old man crept out: “all wrinkled he
was and a green beard hung down to his knees.” “Who are you?” asked the
peasant. “I am Och, King of the Forest,” said the manikin. The peasant
hired out his profligate son to him, “and the King of the Forest departed
with the young man, and conducted him to that other world under the earth
and brought him to a green hut. … In the hut everything was green: the
walls were green and the benches, Och’s wife was green and the children
25
were green … and the little water-women who waited on him were as
green as rue.” Even the food was green. The King of the Forest is here a
vegetation or tree numen who reigns in the woods and, through the nixies,
also has connections with water, which clearly shows his relation to the
unconscious since the latter is frequently expressed through wood and
water symbols.
[407]
There is equally a connection with the unconscious when the old man
appears as a dwarf. The fairytale about the princess who was searching for
her lover says: “Night came and the darkness, and still the princess sat in
the same place and wept. As she sat there lost in thought, she heard a voice
greeting her: ‘Good evening, pretty maid! Why are you sitting here so
lonely and sad?’ She sprang up hastily and felt very confused, and that was
no wonder. But when she looked round there was only a tiny little old man
standing before her, who nodded his head at her and looked so kind and
simple.” In a Swiss fairytale, the peasant’s son who wants to bring the
king’s daughter a basket of apples encounters “es chlis isigs Männdli, das
frogt-ne, was er do i dem Chratte häig?” (a little iron man who asked what
he had there in the basket). In another passage the “Männdli” has “es isigs
Chlaidli a” (iron clothes on). By “isig” presumably “eisern” (iron) is
meant, which is more probable than “eisig” (icy). In the latter case it would
have to be “es Chlaidli vo Is” (clothes of ice). There are indeed little ice
men, and little metal men too; in fact, in a modern dream I have even come
across a little black iron man who appeared at a critical juncture, like the
one in this fairytale of the country bumpkin who wanted to marry the
princess.
26
[408]
In a modern series of visions in which the figure of the wise old man
occurred several times, he was on one occasion of normal size and
appeared at the very bottom of a crater surrounded by high rocky walls; on
another occasion he was a tiny figure on the top of a mountain, inside a
low, stony enclosure. We find the same motif in Goethe’s tale of the dwarf
princess who lived in a casket. In this connection we might also mention
the Anthroparion, the little leaden man of the Zosimos vision, as well as
the metallic men who dwell in the mines, the crafty dactyls of antiquity,
the homunculi of the alchemists, and the gnomic throng of hobgoblins,
brownies, gremlins, etc. How “real” such conceptions are became clear to
me on the occasion of a serious mountaineering accident: after the
27
28
catastrophe two of the climbers had the collective vision, in broad daylight,
of a little hooded man who scrambled out of an inaccessible crevasse in the
ice face and passed across the glacier, creating a regular panic in the two
beholders. I have often encountered motifs which made me think that the
unconscious must be the world of the infinitesimally small. Such an idea
could be derived rationalistically from the obscure feeling that in all these
visions we are dealing with something endopsychic, the inference being
that a thing must be exceedingly small in order to fit inside the head. I am
no friend of any such “rational” conjectures, though I would not say that
they are all beside the mark. It seems to me more probable that this liking
for diminutives on the one hand and for superlatives—giants, etc.—on the
other is connected with the queer uncertainty of spatial and temporal
relations in the unconscious. Man’s sense of proportion, his rational
conception of big and small, is distinctly anthropomorphic, and it loses its
validity not only in the realm of physical phenomena but also in those parts
of the collective unconscious beyond the range of the specifically human.
The atman is “smaller than small and bigger than big,” he is “the size of a
thumb” yet he “encompasses the earth on every side and rules over the tenfinger space.” And of the Cabiri Goethe says: “little in length / mighty in
strength.” In the same way, the archetype of the wise old man is quite tiny,
almost imperceptible, and yet it possesses a fateful potency, as anyone can
see when he gets down to fundamentals. The archetypes have this
peculiarity in common with the atomic world, which is demonstrating
before our eyes that the more deeply the in vestigator penetrates into the
universe of microphysics the more devastating are the explosive forces he
finds enchained there. That the greatest effects come from the smallest
causes has become patently clear not only in physics but in the field of
psychological research as well. How often in the critical moments of life
everything hangs on what appears to be a mere nothing!
29
[409]
In certain primitive fairytales, the illuminating quality of our
archetype is expressed by the fact that the old man is identified with the
sun. He brings a firebrand with him which he uses for roasting a pumpkin.
After he has eaten, he takes the fire away again, which causes mankind to
steal it from him. In a North American Indian tale, the old man is a witchdoctor who owns the fire. Spirit too has a fiery aspect, as we know from
the language of the Old Testament and from the story of the Pentecostal
miracle.
30
31
[410]
Apart from his cleverness, wisdom, and insight, the old man, as we
have already mentioned, is also notable for his moral qualities; what is
more, he even tests the moral qualities of others and makes his gifts
dependent on this test. There is a particularly instructive example of this in
the Estonian fairytale of the stepdaughter and the real daughter. The
former is an orphan distinguished for her obedience and good behaviour.
The story begins with her distaff falling into a well. She jumps in after it,
but does not drown, and comes to a magic country where, continuing her
quest, she meets a cow, a ram, and an apple tree whose wishes she fulfils.
She now comes to a wash-house where a dirty old man is sitting who
wants her to wash him. The following dialogue develops: “Pretty maid,
pretty maid, wash me, do, it is hard for me to be so dirty!” “What shall I
heat the stove with?” “Collect wooden pegs and crows’ dung and make a
fire with that.” But she fetches sticks, and asks, “Where shall I get the
bath-water?” “Under the barn there stands a white mare. Get her to piss
into the tub!” But she takes clean water, and asks, “Where shall I get a
bath-switch?” “Cut off the white mare’s tail and make a bath-switch of
that!” But she makes one out of birch-twigs, and asks, “Where shall I get
soap?” “Take a pumice-stone and scrub me with that!” But she fetches
soap from the village and with that she washes the old man.
[411]
As a reward he gives her a bag full of gold and precious stones. The
daughter of the house naturally becomes jealous, throws her distaff into the
well, where she finds it again instantly. Nevertheless she goes on and does
everything wrong that the stepdaughter had done right, and is rewarded
accordingly. The frequency of this motif makes further examples
superfluous.
[412]
The figure of the superior and helpful old man tempts one to connect
him somehow or other with God. In the German tale of the soldier and the
black princess it is related how the princess, on whom a curse has been
laid, creeps out of her iron coffin every night and devours the soldier
standing guard over the tomb. One soldier, when his turn came, tried to
escape. “That evening he stole away, fled over the fields and mountains,
and came to a beautiful meadow. Suddenly a little man stood before him
with a long grey beard, but it was none other than the Lord God himself,
who could no longer go on looking at all the mischief the devil wrought
every night. ‘Whither away?’ said the little grey man, ‘may I come with
32
you?’ And because the little old man looked so friendly the soldier told
him that he had run away and why he had done so.” Good advice follows,
as always. In this story the old man is taken for God in the same naïve way
that the English alchemist, Sir George Ripley, describes the “old king” as
“antiquus dierum”—“the Ancient of Days.”
33
[413]
Just as all archetypes have a positive, favourable, bright side that
points upwards, so also they have one that points downwards, partly
negative and unfavourable, partly chthonic, but for the rest merely neutral.
To this the spirit archetype is no exception. Even his dwarf form implies a
kind of limitation and suggests a naturalistic vegetation-numen sprung
from the underworld. In one Balkan tale, the old man is handicapped by
the loss of an eye. It has been gouged out by the Vili, a species of winged
demon, and the hero is charged with the task of getting them to restore it to
him. The old man has therefore lost part of his eyesight—that is, his
insight and enlightenment—to the daemonic world of darkness; this
handicap is reminiscent of the fate of Osiris, who lost an eye at the sight of
a black pig (his wicked brother Set), or again of Wotan, who sacrificed his
eye at the spring of Mimir. Characteristically enough, the animal ridden by
the old man in our fairytale is a goat, a sign that he himself has a dark side.
In a Siberian tale, he appears as a one-legged, one-handed, and one-eyed
greybeard who wakens a dead man with an iron staff. In the course of the
story the latter, after being brought back to life several times, kills the old
man by a mistake, and thus throws away his good fortune. The story is
entitled “The One-sided Old Man,” and in truth his handicap shows that he
consists of one half only. The other half is invisible, but appears in the
shape of a murderer who seeks the hero’s life. Eventually the hero
succeeds in killing his persistent murderer, but in the struggle he also kills
the one-sided old man, so that the identity of the two victims is clearly
revealed. It is thus possible that the old man is his own opposite, a lifebringer as well as a death-dealer—“ad utrumque peritus” (skilled in both),
as is said of Hermes.
34
[414]
In these circumstances, whenever the “simple” and “kindly” old man
appears, it is advisable for heuristic and other reasons to scrutinize the
context with some care. For instance, in the Estonian tale we first
mentioned, about the hired boy who lost the cow, there is a suspicion that
the helpful old man who happened to be on the spot so opportunely had
surreptitiously made away with the cow beforehand in order to give his
protégé an excellent reason for taking to flight. This may very well be, for
everyday experience shows that it is quite possible for a superior, though
subliminal, foreknowledge of fate to contrive some annoying incident for
the sole purpose of bullying our Simple Simon of an ego-consciousness
into the way he should go, which for sheer stupidity he would never have
found by himself. Had our orphan guessed that it was the old man who had
whisked off his cow as if by magic, he would have seemed like a spiteful
troll or a devil. And indeed the old man has a wicked aspect too, just as the
primitive medicine-man is a healer and helper and also the dreaded
concocter of poisons. The very word ϕáρμακον means ‘poison’ as well as
‘antidote,’ and poison can in fact be both.
[415]
The old man, then, has an ambiguous elfin character—witness the
extremely instructive figure of Merlin—seeming, in certain of his forms, to
be good incarnate and in others an aspect of evil. Then again, he is the
wicked magician who, from sheer egoism, does evil for evil’s sake. In a
Siberian fairytale, he is an evil spirit “on whose head were two lakes with
two ducks swimming in them.” He feeds on human flesh. The story relates
how the hero and his companions go to a feast in the next village, leaving
their dogs at home. These, acting on the principle “when the cat’s away the
mice do play,” also arrange a feast, at the climax of which they all hurl
themselves on the stores of meat. The men return home and chase out the
dogs, who dash off into the wilderness. “Then the Creator spoke to
Ememqut [the hero of the tale]: ‘Go and look for the dogs with your
wife.’” But he gets caught in a terrible snow-storm and has to seek shelter
in the hut of the evil spirit. There now follows the well-known motif of the
biter bit. The “Creator” is Ememqut’s father, but the father of the Creator
is called the “Self-created” because he created himself. Although we are
nowhere told that the old man with the two lakes on his head lured the hero
and his wife into the hut in order to satisfy his hunger, it may be
conjectured that a very peculiar spirit must have got into the dogs to cause
them to celebrate a feast like the men and afterwards—contrary to their
nature—to run away, so that Ememqut had to go out and look for them;
and that the hero was then caught in a snow-storm in order to drive him
into the arms of the wicked old man. The fact that the Creator, son of the
Self-created, was a party to the advice raises a knotty problem whose
solution we had best leave to the Siberian theologians.
[416]
In a Balkan fairytale the old man gives the childless Czarina a magic
apple to eat, from which she becomes pregnant and bears a son, it being
stipulated that the old man shall be his godfather. The boy, however, grows
up into a horrid little tough who bullies all the children and slaughters the
cattle. For ten years he is given no name. Then the old man appears, sticks
a knife into his leg, and calls him the “Knife Prince.” The boy now wants
to set forth on his adventures, which his father, after long hesitation, finally
allows him to do. The knife in his leg is of vital importance: If he draws it
out himself, he will live; if anybody else does so, he will die. In the end the
knife becomes his doom, for an old witch pulls it out when he is asleep. He
dies, but is restored to life by the friends he has won. Here the old man is
a helper, but also the contriver of a dangerous fate which might just as
easily have turned out for the bad. The evil showed itself early and plainly
in the boy’s villainous character.
35
[417]
In another Balkan tale, there is a variant of our motif that is worth
mentioning: A king is looking for his sister who has been abducted by a
stranger. His wanderings bring him to the hut of an old woman, who warns
him against continuing the search. But a tree laden with fruit, ever
receding before him, lures him away from the hut. When at last the tree
comes to a halt, an old man climbs down from the branches. He regales the
king and takes him to a castle, where the sister is living with the old man
as his wife. She tells her brother that the old man is a wicked spirit who
will kill him. And sure enough, three days afterwards, the king vanishes
without trace. His younger brother now takes up the search and kills the
wicked spirit in the form of a dragon. A handsome young man is thereby
released from the spell and forthwith marries the sister. The old man,
appearing at first as a tree-numen, is obviously connected with the sister.
He is a murderer. In an interpolated episode, he is accused of enchanting a
whole city by turning it to iron, i.e., making it immovable, rigid, and
locked up. He also holds the king’s sister a captive and will not let her
return to her relatives. This amounts to saying that the sister is animuspossessed. The old man is therefore to be regarded as her animus. But the
manner in which the king is drawn into this possession, and the way he
seeks for his sister, make us think that she has an anima significance for
her brother. The fateful archetype of the old man has accordingly first
taken possession of the king’s anima—in other words, robbed him of the
archetype of life which the anima personifies—and forced him to go in
36
search of the lost charm, the “treasure hard to attain,” thus making him the
mythical hero, the higher personality who is an expression of the self.
Meanwhile, the old man acts the part of the villain and has to be forcibly
removed, only to appear at the end as the husband of the sister-anima, or
more properly as the bridegroom of the soul, who celebrates the sacred
incest that symbolizes the union of opposites and equals. This bold
enantiodromia, a very common occurrence, not only signifies the
rejuvenation and transformation of the old man, but hints at a secret inner
relation of evil to good and vice versa.
[418]
So in this story we see the archetype of the old man in the guise
of an evil-doer, caught up in all the twists and turns of an individuation
process that ends suggestively with the hieros gamos. Conversely, in the
Russian tale of the Forest King, he starts by being helpful and
benevolent, but then refuses to let his hired boy go, so that the main
episodes in the story deal with the boy’s repeated attempts to escape
from the clutches of the magician. Instead of the quest we have flight,
which nonetheless appears to win the same reward as adventures
valiantly sought, for in the end the hero marries the king’s daughter. The
magician, however, must rest content with the role of the biter bit.
IV. THERIOMORPHIC SPIRIT SYMBOLISM IN FAIRYTALES
[419]
The description of our archetype would not be complete if we omitted
to consider one special form of its manifestation, namely its animal form.
This belongs essentially to the theriomorphism of gods and demons and
has the same psychological significance. The animal form shows that the
contents and functions in question are still in the extrahuman sphere, i.e.,
on a plane beyond human consciousness, and consequently have a share on
the one hand in the daemonically superhuman and on the other in the
bestially subhuman. It must be remembered, however, that this division is
only true within the sphere of consciousness, where it is a necessary
condition of thought. Logic says tertium non datur, meaning that we
cannot envisage the opposites in their oneness. In other words, while the
abolition of an obstinate antinomy can be no more than a postulate for us,
this is by no means so for the unconscious, whose contents are without
exception paradoxical or antinomial by nature, not excluding the category
of being. If anyone unacquainted with the psychology of the unconscious
wants to get a working knowledge of these matters, I would recommend a
study of Christian mysticism and Indian philosophy, where he will find the
clearest elaboration of the antinomies of the unconscious.
[420]
Although the old man has, up to now, looked and behaved more or
less like a human being, his magical powers and his spiritual superiority
suggest that, in good and bad alike, he is outside, or above, or below the
human level. Neither for the primitive nor for the unconscious does his
animal aspect imply any devaluation, for in certain respects the animal is
superior to man. It has not yet blundered into consciousness nor pitted a
self-willed ego against the power from which it lives; on the contrary, it
fulfils the will that actuates it in a well-nigh perfect manner. Were it
conscious, it would be morally better than man. There is deep doctrine in
the legend of the fall: it is the expression of a dim presentiment that the
emancipation of ego-consciousness was a Luciferian deed. Man’s whole
history consists from the very beginning in a conflict between his feeling
of inferiority and his arrogance. Wisdom seeks the middle path and pays
for this audacity by a dubious affinity with daemon and beast, and so is
open to moral misinterpretation.
[421]
Again and again in fairytales we encounter the motif of helpful
animals. These act like humans, speak a human language, and display a
sagacity and a knowledge superior to man’s. In these circumstances we
can say with some justification that the archetype of the spirit is being
expressed through an animal form. A German fairytale relates how a
young man, while searching for his lost princess, meets a wolf, who says,
“Do not be afraid! But tell me, where is your way leading you?” The
young man recounts his story, whereupon the wolf gives him as a magic
gift a few of his hairs, with which the young man can summon his help at
any time. This intermezzo proceeds exactly like the meeting with the
helpful old man. In the same story, the archetype also displays its other,
wicked side. In order to make this clear I shall give a summary of the
story:
37
[422]
While the young man is watching his pigs in the wood, he discovers a
large tree, whose branches lose themselves in the clouds. “How would it
be,” says he to himself, “if you were to look at the world from the top of
that great tree?” So he climbs up, all day long he climbs, without even
reaching the branches. Evening comes, and he has to pass the night in a
fork of the tree. Next day he goes on climbing and by noon has reached the
foliage. Only towards evening does he come to a village nestling in the
branches. The peasants who live there give him food and shelter for the
night. In the morning he climbs still further. Towards noon, he reaches a
castle in which a young girl lives. Here he finds that the tree goes no
higher. She is a king’s daughter, held prisoner by a wicked magician. So
the young man stays with the princess, and she allows him to go into all
the rooms of the castle: one room alone she forbids him to enter. But
curiosity is too strong. He unlocks the door, and there in the room he finds
a raven fixed to the wall with three nails. One nail goes through his throat,
the two others through the wings. The raven complains of thirst and the
young man, moved by pity, gives him water to drink. At each sip a nail
falls out, and at the third sip the raven is free and flies out at the window.
When the princess hears of it she is very frightened and says, “That was
the devil who enchanted me! It won’t be long now before he fetches me
again.” And one fine morning she has indeed vanished.
[423]
The young man now sets out in search of her and, as we have
described above, meets the wolf. In the same way he meets a bear and a
lion, who also give him some hairs. In addition the lion informs him that
the princess is imprisoned nearby in a hunting-lodge. The young man finds
the house and the princess, but is told that flight is impossible, because the
hunter possesses a three-legged white horse that knows everything and
would infallibly warn its master. Despite that, the young man tries to flee
away with her, but in vain. The hunter overtakes him but, because he had
saved his life as a raven, lets him go and rides off again with the princess.
When the hunter has disappeared into the wood, the young man creeps
back to the house and persuades the princess to wheedle from the hunter
the secret of how he obtained his clever white horse. This she successfully
does in the night, and the young man, who has hidden himself under the
bed, learns that about an hour’s journey from the hunting-lodge there
dwells a witch who breeds magic horses. Whoever was able to guard the
foals for three days might choose a horse as a reward. In former times, said
the hunter, she used to make a gift of twelve lambs into the bargain, in
order to satisfy the hunger of the twelve wolves who lived in the woods
near the farmstead, and prevent them from attacking; but to him she gave
no lambs. So the wolves followed him as he rode away, and while crossing
the borders of her domain they succeeded in tearing off one of his horse’s
hoofs. That was why it had only three legs.
[424]
Then the young man made haste to seek out the witch and agreed to
serve her on condition that she gave him not only a horse of his own
choosing but twelve lambs as well. To this she consented. Instantly she
commanded the foals to run away, and, to make him sleepy, she gave him
brandy. He drinks, falls asleep, and the foals escape. On the first day he
catches them with the help of the wolf, on the second day the bear helps
him, and on the third the lion. He can now go and choose his reward. The
witch’s little daughter tells him which horse her mother rides. This is
naturally the best horse, and it too is white. Hardly has he got it out of the
stall when the witch pierces the four hoofs and sucks the marrow out of the
bones. From this she bakes a cake and gives it to the young man for his
journey. The horse grows deathly weak, but the young man feeds it on the
cake, whereupon the horse recovers its former strength. He gets out of the
woods unscathed after quieting the twelve wolves with the twelve lambs.
He then fetches the princess and rides away with her. But the three-legged
horse calls out to the hunter, who sets off in pursuit and quickly catches up
with them, because the four-legged horse refuses to gallop. As the hunter
approaches, the four-legged horse cries out to the three-legged, “Sister,
throw him off!” The magician is thrown and trampled to pieces by the two
horses. The young man sets the princess on the three-legged horse, and the
pair of them ride away to her father’s kingdom, where they get married.
The four-legged horse begs him to cut off both their heads, for otherwise
they would bring disaster upon him. This he does, and the horses are
transformed into a handsome prince and a wonderfully beautiful princess,
who after a while repair “to their own kingdom.” They had been changed
into horses by the hunter, long ago.
[425]
Apart from the theriomorphic spirit symbolism in this tale, it is
especially interesting to note that the function of knowing and intuition is
represented by a riding-animal. This is as much as to say that the spirit can
be somebody’s property. The three-legged white horse is thus the property
of the demonic hunter, and the four-legged one the property of the witch.
Spirit is here partly a function, which like any other object (horse) can
change its owner, and partly an autonomous subject (magician as owner of
the horse). By obtaining the four-legged horse from the witch, the young
man frees a spirit or a thought of some special kind from the grip of the
unconscious. Here as elsewhere, the witch stands for a mater natura or the
original “matriarchal” state of the unconscious, indicating a psychic
constitution in which the unconscious is opposed only by a feeble and stilldependent consciousness. The four-legged horse shows itself superior to
the three-legged, since it can command the latter. And since the quaternity
is a symbol of wholeness and wholeness plays a considerable role in the
picture-world of the unconscious, the victory of four-leggedness over
three-leggedness is not altogether unexpected. But what is the meaning of
the opposition between threeness and fourness, or rather, what does
threeness mean as compared with wholeness? In alchemy this problem is
known as the axiom of Maria and runs all through alchemical philosophy
for more than a thousand years, finally to be taken up again in the Cabiri
scene in Faust. The earliest literary version of it is to be found in the
opening words of Plato’s Timaeus of which Goethe gives us a reminder.
Among the alchemists we can see clearly how the divine Trinity has its
counterpart in a lower, chthonic triad (similar to Dante’s three-headed
devil). This represents a principle which, by reason of its symbolism,
betrays affinities with evil, though it is by no means certain that it
expresses nothing but evil. Everything points rather to the fact that evil, or
its familiar symbolism, belongs to the family of figures which describe the
dark, nocturnal, lower, chthonic element. In this symbolism the lower
stands to the higher as a correspondence in reverse; that is to say it is
conceived, like the upper, as a triad. Three, being a masculine number, is
logically correlated with the wicked hunter, who can be thought of
alchemically as the lower triad. Four, a feminine number, is assigned to the
old woman. The two horses are miraculous animals that talk and know and
thus represent the unconscious spirit, which in one case is subordinated to
the wicked magician and in the other to the old witch.
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39
40
[426]
Between the three and the four there exists the primary opposition of
male and female, but whereas fourness is a symbol of wholeness, threeness
is not. The latter, according to alchemy, denotes polarity, since one triad
always presupposes another, just as high presupposes low, lightness
darkness, good evil. In terms of energy, polarity means a potential, and
wherever a potential exists there is the possibility of a current, a flow of
events, for the tension of opposites strives for balance. If one imagines the
quaternity as a square divided into two halves by a diagonal, one gets two
triangles whose apices point in opposite directions. One could therefore
say metaphorically that if the wholeness symbolized by the quaternity is
divided into equal halves, it produces two opposing triads. This simple
reflection shows how three can be derived from four, and in the same way
the hunter of the captured princess explains how his horse, from being
four-legged, became three-legged, through having one hoof torn off by the
twelve wolves. The three-leggedness is due to an accident, therefore,
which occurred at the very moment when the horse was leaving the
territory of the dark mother. In psychological language we should say that
when the unconscious wholeness becomes manifest, i.e., leaves the
unconscious and crosses over into the sphere of consciousness, one of the
four remains behind, held fast by the horror vacui of the unconscious.
There thus arises a triad, which as we know—not from the fairytale but
from the history of symbolism—constellates a corresponding triad in
opposition to it —in other words, a conflict ensues. Here too we could ask
with Socrates, “One, two, three—but, my dear Timaeus, of those who
yesterday were the banqueters and today are the banquet-givers, where is
the fourth?” He has remained in the realm of the dark mother, caught by
the wolfish greed of the unconscious, which is unwilling to let anything
escape from its magic circle save at the cost of a sacrifice.
41
42
[427]
The hunter or old magician and the witch correspond to the negative
parental imagos in the magic world of the unconscious. The hunter first
appears in the story as a black raven. He has stolen away the princess and
holds her a prisoner. She describes him as “the devil.” But it is exceedingly
odd that he himself is locked up in the one forbidden room of the castle
and fixed to the wall with three nails, as though crucified. He is
imprisoned, like all jailers, in his own prison, and bound like all who curse.
The prison of both is a magic castle at the top of a gigantic tree,
presumably the world-tree. The princess belongs to the upper region of
light near the sun. Sitting there in captivity on the world-tree, she is a kind
of anima mundi who has got herself into the power of darkness. But this
catch does not seem to have done the latter much good either, seeing that
the captor is crucified and moreover with three nails. The crucifixion
evidently betokens a state of agonizing bondage and suspension, fit
punishment for one foolhardy enough to venture like a Prometheus into the
orbit of the opposing principle. This was what the raven, who is identical
with the hunter, did when he ravished a precious soul from the upper world
of light; and so, as a punishment, he is nailed to the wall in that upper
world. That this is an inverted reflection of the primordial Christian image
should be obvious enough. The Saviour who freed the soul of humanity
from the dominion of the prince of this world was nailed to a cross down
below on earth, just as the thieving raven is nailed to the wall in the
celestial branches of the world-tree for his presumptuous meddling. In our
fairytale, the peculiar instrument of the magic spell is the triad of nails.
Who it was that made the raven captive is not told in the tale, but it sounds
as if a spell had been laid upon him in the triune name.
43
[428]
Having climbed up the world-tree and penetrated into the magic castle
where he is to rescue the princess, our young hero is permitted to enter all
the rooms but one, the very room in which the raven is imprisoned. Just as
in paradise there was one tree of which it was forbidden to eat, so here
there is one room that is not to be opened, with the natural result that it is
entered at once. Nothing excites our interest more than a prohibition. It is
the surest way of provoking disobedience. Obviously there is some secret
scheme afoot to free not so much the princess as the raven. As soon as the
hero catches sight of him, the raven begins to cry piteously and to
complain of thirst, and the young man, moved by the virtue of
compassion, slakes it, not with hyssop and gall, but with quickening water,
whereupon the three nails fall out and the raven escapes through the open
window. Thus the evil spirit regains his freedom, changes into the hunter,
steals the princess for the second time, but this time locks her up in his
hunting-lodge on earth. The secret scheme is partially unveiled: the
princess must be brought down from the upper world to the world of men,
which was evidently not possible without the help of the evil spirit and
man’s disobedience.
44
[429]
But since in the human world, too, the hunter of souls is the princess’s
master, the hero has to intervene anew, to which end, as we have seen, he
filches the four-legged horse from the witch and breaks the three-legged
spell of the magician. It was the triad that first transfixed the raven, and the
triad also represents the power of the evil spirit. These are the two triads
that point in opposite directions.
[430]
Turning now to quite another field, the realm of psychological
experience, we know that three of the four functions of consciousness can
become differentiated, i.e., conscious, while the other remains connected
with the matrix, the unconscious, and is known as the “inferior” function.
It is the Achilles heel of even the most heroic consciousness: somewhere
the strong man is weak, the clever man foolish, the good man bad, and the
reverse is also true. In our fairytale the triad appears as a mutilated
quaternity. If only one leg could be added to the other three, it would make
a whole. The enigmatic axiom of Maria runs: “… from the third comes the
one as the fourth” (έκ τοῡ τρíτου τò ἓν τέταρτον) —which presumably
means, when the third produces the fourth it at once produces unity. The
lost component which is in the possession of the wolves belonging to the
Great Mother is indeed only a quarter, but, together with the three, it
makes a whole which does away with division and conflict.
[431]
But how is it that a quarter, on the evidence of symbolism, is at the
same time a triad? Here the symbolism of our fairytale leaves us in the
lurch, and we are obliged to have recourse to the facts of psychology. I
have said previously that three functions can become differentiated, and
only one remains under the spell of the unconscious. This statement must
be defined more closely. It is an empirical fact that only one function
becomes more or less successfully differentiated, which on that account is
known as the superior or main function, and together with extraversion or
introversion constitutes the type of conscious attitude. This function has
associated with it one or two partially differentiated auxiliary functions
which hardly ever attain the same degree of differentiation as the main
function, that is, the same degree of applicability by the will. Accordingly
they possess a higher degree of spontaneity than the main function, which
displays a large measure of reliability and is amenable to our intentions.
The fourth, inferior function proves on the other hand to be inaccessible to
our will. It appears now as a teasing and distracting imp, now as a deus ex
machina. But always it comes and goes of its own volition. From this it is
clear that even the differentiated functions have only partially freed
themselves from the unconscious; for the rest they are still rooted in it and
to that extent they operate under its rule. Hence the three “differentiated”
functions at the disposal of the ego have three corresponding unconscious
components that have not yet broken loose from the unconscious. And
just as the three conscious and differentiated parts of these functions are
confronted by a fourth, undifferentiated function which acts as a painfully
disturbing factor, so also the superior function seems to have its worst
enemy in the unconscious. Nor should we omit to mention one final turn of
the screw: like the devil who delights in disguising himself as an angel of
light, the inferior function secretly and mischievously influences the
superior function most of all, just as the latter represses the former most
45
strongly.
46
[432]
These unfortunately somewhat abstract formulations are necessary in
order to throw some light on the tricky and allusive associations in our—
save the mark!—“childishly simple” fairytale. The two antithetical triads,
the one banning and the other representing the power of evil, tally to a
hair’s breadth with the functional structure of the conscious and
unconscious psyche. Being a spontaneous, naïve, and uncontrived product
of the psyche, the fairytale cannot very well express anything except what
the psyche actually is. It is not only our fairytale that depicts these
structural psychic relations, but countless other fairytales do the same.
47
[433]
Our fairytale reveals with unusual clarity the essentially antithetical
nature of the spirit archetype, while on the other hand it shows the
bewildering play of antinomies all aiming at the great goal of higher
consciousness. The young swineherd who climbs from the animal level up
to the top of the giant world-tree and there, in the upper world of light,
discovers his captive anima, the high-born princess, symbolizes the ascent
of consciousness, rising from almost bestial regions to a lofty perch with a
broad outlook, which is a singularly appropriate image for the enlargement
of the conscious horizon. Once the masculine consciousness has attained
this height, it comes face to face with its feminine counterpart, the anima.
She is a personification of the unconscious. The meeting shows how inept
it is to designate the latter as the “subconscious”: it is not merely “below”
consciousness but also above it, so far above it indeed that the hero has to
climb up to it with considerable effort. This “upper” unconscious,
however, is far from being a “supercon-conscious” in the sense that
anyone who reaches it, like our hero, would stand as high above the
“subconscious” as above the earth’s surface. On the contrary, he makes the
disagreeable discovery that his high and mighty anima, the Princess Soul,
is bewitched up there and no freer than a bird in a golden cage. He may pat
himself on the back for having soared up from the flatlands and from
almost bestial stupidity, but his soul is in the power of an evil spirit, a
sinister father-imago of subterrene nature in the guise of a raven, the
celebrated theriomorphic figure of the devil. What use now is his lofty
perch and his wide horizon, when his own dear soul is languishing in
prison? Worse, she plays the game of the underworld and ostensibly tries
to stop the young man from discovering the secret of her imprisonment, by
48
49
forbidding him to enter that one room. But secretly she leads him to it by
the very fact of her veto. It is as though the unconscious had two hands of
which one always does the opposite of the other. The princess wants and
does not want to be rescued. But the evil spirit too has got himself into a
fix, by all accounts: he wanted to filch a fine soul from the shining upper
world—which he could easily do as a winged being—but had not
bargained on being shut up there himself. Black spirit though he is, he
longs for the light. That is his secret justification, just as his being
spellbound is a punishment for his transgression. But so long as the evil
spirit is caught in the upper world, the princess cannot get down to earth
either, and the hero remains lost in paradise. So now he commits the sin of
disobedience and thereby enables the robber to escape, thus causing the
abduction of the princess for the second time—a whole chain of
calamities. In the result, however, the princess comes down to earth and
the devilish raven assumes the human shape of the hunter. The otherworldly anima and the evil principle both descend to the human sphere,
that is, they dwindle to human proportions and thus become approachable.
The three-legged, all-knowing horse represents the hunter’s own power: it
corresponds to the unconscious components of the differentiated
functions. The hunter himself personifies the inferior function, which also
manifests itself in the hero as his inquisitiveness and love of adventure. As
the story unfolds, he becomes more and more like the hunter: he too
obtains his horse from the witch. But, unlike him, the hunter omitted to
obtain the twelve lambs in order to feed the wolves, who then injured his
horse. He forgot to pay tribute to the chthonic powers because he was
nothing but a robber. Through this omission the hero learns that the
unconscious lets its creatures go only at the cost of sacrifice. The number
12 is presumably a time symbol, with the subsidiary meaning of the twelve
labours ( θλα) that have to be performed for the unconscious before one
can get free. The hunter looks like a previous unsuccessful attempt of the
hero to gain possession of his soul through robbery and violence. But the
conquest of the soul is in reality a work of patience, self-sacrifice, and
devotion. By gaining possession of the four-legged horse the hero steps
right into the shoes of the hunter and carries off the princess as well. The
quaternity in our tale proves to be the greater power, for it integrates into
its totality that which it still needed in order to become whole.
50
51
52
53
[434]
The archetype of the spirit in this, be it said, by no means primitive
fairytale is expressed theriomorphically as a system of three functions
which is subordinated to a unity, the evil spirit, in the same way that some
unnamed authority has crucified the raven with a triad of three nails. The
two supraordinate unities correspond in the first case to the inferior
function which is the arch-enemy of the main function, namely to the
hunter; and in the second case to the main function, namely to the hero.
Hunter and hero are ultimately equated with one another, so that the
hunter’s function is resolved in the hero. As a matter of fact, the hero lies
dormant in the hunter from the very beginning, egging him on, with all the
unmoral means at his disposal, to carry out the rape of the soul, and then
causing him to play her into the hero’s hands against the hunter’s will. On
the surface a furious conflict rages between them, but down below the one
goes about the other’s business. The knot is unravelled directly the hero
succeeds in capturing the quaternity—or in psychological language, when
he assimilates the inferior function into the ternary system. That puts an
end to the conflict at one blow, and the figure of the hunter melts into thin
air. After this victory, the hero sets his princess upon the three-legged
steed and together they ride away to her father’s kingdom. From now on
she rules and personifies the realm of spirit that formerly served the
wicked hunter. Thus the anima is and remains the representative of that
part of the unconscious which can never be assimilated into a humanly
attainable whole.
[435]
Postscript. Only after the completion of my manuscript was my
attention drawn by a friend to a Russian variant of our story. It bears the
title “Maria Morevna.” The hero of the story is no swineherd, but
Czarevitch Ivan. There is an interesting explanation of the three helpful
animals: they correspond to Ivan’s three sisters and their husbands, who
are really birds. The three sisters represent an unconscious triad of
functions related to both the animal and spiritual realms. The bird-men are
a species of angel and emphasize the auxiliary nature of the unconscious
functions. In the story they intervene at the critical moment when the hero
—unlike his German counterpart—gets into the power of the evil spirit and
is killed and dismembered (the typical fate of the God-man!). The evil
spirit is an old man who is often shown naked and is called Koschei the
Deathless. The corresponding witch is the well-known Baba Yaga. The
three helpful animals of the German variant are doubled here, appearing
first as the bird-men and then as the lion, the strange bird, and the bees.
54
55
56
The princess is Queen Maria Morevna, a redoubtable martial leader—
Mary the queen of heaven is lauded in the Russian Orthodox hymnal as
“leader of hosts”!—who has chained up the evil spirit with twelve chains
in the forbidden room in her castle. When Ivan slakes the old devil’s thirst
he makes off with the queen. The magic riding animals do not in the end
turn into human beings. This Russian story has a distinctly more primitive
character.
V. SUPPLEMENT
[436]
The following remarks lay no claim to general interest, being in the
main technical. I wanted at first to delete them from this revised version of
my essay, but then I changed my mind and appended them in a
supplement. The reader who is not specifically interested in psychology
can safely skip this section. For, in what follows, I have dealt with the
abstruse-looking problem of the three- and four-leggedness of the magic
horses, and presented my reflections in such a way as to demonstrate the
method I have employed. This piece of psychological reasoning rests
firstly on the irrational data of the material, that is, of the fairytale, myth,
or dream, and secondly on the conscious realization of the “latent” rational
connections which these data have with one another. That such
connections exist at all is something of a hypothesis, like that which asserts
that dreams have a meaning. The truth of this assumption is not established
a priori: its usefulness can only be proved by application. It therefore
remains to be seen whether its methodical application to irrational material
enables one to interpret the latter in a meaningful way. Its application
consists in approaching the material as if it had a coherent inner meaning.
For this purpose most of the data require a certain amplification, that is,
they need to be clarified, generalized, and approximated to a more or less
general concept in accordance with Cardan’s rule of interpretation. For
instance, the three-leggedness, in order to be recognized for what it is, has
first to be separated from the horse and then approximated to its specific
principle—the principle of threeness. Likewise, the four-leggedness in the
fairytale, when raised to the level of a general concept, enters into
relationship with the threeness, and as a result we have the enigma
mentioned in the Timaeus, the problem of three and four. Triads and
tetrads represent archetypal structures that play a significant part in all
symbolism and are equally important for the investigation of myths and
dreams. By raising the irrational datum (three-leggedness and fourleggedness) to the level of a general concept we elicit the universal
meaning of this motif and encourage the inquiring mind to tackle the
problem seriously. This task involves a series of reflections and deductions
of a technical nature which I would not wish to withhold from the
psychologically interested reader and especially from the professional, the
less so as this labour of the intellect represents a typical unravelling of
symbols and is indispensable for an adequate understanding of the
products of the unconscious. Only in this way can the nexus of
unconscious relationships be made to yield their own meaning, in contrast
to those deductive interpretations derived from a preconceived theory, e.g.,
interpretations based on astronomy, meteorology, mythology, and—last
but not least—the sexual theory.
[437]
The three-legged and four-legged horses are in truth a recondite matter
worthy of closer examination. The three and the four remind us not only of
the dilemma we have already met in the theory of psychological functions,
but also of the axiom of Maria Prophetissa, which plays a considerable role
in alchemy. It may therefore be rewarding to examine more closely the
meaning of the miraculous horses.
[438]
The first thing that seems to me worthy of note is that the three-legged
horse which is assigned to the princess as her mount is a mare, and is
moreover herself a bewitched princess. Threeness is unmistakably
connected here with femininity, whereas from the dominating religious
standpoint of consciousness it is an exclusively masculine affair, quite
apart from the fact that 3, as an uneven number, is masculine in the first
place. One could therefore translate threeness as “masculinity” outright,
this being all the more significant when one remembers the ancient
Egyptian triunity of God, Ka-mutef, and Pharaoh.
57
[439]
Three-leggedness, as the attribute of some animal, denotes the
unconscious masculinity immanent in a female creature. In a real woman it
would correspond to the animus who, like the magic horse, represents
“spirit.” In the case of the anima, however, threeness does not coincide
with any Christian idea of the Trinity but with the “lower triangle,” the
inferior function triad that constitutes the “shadow.” The inferior half of
the personality is for the greater part unconscious. It does not denote the
whole of the unconscious, but only the personal segment of it. The anima,
on the other hand, so far as she is distinguished from the shadow,
personifies the collective unconscious. If threeness is assigned to her as a
riding-animal, it means that she “rides” the shadow, is related to it as the
mar. In that case she possesses the shadow. But if she herself is the horse,
then she has lost her dominating position as a personification of the
collective unconscious and is “ridden”—possessed—by Princess A, spouse
of the hero. As the fairytale rightly says, she has been changed by
witchcraft into the three-legged horse (Princess B).
58
We can sort out this imbroglio more or less as follows:
[440]
1. Princess A is the anima of the hero. She rides—that is, possesses—
the three-legged horse, who is the shadow, the inferior function-triad of her
later spouse. To put it more simply: she has taken possession of the
inferior half of the hero’s personality. She has caught him on his weak
side, as so often happens in ordinary life, for where one is weak one needs
support and completion. In fact, a woman’s place is on the weak side of a
man. This is how we would have to formulate the situation if we regarded
the hero and Princess A as two ordinary people. But since it is a fairy-story
played out mainly in the world of magic, we are probably more correct in
interpreting Princess A as the hero’s anima. In that case the hero has been
wafted out of the profane world through his encounter with the anima, like
Merlin by his fairy: as an ordinary man he is like one caught in a
marvellous dream, viewing the world through a veil of mist.
59
[441]
2. The matter is now considerably complicated by the unexpected fact
that the three-legged horse is a mare, an equivalent of Princess A. She (the
mare) is Princess B, who in the shape of a horse corresponds to Princess
A’s shadow (i.e., her inferior function-triad). Princess B, however, differs
from Princess A in that, unlike her, she does not ride the horse but is
contained in it: she is bewitched and has thus come under the spell of a
masculine triad. Therefore, she is possessed by a shadow.
[442]
3. The question now is, whose shadow? It cannot be the shadow of the
hero, for this is already taken up by the latter’s anima. The fairytale gives
us the answer: it is the hunter or magician who has bewitched her. As we
have seen, the hunter is somehow connected with the hero, since the latter
gradually puts himself in his shoes. Hence one could easily arrive at the
conjecture that the hunter is at bottom none other than the shadow of the
hero. But this supposition is contradicted by the fact that the hunter stands
for a formidable power which extends not only to the hero’s anima but
much further, namely to the royal brother-sister pair of whose existence
the hero and his anima have no notion, and who appear very much out of
the blue in the story itself. The power that extends beyond the orbit of the
individual has a more than individual character and cannot therefore be
identified with the shadow, if we conceive and define this as the dark half
of the personality. As a supra-individual factor the numen of the hunter is a
dominant of the collective unconscious, and its characteristic featureshunter, magician, raven, miraculous horse, crucifixion or suspension high
up in the boughs of the world-tree —touch the Germanic psyche very
closely. Hence the Christian Weltanschauung, when reflected in the ocean
of the (Germanic) unconscious, logically takes on the features of Wotan.
In the figure of the hunter we meet an imago dei, a God-image, for Wotan
is also a god of winds and spirits, on which account the Romans fittingly
interpreted him as Mercury.
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61
[443]
4. The Prince and his sister, Princess B, have therefore been seized by
a pagan god and changed into horses, i.e., thrust down to the animal level,
into the realm of the unconscious. The inference is that in their proper
human shape the pair of them once belonged to the sphere of collective
consciousness. But who are they?
[444]
In order to answer this question we must proceed from the fact that
these two are an undoubted counterpart of the hero and Princess A. They
are connected with the latter also because they serve as their mounts, and
in consequence they appear as their lower, animal halves. Because of its
almost total unconsciousness, the animal has always symbolized the
psychic sphere in man which lies hidden in the darkness of the body’s
instinctual life. The hero rides the stallion, characterized by the even
(feminine) number 4; Princess A rides the mare who has only three legs (3
= a masculine number). These numbers make it clear that the
transformation into animals has brought with it a modification of sex
character: the stallion has a feminine attribute, the mare a masculine one.
Psychology can confirm this development as follows: to the degree that a
man is overpowered by the (collective) unconscious there is not only a
more unbridled intrusion of the instinctual sphere, but a certain feminine
character also makes its appearance, which I have suggested should be
called “anima.” If, on the other hand, a woman comes under the
domination of the unconscious, the darker side of her feminine nature
emerges all the more strongly, coupled with markedly masculine traits.
These latter are comprised under the term “animus.”
62
[445]
5. According to the fairytale, however, the animal form of the brothersister pair is “unreal” and due simply to the magic influence of the pagan
hunter-god. If they were nothing but animals, we could rest content with
this interpretation. But that would be to pass over in unmerited silence the
singular allusion to a modification of sex character. The white horses are
no ordinary horses: they are miraculous beasts with supernatural powers.
Therefore the human figures out of which the horses were magically
conjured must likewise have had something supernatural about them. The
fairytale makes no comment here, but if our assumption is correct that the
two animal forms correspond to the subhuman components of hero and
princess, then it follows that the human forms—Prince and Princess B—
must correspond to their superhuman components. The superhuman
quality of the original swineherd is shown by the fact that he becomes a
hero, practically a half-god, since he does not stay with his swine but
climbs the world-tree, where he is very nearly made its prisoner, like
Wotan. Similarly, he could not have become like the hunter if he did not
have a certain resemblance to him in the first place. In the same way the
imprisonment of Princess A on the top of the world-tree proves her
electness, and in so far as she shares the hunter’s bed, as stated by the tale,
she is actually the bride of God.
[446]
It is these extraordinary forces of heroism and election, bordering on
the superhuman, which involve two quite ordinary humans in a
superhuman fate. Accordingly, in the profane world a swineherd becomes
a king, and a princess gets an agreeable husband. But since, for fairytales,
there is not only a profane but also a magical world, human fate does not
have the final word. The fairytale therefore does not omit to point out what
happens in the world of magic. There too a prince and princess have got
into the power of the evil spirit, who is himself in a tight corner from
which he cannot extricate himself without extraneous help. So the human
fate that befalls the swineherd and Princess A is paralleled in the world of
magic. But in so far as the hunter is a pagan God-image and thus exalted
above the world of heroes and paramours of the gods, the parallelism goes
beyond the merely magical into a divine and spiritual sphere, where the
evil spirit, the Devil himself—or at least a devil—is bound by the spell of
an equally mighty or even mightier counter-principle indicated by the three
nails. This supreme tension of opposites, the mainspring of the whole
drama, is obviously the conflict between the upper and lower triads, or, to
put it in theological terms, between the Christian God and the devil who
has assumed the features of Wotan.
63
[447]
6. We must, it seems, start from this highest level if we want to
understand the story correctly, for the drama takes its rise from the initial
transgression of the evil spirit. The immediate consequence of this is his
crucifixion. In that distressing situation he needs outside help, and as it is
not forthcoming from above, it can only be summoned from below. A
young swineherd, possessed with the boyish spirit of adventure, is reckless
and inquisitive enough to climb the world-tree. Had he fallen and broken
his neck, no doubt everybody would have said, “What evil spirit could
have given him the crazy idea of climbing up an enormous tree like that!”
Nor would they have been altogether wrong, for that is precisely what the
evil spirit was after. The capture of Princess A was a transgression in the
profane world, and the bewitching of the—as we may suppose—
semidivine brother-sister pair was just such an enormity in the magical
world. We do not know, but it is possible, that this heinous crime was
committed before the bewitching of Princess A. At any rate, both episodes
point to a transgression of the evil spirit in the magical world as well as in
the profane.
[448]
It is assuredly not without a deeper meaning that the rescuer or
redeemer should be a swineherd, like the Prodigal Son. He is of lowly
origin and has this much in common with the curious conception of the
redeemer in alchemy. His first liberating act is to deliver the evil spirit
from the divine punishment meted out to him. It is from this act,
representing the first stage of the lysis, that the whole dramatic tangle
develops.
[449]
7. The moral of this story is in truth exceedingly odd. The finale
satisfies in so far as the swineherd and Princess A are married and become
the royal pair. Prince and Princess B likewise celebrate their wedding, but
this—in accordance with the archaic prerogative of kings—takes the form
of incest, which, though somewhat repellent, must be regarded as more or
less habitual in semidivine circles. But what, we may ask, happens to the
evil spirit, whose rescue from condign punishment sets the whole thing in
motion? The wicked hunter is trampled to pieces by the horses, which
presumably does no lasting damage to a spirit. Apparently he vanishes
without trace, but only apparently, for he does after all leave a trace behind
him, namely a hard-won happiness in both the profane and the magical
world. Two halves of the quaternity, represented on one side by the
swineherd and Princess A and on the other by Prince and Princess B, have
each come together and united: two marriage-pairs now confront one
another, parallel but otherwise divided, inasmuch as the one pair belongs
to the profane and the other to the magical world. But in spite of this
indubitable division, secret psychological connections, as we have seen,
exist between them which allow us to derive the one pair from the other.
64
[450]
Speaking in the spirit of the fairytale, which unfolds its drama from
the highest point, one would have to say that the world of half-gods is
anterior to the profane world and produces it out of itself, just as the world
of half-gods must be thought of as proceeding from the world of gods.
Conceived in this way, the swineherd and Princess A are nothing less than
earthly simulacra of Prince and Princess B, who in their turn would be the
descendants of divine prototypes. Nor should we forget that the horsebreeding witch belongs to the hunter as his female counterpart, rather like
an ancient Epona (the Celtic goddess of horses). Unfortunately we are not
told how the magical conjuration into horses happened. But it is evident
that the witch had a hand in the game because both the horses were raised
from her stock and are thus, in a sense, her productions. Hunter and witch
form a pair—the reflection, in the nocturnalchthonic part of the magical
world, of a divine parental pair. The latter is easily recognized in the
central Christian idea of sponsus et sponsa, Christ and his bride, the
Church.
[451]
If we wanted to explain the fairytale personalistically, the attempt
would founder on the fact that archetypes are not whimsical inventions but
autonomous elements of the unconscious psyche which were there before
any invention was thought of. They represent the unalterable structure of a
psychic world whose “reality” is attested by the determining effects it has
upon the conscious mind. Thus, it is a significant psychic reality that the
human pair is matched by another pair in the unconscious, the latter pair
65
being only in appearance a reflection of the first. In reality the royal pair
invariably comes first, as an a priori, so that the human pair has far more
the significance of an individual concretization, in space and time, of an
eternal and primordial image—at least in its mental structure, which is
imprinted upon the biological continuum.
[452]
We could say, then, that the swineherd stands for the “animal” man
who has a soul-mate somewhere in the upper world. By her royal birth she
betrays her connection with the pre-existent, semidivine pair. Looked at
from this angle, the latter stands for everything a man can become if only
he climbs high enough up the world-tree. For to the degree that the young
swineherd gains possession of the patrician, feminine half of himself, he
approximates to the pair of half-gods and lifts himself into the sphere of
royalty, which means universal validity. We come across the same theme
in Christian Rosencreutz’s Chymical Wedding, where the king’s son must
first free his bride from the power of a Moor, to whom she has voluntarily
given herself as a concubine. The Moor represents the alchemical nigredo
in which the arcane substance lies hidden, an idea that forms yet another
parallel to our mythologem, or, as we would say in psychological
language, another variant of this archetype.
66
[453]
As in alchemy, our fairytale describes the unconscious processes that
compensate the conscious, Christian situation. It depicts the workings of a
spirit who carries our Christian thinking beyond the boundaries set by
ecclesiastical concepts, seeking an answer to questions which neither the
Middle Ages nor the present day have been able to solve. It is not difficult
to see in the image of the second royal pair a correspondence to the
ecclesiastical conception of bridegroom and bride, and in that of the hunter
and witch a distortion of it, veering towards an atavistic, unconscious
Wotanism. The fact that it is a German fairytale makes the position
particularly interesting, since this same Wotanism was the psychological
godfather of National Socialism, a phenomenon which carried the
distortion to the lowest pitch before the eyes of the world. On the other
hand, the fairytale makes it clear that it is possible for a man to attain
totality, to become whole, only with the co-operation of the spirit of
darkness, indeed that the latter is actually a causa instrumentalis of
redemption and individuation. In utter perversion of this goal of spiritual
development, to which all nature aspires and which is also prefigured in
67
Christian doctrine, National Socialism destroyed man’s moral autonomy
and set up the nonsensical totalitarianism of the State. The fairytale tells us
how to proceed if we want to overcome the power of darkness: we must
turn his own weapons against him, which naturally cannot be done if the
magical underworld of the hunter remains unconscious, and if the best men
in the nation would rather preach dogmatisms and platitudes than take the
human psyche seriously.
VI. CONCLUSION
[454]
When we consider the spirit in its archetypal form as it appears to us
in fairytales and dreams, it presents a picture that differs strangely from the
conscious idea of spirit, which is split up into so many meanings. Spirit
was originally a spirit in human or animal form, a daimonion that came
upon man from without. But our material already shows traces of an
expansion of consciousness which has gradually begun to occupy that
originally unconscious territory and to transform those daimonia, at least
partially, into voluntary acts. Man conquers not only nature, but spirit also,
without realizing what he is doing. To the man of enlightened intellect it
seems like the correction of a fallacy when he recognizes that what he took
to be spirits is simply the human spirit and ultimately his own spirit. All
the superhuman things, whether good or bad, that former ages predicated
of the daimonia, are reduced to “reasonable” proportions as though they
were pure exaggeration, and everything seems to be in the best possible
order. But were the unanimous convictions of the past really and truly only
exaggerations? If they were not, then the integration of the spirit means
nothing less than its demonization, since the superhuman spiritual agencies
that were formerly tied up in nature are introjected into human nature, thus
endowing it with a power which extends the bounds of the personality ad
infinitum, in the most perilous way. I put it to the enlightened rationalist:
has his rational reduction led to the beneficial control of matter and spirit?
He will point proudly to the advances in physics and medicine, to the
freeing of the mind from medieval stupidity and—as a well-meaning
Christian—to our deliverance from the fear of demons. But we continue to
ask: what have all our other cultural achievements led to? The fearful
answer is there before our eyes: man has been delivered from no fear, a
hideous nightmare lies upon the world. So far reason has failed
lamentably, and the very thing that everybody wanted to avoid rolls on in
ghastly progression. Man has achieved a wealth of useful gadgets, but, to
offset that, he has torn open the abyss, and what will become of him now
—where can he make a halt? After the last World War we hoped for
reason: we go on hoping. But already we are fascinated by the possibilities
of atomic fission and promise ourselves a Golden Age—the surest
guarantee that the abomination of desolation will grow to limitless
dimensions. And who or what is it that causes all this? It is none other than
that harmless (!), ingenious, inventive, and sweetly reasonable human
spirit who unfortunately is abysmally unconscious of the demonism that
still clings to him. Worse, this spirit does everything to avoid looking
himself in the face, and we all help him like mad. Only, heaven preserve us
from psychology—that depravity might lead to self-knowledge I Rather let
us have wars, for which somebody else is always to blame, nobody seeing
that all the world is driven to do just what all the world flees from in terror.
[455]
It seems to me, frankly, that former ages did not exaggerate, that the
spirit has not sloughed off its demonisms, and that mankind, because of its
scientific and technological development, has in increasing measure
delivered itself over to the danger of possession. True, the archetype of the
spirit is capable of working for good as well as for evil, but it depends
upon man’s free—i.e., conscious—decision whether the good also will be
perverted into something satanic. Man’s worst sin is unconsciousness, but
it is indulged in with the greatest piety even by those who should serve
mankind as teachers and examples. When shall we stop taking man for
granted in this barbarous manner and in all seriousness seek ways and
means to exorcize him, to rescue him from possession and
unconsciousness, and make this the most vital task of civilization? Can we
not understand that all the outward tinkerings and improvements do not
touch man’s inner nature, and that everything ultimately depends upon
whether the man who wields the science and the technics is capable of
responsibility or not? Christianity has shown us the way, but, as the facts
bear witness, it has not penetrated deeply enough below the surface. What
depths of despair are still needed to open the eyes of the world’s
responsible leaders, so that at least they can refrain from leading
themselves into temptation?
ON THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE TRICKSTER-FIGURE1
[456]
It is no light task for me to write about the figure of the trickster in
American Indian mythology within the confined space of a commentary.
When I first came across Adolf Bandelier’s classic on this subject, The
Delight Makers, many years ago, I was struck by the European analogy of
the carnival in the medieval Church, with its reversal of the hierarchic
order, which is still continued in the carnivals held by student societies
today. Something of this contradictoriness also inheres in the medieval
description of the devil as simia dei (the ape of God), and in his
characterization in folklore as the “simpleton” who is “fooled” or
“cheated.” A curious combination of typical trickster motifs can be found
in the alchemical figure of Mercurius; for instance, his fondness for sly
jokes and malicious pranks, his powers as a shape-shifter, his dual nature,
half animal, half divine, his exposure to all kinds of tortures, and—last but
not least—his approximation to the figure of a saviour. These qualities
make Mercurius seem like a daemonic being resurrected from primitive
times, older even than the Greek Hermes. His rogueries relate him in some
measure to various figures met with in folklore and universally known in
fairytales: Tom Thumb, Stupid Hans, or the buffoon-like Hanswurst, who
is an altogether negative hero and yet manages to achieve through his
stupidity what others fail to accomplish with their best efforts. In Grimm’s
fairytale, the “Spirit Mercurius” lets himself be outwitted by a peasant lad,
and then has to buy his freedom with the precious gift of healing.
[457]
Since all mythical figures correspond to inner psychic experiences and
originally sprang from them, it is not surprising to find certain phenomena
in the field of parapsychology which remind us of the trickster. These are
the phenomena connected with poltergeists, and they occur at all times and
places in the ambience of pre-adolescent children. The malicious tricks
played by the poltergeist are as well known as the low level of his
intelligence and the fatuity of his “communications.” Ability to change his
shape seems also to be one of his characteristics, as there are not a few
reports of his appearance in animal form. Since he has on occasion
described himself as a soul in hell, the motif of subjective suffering would
seem not to be lacking either. His universality is co-extensive, so to speak,
with that of shamanism, to which, as we know, the whole phenomenology
of spiritualism belongs. There is something of the trickster in the character
of the shaman and medicine-man, for he, too, often plays malicious jokes
on people, only to fall victim in his turn to the vengeance of those whom
he has injured. For this reason, his profession sometimes puts him in peril
of his life. Besides that, the shamanistic techniques in themselves often
cause the medicine-man a good deal of discomfort, if not actual pain. At
all events the “making of a medicine-man” involves, in many parts of the
world, so much agony of body and soul that permanent psychic injuries
may result. His “approximation to the saviour” is an obvious consequence
of this, in confirmation of the mythological truth that the wounded
wounder is the agent of healing, and that the sufferer takes away suffering.
[458]
These mythological features extend even to the highest regions of
man’s spiritual development. If we consider, for example, the daemonic
features exhibited by Yahweh in the Old Testament, we shall find in them
not a few reminders of the unpredictable behaviour of the trickster, of his
senseless orgies of destruction and his self-imposed sufferings, together
with the same gradual development into a saviour and his simultaneous
humanization. It is just this transformation of the meaningless into the
meaningful that reveals the trickster’s compensatory relation to the “saint.”
In the early Middle Ages, this led to some strange ecclesiastical customs
based on memories of the ancient saturnalia. Mostly they were celebrated
on the days immediately following the birth of Christ—that is, in the New
Year—with singing and dancing. The dances were the originally harmless
tripudia of the priests, lower clergy, children, and subdeacons and took
place in church. An episcopus puerorum (children’s bishop) was elected
on Innocents’ Day and dressed in pontifical robes. Amid uproarious
rejoicings he paid an official visit to the palace of the archbishop and
bestowed the episcopal blessing from one of the windows. The same thing
happened at the tripudium hypodiaconorum, and at the dances for other
priestly grades. By the end of the twelfth century, the subdeacons’ dance
had degenerated into a real festum stultorum (fools’ feast). A report from
the year 1198 says that at the Feast of the Circumcision in Notre Dame,
Paris, “so many abominations and shameful deeds” were committed that
the holy place was desecrated “not only by smutty jokes, but even by the
shedding of blood.” In vain did Pope Innocent III inveigh against the “jests
and madness that make the clergy a mockery,” and the “shameless frenzy
of their play-acting.” Two hundred and fifty years later (March 12, 1444),
a letter from the Theological Faculty of Paris to all the French bishops was
still fulminating against these festivals, at which “even the priests and
clerics elected an archbishop or a bishop or pope, and named him the
Fools’ Pope” (fatuorum papam). “In the very midst of divine service
masqueraders with grotesque faces, disguised as women, lions, and
mummers, performed their dances, sang indecent songs in the choir, ate
their greasy food from a corner of the altar near the priest celebrating
mass, got out their games of dice, burned a stinking incense made of old
shoe leather, and ran and hopped about all over the church.”
2
[459]
It is not surprising that this veritable witches’ sabbath was
uncommonly popular, and that it required considerable time and effort to
free the Church from this pagan heritage.
3
[460]
In certain localities even the priests seem to have adhered to the
“libertas decembrica,” as the Fools’ Holiday was called, in spite (or
perhaps because?) of the fact that the older level of consciousness could let
itself rip on this happy occasion with all the wildness, wantonness, and
irresponsibility of paganism. These ceremonies, which still reveal the
spirit of the trickster in his original form, seem to have died out by the
beginning of the sixteenth century. At any rate, the various conciliar
decrees issued from 1581 to 1585 forbade only the festum puerorum and
the election of an episcopus puerorum.
4
[461]
Finally, we must also mention in this connection the festum asinorum,
which, so far as I know, was celebrated mainly in France. Although
considered a harmless festival in memory of Mary’s flight into Egypt, it
was celebrated in a somewhat curious manner which might easily have
given rise to misunderstandings. In Beauvais, the ass procession went right
into the church. At the conclusion of each part (Introit, Kyrie, Gloria, etc.)
of the high mass that followed, the whole congregation brayed, that is,
they all went “Y-a” like a donkey (“hac modulatione hinham
concludebantur”). A codex dating apparently from the eleventh century
5
says: “At the end of the mass, instead of the words ‘Ite missa est,’ the
priest shall bray three times (ter hinhamabit), and instead of the words
‘Deo gratias,’ the congregation shall answer ‘Y-a’ (hinham) three times.”
[462]
Du Cange cites a hymn from this festival:
Orientis partibus
Adventavit Asinus
Pulcher et fortissimus
Sarcinis aptissimus.
Each verse was followed by the French refrain:
Hez, Sire Asnes, car chantez
Belle bouche rechignez
Vous aurez du foin assez
Et de l’avoine à plantez.
The hymn had nine verses, the last of which was:
Amen, dicas, Asine (hie genuflectebatur)
Jam satur de gramine.
Amen, amen, itera
Aspernare vetera.6
[463]
Du Cange says that the more ridiculous this rite seemed, the greater
the enthusiasm with which it was celebrated. In other places the ass was
decked with a golden canopy whose corners were held “by distinguished
canons”; the others present had to “don suitably festive garments, as at
Christmas.” Since there were certain tendencies to bring the ass into
symbolic relationship with Christ, and since, from ancient times, the god
of the Jews was vulgarly conceived to be an ass—a prejudice which
extended to Christ himself, as is shown by the mock crucifixion scratched
on the wall of the Imperial Cadet School on the Palatine —the danger of
theriomorphism lay uncomfortably close. Even the bishops could do
nothing to stamp out this custom, until finally it had to be suppressed by
the “auctoritas supremi Senatus.” The suspicion of blasphemy becomes
quite open in Nietzsche’s “Ass Festival,” which is a deliberately
blasphemous parody of the mass.
7
8
9
[464]
These medieval customs demonstrate the role of the trickster to
perfection, and, when they vanished from the precincts of the Church, they
appeared again on the profane level of Italian theatricals, as those comic
types who, often adorned with enormous ithyphallic emblems, entertained
the far from prudish public with ribaldries in true Rabelaisian style.
Callot’s engravings have preserved these classical figures for posterity—
the Pulcinellas, Cucorognas, Chico Sgarras, and the like.
10
[465]
In picaresque tales, in carnivals and revels, in magic rites of healing,
in man’s religious fears and exaltations, this phantom of the trickster
haunts the mythology of all ages, sometimes in quite unmistakable form,
sometimes in strangely modulated guise. He is obviously a
“psychologem,” an archetypal psychic structure of extreme antiquity. In
his clearest manifestations he is a faithful reflection of an absolutely
undifferentiated human consciousness, corresponding to a psyche that has
hardly left the animal level. That this is how the trickster figure originated
can hardly be contested if we look at it from the causal and historical
angle. In psychology as in biology we cannot afford to overlook or
underestimate this question of origins, although the answer usually tells us
nothing about the functional meaning. For this reason biology should never
forget the question of purpose, for only by answering that can we get at the
meaning of a phenomenon. Even in pathology, where we are concerned
with lesions which have no meaning in themselves, the exclusively causal
approach proves to be inadequate, since there are a number of pathological
phenomena which only give up their meaning when we inquire into their
purpose. And where we are concerned with the normal phenomena of life,
this question of purpose takes undisputed precedence.
11
[466]
When, therefore, a primitive or barbarous consciousness forms a
picture of itself on a much earlier level of development and continues to do
so for hundreds or even thousands of years, undeterred by the
contamination of its archaic qualities with differentiated, highly developed
mental products, then the causal explanation is that the older the archaic
qualities are, the more conservative and pertinacious is their behaviour.
One simply cannot shake off the memory-image of things as they were,
and drags it along like a senseless appendage.
[467]
This explanation, which is facile enough to satisfy the rationalistic
requirements of our age, would certainly not meet with the approval of the
Winnebagos, the nearest possessors of the trickster cycle. For them the
myth is not in any sense a remnant—it is far too amusing for that, and an
object of undivided enjoyment. For them it still “functions,” provided that
they have not been spoiled by civilization. For them there is no earthly
reason to theorize about the meaning and purpose of myths, just as the
Christmas-tree seems no problem at all to the naïve European. For the
thoughtful observer, however, both trickster and Christmas-tree afford
reason enough for reflection. Naturally it depends very much on the
mentality of the observer what he thinks about these things. Considering
the crude primitivity of the trickster cycle, it would not be surprising if one
saw in this myth simply the reflection of an earlier, rudimentary stage of
consciousness, which is what the trickster obviously seems to be.
12
[468]
The only question that would need answering is whether such
personified reflections exist at all in empirical psychology. As a matter of
fact they do, and these experiences of split or double personality actually
form the core of the earliest psychopathological investigations. The
peculiar thing about these dissociations is that the split-off personality is
not just a random one, but stands in a complementary or compensatory
relationship to the ego-personality. It is a personification of traits of
character which are sometimes worse and sometimes better than those the
ego-personality possesses. A collective personification like the trickster is
the product of an aggregate of individuals and is welcomed by each
individual as something known to him, which would not be the case if it
were just an individual outgrowth.
[469]
Now if the myth were nothing but an historical remnant, one would
have to ask why it has not long since vanished into the great rubbish-heap
of the past, and why it continues to make its influence felt on the highest
levels of civilization, even where, on account of his stupidity and
grotesque scurrility, the trickster no longer plays the role of a “delightmaker.” In many cultures his figure seems like an old river-bed in which
the water still flows. One can see this best of all from the fact that the
trickster motif does not crop up only in its mythical form but appears just
as naïvely and authentically in the unsuspecting modern man—whenever,
in fact, he feels himself at the mercy of annoying “accidents” which thwart
his will and his actions with apparently malicious intent. He then speaks of
“hoodoos” and “jinxes” or of the “mischievousness of the object.” Here
the trickster is represented by counter-tendencies in the unconscious, and
in certain cases by a sort of second personality, of a puerile and inferior
character, not unlike the personalities who announce themselves at
spiritualistic séances and cause all those ineffably childish phenomena so
typical of poltergeists. I have, I think, found a suitable designation for this
character-component when I called it the shadow. On the civilized level,
it is regarded as a personal “gaffe,” “slip,” “faux pas,” etc., which are then
chalked up as defects of the conscious personality. We are no longer aware
that in carnival customs and the like there are remnants of a collective
shadow figure which prove that the personal shadow is in part descended
from a numinous collective figure. This collective figure gradually breaks
up under the impact of civilization, leaving traces in folklore which are
difficult to recognize. But the main part of him gets personalized and is
made an object of personal responsibility.
13
[470]
Radin’s trickster cycle preserves the shadow in its pristine
mythological form, and thus points back to a very much earlier stage of
consciousness which existed before the birth of the myth, when the Indian
was still groping about in a similar mental darkness. Only when his
consciousness reached a higher level could he detach the earlier state from
himself and objectify it, that is, say anything about it. So long as his
consciousness was itself trickster-like, such a confrontation could
obviously not take place. It was possible only when the attainment of a
newer and higher level of consciousness enabled him to look back on a
lower and inferior state. It was only to be expected that a good deal of
mockery and contempt should mingle with this retrospect, thus casting an
even thicker pall over man’s memories of the past, which were pretty
unedifying anyway. This phenomenon must have repeated itself
innumerable times in the history of his mental development. The sovereign
contempt with which our modern age looks back on the taste and
intelligence of earlier centuries is a classic example of this, and there is an
unmistakable allusion to the same phenomenon in the New Testament,
where we are told in Acts 17:30 that God looked down from above (
υπєριδῴυ, despiciens) on the Χρóυoí τῆς ἀγυοíας, the times of ignorance
(or unconsciousness).
[471]
This attitude contrasts strangely with the still commoner and more
striking idealization of the past, which is praised not merely as the “good
old days” but as the Golden Age—and not just by uneducated and
superstitious people, but by all those legions of theosophical enthusiasts
who resolutely believe in the former existence and lofty civilization of
Atlantis.
[472]
Anyone who belongs to a sphere of culture that seeks the perfect state
somewhere in the past must feel very queerly indeed when confronted by
the figure of the trickster. He is a forerunner of the saviour, and, like him,
God, man, and animal at once. He is both subhuman and superhuman, a
bestial and divine being, whose chief and most alarming characteristic is
his unconsciousness. Because of it he is deserted by his (evidently human)
companions, which seems to indicate that he has fallen below their level of
consciousness. He is so unconscious of himself that his body is not a unity,
and his two hands fight each other. He takes his anus off and entrusts it
with a special task. Even his sex is optional despite its phallic qualities: he
can turn himself into a woman and bear children. From his penis he makes
all kinds of useful plants. This is a reference to his original nature as a
Creator, for the world is made from the body of a god.
[473]
On the other hand he is in many respects stupider than the animals,
and gets into one ridiculous scrape after another. Although he is not really
evil, he does the most atrocious things from sheer unconsciousness and
unrelatedness. His imprisonment in animal unconsciousness is suggested
by the episode where he gets his head caught inside the skull of an elk, and
the next episode shows how he overcomes this condition by imprisoning
the head of a hawk inside his own rectum. True, he sinks back into the
former condition immediately afterwards, by falling under the ice, and is
outwitted time after time by the animals, but in the end he succeeds in
tricking the cunning coyote, and this brings back to him his saviour nature.
The trickster is a primitive “cosmic” being of divine-animal nature, on the
one hand superior to man because of his superhuman qualities, and on the
other hand inferior to him because of his unreason and unconsciousness.
He is no match for the animals either, because of his extraordinary
clumsiness and lack of instinct. These defects are the marks of his human
nature, which is not so well adapted to the environment as the animal’s
but, instead, has prospects of a much higher development of consciousness
based on a considerable eagerness to learn, as is duly emphasized in the
myth.
[474]
What the repeated telling of the myth signifies is the therapeutic
anamnesis of contents which, for reasons still to be discussed, should never
be forgotten for long. If they were nothing but the remnants of an inferior
state it would be understandable if man turned his attention away from
them, feeling that their reappearance was a nuisance. This is evidently by
no means the case, since the trickster has been a source of amusement right
down to civilized times, where he can still be recognized in the carnival
figures of Pulcinella and the clown. That is one important reason for his
still continuing to function. But it is not the only one, and certainly not the
reason why this reflection of an extremely primitive state of consciousness
solidified into a mythological personage. Mere vestiges of an early state
that is dying out usually lose their energy at an increasing rate, otherwise
they would never disappear. The last thing we would expect is that they
would have the strength to solidify into a mythological figure with its own
cycle of legends—unless, of course, they received energy from outside, in
this case from a higher level of consciousness or from sources in the
unconscious which are not yet exhausted. To take a legitimate parallel
from the psychology of the individual, namely the appearance of an
impressive shadow figure antagonistically confronting a personal
consciousness: this figure does not appear merely because it still exists in
the individual, but because it rests on a dynamism whose existence can
only be explained in terms of his actual situation, for instance because the
shadow is so disagreeable to his ego-consciousness that it has to be
repressed into the unconscious. This explanation does not quite meet the
case here, because the trickster obviously represents a vanishing level of
consciousness which increasingly lacks the power to take express and
assert itself. Furthermore, repression would prevent it from vanishing,
because repressed contents are the very ones that have the best chance of
survival, as we know from experience that nothing is corrected in the
unconscious. Lastly, the story of the trickster is not in the least
disagreeable to the Winnebago consciousness or incompatible with it but,
on the contrary, pleasurable and therefore not conducive to repression. It
looks, therefore, as if the myth were actively sustained and fostered by
consciousness. This may well be so, since that is the best and most
successful method of keeping the shadow figure conscious and subjecting
it to conscious criticism. Although, to begin with, this criticism has more
the character of a positive evaluation, we may expect that with the
progressive development of consciousness the cruder aspects of the myth
will gradually fall away, even if the danger of its rapid disappearance
under the stress of white civilization did not exist. We have often seen how
certain customs, originally cruel or obscene, became mere vestiges in the
course of time.
14
[475]
The process of rendering this motif harmless takes an extremely long
time, as its history shows; one can still detect traces of it even at a high
level of civilization. Its longevity could also be explained by the strength
and vitality of the state of consciousness described in the myth, and by the
secret attraction and fascination this has for the conscious mind. Although
purely causal hypotheses in the biological sphere are not as a rule very
satisfactory, due weight must nevertheless be given to the fact that in the
case of the trickster a higher level of consciousness has covered up a lower
one, and that the latter was already in retreat. His recollection, however, is
mainly due to the interest which the conscious mind brings to bear on him,
the inevitable concomitant being, as we have seen, the gradual civilizing,
i.e., assimilation, of a primitive daemonic figure who was originally
autonomous and even capable of causing possession.
[476]
To supplement the causal approach by a final one therefore enables us
to arrive at more meaningful interpretations not only in medical
psychology, where we are concerned with individual fantasies originating
in the unconscious, but also in the case of collective fantasies, that is myths
and fairytales.
[477]
As Radin points out, the civilizing process begins within the
framework of the trickster cycle itself, and this is a clear indication that the
original state has been overcome. At any rate the marks of deepest
unconsciousness fall away from him; instead of acting in a brutal, savage,
stupid, and senseless fashion, the trickster’s behaviour towards the end of
the cycle becomes quite useful and sensible. The devaluation of his earlier
unconsciousness is apparent even in the myth, and one wonders what has
happened to his evil qualities. The naïve reader may imagine that when the
dark aspects disappear they are no longer there in reality. But that is not
the case at all, as experience shows. What actually happens is that the
conscious mind is then able to free itself from the fascination of evil and is
no longer obliged to live it compulsively. The darkness and the evil have
not gone up in smoke, they have merely withdrawn into the unconscious
owing to loss of energy, where they remain unconscious so long as all is
well with the conscious. But if the conscious should find itself in a critical
or doubtful situation, then it soon becomes apparent that the shadow has
not dissolved into nothing but is only waiting for a favourable opportunity
to reappear as a projection upon one’s neighbour. If this trick is successful,
there is immediately created between them that world of primordial
darkness where everything that is characteristic of the trickster can happen
—even on the highest plane of civilization. The best examples of these
“monkey tricks,” as popular speech aptly and truthfully sums up this state
of affairs in which everything goes wrong and nothing intelligent happens
except by mistake at the last moment, are naturally to be found in politics.
[478]
The so-called civilized man has forgotten the trickster. He remembers
him only figuratively and metaphorically, when, irritated by his own
ineptitude, he speaks of fate playing tricks on him or of things being
bewitched. He never suspects that his own hidden and apparently harmless
shadow has qualities whose dangerousness exceeds his wildest dreams. As
soon as people get together in masses and submerge the individual, the
shadow is mobilized, and, as history shows, may even be personified and
incarnated.
[479]
The disastrous idea that everything comes to the human psyche from
outside and that it is born a tabula rasa is responsible for the erroneous
belief that under normal circumstances the individual is in perfect order.
He then looks to the State for salvation, and makes society pay for his
inefficiency. He thinks the meaning of existence would be discovered if
food and clothing were delivered to him gratis on his own doorstep, or if
everybody possessed an automobile. Such are the puerilities that rise up in
place of an unconscious shadow and keep it unconscious. As a result of
these prejudices, the individual feels totally dependent on his environment
and loses all capacity for introspection. In this way his code of ethics is
replaced by a knowledge of what is permitted or forbidden or ordered.
How, under these circumstances, can one expect a soldier to subject an
order received from a superior to ethical scrutiny? He has not yet made the
discovery that he might be capable of spontaneous ethical impulses, and of
performing them—even when no one is looking.
[480]
From this point of view we can see why the myth of the trickster was
preserved and developed: like many other myths, it was supposed to have a
therapeutic effect. It holds the earlier low intellectual and moral level
before the eyes of the more highly developed individual, so that he shall
not forget how things looked yesterday. We like to imagine that something
which we do not understand does not help us in any way. But that is not
always so. Seldom does a man understand with his head alone, least of all
when he is a primitive. Because of its numinosity the myth has a direct
effect on the unconscious, no matter whether it is understood or not. The
fact that its repeated telling has not long since become obsolete can, I
believe, be explained by its usefulness. The explanation is rather difficult
because two contrary tendencies are at work: the desire on the one hand to
get out of the earlier condition and on the other hand not to forget it.
Apparently Radin has also felt this difficulty, for he says: “Viewed
psychologically, it might be contended that the history of civilization is
largely the account of the attempts of man to forget his transformation
from an animal into a human being.” A few pages further on he says (with
reference to the Golden Age): “So stubborn a refusal to forget is not an
accident.” And it is also no accident that we are forced to contradict
ourselves as soon as we try to formulate man’s paradoxical attitude to
myth. Even the most enlightened of us will set up a Christmas-tree for his
children without having the least idea what this custom means, and is
invariably disposed to nip any attempt at interpretation in the bud. It is
really astonishing to see how many so-called superstitions are rampant
nowadays in town and country alike, but if one took hold of the individual
and asked him, loudly and clearly, “Do you believe in ghosts? in witches?
in spells and magic?” he would deny it indignantly. It is a hundred to one
he has never heard of such things and thinks it all rubbish. But in secret he
is all for it, just like a jungle-dweller. The public knows very little of these
things anyway, for everyone is convinced that in our enlightened society
that kind of superstition has long since been eradicated, and it is part of the
general convention to act as though one had never heard of such things,
not to mention believing in them.
15
16
17
[481]
But nothing is ever lost, not even the blood pact with the devil.
Outwardly it is forgotten, but inwardly not at all. We act like the natives on
the southern slopes of Mount Elgon, in East Africa, one of whom
accompanied me part of the way into the bush. At a fork in the path we
came upon a brand new “ghost trap,” beautifully got up like a little hut,
near the cave where he lived with his family. I asked him if he had made it.
He denied it with all the signs of extreme agitation, asserting that only
children would make such a “ju-ju.” Whereupon he gave the hut a kick,
and the whole thing fell to pieces.
[482]
This is exactly the reaction we can observe in Europe today.
Outwardly people are more or less civilized, but inwardly they are still
primitives. Something in man is profoundly disinclined to give up his
beginnings, and something else believes it has long since got beyond all
that. This contradiction was once brought home to me in the most drastic
manner when I was watching a “Strudel” (a sort of local witch-doctor)
taking the spell off a stable. The stable was situated immediately beside the
Gotthard railway line, and several international expresses sped past during
the ceremony. Their occupants would hardly have suspected that a
primitive ritual was being performed a few yards away.
[483]
The conflict between the two dimensions of consciousness is simply
an expression of the polaristic structure of the psyche, which like any other
energic system is dependent on the tension of opposites. That is also why
there are no general psychological propositions which could not just as
well be reversed; indeed, their reversibility proves their validity. We
should never forget that in any psychological discussion we are not saying
anything about the psyche, but that the psyche is always speaking about
itself. It is no use thinking we can ever get beyond the psyche by means of
the “mind,” even though the mind asserts that it is not dependent on the
psyche. How could it prove that? We can say, if we like, that one statement
comes from the psyche, is psychic and nothing but psychic, and that
another comes from the mind, is “spiritual” and therefore superior to the
psychic one. Both are mere assertions based on the postulates of belief.
[484]
The fact is, that this old trichotomous hierarchy of psychic contents
(hylic, psychic, and pneumatic) represents the polaristic structure of the
psyche, which is the only immediate object of experience. The unity of our
psychic nature lies in the middle, just as the living unity of the waterfall
appears in the dynamic connection between above and below. Thus, the
living effect of the myth is experienced when a higher consciousness,
rejoicing in its freedom and independence, is confronted by the autonomy
of a mythological figure and yet cannot flee from its fascination, but must
pay tribute to the overwhelming impression. The figure works, because
secretly it participates in the observer’s psyche and appears as its
reflection, though it is not recognized as such. It is split off from his
consciousness and consequently behaves like an autonomous personality.
The trickster is a collective shadow figure, a summation of all the inferior
traits of character in individuals. And since the individual shadow is never
absent as a component of personality, the collective figure can construct
itself out of it continually. Not always, of course, as a mythological figure,
but, in consequence of the increasing repression and neglect of the original
mythologems, as a corresponding projection on other social groups and
nations.
[485]
If we take the trickster as a parallel of the individual shadow, then the
question arises whether that trend towards meaning, which we saw in the
trickster myth, can also be observed in the subjective and personal shadow.
Since this shadow frequently appears in the phenomenology of dreams as a
well-defined figure, we can answer this question positively: the shadow,
although by definition a negative figure, sometimes has certain clearly
discernible traits and associations which point to a quite different
background. It is as though he were hiding meaningful contents under an
unprepossessing exterior. Experience confirms this; and what is more
important, the things that are hidden usually consist of increasingly
numinous figures. The one standing closest behind the shadow is the
anima, who is endowed with considerable powers of fascination and
possession. She often appears in rather too youthful form, and hides in her
turn the powerful archetype of the wise old man (sage, magician, king,
etc.). The series could be extended, but it would be pointless to do so, as
psychologically one only understands what one has experienced oneself.
The concepts of complex psychology are, in essence, not intellectual
formulations but names for certain areas of experience, and though they
can be described they remain dead and irrepresentable to anyone who has
not experienced them. Thus, I have noticed that people usually have not
much difficulty in picturing to themselves what is meant by the shadow,
even if they would have preferred instead a bit of Latin or Greek jargon
that sounds more “scientific.” But it costs them enormous difficulties to
understand what the anima is. They accept her easily enough when she
appears in novels or as a film star, but she is not understood at all when it
comes to seeing the role she plays in their own lives, because she sums up
everything that a man can never get the better of and never finishes coping
with. Therefore it remains in a perpetual state of emotionality which must
not be touched. The degree of unconsciousness one meets with in this
connection is, to put it mildly, astounding. Hence it is practically
impossible to get a man who is afraid of his own femininity to understand
18
what is meant by the anima.
[486]
Actually, it is not surprising that this should be so, since even the most
rudimentary insight into the shadow sometimes causes the greatest
difficulties for the modern European. But since the shadow is the figure
nearest his consciousness and the least explosive one, it is also the first
component of personality to come up in an analysis of the unconscious. A
minatory and ridiculous figure, he stands at the very beginning of the way
of individuation, posing the deceptively easy riddle of the Sphinx, or
grimly demanding answer to a “quaestio crocodilina.”
19
[487]
If, at the end of the trickster myth, the saviour is hinted at, this
comforting premonition or hope means that some calamity or other has
happened and been consciously understood. Only out of disaster can the
longing for the saviour arise—in other words, the recognition and
unavoidable integration of the shadow create such a harrowing situation
that nobody but a saviour can undo the tangled web of fate. In the case of
the individual, the problem constellated by the shadow is answered on the
plane of the anima, that is, through relatedness. In the history of the
collective as in the history of the individual, everything depends on the
development of consciousness. This gradually brings liberation from
imprisonment in ἀγνοία, ‘unconsciousness,’ and is therefore a bringer of
light as well as of healing.
20
[488]
As in its collective, mythological form, so also the individual shadow
contains within it the seed of an enantiodromia, of a conversion into its
opposite.
VI
CONSCIOUS, UNCONSCIOUS,
AND INDIVIDUATION
______
A STUDY IN THE PROCESS
OF INDIVIDUATION
______
CONCERNING MANDALA SYMBOLISM
CONSCIOUS, UNCONSCIOUS, AND INDIVIDUATION1
[489]
The relation between the conscious and the unconscious on the one
hand, and the individuation process on the other, are problems that arise
almost regularly during the later stages of analytical treatment. By
“analytical” I mean a procedure that takes account of the existence of the
unconscious. These problems do not arise in a procedure based on
suggestion. A few preliminary words may not be out of place in order to
explain what is meant by “individuation.”
[490]
I use the term “individuation” to denote the process by which a person
becomes a psychological “in-dividual,” that is, a separate, indivisible unity
or “whole.” It is generally assumed that consciousness is the whole of the
psychological individual. But knowledge of the phenomena that can only
be explained on the hypothesis of unconscious psychic processes makes it
doubtful whether the ego and its contents are in fact identical with the
“whole.” If unconscious processes exist at all, they must surely belong to
the totality of the individual, even though they are not components of the
conscious ego. If they were part of the ego they would necessarily be
conscious, because everything that is directly related to the ego is
conscious. Consciousness can even be equated with the relation between
the ego and the psychic contents. But unconscious phenomena are so little
related to the ego that most people do not hesitate to deny their existence
outright. Nevertheless, they manifest themselves in an individual’s
behaviour. An attentive observer can detect them without difficulty, while
the observed person remains quite unaware of the fact that he is betraying
his most secret thoughts or even things he has never thought consciously.
It is, however, a great prejudice to suppose that something we have never
thought consciously does not exist in the psyche. There is plenty of
evidence to show that consciousness is very far from covering the psyche
in its totality. Many things occur semiconsciously, and a great many more
2
remain entirely unconscious. Thorough investigation of the phenomena of
dual and multiple personalities, for instance, has brought to light a mass of
material with observations to prove this point. (I would refer the reader to
the writings of Pierre Janet, Théodore Flournoy, Morton Prince, and
others. )
3
[491]
The importance of such phenomena has made a deep impression on
medical psychology, because they give rise to all sorts of psychic and
physiological symptoms. In these circumstances, the assumption that the
ego expresses the totality of the psyche has become untenable. It is, on the
contrary, evident that the whole must necessarily include not only
consciousness but the illimitable field of unconscious occurrences as well,
and that the ego can be no more than the centre of the field of
consciousness.
[492]
You will naturally ask whether the unconscious possesses a centre too.
I would hardly venture to assume that there is in the unconscious a ruling
principle analogous to the ego. As a matter of fact, everything points to the
contrary. If there were such a centre, we could expect almost regular signs
of its existence. Cases of dual personality would then be frequent
occurrences instead of rare curiosities. As a rule, unconscious phenomena
manifest themselves in fairly chaotic and unsystematic form. Dreams, for
instance, show no apparent order and no tendency to systematization, as
they would have to do if there were a personal consciousness at the back of
them. The philosophers Carus and von Hartmann treat the unconscious as
a metaphysical principle, a sort of universal mind, without any trace of
personality or ego-consciousness, and similarly Schopenhauer’s “Will” is
without an ego. Modern psychologists, too, regard the unconscious as an
egoless function below the threshold of consciousness. Unlike the
philosophers, they tend to derive its subliminal functions from the
conscious mind. Janet thinks that there is a certain weakness of
consciousness which is unable to hold all the psychic processes together.
Freud, on the other hand, favours the idea of conscious factors that
suppress certain incompatible tendencies. Much can be said for both
theories, since there are numerous cases where a weakness of
consciousness actually causes certain contents to fall below the threshold,
or where disagreeable contents are repressed. It is obvious that such
careful observers as Janet and Freud would not have constructed theories
deriving the unconscious mainly from conscious sources had they been
able to discover traces of an independent personality or of an autonomous
will in the manifestations of the unconscious.
[493]
If it were true that the unconscious consists of nothing but contents
accidentally deprived of consciousness but otherwise indistinguishable
from the conscious material, then one could identify the ego more or less
with the totality of the psyche. But actually the situation is not quite so
simple. Both theories are based mainly on observations in the field of
neurosis. Neither Janet nor Freud had any specifically psychiatric
experience. If they had, they would surely have been struck by the fact that
the unconscious displays contents that are utterly different from conscious
ones, so strange, indeed, that nobody can understand them, neither the
patient himself nor his doctors. The patient is inundated by a flood of
thoughts that are as strange to him as they are to a normal person. That is
why we call him “crazy”: we cannot understand his ideas. We understand
something only if we have the necessary premises for doing so. But here
the premises are just as remote from our consciousness as they were from
the mind of the patient before he went mad. Otherwise he would never
have become insane.
[494]
There is, in fact, no field directly known to us from which we could
derive certain pathological ideas. It is not a question of more or less
normal contents that became unconscious just by accident. They are, on
the contrary, products whose nature is at first completely baffling. They
differ in every respect from neurotic material, which cannot be said to be
at all bizarre. The material of a neurosis is understandable in human terms,
but that of a psychosis is not.
4
[495]
This peculiar psychotic material cannot be derived from the conscious
mind, because the latter lacks the premises which would help to explain
the strangeness of the ideas. Neurotic contents can be integrated without
appreciable injury to the ego, but psychotic ideas cannot. They remain
inaccessible, and ego-consciousness is more or less swamped by them.
They even show a distinct tendency to draw the ego into their “system.”
[496]
Such cases indicate that under certain conditions the unconscious is
capable of taking over the role of the ego. The consequence of this
exchange is insanity and confusion, because the unconscious is not a
second personality with organized and centralized functions but in all
probability a decentralized congeries of psychic processes. However,
nothing produced by the human mind lies absolutely outside the psychic
realm. Even the craziest idea must correspond to something in the psyche.
We cannot suppose that certain minds contain elements that do not exist at
all in other minds. Nor can we assume that the unconscious is capable of
becoming autonomous only in certain people, namely in those predisposed
to insanity. It is very much more likely that the tendency to autonomy is a
more or less general peculiarity of the unconscious. Mental disorder is, in a
sense, only one outstanding example of a hidden but none the less general
condition. This tendency to autonomy shows itself above all in affective
states, including those of normal people. When in a state of violent affect
one says or does things which exceed the ordinary. Not much is needed:
love and hate, joy and grief, are often enough to make the ego and the
unconscious change places. Very strange ideas indeed can take possession
of otherwise healthy people on such occasions. Groups, communities, and
even whole nations can be seized in this way by psychic epidemics.
[497]
The autonomy of the unconscious therefore begins where emotions
are generated. Emotions are instinctive, involuntary reactions which upset
the rational order of consciousness by their elemental outbursts. Affects
are not “made” or wilfully produced; they simply happen. In a state of
affect a trait of character sometimes appears which is strange even to the
person concerned, or hidden contents may irrupt involuntarily. The more
violent an affect the closer it comes to the pathological, to a condition in
which the ego-consciousness is thrust aside by autonomous contents that
were unconscious before. So long as the unconscious is in a dormant
condition, it seems as if there were absolutely nothing in this hidden
region. Hence we are continually surprised when something unknown
suddenly appears “from nowhere.” Afterwards, of course, the psychologist
comes along and shows that things had to happen as they did for this or
that reason. But who could have said so beforehand?
[498]
We call the unconscious “nothing,” and yet it is a reality in potentia.
The thought we shall think, the deed we shall do, even the fate we shall
lament tomorrow, all lie unconscious in our today. The unknown in us
which the affect uncovers was always there and sooner or later would have
presented itself to consciousness. Hence we must always reckon with the
presence of things not yet discovered. These, as I have said, may be
unknown quirks of character. But possibilities of future development may
also come to light in this way, perhaps in just such an outburst of affect
which sometimes radically alters the whole situation. The unconscious has
a Janus-face: on one side its contents point back to a preconscious,
prehistoric world of instinct, while on the other side it potentially
anticipates the future—precisely because of the instinctive readiness for
action of the factors that determine man’s fate. If we had complete
knowledge of the ground plan lying dormant in an individual from the
beginning, his fate would be in large measure predictable.
[499]
Now, to the extent that unconscious tendencies—be they backwardlooking images or forward-looking anticipations—appear in dreams,
dreams have been regarded, in all previous ages, less as historical
regressions than as anticipations of the future, and rightly so. For
everything that will be happens on the basis of what has been, and of what
—consciously or unconsciously—still exists as a memory-trace. In so far
as no man is born totally new, but continually repeats the stage of
development last reached by the species, he contains unconsciously, as an
a priori datum, the entire psychic structure developed both upwards and
downwards by his ancestors in the course of the ages. That is what gives
the unconscious its characteristic “historical” aspect, but it is at the same
time the sine qua non for shaping the future. For this reason it is often very
difficult to decide whether an autonomous manifestation of the
unconscious should be interpreted as an effect (and therefore historical) or
as an aim (and therefore teleological and anticipatory). The conscious
mind thinks as a rule without regard to ancestral preconditions and without
taking into account the influence this a priori factor has on the shaping of
the individual’s fate. Whereas we think in periods of years, the
unconscious thinks and lives in terms of millennia. So when something
happens that seems to us an unexampled novelty, it is generally a very old
story indeed. We still forget, like children, what happened yesterday. We
are still living in a wonderful new world where man thinks himself
astonishingly new and “modern.” This is unmistakable proof of the
youthfulness of human consciousness, which has not yet grown aware of
its historical antecedents.
[500]
As a matter of fact, the “normal” person convinces me far more of the
autonomy of the unconscious than does the insane person. Psychiatric
theory can always take refuge behind real or alleged organic disorders of
the brain and thus detract from the importance of the unconscious. But
such a view is no longer applicable when it comes to normal humanity.
What one sees happening in the world is not just a “shadowy vestige of
activities that were once conscious,” but the expression of a living psychic
condition that still exists and always will exist. Were that not so, one might
well be astonished. But it is precisely those who give least credence to the
autonomy of the unconscious who are the most surprised by it. Because of
its youthfulness and vulnerability, our consciousness tends to make light of
the unconscious. This is understandable enough, for a young man should
not let himself be overawed by the authority of his parents if he wants to
start something on his own account. Historically as well as individually,
our consciousness has developed out of the darkness and somnolence of
primordial unconsciousness. There were psychic processes and functions
long before any ego-consciousness existed. “Thinking” existed long before
man was able to say: “I am conscious of thinking.”
[501]
The primitive “perils of the soul” consist mainly of dangers to
consciousness. Fascination, bewitchment, “loss of soul,” possession, etc.
are obviously phenomena of the dissociation and suppression of
consciousness caused by unconscious contents. Even civilized man is not
yet entirely free of the darkness of primeval times. The unconscious is the
mother of consciousness. Where there is a mother there is also a father, yet
he seems to be unknown. Consciousness, in the pride of its youth, may
deny its father, but it cannot deny its mother. That would be too unnatural,
for one can see in every child how hesitantly and slowly its egoconsciousness evolves out of a fragmentary consciousness lasting for
single moments only, and how these islands gradually emerge from the
total darkness of mere instinctuality.
[502]
Consciousness grows out of an unconscious psyche which is older
than it, and which goes on functioning together with it or even in spite of
it. Although there are numerous cases of conscious contents becoming
unconscious again (through being repressed, for instance), the unconscious
as a whole is far from being a mere remnant of consciousness. Or are the
psychic functions of animals remnants of consciousness?
[503]
As I have said, there is little hope of our finding in the unconscious an
order equivalent to that of the ego. It certainly does not look as if we were
likely to discover an unconscious ego-personality, something in the nature
of a Pythagorean “counter-earth.” Nevertheless, we cannot overlook the
fact that, just as consciousness arises from the unconscious, the ego-centre,
too, crystallizes out of a dark depth in which it was somehow contained in
potentia. Just as a human mother can only produce a human child, whose
deepest nature lay hidden during its potential existence within her, so we
are practically compelled to believe that the unconscious cannot be an
entirely chaotic accumulation of instincts and images. There must be
something to hold it together and give expression to the whole. Its centre
cannot possibly be the ego, since the ego was born out of it into
consciousness and turns its back on the unconscious, seeking to shut it out
as much as possible. Or can it be that the unconscious loses its centre with
the birth of the ego? In that case we would expect the ego to be far
superior to the unconscious in influence and importance. The unconscious
would then follow meekly in the footsteps of the conscious, and that would
be just what we wish.
[504]
Unfortunately, the facts show the exact opposite: consciousness
succumbs all too easily to unconscious influences, and these are often truer
and wiser than our conscious thinking. Also, it frequently happens that
unconscious motives overrule our conscious decisions, especially in
matters of vital importance. Indeed, the fate of the individual is largely
dependent on unconscious factors. Careful investigation shows how very
much our conscious decisions depend on the undisturbed functioning of
memory. But memory often suffers from the disturbing interference of
unconscious contents. Moreover, it functions as a rule automatically.
Ordinarily it uses the bridges of association, but often in such an
extraordinary way that another thorough investigation of the whole process
of memory-reproduction is needed in order to find out how certain
memories managed to reach consciousness at all. And sometimes these
bridges cannot be found. In such cases it is impossible to dismiss the
hypothesis of the spontaneous activity of the unconscious. Another
example is intuition, which is chiefly dependent on unconscious processes
of a very complex nature. Because of this peculiarity, I have defined
intuition as “perception via the unconscious.”
[505]
Normally the unconscious collaborates with the conscious without
friction or disturbance, so that one is not even aware of its existence. But
when an individual or a social group deviates too far from their instinctual
foundations, they then experience the full impact of unconscious forces.
The collaboration of the unconscious is intelligent and purposive, and even
when it acts in opposition to consciousness its expression is still
compensatory in an intelligent way, as if it were trying to restore the lost
balance.
[506]
There are dreams and visions of such an impressive chararacter that
some people refuse to admit that they could have originated in an
unconscious psyche. They prefer to assume that such phenomena derive
from a sort of “superconsciousness.” Such people make a distinction
between a quasi-physiological or instinctive unconscious and a psychic
sphere or layer “above” consciousness, which they style the
“superconscious.” As a matter of fact, this psyche, which in Indian
philosophy is called the “higher” consciousness, corresponds to what we in
the West call the “unconscious.” Certain dreams, visions, and mystical
experiences do, however, suggest the existence of a consciousness in the
unconscious. But, if we assume a consciousness in the unconscious, we are
at once faced with the difficulty that no consciousness can exist without a
subject, that is, an ego to which the contents are related. Consciousness
needs a centre, an ego to which something is conscious. We know of no
other kind of consciousness, nor can we imagine a consciousness without
an ego. There can be no consciousness when there is no one to say: “I am
conscious.”
[507]
It is unprofitable to speculate about things we cannot know. I therefore
refrain from making assertions that go beyond the bounds of science. It
was never possible for me to discover in the unconscious anything like a
personality comparable with the ego. But although a “second ego” cannot
be discovered (except in the rare cases of dual personality), the
manifestations of the unconscious do at least show traces of personalities.
A simple example is the dream, where a number of real or imaginary
people represent the dream-thoughts. In nearly all the important types of
dissociation, the manifestations of the unconscious assume a strikingly
personal form. Careful examination of the behaviour and mental content of
these personifications, however, reveals their fragmentary character. They
seem to represent complexes that have split off from a greater whole, and
are the very reverse of a personal centre of the unconscious.
[508]
I have always been greatly impressed by the character of dissociated
fragments as personalities. Hence I have often asked myself whether we
are not justified in assuming that, if such fragments have personality, the
whole from which they were broken off must have personality to an even
higher degree. The inference seemed logical, since it does not depend on
whether the fragments are large or small. Why, then, should not the whole
have personality too? Personality need not imply consciousness. It can just
as easily be dormant or dreaming.
[509]
The general aspect of unconscious manifestations is in the main
chaotic and irrational, despite certain symptoms of intelligence and
purposiveness. The unconscious produces dreams, visions, fantasies,
emotions, grotesque ideas, and so forth. This is exactly what we would
expect a dreaming personality to do. It seems to be a personality that was
never awake and was never conscious of the life it had lived and of its own
continuity. The only question is whether the hypothesis of a dormant and
hidden personality is possible or not. It may be that all of the personality to
be found in the unconscious is contained in the fragmentary
personifications mentioned before. Since this is very possible, all my
conjectures would be in vain—unless there were evidence of much less
fragmentary and more complete personalities, even though they are
hidden.
[510]
I am convinced that such evidence exists. Unfortunately, the material
to prove this belongs to the subtleties of psychological analysis. It is
therefore not exactly easy to give the reader a simple and convincing idea
of it.
[511]
I shall begin with a brief statement: in the unconscious of every man
there is hidden a feminine personality, and in that of every woman a
masculine personality.
[512]
It is a well-known fact that sex is determined by a majority of male or
female genes, as the case may be. But the minority of genes belonging to
the other sex does not simply disappear. A man therefore has in him a
feminine side, an unconscious feminine figure—a fact of which he is
generally quite unaware. I may take it as known that I have called this
figure the “anima,” and its counterpart in a woman the “animus.” In order
not to repeat myself, I must refer the reader to the literature. This figure
frequently appears in dreams, where one can observe all the attributes I
have mentioned in earlier publications.
5
[513]
Another, no less important and clearly defined figure is the “shadow.”
Like the anima, it appears either in projection on suitable persons, or
personified as such in dreams. The shadow coincides with the “personal”
unconscious (which corresponds to Freud’s conception of the
unconscious). Again like the anima, this figure has often been portrayed by
poets and writers. I would mention the Faust-Mephistopheles relationship
and E. T. A. Hoffmann’s tale The Devil’s Elixir as two especially typical
descriptions. The shadow personifies everything that the subject refuses to
acknowledge about himself and yet is always thrusting itself upon him
directly or indirectly—for instance, inferior traits of character and other
incompatible tendencies.
6
[514]
The fact that the unconscious spontaneously personifies certain
affectively toned contents in dreams is the reason why I have taken over
these personifications in my terminology and formulated them as names.
[515]
Besides these figures there are still a few others, less frequent and less
striking, which have likewise undergone poetic as well as mythological
formulation. I would mention, for instance, the figure of the hero and of
the wise old man, to name only two of the best known.
7
8
[516]
All these figures irrupt autonomously into consciousness as soon
as it gets into a pathological state. With regard to the anima, I would
particularly like to draw attention to the case described by Nelken. Now
the remarkable thing is that these figures show the most striking
connections with the poetic, religious, or mythological formulations,
though these connections are in no way factual. That is to say, they are
spontaneous products of analogy. One such case even led to the charge
of plagiarism: the French writer Benoît gave a description of the anima
and her classic myth in his book L’Atlantide, which is an exact parallel
of Rider Haggard’s She. The lawsuit proved unsuccessful; Benoît had
never heard of She. (It might, in the last analysis, have been an instance
of cryptomnesic deception, which is often extremely difficult to rule
out.) The distinctly “historical” aspect of the anima and her
condensation with the figures of the sister, wife, mother, and daughter,
9
plus the associated incest motif, can be found in Goethe (“You were in
times gone by my wife or sister”), as well as in the anima figure of the
regina or femina alba in alchemy. The English alchemist Eirenaeus
Philalethes (“lover of truth”), writing about 1645, remarks that the
“Queen” was the King’s “sister, mother, or wife.” The same idea can be
found, ornately elaborated, in Nelken’s patient and in a whole series of
cases observed by me, where I was able to rule out with certainty any
possibility of literary influence. For the rest, the anima complex is one
of the oldest features of Latin alchemy.
10
11
12
[517]
When one studies the archetypal personalities and their behaviour
with the help of the dreams, fantasies, and delusions of patients, one is
profoundly impressed by their manifold and unmistakable connections
with mythological ideas completely unknown to the layman. They form a
species of singular beings whom one would like to endow with egoconsciousness; indeed, they almost seem capable of it. And yet this idea is
not borne out by the facts. There is nothing in their behaviour to suggest
that they have an ego-consciousness as we know it. They show, on the
contrary, all the marks of fragmentary personalities. They are masklike,
wraithlike, without problems, lacking self-reflection, with no conflicts, no
doubts, no sufferings; like gods, perhaps, who have no philosophy, such as
the Brahma-gods of the Samyutta-nikãya, whose erroneous views needed
correction by the Buddha. Unlike other contents, they always remain
strangers in the world of consciousness, unwelcome intruders saturating
the atmosphere with uncanny forebodings or even with the fear of
madness.
13
[518]
If we examine their content, i.e., the fantasy material constituting their
phenomenology, we find countless archaic and “historical” associations
and images of an archetypal nature. This peculiar fact permits us to draw
conclusions about the “localization” of anima and animus in the psychic
structure. They evidently live and function in the deeper layers of the
unconscious, especially in that phylogenetic substratum which I have
called the collective unconscious. This localization explains a good deal of
their strangeness: they bring into our ephemeral consciousness an
unknown psychic life belonging to a remote past. It is the mind of our
unknown ancestors, their way of thinking and feeling, their way of
experiencing life and the world, gods and men. The existence of these
14
archaic strata is presumably the source of man’s belief in reincarnations
and in memories of “previous existences.” Just as the human body is a
museum, so to speak, of its phylogenetic history, so too is the psyche. We
have no reason to suppose that the specific structure of the psyche is the
only thing in the world that has no history outside its individual
manifestations. Even the conscious mind cannot be denied a history
reaching back at least five thousand years. It is only our ego-consciousness
that has forever a new beginning and an early end. The unconscious
psyche is not only immensely old, it is also capable of growing into an
equally remote future. It moulds the human species and is just as much a
part of it as the human body, which, though ephemeral in the individual, is
collectively of immense age.
[519]
The anima and animus live in a world quite different from the world
outside—in a world where the pulse of time beats infinitely slowly, where
the birth and death of individuals count for little. No wonder their nature is
strange, so strange that their irruption into consciousness often amounts to
a psychosis. They undoubtedly belong to the material that comes to light in
schizophrenia.
[520]
What I have said about the collective unconscious may give you a
more or less adequate idea of what I mean by this term. If we now turn
back to the problem of individuation, we shall see ourselves faced with a
rather extraordinary task: the psyche consists of two incongruous halves
which together should form a whole. One is inclined to think that egoconsciousness is capable of assimilating the unconscious, at least one
hopes that such a solution is possible. But unfortunately the unconscious
really is unconscious; in other words, it is unknown. And how can you
assimilate something unknown? Even if you can form a fairly complete
picture of the anima and animus, this does not mean that you have
plumbed the depths of the unconscious. One hopes to control the
unconscious, but the past masters in the art of self-control, the yogis, attain
perfection in samadhi, a state of ecstasy, which so far as we know is
equivalent to a state of unconsciousness. It makes no difference whether
they call our unconscious a “universal consciousness”; the fact remains
that in their case the unconscious has swallowed up ego-consciousness.
They do not realize that a “universal consciousness” is a contradiction in
terms, since exclusion, selection, and discrimination are the root and
essence of everything that lays claim to the name “consciousness.”
“Universal consciousness” is logically identical with unconsciousness. It is
nevertheless true that a correct application of the methods described in the
Pāli Canon or in the Yoga-sütra induces a remarkable extension of
consciousness. But, with increasing extension, the contents of
consciousness lose in clarity of detail. In the end, consciousness becomes
all-embracing, but nebulous; an infinite number of things merge into an
indefinite whole, a state in which subject and object are almost completely
identical. This is all very beautiful, but scarcely to be recommended
anywhere north of the Tropic of Cancer.
[521]
For this reason we must look for a different solution. We believe in
ego-consciousness and in what we call reality. The realities of a northern
climate are somehow so convincing that we feel very much better off when
we do not forget them. For us it makes sense to concern ourselves with
reality. Our European ego-consciousness is therefore inclined to swallow
up the unconscious, and if this should not prove feasible we try to suppress
it. But if we understand anything of the unconscious, we know that it
cannot be swallowed. We also know that it is dangerous to suppress it,
because the unconscious is life and this life turns against us if suppressed,
as happens in neurosis.
[522]
Conscious and unconscious do not make a whole when one of them is
suppressed and injured by the other. If they must contend, let it at least be
a fair fight with equal rights on both sides. Both are aspects of life.
Consciousness should defend its reason and protect itself, and the chaotic
life of the unconscious should be given the chance of having its way too—
as much of it as we can stand. This means open conflict and open
collaboration at once. That, evidently, is the way human life should be. It
is the old game of hammer and anvil: between them the patient iron is
forged into an indestructible whole, an “individual.”
[523]
This, roughly, is what I mean by the individuation process. As the
name shows, it is a process or course of development arising out of the
conflict between the two fundamental psychic facts. I have described the
problems of this conflict, at least in their essentials, in my essay “The
Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious.” A special chapter,
however, is the symbolism of the process, which is of the utmost
importance for understanding the final stages of the encounter between
conscious and unconscious, in practice as well as in theory. My
investigations during these last years have been devoted mainly to this
theme. It turned out, to my own great astonishment, that the symbol
formation has the closest affinities with alchemical ideas, and especially
with the conceptions of the “uniting symbol,” which yield highly
significant parallels. Naturally these are processes which have no meaning
in the initial stages of psychological treatment. On the other hand, more
difficult cases, such as cases of unresolved transference, develop these
symbols. Knowledge of them is of inestimable importance in treating cases
of this kind, especially when dealing with cultured patients.
15
[524]
How the harmonizing of conscious and unconscious data is to be
undertaken cannot be indicated in the form of a recipe. It is an irrational
life-process which expresses itself in definite symbols. It may be the task
of the analyst to stand by this process with all the help he can give. In this
case, knowledge of the symbols is indispensable, for it is in them that the
union of conscious and unconscious contents is consummated. Out of this
union emerge new situations and new conscious attitudes. I have therefore
called the union of opposites the “transcendent function.” This rounding
out of the personality into a whole may well be the goal of any
psychotherapy that claims to be more than a mere cure of symptoms.
16
A STUDY IN THE PROCESS OF INDIVIDUATION1
Tao’s working of things is vague and obscure.
Obscure! Oh vague!
In it are images.
Vague! Oh obscure!
In it are things.
Profound! Oh dark indeed!
In it is seed.
Its seed is very truth.
In it is trustworthiness.
From the earliest Beginning until today
Its name is not lacking
By which to fathom the Beginning of all things.
How do I know it is the Beginning of all things?
Through it!
LAO-TZU, Tao Teh Ching, ch. 21.
Introductory
[525]
During the 1920’s, I made the acquaintance in America of a lady with
an academic education—we will call her Miss X—who had studied
psychology for nine years. She had read all the more recent literature in
this field. In 1928, at the age of fifty-five, she came to Europe in order to
continue her studies under my guidance. As the daughter of an exceptional
father she had varied interests, was extremely cultured, and possessed a
lively turn of mind. She was unmarried, but lived with the unconscious
equivalent of a human partner, namely the animus (the personification of
everything masculine in a woman), in that characteristic liaison so often
met with in women with an academic education. As frequently happens,
this development of hers was based on a positive father complex: she was
“fille à papa” and consequently did not have a good relation to her mother.
Her animus was not of the kind to give her cranky ideas. She was protected
from this by her natural intelligence and by a remarkable readiness to
tolerate the opinions of other people. This good quality, by no means to be
expected in the presence of an animus, had, in conjunction with some
difficult experiences that could not be avoided, enabled her to realize that
she had reached a limit and “got stuck,” and this made it urgently
necessary for her to look round for ways that might lead her out of the
impasse. That was one of the reasons for her trip to Europe. Associated
with this there was another—not accidental—motive. On her mother’s side
she was of Scandinavian descent. Since her relation to her mother left very
much to be desired, as she herself clearly realized, the feeling had
gradually grown up in her that this side of her nature might have developed
differently if only the relation to her mother had given it a chance. In
deciding to go to Europe she was conscious that she was turning back to
her own origins and was setting out to reactivate a portion of her childhood
that was bound up with the mother. Before coming to Zurich she had gone
back to Denmark, her mother’s country. There the thing that affected her
most was the landscape, and unexpectedly there came over her the desire
to paint—above all, landscape motifs. Till then she had noticed no such
aesthetic inclinations in herself, also she lacked the ability to paint or draw.
She tried her hand at water-colours, and her modest landscapes filled her
with a strange feeling of contentment. Painting them, she told me, seemed
to fill her with new life. Arriving in Zurich, she continued her painting
efforts, and on the day before she came to me for the first time she began
another landscape—this time from memory. While she was working on it,
a fantasy-image suddenly thrust itself between her and the picture: she saw
herself with the lower half of her body in the earth, stuck fast in a block of
rock. The region round about was a beach strewn with boulders. In the
background was the sea. She felt caught and helpless. Then she suddenly
saw me in the guise of a medieval sorcerer. She shouted for help, I came
along and touched the rock with a magic wand. The stone instantly burst
open, and she stepped out uninjured. She then painted this fantasy-image
instead of the landscape and brought it to me on the following day.
Picture 1
[526]
As usually happens with beginners and people with no skill of hand,
the drawing of the picture cost her considerable difficulties. In such cases
it is very easy for the unconscious to slip its subliminal images into the
painting. Thus it came about that the big boulders would not appear on the
paper in their real form but took on unexpected shapes. They looked, some
of them, like hardboiled eggs cut in two, with the yolk in the middle.
Others were like pointed pyramids. It was in one of these that Miss X was
stuck. Her hair, blown out behind her, and the movement of the sea
suggested a strong wind.
[527]
The picture shows first of all her imprisoned state, but not yet the act
of liberation. So it was there that she was attached to the earth, in the land
of her mother. Psychologically this state means being caught in the
unconscious. Her inadequate relation to her mother had left behind
something dark and in need of development. Since she succumbed to the
magic of her motherland and tried to express this by painting, it is obvious
that she is still stuck with half her body in Mother Earth: that is, she is still
partly identical with the mother and, what is more, through that part of the
body which contains just that secret of the mother which she had never
inquired into.
[528]
Since Miss X had discovered all by herself the method of active
imagination I have long been accustomed to use, I was able to approach
the problem at just the point indicated by the picture: she is caught in the
unconscious and expects magical help from me, as from a sorcerer. And
since her psychological knowledge had made her completely au fait with
certain possible interpretations, there was no need of even an
understanding wink to bring to light the apparent sous-entendu of the
liberating magician’s wand. The sexual symbolism, which for many naïve
minds is of such capital importance, was no discovery for her. She was far
enough advanced to know that explanations of this kind, however true they
might be in other respects, had no significance in her case. She did not
want to know how liberation might be possible in a general way, but how
and in what way it could come about for her. And about this I knew as
little as she. I know that such solutions can only come about in an
individual way that cannot be foreseen. One cannot think up ways and
means artificially, let alone know them in advance, for such knowledge is
merely collective, based on average experience, and can therefore be
completely inadequate, indeed absolutely wrong, in individual cases. And
when, on top of that, we consider the patient’s age, we would do well to
abandon from the start any attempt to apply ready-made solutions and
warmed-up generalities of which the patient knows just as much as the
doctor. Long experience has taught me not to know anything in advance
and not to know better, but to let the unconscious take precedence. Our
instincts have ridden so infinitely many times, unharmed, over the
problems that arise at this stage of life that we may be sure the
transformation processes which make the transition possible have long
been prepared in the unconscious and are only waiting to be released.
Picture 1
Picture 2
Picture 3
Picture 4
Picture 5
Picture 6
Picture 7
Picture 8
Picture 9
Picture 10
Picture 11
Picture 12
Picture 13
Picture 14
Picture 15
Picture 16
Picture 17
Picture 18
Picture 19
Picture 20
Picture 21
Picture 22
Picture 23
Picture 24
[529]
I had already seen from her previous history how the unconscious
made use of the patient’s inability to draw in order to insinuate its own
suggestions. I had not overlooked the fact that the boulders had
surreptitiously transformed themselves into eggs. The egg is a germ of life
with a lofty symbolical significance. It is not just a cosmogonic symbol—it
is also a “philosophical” one. As the former it is the Orphic egg, the
world’s beginning; as the latter, the philosophical egg of the medieval
natural philosophers, the vessel from which, at the end of the opus
alchymicum, the homunculus emerges, that is, the Anthropos, the spiritual,
inner and complete man, who in Chinese alchemy is called the chen-yen
(literally, “perfect man”).
2
[530]
From this hint, therefore, I could already see what solution the
unconscious had in mind, namely individuation, for this is the
transformation process that loosens the attachment to the unconscious. It is
a definitive solution, for which all other ways serve as auxiliaries and
temporary makeshifts. This knowledge, which for the time being I kept to
myself, bade me act with caution. I therefore advised Miss X not to let it
go at a mere fantasy-image of the act of liberation, but to try to make a
picture of it. How this would turn out I could not guess, and that was a
good thing, because otherwise I might have put Miss X on the wrong track
from sheer helpfulness. She found this task terribly difficult owing to her
artistic inhibitions. So I counselled her to content herself with what was
possible and to use her fantasy for the purpose of circumventing technical
difficulties. The object of this advice was to introduce as much fantasy as
possible into the picture, for in that way the unconscious has the best
chance of revealing its contents. I also advised her not to be afraid of
bright colours, for I knew from experience that vivid colours seem to
attract the unconscious. Thereupon, a new picture arose.
Picture 2
[531]
Again there are boulders, the round and pointed forms; but the round
ones are no longer eggs, they are complete circles, and the pointed ones are
tipped with golden light. One of the round forms has been blasted out of its
place by a golden flash of lightning. The magician and magic wand are no
longer there. The personal relationship to me seems to have ceased: the
picture shows an impersonal natural process.
[532]
While Miss X was painting this picture she made all sorts of
discoveries. Above all, she had no notion of what picture she was going to
paint. She tried to reimagine the initial situation; the rocky shore and the
sea are proof of this. But the eggs turned into abstract spheres or circles,
and the magician’s touch became a flash of lightning cutting through her
unconscious state. With this transformation she had rediscovered the
historical synonym of the philosophical egg, namely the rotundum, the
round, original form of the Anthropos (or στοιχάεῖον στρογγυ’λον, ‘round
element,’ as Zosimos calls it). This is an idea that has been associated with
the Anthropos since ancient times. The soul, too, according to tradition,
has a round form. As the Monk of Heisterbach says, it is not only “like to
the sphere of the moon, but is furnished on all sides with eyes” (ex omni
parte oculata). We shall come back to this motif of polyophthalmia later
on. His remark refers in all probability to certain parapsychological
phenomena, the “globes of light” or globular luminosities which, with
remarkable consistency, are regarded as “souls” in the remotest parts of the
world.
3
4
[533]
The liberating flash of lightning is a symbol also used by Paracelsus
and the alchemists for the same thing. Moses’ rock-splitting staff, which
struck forth the living water and afterwards changed into a serpent, may
have been an unconscious echo in the background. Lightning signifies a
sudden, unexpected, and overpowering change of psychic condition.
5
6
7
[534]
“In this Spirit of the Fire-flash consists the Great Almighty Life,” says
Jakob Böhme. “For when you strike upon the sharp part of the stone, the
bitter sting of Nature sharpens itself, and is stirred in the highest degree.
For Nature is dissipated or broken asunder in the sharpness, so that the
Liberty shines forth as a Flash.” The flash is the “Birth of the light.” It
has transformative power: “For if I could in my Flesh comprehend the
Flash, which I very well see and know how it is, I could clarify or trans
figure my Body therewith, so that it would shine with a bright light and
glory. And then it would no more resemble and be conformed to the bestial
Body, but to the angels of God.” Elsewhere Böhme says: “As when the
Flash of Life rises up in the centre of the Divine Power, wherein all the
spirits of God attain their life, and highly rejoice.” Of the “Source-spirit”
Mercurius, he says that it “arises in the Fire-flash.” Mercurius is the
8
9
10
11
12
“animal spirit” which, from Lucifer’s body, “struck into the Salniter of
God like a fiery serpent from its hole, as if there went a fiery Thunder-bolt
into God’s Nature, or a fierce Serpent, which tyrannizes, raves, and rages,
as if it would tear and rend Nature all to pieces.” Of the “innermost birth
of the soul” the bestial body “attains only a glimpse, just as if it
lightened.” “The triumphing divine Birth lasteth in us men only so long as
the flash lasteth; therefore our knowledge is but in part, whereas in God
the flash stands unchangeably, always eternally thus.” (Cf. Fig. 1.)
13
14
15
16
[535]
In this connection I would like to mention that Böhme associates
lightning with something else too. That is the quaternity, which plays a
great role in the following pictures. When caught and assuaged in the four
“Qualities” or four “Spirits,” “the Flash, or the Light, subsists in the Midst
or Centre as a Heart. Now when that Light, which stands in the Midst or
Centre, shines into the four Spirits, then the Power of the four Spirits rises
up in the Light, and they become Living, and love the Light; that is, they
take it into them, and are impregnated with it.” “The Flash, or Stock, or
Pith, or the Heart, which is generated in the Powers, remains standing in
the Midst or Centre, and that is the Son. … And this is the true Holy Ghost,
whom we Christians honour and adore for the third Person in the Deity.”
Elsewhere Böhme says: “When the Fire-flash reaches the dark substance,
it is a great terror, from which the Cold Fire draws back in affright as if it
would perish, and becomes impotent, and sinks into itself, … But now the
Flash … makes in its Rising a Cross with the Comprehension of all
17
18
17
20
21
22
23
Properties; for here arises the Spirit in the Essence, and it stands thus: .
If thou hast here understanding, thou needest ask no more; it is Eternity
and Time, God in Love and Anger, also Heaven and Hell. The lower part,
which is thus marked , is the first Principle, and is the Eternal Nature in
the Anger, viz. the Kingdom of Darkness dwelling in itself; and the upper
Part, with this figure , is the Salniter; the Upper Cross above the Circle
is the Kingdom of Glory, which in the Flagrat of Joy in the Will of the free
Lubet proceeds from the Fire in the Lustre of the Light into the power of
the Liberty; and this spiritual Water … is the Corporality of the free Lubet
… wherein the Lustre from the Fire and Light makes a Tincture, viz. a
budding and growing and a Manifestation of Colours from the Fire and
Light.”
24
25
26
27
Fig. 1. Mandala from Jakob Böhme’s XL Questions concerning the Soule
(1620)
The picture is taken from the English edition of 1647. The quaternity consists
of Father, H. Ghost, Sonne, and Earth or Earthly Man. It is characteristic that
the two semicircles are turned back to back instead of closing.
[536]
I have purposely dwelt at some length on Böhme’s disquisition on the
lightning, because it throws a good deal of light on the psychology of our
pictures. However, it anticipates some things that will only become clear
when we examine the pictures themselves. I must therefore ask the reader
to bear Böhme’s views in mind in the following commentary. I have put
the most important points in italics. It is clear from the quotations what the
lightning meant to Böhme and what sort of a role it plays in the present
case. The last quotation in particular deserves special attention, as it
anticipates various key motifs in the subsequent pictures done by my
patient, namely the cross, the quaternity, the divided mandala, the lower
half of which is virtually equivalent to hell and the upper half to the lighter
realm of the “Salniter.” For Böhme the lower half signifies the “everlasting
darkness” that “extends into the fire,” while the upper, “salnitrous” half
corresponds to the third Principle, the “visible, elemental world, which is
an emanation of the first and other Principle.” The cross, in turn,
corresponds to the second Principle, the “Kingdom of Glory,” which is
revealed through “magic fire,” the lightning, which he calls a “Revelation
of Divine Motion.” The “lustre of the fire” comes from the “unity of
God” and reveals his will. The mandala therefore represents the “Kingdom
of Nature,” which “in itself is the great everlasting Darkness.” The
“Kingdom of God,” on the other hand, or the “Glory” (i.e., the Cross), is
the Light of which John 1 : 5 speaks: “And the light shineth in the
darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not.” The Life that “breaks
itself off from the eternal Light and enters into the Object, as into the
selfhood of Properties,” is “only fantastic and foolish, even such as the
Devils were, and the souls of the damned are; as can be seen … from the
fourth number.” For the “fire of Nature” is called by Böhme the fourth
form, and he understands it as a “spiritual Life-Fire, that exists from a
continual conjunction … of Hardness [i.e., the solidified, dry Salniter] and
Motion [the Divine Will].” Quite in keeping with John 1 : 5 the quaternity
of the lightning, the Cross, pertains to the Kingdom of Glory, whereas
Nature, the visible world and the dark abyss remain untouched by the
fourfold light and abide in darkness.
28
29
30
31
32
[537]
For the sake of completeness I should mention that is the sign for
cinnabar, the most important quicksilver ore (HgS). The coincidence of
the two symbols can hardly be accidental in view of the significance which
Böhme attributes to Mercurius. Ruland finds it rather hard to define
exactly what was meant by cinnabar. The only certain thing is that there
was a κιννάβαρις τών ϕιλοσόϕων (cinnabar of the philosophers) in Greek
33
34
alchemy, and that it stood for the rubedo stage of the transforming
substance. Thus Zosimos says: “(After the preceding process) you will find
the gold coloured fiery red like blood. That is the cinnabar of the
philosophers and the copper man (χαλκάνθρωπος, turned to gold.”
Cinnabar was also supposed to be identical with the uroboros dragon.
Even in Pliny, cinnabar is called sanguis draconis, ‘dragon’s blood,’ a
term that lasted all through the Middle Ages. On account of its redness it
was often identified with the philosophical sulphur. A special difficulty is
the fact that the wine-red cinnabar crystals were classed with the άνθρακες,
carbons, to which belong all reddish and red-tinted stones like rubies,
garnets, amethysts, etc. They all shine like glowing coals. The
λιθάνθρακες (anthracites), on the other hand, were regarded as “quenched”
coals. These associations explain the similarity of the alchemical signs for
35
36
37
38
gold, antimony, and garnet. Gold , after mercury the most important
“philosophical” substance, shares its sign with what is known as “regulus”
or “button” antimony, and during the two decades prior to the writing of
Signatura return (1622), from which our quotation comes, this had
enjoyed particular fame as the new transformative substance and
panacea. Basilius Valentinus’ Triumphal Car of Antimony was published
about the first decade of the seventeenth century (the first edition possibly
in 1611) and soon found the widest acclaim. The sign for garnet is , and
39
40
41
42
means salt. A cross with a little circle in it
means copper (from the
“Cyprian,” Venus
). Medicinal tartaric acid is denoted by , and
hydrogen potassium tartrate (tartar) has the signs
. Tartar settles on
the bottom of the vessel, which in the language of the alchemists means: in
the underworld, Tartarus.
43
44
[538]
I will not attempt here any interpretation of Böhme’s symbols, but will
only point out that in our picture the lightning, striking into the darkness
and “hardness,” has blasted a rotundum out of the dark massa confusa and
kindled a light in it. There can be no doubt that the dark stone means the
blackness, i.e., the unconscious, just as the sea and sky and the upper half
of the woman’s figure indicate the sphere of consciousness. We may safely
assume that Böhme’s symbol refers to a similar situation. The lightning
has released the spherical form from the rock and so caused a kind of
liberation. But, just as the magician has been replaced by the lightning, so
the patient has been replaced by the sphere. The unconscious has thus
presented her with ideas which show that she had gone on thinking without
the aid of consciousness and that this radically altered the initial situation.
It was again her inability to draw that led to this result. Before finding this
solution, she had made two attempts to portray the act of liberation with
human figures, but with no success. She had overlooked the fact that the
initial situation, her imprisonment in the rock, was already irrational and
symbolic and therefore could not be solved in a rational way. It had to be
done by an equally irrational process. That was why I advised her, should
she fail in her attempt to draw human figures, to use some kind of
hieroglyph. It then suddenly struck her that the sphere was a suitable
symbol for the individual human being. That it was a chance idea (Einfall)
is proved by the fact that it was not her conscious mind that thought up this
typification, but the unconscious, for an Einfall “falls in” quite of its own
accord. It should be noted that she represents only herself as a sphere, not
me. I am represented only by the lightning, purely functionally, so that for
her I am simply the “precipitating” cause. As a magician I appeared to her
in the apt role of Hermes Kyllenios, of whom the Odyssey says:
“Meanwhile Cyllenian Hermes was gathering in the souls of the suitors,
armed with the splendid golden wand that he can use at will to cast a spell
on our eyes or wake us from the soundest sleep.” Hermes is the ψνχῶν
αῖτιος, ‘originator of souls.’ He is also the ήγήτωρ ονείρων, ‘guide of
dreams.” For the following pictures it is of special importance that
Hermes has the number 4 attributed to him. Martianus Capella says: “The
number four is assigned to the Cyllenian, for he alone is held to be a
fourfold god.”
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46
47
[539]
The form the picture had taken was not unreservedly welcome to the
patient’s conscious mind. Luckily, however, while painting it Miss X had
discovered that two factors were involved. These, in her own words, were
reason and the eyes. Reason always wanted to make the picture as it
thought it ought to be; but the eyes held fast to their vision and finally
forced the picture to come out as it actually did and not in accordance with
rationalistic expectations. Her reason, she said, had really intended a
daylight scene, with the sunshine melting the sphere free, but the eyes
favoured a nocturne with “shattering, dangerous lightning.” This
realization helped her to acknowledge the actual result of her artistic
efforts and to admit that it was in fact an objective and impersonal process
and not a personal relationship.
[540]
For anyone with a personalistic view of psychic events, such as a
Freudian, it will not be easy to see in this anything more than an elaborate
repression. But if there was any repression here we certainly cannot make,
the conscious mind responsible for it, because the conscious mind would
undoubtedly have preferred a personal imbroglio as being far more
interesting. The repression must have been manoeuvred by the
unconscious from the start. One should consider what this means: instinct,
the most original force of the unconscious, is suppressed or turned back on
itself by an arrangement stemming from this same unconscious! It would
be idle indeed to talk of “repression” here, since we know that the
unconscious goes straight for its goal and that this does not consist solely
in pairing two animals but in allowing an individual to become whole. For
this purpose wholeness—represented by the sphere—is emphasized as the
essence of personality, while I am reduced to the fraction of a second, the
duration of a lightning flash.
[541]
The patient’s association to lightning was that it might stand for
intuition, a conjecture that is not far off the mark, since intuitions often
come “like a flash.” Moreover, there are good grounds for thinking that
Miss X was a sensation type. She herself thought she was one. The
“inferior” function would then be intuition. As such, it would have the
significance of a releasing or “redeeming” function. We know from
experience that the inferior function always compensates, complements,
and balances the “superior” function. My psychic peculiarity would make
me a suitable projection carrier in this respect. The inferior function is the
one of which least conscious use is made. This is the reason for its
undifferentiated quality, but also for its freshness and vitality. It is not at
the disposal of the conscious mind, and even after long use it never loses
its autonomy and spontaneity, or only to a very limited degree. Its role is
therefore mostly that of a deus ex machina. It depends not on the ego but
on the self. Hence it hits consciousness unexpectedly, like lightning, and
occasionally with devastating consequences. It thrusts the ego aside and
makes room for a supraordinate factor, the totality of a person, which
consists of conscious and unconscious and consequently extends far
beyond the ego. This self was always present, but sleeping, like
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49
Nietzsche’s “image in the stone.” It is, in fact, the secret of the stone, of
the lapis philosophorum, in so far as this is the prima materia. In the stone
sleeps the spirit Mercurius, the “circle of the moon,” the “round and
square,” the homunculus, Tom Thumb and Anthropos at once, whom the
alchemists also symbolized as their famed lapis philosophorum.
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51
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[542]
All these ideas and inferences were naturally unknown to my patient,
and they were known to me at the time only in so far as I was able to
recognize the circle as a mardala, the psychological expression of the
totality of the self. Under these circumstances there could be no question
of my having unintentionally infected her with alchemical ideas. The
pictures are, in all essentials, genuine creations of the unconscious; their
inessential aspects (landscape motifs) are derived from conscious contents.
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[543]
Although the sphere with its glowing red centre and the golden flash
of lightning play the chief part, it should not be overlooked that there are
several other eggs or spheres as well. If the sphere signifies the self of the
patient, we must apply this interpretation to the other spheres, too. They
must therefore represent other people who, in all probability, were her
intimates. In both the pictures two other spheres are clearly indicated. So I
must mention that Miss X had two women friends who shared her
intellectual interests and were joined to her in a lifelong friendship. All
three of them, as if bound together by fate, are rooted in the same “earth,”
i.e., in the collective unconscious, which is one and the same for all. It is
probably for this reason that the second picture has the decidedly nocturnal
character intended by the unconscious and asserted against the wishes of
the conscious mind. It should also be mentioned that the pointed pyramids
of the first picture reappear in the second, where their points are actually
gilded by the lightning and strongly emphasized. I would interpret them as
unconscious contents “pushing up” into the light of consciousness, as
seems to be the case with many contents of the collective unconscious. In
contrast to the first picture, the second is painted in more vivid colours, red
and gold. Gold expresses sunlight, value, divinity even. It is therefore a
favourite synonym for the lapis, being the aurum philosophicum or aurum
potabile or aurum vitreum.
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[544]
As already pointed out, I was not at that time in a position to reveal
anything of these ideas to Miss X, for the simple reason that I myself knew
nothing of them. I feel compelled to mention this circumstance yet again,
because the third picture, which now follows, brings a motif that points
unmistakably to alchemy and actually gave me the definitive incentive to
make a thorough study of the works of the old adepts.
Picture 3
[545]
The third picture, done as spontaneously as the first two, is
distinguished most of all by its light colours. Free-floating in space, among
clouds, is a dark blue sphere with a wine-red border. Round the middle
runs a wavy silver band, which keeps the sphere balanced by “equal and
opposite forces,” as the patient explained. To the right, above the sphere,
floats a snake with golden rings, its head pointing at the sphere—an
obvious development of the golden lightning in Picture 2. But she drew the
snake in afterwards, on account of certain “reflections.” The whole is “a
planet in the making.” In the middle of the silver band is the number 12.
The band was thought of as being in rapid vibratory motion; hence the
wave motif. It is like a vibrating belt that keeps the sphere afloat. Miss X
compared it to the ring of Saturn. But unlike this, which is composed of
disintegrated satellites, her ring was the origin of future moons such as
Jupiter possesses. The black lines in the silver band she called “lines of
force”; they were meant to indicate that it was in motion. As if asking a
question, I made the remark: “Then it is the vibrations of the band that
keep the sphere floating?” “Naturally,” she said, “they are the wings of
Mercury, the messenger of the gods. The silver is quicksilver!” She went
on at once: “Mercury, that is Hermes, is the Nous, the mind or reason, and
that is the animus, who is here outside instead of inside. He is like a veil
that hides the true personality.” We shall leave this latter remark alone for
the moment and turn first to the wider context, which, unlike that of the
two previous pictures, is especially rich.
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[546]
While Miss X was painting this picture, she felt that two earlier
dreams were mingling with her vision. They were the two “big” dreams of
her life. She knew of the attribute “big” from my stories of the dream life
of African primitives I had visited. It has become a kind of “colloquial
term” for characterizing archetypal dreams, which as we know have a
peculiar numinosity. It was used in this sense by the dreamer. Several
years previously, she had undergone a major operation. Under narcosis she
had the following dream-vision: She saw a grey globe of the world. A
silver band rotated about the equator and, according to the frequency of
its vibrations, formed alternate zones of condensation and evaporation. In
the zones of condensation appeared the numbers 1 to 3, but they had the
tendency to increase up to 12. These numbers signified “nodal points” or
“great personalities” who played a part in man’s historical development.
“The number 12 meant the most important nodal point or great man (still
to come), because it denotes the climax or turning point of the process of
development.” (These are her own words.)
[547]
The other dream that intervened had occurred a year before the first
one: She saw a golden snake in the sky. It demanded the sacrifice, from
among a great crowd of people, of a young man, who obeyed this demand
with an expression of sorrow. The dream was repeated a little later, but this
time the snake picked on the dreamer herself. The assembled people
regarded her compassionately, but she took her fate “proudly” on herself.
[548]
She was, as she told me, born immediately after midnight, so soon
afterwards, indeed, that there was some doubt as to whether she came into
the world on the 28th or on the 29th. Her father used to tease her by saying
that she was obviously born before her time, since she came into the world
just at the beginning of a new day, but “only just,” so that one could almost
believe she was born “at the twelfth hour.” The number 12, as she said,
meant for her the culminating point of her life, which she had only now
reached. That is, she felt the “liberation” as the climax of her life. It is
indeed an hour of birth—not of the dreamer but of the self. This distinction
must be borne in mind.
[549]
The context to Picture 3 here established needs a little commentary.
First, it must be emphasized that the patient felt the moment of painting
this picture as the “climax” of her life and also described it as such.
Second, two “big” dreams have amalgamated in the picture, which
heightens its significance still more. The sphere blasted from the rock in
Picture 2 has now, in the brighter atmosphere, floated up to heaven. The
nocturnal darkness of the earth has vanished. The increase of light
indicates conscious realization: the liberation has become a fact that is
integrated into consciousness. The patient has understood that the floating
sphere symbolizes the “true personality.” At present, however, it is not
quite clear how she understands the relation of the ego to the “true
personality.” The term chosen by her coincides in a remarkable way with
the Chinese chen-yen, the “true” or “complete” man, who has the closest
affinity with the homo quadratus of alchemy. As we pointed out in the
analysis of Picture 2, the rotundum of alchemy is identical with Mercurius,
the “round and square.” In Picture 3 the connection is shown concretely
through the mediating idea of the wings of Mercury, who, it is evident, has
entered the picture in his own right and not because of any non-existent
knowledge of Böhme’s writings.
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[550]
For the alchemists the process of individuation represented by the
opus was an analogy of the creation of the world, and the opus itself an
analogy of God’s work of creation. Man was seen as a microcosm, a
complete equivalent of the world in miniature. In our picture, we see what
it is in man that corresponds to the cosmos, and what kind of evolutionary
process is compared with the creation of the world and the heavenly
bodies: it is the birth of the self, the latter appearing as a microcosm. It is
not the empirical man that forms the “correspondentia” to the world, as the
medievalists thought, but rather the indescribable totality of the psychic or
spiritual man, who cannot be described because he is compounded of
consciousness as well as of the indeterminable extent of the unconscious.
The term microcosm proves the existence of a common intuition (also
present in my patient) that the “total” man is as big as the world, like an
Anthropos. The cosmic analogy had already appeared in the much earlier
dream under narcosis, which likewise contained the problem of
personality: the nodes of the vibrations were great personalities of
historical importance. As early as 1916, I had observed a similar
individuation process, illustrated by pictures, in another woman patient. In
her case too there was a world creation, depicted as follows (see Fig. 2):
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63
[551]
To the left, from an unknown source, three drops fall, dissolving into
four lines, or two pairs of lines. These lines move and form four separate
paths, which then unite periodically in a nodal point and thus build a
system of vibrations. The nodes are “great personalities and founders of
religions,” as my erstwhile patient told me. It is obviously the same
conception as in our case, and we can call it archetypal in so far as there
exist universal ideas of world periods, critical transitions, gods and half
gods who personify the aeons. The unconscious naturally does not produce
its images from conscious reflections, but from the worldwide propensity
of the human system to form such conceptions as the world periods of the
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Parsees, the yugas and avatars of Hinduism, and the Platonic months of
astrology with their bull and ram deities and the “great” Fish of the
Christian aeon.
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Fig. 2. Sketch of a picture from the year 1916
At the top, the sun, surrounded by a rainbow-coloured halo divided into
twelve parts, like the zodiac. To the left, the descending, to the right, the
ascending, transformation process.
[552]
That the nodes in our patient’s picture signify or contain numbers is a
bit of unconscious number mysticism that is not always easy to unravel. So
far as I can see, there are two stages in this arithmetical phenomenology:
the first, earlier stage goes up to 3, the second, later stage up to 12. Two
numbers, 3 and 12, are expressly mentioned. Twelve is four times three. I
think we have here stumbled again on the axiom of Maria, that peculiar
dilemma of three and four, which I have discussed many times before
because it plays such a great role in alchemy. I would hazard that we have
to do here with a tetrameria (as in Greek alchemy), a transformation
process divided into four stages of three parts each, analogous to the
twelve transformations of the zodiac and its division into four. As not
infrequently happens, the number 12 would then have a not merely
individual significance (as the patient’s birth number, for instance), but a
time-conditioned one too, since the present aeon of the Fishes is drawing
to its end and is at the same time the twelfth house of the zodiac. One is
reminded of similar Gnostic ideas, such as those in the gnosis of Justin:
The “Father” (Elohim) begets with Edem, who was half woman and half
snake, twelve “fatherly” angels, and Edem gives birth besides these to
twelve “motherly” angels, who—in psychological parlance—represent the
shadows of the twelve “fatherly” ones. The “motherly” angels divide
themselves into four categories (μέρη) of three each, corresponding to the
four rivers of Paradise. These angels dance round in a circle (ὲν χόρῳ
κνκλικῷ). . It is legitimate to bring these seemingly remote associations
into hypothetical relationship, because they all spring from a common root,
i.e., the collective unconscious.
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[553]
In our picture Mercurius forms a world-encircling band, usually
represented by a snake. Mercurius is a serpent or dragon in alchemy
(“serpens mercurialis”). Oddly enough, this serpent is some distance away
from the sphere and is aiming down at it, as if to strike. The sphere, we are
told, is kept afloat by equal and opposite forces, represented by the
quicksilver or somehow connected with it. According to the old view,
Mercurius is duplex, i.e., he is himself an antithesis. Mercurius or Hermes
is a magician and god of magicians. As Hermes Trismegistus he is the
patriarch of alchemy. His magician’s wand, the caduceus, is entwined by
two snakes. The same attribute distinguishes Asklepios, the god of
physicians. The archetype of these ideas was projected on to me by the
patient before ever the analysis had begun.
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[554]
The primordial image underlying the sphere girdled with quicksilver
is probably that of the world egg encoiled by a snake. But in our case the
snake symbol of Mercurius is replaced by a sort of pseudo-physicistic
notion of a field of vibrating molecules of quicksilver. This looks like an
73
intellectual disguising of the true situation, that the self, or its symbol, is
entwined by the mercurial serpent. As the patient remarked more or less
correctly, the “true personality” is veiled by it. This, presumably, would
then be something like an Eve in the coils of the paradisal serpent. In order
to avoid giving this appearance, Mercurius has obligingly split into his two
forms, according to the old-established pattern: the mercurius crudus or
vulgi (crude or ordinary quicksilver), and the Mercurius Philosophorum
(the spiritus mercurialis or the spirit Mercurius, Hermes-Nous), who
hovers in the sky as the golden lightning-snake or Nous Serpent, at present
inactive. In the vibrations of the quicksilver band we may discern a certain
tremulous excitement, just as the suspension expresses tense expectation:
“Hover and haver suspended in pain!” For the alchemists quicksilver
meant the concrete, material manifestation of the spirit Mercurius, as the
above-mentioned mandala in the scholia to the Tractatus aureus shows:
the central point is Mercurius, and the square is Mercurius divided into the
four elements. He is the anima mundi, the innermost point and at the same
time the encompasser of the world, like the atman in the Upanishads. And
just as quicksilver is a materialization of Mercurius, so the gold is a
materialization of the sun in the earth.
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[555]
A circumstance that never ceases to astonish one is this: that at all
times and in all places alchemy brought its conception of the lapis or its
minera (raw material) together with the idea of the homo altus or maximus,
that is, with the Anthropos. Equally, one must stand amazed at the fact
that here too the conception of the dark round stone blasted out of the rock
should represent such an abstract idea as the psychic totality of man. The
earth and in particular the heavy cold stone is the epitome of materiality,
and so is the metallic quicksilver which, the patient thought, meant the
animus (mind, nous). We would expect pneumatic symbols for the idea of
the self and the animus, images of air, breath, wind. The ancient formula
λίθος où λίθος (the stone that is no stone) expresses this dilemma: we are
dealing with a complexio oppositorum, with something like the nature of
light, which under some conditions behaves like particles and under others
like waves, and is obviously in its essence both at once. Something of this
kind must be conjectured with regard to these paradoxical and hardly
explicable statements of the unconscious. They are not inventions of any
conscious mind, but are spontaneous manifestations of a psyche not
controlled by consciousness and obviously possessing all the freedom it
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wants to express views that take no account of our conscious intentions.
The duplicity of Mercurius, his simultaneously metallic and pneumatic
nature, is a parallel to the symbolization of an extremely spiritual idea like
the Anthropos by a corporeal, indeed metallic, substance (gold). One can
only conclude that the unconscious tends to regard spirit and matter not
merely as equivalent but as actually identical, and this in flagrant contrast
to the intellectual one-sidedness of consciousness, which would sometimes
like to spiritualize matter and at other times to materialize spirit. That the
lapis, or in our case the floating sphere, has a double meaning is clear from
the circumstance that it is characterized by two symbolical colours: red
means blood and affectivity, the physiological reaction that joins spirit to
body, and blue means the spiritual process (mind or nous). This duality
reminds one of the alchemical duality corpus and spiritus, joined together
by a third, the anima as the ligamentum corporis et spiritus. For Böhme a
“high deep blue” mixed with green signifies “Liberty,” that is, the inner
“Kingdom of Glory” of the reborn soul. Red leads to the region of fire and
the “abyss of darkness,” which forms the periphery of Böhme’s mandala
(see Fig. 1).
Picture 4
[556]
Picture 4, which now follows, shows a significant change: the sphere
has divided into an outer membrane and an inner nucleus. The outer
membrane is flesh coloured, and the originally rather nebulous red nucleus
in Picture 2 now has a differentiated internal structure of a decidedly
ternary character. The “lines of force” that originally belonged to the band
of quicksilver now run through the whole nuclear body, indicating that the
excitation is no longer external only but has seized the innermost core. “An
enormous inner activity now began,” the patient told me. The nucleus with
its ternary structure is presumably the female organ, stylized to look like a
plant, in the act of fecundation: the spermatozoon is penetrating the
nuclear membrane. Its role is played by the mercurial serpent: the snake is
black, dark, chthonic, a subterranean and ithyphallic Hermes; but it has the
golden wings of Mercury and consequently possesses his pneumatic
nature. The alchemists accordingly represented their Mercurius duplex as
the winged and wingless dragon, calling the former feminine and the latter
masculine.
[557]
The serpent in our picture represents not so much the spermatozoon
but, more accurately, the phallus. Leone Ebreo, in his Dialoghi d’amore,
calls the planet Mercury the membrum virile of heaven, that is, of the
macrocosm conceived as the homo maximus. The spermatozoon seems,
rather, to correspond to the golden substance which the snake is injecting
into the invaginated ectoderm of the nucleus. The two silver petals (?)
probably represent the receptive vessel, the moon-bowl in which the sun’s
seed (gold) is destined to rest. Underneath the flower is a small violet
circle inside the ovary, indicating by its colour that it is a “united double
nature,” spirit and body (blue and red). The snake has a pale yellow halo,
which is meant to express its numinosity.
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[558]
Since the snake evolved out of the flash of lightning or is a modulated
form of it, I would like to instance a parallel where the lightning has the
same illuminating, vivifying, fertilizing, transforming and healing function
that in our case falls to the snake (cf. Fig. 3). Two phases are represented:
first, a black sphere, signifying a state of profound depression; and second,
the lightning that strikes into this sphere. Ordinary speech makes use of the
same imagery: something “strikes home” in a “flash of revelation.” The
only difference is that generally the image comes first, and only afterwards
the realization which enables the patient to say: “This has struck home.”
Fig. 3. Sketch of a drawing by a young woman patient with psychogenic
depression from the beginning of the treatment
I. State of black hopelessness / II. Beginning of the therapeutic effect
In an earlier picture the sphere lay on the bottom of the sea. As a series of
pictures shows, it arose in the first place because a black snake had
swallowed the sun. There then followed an eight-rayed, completely black
mandala with a wreath of eight silver stars. In the centre was a black
homunculus. Next the black sphere developed a red centre, from which red
rays, or streams of blood, ran out into tentacle-like extremities. The whole
thing looked rather like a crab or an octopus. As the later pictures showed,
the patient herself was shut up in the sphere.
[559]
As to the context of Picture 4, Miss X emphasized that what disturbed
her most was the band of quicksilver in Picture 3. She felt the silvery
substance ought to be “inside,” the black lines of force remaining outside
to form a black snake. This would now encircle the sphere. She felt the
snake at first as a “terrible danger,” as something threatening the “integrity
81
of the sphere.” At the point where the snake penetrates the nuclear
membrane, fire breaks out (emotion). Her conscious mind interpreted this
conflagration as a defensive reaction on the part of the sphere, and
accordingly she tried to depict the attack as having been repulsed. But this
attempt failed to satisfy the “eyes,” though she showed me a pencil sketch
of it. She was obviously in a dilemma: she could not accept the snake,
because its sexual significance was only too clear to her without any
assistance from me. I merely remarked to her: “This is a well-known
process which you can safely accept,” and showed her from my collection
a similar picture, done by a man, of a floating sphere being penetrated from
below by a black phallus-like object. Later she said: “I suddenly
understood the whole process in a more impersonal way.” It was the
realization of a law of life to which sex is subordinated. “The ego was not
the centre, but, following a universal law, I circled round a sun.”
Thereupon she was able to accept the snake “as a necessary part of the
process of growth” and finish the picture quickly and satisfactorily. Only
one thing continued to give difficulty: she had to put the snake, she said,
“One hundred per cent at the top, in the middle, in order to satisfy the
eyes.” Evidently the unconscious would only be satisfied with the most
important position at the top and in the middle—in direct contrast to the
picture I had previously shown her. This, as I said, was done by a man and
showed the menacing black symbol entering the mandala from below. For
a woman, the typical danger emanating from the unconscious comes from
above, from the “spiritual” sphere personified by the animus, whereas for a
man it comes from the chthonic realm of the “world and woman,” i.e., the
anima projected on to the world.
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[560]
Once again we must recall similar ideas found in Justin’s gnosis: the
third of the fatherly angels is Baruch. He is also the tree of life in paradise.
His counterpart on the motherly side is Naas, the serpent, who is the tree of
knowledge of good and evil. When Elohim left Edem, because, as the
second member, he had retreated to the first member of the divine triad
(which consisted of the “Good,” the “Father,” and Edem), Edem pursued
the pneuma of the Father, which he had left behind in man, and caused it to
be tormented by Naas (ῖνα πάσαις κολάσεικολάζη τó ὂν πνευμα του
’Eλωεὶμ τò ἐν τοϊς άνθρωποις), Naas defiled Eve and also used Adam as a
catamite. Edem, however, is the soul; Elohim is spirit. “The soul is against
the spirit, and the spirit against the soul” (κατà τής ψυχής τετάκται). This
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idea sheds light on the polarity of red and blue in our mandala, and also on
the attack by the snake, who represents knowledge. That is why we fear
knowledge of the truth, in this case, of the shadow. Therefore Baruch sent
to mankind Jesus, that they might be led back to the “Good.” But the
“Good One is Priapus.” Elohim is the swan, Edem is Leda; he the gold,
she Danae. Nor should we forget that the god of revelation has from of old
the form of a snake—e.g., the agathodaimon. Edem too, as a snakemaiden, has a dual nature, “two-minded, two-bodied” (δίγνωμος,
δίσωμος), and in medieval alchemy her figure became the symbol of the
androgynous Mercurius.
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[561]
Let us remember that in Picture 3 Mercurius vulgi, ordinary
quicksilver, encircles the sphere. This means that the mysterious sphere is
enveloped or veiled by a “vulgar” or crude understanding. The patient
herself opined that “the animus veils the true personality.” We shall hardly
be wrong in assuming that a banal, everyday view of the world, allegedly
biological, has here got hold of the sexual symbol and concretized it after
the approved pattern. A pardonable error! Another, more correct view is so
much more subtle that one naturally prefers to fall back on something
well-known and ready to hand, thus gratifying one’s own “rational”
expectations and earning the applause of one’s contemporaries—only to
discover that one has got hopelessly stuck and has arrived back at the point
from which one set forth on the great adventure. It is clear what is meant
by the ithyphallic serpent: from above comes all that is aerial, intellectual,
spiritual, and from below all that is passionate, corporeal, and dark. The
snake, contrary to expectation, turns out to be a pneumatic symbol, a
Mercurius spiritualis—a realization which the patient herself formulated
by saying that the ego, despite its capricious manipulation of sexuality, is
subject to a universal law. Sex in this case is therefore no problem at all, as
it has been subjected to a higher transformation process and is contained in
it; not repressed, only without an object.
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[562]
Miss X subsequently told me that she felt Picture 4 was the most
difficult, as if it denoted the turning point of the whole process. In my view
she may not have been wrong in this, because the clearly felt, ruthless
setting aside of the so beloved and so important ego is no light matter. Not
for nothing is this “letting go” the sine qua non of all forms of higher
spiritual development, whether we call it meditation, contemplation, yoga,
or spiritual exercises. But, as this case shows, relinquishing the ego is not
an act of the will and not a result arbitrarily produced; it is an event, an
occurrence, whose inner, compelling logic can be disguised only by wilful
self-deception.
[563]
In this case and at this moment the ability to “let go” is of decisive
importance. But since everything passes, the moment may come when the
relinquished ego must be reinstated in its functions. Letting go gives the
unconscious the opportunity it has been waiting for. But since it consists of
opposites—day and night, bright and dark, positive and negative—and is
good and evil and therefore ambivalent, the moment will infallibly come
when the individual, like the exemplary Job, must hold fast so as not to be
thrown catastrophically off balance—when the wave rebounds. The
holding fast can be achieved only by a conscious will, i.e., by the ego. That
is the great and irreplaceable significance of the ego, but one which, as we
see here, is nonetheless relative. Relative, too, is the gain won by
integrating the unconscious. We add to ourselves a bright and a dark, and
more light means more night. The urge of consciousness towards wider
horizons, however, cannot be stopped; they must needs extend the scope of
the personality, if they are not to shatter it.
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Picture 5
[564]
Picture 5, Miss X said, followed naturally from Picture 4, with no
difficulty. The sphere and the snake have drawn apart. The snake is
sinking downwards and seems to have lost its threateningness. But the
sphere has been fecundated with a vengeance: it has not only got bigger,
but blossoms in the most vivid colours. The nucleus has divided into four;
something like a segmentation has occurred. This is not due to any
conscious reflection, such as might come naturally to a biologically
educated person; the division of the process or of the central symbol into
four has always existed, beginning with the four sons of Horus, or the four
seraphim of Ezekiel, or the birth of the four Aeons from the Metra (uterus)
impregnated by the pneuma in Barbelo-Gnosis, or the cross formed by the
lightning (snake) in Böhme’s system, and ending with the tetrameria of
the opus alchymicum and its components (the four elements, qualities,
stages, etc.). In each case the quaternity forms a unity; here it is the green
circle at the centre of the four. The four are undifferentiated, and each of
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them forms a vortex, apparently turning to the left. I think I am not
mistaken in regarding it as probable that, in general, a leftward movement
indicates movement towards the unconscious, while a rightward
(clockwise) movement goes towards consciousness. The one is “sinister,”
the other “right,” “rightful,” “correct.” In Tibet, the leftward-moving
swastika is a sign of the Bön religion, of black magic. Stupas and chörtens
must therefore be circumambulated clockwise. The leftward-spinning
eddies spin into the unconscious; the rightward-spinning ones spin out of
the unconscious chaos. The rightward-moving swastika in Tibet is
therefore a Buddhist emblem. (Cf. also Fig. 4.)
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[565]
For our patient the process appeared to mean, first and foremost, a
differentiation of consciousness. From the treasures of her psychological
knowledge she interpreted the four as the four orienting functions of
consciousness: thinking, feeling, sensation, intuition. She noticed,
however, that the four were all alike, whereas the four functions are all
unlike. This raised no question for her, but it did for me. What are these
four if they are not the four functional aspects of consciousness? I doubted
whether this could be a sufficient interpretation of them. They seemed to
be much more than that, and that is probably the reason why they are not
different but identical. They do not form four functions, different by
definition, but they might well represent the a priori possibility for the
formation of the four functions. In this picture we have the quaternity, the
archetypal 4, which is capable of numerous interpretations, as history
shows and as I have demonstrated elsewhere. It illustrates the coming to
consciousness of an unconscious content; hence it frequently occurs in
cosmogonic myths. What is the precise significance of the fact that the
four eddies are apparently turning to the left, when the division of the
mandala into four denotes a process of becoming conscious, is a point
about which I would rather not speculate. I lack the necessary material.
Blue means air or pneuma, and the leftward movement an intensification
of the unconscious influence. Possibly this should be taken as a pneumatic
compensation for the strongly emphasized red colour, which signifies
affectivity.
Fig. 4. Neolithic relief from Tarxien, Malta
The spirals represent vine tendrils.
[566]
The mandala itself is bright red, but the four eddies have in the main a
cool, greenish-blue colour, which the patient associated with “water.” This
might hang together with the leftward movement, since water is a favourite
symbol for the unconscious. The green of the circle in the middle signifies
life in the chthonic sense. It is the “benedicta viriditas” of the alchemists.
94
[567]
The problematical thing about this picture is the fact that the black
snake is outside the totality of the symbolic circle. In order to make the
totality actual, it ought really to be inside. But if we remember the
unfavourable significance of the snake, we shall understand why its
assimilation into the symbol of psychic wholeness presents certain
difficulties. If our conjecture about the leftward movement of the four
eddies is correct, this would denote a trend towards the deep and dark side
of the spirit, by means of which the black snake could be assimilated. The
snake, like the devil in Christian theology, represents the shadow, and one
which goes far beyond anything personal and could therefore best be
compared with a principle, such as the principle of evil. It is the colossal
shadow thrown by man, of which our age had to have such a devastating
experience. It is no easy matter to fit this shadow into our cosmos. The
view that we can simply turn our back on evil and in this way eschew it
belongs to the long list of antiquated naïveties. This is sheer ostrich policy
and does not affect the reality of evil in the slightest. Evil is the necessary
opposite of good, without which there would be no good either. It is
impossible even to think evil out of existence. Hence the fact that the black
snake remains outside expresses the critical position of evil in our
traditional view of the world.
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[568]
The background of the picture is pale, the colour of parchment. I
mention this fact in particular, as the pictures that follow show a
characteristic change in this respect.
Picture 6
[569]
The background of Picture 6 is a cloudy grey. The mandala itself is
done in the vividest colours, bright red, green, and blue. Only where the
red outer membrane enters the blue-green nucleus does the red deepen to
blood colour and the pale blue to a dark ultramarine. The wings of
Mercury, missing in the previous picture, reappear here at the neck of the
blood-red pistons (as previously on the neck of the black snake in Picture
4). But the most striking thing is the appearance of a swastika,
undoubtedly wheeling to the right. (I should add that these pictures were
painted in 1928 and had no direct connection with contemporary fantasies,
which at that time were still unknown to the world at large.) Because of its
green colour, the swastika suggests something plantlike, but at the same
time it has the wavelike character of the four eddies in the previous
picture.
[570]
In this mandala an attempt is made to unite the opposites red and blue,
outside and inside. Simultaneously, the rightward movement aims at
bringing about an ascent into the light of consciousness, presumably
because the background has become noticeably darker. The black snake
has disappeared, but has begun to impart its darkness to the entire
background. To compensate this, there is in the mandala an upwards
movement towards the light, apparently an attempt to rescue consciousness
from the darkening of the environment. The picture was associated with a
dream that occurred a few days before. Miss X dreamt that she returned to
the city after a holiday in the country. To her astonishment she found a
tree growing in the middle of the room where she worked. She thought:
“Well, with its thick bark this tree can withstand the heat of an
apartment.” Associations to the tree led to its maternal significance. The
tree would explain the plant motif in the mandala, and its sudden growth
represents the higher level or freeing of consciousness induced by the
movement to the right. For the same reason the “philosophical” tree is a
symbol of the alchemical opus, which as we know is an individuation
process.
[571]
We find similar ideas in Justin’s gnosis. The angel Baruch stands for
the pneuma of Elohim, and the “motherly” angel Naas for the craftiness of
Edem. But both angels, as I have said, were also trees: Baruch the tree of
life, Naas the tree of knowledge. Their division and polarity are in keeping
with the spirit of the times (second-third centuries A.D.). But in those days,
too, they knew of an individuation process, as we can see from
Hippolytus. Elohim, we are told, set the “prophet” Heracles the task of
delivering the “Father” (the pneuma) from the power of the twelve wicked
angels. This resulted in his twelve labours. Now the Heracles myth has in
fact all the characteristic features of an individuation process: the journeys
to the four directions, four sons, submission to the feminine principle
(Omphale) that symbolizes the unconscious, and the self-sacrifice and
rebirth caused by Deianeira’s robe.
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[572]
The “thick bark” of the tree suggests the motif of protection, which
appears in the mandala as the “formation of skins” (see par. 576). This is
expressed in the motif of the protective black bird’s wings, which shield
the contents of the mandala from outside influences. The piston-shaped
prolongations of the peripheral red substance are phallic symbols,
indicating the entry of affectivity into the pneumatic interior. They are
obviously meant to activate and enrich the spirit dwelling within. This
“spirit” has of course nothing to do with intellect, rather with something
that we would have to call spiritual substance (pneuma) or—in modern
terms—“spiritual life.” The underlying symbolical thought is no doubt the
same as the view developed in the Clementine Homilies, that ττνεϋμα
(spirit) and σώμα (body) are one in God. The mandala, though only a
symbol of the self as the psychic totality, is at the same time a God-image,
for the central point, circle, and quaternity are well-known symbols for the
deity. The impossibility of distinguishing empirically between “self” and
“God” leads, in Indian theosophy, to the identity of the personal and suprapersonal Purusha-Atman. In ecclesiastical as in alchemical literature the
saying is often quoted: “God is an infinite circle (or sphere) whose centre
is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.” This idea can be found in
full development as early as Parmenides. I will cite the passage, because it
alludes to the same motifs that underlie our mandala: “For the narrower
rings were filled with unmixed Fire, and those next to them with Night,
but between these rushes the portion of Flame. And in the centre of these is
the goddess who guides everything; for throughout she rules over cruel
Birth and Mating, sending the female to mate with the male, and
conversely again the male with the female.”
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[573]
The learned Jesuit, Nicholas Caussin, apropos the report in Clement of
Alexandria that, on certain occasions, wheels were rolled round in the
Egyptian temples, comments that Democritus of Abdera called God
(mentem in igne orbiculari, ‘mind in the
spherical fire’). He goes on: “This was the view also of Parmenides, who
defined God as σπφάνην, ‘crown,’ a circle consisting of glowing light.
And it has been very clearly established by Iamblichus, in his book on the
mysteries, that the Egyptians customarily represent God, the Lord of the
world, as sitting in the lotus, a water-plant, the fruits as well as the leaves
of which are round, thereby indicating the circular motion of the mind,
which everywhere returns into itself.” This is also the origin, he says, of
the ritual transformations or circuits (“circuitiones”) that imitate the
motion of the heavens. But the Stoics named the heavens a “round and
revolving God” (rotundum et volubilem Deum). Caussin says it is to this
that the “mystical” (mystice = symbolical) explanation of Psalm 12 : 8
refers: “In circuitu impii ambulant” (the ungodly wander in a circle); they
only walk round the periphery without ever reaching the centre, which is
God. Here I would mention the wheel motif in mandala symbolism only in
passing, as I have dealt with it in detail elsewhere.
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107
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Picture 7
[574]
In Picture 7 it has indeed turned to night: the entire sheet which the
mandala is painted on is black. All the light is concentrated in the sphere.
The colours have lost their brightness but have gained in intensity. It is
especially striking that the black has penetrated as far as the centre, so that
something of what we feared has already occurred: the blackness of the
snake and of the sombre surroundings has been assimilated by the nucleus
and, at the same time, as the picture shows, is compensated by a golden
light radiating out from the centre. The rays form an equal-armed cross, to
replace the swastika of the previous picture, which is here represented only
by four hooks suggesting a rightwards rotation. With the attainment of
absolute blackness, and particularly its presence in the centre, the upward
movement and rightward rotation seem to have come to an end. On the
other hand, the wings of Mercury have undergone a noticeable
differentiation, which presumably means that the sphere has sufficient
power to keep itself afloat and not sink down into total darkness. The
golden rays forming the cross bind the four together. This produces an
inner bond and consolidation as a defence against destructive influences
emanating from the black substance that has penetrated to the centre. For
us the cross symbol always has the connotation of suffering, so we are
probably not wrong in assuming that the mood of this picture is one of
more or less painful suspension—remember the wings!—over the dark
abyss of inner loneliness.
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[575]
Earlier, I mentioned Böhme’s lightning that “makes a cross,” and I
brought this cross into connection with the four elements. As a matter of
fact, John Dee symbolizes the elements by an equal-armed cross. As we
said, the cross with a little circle in it is the alchemical sign for copper
(cuprum, from Kypris, Aphrodite), and the sign for Venus is .
Remarkably enough, is the old apothecary’s sign for spiritus Tartari
(tartaric acid), which, literally translated, means ‘spirit of the underworld.’
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is also the sign for red hematite (bloodstone). Hence there seems to be
not only a cross that comes from above, as in Böhme’s case and in our
mandala, but also one that comes from below. In other words, the lightning
—to keep to Böhme’s image—can come from below out of the blood,
from Venus or from Tartarus. Böhme’s neutral “Salniter” is identical with
salt in general, and one of the signs for this is
. One can hardly
imagine a better sign for the arcane substance, which salt was considered
to be by the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century alchemists. Salt, in
ecclesiastical as well as alchemical usage, is the symbol for Sapientia and
also for the distinguished or elect personality, as in Matthew 5 : 13: “Ye
are the salt of the earth.”
[576]
The numerous wavy lines or layers in the mandala could be
interpreted as representing the formation of layers of skin, giving
protection against outside influences. They serve the same purpose as the
inner consolidation. These cortices probably have something to do with the
dream of the tree in the workroom, which had a “thick bark.” The
formation of skins is also found in other mandalas, and it denotes a
hardening or sealing off against the outside, the production of a regular
rind or “hide.” It is possible that this phenomenon would account for the
cortices or putamina (‘shards’) mentioned in the cabala. “For such is the
name for that which abides outside holiness,” such as the seven fallen
kings and the four Achurayim. From them come the “klippoth” or
cortices. As in alchemy, these are the scoriae or slag, to which adheres the
quality of plurality and of death. In our mandala the cortices are boundary
lines marking off the inner unity and protecting it against the outer
blackness with its disintegrating influences, personified by the snake. The
same motif is expressed by the petals of the lotus and by the skins of the
onion: the outer layers are withered and desiccated, but they protect the
softer, inner layers. The lotus seat of the Horus-child, of the Indian
divinities, and of the Buddha must be understood in this sense. Hölderlin
makes use of the same image:
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116
Fateless, like the sleeping
Infant, breathe the heavenly ones,
Chastely guarded
In modest bud; their spirits
Blossom eternally …117
[577]
In Christian metaphor, Mary is the flower in which God lies hidden;
or again, the rose window in which the rex gloriae and judge of the world
is enthroned.
[578]
The idea of circular layers is to be found, by implication, in Böhme,
for the outermost ring of his three-dimensional mandala is labelled “will
of ye Devill Lucifer,” “Abysse (of) Eternity,” “Abyss of ye Darkness,”
“Hell of Devills,” etc. (See Fig. 1.) Böhme says of this in his Aurora (ch.
XVII, sec. 6): “Behold, when Lucifer with his hosts aroused the Wrath-fire
in God’s nature, so that God waxed wroth in Nature in the place of
Lucifer, the outermost Birth in Nature acquired another Quality, wholly
wrathful, dry, cold, vehement, bitter, and sour. The raging Spirit, that
before had a subtle, gentle Quality in Nature, became in his outermost
Birth wholly presumptuous and terrible, and now in his outermost Birth is
called the Wind, or the element Air.” In this way the four elements arose—
the earth, in particular, by a process of contraction and desiccation.
118
[579]
Cabalistic influences may be conjectured here, though Böhme knew
not much more about the Cabala than did Paracelsus. He regarded it as a
species of magic. The four elements correspond to the four Achurayim.
They constitute a sort of second quaternity, proceeding from the inner,
pneumatic quaternity but of a physical nature. The alchemists, too, allude
to the Achurayim. Mennens, for instance, says: “And although the holy
name of God reveals the Tetragrammaton or the Four Letters, yet if you
should look at it aright, only three Letters are found in it. The letter he [n]
is found twice, since they are the same, namely Air and Water, which
signifies the Son; Earth the Father, and Fire the Holy Ghost. Thus the Four
Letters of God’s name manifestly signify the Most Holy Trinity and
Matter, which likewise is threefold (triplex) … and which is also called
the shadow of the same [i.e., of God], and is named by Moyses the back
of God [Dei posteriora], which seems to be created out of it [matter].”
This statement bears out Böhme’s view.
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123
[580]
To return to our mandala. The original four eddies have coalesced into
the wavy squares in the middle of the picture. Their place is taken by
golden points at the outer rim (developed from the previous picture),
emitting rainbow colours. These are the colours of the peacock’s eye,
which play a great role as the cauda pavonis in alchemy. The appearance
of these colours in the opus represents an intermediate stage preceding the
definitive end result. Böhme speaks of a “love-desire or a Beauty of
Colours; and here all Colours arise.” In our mandala, too, the rainbow
colours spring from the red layer that means affectivity. Of the “life of
Nature and Spirit” that is united in the “spherical wheel” Böhme says:
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“Thus is made known to us an eternal Essence of Nature, like to Water and
Fire, which stand as it were mixed into one another. For there comes a
bright-blue colour, like the Lightning of the Fire; and then it has a form
like a Ruby mingled with Crystals into one Essence, or like yellow, white,
red, and blue mingled in dark Water: for it is like blue in green, since each
still has its brightness and shines, and the Water only resists their Fire, so
that there is no wasting anywhere, but one eternal Essence in two
Mysteries mingled together, notwithstanding the difference of two
Principles, viz. two kinds of life.” The phenomenon of the colours owes its
existence to the “Imagination of the great Mystery, where a wondrous
essential Life is born.”
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[581]
It is abundantly clear from this that Böhme was preoccupied with the
same psychic phenomenon that fascinated Miss X—and many other
patients too. Although Böhme took the idea of the cauda pavonis and the
tetrameria from alchemy, he, like the alchemists, was working on an
empirical basis which has since been rediscovered by modern psychology.
There are products of active imagination, and also dreams, which
reproduce the same patterns and arrangements with a spontaneity that
cannot be influenced. A good example is the following dream: A patient
dreamt that she was in a drawing-room. There was a table with three
chairs beside it. An unknown man standing beside her invited her to sit
down. For this purpose she fetched a fourth chair that stood further off.
She then sat at the table and began turning over the pages of a book,
containing pictures of blue and red cubes, as for a building game.
Suddenly it occurred to her that she had something else to attend to. She
left the room and went to a yellow house. It was raining in torrents, and
she sought shelter under a green laurel tree.
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[582]
The table, the three chairs, the invitation to sit down, the other chair
that had to be fetched to make four chairs, the cubes, and the building
game all suggest a process of composition. This takes place in stages: a
combination first of blue and red, then of yellow and green. These four
colours symbolize four qualities, as we have seen, which can be interpreted
in various ways. Psychologically this quaternity points to the orienting
functions of consciousness, of which at least one is unconscious and
therefore not available for conscious use. Here it would be the green, the
sensation function, because the patient’s relation to the real world was
130
uncommonly complicated and clumsy. The “inferior” function, however,
just because of its unconsciousness, has the great advantage of being
contaminated with the collective unconscious and can be used as a bridge
to span the gulf between conscious and unconscious and thus restore the
vital connection with the latter. This is the deeper reason why the dream
represents the inferior function as a laurel. The laurel in this dream has the
same connection with the processes of inner growth as the tree that Miss X
dreamt grew in her room. It is essentially the same tree as the arbor
philosophica of the alchemists, about which I have written in Psychology
and Alchemy. We should also remember that, according to tradition, the
laurel is not injured either by lightning or by cold—“intacta triumphat.”
Hence it symbolized the Virgin Mary, the model for all women, just as
Christ is the model for men. In view of its historical interpretation the
laurel, like the alchemical tree, should be taken in this context as a symbol
of the self. The ingenuousness of patients who produce such dreams is
always very impressive.
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133
[583]
To turn back again to our mandala. The golden lines that end in
pistons recapitulate the spermatozoon motif and therefore have a spermatic
significance, suggesting that the quaternity will be reproduced in a new
and more distinct form. In so far as the quaternity has to do with conscious
realization, we can infer from these symptoms an intensification of the
latter, as is also suggested by the golden light radiating from the centre.
Probably a kind of inner illumination is meant.
[584]
Two days before painting this picture, Miss X dreamt that she was in
her father’s room in their country house. “But my mother had moved my
bed away from the wall into the middle of the room and had slept in it. I
was furious, and moved the bed back to its former place. In the dream the
bed-cover was red—exactly the red reproduced in the picture.”
[585]
The mother significance of the tree in her previous dream has here
been taken up by the unconscious: this time the mother has slept in the
middle of the room. This seems to be for Miss X an annoying intrusion
into her sphere, symbolized by the room of her father, who has an animus
significance for her. Her sphere is therefore a spiritual one, and she has
usurped it just as she usurped her father’s room. She has thus identified
with the “spirit.” Into this sphere her mother has intruded and installed
herself in the centre, at first under the symbol of the tree. She therefore
stands for physis opposed to spirit, i.e., for the natural feminine being
which the dreamer also is, but which she would not accept because it
appeared to her as a black snake. Although she remedied the intrusion at
once, the dark chthonic principle, the black substance, has nevertheless
penetrated to the centre of her mandala, as Picture 7 shows. But just
because of this the golden light can appear: “e tenebris lux!” We have to
relate the mother to Böhme’s idea of the matrix. For him the matrix is the
sine qua non of all differentiation or realization, without which the spirit
remains suspended and never comes down to earth. The collision between
the paternal and the maternal principle (spirit and nature) works like a
shock.
[586]
After this picture, she felt the renewed penetration of the red colour,
which she associated with feeling, as something disturbing, and she now
discovered that her “rapport” with me, her analyst (= father), was unnatural
and unsatisfactory. She was giving herself airs, she said, and was posing as
an intelligent, understanding pupil (usurpation of spirituality!). But she had
to admit that she felt very silly and was very silly, regardless of what I
thought about it. This admission brought her a feeling of great relief and
helped her to see at last that sex was “not, on the one hand, merely a
mechanism for producing children and not, on the other, only an
expression of supreme passion, but was also banally physiological and
autoerotic.” This belated realization led her straight into a fantasy state
where she became conscious of a series of obscene images. At the end she
saw the image of a large bird, which she called the “earth bird,” and which
alighted on the earth. Birds, as aerial beings, are well-known spirit
symbols. It represented the transformation of the “spiritual” image of
herself into a more earthy version that is more characteristic of women.
This “tailpiece” confirms our suspicion that the intensive upward and
rightward movement has come to a halt: the bird is coming down to earth.
This symbolization denotes a further and necessary differentiation of what
Böhme describes in general as “Love-desire.” Through this differentiation
consciousness is not only widened but also brought face to face with the
reality of things, so that the inner experience is tied, so to speak, to a
definite spot.
[587]
On the days following, the patient was overcome by feelings of selfpity. It became clear to her how much she regretted never having had any
children. She felt like a neglected animal or a lost child. This mood grew
into a regular Weltschmerz, and she felt like the “all-compassionate
Tathagata” (Buddha), Only when she had completely given way to these
feelings could she bring herself to paint another picture. Real liberation
comes not from glossing over or repressing painful states of feeling, but
only from experiencing them to the full.
Picture 8
[588]
The thing that strikes us at once in Picture 8 is that almost the whole
interior is filled with the black substance. The blue-green of the water has
condensed to a dark blue quaternity, and the golden light in the centre
turns in the reverse direction, anti-clockwise: the bird is coming down to
earth. That is, the mandala is moving towards the dark, chthonic depths. It
is still floating—the wings of Mercury show this—but it has come much
closer to the blackness. The inner, undifferentiated quaternity is balanced
by an outer, differentiated one, which Miss X equated with the four
functions of consciousness. To these she assigned the following colours:
yellow = intuition, light blue = thinking, flesh pink = feeling, brown =
sensation. Each of these quarters is divided into three, thus producing the
number 12 again. The separation and characterization of the two
quaternities is worth noting. The outer quaternity of wings appears as a
differentiated realization of the undifferentiated inner one, which really
represents the archetype. In the cabala this relationship corresponds to the
quaternity of Merkabah on the one hand and of the Achurayim on the
other, and in Böhme they are the four Spirits of God and the four
elements.
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137
[589]
The plantlike form of the cross in the middle of the mandala, also
noted by the patient, refers back to the tree (“tree of the cross”) and the
mother. She thus makes it clear that this previously taboo element has
been accepted and now holds the central place. She was fully conscious of
this—which of course was a great advance on her previous attitude.
138
[590]
In contrast to the previous picture there are no inner cortices. This is a
logical development, because the thing they were meant to exclude is now
in the centre, and defence has become superfluous. Instead, the cortices
spread out into the darkness as golden rings, expanding concentrically like
waves. This would mean a far-reaching influence on the environment
emanating from the sealed-off self.
[591]
Four days before she painted this mandala she had the following
dream: “I drew a young man to the window and, with a brush dipped in
white oil, removed a black fleck from the cornea of his eye. A little golden
lamp then became visible in the centre of the pupil. The young man felt
greatly relieved, and I told him he should come again for treatment. I woke
up saying the words: ‘If therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall
be full of light.’”S (Matthew 6 : 22.)
[592]
This dream describes the change: the patient is no longer identical
with her animus. The animus has, so to speak, become her patient, since he
has eye trouble. As a matter of fact the animus usually sees things “cockeyed” and often very unclearly. Here a black fleck on the cornea obscures
the golden light shining from inside the eye. He has “seen things too
blackly.” The eye is the prototype of the mandala, as is evident from
Böhme, who calls his mandala “The Philosophique Globe, or Eye of ye
Wonders of Eternity, or Looking-Glass of Wisdom.” He says: “The
substance and Image of the Soul may be resembled to the Earth, having a
fair Flower growing out of it, and also to the Fire and Light; as we see that
Earth is a Centre, but no life; yet it is essential, and a fair flower grows out
of it, which is not like Earth … and yet the Earth is the Mother of the
Flower.” The soul is a “fiery Eye, and similitude of the First Principle,” a
“Centre of Nature.”
139
[593]
Our mandala is indeed an “eye,” the structure of which symbolizes the
centre of order in the unconscious. The eye is a hollow sphere, black
inside, and filled with a semi-liquid substance, the vitreous humour.
Looking at it from outside, one sees a round, coloured surface, the iris,
with a dark centre, from which a golden light shines. Böhme calls it a
“fiery eye,” in accordance with the old idea that seeing emanates from the
eye. The eye may well stand for consciousness (which is in fact an organ
of perception), looking into its own background. It sees its own light there,
and when this is clear and pure the whole body is filled with light. Under
certain conditions consciousness has a purifying effect. This is probably
what is meant by Matthew 6 : 22ff., an idea expressed even more clearly in
Luke 11: 331Ï.
[594]
The eye is also a well-known symbol for God. Hence Böhme calls his
“Philosophique Globe” the “Eye of Eternity,” the “Essence of all
Essences,” the “Eye of God.”
140
[595]
By accepting the darkness, the patient has not, to be sure, changed it
into light, but she has kindled a light that illuminates the darkness within.
By day no light is needed, and if you don’t know it is night you won’t light
one, nor will any light be lit for you unless you have suffered the horror of
darkness. This is not an edifying text but a mere statement of the
psychological facts. The transition from Picture 7 to Picture 8 gives one a
working idea of what I mean by “accepting the dark principle.” It has
sometimes been objected that nobody can form a clear conception of what
this means, which is regrettable, because it is an ethical problem of the first
order. Here, then, is a practical example of this “acceptance,” and I must
leave it to the philosophers to puzzle out the ethical aspects of the
process.
141
Picture 9
[596]
In Picture 9 we see for the first time the blue “soul-flower,” on a red
background, also described as such by Miss X (naturally without
knowledge of Böhme). In the centre is the golden light in the form of a
lamp, as she herself stated. The cortices are very pronounced, but they
consist of light (at least in the upper half of the mandala) and radiate
outwards. The light is composed of the rainbow hues of the rising sun; it
is a real cauda pavonis. There are six sets of sunbeams. This recalls the
Buddha’s Discourse on the Robe, from the Collection of the Pali Canon:
142
143
His heart overflowing with lovingkindness … with compassion …
with joyfulness … with equanimity, he abides, raying forth
lovingkindness, compassion, joyfulness, equanimity, towards one
quarter of space, then towards the second, then towards the third, then
towards the fourth, and above and below, thus, all around. Everywhere,
into all places the wide world over, his heart overflowing with
compassion streams forth, wide, deep, illimitable, free from enmity, free
from all ill-will….
144
[597]
But a parallel with the Buddhist East cannot be carried through here,
because the mandala is divided into an upper and a lower half. Above,
145
the rings shine many-hued as a rainbow; below, they consist of brown
earth. Above, there hover three white birds (pneumata signifying the
Trinity); below, a goat is rising up, accompanied by two ravens (Wotan’s
birds) and twining snakes. This is not the sort of picture a Buddhist holy
man would make, but that of a Western person with a Christian
background, whose light throws a dark shadow. What is more, the three
birds float in a jet black sky, and the goat, rising out of dark clay, is shown
against a field of bright orange. This, oddly enough, is the colour of the
Buddhist monk’s robe, which was certainly not a conscious intention of
the patient. The underlying thought is clear: no white without black, and
no holiness without the devil. Opposites are brothers, and the Oriental
seeks to liberate himself from them by his nirdvandva (“free from the
two”) and his neti neti (“not this, not that”), or else he puts up with them in
some mysterious fashion, as in Taoism. The connection with the East is
deliberately stressed by the patient, through her painting into the mandala
four hexagrams from the I Ching.
146
147
[598]
The sign in the left top half is “Yü, ENTHUSIASM” (NO. 16). It means
“Thunder comes resounding out of the earth,” i.e., a movement coming
from the unconscious, and expressed by music and dancing. Confucius
comments as follows:
Firm as a rock, what need of a whole day?
The judgment can be known.
The superior man knows what is hidden and what is evident.
He knows weakness, he knows strength as well.
Hence the myriads look up to him.
Enthusiasm can be the source of beauty, but it can also delude.
[599]
The second hexagram at the top is “Sun, DECREASE” (NO. 41). The
upper trigram means Mountain, the lower trigram means Lake. The
mountain towers above the lake and “restrains” it. That is the “image”
whose interpretation points to self-restraint and reserve, i.e., a seeming
decrease of oneself. This is significant in the light of “ENTHUSIASM.” In the
top line of the hexagram, “But [one] no longer has a separate home,” the
homelessness of the Buddhist monk is meant. On the psychological level
this does not, of course, refer to so drastic a demonstration of renunciation
and independence, but to the patient’s irreversible insight into the
conditioned quality of all relationships, into the relativity of all values, and
the transience of all things.
[600]
The sign in the bottom half to the right is “Sheng, PUSHING UPWARD”
(No. 46). “Within the earth, wood grows: The image of Pushing Upward.”
It also says: “One pushes upward into an empty city,” and “The king offers
him Mount Ch’i.” So this hexagram means growth and development of the
personality, like a plant pushing out of the earth—a theme already
anticipated by the plant motif in an earlier mandala. This is an allusion to
the important lesson which Miss X has learnt from her experience: that
there is no development unless the shadow is accepted.
[601]
The hexagram to the left is “Ting, THE CAULDRON” (No. 50). This is a
bronze sacrificial vessel equipped with handles and legs, which held the
cooked viands used for festive occasions. The lower trigram means Wind
and Wood, the upper one Fire. The “Cauldron” is thus made up of “fire
over wood,” just as the alchemical vessel consists of fire or water. There
is “delicious food” in it (the “fat of the pheasant”), but it is not eaten
because “the handle of the ting is altered” and its “legs are broken,”
making it unusable. But, as a result of “constant self-abnegation,” the
personality becomes differentiated (“the ting has golden carrying rings”
and even “rings of jade”) and purified, until it acquires the “hardness and
soft lustre” of precious jade.
148
149
[602]
Though the four hexagrams were put into the mandala on purpose,
they are authentic results of preoccupation with the I Ching. The phases
and aspects of my patient’s inner process of development can therefore
express themselves easily in the language of the I Ching, because it too is
based on the psychology of the individuation process that forms one of the
main interests of Taoism and of Zen Buddhism. Miss X’s interest in
Eastern philosophy was due to the deep impression which a better
knowledge of her life and of herself had made upon her—an impression of
the tremendous contradictions in human nature. The insoluble conflict she
was faced with makes her preoccupation with Eastern therapeutic systems,
which seem to get along without conflict, doubly interesting. It may be
partly due to this acquaintance with the East that the opposites,
irreconcilable in Christianity, were not blurred or glossed over, but were
seen in all their sharpness, and in spite (or perhaps just because) of this,
were brought together into the unity of the mandala. Böhme was never
150
able to achieve this union; on the contrary, in his mandala the bright and
dark semi-circles are turned back to back. The bright half is labelled “H.
Ghost,” the dark half “Father,” i.e., auctor rerum or “First Principle,”
whereas the Holy Ghost is the “Second Principle.” This polarity is crossed
by the paired opposites “Sonne” and “Earthly Man.” The “Devills” are all
on the side of the dark “Father” and constitute his “Wrath-fire,” just as on
the periphery of the mandala.
151
[603]
Böhme’s starting-point was philosophical alchemy, and to my
knowledge he was the first to try to organize the Christian cosmos, as a
total reality, into a mandala. The attempt failed, inasmuch as he was
unable to unite the two halves in a circle. Miss X’s mandala, on the other
hand, comprises and contains the opposites, as a result, we may suppose,
of the support afforded by the Chinese doctrine of Yang and Yin, the two
metaphysical principles whose co-operation makes the world go round.
The hexagrams, with their firm (yang) and yielding (yin) lines, illustrate
certain phases of this process. It is therefore right that they should occupy
a mediating position between above and below. Lao-tzu says: “High stands
on low.” This indisputable truth is secretly suggested in the mandala: the
three white birds hover in a black field, but the grey-black goat has a bright
orange-coloured background. Thus the Oriental truth insinuates itself and
makes possible—at least by symbolic anticipation—a union of opposites
within the irrational life process formulated by the I Ching. That we are
really concerned here with opposite phases of one and the same process is
shown by the picture that now follows.
152
Picture 10
[604]
In Picture 10, begun in Zurich but only completed when Miss X again
visited her motherland, we find the same division as before into above and
below. The “soul-flower” in the centre is the same, but it is surrounded
on all sides by a dark blue night sky, in which we see the four phases of
the moon, the new moon coinciding with the world of darkness below. The
three birds have become two. Their plumage has darkened, but on the
other hand the goat has turned into two semi-human creatures with horns
and light faces, and only two of the four snakes remain. A notable
innovation is the appearance of two crabs in the lower, chthonic
hemisphere that also represents the body. The crab has essentially the same
153
meaning as the astrological sign Cancer. Unfortunately Miss X gave no
context here. In such cases it is usually worth investigating what use has
been made in the past of the object in question. In earlier, prescientific
ages hardly any distinction was drawn between longtailed crabs (Macrura,
crayfish) and short-tailed crabs (Brachyura). As a zodiacal sign Cancer
signifies resurrection, because the crab sheds its shell. The ancients had
in mind chiefly Pagurus bernhardus, the hermit crab. It hides in its shell
and cannot be attacked. Therefore it signifies caution and foresight,
knowledge of coming events . It “depends on the moon, and waxes with
it.” It is worth noting that the crab appears just in the mandala in which
we see the phases of the moon for the first time. Astrologically, Cancer is
the house of the moon. Because of its backwards and sideways movement,
it plays the role of an unlucky animal in superstition and colloquial speech
(“crabbed,” “catch a crab,” etc.). Since ancient times cancer (καρκίνοή has
been the name for a malignant tumour of the glands. Cancer is the zodiacal
sign in which the sun begins to retreat, when the days grow shorter.
Pseudo-Kallisthenes relates that crabs dragged Alexander’s ships down
into the sea. “Karkinos” was the name of the crab that bit Heracles in the
foot in his fight with the Lernaean monster. In gratitude, Hera set her
accomplice among the stars.
154
155
156
157
158
159
[605]
In astrology, Cancer is a feminine and watery sign, and the summer
solstice takes place in it. In the melothesiae it is correlated with the
breast. It rules over the Western sea. In Propertius it makes a sinister
appearance: “Octipedis Cancri terga sinistra time” (Fear thou the illomened back of the eight-footed crab). De Gubernatis says: “The crab …
causes now the death of the solar hero and now that of the monster.” The
Panchatantra (V, 2) relates how a crab, which the mother gave to her son
as apotropaic magic, saved his life by killing a black snake. As De
Gubernatis thinks, the crab stands now for the sun and now for the moon,
according to whether it goes forwards or backwards.
160
161
162
163
164
165
[606]
Miss X was born in the first degrees of Cancer (actually about 3°). She
knew her horoscope and was well aware of the significance of the moment
of birth; that is, she realized that the degree of the rising sign (the
ascendent) conditions the individuality of the horoscope. Since she
obviously guessed the horoscope’s affinity with the mandala, she
introduced her individual sign into the painting that was meant to express
her psychic self.
166
[607]
The essential conclusion to be drawn from Picture 10 is that the
dualities which run through it are always inwardly balanced, so that they
lose their sharpness and incompatibility. As Multatuli says: “Nothing is
quite true, and even that is not quite true.” But this loss of strength is
counterbalanced by the unity of the centre, where the lamp shines, sending
out coloured rays to the eight points of the compass.
167
[608]
Although the attainment of inner balance through symmetrical pairs of
opposites was probably the main intention of this mandala, we should not
overlook the fact that the duplication motif also occurs when unconscious
contents are about to become conscious and differentiated. They then split,
as often happens in dreams, into two identical or slightly different halves
corresponding to the conscious and still unconscious aspects of the nascent
content. I have the impression, from this picture, that it really does
represent a kind of solstice or climax, where decision and division take
place. The dualities are, at bottom, Yes and No, the irreconcilable
opposites, but they have to be held together if the balance of life is to be
maintained. This can only be done by holding unswervingly to the centre,
where action and suffering balance each other. It is a path “sharp as the
edge of a razor.” A climax like this, where universal opposites clash, is at
the same time a moment when a wide perspective often opens out into the
past and future. This is the psychological moment when, as the consensus
gentium has established since ancient times, synchronistic phenomena
occur—that is, when the far appears near: sixteen years later, Miss X
became fatally ill with cancer of the breast.
168
Picture 11
[609]
Here I will only mention that the coloured rays emanating from the
centre have become so rarified that, in the next few pictures, they
disappear altogether. Sun and moon are now outside, no longer included in
the microcosm of the mandala. The sun is not golden, but has a dull,
ochrous hue and in addition is clearly turning to the left: it is moving
towards its own obscuration, as had to happen after the cancer picture
(solstice). The moon is in the first quarter. The roundish masses near the
sun are probably meant to be cumulus clouds, but with their grey-red hues
they look suspiciously like bulbous swellings. The interior of the mandala
now contains a quincunx of stars, the central star being silver and gold.
The division of the mandala into an aerial and an earthy hemisphere has
transferred itself to the outside world and can no longer be seen in the
interior. The silvery rim of the aerial hemisphere in the preceding picture
now runs round the entire mandala and recalls the band of quicksilver that,
as Mercurius vulgaris, “veils the true personality.” At all events, it is
probable that the influence and importance of the outside world are
becoming so strong in this picture as to bring about an impairment and
devaluation of the mandala. It does not break down or burst (as can easily
happen under similar circumstances), but is removed from the telluric
influence through the symbolical constellation of stars and heavenly
bodies.
Picture 12–24
[610]
In Picture 12 the sun is in fact sinking below the horizon and the moon
is coming out of the first quarter. The radiation of the mandala has ceased
altogether, but the equivalents of sun and moon, and also of the earth, have
been assimilated into it. A remarkable feature is its sudden inner animation
by two human figures and various animals. The constellation character of
the centre has vanished and given way to a kind of flower motif. What this
animation means cannot be established, unfortunately, as we have no
commentary.
[611]
In Picture 13 the source of radiation is no longer in the mandala but
outside, in the shape of the full moon, from which rings of rainbowcoloured light radiate in concentric circles. The mandala is laced together
by four black and golden snakes, the heads of three of them pointing to the
centre, while the fourth rears upwards. In between the snakes and the
centre there are indications of the spermatozoon motif. This may mean an
intensive penetration on the part of the outside world, but it could also
mean magical protection. The breaking down of the quaternity into 3 plus
1 is in accord with the archetype.
169
[612]
In Picture 14 the mandala is suspended over the lit-up ravine of Fifth
Avenue, New York, whither Miss X in the meantime returned. On the blue
flower in the centre the coniunctio of the “royal” pair is represented by the
sacrificial fire burning between them. The King and Queen are assisted by
two kneeling figures of a man and a woman. It is a typical marriage
quaternio, and for an understanding of its psychology I must refer the
reader to my account in the “Psychology of the Transference.” This inner
bond should be thought of as a compensatory “consolidation” against
disintegrating influences from without.
170
[613]
In Picture 15 the mandala floats between Manhattan and the sea. It is
daylight again, and the sun is just rising. Out of the blue centre blue snakes
penetrate into the red flesh of the mandala: the enantiodromia is setting in,
after the introversion of feeling caused by the shock of New York had
passed its climax. The blue colour of the snakes indicates that they have
acquired a pneumatic nature.
[614]
From Picture 16 onwards, the drawing and painting technique shows a
decided improvement. The mandalas gain in aesthetic value. In Picture 17
a kind of eye motif appears, which I have also observed in the mandalas of
other persons. It seems to me to link up with the motif of polyophthalmia
and to point to the peculiar nature of the unconscious, which can be
regarded as a “multiple consciousness.” I have discussed this question in
detail elsewhere. (See also Fig. 5.)
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Fig. 5. Mandala by a woman patient
Aged 58, artistic and technically accomplished. In the centre is the egg
encircled by the snake; outside, apotropaic wings and eyes. The mandala is
exceptional in that it has a pentadic structure. (The patient also produced
triadic mandalas. She was fond of playing with forms irrespective of their
meaning—a consequence of her artistic gift.)
[615]
The enantiodromia only reached its climax the following year, in
Picture 19. In that picture the red substance is arranged round the golden,
four-rayed star in the centre, and the blue substance is pushing everywhere
to the periphery. Here the rainbow-coloured radiation of the mandala
begins again for the first time, and from then on was maintained for over
172
ten years (in mandalas not reproduced here).
[616]
I will not comment on the subsequent pictures, nor reproduce them all
—as I say, they extend over more than ten years—because I feel I do not
understand them properly. In addition, they came into my hands only
recently, after the death of the patient, and unfortunately without text or
commentary. Under these circumstances the work of interpretation
becomes very uncertain, and is better left unattempted. Also, this case was
meant only as an example of how such pictures come to be produced, what
they mean, and what reflections and observations their interpretation
requires. It is not intended to demonstrate how an entire lifetime expresses
itself in symbolic form. The individuation process has many stages and is
subject to many vicissitudes, as the fictive course of the opus alchymicum
amply shows.
Conclusion
[617]
Our series of pictures illustrates the initial stages of the way of
individuation. It would be desirable to know what happens afterwards. But,
just as neither the philosophical gold nor the philosophers’ stone was ever
made in reality, so nobody has ever been able to tell the story of the whole
way, at least not to mortal ears, for it is not the story-teller but death who
speaks the final “consummatum est.” Certainly there are many things
worth knowing in the later stages of the process, but, from the point of
view of teaching as well as of therapy, it is important not to skip too
quickly over the initial stages. As these pictures are intuitive anticipations
of future developments, it is worth while lingering over them for a long
time, in order, with their help, to integrate so many contents of the
unconscious into consciousness that the latter really does reach the stage it
sees ahead. These psychic evolutions do not as a rule keep pace with the
tempo of intellectual developments. Indeed, their very first goal is to bring
a consciousness that has hurried too far ahead into contact again with the
unconscious background with which it should be connected. This was the
problem in our case too. Miss X had to turn back to her “motherland” in
order to find her earth again—vestigia retro! It is a task that today faces
not only individuals but whole civilizations. What else is the meaning of
the frightful regressions of our time? The tempo of the development of
consciousness through science and technology was too rapid and left the
unconscious, which could no longer keep up with it, far behind, thereby
forcing it into a defensive position which expresses itself in a universal
will to destruction. The political and social isms of our day preach every
conceivable ideal, but, under this mask, they pursue the goal of lowering
the level of our culture by restricting or altogether inhibiting the
possibilities of individual development. They do this partly by creating a
chaos controlled by terrorism, a primitive state of affairs that affords only
the barest necessities of life and surpasses in horror the worst times of the
so-called “Dark” Ages. It remains to be seen whether this experience of
degradation and slavery will once more raise a cry for greater spiritual
freedom.
[618]
This problem cannot be solved collectively, because the masses are
not changed unless the individual changes. At the same time, even the
best-looking solution cannot be forced upon him, since it is a good solution
only when it is combined with a natural process of development. It is
therefore a hopeless undertaking to stake everything on collective recipes
and procedures. The bettering of a general ill begins with the individual,
and then only when he makes himself and not others responsible. This is
naturally only possible in freedom, but not under a rule of force, whether
this be exercised by a self-elected tyrant or by one thrown up by the mob.
[619]
The initial pictures in our series illustrate the characteristic psychic
processes which set in the moment one gives a mind to that part of the
personality which has remained behind, forgotten. Scarcely has the
connection been established when symbols of the self appear, trying to
convey a picture of the total personality. As a result of this development,
the unsuspecting modern gets into paths trodden from time immemorial—
the via sancta, whose milestones and signposts are the religions. He will
think and feel things that seem strange to him, not to say unpleasant.
Apuleius relates that in the Isis mysteries he “approached the very gates of
death and set one foot on Proserpina’s threshold, yet was permitted to
return, rapt through all the elements. At midnight I saw the sun shining as
if it were noon; I entered the presence of the gods of the underworld and
the gods of the upper world, stood near and worshipped them.” Such
experiences are also expressed in our mandalas; that is why we find in
religious literature the best parallels to the symbols and moods of the
situations they formulate. These situations are intense inner experiences
173
174
which can lead to lasting psychic growth and a ripening and deepening of
the personality, if the individual affected by them has the moral capacity
for πίστπ, loyal trust and confidence. They are the age-old psychic
experiences that underlie “faith” and ought to be its unshakable foundation
—and not of faith alone, but also of knowledge.
[620]
Our case shows with singular clarity the spontaneity of the psychic
process and the transformation of a personal situation into the problem of
individuation, that is, of becoming whole, which is the answer to the great
question of our day: How can consciousness, our most recent acquisition,
which has bounded ahead, be linked up again with the oldest, the
unconscious, which has lagged behind? The oldest of all is the instinctual
foundation. Anyone who overlooks the instincts will be ambuscaded by
them, and anyone who does not humble himself will be humbled, losing at
the same time his freedom, his most precious possession.
[621]
Always when science tries to describe a “simple” life-process, the
matter becomes complicated and difficult. So it is no wonder that the
details of a transformation process rendered visible through active
imagination make no small demands on our understanding. In this respect
they may be compared with all other biological processes. These, too,
require specialized knowledge to become comprehensible. Our example
also shows, however, that this process can begin and run its course without
any special knowledge having to stand sponsor to it. But if one wants to
understand anything of it and assimilate it into consciousness, then a
certain amount of knowledge is needed. If the process is not understood at
all, it has to build up an unusual intensity so as not to sink back again into
the unconscious without result. But if its affects rise to an unusual pitch,
they will enforce some kind of understanding. It depends on the
correctness of this understanding whether the consequences turn out more
pathologically or less. Psychic experiences, according to whether they are
rightly or wrongly understood, have very different effects on a person’s
development. It is one of the duties of the psychotherapist to acquire such
knowledge of these things as will enable him to help his patient to an
adequate understanding. Experiences of this kind are not without their
dangers, for they are also, among other things, the matrix of the psychoses.
Stiffnecked and violent interpretations should under all circumstances be
avoided, likewise a patient should never be forced into a development that
does not come naturally and spontaneously. But once it has set in, he
should not be talked out of it again, unless the possibility of a psychosis
has been definitely established. Thorough psychiatric experience is needed
to decide this question, and it must constantly be borne in mind that the
constellation of archetypal images and fantasies is not in itself
pathological. The pathological element only reveals itself in the way the
individual reacts to them and how he interprets them. The characteristic
feature of a pathological reaction is, above all, identification with the
archetype. This produces a sort of inflation and possession by the
emergent contents, so that they pour out in a torrent which no therapy can
stop. Identification can, in favourable cases, sometimes pass off as a more
or less harmless inflation. But in all cases identification with the
unconscious brings a weakening of consciousness, and herein lies the
danger. You do not “make” an identification, you do not “identify
yourself,” but you experience your identity with the archetype in an
unconscious way and so are possessed by it. Hence in more difficult cases
it is far more necessary to strengthen and consolidate the ego than to
understand and assimilate the products of the unconscious. The decision
must be left to the diagnostic and therapeutic tact of the analyst.
*
[622]
This paper is a groping attempt to make the inner processes of the
mandala more intelligible. They are, as it were, self-delineations of dimly
sensed changes going on in the background, which are perceived by the
“reversed eye” and rendered visible with pencil and brush, just as they are,
uncomprehended and unknown. The pictures represent a kind of ideogram
of unconscious contents. I have naturally used this method on myself too
and can affirm that one can paint very complicated pictures without having
the least idea of their real meaning. While painting them, the picture seems
to develop out of itself and often in opposition to one’s conscious
intentions. It is interesting to observe how the execution of the picture
frequently thwarts one’s expectations in the most surprising way. The
same thing can be observed, sometimes even more clearly, when writing
down the products of active imagination.
175
[623]
The present work may also serve to fill a gap I myself have felt in my
exposition of therapeutic methods. I have written very little on active
imagination, but have talked about it a great deal. I have used this method
since 1916, and I sketched it out for the first time in “The Relations
between the Ego and the Unconscious.” I first mentioned the mandala in
1929, in The Secret of the Golden Flower. For at least thirteen years I
kept quiet about the results of these methods in order to avoid any
suggestion. I wanted to assure myself that these things—mandalas
especially—really are produced spontaneously and were not suggested to
the patient by my own fantasy. I was then able to convince myself, through
my own studies, that mandalas were drawn, painted, carved in stone, and
built, at all times and in all parts of the world, long before my patients
discovered them. I have also seen to my satisfaction that mandalas are
dreamt and drawn by patients who were being treated by psychotherapists
whom I had not trained. In view of the importance and significance of the
mandala symbol, special precautions seemed to be necessary, seeing that
this motif is one of the best examples of the universal operation of an
archetype. In a seminar on children’s dreams, which I held in 1939–40, I
mentioned the dream of a ten-year-old girl who had absolutely no
possibility of ever hearing about the quaternity of God. The dream was
written down by the child herself and was sent to me by an acquaintance:
“Once in a dream I saw an animal that had lots of horns. It spiked up
other little animals with them. It wriggled like a snake and that was how it
lived. Then a blue fog came out of all the four corners, and it stopped
eating. Then God came, but there were really four Gods in the four
corners. Then the animal died, and all the animals it had eaten came out
alive again.”
176
177
[624]
This dream describes an unconscious individuation process: all the
animals are eaten by the one animal. Then comes the enantiodromia: the
dragon changes into pneuma, which stands for a divine quaternity.
Thereupon follows the apocatastasis, a resurrection of the dead. This
exceedingly “unchildish” fantasy can hardly be termed anything but
archetypal. Miss X, in Picture 12, also put a whole collection of animals
into her mandala—two snakes, two tortoises, two fishes, two lions, two
pigs, a goat and a ram. Integration gathers many into one. To the child
who had this dream, and to Miss X likewise, it was certainly not known
that Origen had already said (speaking of the sacrificial animals): “Seek
these sacrifices within thyself, and thou wilt find them within thine own
soul. Understand that thou hast within thyself flocks of cattle … flocks of
178
sheep and flocks of goats. … Understand that the birds of the sky are also
within thee. Marvel not if we say that these are within thee, but understand
that thou thyself art even another little world, and hast within thee the sun
and the moon, and also the stars.”
179
[625]
The same idea occurs again in another passage, but this time it takes
the form of a psychological statement: “For look upon the countenance of
a man who is at one moment angry, at the next sad, a short while afterward
joyful, then troubled again, and then contented. … See how he who thinks
himself one is not one, but seems to have as many personalities as he has
moods, as also the Scripture says: A fool is changed as the moon. …
God, therefore, is unchangeable, and is called one for the reason that he
changes not. Thus also the true imitator of God, who is made after God’s
image, is called one and the selfsame [unus et ipse] when he comes to
perfection, for he also, when he is fixed on the summit of virtue, is not
changed, but remains alway one. For every man, whiles he is in
wickedness [malitia], is divided among many things and torn in many
directions; and while he is in many kinds of evil he cannot be called
one.”
180
181
[626]
Here the many animals are affective states to which man is prone. The
individuation process, clearly alluded to in this passage, subordinates the
many to the One. But the One is God, and that which corresponds to him
in us is the imago Dei, the God-image. But the God-image, as we saw from
Jakob Böhme, expresses itself in the mandala.
CONCERNING MANDALA SYMBOLISM1
[627]
In what follows I shall try to describe a special category of symbols,
the mandala, with the help of a wide selection of pictures. I have dealt
with this theme on several occasions before, and in Psychology and
Alchemy I gave a detailed account, with running commentary, of the
mandala symbols that came up in the course of an individual analysis. I
repeated the attempt in the preceding paper of the present volume, but
there the mandalas did not derive from dreams but from active
imagination. In this paper I shall present mandalas of the most varied
provenance, on the one hand to give the reader an impression of the
astonishing wealth of forms produced by individual fantasy, and on the
other hand to enable him to form some idea of the regular occurrence of
the basic elements.
[628]
As regards the interpretation, I must refer the reader to the literature.
In this paper I shall content myself with hints, because a more detailed
explanation would lead much too far, as the mandalas described in
“Psychology and Religion” and in the preceding paper of this volume
show.
[629]
The Sanskrit word mandala means ‘circle.’ It is the Indian term for
the circles drawn in religious rituals. In the great temple of Madura, in
southern India, I saw how a picture of this kind was made. It was drawn by
a woman on the floor of the mandapam (porch), in coloured chalks, and
measured about ten feet across. A pandit who accompanied me said in
reply to my questions that he could give me no information about it. Only
the women who drew such pictures knew what they meant. The woman
herself was non-committal; she evidently did not want to be disturbed in
her work. Elaborate mandalas, executed in red chalk, can also be found on
the whitewashed walls of many huts. The best and most significant
mandalas are found in the sphere of Tibetan Buddhism. I shall use as an
2
example a Tibetan mandala, to which my attention was drawn by Richard
Wilhelm.
Figure 1
[630]
A mandala of this sort is known in ritual usage as a yantra, an
instrument of contemplation. It is meant to aid concentration by narrowing
down the psychic field of vision and restricting it to the centre. Usually the
mandala contains three circles, painted in black or dark blue. They are
meant to shut out the outside and hold the inside together. Almost
regularly the outer rim consists of fire, the fire of concupiscentia, ‘desire,’
from which proceed the torments of hell. The horrors of the burial ground
are generally depicted on the outer rim. Inside this is a garland of lotus
leaves, characterizing the whole mandala as a padma, ‘lotus-flower.’ Then
comes a kind of monastery courtyard with four gates. It signifies sacred
seclusion and concentration. Inside this courtyard there are as a rule the
four basic colours, red, green, white, and yellow, which represent the four
directions and also the psychic functions, as the Tibetan Book of the Dead
shows. Then, usually marked off by another magic circle, comes the centre
as the essential object or goal of contemplation.
3
[631]
This centre is treated in very different ways, depending on the
requirements of the ritual, the grade of initiation of the contemplator, and
the sect he belongs to. As a rule it shows Shiva in his world-creating
emanations. Shiva, according to Tantric doctrine, is the One Existent, the
Timeless in its perfect state. Creation begins when this unextended point—
known as Shiva-bindu—appears in the eternal embrace of its feminine side,
the Shakti. It then emerges from the state of being-in-itself and attains the
state of being-for-itself, if I may use the Hegelian terminology.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6
Figure 7
Figure 8
Figure 9
Figure 10
Figure 11
Figure 12
Figure 13
Figure 14
Figure 15
Figure 16
Figure 17
Figure 18
Figure 19
Figure 20
Figure 21
Figure 22
Figure 23
Figure 24
Figure 25
Figure 26
Figure 27
Figure 28
Figure 29
Figure 30
Figure 31
Figure 32
Figure 33
Figure 34
Figure 35
Figure 36
Figure 37
Figure 38
Figure 39
Figure 40
Figure 41
Figure 42
Figure 43
Figure 44
Figure 45
Figure 46
Figure 47
Figure 48
Figure 49
Figure 50
Figure 51
Figure 52
Figure 53
Figure 54
[632]
In kundalini yoga symbolism, Shakti is represented as a snake wound
three and a half times round the lingam, which is Shiva in the form of a
phallus. This image shows the possibility of manifestation in space. From
Shakti comes Maya, the building material of all individual things; she is, in
consequence, the creatrix of the real world. This is thought of as illusion,
as being and not-being. It is, and yet remains dissolved in Shiva. Creation
therefore begins with an act of division of the opposites that are united in
the deity. From their splitting arises, in a gigantic explosion of energy, the
multiplicity of the world.
[633]
The goal of contemplating the processes depicted in the mandala is
that the yogi shall become inwardly aware of the deity. Through
contemplation, he recognizes himself as God again, and thus returns from
the illusion of individual existence into the universal totality of the divine
state.
[634]
As I have said, mandala means ‘circle.’ There are innumerable
variants of the motif shown here, but they are all based on the squaring of
a circle. Their basic motif is the premonition of a centre of personality, a
kind of central point within the psyche, to which everything is related, by
which everything is arranged, and which is itself a source of energy. The
energy of the central point is manifested in the almost irresistible
compulsion and urge to become what one is, just as every organism is
driven to assume the form that is characteristic of its nature, no matter
what the circumstances. This centre is not felt or thought of as the ego but,
if one may so express it, as the self. Although the centre is represented by
an innermost point, it is surrounded by a periphery containing everything
that belongs to the self—the paired opposites that make up the total
personality. This totality comprises consciousness first of all, then the
personal unconscious, and finally an indefinitely large segment of the
collective unconscious whose archetypes are common to all mankind. A
certain number of these, however, are permanently or temporarily included
within the scope of the personality and, through this contact, acquire an
individual stamp as the shadow, anima, and animus, to mention only the
best-known figures. The self, though on the one hand simple, is on the
other hand an extremely composite thing, a “conglomerate soul,” to use the
Indian expression.
[635]
Lamaic literature gives very detailed instructions as to how such a
circle must be painted and how it should be used. Form and colour are laid
down by tradition, so the variants move within fairly narrow limits. The
ritual use of the mandala is actually non-Buddhist; at any rate it is alien to
the original Hínayāna Buddhism and appears first in Mahāyāna Buddhism.
[636]
The mandala shown here depicts the state of one who has emerged
from contemplation into the absolute state. That is why representation of
hell and the horrors of the burial ground are missing. The diamond
thunderbolt, the dorje in the centre, symbolizes the perfect state where
masculine and feminine are united. The world of illusions has finally
vanished. All energy has gathered together in the initial state.
[637]
The four dorjes in the gates of the inner courtyard are meant to
indicate that life’s energy is streaming inwards; it has detached itself from
objects and now returns to the centre. When the perfect union of all
energies in the four aspects of wholeness is attained, there arises a static
state subject to no more change. In Chinese alchemy this state is called the
“Diamond Body,” corresponding to the corpus incorruptibile of medieval
alchemy, which is identical with the corpus glorificationis of Christian
tradition, the incorruptible body of resurrection. This mandala shows, then,
the union of all opposites, and is embedded between yang and yin, heaven
and earth; the state of everlasting balance and immutable duration.
[638]
For our more modest psychological purposes we must abandon the
colourful metaphysical language of the East. What yoga aims at in this
exercise is undoubtedly a psychic change in the adept. The ego is the
expression of individual existence. The yogin exchanges his ego for Shiva
or the Buddha; in this way he induces a shifting of the psychological centre
of personality from the personal ego to the impersonal non-ego, which is
now experienced as the real “Ground” of the personality.
[639]
In this connection I would like to mention a similar Chinese
conception, namely the system on which the I Ching is based.
Figure 2
[640]
In the centre is ch’ien, ‘heaven,’ from which the four emanations go
forth, like the heavenly forces extending through space. Thus we have:
ch’ien: self-generated creative energy, corresponding to Shiva.
heng: all-pervading power.
yuen: generative power.
li: beneficent power.
ching: unchangeable, determinative power.
[641]
Round this masculine power-centre lies the earth with its formed
elements. It is the same conception as the Shiva-Shakti union in kundalini
yoga, but here represented as the earth receiving into itself the creative
power of heaven. The union of heaven with kun, the feminine and
receptive, produces the tetraktys, which, as in Pythagoras, underlies all
existence.
[642]
The “River Map” is one of the legendary foundations of the I Ching,
which in its present form derives partly from the twelfth century B.C.
According to the legend, a dragon dredged the magical signs of the “River
Map” from a river. On it the sages discovered the drawing, and in the
drawing the laws of the world-order. This drawing, in accordance with its
extreme age, shows the knotted cords that signify numbers. These numbers
have the usual primitive character of qualities, chiefly masculine and
feminine. All uneven numbers are masculine, even numbers feminine.
[643]
Unfortunately I do not know whether this primitive conception
influenced the formation of the much younger Tantric mandala. But the
parallels are so striking that the European investigator has to ask himself:
Which view influenced the other? Did the Chinese develop from the
Indian, or the Indian from the Chinese? An Indian whom I asked
answered: “Naturally the Chinese developed from the Indian.” But he did
not know how old the Chinese conceptions are. The bases of the I Ching
go back to the third millennium B.C. My late friend Richard Wilhelm, the
eminent expert on classical Chinese philosophy, was of the opinion that no
direct connections could be assumed. Nor, despite the fundamental
similarity of the symbolic ideas, does there need to be any direct influence,
since the ideas, as experience shows and as I think I have demonstrated,
arise autochthonously again and again, independently of one another, out
of a psychic matrix that seems to be ubiquitous.
Figure 3
[644]
As a counterpart to the Lamaic mandala, I now reproduce the Tibetan
“World Wheel,” which should be sharply distinguished from the former,
since it represents the world. In the centre are the three principles: cock,
snake, and pig, symbolizing lust, envy, and unconsciousness. The wheel
has, near the centre, six spokes, and twelve spokes round the edge. It is
based on a triadic system. The wheel is held by the god of death, Yama.
(Later we shall meet other “shield-holders”: Figs. 34 and 47.) It is
understandable that the sorrowful world of old age, sickness, and death
should be held in the claws of the death-demon. The incomplete state of
existence is, remarkably enough, expressed by a triadic system, and the
complete (spiritual) state by a tetradic system. The relation between the
incomplete and the complete state therefore corresponds to the
“sesquitertian proportion” of 3 : 4. This relation is known in Western
alchemical tradition as the axiom of Maria. It also plays a not
inconsiderable role in dream symbolism.
4
*
[645]
We shall now pass on to individual mandalas spontaneously produced
by patients in the course of an analysis of the unconscious. Unlike the
mandalas so far discussed, these are not based on any tradition or model,
seeming to be free creations of fantasy, but determined by certain
archetypal ideas unknown to their creators. For this reason the fundamental
motifs are repeated so often that marked similarities occur in drawings
done by the most diverse patients. The pictures come as a rule from
educated persons who were unacquainted with the ethnic parallels. The
pictures differ widely, according to the stage of the therapeutic process;
but certain important stages correspond to definite motifs. Without going
into therapeutic details, I would only like to say that a rearranging of the
personality is involved, a kind of new centring. That is why mandalas
mostly appear in connection with chaotic psychic states of disorientation
or panic. They then have the purpose of reducing the confusion to order,
though this is never the conscious intention of the patient. At all events
they express order, balance, and wholeness. Patients themselves often
emphasize the beneficial or soothing effect of such pictures. Usually the
mandalas express religious, i.e., numinous, thoughts and ideas, or, in their
stead, philosophical ones. Most mandalas have an intuitive, irrational
character and, through their symbolical content, exert a retroactive
influence on the unconscious. They therefore possess a “magical”
significance, like icons, whose possible efficacy was never consciously felt
by the patient. In fact, it is from the effect of their own pictures that
patients discover what icons can mean. Their pictures work not because
they spring from the patients’ own fantasy but because they are impressed
by the fact that their subjective imagination produces motifs and symbols
of the most unexpected kind that conform to law and express an idea or
situation which their conscious mind can grasp only with difficulty.
Confronted with these pictures, many patients suddenly realize for the first
time the reality of the collective unconscious as an autonomous entity. I
will not labour the point here; the strength of the impression and its effect
on the patient are obvious enough from some of the pictures.
[646]
I must preface the pictures that now follow with a few remarks on the
formal elements of mandala symbolism. These are primarily:
1. Circular, spherical, or egg-shaped formation.
2. The circle is elaborated into a flower (rose, lotus) or a wheel.
3. A centre expressed by a sun, star, or cross, usually with four, eight, or twelve rays.
4. The circles, spheres, and cruciform figures are often represented in rotation (swastika).
5. The circle is represented by a snake coiled about a centre, either ring-shaped (uroboros) or
spiral (Orphic egg).
6. Squaring of the circle, taking the form of a circle in a square or vice versa.
7. Castle, city, and courtyard (temenos) motifs, quadratic or circular.
8. Eye (pupil and iris).
9. Besides the tetradic figures (and multiples of four), there are also triadic and pentadic ones,
though these are much rarer.
They should be regarded as “disturbed” totality pictures, as we shall see
below.
Figure 4
[647]
This mandala was done by a woman patient in her middle years, who
first saw it in a dream. Here we see at once the difference from the Eastern
mandala. It is poor in form, poor in ideas, but nevertheless expresses the
individual attitude of the patient far more clearly than the Eastern pictures,
which have been subjected to a collective and traditional configuration.
Her dream ran: “I was trying to decipher an embroidery pattern. My sister
knew how. I asked her if she had made an elaborate hemstitched
handkerchief. She said, “No, but I know how it was done.” Then I saw it
with the threads drawn, but the work not yet done. One must go around
and around the square until near the centre, then go in circles.”
[648]
The spiral is painted in the typical colours red, green, yellow, and
blue. According to the patient, the square in the centre represents a stone,
its four facets showing the four basic colours. The inner spiral represents
the snake that, like Kundalini, winds three and a half times round the
centre.
5
[649]
The dreamer herself had no notion of what was going on in her,
namely the beginning of a new orientation, nor would she have understood
it consciously. Also, the parallels from Eastern symbolism were
completely unknown to her, so that any influence is out of the question.
The symbolic picture came to her spontaneously, when she had reached a
certain point in her development.
[650]
It is, unfortunately, not possible for me to say exactly under what
circumstances each of these pictures arose. That would lead us too far. The
sole aim of this paper is to give a survey of the formal parallels to the
individual and collective mandala. I regret also that for the same reason no
single picture can be interpreted circumstantially and in detail, as that
would inevitably require a comprehensive account of the analytical
situation of the patient. Wherever it is possible to shed light on the origins
of the picture by a passing hint, as in the present case, I shall do so.
[651]
As to the interpretation of the picture, it must be emphasized that the
snake, arranged in angles and then in circles round the square, signifies the
circumambulation of, and way to, the centre. The snake, as a chthonic and
at the same time spiritual being, symbolizes the unconscious. The stone in
the centre, presumably a cube, is the quaternary form of the lapis
philosophorum. The four colours also point in this direction. It is evident
that the stone in this case signifies the new centre of personality, the self,
which is also symbolized by a vessel.
6
Figure 5
[652]
The painter was a middle-aged woman of schizoid disposition. She
had several times drawn mandalas spontaneously, because they always had
an ordering effect on her chaotic psychic states. The picture shows a rose,
the Western equivalent of the lotus. In India the lotus-flower (padma) is
interpreted by the Tantrists as the womb. We know this symbol from the
numerous pictures of the Buddha (and other Indian deities) in the lotusflower. It corresponds to the “Golden Flower” of Chinese alchemy, the
rose of the Rosicrucians, and the mystic rose in Dante’s Paradiso. Rose
and lotus are usually arranged in groups of four petals, indicating the
squaring of the circle or the united opposites. The significance of the rose
as the maternal womb was nothing strange to our Western mystics, for we
read in a prayer inspired by the Litany of Loreto:
7
O Rose-wreath, thy blossoming makes men weep for joy.
O rosy sun, thy burning makes men to love.
O son of the sun,
Rose-child,
Sun-beam.
Flower of the Cross, pure Womb that blossoms
Over all blooming and burning,
Sacred Rose,
Mary.
[653]
At the same time, the vessel motif is an expression of the content, just
as Shakti represents the actualization of Shiva. As alchemy shows, the self
is androgynous and consists of a masculine and a feminine principle.
Conrad of Würzburg speaks of Mary, the flower of the sea in which Christ
lies hidden. And in an old hymn we read:
O’er all the heavens a rose appears
And a bright dress of blossom wears.
Its light glows in the Three-in-One
For God himself has put it on.
Figure 6
[654]
The rose in the centre is depicted as a ruby, its outer ring being
conceived as a wheel or a wall with gates (so that nothing can come out
from inside or go in from outside). The mandala was a spontaneous
product from the analysis of a male patient. It was based on a dream: The
dreamer found himself with three younger travelling companions in
Liverpool. It was night, and raining. The air was full of smoke and soot.
They climbed up from the harbour to the “upper city.” The dreamer said:
8
“It was terribly dark and disagreeable, and we could not understand how
anyone could stick it here. We talked about this, and one of my
companions said that, remarkably enough, a friend of his had settled here,
which astonished everybody. During this conversation we reached a sort
of public garden in the middle of the city. The park was square, and in the
centre was a lake or large pool. A few street lamps just lit up the pitch
darkness, and I could see a little island in the pool. On it there was a
single tree, a red-flowering magnolia, which miraculously stood in
everlasting sunshine. I noticed that my companions had not seen this
miracle, whereas I was beginning to understand why the man had settled
here.”
[655]
The dreamer went on: “I tried to paint this dream. But as so often
happens, it came out rather different. The magnolia turned into a sort of
rose made of ruby-coloured glass. It shone like a four-rayed star. The
square represents the wall of the park and at the same time a street leading
round the park in a square. From it there radiate eight main streets, and
from each of these eight side-streets, which meet in a shining red central
point, rather like the Étoile in Paris. The acquaintance mentioned in the
dream lived in a house at the corner of one of these stars.” The mandala
thus combines the classic motifs of flower, star, circle, precinct (temenos),
and plan of city divided into quarters with citadel. “The whole thing
seemed like a window opening on to eternity,” wrote the dreamer.
Figure 7
[656]
Flower motif with cross in the centre. The square, too, is arranged like
a flower. The four faces at the corners correspond to the four cardinal
points, which are often depicted as four deities. Here they have a demonic
character. This may be connected with the fact that the patient was born in
the Dutch East Indies, where she sucked up the peculiar local demonology
with the mother’s milk of her native ayah. Her numerous drawings all had
a distinctly Eastern character, and thereby helped her to assimilate
influences that at first could not be reconciled with her Western mentality.
9
[657]
In the picture that followed, the demon faces were ornamentally
elaborated in eight directions. For the superficial observer the flowerlike
character of the whole may disguise the demonic element the mandala is
meant to ward off. The patient felt that the “demonic” effect came from the
European influence with its moralism and rationalism. Brought up in the
East Indies until her sixth year, she came later into a conventional
European milieu, and this had a devastating effect on the flowerlike quality
of her Eastern spirit and caused a prolonged psychic trauma. Under
treatment her native world, long submerged, came up again in these
drawings, bringing with it psychic recovery.
Figure 8
[658]
The flowerlike development has got stronger and is beginning to
overgrow the “demonishness” of the faces.
Figure 9
[659]
A later stage is shown here. Minute care in the draughtsmanship vies
with richness of colour and form. From this we can discern not only the
extraordinary concentration of the patient but the triumph of Eastern
“flowerlikeness” over the demon of Western intellectualism, rationalism,
and moralism. At the same time the new centring of the personality
becomes visible.
Figure 10
[660]
In this painting, done by another young woman patient, we see at the
cardinal points four creatures: a bird, a sheep, a snake, and a lion with a
human face. Together with the four colours in which the four regions are
painted, they embody four principles. The interior of the mandala is empty.
Or rather, it contains a “Nothing” that is expressed by a quaternity. This is
in accord with the overwhelming majority of individual mandalas: as a rule
the centre contains the motif of the rotundum, known to us from alchemy,
or the four-fold emanation or the squaring of the circle, or—more rarely—
the figure of the patient in a universal human sense, representing the
Anthropos. We find this motif, too, in alchemy. The four animals remind
us of the cherubim in Ezekiel’s vision, and also of the four symbols of the
evangelists and the four sons of Horus, which are sometimes depicted in
the same way, three with animal heads and one with a human head.
Animals generally signify the instinctive forces of the unconscious, which
10
are brought into unity within the mandala. This integration of the instincts
is a prerequisite for individuation.
Figure 11
[661]
Painting by an older patient. Here the flower is seen not in the basic
pattern of the mandala, but in elevation. The circular form has been
preserved inside the square, so that despite its different execution this
picture can still be regarded as a mandala. The plant stands for growth and
development, like the green shoot in the diaphragm chakra of the
kundalini yoga system. The shoot symbolizes Shiva and represents the
centre and the male, whereas the calyx represents the female, the place of
germination and birth. Thus the Buddha sitting in the lotus is shown as
the germinating god. It is the god in his rising, the same symbol as Ra the
falcon, or the phoenix rising from the nest, or Mithras in the tree-top, or
the Horus-child in the lotus. They are all symbolizations of the status
nascendi in the seeding-place of the matrix. In medieval hymns Mary too
is praised as the cup of the flower in which Christ, coming down as a bird,
makes his nest. Psychologically Christ means unity, which clothes itself in
the corpus mysticum of the Church or in the body of the Mother of God
(“mystic rose”), surrounded as with flower-petals, and thus reveals itself in
reality. Christ as an image is a symbol of the self. Just as the plant stands
for growth, so the flower depicts the unfolding from a centre.
11
12
Figure 12
[662]
Here the four rays emanating from the centre spread across the whole
picture. This gives the centre a dynamic character. The structure of the
flower is a multiple of four. The picture is typical of the marked
personality of the patient, who had some artistic talent. (She also painted
Fig. 5.) Besides that she had a strong feeling for Christian mysticism,
which played a great role in her life. It was important for her to experience
the archetypal background of Christian symbolism.
Figure 13
[663]
Photograph of a rug woven by a middle-aged woman, Penelope-like,
at a time of great inner and outer distress. She was a doctor and she wove
this magic circle round herself, working at it every day for months, as a
counterbalance to the difficulties of her life. She was not my patient and
could not have been influenced by me. The rug contains an eight-petalled
flower. A special feature of the rug is that it has a real “above and below.”
Above is light; below, relative darkness. In it, there is a creature like a
beetle, representing an unconscious content, and comparable with the sun
in the form of Khepera. Occasionally the “above and below” are outside
the protective circle, instead of inside. In that case the mandala affords
protection against extreme opposites; that is, the sharpness of the conflict
is not yet realized or else is felt as intolerable. The protective circle then
guards against possible disruption due to the tension of opposites.
Figure 14
[664]
An Indian picture of Shiva-bindu, the unextended point. It shows the
divine power before the creation: the opposites are still united. The god
rests in the point. Hence the snake signifies extension, the mother of
Becoming, the creation of the world of forms. In India this point is also
called Hiranyagarbha, ‘golden germ’ or ‘golden egg.’ We read in the
Sanatsugatiya: “That pure great light which is radiant, that great glory
which the gods worship, which makes the sun shine forth, that divine,
eternal Being is perceived by the faithful.”
13
Figure 15
[665]
This picture, also by a middle-aged woman patient, shows the
squaring of the circle. The plants again denote germination and growth. In
the centre is a sun. As the snake-and-tree motif shows, we have here a
conception of Paradise. A parallel is the Gnostic conception of Edem with
the four rivers of Paradise in the Naassene gnosis. For the functional
significance of the snake in relation to the mandala, see the preceding
paper (comments on pictures 3, 4, and 5).
Figure 16
[666]
This picture was painted by a neurotic young woman. The snake is
somewhat unusual in that it lies in the centre itself, its head coinciding
with this. Usually it is outside the inner circle, or at least coiled round the
central point. One suspects (rightly, as it turned out) that the inner darkness
does not conceal the longed-for unity, the self, but rather the chthonic,
feminine nature of the patient. In a later picture the mandala bursts and the
snake comes out.
Figure 17
[667]
The picture was done by a young woman. This mandala is
“legitimate” in so far as the snake is coiled round the four-rayed middle
point. It is trying to get out: it is the awakening of Kundalini, meaning that
the patient’s chthonic nature is becoming active. This is also indicated by
the arrows pointing outwards. In practice it means becoming conscious of
one’s instinctual nature. The snake in ancient times personified the spinal
ganglia and the spinal cord. Arrows pointing outwards may in other cases
mean the opposite: protection of the inside from danger.
Figure 18
[668]
Drawn by an older patient. Unlike the previous picture, this one is
“introverted.” The snake is coiled round the four-rayed centre and has laid
its head on the white, central point (Shiva-bindu), so that it looks as if it
were wearing a halo. There seems to be a kind of incubation of the middle
point—the motif of the snake guarding the treasure. The centre is often
characterized as the “treasure hard to attain.”
14
Figure 19
[669]
Done by a middle-aged woman. The concentric circles express
concentration. This is further emphasized by the fishes circumnavigating
the centre. The number 4 has the meaning of total concentration. The
movement to the left presumably indicates movement towards the
unconscious, i.e., immersion in it.
Figure 20
[670]
This is a parallel to Figure 19: sketch of a fish-motif which I saw on
the ceiling of the Maharajah’s pavilion in Benares.
Figure 21
[671]
A fish instead of a snake. Fish and snake are simultaneously attributes
of both Christ and the devil. The fish is making a whirlpool in the sea of
the unconscious, and in its midst the precious pearl is being formed. A
Rig-Veda hymn says:
Darkness there was, concealed in darkness,
A Lightless ocean lost in night.
Then the One, that was hidden in the shell,
Was born through the power of fiery torment.
From it arose in the beginning love,
Which is the germ and the seed of knowledge.15
[672]
As a rule the snake personifies the unconscious, whereas the fish
usually represents one of its contents. These subtle distinctions must be
borne in mind when interpreting a mandala, because the two symbols very
probably correspond to two different stages of development, the snake
representing a more primitive and more instinctual state than the fish,
which in history as well was endowed with higher authority than the snake
(cf. the Ichthys-symbol).
Figure 22
[673]
In this picture by a young woman the fish has produced a
differentiated centre by circumnavigation, and in it a mother and child
stand before a stylized Tree of Life or of Knowledge. Here the fish has a
dragonlike nature; it is a monster, a sort of Leviathan, which, as the texts
from Ras Shamra show, was originally a snake. Once more the movement
is to the left.
16
Figure 23
[674]
The golden ball corresponds to the golden germ (Hiranyagarbha). It is
rotating, and the Kundalini winding round it has doubled. This indicates
conscious realization, since a content rising out of the unconscious splits at
a certain moment into two halves, a conscious and an unconscious one.
The doubling is not made by the conscious mind, but appears
spontaneously in the products of the unconscious. The rightwards rotation,
expressed by the wings (swastika-motif), likewise indicates conscious
realization. The stars show that the centre has a cosmic structure. It has
four rays, and thus behaves like a heavenly body. The ShatapathaBrahmana says:
Then he looks up to the sun, for that is the final goal, that the safe
resort. To that final goal, to that resort he goes; for this reason he looks
up to the sun.
He looks up, saying, “Self-existent art thou, the best ray of light!” The
sun is indeed the best ray of light, and therefore he says, “Self-existent art
thou, the best ray of light!” “Light-bestowing art thou: give me light
(varkas)!” “So say I,” said Yajñavalkya, “and for this indeed the Brahmin
should strive, if he would be brahmavarkasin, illumined by brahma.”
He then turns from left to right, saying, “I move along the course
of the sun.” Having reached that final goal, that safe resort, he now
moves along the course of yonder sun.
17
[675]
This sun has seven rays. A commentator remarks that four of them
point to the four quarters; one points upwards, another downwards, but the
seventh and “best” points inwards. It is at the same time the sun’s disc,
named Hiranyagarbha. This, according to Ramanuja’s commentary on the
Vedanta Sutras, is the highest self, the “collective aggregate of all
individual souls.” It is the body of the highest Brahma and represents the
collective psyche. For the idea of the self as compounded of many,
compare Origen’s “Each of us is not one, but many” and “All are
righteous, but one receiveth the crown.”
18
19
[676]
The patient was a woman of sixty, artistically gifted. The
individuation process, long blocked but released by the treatment,
stimulated her creative activity (Fig. 21 derives from the same source) and
gave rise to a series of happily coloured pictures which eloquently express
the intensity of her experience.
Figure 24
[677]
Done by the same patient. She herself is shown practising
contemplation or concentration on the centre: she has taken the place of
the fish and the snakes. An ideal image of herself is laid round the precious
egg. The legs are flexible, like a nixie’s. The psychology of such a picture
reappears in ecclesiastical tradition. The Shiva-Shakti of the East is known
in the West as the “man encompassed by a woman,” Christ and his bride
the Church. Compare the Maitrayana-Brahmana Upanishad:
He [the Self] is also he who warms, the Sun, hidden by the
thousand-eyed golden egg, as one fire by another. He is to be thought
after, he is to be sought after. Having said farewell to all living things,
having gone to the forest, and having renounced all sensuous objects, let
a man perceive the Self from his own body.
20
[678]
Here too the radiation from the centre spreads out beyond the
protective circle into the distance. This expresses the idea of the farreaching effect of the introverted state of consciousness. It could also be
described as an unconscious connection with the world.
Figure 25
[679]
This picture was done by another middle-aged patient. It shows
various phases of the individuation process. Down below she is caught in a
chthonic tangle of roots (the mūlādhāra of kundalini yoga). In the middle
she studies a book, cultivating her mind and augmenting her knowledge
and consciousness. At the top, reborn, she receives illumination in the
form of a heavenly sphere that widens and frees the personality, its round
shape again representing the mandala in its “Kingdom of God” aspect,
whereas the lower, wheel-shaped mandala is chthonic. There is a
confrontation of the natural and spiritual totalities. The mandala is unusual
on account of its six rays, six mountain peaks, six birds, three human
figures. In addition, it is located between a distinct Above and Below, also
repeated in the mandala itself. The upper, bright sphere is in the act of
descending into the hexad or triad and has already passed the rim of the
wheel. According to old tradition the number 6 means creation and
evolution, since it is a coniunctio of 2 and 3 (even and odd = female and
male). Philo Judaeus therefore calls the senarius (6) the “number most
suited to generation.” The number 3, he says, denotes the surface or
flatness, whereas 4 means height or depth. The quaternarius “shows the
nature of solids,” whereas the three first numbers characterize or produce
incorporeal intelligences. The number 4 appears as a three-sided pyramid.
The hexad shows that the mandala consists of two triads, and the upper
21
22
one is making itself into a quaternity, the state of “equability and justice,”
as Philo says. Down below lurk unintegrated dark clouds. This picture
demonstrates the not uncommon fact that the personality needs to be
extended both upwards and downwards.
Figure 26 and 27
[680]
These mandalas are in part atypical. Both were done by the same
young woman. In the centre, as in the previous mandala, is a female figure,
as if enclosed in a glass sphere or transparent bubble. It looks almost as if
an homunculus were in the making. In addition to the usual four or eight
rays, both mandalas show a pentadic element. There is thus a dilemma
between four and five. Five is the number assigned to the “natural” man, in
so far as he consists of a trunk with five appendages. Four, on the other
hand, signifies a conscious totality. It describes the ideal, “spiritual” man
and formulates him as a totality in contrast to the pentad, which describes
the corporeal man. It is significant that the swastika symbolizes the “ideal”
man, whereas the five-pointed star symbolizes the material and bodily
man. The dilemma of four and five corresponds to the conflict between
“culture” and “nature.” That was the problem of the patient. In Figure 26
the dilemma is indicated by the four groups of stars: two of them contain
four stars and two of them five stars. On the rims of both mandalas we see
the “fire of desire.” In Figure 27 the rim is made of something that looks
like lighted tissue. In characteristic contrast to the “shining” mandala, both
these (especially the second one) are “burning.” It is flaming desire,
comparable to the longing of the homunculus in the retort (Faust, Part II),
which was finally shattered against the throne of Galatea. The fire
represents an erotic demand but at the same time an amor fati that burns in
the innermost self, trying to shape the patient’s fate and thus help the self
into reality. Like the homunculus in Faust, the figure shut up in the vessel
wants to “become.”
23
24
[681]
The patient was herself aware of the conflict, for she told me she had
no peace after painting the second picture. She had reached the afternoon
of her life, and was in her thirty-fifth year. She was in doubt as to whether
she ought to have another child. She decided for a child, but fate did not let
her, because the development of her personality was evidently pursuing a
different goal, not a biological but a cultural one. The conflict was
resolved in the interests of the latter.
Figure 28
[682]
Picture by a middle-aged man. In the centre is a star. The blue sky
contains golden clouds. At the four cardinal points we see human figures:
at the top, an old man in the attitude of contemplation; at the bottom, Loki
or Hephaestus with red, flaming hair, holding in his hands a temple. To the
right and left are a light and a dark female figure. Together they indicate
four aspects of the personality, or four archetypal figures belonging, as it
were, to the periphery of the self. The two female figures can be
recognized without difficulty as the two aspects of the anima. The old man
corresponds to the archetype of meaning, or of the spirit, and the dark
chthonic figure to the opposite of the Wise Old Man, namely the magical
(and sometimes destructive) Luciferian element. In alchemy it is Hermes
Trismegistus versus Mercurius, the evasive “trickster.” The circle
enclosing the sky contains structures or organisms that look like protozoa.
The sixteen globes painted in four colours just outside this circle derived
originally from an eye motif and therefore stand for the observing and
discriminating consciousness. Similarly, the ornaments in the next circle,
all opening inwards, are rather like vessels pouring out their content
towards the centre. On the other hand the ornaments along the rim open
outwards, as if to receive something from outside. That is, in the
individuation process what were originally projections stream back
“inside” and are integrated into the personality again. Here, in contrast to
Figure 25, “Above” and “Below,” male and female, are integrated, as in
the alchemical hermaphrodite.
25
26
Figure 29
[683]
Once again the centre is symbolized by a star. This very common
image is consistent with the previous pictures, where the sun represents the
centre. The sun, too, is a star, a radiant cell in the ocean of the sky. The
picture shows the self appearing as a star out of chaos. The four-rayed
structure is emphasized by the use of four colours. This picture is
significant in that it sets the structure of the self as a principle of order
against chaos. It was painted by the same man who did Figure 28.
27
Figure 30
[684]
This mandala, by an older woman patient, is again split into Above
and Below: heaven above, the sea below, as indicated by the golden waves
on a green ground. Four wings revolve leftwards about the centre, which is
marked only by an orange-red spot. Here too the opposites are integrated
and are presumably the cause of the centre’s rotation.
Figure 31
[685]
An atypical mandala, based on a dyad. A golden moon and a silver
moon form the upper and lower edges. The inside is blue sky above and
something like a black crenellated wall below. On it there sits a peacock,
fanning out its tail, and to the left there is an egg, presumably the
peacock’s. In view of the important role which the peacock and the
peacock’s egg together play in alchemy and also in Gnosticism, we may
expect the miracle of the cauda pavonis, the appearance of “all Colours”
(Böhme), the unfolding and realization of wholeness, once the dark
dividing wall has broken down. (See Fig. 32.) The patient thought the egg
might split and produce something new, maybe a snake. In alchemy the
peacock is synonymous with the Phoenix. A variant of the Phoenix legend
relates that the Semenda Bird consumes itself, a worm forms from the
ashes, and from the worm the bird rises anew.
Figure 32
[686]
This picture is reproduced from the Codex Alchemicus Rhenoviensis,
Central Library, Zurich. Here the peacock represents the Phoenix rising
newborn from the fire. There is a similar picture in a manuscript in the
British Museum, only there the peacock is enclosed in a flask, the vas
hermeticum, like the homunculus. The peacock is an old emblem of
rebirth and resurrection, quite frequently found on Christian sarcophagi. In
the vessel standing beside the peacock the colours of the cauda pavonis
appear, as a sign that the transformation process is nearing its goal. In the
alchemical process the serpens mercurialis, the dragon, is changed into the
eagle, the peacock, the goose of Hermes, or the Phoenix.
28
29
Figure 33
[687]
This picture was done by a seven-year-old boy, offspring of a problem
marriage. He had done a whole series of these drawings of circles and
hung them up round his bed. He called them his “loves” and would not go
to sleep without them. This shows that the “magical” pictures still
functioned for him in their original sense, as a protective magic circle.
Figure 34
[688]
An eleven-year-old girl, whose parents were divorced, had, at a time
of great difficulties and upsets, drawn a number of pictures which clearly
reveal a mandala structure. Here too they were magic circles intended to
stop the difficulties and adversities of the outside world from entering into
the inner psychic space. They represent a kind of self-protection.
[689]
As on the kilkhor, the Tibetan World Wheel (Fig. 3), you can see at
either side of this picture something that looks like horns, which as we
know belong to the devil or to one of his theriomorphic symbols. The
slanting eye-slits underneath them, and the two strokes for nose and
mouth, are also the devil’s. This amounts to saying: Behind the mandala
lurks the devil. Either the “demons” are covered up by the magically
powerful picture, and thereby eliminated—which would be the purpose of
the mandala—or, as in the case of the Tibetan World Wheel, the world is
caught in the claws of the demon of death. In this picture the devils merely
peek out over the edge. I have seen what this means from another case: An
artistically gifted patient produced a typical tetradic mandala and stuck it
on a sheet of thick paper. On the back there was a circle to match, filled
with drawings of sexual perversions. This shadow aspect of the mandala
represented the disorderly, disruptive tendencies, the “chaos” that hides
behind the self and bursts out in a dangerous way as soon as the
individuation process comes to a standstill, or when the self is not realized
and so remains unconscious. This piece of psychology was expressed by
the alchemists in their Mercurius duplex, who on the one hand is Hermes
the mystagogue and psychopomp, and on the other hand is the poisonous
dragon, the evil spirit and “trickster.”
Figure 35
[690]
Drawing by the same girl. Round the sun is a circle with eyes, and
round this an uroboros. The motif of polyophthalmia frequently occurs in
individual mandalas. (See Picture 17 and Fig. 5 in the preceding paper.) In
the Maitrayana-Brahmana Upanishad VI, 8 the egg (Hiranyagarbha) is
described as “thousand-eyed.” The eyes in the mandala no doubt signify
the observing consciousness, but it must also be borne in mind that the
texts as well as the pictures both attribute the eyes to a mythic figure, e.g.,
an Anthropos, who does the seeing. This seems to me to point to the
fascination which, through a kind of magical stare, attracts the attention of
the conscious mind. (Cf. Figs. 38 and 39.)
Figure 36
[691]
Painting of a medieval city with walls and moats, streets and churches,
arranged quadratically. The inner city is again surrounded by walls and
moats, like the Imperial City in Peking. The buildings all open inwards,
towards the centre, represented by a castle with a golden roof. It too is
surrounded by a moat. The ground round the castle is laid with black and
white tiles, representing the united opposites. This mandala was done by a
middle-aged man (cf. Figs. 6, 28, 29). A picture like this is not unknown in
Christian symbolism. The Heavenly Jerusalem of Revelation is known to
everybody. Coming to the Indian world of ideas, we find the city of
Brahma on the world mountain, Meru. We read in the Golden Flower:
“The Book of the Yellow Castle says: ‘In the square inch field of the square
foot house, life can be regulated.’ The square foot house is the face. The
square inch field in the face: what could that be other than the heavenly
heart? In the middle of the square inch dwells the splendour. In the purple
hall of the city of jade dwells the God of Utmost Emptiness and Life.”
30
Figure 37
[692]
Painted by the same patient who did Figures 11 and 30. Here the
“seeding-place” is depicted as a child enclosed in a revolving sphere. The
four “wings” are painted in the four basic colours. The child corresponds
to Hiranyagarbha and to the homunculus of the alchemists. The
mythologem of the “Divine Child” is based on ideas of this sort.
31
Figure 38
[693]
Mandala in rotation, by the same patient, who did Figures 21 and 23.
A notable feature is the quaternary structure of the golden wings in
combination with the triad of three dogs running round the centre. They
have their backs to it, indicating that for them the centre is in the
unconscious. The mandala contains—another unusual feature—a triadic
motif turning to the left, while the wings turn to the right. This is not
accidental. The dogs represent consciousness “scenting” or “intuiting” the
unconscious; the wings show the movement of the unconscious towards
consciousness, as corresponded to the patient’s situation at the time. It is as
if the dogs were fascinated by the centre although they cannot see it. They
seem to represent the fascination felt by the conscious mind. The picture
embodies the above-mentioned sesquitertian proportion (3 : 4).
Figure 39
[694]
The same motif as before, but represented by hares. From a Gothic
window in the cathedral at Paderborn. There is no recognizable centre
though the rotation presupposes one.
Figure 40
[695]
Picture by a young woman patient. It too exhibits the sesquitertian
proportion and hence the dilemma with which Plato’s Timaeus begins, and
which as I said plays a considerable role in alchemy, as the axiom of
Maria.
32
Figure 41
[696]
This picture was done by a young woman patient with a schizoid
disposition. The pathological element is revealed in the “breaking lines”
that split up the centre. The sharp, pointed forms of these breaking lines
indicate evil, hurtful, and destructive impulses which might hinder the
desired synthesis of personality. But it seems as if the regular structure of
the surrounding mandala might be able to restrain the dangerous
tendencies to dissociation. And this proved to be the case in the further
course of the treatment and subsequent development of the patient.
Figure 42
[697]
A neurotically disturbed mandala. It was drawn by a young, unmarried
woman patient at a time that was full of conflict: she was in a dilemma
between two men. The outer rim shows four different colours. The centre
is doubled in a curious way: fire breaks out from behind the blue star in the
black field, while to the right a sun appears, with blood vessels running
through it. The five-pointed star suggests a pentagram symbolizing man,
the arms, legs, and head all having the same value. As I have said, it
signifies the purely instinctual, chthonic, unconscious man. (Cf. Figs. 26
and 27.) The colour of the star is blue—of a cool nature, therefore. But the
nascent sun is yellow and red—a warm colour. The sun itself (looking
rather like the yolk of an incubated egg) usually denotes consciousness,
illumination, understanding. Hence we could say of this mandala: a light is
gradually dawning on the patient, she is waking out of her formerly
unconscious state, which corresponded to a purely biological and rational
existence. (Rationalism is no guarantee of higher consciousness, but
merely of a one-sided one!) The new state is characterized by red (feeling)
and yellow or gold (intuition). There is thus a shifting of the centre of
personality into the warmer region of heart and feeling, while the inclusion
of intuition suggests a groping, irrational apprehension of wholeness.
Figure 43
[698]
This picture was done by a middle-aged woman who, without being
neurotic, was struggling for spiritual development and used for this
purpose the method of active imagination. These efforts induced her to
make a drawing of the birth of a new insight or conscious awareness (eye)
from the depths of the unconscious (sea). Here the eye signifies the self.
Figure 44
[699]
Drawing of motif from a Roman mosaic on the floor of a house in
Moknine, Tunis, which I photographed. It represents an apotropaism
against the evil eye.
Figure 45
[700]
Mandala from the Navaho Indians, who with great toil prepare such
mandalas from coloured sand for curative purposes. It is part of the
Mountain Chant Rite performed for the sick. Around the centre there runs,
in a wide arc, the body of the Rainbow Goddess. A square head denotes a
female deity, a round one a male deity. The arrangement of the four pairs
of deities on the arms of the cross suggests a swastika wheeling to the
right. The four male deities who surround the swastika are making the
same movement.
Figure 46
[701]
Another sand-painting by the Navahos, from the Male Shooting
Chant. The four horned heads are painted in the four colours that
correspond to the four directions.
33
Figure 47
[702]
Here, for comparison, is a painting of the Egyptian Sky Mother,
bending, like the Rainbow Goddess, over the “Land” with its round
horizon. Behind the mandala stands—presumably—the Air God, like the
demon in Figures 3 and 34. Underneath, the arms of the ka, raised in
adoration and decked with the eye motif, hold the mandala, which
probably signifies the wholeness of the “Two Lands.”
34
Figure 48
[703]
This picture, from a manuscript of Hildegard of Bingen, shows the
earth surrounded by the ocean, realm of air, and starry heaven. The actual
globe of the earth in the centre is divided into four.
35
[704]
Böhme has a mandala in his book XL Questions concerning the Soule
(see Fig. 1 of preceding paper). The periphery contains a bright and a dark
hemisphere turning their backs to one another. They represent un-united
opposites, which presumably should be bound together by the heart
standing between them. This drawing is most unusual, but aptly expresses
the insoluble moral conflict underlying the Christian view of the world.
“The Soul,” Böhme says, “is an Eye in the Eternal Abyss, a similitude of
Eternity, a perfect Figure and Image of the first Principle, and resembles
God the Father in his Person, as to the eternal Nature. The Essence and
Substance of it, merely as to what it is purely in itself, is first the wheel of
Nature, with the first four Forms.” In the same treatise Böhme says: “The
substance and Image of the soul may be resembled to the Earth, having a
fair flower growing out of it…” “The Soul is a fiery Eye … from the
eternal Centre of Nature … a similitude of the First Principle.” As an eye,
the soul “receives the Light, as the Moon does the glance of the Sun … for
the life of the soul has its original in the Fire.”
36
37
Figure 49 and 50
[705]
Figure 49 is especially interesting because it shows us very clearly in
what relationship the picture stands to the painter. The patient (the same as
did Fig. 42) has a shadow problem. The female figure in the picture
represents her dark, chthonic side. She is standing in front of a wheel with
four spokes, the two together forming an eight-rayed mandala. From her
head spring four snakes, expressing the tetradic nature of consciousness,
but—in accordance with the demonic character of the picture—they do
this in an evil and nefarious way, since they represent evil and destructive
thoughts. The entire figure is wrapped in flames, emitting a dazzling light.
She is like a fiery demon, a salamander, the medieval conception of a fire
sprite. Fire expresses an intense transformation process. Hence the prima
materia in alchemy was symbolized by the salamander in the fire, as the
next picture shows. The spear- or arrow-head expresses “direction”: it is
pointing upwards from the middle of the head. Everything that the fire
consumes rises up to the seat of the gods. The dragon glowing in the fire
becomes volatilized; illumination comes through the fiery torment. Figure
49 tells us something about the background of the transformation process.
It depicts a state of suffering, reminiscent on the one hand of crucifixion
and on the other of Ixion bound to the wheel. From this it is evident that
individuation, or becoming whole, is neither a summum bonum nor a
summum desideratum, but the painful experience of the union of opposites.
That is the real meaning of the cross in the circle, and that is why the cross
has an apotropaic effect, because, pointed at evil, it shows evil that it is
already included and has therefore lost its destructive power.
38
39
Figure 51
[706]
This picture was done by a sixty-year-old woman patient with a
similar problem: A fiery demon mounts through the night towards a star.
There he passes over from a chaotic into an ordered and fixed state. The
star stands for the transcendent totality, the demon for the animus, who,
like the anima, is the connecting link between conscious and unconscious.
The picture recalls the antique symbolism found, for instance, in Plutarch:
The soul is only partly in the body, the other part is outside it and soars
above man like a star symbolizing his “genius.” The same conception can
be found among the alchemists.
40
Figure 52
[707]
Picture by the same patient as before, showing flames with a soul
rising up from them, as if swimming. The motif is repeated in Figure 53.
Exactly the same thing—and with the same meaning—can be found in the
Codex Rhenoviensis (fifteenth century), Zurich (Fig. 54). The souls of the
calcined prima materia escape as vapours, in the form of human figures
looking like children (homunculi). In the fire is the dragon, the chthonic
form of the anima mundi, which is being transmuted.
Figure 53 and 54
[708]
Here I must remark that not only did the patient have no knowledge of
alchemy but that I myself knew nothing at that time of the alchemical
picture material. The resemblance between these two pictures, striking as it
is, is nothing extraordinary, since the great problem and concern of
philosophical alchemy was the same as underlies the psychology of the
unconscious, namely individuation, the integration of the self. Similar
causes (other things being equal) have similar effects, and similar
psychological situations make use of the same symbols, which on their
side rest on archetypal foundations, as I have shown in the case of
alchemy.
Conclusion
[709]
I hope I have succeeded in giving the reader some idea of mandala
symbolism with the help of these pictures. Naturally my exposition aims at
nothing more than a superficial survey of the empirical material on which
comparative research is based. I have indicated a few parallels that may
point the way to further historical and ethnic comparisons, but have
refrained from a more complete and more thorough exposition because it
would have taken me too far.
[710]
I need say only a few words about the functional significance of the
mandala, as I have discussed this theme several times before. Moreover, if
we have a little feeling in our fingertips we can guess from these pictures,
painted with the greatest devotion but with unskilful hands, what is the
deeper meaning that the patients tried to put into them and express through
them. They are yantras in the Indian sense, instruments of meditation,
concentration, and self-immersion, for the purpose of realizing inner
experience, as I have explained in the commentary to the Golden Flower.
At the same time they serve to produce an inner order—which is why,
when they appear in a series, they often follow chaotic, disordered states
marked by conflict and anxiety. They express the idea of a safe refuge, of
inner reconciliation and wholeness.
[711]
I could produce many more pictures from all parts of the world, and
one would be astonished to see how these symbols are governed by the
same fundamental laws that can be observed in individual mandalas. In
view of the fact that all the mandalas shown here were new and
uninfluenced products, we are driven to the conclusion that there must be a
transconscious disposition in every individual which is able to produce the
same or very similar symbols at all times and in all places. Since this
disposition is usually not a conscious possession of the individual I have
called it the collective unconscious, and, as the bases of its symbolical
products, I postulate the existence of primordial images, the archetypes. I
need hardly add that the identity of unconscious individual contents with
their ethnic parallels is expressed not merely in their form but in their
meaning.
[712]
Knowledge of the common origin of these unconsciously preformed
symbols has been totally lost to us. In order to recover it, we have to read
old texts and investigate old cultures, so as to gain an understanding of the
things our patients bring us today in explanation of their psychic
development. And when we penetrate a little more deeply below the
surface of the psyche, we come upon historical layers which are not just
dead dust, but alive and continuously active in everyone—maybe to a
degree that we cannot imagine in the present state of our knowledge.
APPENDIX
MANDALAS
1
[713]
The Sanskrit word mandala means “circle” in the ordinary sense of
the word. In the sphere of religious practices and in psychology it denotes
circular images, which are drawn, painted, modelled, or danced. Plastic
structures of this kind are to be found, for instance, in Tibetan Buddhism,
and as dance figures these circular patterns occur also in Dervish
monasteries. As psychological phenomena they appear spontaneously in
dreams, in certain states of conflict, and in cases of schizophrenia. Very
frequently they contain a quaternity or a multiple of four, in the form of a
cross, a star, a square, an octagon, etc. In alchemy we encounter this motif
in the form of quadratura circuli.
[714]
In Tibetan Buddhism the figure has the significance of a ritual
instrument (yantra), whose purpose is to assist meditation and
concentration. Its meaning in alchemy is somewhat similar, inasmuch as it
represents the synthesis of the four elements which are forever tending to
fall apart. Its spontaneous occurrence in modern individuals enables
psychological research to make a closer investigation into its functional
meaning. As a rule a mandala occurs in conditions of psychic dissociation
or disorientation, for instance in the case of children between the ages of
eight and eleven whose parents are about to be divorced, or in adults who,
as the result of a neurosis and its treatment, are confronted with the
problem of opposites in human nature and are consequently disoriented; or
again in schizophrenics whose view of the world has become confused,
owing to the invasion of incomprehensible contents from the unconscious.
In such cases it is easy to see how the severe pattern imposed by a circular
image of this kind compensates the disorder and confusion of the psychic
state—namely, through the construction of a central point to which
everything is related, or by a concentric arrangement of the disordered
multiplicity and of contradictory and irreconcilable elements. This is
evidently an attempt at self-healing on the part of Nature, which does not
spring from conscious reflection but from an instinctive impulse. Here, as
comparative research has shown, a fundamental schema is made use of, an
archetype which, so to speak, occurs everywhere and by no means owes its
individual existence to tradition, any more than the instincts would need to
be transmitted in that way. Instincts are given in the case of every newborn
individual and belong to the inalienable stock of those qualities which
characterize a species. What psychology designates as archetype is really a
particular, frequently occurring, formal aspect of instinct, and is just as
much an a priori factor as the latter. Therefore, despite external
differences, we find a fundamental conformity in mandalas regardless of
their origin in time and space.
[715]
The “squaring of the circle” is one of the many archetypal motifs
which form the basic patterns of our dreams and fantasies. But it is
distinguished by the fact that it is one of the most important of them from
the functional point of view. Indeed, it could even be called the archetype
of wholeness. Because of this significance, the “quaternity of the One” is
the schema for all images of God, as depicted in the visions of Ezekiel,
Daniel, and Enoch, and as the representation of Horus with his four sons
also shows. The latter suggests an interesting differentiation, inasmuch as
there are occasionally representations in which three of the sons have
animals’ heads and only one a human head, in keeping with the Old
Testament visions as well as with the emblems of the seraphim which were
transferred to the evangelists, and—last but not least—with the nature of
the Gospels themselves: three of which are synoptic and one “Gnostic.”
Here I must add that, ever since the opening of Plato’s Timaeus (“One,
two, three … but where, my dear Socrates, is the fourth?”) and right up to
the Cabiri scene in Faust, the motif of four as three and one was the everrecurring preoccupation of alchemy.
[716]
The profound significance of the quaternity with its singular process
of differentiation extending over the centuries, and now manifest in the
latest development of the Christian symbol, may explain why Du chose
just the archetype of wholeness as an example of symbol formation. For,
just as this symbol claims a central position in the historical documents,
individually too it has an outstanding significance. As is to be expected,
individual mandalas display an enormous variety. The overwhelming
majority are characterized by the circle and the quaternity. In a few,
however, the three or the five predominates, for which there are usually
special reasons.
2
[717]
Whereas ritual mandalas always display a definite style and a limited
number of typical motifs as their content, individual mandalas make use of
a well-nigh unlimited wealth of motifs and symbolic allusions, from which
it can easily be seen that they are endeavouring to express either the
totality of the individual in his inner or outer experience of the world, or its
essential point of reference. Their object is the self in contradistinction to
the ego, which is only the point of reference for consciousness, whereas
the self comprises the totality of the psyche altogether, i.e., conscious and
unconscious. It is therefore not unusual for individual mandalas to display
a division into a light and a dark half, together with their typical symbols.
An historical example of this kind is Jakob Böhme’s mandala, in his
treatise XL Questions concerning the Soule. It is at the same time an image
of God and is designated as such. This is not a matter of chance, for Indian
philosophy, which developed the idea of the self, Atman or Purusha, to the
highest degree, makes no distinction in principle between the human
essence and the divine. Correspondingly, in the Western mandala, the
scintilla or soul-spark, the innermost divine essence of man, is
characterized by symbols which can just as well express a God-image,
namely the image of Deity unfolding in the world, in nature, and in man.
[718]
The fact that images of this kind have under certain circumstances a
considerable therapeutic effect on their authors is empirically proved and
also readily understandable, in that they often represent very bold attempts
to see and put together apparently irreconcilable opposites and bridge over
apparently hopeless splits. Even the mere attempt in this direction usually
has a healing effect, but only when it is done spontaneously. Nothing can
be expected from an artificial repetition or a deliberate imitation of such
images.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The items of the bibliography are arranged alphabetically under two
headings: A. Ancient volumes containing collections of alchemical tracts by
various authors; B. General bibliography, including cross-references to the
material in section A. Short titles of the ancient volumes are printed in capital
letters.
A. ANCIENT VOLUMES CONTAINING COLLECTIONS OF
ALCHEMICAL TRACTS BY VARIOUS AUTHORS
ARS CHEMICA, quod sit licita recte exercentibus,
iurisconsultorum…. Argentorati [Strasbourg], 1566.
probationes
doctissimorum
Contents quoted in this volume:
Septem tractatus seu capitula Hermetis Trismegisti aurei [pp. 7–31;
usually referred to as “Tractatus aureus”]
ARTIS AURIFERAE
quam chemiam vocant.… Basileae [Basel], [1593]. 2 vols.
Contents quoted in this volume:
VOLUME I
i. Allegoriae super librum Turbae [pp. 139–45]
ii. Aurora consurgens, quae dicitur Aurea hora [pp. 185–246]
iii. [Zosimus:] Rosinus ad Sarratantam episcopum [pp. 277–319]
iv. [Kallid:] Calidis Liber secretorum [pp. 325–51]
v. Tractatulus Aristotelis de practica lapidis philosophici [pp. 361–73]
vi. Rachaidibus: De materia philosophici lapidis [pp. 397–404]
vii. Liber de arte chymica [pp. 575–631]
VOLUME II
viii Rosarium philosophorum [pp. 204–384]; contains a version of the “Visio Arislei,” pp. 246ff.
Another edition of the Artis auriferae, occasionally quoted in this volume, appeared in 1572 at
Basel; contains the “Tractatus aureus,” pp. 641ff.
MANGETUS, JOANNES JACOBUS (ed.). BIBLIOTHECA CHEMICA CURIOSA, seu Rerum ad alchemiam
pertinentium thesaurus instructissimus … Coloniae Allobrogum [Geneva], 1702, 2 vols.
Contents quoted in this volume:
VOLUME I
i Hermes Trismegistus: Tractatus aureus de lapidis physici secreto [pp. 400–45]
ii Morienus: Liber de compositione alchemiae [pp. 509–19]
VOLUME II
iii Sendivogius: Epistola XIII [p. 496]
THEATRUM CHEMICUM, praecipuos selectorum auctorum tractatus … continens. Ursellis [Ursel]
and Argentorati [Strasbourg], 1602–61. 6 vols. (Vols. I–III, Ursel, 1602; Vols. IV–VI, Strasbourg,
1613, 1622, 1661 respectively.)
Contents quoted in this volume:
VOLUME I
i Dorn: Speculativae philosophiae, gradus septem vel decem continens [pp. 255–310]
ii Dorn: De tenebris contra Naturam et vita brevi [pp. 518–35]
iii Dorn: De transmutatione metallorum [pp. 563–646]
VOLUME II
iv Dee: Monas hieroglyphica [pp. 218–43]
VOLUME IV
v Hermetis Trismegisti Tractatus vere aureus de lapide philosophici secreto [pp. 672–797; usually
referred to as “Tractatus aureus”]
vi David Lagneus: Harmonia seu Consensus philosophorum chemicorum (frequently called Harmonia
chemica) [pp. 813–903]
VOLUME V
vii Mennens: De aureo vellere … libri tres [pp. 267–470]
VOLUME VI
viii. Vigenerus (Blaise de Vigenère): Tractatus de igne et sale [pp.1–139]
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INDEX
INDEX
A
abaissement du niveau mental, 119, 120, 139, 155
abandonment, 167f
Abarbanel/Abrabanel, Judah, see Leone Ebreo
Abercius inscription, 310n
ablution, 129
Abraham, Karl, 153n
Achurayim, 298n, 328, 329f, 335
Acts of the Apostles, 263
Adam, 26f, 317
Belial, 328n
First, 338n
Second, 134n, 141
Adler, Alfred, 43
Adler, Gerhard, 352n
Aelian, 236n
Aeons, 295n, 310, 319, 328n
aesthetics, and morals, conflict, 28
Aetius, 325n
Afanas’ev, E. N., 242n
Africa, East, 95; see also Kenya
agathodaimon, 317
, 272
Agricola, Georg, 158n
Ain-Soph, 328n
Air God, 380
albedo, 140n
alchemists/alchemy, 58, 70, 133, 141n, 305, 312, 328, 366, 375, 382
anima in, 286
Böhme and, 12, 341
Chinese, 293, 358
and energy, 33
and fish, 140
hermaphrodite/androgyny in, 192, 384
and individuation, 41
lightning in, 295
mandalas in, 387
and Mercury/Mercurius, 314, 317
and prolongation of life, 136
and spirit, 38, 208, 215
and synonyms for lapis, 171
triad in, 234
and union of opposites, 109
and uniting symbol, 289
and wise old man, 35
alcheringa/alchera/alcheringamijina, 40, 125, 126n, 154
alcohol, 209
Aldrovandus, Ulysses, 25n, 124n
Alexander the Great, 144, 145, 343
“Allegoria super librum Turbae,” 158n
allegory, distinguished from symbol, 6n
altar, 202
ambivalence: of anima, 200
of maternal attributes, 82
America/American, 22, 373n
amethysts, 300
Amitāyur-dhyāna Sūtra, 327n, 344n
amnesias, 120
amulets, 197
anaesthetic areas, 120
analysis, 39
personal, and archetypes, 47; see also dream-analysis
analyst: parental imagos projected on, 60
as saviour, 61; see also doctor
anamnesis, 189
ancestors, 188
identification with, 126
ancestral: roles, 124
souls, 125
ancestress, 81
Ancient of Days, 226
androgyny, Christ’s, 174
angel(s): fallen, 214
“fatherly” and “motherly,” 310f, 317, 324
first, 143
twelve wicked, 324
angelos, 143
Angelus Silesius, 11
anima, 25ff, 41, 56ff, 123, 175, 177, 239f, 242, 244ff, 247, 270f, 284, 285,
317, 320n, 357, 374, 382
in alchemy, 286
ambivalence of, 200
and animals, 200
an archetype, 27, 37, 82, 94, 182f, 198
archetype of life, 32
autonomy of, 30
bipolar, 199
conservative, 28
derivation, 209
empirical concept, 56
experiences, significance of, 203
femininity of, 27, 69
image, 69
Kore as, 199
as ligamentum corporis et spiritus, 313
in literature, 71
localization of, 286
loss of, 71f
as Mercurius, 211n
and mother, 29
in mother complex, 85
old man as, 229
possession caused by, 124
projection of, 29, 89, 203
religious tinge in, 199
secret knowledge of, 30f
as soul, 26, 211
in syzygy, 65
and therapy, 71
Anima Christi, 328n
anima mundi, 236, 312, 383
animal(s), 158, 161n
and anima, 199, 200
archetype as, 216
child-protecting, 168
chthonic, 159
in fairytales, 221, 230f
helpful, 81, 231, 242
kingdom of heaven and, 35
in mandala, 366
mother as, 85
poltergeist as, 256
powerful, 187
psyche of, 125
symbolic, 166
talking, 215; see also bear; bees; beetle; birds; bull; butterfly; cat; cow;
coyote; crab, crayfish, crocodile; crow; dog; dolphin; dove; eagle;
elephant; elk; falcon; fish; goat; goose; hare; hawk; horse; lamb;
leopard; lion; magpie; monkey; octopus; peacock; pig; raven; sea-horse;
serpent; sheep; snake; spider; swan; tiger; tortoise; vertebrates; vulture;
wolf; worm
animosity, 94
animus, 25n, 30, 177, 183, 247, 284, 290f, 306, 317, 318, 333, 336, 357, 382
danger from, 344n
derivation, 209
-figure, 191
localization of, 286
as mediating function, 197
old man as, 229
“positive,” 215
possession by, 124
represented by quicksilver, 312
represents spirit, 244
Anne, St., 44ff, 68n
anthracites, 300
anthrax, 300n, 331n
Anthroparion/ἀvθρωπáρíov, 158, 223
anthropology, 189
Anthropos, 293, 294, 304, 308, 312, 313, 366, 377
Antichrist, 141
antimony, 301
ape of God, 255
Aphrodite, 327
Apocalypse, 35
Christ of, 51; see also Revelation, Book of
apocatastasis, 188
Apollo, 236n
apologetics, Christian, 157
apparition, 214n
apperception, 66
apple(s), 27, 223, 228
Aptowitzer, Victor, 331n
Apuleius, 32, 52, 107, 128, 350
aqua permanens, 140
arbor philosophica, 251n, 333; see also tree, “philosophical”
archetype(s), 4, 58, 153, 177, 357, 384, 388, etc.;
activated, 48
as active personalities, 38
and archetypal idea, 5n
can rearise spontaneously, 79
cannot be finally explained, 160
constellated, in neuroses, 47
content not determined, 79
contents of collective unconscious, 42, 43
in dreams, 48ff, 53
dynamism of, 102
function of, 162ff
futurity of, 164ff
gods as, 23
identification with, 351
as link with past, 160ff
loss of, 69
as mediator, 174
mother as carrier of, 102
as myths/mythological, 67, 156
no “rational” substitute for, 161
origin of, 101
patterns of instinctual behaviour, 44
positive and negative sides, 226
proof of, 48ff
psychological meaning, 5
relatively autonomous, 40, 222
specific energy of, 63
of transformation, 38
of wholeness, 388; see also anima; animus; child; father; maiden;
mother; self; shadow; wise old man
Aries, 6
Aristotle, 75
Aristotelian reasoning, 76
arrows, 368f
arrow-head, 382
Ars chemica, 133n
Artemis, 195
arthropods, 56
Artio, Dea, 195
Artis auriferae, 134n, 140n, 141n, 158n, 174n, 286n, 331n
artists, and anima, 7
ascension, of Christ, 114
ascent, 19
Asiatic cults, 13
“as-if,” 156
Asklepios, 311
ass(es): feast of, 258
she-, 198
association, 282
free, 49
Assumption, see Mary, the Virgin
Asterius, Bishop, 177n
Astrampsychos, 133n
astrology, 310, 343, 344n
Aswan, 134
atheism, 62
Athene, 46, 201
Athi plains, 95
athla/ θλα, 171, 241
Atlantis, 263
atman/Atman, 142, 171, 224, 325
atoms, 57
atomic fission, 253
atomic theory, 57
atomic world, 224
Attis, see Cybele-Attis myth
attitude, 238
conscious, onesidedness of, 139
attributes, of anthropomorphic divinities, 188
Augustine, St., 4, 18n, 75
“Aurea hora,” 134n
aurum philosophicum/potabile/vitreum, 305; see also gold, philosophical
Australian aborigines, 126n
and ancestors, 40, 125
soul-atoms and, 57 see also alcheringa
authority, magic, of female, 82
automatismes téléologiques, 155n
autosuggestion, 63n
Avalon, Arthur, 38n, 70n, 185n, 261n; see also Woodroffe, Sir John
avatars, 310
Ayik, 170
B
Baba Yaga, 242
babe, unbaptized, 26
Bacon, Josephine D., 185n
ball: game of, 191, 192
— on fools’ feast, 258n
golden, 160, 370
path-finding, 220n
Balli di Sfessania, 260n
Bandelier, Adolf, 255
Bänziger, Hans, 352n
baptism of Christ, 45
Barbelo-Gnosis, 319
Bardesanes, 18
Barlach, Ernst, 215
Baruch, angel, 317, 324
Baruch, Apocalypse of, 295n
Basel, 265n
Basilides, 331n
Bastian, Adolf, 43, 79, 151
Bataks, 102
bath, baptismal, 129
Baubo, 88, 185, 186
Baumgartner, Matthias, 325n
Baynes, H. G., 190n
bear, 184, 187, 195, 198, 232
“beautiful and good,” 28
Beauvais, 258
bed, 333
bees, 198
“Bees, Woman of the,” 185n
beetle, 187, 367
behaviour: archetypes of instinctual, 44
pattern of, 5n
Benares, 369
benedicta viriditas, 322
Benoît, Pierre, 28, 30, 71, 200, 285, 286n
Bernoulli, R., 38
Berthelot, Marcellin, 134n, 140n, 158n, 300n, 319n, 330n
Bes, 106, 215
Bethesda, pool of, 17, 19
Bhutia Busty, 320n, 327n
Bible, 20, 141, 237n; see also New Testament; Old Testament; names of
individual books
Biedermeier, 28
Binah, 335n
Bin Gorion, 145n
biology, and purpose, 260
bird(s): black, 324
dream-symbols, 200ff
earth, 334
in fairytales, 221, 242
in mandala, 366
three, 342;
white, 191, 338; see also crow; dove; eagle; falcon; goose; hawk;
magpie; peacock; raven; swan; vulture
birth: of “child,” 172
dual/second, 45f, 68
miraculous, 166, 167; see also rebirth; twice-born
Birth, Virgin, see Virgin Birth
bishop, children’s, 257
black, 185, 326
blackness, 301
Blanke, Fritz, 9n, 10
Block, Raymond de, 60n
blood, 185n
bathings in, 184
drinkings of, 184
sacrificial, 192
bloodstone, 327
boat, self-propelled, 220n
body: one with spirit in God, 324
subtle, 114, 212
bogies, 82
Böhme, Jakob, 11f, 295ff, 308, 313, 319, 322n, 327, 329ff, 341, 354, 375,
381, 389
Bön religion, 320, 373n
bondsman, 171
Book of the Dead, Tibetan, 356
book: in mandala, 372
of secret wisdom, 220n
Bouché-Leclercq, Auguste, 342n, 343n
Bouelles, Charles de, see Bovillus boulders, 292f, 294
Bousset, Wilhelm, 136n
Bovillus, Karl, 9
“Boy, Radiant,” 158
boy(s), 165
naked, 215n
spirit as, 215
Bozzano, 295n
Brahma, city of, 377
Brahma-gods, 286
Brassempouy, “Venus” of, 186
bread, Christ as, 141
breast(s), 343
multiple, 186
bridegroom and bride, 251
Broglie, Louis de, 275
brook, 194
brother-sister pair, royal, 246, 247f
brownies, 223
Buddha, 142, 286, 335, 358
Discourse on the Rule, 338
lotus seat of, 328f, 338n, 363, 366
and mandala, 130
as puer aeternus, 159
Buddhism, 319n, 373”
mandala in, 358
—, in Tibetan, 356, 387
reincarnation in, 113
swastika and, 320; see also Hīnayana; Mahāyana; Zen
Budge, Ernest A. Wallis, 136n
bugari, 154
bull, 191, 335n;
deities, 310
Bultmann, Rudolf, 104n
Buri, F., 104n
butterfly, 187
Bythos, 17
C
Cabala, 328, 329, 330n, 335
Cabiri, 224, 234, 388
caduceus, 295n, 311
Caesarius of Heisterbach, 294f
“Calidis liber secretorum,” 134n
Callot, Jacques, 260
Cancer (zodiacal sign), 342f
cancer, imaginary, 105
carbons, 300
carbuncle, 331n
Cardan, Jerome (Hieronymus Cardanus), 243
carnival, 255, 262
carriage, golden, 191
Carus, C. G., 3, 152, 276
case-histories, 190
Cassian, 176
castle, 361
castration: complex, 68
of mother, 68
self-, 39, 85, 177n
cat, 184
categories, 67n, 76
of the imagination, 79
Catholic: Church, ritual of, 128
mysticism, 174
way of life, 12
cauda pavonis, 330, 332, 338, 375, 376
Caussin, Nicholas, 325, 326, 342n
cave, 81, 135, 141
Cellini, Benvenuto, 45, 184n
cerebellum, 166
cerebrospinal system, 19f
cerebrum, 20
Cervula/Cervulus, 257n
chairs, 332
chakra, 38, 261n, 366
chalice, 160
Chantepie de la Saussaye, P. D., 59n
chaos, and cosmos, 32
Charles, R. H., 295n
chen-yen, 293, 307
cherubim, 366
ch’ien (heaven), 358n
child, 158, 173, 183
abandonment of, 167ff
as archetype, 153ff, 178f
divine, 170, 378
eternal, 179
as god and hero, 165ff
hermaphroditism of, 173ff
“imaginary,” 159
invincibility of, 170ff
mythology of, 151ff, 170
numinous character of, 168; see also motif
children, ancestors reincarnated in, 124
childhood, early, dreams of, 50
China, Taoism in, 8
Chinese: alchemy, 293
philosophy, 59, 109
yoga, 38
ching (unchangeable power), 359
Chochmah, 335n
chörtens, 320
Christ, 103, 333
in alchemy, 312n
androgyny of, 174
of Apocalypse, 51
ascension, 114
as ass, 259
in bearskin, vision of, 10
birth of, festivities, 256f
as bread, 141
and the Church, 250, 371
divinity of, 13
fiery nature of, 169
fish and snake attributes, 369
as friend, 133
in inner colloquy, 132
Mother of, see Mother of Christ
outer and inner, 128
sacrifice of, in Mass, 118
symbol of immortal man, 121
— of self, 367
transfiguration, 114
twice-born, 45; see also Baptism; bread; conception; Jesus; Virgin Birth
Christ-child, 52, 128, 158, 169
Christianity, 128, 254
and Germanic tribes, 13f
and Jewish God-concept, 103
monotheism of, 103
of Negroes, 14
and poverty, 15
“second birth” in, 45
spirit in, 46, 211, 213
world-view of, 7
Christianos, 319n
Christians, and ritual murder, 191
Christ-image, 9
Christmas tree(s), 13, 261, 268
Christopher, St., 158
Church, the, 22, 81
bride of Christ, 250, 377
as corpus mysticum, 165
freedom and obedience in, 137n
images represented by, 8
loss of authority, 13
Mother, 29
church, crooked, 221f
Cicero, 326n
cinnabar, 300, 331n
circle(s), 164, 187, 294, 304, 365
cross in, 382
God as infinite, 325
magic, 376
squaring of, 357, 361, 363, 366, 368, 387f
circuits, 326
Circumcision, Feast of, 257
Cistercian Order, 64
city, 81, 361
beloved, 146
heavenly, 35
medieval, 377
Clement, pseudo-, 176
Clement of Alexandria, 176, 325
Clementine Homilies, 324
Cleopatra, 202
“climax” of life, 307
clock, 187
clown, 264
cock, 360
Codex Rhenoviensis (Zurich), 375, 383
cognition, 76, 171
transcendental subject of, 171
colloquy, internal, 131f
colours, 332
in Böhme, 313, 331
bright, 294
four, 308n, 375, 379, 380
and functions, psychic, 335
light, 305
in mandalas, 323, 326, 362, 379
red/blue, 322
two symbolical, 313; see also black; green; red
Comarius, 202
comic strips, 260n
Communism, 127
compass, eight points of, 344n
compensation, 163
complex(es): castration, 67, 68
content of personal unconscious, 42
father-, 85, 214, 291
— feminine, 89n
— in men and women, 214
feeling-toned, 4
mother-, 46, 67, 69, 85ff
— of daughter, 86
— feminine, 94
— negative, 90, 98ff
— positive, projection of, 99
— of son, 85ff
possession and, 122
complex psychology, therapeutic method of, 40
complexio oppositorum, 147, 312
Nicholas Cusanus and, 11; see also opposites
composition, 332
concentration, 384
conception; failure of, 91
miraculous, 166
of Christ, 52
concupiscentia, 356
confirmation lessons, 15
conflict, 288
Confucius, 339
confusion, 278
coniugium solis et lunae, 176
coniunctio, 140, 175, 176, 177, 191, 346
Conrad of Würzburg, 364
conscious mind: and ego, 187
one-sidedness of, 162
in primitives, 153
widening of, 188
consciousness, 142, 171, 357
and cerebrum, 20
conflict within, 269
consolidation of, 22
differentiation of, 320
dissociation/dissociability of, 40, 104
dissolution of, 145
expansion of, 252
eye as symbol of, 337
higher, 39, 141, 169, 283
— why seek?, 95
inferior, 18
maladaptation of, 30
male, 176
menaced by unconscious, 154
not whole of psyche, 276
primitive, lacks coherence, 119
— and myths, 155f
reduced intensity of, 155
relics of early stages, 261n
requires recognition of unconscious, 96
return to darkness, 147
soul and, 27
subject and object in, 22
supremacy of, 23
unity of, only a desideratum, 104
universal, 287f
urge of, 319
without ego, unknown, 283; see also ego-consciousness
contemplation, 318, 357
cooking vessel, 81
copper, 301, 327
Corinthians, Second Epistle of Paul to, 328n
corn, 169
cornucopia, 81
corpus, 313
glorificationis/glorificatum, 114, 171, 358
incorruptibile, 358
mysticum, 367
Corpus Hermeticum, 4, 51, 75
cortices, 328, 336, 338
corybant, 184
counter-earth, 281
country, 81
courtyard, 361
cow, 81, 227
leathern, 129
coyote, 264
crab(s), 187, 315, 342f
hermit, 342
Crawley, Alfred Ernest, 57
crayfish, 342
creation, 308, 356, 357
crocodile (s), 159, 184, 271n, 342n
cross, 296n
alchemical symbol, 301
in Böhme, 298ff, 319, 327
in circle, 382
dream symbol, 198
in mandala, 336, 361
in Navajo symbolism, 363n
and swastika, 48, 326
Virgin Mary as, 82
crow, 330n
crowd: individual in, 126
psychology of, 125
crown, 326
crucifixion, 135, 184f, 382
of evil spirit, 248
of raven, 235f, 241
cryptomnesia, 44, 308n
crystal, 79, 80
Cucorogna, 260
cucullatus, 177
culture, 373
Cumont, Franz, 135n, 311n
cupids, 177
Cusanus, Nicholas, 11
Custance, John, 39n
Cybele, 195
Cybele-Attis myth, 81, 85
cymbals, 192
Cyranides, 331n
D
Dactyls, 178, 223
daimonion, 252
Danae, 317
dancer, 184, 185n, 198, 200
dances, 257
dangers, 184
Daniel, 388
Dante, 234, 363
dark, fear of, 169
Dark Night of the Soul, 319n
darkness, 147
place of, 140
Daudet, Léon, 124
daughter: and mother, 188
mother-complex in, 86ff
“nothing-but,” 97f
self expressed by, 187
dead, primitives and souls of, 210
“De arte chymica,” 134n
death, 147
early, 85
as symbol/symbolic, 82, 129
voluntary, 32
Decius, 136n
Dee, John, 327
Déesse Raison, 92
De Gubernatis, Angelo, 343
Deianeira, 123, 324
deification rites, 142
deity(ies): male-female pairs, 59
symbols for, 324f
Delacotte, Joseph, 64n
Delatte, Louis, 331n
delight-maker, 262
delirium, 155
delusions, 50, 183
Demeter, 81, 88, 90, 115n, 182, 184ff, 188, 195, 203
Democritus (alchemist), 130
Democritus (philosopher) of Abdera, 57 325
demon(s), 197
Deo concedente, 163f
Dervish monasteries, 387
descent, dual, 45f, 68n
deus terrenus, 171
devil, the, 103, 108, 238, 248, 339, 376
“ape of God,” 255
in Faust, 146
fish and snake attributes, 369
his grandmother, 103
Leviathan as, 316n
as raven, 240
represents shadow, 322
spiritual character of, 213
as tempter, 214
Dhulqarnein, 143ff
diamond body, 358
Diana, 195
Diels, Hermann, 325n
Dieterich, Albrecht, 51
Digulleville, Guillaume de, see Guillaume de Digulleville
diminutives, 224
Dionysius (pseudo-), the Areopagite, 4, 341n
Dionysius Thrax, 325n
Dionysus, 62, 107, 118
Dioscuri, 121, 131, 144, 147n
directions, four, 380
discontent, 70
discontinuity, 275n
dissociation, 139, 165
distaff, 225
Divine, experience of the, 11
divinity, splitting of, 103
divorce, 29, 387
Docetists, 295n
doctor, 216; see also analyst
doctrinairism, 93
dog(s): in Faust, 146
in Khidr legend, 136n
miraculous, 220n
three, 378
dogma, 11, 12
and collective unconscious, 12, 22
reward and punishment, 27
dolphin(s), 177, 192
Don Juanism, 85, 87
donkey, see ass
dorje, 358
Dorn, Gerard, 193, 194, 330n
dove, 45, 52
dragon(s), 159, 166, 197f, 383
in alchemy, 376, 377
dream-symbol, 201
evil symbol, 82
in fairytales, 229
in mandala, 382, 383
Mercurius as, 311, 377
and “River Map,” 359
sun identified with, 157
symbol of self, 187
water, of Tao, 18
winged and wingless, 314
dragon’s blood, 300
drama, mystery, 117
dream(s), 21, 183, 184n, 189, 282, 283
as anticipation of future, 279
archetypal, 306
—, images in, 189
and archetypes, 48ff
“big,” 306, 307
children’s, 353
of early childhood, 50
and individuation, 130f
and mythology, 152
psychology of, 152
relation to dreamer, 118
repressed instincts sources of, 49
spirit in, 214ff
symbols in series, 53
and therapy of neuroses, 178
typical, 183
INSTANCES OF DREAMS (in order of occurrence in text): lake at foot of
mountain, 17
water, 18
mountain (Grail Castle), 19
black and white magician, 34, 216f
white bird and woman, 191
bull and child, 191
golden pig and hole, 191
youth with cymbals, 192
sheep sacrifice, 192
den of snakes, 192
divine woman sleeping, 192
fields of grain, 193
sky-woman on mountain, 195
bear-goddess, 195f
pictures by H. C. Lund, 197
dancer who changes shape, 198
girl on cross in church, 198
transformations into animals, 200f
grey world-globe, 306
snake requiring sacrifice, 306n
table and chairs, 332
bed moved from its place, 333
young man with lamp in eye, 336
horned animal that ate others, 353
embroidery pattern, 362
magnolia tree in Liverpool, 364
dream-analysis, and free association, 49
dromenon, 128
dualism, Manichaean, 103
Du Cange, Charles, 257n, 258, 259
Duchesne, Louis, 185n
duplication motif, 344
Dürkheim, Emile, 79
Dutch East Indies, 365
dwarf(s), 158, 165, 215, 222
dyad, 375
E
eagle, 335n, 376
earth, 81
Mother, see Mother; Virgin Mary as, 107
east, symbolism of, attraction of Europeans to, 8
Easter: candle, 185n
eggs, 13
ecclesia spiritualis, 87
Ecclesiasticus, 354n
Eckhart, Meister, 158, 215n
ecstasy, 287
Edem, 310, 317, 324, 330n, 368
Eden, Garden of, 27, 35
education, of the educator, 175
egg(s), 292ff, 304, 319n, 377
golden, 159, 160, 172, 368
in mandala, 347, 371
Orphic, 293, 361
peacock’s, 375
philosophical, 293
world, 311
ego, 318, 319, 357, 358
and consciousness, 275
differentiation from mother, 102
not centre of unconscious, 281
and personality, 165, 187
unconscious and role of, 278
ego-consciousness, 141, 288
and archetypes, 286
awakening of, 102
emancipation of, 230
identification with self, 145
possessed by shadow and anima, 123
primitive, 33
supremacy of, 132
Egypt, 343n
infant in tomb, 134
initiation in, 14
Mary’s flight into, 258
rebirth ritual, 45
Egyptian (s): land of the, 18
representation of God, 326
Egyptians, Gospel according to the, 176
ε δos, see idea, Platonic
eight, see numbers
Eisler, Robert, 311n
Eleazar, Abraham, 298n
elements, four, 319, 329, 335
elephant, 187
Eleusis, 14; see also Mysteries
elf, 158
Elgon, Mount, 169, 268
Elgonyi tribe, 17
Eliade, Mircea, 56
Elijah, 141, 145, 237n
elk, 264
Elohim, 310, 317, 324
Ememqut, 227f
emotion(s), 96, 209, 278
mass, 47;
violent, 120
empiricism, 76
emptiness, 98
Empusa, 82
enantiodromia, 215, 229, 239n, 272, 346, 348, 353
in symbolic process, 38
energy, 33
consciousness and, 142;
specific, of archetypes, 63
Enkidu, 145
Enlightenment, 157
Enoch, 388
entelechy, 164f, 166
enthusiasm, 213
envy, 360
Ephesians, Epistle to the, 12n, 342n
Ephesus, 136n
epidemics, psychic, 127, 157, 278
epilepsy, 78
episcopus puerorum, 257, 258
Epona, 250
Erman, Adolf, 326n
Eros, 86
overdeveloped, 88, 94ff
Erskine, John, 28, 202
esoteric teaching, 7
archetypes in, 5
eternity, 147, 196
ethnology, 53
euhemerism, 157
Euhemeros, 60
Europa, 191
evangelists: attributes/symbols of, 234n, 366
four, 341n, 346n
Eve, 27, 312, 317
evil, 337n
chthonic triad and, 234
cross and, 382
and good, 103, 215, 217
matter and, 109
reality of, 322f, 341n
evil eye, 197, 380
evil spirit, 213, 249, 377
transgression of, 248
exercitia spiritualia, 129, 131f
existences, previous, 287
exposure, of child, 167
extraversion, 238
eye(s), 336
in Böhme, 381
and mandala, 337, 361, 377, 380
motif, 346
of Osiris, 226
peacock’s, 330
symbol of consciousness/God, 337
of Wotan, 226; see also evil eye
Ezekiel, 346n
seraphim of, 319
vision of, 234n, 355n, 366
wheel of, 329n, 388
F
“factor(s)”
anima as, 27
gods as, 23
fairytales, 155, 207ff
archetypes in, 5, 207ff
Estonian, 218
EXAMPLES: Czar’s Son and His Two Companions, 228f
diagrams on wall, 129f
Ememqut and the Creator, 227f
How Orphan Boy Found his Luck, 218f
Maria Morevna, 242
Onesided Old Man, 226f
Princess in the Tree, 231ff, 235ff, 243ff
Soldier and Black Princess, 225ff
Son-in-Law from Abroad, 228ff
Stepdaughter and Real Daughter, 225ff
see also 218–42 passim
faith, 208, 350
falcon, 367
fall, the, 230, 328n
fantasies, 66, 172, 183
archetypal images in, 189
and dreams, 49
Miller, 189
personal, and impersonal, 155
series of, 190
fantasy: creative, 78
erotic, 25
infantile, 83
intensification of, 180
fasces, 48
fascination, 26, 69, 377, 378
fate, goddess of, 81
father, 102
archetype, 161n
-complex, see complex
-figure, in dreams, 214
-imago, see imago, parental
pneuma as, 324
self expressed by, 187
tribal, 62
unconscious incestuous relationship with, 88
Father and Son, Christian formula of, 12
fatigue, 120, 139
Faust, 284; see also Goethe
“fear, maker of,” 17, 170
Fechner, Gustav Theodor, 54
feeling-values, 103
see also functions
femininity, threeness and, 244
Fendt, Leonhard, 176
Fescennia, 260n
festum: asinorum, 258
fatuorum, 258n
puerorum, 258
stultorum, 257
Ficino, Marsilio, 314n
field, 81
Fierz-David, Linda, 28n, 124n
figures, geometrical, 187
filia mystica, 201
filius: philosophorum, 140
regius, 215
sapientiae, 106, 158, 171
Finland, child-motif in, 151
fire, 169, 316, 327n, 356
ever-living, 33
fire-god, 51
wise old man and, 224
firmament, 187
first half of life, 120
fish, 146
in Abercius inscription, 310n
alchemical “round,” 140
content of unconscious, 139
Great, 310
in Khidr legend, 138f
in mandala, 369f
meals, of early Christians, 141
“Nun” as, 138
symbol, 142
—, of mother, 82
—, of saviour, 18
transformation of, 141
Fishes, aeon of, 309, 310
five, see numbers
Flamel, Nicholas, 140n
flash, 295f
Flournoy, Théodore, 55, 155n
flower(s), 159, 160, 187, 361, 365, 367
Golden, 363
flute, 220n
Fo, 159
fog, blue, 353
folklore, 217
child motif in, 158
devil in, 255
folktales, 184, 217ff
font: baptismal, 45, 81
benediction of, 45
fools’ feast/holiday, 257, 258
force, lines of, 306, 313
Fordham, Michael, 156n
Forest, King of the, 222
foster-parents, fantasy of, 45
Foucart, Paul François, 177n
fountain, 221
Mercurial, 140n
four: a feminine number, 234; see also numbers
fourness, 234
France, 258
Franz, Marie-Louise von, 217n
freedom, 163
Freeman, Kathleen, 325n
Freud, Sigmund: and aetiology of neuroses, 83
and free association, 49
on Leonardo, 44, 46, 68n
and Oedipus legend, 152–3n
on religious inhibition of thought, 69n
theory and method, 54f
view of psyche, 43
view of unconscious, 3, 277, 284
Freudian, 303
psychology, 29
friend(s), 133
pair of, 147
two, parable of, 121f
two helpful, 147
friendship, 86
of Mithras and sun-god, 131
of Moses and Khidr, 122
of two birds, 121f
Frobenius, Leo, 310n
function(s): four psychic, 77, 153, 237f, 320, 332
—, and colours, 335
inferior, 123, 237, 238, 241, 244, 303, 332
loss of, hysterical, 120
pairs of, 303n
superior, 238
three/triad of, 241, 242
transcendent, 289
triads of, 330n; see also feeling
G
Galatea, 373
gana, 119n
Garbe, Richard, 82n
garden, 81
garnet(s), 300, 301
Gebhurah, 335n
Gedulah, 335n
Geist, 209
genes, 284
Genesis, Book of, 299n
germ, golden, 368, 370
Germanic: soul, 146
tribes, and Christianity, 13f
Germany, 127
Gessmann, Gustav Wilhelm, 300n
“getting stuck,” 38, 291, 318
ghost, 215
ghost-stories, 158
ghost trap, 268
giant, 161n
Gilgamesh, 145
girl, unknown young, 184
Glauber, Johann Rudolph, 331n
globes, 374
Gnosticism/Gnosis/Gnostic, 12, 191, 310, 368
coniunctio in, 175, 177
hermaphrodite in, 174
and Holy Ghost, 64
of Justin, 317, 324, 330n
Naassene, 368
peacock in, 375
“psychic” and “spiritual” man in, 26
spirit/dove in, 45
syzygies in, 59, 70; see also Barbelo-Gnosis Soul, Hymn to the
goat, 226, 338, 339, 342
god(s), 199
child-, 151, 158, 165ff
fire-, 51
“light,” 103
as psychic factors, 23
self expressed by, 187
seven planetary, 136n
sun as, 6, 51
unreliability of, 145f
God, 211
back of, 328n, 330
Christian conception of, 11
dual vision of, 64
as Father, Mother, and Son, in Brother Klaus’s vision, 10
four spirits of, 335
and lotus, 326
the mandala as an image of, 389
name of, 330
of New Testament, 11
spirit as, 208, 213
wise old man and, 225
Yahwistic conception of, 11; see also Son of God
goddess, 330
anima as, 29
as mother, 81
Mother, 177n
self expressed by, 187
godfather/godmother, 45, 68, 93
godhead, spirit and, 211
God-image, 4, 246, 324, 354; see also Imago Dei
Goethe, 69, 101, 104, 209, 223, 224, 285
Faust, 28, 29, 96n, 97n, 98, 114, 146, 158, 159n, 177, 183, 234, 286n,
373, 389
Goetz, Bruno, 159, 215n
Gog, 144, 146
gold, 305, 317
alchemical sign for, 301
hoard of, 157
philosophical, 348, see also aurum philosophicum
and sun, 312
symbol of Anthropos, 313
Golden Age, 263, 268
good, see evil
goose, of Hermes, 376
gorge, 192
Gorgon’s head, 189
gospels(s), 128, 141, 346n, 388
governess, 81
grace, 25, 115, 117, 118, 129, 132, 134
Graeae, 81
grail, 14n
Grail, Castle of the, 19, 24
grain, field of, 193
grandfather, 216
grandmother, 81, 102
devil’s, 103
grass, 143
grave, 82
Great Mother, see Mother s.v. Great
Greece: child-motif in, 151
gods of, 14
green: in fairytale, 222
and sensation function, 332, 335
gremlins, 223
griffin, 223n
Grimm, Brothers, 223n, 255
group: identification with, 125ff
relation to individual, 127
Guillaume de Digulleville, 64
gunas, 82
guru, 133, 216
H
Hades, 140n, 184
Haggard, H. Rider, 28, 30, 71, 200, 285, 286n
hallucination, 214n
Hal Saflieni, 186
Hans, Stupid, 255
Hanswurst, 255
Harding, M. Esther, 316n
hare(s), 81, 378
Hartmann, Eduard von, 3, 152, 276
Hauck, Albert, 324n
hawk, 264
heart, 20, 296
heaven, 24, 27, 81
kingdom of, 221; see also Queen of Heaven
Hecate, 100, 182, 185, 186
Helen (companion of Simon Magus), 202
Helen of Troy, 28, 30f, 202
Helios, 40, 52, 128
hematite, 327
hemorrhage, 91
hemlock, 177n
heng (all-pervading power), 359
Hephaestus, 374
Hera, 45, 343
Heracles, 45, 123, 167, 171, 343
cycle, 24n
“Prophet,” 324
Heraclitus/Heraclitean, 16, 26, 33
Hercules Morbicida, 301n
heredity, 78
hermaphrodite, 69n 173, 174, 176, 374
divine, 67
Mercurius as, 158
Platonic, 192
hermaphroditism, of child, 173ff
Hermas, “Shepherd” of, 37
Hermes, 133, 178, 227, 255, 306, 307n, 331, 312, 377
ithyphallic, 106, 314
Kyllenios, 295, 302
Hermes Trismegistus, 4n, 37, 311, 374
Hermetic philosophy, 60n, 175, 176; see also alchemy
hero(es), 197, 199, 218, 229, 285
birth of, 141
child, 165ff
—, as culture-, 169, 171, 183
cult-, identification with, 128
myths of, 69n, 172, 180
old man and, 217
self as, 146
sun as/solar, 6, 343n
transformations of, 117
heterosuggestion, 63ra
hexad, 372
hierogamy, of sun and moon, 314n
hieroglyph, 302
hieros gamos, 109, 176, 177, 229
Hildegard of Bingen, St., 381
Hïnayana Buddhism, 358
Hindu: philosophy, 36
speculation, 171
Hinduism, 310
Hipparchus, 6
Hippolytus, 166n, 177n, 295n, 302n, 311n, 317n, 324, 331n
Hiranyagarbha, 142, 368, 370, 371, 377, 378
hoard, guarded by dragon, 157
hobgoblin(s), 216, 223
Hoffmann, E. T. A., 284
Hölderlin, Friedrich, 329
Hollandus, Joannes Isaacus, 140n
Holy Ghost, 52, 296
Gnostic interpretation of, 64
Holy Saturday, 45
Homer: Odyssey, 302
Homeric Hymn, 115n
homo: altus/interior/maximus, 380n, 312, 314
philosophicus, 134n
quadratus, 307
homoousia, 8
homosexuality, 71, 85, 86, 199
homunculus(-i), 159, 165, 223, 293, 304, 315, 373, 375, 378, 383
Honorius of Autun, 219n
hooded man, 223
Horace, 260n
Horapollo, 46, 49, 311n
horde, primal, 62
Horneffer, Ernst, 118n
horns, 353, 376
horoscope, 6, 344
horse: black, 34, 35, 217
three-legged, 232f
Horus, 107
-child, 328, 363n, 367
four sons of, 234n, 319, 346n, 366, 388
Hosea, 176
hospital, 194
Hovamol, 246n
Hubert, H., and Mauss, M., 43, 67n, 79
hun (spirit), 320n
hydrogen bomb, 108
hylozoism, 208
hypnosis, 219
I
Ialdabaoth, 298n
Iamblichus, 326
ice men, 223
I Ching, 38, 59n, 219n, 339n, 342, 358, 359
Ichthys, 370; see also fish
icons, 361
id, 3n
idea(s): archetypal, 5n, 21, 57
history of the word, 33
inherited, 66
as nomina, 76
Platonic, 4, 33, 75f, 79
idealization, 106
identification, 97, 180
with ancestral souls, 125
with archetype, 351
with cult-hero, 128
with deceased persons, 124
regressive, 126
of self and ego-consciousness, 145; see also group
identity, group, 125
idleness, 27
Ignatius Loyola, St., 131
illness, 120
illumination, 39
illusion, 198
image(s), 78
archetypal, 39
—, meaning of, 13
eternal, meaning of, 8
ideas as, 33
myth-creating, 7
pre-existing psychic, 66
primordial, 78, 153
sacred, Reformation and, 12
in symbolic process, 38
imagination, active, 49, 53, 155n, 190, 193, 216, 292, 332, 351, 352, 355, 380
Imago Dei, 4, 246, 354; see also God-image
imago, parental, 60f, 66
immortality, 117, 136, 142, 188
impotence, 85
incest, 249, 285
sacred, 229
theory, 68–69n
incest-fantasies, 60f, 63, 65
India, 8, 106, 216
child-motif in, 151
“loving and terrible mother” in, 82
Indian philosophy, 230, 282, 389, see also Hindu philosophy; Sankhya
philosophy
individuation, 40, 106, 130, 145ff, 159, 172, 198, 287, 290ff, 348, 350, 353ff,
371ff
and alchemy, 41
analogy of creation, 308
dream-symbols of, 130
goal and symbols of, 164f
hero and, 166
mandala symbol of, 35
meaning, 275, 288
opus as, 324
spirit of darkness and, 252
industry, 193
infans noster, 158
infantilism, 180
infatuation, 69
inferiority, 180
inflation, 145, 180, 213, 351
negative, 180
Ingram, John H., 158n
initiate, 117
Innocent III, Pope, 257
Innocents’ Day, 257
insane, delusions of the, 183
insanity, 40, 278
inspiration, 213
instinct(s), 303, 388
analogies to archetypes, 43
a priori, 43
determined in form only, 79
maternal, 87
—, overdevelopment of, 92
physiology of, 55
primitive man and, 163
repressed, and dreams, 49
integration, 31n;
intellect: and spirit, 16, 211
spontaneous development of, 91
interpretation(s), 157
of anima, 32
only for the uncomprehending, 31
intoxication, mass, 126
introversion, 238
intuition, 282, 303
invisibility, staff of, 219n
invisible one, 177
Io, 107
Irenaeus, 4, 59n, 64n, 70n, 262n
Iris, 330n
iron man, 223
Isaiah, Book of, 141, 350n
Isis, 107
mysteries of, 40, 52, 350
island motif, 196
“isms,” 61, 62, 349
Ivan, Czarevitch, 242
Ixion, 382
I-You relationship, 8
Izquierdo, Sebastian, 131n
J
Jacobi, Jolande, 353n
Jacobsohn, Helmuth, 244n
Jaffé, Aniela, 28
James, M. R., 18n, 35n, 176
James, William, 55, 210
Janet, Pierre, 55, 119, 155, 276, 277
Jehovah, 214; see also Yahweh
Jerome, St., 316n
Jerusalem, 146
heavenly, 81, 377
Jesus, 317
Oxyrhynchus sayings of, 35
St. Paul and, 121
uncanonical Gospels, 26; see also Christ; Virgin Birth
jewel, 160
Jews, 145, 191
concept of God, 103;
persecutions of, 48
Job, 319
Book of, 237n
John, St. (Evangelist), 136n, 299, 300
(author of Epistles), 215
John of the Cross, St., 319n
Jordan, baptism in, 45
Joshua, 137f, 141
Judgment, Last, 147
Jung, Carl Gustav:
CASES IN SUMMARY (in order of presentation, numbered for reference):
[1]Schizophrenic who saw sun’s penis. — 50f
[2] Victim of mother and castration complex. — 67f
[3] Philosopher with imaginary cancer. — 104f
[4] Woman with fantasy of primitive mother-figure. — 184n
[5] “Case X,” spontaneous visual impressions of Kore archetype.—
191ff
[6] “Case Y,” dreams of same. — 195ff
[7] “Case Z,” dreams with animal affinities. — 200ff
[8]American lady in psychic impasse: active imagination expressed in
paintings. — 290ff
[9] Woman fond of playing with forms. — 347
See also 362–83;
many of the mandala pictures are from cases
WORKS: “Aims of Psychotherapy, The,” 352n
Aion, 41n, 140n, 14n, 164n, 27on, 285n, 307n, 310n, 367n, 370n
“Answer to Job,” 328n
“Brother Klaus,” 8n, 64n
Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology, 306n
Commentary on “The Secret of the Golden Flower,” 59n, 320n, 352,
384
“Enigma of Bologna, The,” 25n
“Instinct and the Unconscious,” 78n
Integration of the Personality, The, 3n
Memories, Dreams, Reflections, xi, 355n, 364n
Mysterium Coniunctionis, 25n, 155, 226n
“On the Nature of the Psyche,” 5n, 314n, 346n
“On the Psychology and Pathology of So-called Occult Phenomena,”
122n
“Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon,” 24n, 136n, 295n, 317n
“Philosophical Tree, The,” 333n, 366n
Practice of Psychotherapy, The, 25n, 365n
Psychiatric Studies, 276n
“Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity, A,” 121n, 122n,
323n, 378n
Psychological Commentary on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, 356n
Psychological Types, 123n, 162n, 164n, 167n, 175n, 238n, 284n, 289n,
303n
Psychologische Interpretation von Kinderträumen, 353n
Psychology and Alchemy, 34n, 41n, 53n, 64n, 70n, 130n, 133n, 136n,
159n, 164n, 165n, 171n, 187n, 215n, 234n, 235n, 251n, 284n, 287n,
293n, 300n, 304n, 307n, 310n, 312n, 324n, 326n, 333n, 340n, 355,
356n, 366n, 373n, 374n, 376n, 380n
“Psychology of Eastern Meditation, The,” 129n, 327n, 344n, 375n
“Psychology and Education,” 33n
“Psychology and Religion,” 136n, 164n, 234n, 310n, 328n, 343n, 355
Psychology and Religion: West and East, 234n, 389n
“Psychology of the Transference,” 29n, 72n, 140n, 314n, 346
Psychology of the Unconscious, 50n, 153n
“Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious,” 72n, 159n, 175n,
181n, 284n, 288f, 306n, 352
“Spirit and Life,” 209
“Spirit Mercurius, The,” 133n, 235n, 304n, 307n, 308n, 311n, 333n,
374n
“Structure of the Psyche, The,” 154n
Symbols of Transformation, 27n, 41n, 50n, 82, 107n, 141n, 145n, 153n,
160n, 189n, 190n, 245n, 285n, 287n, 329n, 336n, 369n
“Synchronicity,” 109n, 142n, 344n
“Transcendent Function, The,” 155n, 159n, 289n
“Transformation Symbolism in the Mass,” 118n
Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 86n, 162n, 164n, 343n
“Visions of Zosimos, The,” 135n, 223n
Von den Wurzeln des Bewusstseins, 3n
Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, 50n
“Wotan,” 251n
Jung, Emma, 124n, 247n
Jupiter, 306, 335n
Justin (Gnostic), 310, 317, 324, 330n
K
ka, 380
Kabbala Denudata, 314n, 328n, 338n
Kali, 82, 100, 103
Kallid, see “Calidis …”
Kallisthenes, pseudo-, 343
Ka-Mutef, 244
Kant, Emmanuel, 59n, 67n, 76, 77, 84, 152
Karkinos, 343
karma, 113
Karnak, 215
Kenya, 17, 143
Kerényi, Karl, 7n, 117n, 151, 173, 192, 302n
Kerner, Justinus, 54
Kether, 328n
Keyserling, Count, 119n
Khepera, 367
Khidr, 122, 133, 135f 140f, 143ff
Khunrath, Henricus, 298n, 330n, 331n
Kierkegaard, Søren, 8
kilkhor, 376
king(s): in black and white magician dream, 34
four great, 319n
“old,” in alchemy, 34n
seven fallen, 328
sun as, 157
symbol of self, 187
Kingdom of God, 81; see also Heaven, Kingdom of
Kings, First Book of, 237n
Kingsford, Anna, 65
Kircher, Athanasius, 158n
Kiswahili, 143n
Klages, Ludwig, 16, 211
Klaus, Brother, see Nicholas of Flüe, St.
klippoth, 328
Knife Prince, 228
Knorr von Rosenroth, Christian, 314n
knowledge: critique of, 101
discriminating, 82
Koepgen, Georg, 174n
Köhler, Reinhold, 236n
Koran, 122n, 135ff, 140, 143ff
Kore, 81, 182ff, 188, 197, 199, 202, 203
Koschei the Deathless, 242
“Krates, Book of,” 134n
kuei (-soul), 59, 212
Kundalini, 362, 368, 370
yoga, see yoga
Kypris, 327
L
labours, twelve, 241
Lactantius, 295n
lady, white, 198
Lagneus, David, 140n
lamb(s), 232f
with seven horns, 9
Lambspringk, 382n
lamia, 25
Lands, Two, 381
language, history of, 33
Lao-tzu, 290, 341
lapis (philosophorum), 58, 304, 307n, 312, 313, 340n, 363
synonyms for, 171, 305
exilis et vilis, 171
as mediator, 174n
La Rochefoucauld, 27n
laurel, 332, 333
Lavaud, Benoît, 10n
layers, circular, 329
lead, 332n
leaden man, 223
Le Bon, Gustave, 125n
Leda, 317
legends, of gods, contradictions in, 102
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 152
Leiden, papyri, 51
Leisegang, Hans, 166n
Lenglet du Fresnoy, Pierre Nicolas, 330n
Leonardo da Vinci, 44, 46, 49, 68n
Leone Ebreo, 314
leopard, 198
“letting go,” 318
Leucippus, 57
Leviathan, 311n, 316n, 370
Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien, 5, 42, 125n, 126n
li (beneficent power), 359
liberation, 302
Liber mutus, 25n
libertas decembrica, 258
life: anima as archetype of, 32
perpetual continuation of, 117
prolongation of, 136
stone as, 134n
ligamentum corporis et spiritus, 313
light, 147
archetypal, God as, 4, 75
in Böhme, 296, 299, 389
bringers of, 169
Maitland’s vision of God as, 65
wave and particle concepts, 312
lightning, 294ff, 298n, 299ff, 314, 319, 327, 331
Lilith, 82
Lilius, 331n
lily, 198
lingam, 106, 357
Lingdam Gomchen, 327n
lion, 157, 335n
in fairytales, 221, 232
green, 140n
man-faced, 366;
symbol of self, 187
listlessness, 119
literature, syzygy motif in, 56
liver, 364
Liverpool, 364
Loco Tenente Gobernador, 22
Logos, 96
Loki, 374
loneliness, 169
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 142n
“Long-lived One,” 141
Lord’s Prayer, 214
Loreto, Litany of, 363
lotus, 81, 130, 187, 326, 328, 338n, 356, 361, 363
Love-desire, 334
Lucifer, 37, 296, 322n, 329
Lüdy, F., 300n
Luke, Gospel of, 237n, 295n, 296n, 337
Lund, Hermann Christian, 197
Lupulus, see Woelflin
lust, 360
M
McGlashan, Alan, 260n
Macrobius, 59
macrocosm, 314
madness, 85
Madonna, 103, 201; see also Mary, the Virgin
Madura, 355
Maeder, A., 153n
maenad, 184
magic: of female, 82
fertility, 177
and primitive man, 154
and rebirth, 114, 128f
sympathetic, 22
magician, 198, 216, 235
black and white, 34f, 216f
wicked, 227
magnolia, 364
Magog, 144, 146
magpie, 221n
mahatmas, 216n
Mahāyāna Buddhism, 358
maiden, 183, 184, 185, 186, 191, 198; see also Kore
Maier, Michael, 60n, 301n, 312n, 331n
Maitland, Edward, 64f
Maitrayana-Brahmana Upanishad, 371, 377
maize, 142, 169
Majjhima Nikaya, 338n
Majuj, see Magog
Male Shooting Chant, 380
Malkhuth, 328n
man, 71
carnal and spiritual, 137n
encompassed by a woman, 371
in Ezekiel’s vision, 335n
feminine traits in, 124
higher and lower, 137n
Original, Plato’s, 68n
“psychic,” 26
“spiritual,” 26
stone as, 134n
true, see chen-yen
mana, 14, 33
mandala, 81, 130, 296n, 297, 299, 304, 307n, 312ff, 323ff, 335ff, 387ff
alchemical, 319n
antidote for mental chaos, 10
Böhme’s, 12
in Brother Klaus’s vision, 9
child as, 159
division into four, 322
functional significance of, 383f
heavenly city as, 35
Lamaic, 358, 360
pentadic, 347, 361
ritual use of, 358
Tantric, 359
tetradic, 361
Tibetan, 338n
triadic, 347, 361
mandapam, 355
Manget, J. J., 133n, 159n, 174n, 319n
Manichaean dualism, 103
mar, 245
mare tenebrositatis, 140
Maria, axiom of, 234, 237, 245, 300n, 310, 346n, 360, 378
Maria Aegyptiaca, 104
Maria Morevna, Queen, 242
Marianus, 159n
marriage: divine, 175
insecurity of, 29
wrecking of, 95
Mars, 335n
Martianus Capella, 302
Mary, the Virgin, 46, 81, 82, 185n, 295n, 329, 367
assumption of, 107, 108, 109, 114, 388n
as earth, 107
flight into Egypt, 258
fructification by tube, 52
laurel and, 333
“leader of hosts,” 242
stone as, 134n
masculine traits, emergence of, 91
Masenius, Jacobus, 343n
mass (mob), 349
identity with, 175
shadow and, 267
state, totalitarian, 213; see also emotion, mass; intoxication, mass;
psyche, mass; psychology s.v. mob/mass
Mass, the (religious rite), 115, 117
Black, 191
for the Dead, 298n;
parody of, 260
massa confusa, 301
Mater: Dei, 136n
dolorosa, 92
natura, 92
spiritualis, 92
materia prima, 171
materialism, 109, 211, 213
material: element, hypertrophy of, 87f
instinct, overdevelopment of, 92
matriarchy, primitive, 95
matriarchal society, 203
matrix, 334
matter, 81, 108, 212
Assumption and, 109
mother as, 91, 107
One Substance as, 211
“psychization” of, 109
relation to psyche, 108
and Spirit, 109, 208, 210
Matthew, Gospel of, 336, 337
Matthews, Washington, 135n
Maya, 357
meaning: of anima, 32
archetype of, 32, 37, 374
how assigned, 32f
manifold, of archetypes, 38
unconscious core, in myths, 156
Mechthild of Magdeburg, 176
mediator, 164
medicine man, 37, 119, 227, 256
meditatio, in alchemy, 40f, 131
meditation, 63n, 318
megalomania, 52, 68, 180
Meier, C. A., 311n, 352n
melothesiae, 343
melusina, 24n, 25
memory, 282
Mennens, Gulielmus, 330, 341n
menstrual: blood, 184
disturbances, 91
Mephistopheles, 136n, 146, 183, 284
Mercurius/Mercury, 158, 304, 306
anima as, 211n
in Böhme, 296, 298n, 300
as dragon, 314
duplex/duplicity of, 311, 313, 314, 322n, 377
Edem symbol of, 317
identical, with rotundum, 307
—, with stone, 133
in mandala, 311, 312
as mediator, 307n
Philosophorum, 312
as servant, 171n
spirit, 312
spiritualis, 318
symbols of, 215
as trickster, 255, 374
vulgi/vulgaris/crudus, 312, 317, 345
wings of, 308, 323, 327, 335
and Wotan, 246
mercury, see quicksilver
Mercury (planet), 314
Merkabah, 335
Merlin, 227, 245
mermaid, 25
anima and, 251n
Meru, Mount, 377
messenger, 143
Messiah, 295n, 328n
metal (s): alchemical, 158
child-figure and, 169
metal man, 158, 223
metamorphosis, 158
of the gods, 157
metaphors, 157
metaphysics, 28, 76
metempsychosis, 113
Metra, 319
Meyrink, Gustav, 221n
microbes, 65
microcosm, 188, 308
microphysics, 224
middle, 135, 139, 140
migration, 151, 155
Miller fantasies, 189
Mimir, 226
mind, 312, 313
minera, 312
mines, 223
mine-shafts, 158
miscarriages, 91
misogyny, 69
Missal, Roman, 45
Mithras/Mithraism, 51, 62, 131, 367
Mithraic altarpieces, 135
Mohammed, 331
Moira, 81
Moknine, 380
Mondamin, 142
monkey(s), 159, 185
Monogenes, 295n
monotheism, 103
months, Platonic, 310
moon, 184
circle of the, 304
Earth-Mother and, 185
-goddess, 196
-lady, 196f
in mandalas, 342f, 345, 375
mother-symbol, 81
moon-bowl, 195f, 314
morals, and aesthetics, conflict, 28
Morienus/Morienes, 159
Moses, 295n, 330
and Joshua, 137ff
and Khidr, 122, 141
staff of, 295
mother, 101
aetiological effects produced by, 83
anima in, 29, 200
archetype, 75ff, 161n
—, and mother-complex, 85
—, attributes, 82
assimilation of, 69
Church, see Church
complex, see complex
and daughter, 188
dual, 45ff, 82
Earth, 106, 183, 184, 185, 186, 193, 197
figurative, 81
God as, in St. Nicholas of Flüe’s vision, 64
Great, 75, 102, 105, 106, 185n, 237
identity with, 89
-imago, see imagos, parental
loving and terrible, 82
personal, 81, 83, 102, 199
primordial, 183
prototype of, 75
resistance to, 90
self expressed by, 187
unmarried, 184
very old, 192
Mother of Christ, 45
Mother of God, 81, 107, 108, 202, 367
mother-goddess, 75, 177n
mother-image, 80, 105
analogues of, 105
chthonic type and Urania type, 106
fixation on, 93
in man and in woman, 105f
mother-in-law, 81, 90n
mother-love, 92
Mothers, Realm of the, 98
motif(s), 42, 153, 183
child, 158, 159, 161, 162
—, unity and plurality of, 165
in dreams, 183
mountain, 193, 219n
in dream, 19
Mountain Chant Rite, 380
Mountains, Two, 144, 146
movement, leftward and rightward, 320
M’tu-ya-kitabu, 143
mūlādhāra, 372
Multatuli, 344
murder, ritual, 191
Musaeum hermeticum, 382n
Mylius, Johann Daniel, 140n, 158n, 331n
mysteries, 128
anima and, 199
antique, 12
Eleusinian, 115, 117, 136; see also Isis
mysterium iniquitatis, 103, 175
mystical experience, 283
mysticism, 44, 176
Catholic, 174
Christian, 230, 367
Islamic, 135, 147
myth(s): and archetypes, 5, 67, 153
experienced, 154
hero, 69n, 180
living and lived, 179
primarily psychic phenomena, 6
and primitive consciousness, 156
mythologem(s), 179, 189, 251, 378
in dreams, 152
mythology, 189, 199
American Indian, 255
comparative, 53
Great Mother in, 106
incest in, 249n
and mother archetype, 101
parallels in fantasy, 66
rationalized substitute for, 169
syzygy motif in, 56
N
Naas, 317, 324
name, new, 129
National Socialism, 251, 252
nations, fate of, and individual psyche, 47
Nativity, 141
natural philosophy, Greek, 76
nature, 337n
in Böhme, 295f
and culture, 373
Deity garbed as, 118
Democritus on, 130
fire of, 300
processes of, as symbols of psyche, 6
spirit and, 208, 210
Navahos, 135, 380
nebulae, 16
Needham, Joseph, 59n
Negroes, and Christianity, 14
nekyia, 184
Nelken, Jan, 39, 189n, 278n, 285, 286
neolithic, 186
nerve, mystical, system, 38
Nessus shirt, 123
neti neti, 339
Neumann, Erich, 186n, 272n, 337n
neurosis(-es), 39, 47, 48, 68, 105, 157, 277, 278, 288
aetiology of, 83
archetypes in, 47
dreams and therapy of, 178
dual mother in, 46
Freud and, 55, 83
infantile, mother and, 85
psychology of, and anima, 56
psychopathology of, 139, 152
are social phenomena, 47
therapy of, 159
neurotics, mythological parallels in dreams of, 66
Newcomb, Franc Johnson, and Reichard, Gladys A., 363n
New Testament, 104, 105, 263
God of, 11; see also names of individual books
New Year, 257
New York, 127, 346
Nicholas Cusanus, 11
Nicholas of Flüe, St., 8ff, 63f
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 18, 29, 37, 104, 118, 121, 146, 246n, 260, 304
nightmares, 82
nigredo, 140 & n, 251
Nile, 342n
Ninck, Martin, 248n
nirdvandva, 36, 339
nixie(s), 24ff, 184, 222, 371
Noah, 236n
Noah’s Ark, 353n
nodes, 308
nominalism and realism, 76
nonad, 136n
non-differentiation, 172
non-recognition, 172
Norns, 81
“nothing but,” 172
Nous/
, 106, 212, 306, 312, 313, 317n, 318n
numbers, 310
three, 136n, 234f, 243, 247, 310, 372, 389
four, 136n, 234, 235, 243, 247, 302, 372, 373
five, 373, 389
six, 372
seven, 136n, 140n
eight, 136n
twelve, 241, 305; 306, 307, 310, 335; see also dyad; triad; tetrad;
quaternity; pentad; hexad; nonad
masculine and feminine, 234, 244, 247, 259
numinosity/numinous
and anima, 28
of archetypes, 39
Nun, 138, 139
nurse, 81
nymph, 184
O
obsession, 132
Ocean, 316n
Och, 222
octopus, 198, 315
Oedipus legend, 152n
old man: one-sided, 226; see also wise old man
Old Testament, 175, 214, 224, 256; see also names of separate books
omens, evil, averting, 22
Omphale, 324
one-sideness, 163
onion, 328
ontology, 171
Opicinus de Canistris, 176
opposites, 319
cannot be envisaged in oneness, 230
collision of, 167
conscious mind between, 168
discrimination of, 96
equivalence of, 36
freedom from, 36
good/evil, 323
irreconcilability of, 36, 344
male/female, 69, 70, 234
paired, 106
relativization of, 36
separation of, 147
symbol uniting, 164
tension of, 109, 235, 248, 269
union of, 12, 109, 168, 173, 174, 176, 289, 342, 358, 382
war of, 175; see also complexio oppositorum; syzygies
opus alchymicum, 293, 308, 319, 324, 331, 348
Orandus, Eirenaeus, 140n
orgies, 184
Origen, 169, 353f, 371
Orpheus, 37, 325n
Osiris, 117, 128, 141, 226, 242n
oven, 81
overvaluation, 69
Oxyrhynchus sayings of Jesus, 35
P
Paderborn, 378
padma, see lotus
painter, 197
paintings, 291ff
pair: divine, 60, see also syzygies
parental, 65; see also brother-sister pair
Palatine, ass graffito, 259
Pan, 17, 118
panacea, 171
Panchatantra, 343
panic, 23
Paracelsus, 24, 136, 295, 329
Paraclete, 141
Paradise, 81, 147, 368
four rivers/streams of, 35, 310f, 341n, 368
keys of, 34f, 216f
tree of, 236, 317
paranoia, 122
paranoiacs, delusions of, 50
parapsychology, 256
parents: projection of, 65
relationship to, and religious ideas, 62
Paris: Étoile, 365
Notre Dame, 257
Parmenides, 325, 326n, 330n
Parsees, 310
participation mystique, 20, 126
past, idealization of, 263
pathology, 260
Paul, St., 121
Epistles of, 137n
peacock(s), 198, 375f
eye, 330
sweat, 331n
tail, 330n; see also cauda pavonis
pearl, 18, 160
Peking, Imperial City, 377
pelota, 258n
pentad, 373
pentadic mandala, 361, 373
pentagram, 379
Pentecost, miracle at, 46, 210, 224
“perils of the soul,” 22, 145, 157, 281
persecution, of Christians under Decius, 136n
Persephone, 90, 186; see also Proserpina
Perseus, 189
persona, 20, 123, 162
identity with, 122
personalities, traces of, and unconscious, 283
personality: ancestral elements in, 124
centre of, 181, 357
change of, 136
continuity of, 113
dark side of, 123
diminution of, 119f
dual/multiple/double/split, 261, 276, 283
enlargement/widening of, 120, 122n
includes conscious and unconscious, 187
need not imply consciousness, 283
negative, 120
plural stage, 165
supraordinate, 182, 183, 186, 187, 195, 199
transformation of, 124
Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich, 209
phallus, 178, 295n, 357
serpent as, 314
Pharaoh, 45, 128, 244
φáρμakoν 227
phenomenology, 54, 55
of religious experience, 62
Philalethes, Eirenaeus, 171n, 285
Philo Judaeus, 4, 51, 372
phobias, infantile, 83
Phoenicians, child-sacrifice, 191
phoenix, 367, 375, 376
physics, mathematical, 16
physis/φúσíς, 212, 334
Picinelli, Filippo, 333n, 342n
Pietà, 185
pig, 360
black, 226
golden, 191
“Pilgrim’s Tract,” 10
Pisces, 6
pith, 296
planets, 335n
plant, 192
plateau, 193
Plato, 76, 79, 186
Original Man, 68n
parable of passions, 34f
Symposium, 314n
Timaeus, 234, 235, 243, 378, 389; see also idea
Pleroma, 295n
Pliny, 300
Plutarch, 382
Pluto, 90
pneuma /πvεūμα, 46, 324
as Father, 324
meaning, 209
pneumatikos, 137n, 138
p’o, 59, 320n
Poimandres, 37, 65n
poisons, 227
polarity: red/blue, 317
threeness and, 234
Poliphilo, 28, 124n, 186
politico-social systems, modern, 23
politics, 267
poltergeists, 256, 262
polyophthalmia, 294, 346, 377
pope, fools’, 257
Poseidon, 192
Positivism, 157
possession, 39, 122ff, 164, 209, 253, 281, 351
poverty: Christianity and, 15
spiritual, 17
Prakrti, 82
prayer, 21, 63n
precession of equinoxes, 6
precinct, see temenos
pregnancy: abhorrence of, 91
disturbances, 91
prehistory, neolithic, 12
Preisendanz, Karl, 304n
Priapus, 317
priest, 216
prima materia, 298n, 304, 382, 383
primal beings, hermaphroditic, 68n
primitive(s) (man), 172, 178
and ancestors, 125
and archetypes, 5, 42
consciousness of, 22
contemporary, 153
and magic, 160
and myths, 6, 154
perception in, 101
“perils of the soul,” 157
psychic life of, 169
“soul” among, 26
and spirits, 210
subjectivity of, 6
syzygy motif among, 56
Prince, Morton, 276
princess, black, 225
Priscus, Lucius Agatho, 124n
privatio boni, 341n
Prodigal Son, 249
professor, 216
progress, 163, 174
prohibition, 236
projection (s), 6, 25, 59f, 63, 65, 101, 187
of anima, 29, 89, 97
of man’s unconscious on woman, 177
need to dissolve, 84
never conscious, 61
Prometheus, 236
Propertius, 343
propitiation, 22
Proserpina, 107, 350; see also Persephone
Protestantism: conception of God in, 11
disintegration of, 13
icon-oclasm of, 12, 13
preaching of the Word, 128
and spiritual poverty, 17
and Virgin Birth, 13
Protestant/Church, 13, 15, 29, 36
protozoa, 374
Proverbs, Book of, 328n
Prudentius, 227n
Psalms, 237n, 326
psyche/ψυχή, 287
affinity with cold, 209
collective, 125
dark side of, 152
impersonal, unconscious as, 186
individual and group total, 125
and individuation, 147
instinctive/instinctual, 166
“id” of Freud, 3n
loss of, 139; see also unconscious
mass, 127
materialist view of, 57
and “mind,” 269
most tremendous fact of life, 116
myth-forming/creating elements in, 7, 152
neonate’s not a tabula rasa, 66
nonconscious, 152
not homogeneous, 104
only can observe psyche, 207
part of life’s mystery, 101
is personal, 43
preconscious, 77
relation to spirit, 208
unconscious, 287
uniqueness of individual, 77
unpredictability of reactions, 23
psychic figures, duplex, 183
psychologem, 260
psychology: complex, see complex psychology
empirical, 77
experimental, 54
a field of experience, 54
mob/mass, 125, 127
of the person, 43
and physiology of instincts, 55
primitive, 119, 124
sexuality in modern, 29
why youngest of empirical sciences, 7
psychopathology, 159
psychophysics, 54
psychopomp, 37, 133, 377
psychosis(-es), 39, 152, 278, 287
psychotherapy, 40
and instincts, 43
psychotics, archetypal figures of, 39
Pueblo Indians, see Taos
puer aeternus, 106, 158, 159
Pulcinella, 260, 264
pumpkin, 224
purification, 22
Purusha, 82, 142, 325
pyramids, 292, 305
Pythagoras, 359
Q
quadratura circuli, 387; see also circle, squaring of
qualities, four, 296n
quaternio, 328
marriage, 346
quaternarius, 372
quaternity, 234n, 235, 333
in Böhme, 296, 298n, 300f
child motif as, 160, 164
of colours, 332
dream symbol, 196
of elements, 330
in fairytale, 241, 249
in mandalas, 319f, 335, 366, 387
symbol of Deity, 324
—, of self, 187
—, of wholeness, 233
triad as mutilated, 237
queen, self expressed by, 187
Queen of Heaven, 29, 64, 104, 107
quicksilver, 306, 311ff, 316f, 332, 345
Quito, 127
R
Ra, 367
“Rachaidibi fragmentum,” 134n
Radin, Paul, 262, 266, 268
Rahner, Hugo, 227n, 236n, 316n, 342n
Rainbow Goddess, 380
Ramanuja, 371
ram deities, 310
Rank, Otto, 153n
Ras Shamra, 370
rationalism, 379
raven(s), 240, 241
and evil, 236n
in fairytale, 231f, 235ff
in mandala, 339
thirst of, 236n
Read, John, 375n
realism, see nominalism
reason, 13, 94
rebirth, 46, 113ff 141, 147
indirect, 114f
magic, and mother, 82
meanings of concept, 113ff
primordial affirmation of mankind, 116
psychic reality, 116
rebis, 174
recognition, of unconscious contents, 40
red, 185
redeemer, 249, 318n
in alchemy, 249
redemption, 35, 252
redemptive significance, of uniting symbols, 168
redheaded actress, professorial anima as, 30
Reformation, 12
reincarnation(s), 113, 287
Reitzenstein, Richard, 37n, 133n
religio, 161
religion(s): comparative, 42, 56, 75, 189
ideas of, and parental imagos, 61f
and psychic processes, 154
spirit in, 212
task of, 213
world, images in, 7
religious: experience, phenomenology of, 62
observances, 162
renewal, 117
magical, 114, 129
renovatio, 114
representations collectives, 5, 41, 42, 45, 48, 51, 61ff
repression, 186, 303
moral, 65f
of représentations collectives, 63
resistance(s), 61, 131
to mother, 90
negative, 91
of unconscious, 305n
restitution ceremonies, 40
resurrection, 114, 342
body of, 358
stone as, 134n
Reusner, Hieronymus, 317n
Revelation, Book of, 9, 10, 146, 305n, 362n, 377
reveries, 155
rex gloriae, 329, 341n
Rhine, J. B., 109, 142n
Richard of St. Victor, 219n
rigidity, premature, 71
Rig-Veda, 369
Riklin, F., 153n
ring of return, 118
Ripley, Sir George, 226, 285n
“Ripley Scrowle,” 251n, 374n
rishis, 216n
rite/ritual, 269
and archetypes, 188
of Catholic Church, 128
and consolidation of consciousness, 22
friend depicted in, 131
Mithraic, 51
regression and, 127
and renewal of “child,” 169
and transcendence of life, 117
and transformed hero, 128; see also transformation
rites d’entrée et de sortie, 154, 163
River Map, 359
rivers, four, of Paradise, see Paradise
rock, 81
Romans/Rome: and Asiatic cults, 13, 14
child-motif in, 151
Gods of, 14
Romantics, 28
Rome, St. Peter’s, 257n
Roques, Mrs. H. von, 217n
rosarium, 319n
Rosarium philosophorum, 133n, 140n, 141n, 331n
Roscher, Wilhelm Heinrich, 343n
rose: in mandalas, 361, 363, 364
mystic, 367
symbol, of mother, 81
—, of self, 187
rose window, 329
Rosencreutz, Christian, 251, 295n, 331n
Rosicrucians, 363
“Rosinus ad Sarratantam,” 134n
rotation, in mandala, 361
rotundum, 294, 301, 307, 366
roundness, 164
Rousselle, Erwin, 38n
rubedo, 300, 331n
ruby/rubies, 300, 331, 364
rug, 367
Ruland, Martin, 41n, 131n, 295n, 300n
Ruska, Julius, 286n
Russia, 373n
S
Sachseln, 9, 10
sacrifice, child, 191
salamander, 184n, 382
salniter, 296ff, 327
Salomon, Richard, 176
salt, 298n, 301, 327ff
saltpetre, 296, 298n
salute, Roman, 48
samādhi, 287
Samothrace, 14
Samyutta-Nikaya, 113n, 286, 319n
Sanatsugatiya, 368
Sand, George, 132
Sankhya philosophy, 82
Santa Claus, 128
sarcophagus, 82, 216
sarkikos 137n, 138
Satan, 146, 214
Saturn, 4n, 298n, 305, 335n
saturnalia, 256
Saviour, 236
analyst as, 61
approximation to, 256
loss of, 157
Mercurius as, 255
and serpent, 35
trickster forerunner of, 263, 270
Scheler, Max, 16
Schelling, F. W, J. von, 152
Schevill, Mrs. Margaret, 380n
Schiller, Friedrich, 7, 175, 209
schizophrenia, 66, 165, 190, 278n, 287, 388
Schmaltz, Gustav, 31n
Schmitz, Oskar, 24
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 123n, 277
Schreber, Daniel Paul, 39, 159, 278n
Schubert, G. H. von, 54
Schultz, Wolfgang, 70n
science: danger of, 107f
and deification of mother, 108
as myth, 179
scintillae, 140n, 390
Scott, Walter (Hermetica), 4n, 65n
sea: symbol, of mother, 81
—, of unconscious, 177, 380
Western, 343
sea-horse, 192
second half of life, 98, 199
Seele, 26
self, 22, 142, 164, 187, 215
androgynous, 364
as archetype, 182
attainment of, 106
birth of, 308
centre of personality, 357
as hero, 146
identification with ego-consciousness, 145
Khidr as symbol of, 141
mandala as expressing, 304, 389
Moses’ experience of, 144
“smaller than small,” 171
symbols of, 173, 333
synthesis of, 164
totality of, 304
vision of, 162
self-assertion, urge for, 43
self-immersion, 384
self-realization, 168
Semele, 107
Semenda bird, 375
senarius, 372
Sendivogius, Michael, 319n
Senex Israel, 328n
sensation, function of, 303, 332, 335
“Septem tractatus … Hermetis,” 133n
seraphim, 319
serpens mercurialis, 311, 376
serpent(s), 159, 166
anima as, 28
evil symbol, 82
fiery, 296, 322n
ithyphallic, 318
mercurial/Mercury as, 311, 312, 314, 317n, see also serpens mercurialis
Moses’ staff and, 295
Ophitic, 35
in paradise, 35, 312, 317
redemptive/as Saviour, 35, 202; see also snake; uroboros
servant of God, 141
servus rubeus/fugitivus, 171
sesquitertian proportion, 360, 362n, 378
Set, 226, 316n
seven, see numbers
Seven Sleepers, 135, 136, 138, 140n
sex(es), 318
determination of, 284
interinhabitation of, 27f
sexual instinct, and psychology, 43
sexuality, in Freudian psychology, 29
sexual rites, 184
Sgarra, Chico, 269
shadow(s), 20f, 29, 30, 37, 41, 123, 183, 244ff, 262, 265, 266, 267, 270f, 284,
317, 322, 340, 357, 381
collective, 262
of “fatherly” angels, 310
of Madonna, 103
of Moses, 138f
spirit as, 215
Shakti, 185n, 356, 357, 364, 371
shamanism, 56, 256
Shankaracharya, 216n
shape, changing, 256
shards, 328
Shatapatha-Brahmana, 370
sheep, 192, 366
Shekinah, 328n
shield-holders, 360
Shiva, 356, 357, 358, 364, 366, 371
Shiva-bindu, 356, 368, 369
Shvetasvatara Upanishad, 122
Simon Magus, 31, 202
simpleton, devil as, 255
siren, 25
six, the number, 372
skins, formation of, 324, 328
Sky Mother, Egyptian, 380
sky-woman, 195, 198
Sleepers, Seven, see Seven
Sloane, William M., 200
snake(s); anima as, 200, 202
black, 315f, 322f, 326, 334
den of, 192
dream-symbol, 50, 166, 353
golden, 306
signifying extension, 368
symbol, of envy, 360
—, of Kore, 184
—, of Mercurius, 311, 314
—, in pictures and mandalas, 305, 317ff, 328, 342, 346f, 361, 362, 366,
368ff, 375, 382
—, of self, 187
—, of unconscious, 363, 376; see also serpent
solicitude, 82
solidarity, human, 127
324
Somali, 143
son: mother complex in, 85ff
self expressed by, 187
Son of God, 35
“sons of the sun,” 40
Sophia, 17, 64, 81, 106
-Sapientia, 45
soror, 201
soul(s), 26f
ancestral, 124
—, in Australia, 125
—, identification with, 125
Christian idea of, 59, 128
conglomerate, 357
derivation, 211n
loss of, 119, 139
projected, 57
and spirit, 211, 307
stone as, 134n
virgin mother of wise old man, 35; see also anima; “perils of the soul”
Soul, Hymn to the (Gnostic), 18
soul-atoms, 57
soul-flower, 338, 342
spear-head, 382
spells, 22
Spencer, Sir Walter B., and Gillen, F. J., 57n, 126n
sphere(s), 164, 187, 294, 301ff, 307, 311, 314ff, 372
spider, 187
spinal cord, 166
Spinoza, B., 208, 211
spiral, 362
spirit(s), 17, 24, 324
in alchemy, 38, 208
archetype, antithetical nature of, 239
archetype of, 226, 374
autonomy of, 214
“cold breath of,” 209
comes from above, 19
as dove, 45
in dreams, 214ff
evil, see evil spirit
exorcizing of, 22
four, 296
—, of God, 335
hallmarks of, 212
immateriality of, 109, 212
and intellect, 16
“materiality” of, 322n
and matter, 108, 109, 208, 210
meaning, 208ff
and nature, 208, 210
of the age, 209
one with body in God, 324
pneuma as, 46
religions and, 213
seven, 329n
and soul, 211
subjective and objective, 209, 211
theriomorphic symbolism of, 230ff
spiritual exercises, 63n, 318; see also exerritia spiritualia
spiritualism, 256
Spiritus, 209, 313
Spitteler, Carl, 71
sponsus et sponsa, in Christianity, 250
sprightliness, 208
spring, 81, 185n
spring-point, 6
sprite: fire, 382
water, 184
square, 187, 235, 307n, 312, 361; see also circle, squaring of
Stade, Bernhard, 341n
star(s): five-pointed, 373
in mandala, 361, 365, 373, 374, 382
seven, 140n
State: and individuals, 127, 267
totalitarianism and, 252
statement, in psychology, 207
statue, antique, 191
Stein, Frau von, 69
Steissbart, 215
stepdaughter, 225
stepmother, 68n, 81
Stevenson, James, 135n
steward, unjust, 36
stock (Böhme), 296
Stoeckli, Alban, 10n, 64n
Stoics, 33, 326
stone: alchemical/philosophers’, 133, 134n, 141n, 304, 312, 348, 362, 363
animate, 140
symbol of self, 140
“that is no stone,” 312; see also lapis
Stone Age, 125, 126
streams, four, of paradise, see paradise
Strudel, 269
student societies, 255
stupas, 320
“subconscious,” 18, 239
subjectivity, egocentric, 20
substance: arcane, 251, 298n, 327
One, 211
spiritual, 324
succubus, 25
Suez, Isthmus of, 139
suffering: subjective, in poltergeist, 256
symbolized by cross, 327
Sufi, 143
suggestion, 275
sulphur, 300
summum bonum, 9, 213
sun, 143, 144, 157, 309, 315, 379
in alchemy, 140n
in Böhme, 335n
delusory penis of, 50f
in fantasy, 196
in mandala, 345, 361, 379
materialized in gold, 312
primitives’ view of, 6
Pueblo Indians and, 22
wise old man and, 224
sun-barge, 134
sun-child, 326n
sun-god, 51, 52, 131
superconsciousness, 282
super-ego, 3n
superlatives, 224
supermen, 104
superstitions, 268
Suso, Henry, 10n
Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro, 340n
swan, 317, 331n
swastika, 48, 320, 323, 326, 327n, 361, 373, 380
Swedenborg, Emanuel, 4n
symbol(s) 24, 39
distinguished from allegory, 6n
dogmatic, 11
elaboration of, 9
formation of, and psychic disorders, 172
functional meaning of, 50
geometrical, 187
of individuation, 289
mother-, 81
plant, 187
poverty of, 13, 14
theriomorphic, 187
uniting, 168, 174, 289
world itself speaks in, 173
symbolism: alchemical, see alchemy
Christian, 15
impoverishment of, 8, 23
of individuation process, 289
of rebirth, 130
sympathetic nervous system, 19f, 21
sympathy, 82
synchronicity/synchronistic phenomena, 109, 344n
syncretism, Hellenistic, 106
Synesius, 96
synthesis, 164f
syzygy (-ies) 106
divine, 59, 64, 67
male/female, 70
motif, 65
—universal distribution, 56
mystic, 202
projection of, 63
youth/girl, 191
T
“Tabula smaragdina,” 106, 234n
talisman, magic, 220
Tantra/Tantrism, 356, 363
chakra system, 38, 261n
and matter, 212; see also yoga, Tantric
Tao/Taoism/Taoist philosophy, 8, 18, 36, 290, 320n, 339, 340
Taos pueblo, 22, 40
tar, 221
Tarot cards, 38
tartar, 301
tartaric acid, 301, 327
Tartarus, 298n, 301, 327
Tarxien, 321
teacher, wise old man as, 216
Tebhunah, 328n
telepathy/telepathic phenomena, 142
telescope, 16
temenos, 361, 365
tempter, 214
tension, 147; see also opposites, tension of
Tertullian, 259n
tests, psychological, 54
tetrad(s), 243
tetradic mandala, 361
—, system, 360
Tetragrammaton, 330
tetraktys, 359
tetrameria, 310, 319, 332
Theatrum chemicum, 133n, 140n, 193n, 327n, 330n
Theodosius II, 136n
theoria, 177
Theosebeia, 202
theosophy/theosophical, 263, 325
theosophists, 14
therapeutics, see complex psychology
therapy: anima and, 71
of neuroses, child motif in, 159
thinking/thought(s): inhibition of, 68–69n
pre-conscious, 33, 280
primordial/elementary, 43
unconscious, 79, 153
Thomas Aquinas, St., 331n
Thoth, 37
thread, ball of, 220n
three: a masculine number, 234, 244; see also numbers
three and a half, 362n
threeness, 234, 243
and femininity, 244
thunderbolt, 358
Tibet, 320, 373n
tiger, 200
Tightrope Walker, Nietzsche’s, 121
Timaeus, see Plato
time, 188, 199
-spirit, 209
toga, Buddhist monk’s, 339
Tom Dumb, 184
Tom Thumb, 158, 161n, 184, 255, 304
Tonquédec, Joseph de, 122
tortoises, 342n
totalitarianism, 252
“Tractatulus Aristotelis,” 134n
“Tractatus aureus,” 25n, 133, 174n, 307n, 312
tradition, 57
trance-states, 50
transference, 60
unresolved, 289
transfiguration, 114
transformation(s), 141
alchemical, 134
archetypes of, 38, 147
in Christianity, 128
collective experiences of, 126
continuation of life through, 117
of god or hero, 117
immortality and, 142
magic and, 128f
natural, 130ff
participation in, 114ff
psychic, 147
rebirth as, 114
rites of, 115, 125
subjective, 119ff
technical, 129f
transmigration of souls, see metempsychosis
transmutation, 114
treasure: “hard to attain,” 160, 184, 229, 369
in water, 24
tree, 296n
in alchemy, 109
cosmic/world-, 110, 235, 248f, 251
dream-figure, 323f, 328, 333
in fairytales, 228
of knowledge, 317
of life, 317, 370
and mother, 336
mother archetype and, 81
paradisal, 236, 317
“philosophical,” 324
tree-numen, 229
triad(s), 243
chthonic, 234
lower, 339n
Trinity not a, 8
two antithetical, 235, 237, 239
triadic, mandala, 361
—, system, 360
triangle, 235
tribal lore, sacred, 7
trickster, 255ff
Mercurius as, 374, 377
Trinity, 15, 244, 339n
Brother Klaus and, 9, 11, 64
and chthonic triad, 234
feminine element, 64
not a triad, 8
Protestantism and, 13
symbolized by birds, 338
Tetragrammaton and, 330
tripudia, 257
tritons, 177
triunity, Egyptian, 244
tube, depending from sun, 51, 52
twelve, see numbers
“twice-born,” 45
Two-horned One, 145; see also Dhulqarnein
type(s), 70, 87n, 153
mythological, and fantasy-images, 155
of situations and of figures, 183
Typhon, 316n
typology, Gnostic, 26
U
Ueli, 265n
unconscious, passim
antimonies of, 230
centre of, 276
collective, see next heading
conditions consciousness, 58
conscious’s view of, 20
essential basis of psyche, 152
female, 176
Freud’s view of, 3
and immortality, 142
as impersonal psyche, 186
integrating, 319
irruption of, 158
“matriarchal” state of, 233
meaning of concept, 3
as multiple consciousness, 346
personal, see heading below
spatial and temporal relations in, 224
and sympathetic system, 19
unconscious, collective, 3f, 155, 304, 311, 357, 384 et passim
anima/animus and, 245, 286
definition, 42
diagnosis not always easy, 44
distinction from personal unconscious, 42
identical in all men, 4
is inherited, 43
reaction from, 21
sheer objectivity, 22
why so called, 3f
unconscious, personal, 3, 357
autonomy of, 278, 280
cannot be swallowed, 288
distinction from collective unconscious, 42
fantasies of, 172
mother of consciousness, 281
a potential reality, 279
shadow and, 20, 284
unconsciousness, 271
as egoless, 277
and the Logos, 96
man’s worst sin, 253
original psychic distress, 169
symbolized by pig, 360
underworld, 81
unity, 237
universals, 76
university, 81
Upanishads, 312; see also Maitrayana-Brahmana Upanishad; Shvetashvatara
Upanishad
uroboros, 300, 361, 377
Ursanna, 195f
Usener, Hermann, 79
uterus, 81
V
Valentinians, 59n
Valentinus, Basilius, 301
“valley spirit,” 18
Vancouver, 18
vas hermeticum, 375
Vedanta Sutras, 371
Venus: alchemical sign for, 301, 327
of Brassempouy, 186
carbuncles and, 331n
heavenly, 107
Queen, 28, 186
of Willendorf, 186
vertebrates, as symbols, 166
vessel motif, 364 see also vas hermeticum
vibrations, 308
Vigenerus, Blasius, 4n
Vili, 226
vine tendrils, 321
Virgin Birth, 8, 13, 166
Vishnu, 311n
“Visio Arislei,” 140n, 286n
vision(s), 155, 183, 189, 282
of St. Nicholas of Flüe, 63f
spontaneous, 155n
syzygies and, 63
wise old man in, 223
visual impressions, see dreams
vital force, 33
Vitus, Richardus, 25n
Vollers, K., 138n, 139n, 140n, 141n, 143, 144, 145
Volüspa, 24
vomiting, excessive, 91
vulture, 46, 49
W
wall, 364
wand, 296n, 311; see also caduceus
warmth, primal, 33
Warnecke, Johannes, 102n
water: dreams about, 18, 191, 198
of life, 140, 145n
Moses’ rod and, 295
primordial, 319n
and shadow, 21
-sprite, 184
symbol, of mother, 82
—, of psyche/spirit/unconscious, 17, 18f, 222, 322
treasure in, 24
Weckerling, Adolf, 82n
Weimar, 209
well, 81
Wells, H. G. 127
werewolf, 221
West, the, and Eastern images, 14
wheat: grain of, in vision, 191
Osiris as, 117, 141
wheel(s): in Böhme, 329n, 331
Brother Klaus and symbol of, 10
in Egyptian temples, 325
in mandala, 361, 364, 381
motif, 326
world, 360, 376
whole, ego and, 275
wholeness, 168, 186, 384
essence of personality, 303
four aspects of, 358
fourness symbol of, 234
and individuation process, 165, 166
man’s must be masculine, 199
quaternity and, 164
“round,” 142
snake and symbol of, 322
syzygy symbolizing, 191f
and threeness, 233f, 235
union of conscious and unconscious, 175, 178
Wilhelm, Richard, 356, 359
and Jung, Secret of the Golden Flower, 304n, 366n, 377, 378n
will, 163
Willendorf, “Venus” of, 186
wind: conception through, 46
sun-tube and, 51f
wings: in mandala, 378; see also Mercurius/Mercury
Winnebagos, 261, 265
Winthuis, Josef, 59n
wisdom: and folly, identity of, 31
Fountain of, 194
grandmother and, 102
higher, 141
wise old man, 41, 183, 285
archetype of spirit/meaning, 35, 37
in dreams, 215f
in fairytales, 217ff
hidden by anima, 270
opposite of, 374
wish-fulfilments, 184n, 186
witch(es), 82
anima as, 25f, 29, 30, 199
evil symbol, 82
in fairytales, 221, 228, 232, 235, 237, 242
grandmother as, 102
mother as, 85
witch-doctor, 224
Woelflin, Heinrich, 9
wolf(-ves), 231f, 235
Wolff, Toni, 285n
Wolfram von Eschenbach, 141n
woman: divine, 192
masculine traits in, 124
as personality, 199
womb, 363
wood-nymph, 25
Woodroffe, Sir John, 70n see also Avalon, Arthur (pseudonym)
Word, preaching of the, 128
words, 81
world, end of, subjective, 147
world-guardians, 319n
World War, 253
World Wheel, 360, 376
worm, 187, 375
Wotan, 24, 226, 246, 248n, 339
Wrath-fire, 12, 341
Wu, Lu-ch’iang, 293n
Wundt, Wilhelm, 54, 151, 208
Wylie, Philip, 83n
X/Y/Z
Xenocrates, 319n
Yahweh, 11, 103, 256, 341n; see also Jehovah
Yajuj, see Gog
Yama, 360
yang and yin, 18, 59, 98, 109, 341, 358
yantra, 356, 383, 387
year, dragon as symbol of, 311n
Yellow Castle, Book of the, 377
Yesod, 314n
yin, see yang
yoga, 219n, 318
Chinese, 38
Kundalini 70, 357, 359, 366, 372
Tantric, 185n
and transformation, 129
yogi(s), 287, 357, 358
Yoga-sūtra, 288
yoni, 81
youth: as animus figure, 191
spirit as, 215
yuen (generative power), 359
yugas, 310
Zacharias/Zechariah, 140n, 295n
Zagreus, 118
Zarathustra, see Nietzsche
Zen Buddhism, 340
Zeus, 46
Zimmer, Heinrich, 82n
zodiac, 6, 309, 310
Zohar, 328n
Zosimos, 135n, 202, 223, 294, 300
Zurich, 52
THE COLLECTED WORKS OF
C. G. JUNG
THE PUBLICATION of the first complete edition, in English, of the works of
C. G. Jung was undertaken by Routledge and Kegan Paul, Ltd., in England
and by Bollingen Foundation in the United States. The American edition is
number XX in Bollingen Series, which since 1967 has been published by
Princeton University Press. The edition contains revised versions of works
previously published, such as Psychology of the Unconscious, which is now
entitled Symbols of Transformation; works originally written in English, such
as Psychology and Religion; works not previously translated, such as Aion;
and, in general, new translations of virtually all of Professor Jung’s writings.
Prior to his death, in 1961, the author supervised the textual revision, which
in some cases is extensive. Sir Herbert Read (d. 1968), Dr. Michael Fordham,
and Dr. Gerhard Adler compose the Editorial Committee; the translator is R.
F. C. Hull (except for Volume 2) and William McGuire is executive editor.
The price of the volumes varies according to size; they are sold separately,
and may also be obtained on standing order. Several of the volumes are
extensively illustrated. Each volume contains an index and in most a
bibliography; the final volumes will contain a complete bibliography of
Professor Jung’s writings and a general index to the entire edition.
In the following list, dates of original publication are given in parentheses
(of original composition, in brackets). Multiple dates indicate revisions.
*1. PSYCHIATRIC STUDIES
On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena
(1902)
On Hysterical Misreading (1904)
Cryptomnesia (1905)
On Manic Mood Disorder (1903)
A Case of Hysterical Stupor in a Prisoner in Detention (1902)
On Simulated Insanity (1903)
A Medical Opinion on a Case of Simulated Insanity (1904)
A Third and Final Opinion on Two Contradictory Psychiatric Diagnoses
(1906)
On the Psychological Diagnosis of Facts (1905)
†2. EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCHES
Translated by Leopold Stein in collaboration with Diana Riviere
(1904–7, 1910)
The Associations of Normal Subjects (by Jung and F. Riklin)
An Analysis of the Associations of an Epileptic
The Reaction-Time Ratio in the Association Experiment
Experimental Observations on the Faculty of Memory
Psychoanalysis and Association Experiments
The Psychological Diagnosis of Evidence
Association, Dream, and Hysterical Symptom
The Psychopathological Significance of the Association Experiment
Disturbances in Reproduction in the Association Experiment
The Association Method
The Family Constellation
PSYCHOPHYSICAL RESEARCHES (1907–8)
On the Psychophysical Relations of the Association Experiment
Psychophysical Investigations with the Galvanometer and Pneumograph
in Normal and Insane Individuals (by F. Peterson and Jung)
Further Investigations on the Galvanic Phenomenon and Respiration in
Normal and Insane Individuals (by C. Ricksher and Jung)
Appendix: Statistical Details of Enlistment (1906); New Aspects of
Criminal Psychology (1908); The Psychological Methods of
Investigation Used in the Psychiatric Clinic of the University of Zurich
(1910); On the Doctrine of Complexes ([1911] 1913); On the
Psychological Diagnosis of Evidence (1937)
STUDIES IN WORD ASSOCIATION
*3 THE PSYCHOGENESIS OF MENTAL DISEASE
The Psychology of Dementia Praecox (1907)
The Content of the Psychoses (1908/1914)
On Psychological Understanding (1914)
A Criticism of Bleuler’s Theory of Schizophrenic Negativism (1911)
On the Importance of the Unconscious in Psychopathology (1914)
On the Problem of Psychogenesis in Mental Disease (1919)
Mental Disease and the Psyche (1928)
On the Psychogenesis of Schizophrenia (1939)
Recent Thoughts on Schizophrenia (1957)
Schizophrenia (1958)
+4. FREUD AND PSYCHOANALYSIS
Freud’s Theory of Hysteria: A Reply to Aschaffenburg (1906)
The Freudian Theory of Hysteria (1908)
The Analysis of Dreams (1909)
A Contribution to the Psychology of Rumour (1910–11)
On the Significance of Number Dreams (1910–11)
Morton Prince, “The Mechanism and Interpretation of Dreams”: A
Critical Review (1911)
On the Criticism of Psychoanalysis (1910)
Concerning Psychoanalysis (1912)
The Theory of Psychoanalysis (1913)
General Aspects of Psychoanalysis (1913)
Psychoanalysis and Neurosis (1916)
Some Crucial Points in Psychoanalysis: A Correspondence between Dr.
Jung and Dr. Loÿ (1914)
Prefaces to “Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology” (1916, 1917)
The Significance of the Father in the Destiny of the Individual
(1909/1949)
Introduction to Kranefeldt’s “Secret Ways of the Mind” (1930)
Freud and Jung: Contrasts (1929)
‡5. SYMBOLS OF TRANSFORMATION (1911–12/1952)
PART I
Introduction
Two Kinds of Thinking
The Miller Fantasies: Anamnesis
The Hymn of Creation
The Song of the Moth
PART II
Introduction
The Concept of Libido
The Transformation of Libido
The Origin of the Hero
Symbols of the Mother and of Rebirth
The Battle for Deliverance from the Mother
The Dual Mother
The Sacrifice
Epilogue
Appendix: The Miller Fantasies
*6. PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES (1921)
Introduction
The Problem of Types in the History of Classical and Medieval
Thought
Schiller’s Ideas on the Type Problem
The Apollinian and the Dionysian
The Type Problem in Human Character
The Type Problem in Poetry
The Type Problem in Psychopathology
The Type Problem in Aesthetics
The Type Problem in Modern Philosophy
The Type Problem in Biography
General Description of the Types
Definitions
Epilogue
Four Papers on Psychological Typology (1913, 1925, 1931. 1936)
†7. TWO ESSAYS ON ANALYTICAL PSYCHOLOGY
On the Psychology of the Unconscious (1917/1926/1943)
The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious (1928)
Appendix: New Paths in Psychology (1912); The Structure of the
Unconscious (1916) (new versions, with variants, 1966)
‡8. THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE PSYCHE
On Psychic Energy (1928)
The Transcendent Function ([1916]/1957)
A Review of the Complex Theory (1934)
The Significance of Constitution and Heredity in Psychology (1929)
Psychological Factors Determining Human Behavior (1937)
Instinct and the Unconscious (1919)
The Structure of the Psyche (1927/1931)
On the Nature of the Psyche (1947/1954)
General Aspects of Dream Psychology (1916/1948)
On the Nature of Dreams (1945/1948)
The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits (1920/1948)
Spirit and Life (1926)
Basic Postulates of Analytical Psychology (1931)
Analytical Psychology and Weltanschauung (1928/1931)
The Real and the Surreal (1933)
The Stages of Life (1930–1931)
The Soul and Death (1934)
Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle (1952)
Appendix: On Synchronicity (1951)
*
9. PART I. THE ARCHETYPES AND THE COLLECTIVE
UNCONSCIOUS
Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious (1934/1954)
The Concept of the Collective Unconscious (1936)
Concerning the Archetypes, with Special Reference to the Anima
Concept (1936/1954)
Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype (1938/1954)
Concerning Rebirth (1940/1950)
The Psychology of the Child Archetype (1940)
The Psychological Aspects of the Kore (1941)
The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales (1945/1948)
On the Psychology of the Trickster-Figure (1954)
Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation (1939)
A Study in the Process of Individuation (1934/1950)
Concerning Mandala Symbolism (1950)
Appendix: Mandalas (1955)
* 9. PART II. AION (1951)
RESEARCHES INTO THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE SELF
The Ego
The Shadow
The Syzygy: Anima and Animus
The Self
Christ, a Symbol of the Self
The Sign of the Fishes
The Prophecies of Nostradamus
The Historical Significance of the Fish
The Ambivalence of the Fish Symbol
The Fish in Alchemy
The Alchemical Interpretation of the Fish
Background to the Psychology of Christian Alchemical Symbolism
Gnostic Symbols of the Self
The Structure and Dynamics of the Self
Conclusion
* 10. CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION
The Role of the Unconscious (1918)
Mind and Earth (1927/1931)
Archaic Man (1931)
The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man (1928/1931)
The Love Problem of a Student (1928)
Woman in Europe (1927)
The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man (1933/1934)
The State of Psychotherapy Today (1934)
Preface and Epilogue to “Essays on Contemporary Events” (1946)
Wotan (1936)
After the Catastrophe (1945)
The Fight with the Shadow (1946)
The Undiscovered Self (Present and Future) (1957)
Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth (1958)
A Psychological View of Conscience (1958)
Good and Evil in Analytical Psychology (1959)
Introduction to Wolff’s “Studies in Jungian Psychology” (1959)
The Swiss Line in the European Spectrum (1928)
Reviews of Keyserling’s “America Set Free” (1930) and “La Révolution
Mondiale” (1934)
The Complications of American Psychology (1930)
The Dreamlike World of India (1939)
What India Can Teach Us (1939)
Appendix: Documents (1933–1938)
†11 PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION: WEST AND EAST
WESTERN RELIGION
Psychology and Religion (The Terry Lectures) (1938/1940)
A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity (1942/1948)
Transformation Symbolism in the Mass (1942/1954)
Forewords to White’s “God and the Unconscious” and Werblowsky’s
“Lucifer and Prometheus” (1952)
Brother Klaus (1933)
Psychotherapists or the Clergy (1932)
Psychoanalysis and the Cure of Souls (1928)
Answer to Job (1952)
EASTERN RELIGION
Psychological Commentaries on “The Tibetan Book of the Great
Liberation” (1939/1954) and “The Tibetan Book of the Dead”
(1935/1953)
Yoga and the West (1936)
Foreword to Suzuki’s “Introduction to Zen Buddhism” (1939)
The Psychology of Eastern Meditation (1943)
The Holy Men of India: Introduction to Zimmer’s “Der Weg zum
Selbst” (1944)
Foreword to the “I Ching” (1950)
*12. PSYCHOLOGY AND ALCHEMY (1944)
Prefatory note to the English Edition ([1951?] added 1967)
Introduction to the Religious and Psychological Problems of Alchemy
Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy (1936)
Religious Ideas in Alchemy (1937)
Epilogue
†13. ALCHEMICAL STUDIES
Commentary on “The Secret of the Golden Flower” (1929)
The Visions of Zosimos (1938/1954)
Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon (1942)
The Spirit Mercurius (1943/1948)
The Philosophical Tree (1945/1954)
‡14. MYSTERIUM CONIUNCTIONIS (1955–56)
AN INQUIRY INTO THE SEPARATION AND
SYNTHESIS OF PSYCHIC OPPOSITES IN ALCHEMY
The Components of the Coniunctio
The Paradoxa
The Personification of the Opposites
Rex and Regina
Adam and Eve
The Conjunction
*15. THE SPIRIT IN MAN, ART, AND LITERATURE
Paracelsus (1929)
Paracelsus the Physician (1941)
Sigmund Freud in His Historical Setting (1932)
In Memory of Sigmund Freud (1939)
Richard Wilhelm: In Memoriam (1930)
On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry (1922)
Psychology and Literature (1930/1950)
“Ulysses”: A Monologue (1932)
Picasso (1932)
†16. THE PRACTICE OF PSYCHOTHERAPY
GENERAL PROBLEMS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY
Principles of Practical Psychotherapy (1935)
What Is Psychotherapy? (1935)
Some Aspects of Modern Psychotherapy (1930)
The Aims of Psychotherapy (1931)
Problems of Modern Psychotherapy (1929)
Psychotherapy and a Philosophy of Life (1943)
Medicine and Psychotherapy (1945)
Psychotherapy Today (1945)
Fundamental Questions of Psychotherapy (1951)
SPECIFIC PROBLEMS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY
The Therapeutic Value of Abreaction (1921/1928)
The Practical Use of Dream-Analysis (1934)
The Psychology of the Transference (1946)
Appendix: The Realities of Practical Psychotherapy ([1937] added,
1966)
‡ 17. THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY
Psychic Conflicts in a Child (1910/1946)
Introduction to Wickes’s “Analyses der Kinderseele” (1927/1931)
Child Development and Education (1928)
Analytical Psychology and Education: Three Lectures (1926/1946)
The Gifted Child (1943)
The Significance of the Unconscious in Individual Education (1928)
The Development of Personality (1934)
Marriage as a Psychological Relationship (1925)
*18. THE SYMBOLIC LIFE
Miscellaneous Writings
†19 GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF C. G. JUNG’S WRITINGS
†20. GENERAL INDEX TO THE COLLECTED WORKS
See also:
C. G: JUNG. LETTERS
Selected and edited by Gerhard Adler, in collaboration with Aniela Jaffé
Translations from the German by R.F.C. Hull.
VOL. 1: 1906–1950
VOL. 2: 1951–1961
THE FREUD/JUNG LETTERS
Edited by William McGuire, translated by
Ralph Manheim and R.F.C. Hull
C. G. JUNG SPEAKING: Interviews and Encounters
Edited by William McGuire and R.F.C. Hull
C. G. JUNG: Word and Image
Edited by Aniela Jaffé
*In Psychiatric Studies, vol. 1 of the Coll. Works.
1 [First published in the Eranos-Jahrbuch 1934, and later revised and published in Von den Wurzeln
des Bewusstseins (Zurich, 1954), from which version the present translation is made. The translation of
the original version, by Stanley Dell, in The Integration of the Personality (New York, 1939; London,
1940), has been freely consulted.—EDITORS.]
2 In his later works Freud differentiated the basic view mentioned here. He called the instinctual
psyche the “id,” and his “super-ego” denotes the collective consciousness, of which the individual is
partly conscious and partly unconscious (because it is repressed).
3 De opificio mundi, I, 69. Cf. Colson/Whitaker trans., I, p. 55.
4 Adversus haereses II, 7, 5: “Mundi fabricator non a semetipso fecit haec, sed de alienis archetypis
transtulit.” (Cf. Roberts/Rambaut trans., I, p. 139.)
5 Scott, Hermetica, I, p. 140.
6 In Migne, P.G., vol. 3, col. 144.
7 Ibid., col. 595. Cf. The Divine Names (trans. by Rolt), pp. 62, 72.
8 Migne, P.L., vol. 40, col. 30. “Archetype” is used in the same way by the alchemists, as in the
“Tractatus aureus” of Hermes Trismegistus (Theatrum chemicum, IV, 1613, p. 718): “As God
[contains] all the treasure of his godhead … hidden in himself as in an archetype [in se tanquam
archetypo absconditum] … in like manner Saturn carries the similitudes of metallic bodies hiddenly in
himself.” In the “Tractatus de igne et sale” of Vigenerus (Theatr. chem., VI, 1661, p. 3), the world is
“ad archetypi sui similitudinem factus” (made after the likeness of its archetype) and is therefore called
the “magnus homo” (the “homo maximus” of Swedenborg).
9 One must, for the sake of accuracy, distinguish between “archetype” and “archetypal ideas.” The
archetype as such is a hypothetical and irrepresentable model, something like the “pattern of behaviour”
in biology. Cf. “On the Nature of the Psyche,” sec. 7.
10
An allegory is a paraphrase of a conscious content, whereas a symbol is the best possible
expression for an unconscious content whose nature can only be guessed, because it is still unknown.
11
Cf. my papers on the divine child and the Kore in the present volume, and Kerényi’s
complementary essays in Essays on [or Introduction to] a Science of Mythology.
12
[Schiller, Piccolomini, II, 6.—EDITORS.]
13
Cf. my “Brother Klaus.”
14
Heinrich Woelflin, also called by the Latin form Lupulus, born 1470, humanist and director of
Latin studies at Bern. Cited in Fritz Blanke, Bruder Klaus von Flüe, pp. 92f.
15
Ibid., p. 94.
16
Ein gesichte Bruder Clausen ynn Schweytz und seine deutunge (Wittemberg, 1528), p. 5. Cited in
Alban Stoeckli, O. M. Cap., Die Visionen des seligen Bruder Klaus, p. 34.
17
M. B. Lavaud, O.P. (Vie Profonde de Nicolas de Flue) gives just as apt a parallel with a text from
the Horologium sapientiae of Henry Suso, where the apocalyptic Christ appears as an infuriated and
wrathful avenger, very much in contrast to the Jesus who preached the Sermon on the Mount. [Cf.
Suso, Little Book of Eternal Wisdom, Clark trans., pp. 77–78.—EDITORS.]
18
Ein nützlicher und loblicher Tractat von Bruder Claus und einem Bilger (1488).
19
Blanke, pp. 95ff.
20
London, 1647.
21
Cf. my “Study in the Process of Individuation,” infra.
22
[Cf. Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele.]
23
[Cf., e.g., Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos.—EDITORS.]
24
James, Apocryphal New Testament, pp. 411–15.
25
Augustine, Confessions, Lib. XIII, cap. XXI.
The fact that it was another theologian who dreamed this dream is not so surprising, since priests
and clergymen have a professional interest in the motif of “ascent.” They have to speak of it so often
that the question naturally arises as to what they are doing about their own spiritual ascent.
27
[The “Fischottermärchen” in Märchen aus dem Unbewussten, pp. 14ff., 43ff.—EDITORS.]
28
Cf. Paracelsus, De vita longa (1562), and my commentary in “Paracelsus as a Spiritual
Phenomenon” [concerning Melusina, pars. 179f., 215ff.].
29
Cf. the picture of the adept in Liber mutus (1677) (fig. 13 in The Practice of Psychotherapy, p.
320). He is fishing, and has caught a nixie. His soror mystica, however, catches birds in her net,
symbolizing the animus. The idea of the anima often turns up in the literature of the 16th and 17th
cent., for instance in Richardus Vitus, Aldrovandus, and the commentator of the Tractatus aureus. Cf.
“The Enigma of Bologna” in my Mysterium Coniunctionis, pars. 51ff.
30
La Rochefoucauld, Pensées DLX. Quoted in Symbols of Transformation, p. 174.
31
Cf. The Dream of Poliphilo, ed. by Linda Fierz-David. [For Haggard and Benoît, see the
bibliography.—EDITORS.]
32
“Bilder und Symbole aus E. T. A. Hoffmanns Märchen ‘Der Goldne Topf.’”
33
I have expounded my views at some length in “Psychology of the Transference.”
34
I am referring here to literary examples that are generally accessible and not to clinical material.
These are quite sufficient for our purpose.
35
I.e., coming to terms with the contents of the collective unconscious in general. This is the great
task of the integration process.
36
A good example is the little book by Gustav Schmaltz, Östliche Weisheit und Westliche
Psychotherapie.
37
I have already used this dream in “The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales,” par. 398, infra,
and in “Psychology and Education,” pp. 117ff., as an example of a “big” dream, without commenting
on it more closely.
38
Cf. the motif of the “old king” in alchemy. Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 434ff.
39
Cf. James, The Apocryphal New Testament, pp. 27f.
40
Reitzenstein interprets the “Shepherd” of Hermas as a Christian rejoinder to the Poimandres
writings.
41
Arthur Avalon, The Serpent Power.
42
Erwin Rousselle, “Spiritual Guidance in Contemporary Taoism.”
43
R. Bernoulli, “Zur Symbolik geometrischer Figuren und Zahlen,” pp. 397ff.
44
“Analytische Beobachtungen über Phantasien eines Schizophrenen,” pp. 504ff.
45
John Custance, Wisdom, Madness, and Folly.
46
Ruland, Lexicon alchemiae (1612).
47
Cf. Symbols of Transformation.
48
Aion, Part II of this volume.
49
Psychology and Alchemy.
26
1 [Originally given as a lecture to the Abernethian Society at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London,
on Oct. 19, 1936, and published in the Hospital’s Journal, XLIV (1936/37), 46–49, 64–66. The present
version has been slightly revised by the author and edited in terminology.—EDITORS.]
2 Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood, sec. IV.
3 [Cf. the trans. by George Boas, pp. 63ff., and Freud, Leonardo, sec. II.—EDITORS.]
4 Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (orig. 1912). [Trans. as Psychology of the Unconscious,
1916. Cf. the revised edition, Symbols of Transformation, pars. 149ff., 223.—EDITORS.]
5 Eine Mithrasliturgie. [As the author subsequently learned, the 1910 edition was actually the
second, there having been a first edition in 1903. The patient had, however, been committed some years
before 1903.—EDITORS.]
6 Ibid., pp. 6ff.
7 Psychology and Alchemy, Part II.
1 [Originally published as “Über den Archetypus mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des
Animabegriffes” in the Zentralblatt für Psychotherapie und ihre Grenzgebiete (Leipzig), IX (1936) : 5,
259–75. Revised and republished in Von den Wurzeln des Bewusstseins (Zurich, 1954), from which
version the present translation is made.—EDITORS.]
2 Elemente der Psychophysik (1860).
3 Principles of Physiological Psychology (orig. 1874).
4 Cf. G. H. von Schubert’s compilation, Altes und Neues aus dem Gebiet der innern Seelenkunde
(1825–44).
5 First published 1829. Trans. as The Seeress of Prevorst (1859).
6 L’Automatisme psychologique (1889); The Mental State of Hystericals (orig., 1893); Névroses et
idées fixes (1898).
7 From India to the Planet Mars (orig., 1900), and “Nouvelles Observations sur un cas de
somnambulisme avec glossolalie.”
8 I am thinking especially of shamanism with its idea of the “celestial wife” (Eliade, Shamanism,
pp. 76–81).
9 Spencer and Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 331 and elsewhere. Also
Crawley, The Idea of the Soul, pp. 87f.
10
Commentary on the Dream of Scipio.
11
Cf. my “Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower,” pars. 57ff., and Chantepie de la
Saussaye, Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte, I, p. 71.
12
This standpoint derives from Kant’s theory of knowledge and has nothing to do with materialism.
13
Winthuis, Das Zweigeschlechterwesen bei den Zentralaustraliern und anderen Völkern.
14
Especially in the system of the Valentinians. Cf. Irenaeus, Adversus haereses.
15
Cf. The I Ching or Book of Changes. [Also Needham, Science and Civilization in China, II, pp.
273f.—EDITORS.]
16
Hermetic alchemical philosophy from the 14th to the 17th cents. provides a wealth of instructive
examples. For our purposes, a glimpse into Michael Maier’s Symbola aureae mensae (1617) would
suffice.
17
There are of course cases where, in spite of the patient’s seemingly sufficient insight, the reactive
effect of the projection does not cease, and the expected liberation does not take place. I have often
observed that in such cases meaningful but unconscious contents are still bound up with the projection
carrier. It is these contents that keep up the effect of the projection, although it has apparently been seen
through.
18
Fl. c. 300 B.C. Cf. Block, Euhémère: son livre et sa doctrine.
19
This is not to overlook the fact that there is probably a far greater number of visions which agree
with the dogma. Nevertheless, they are not spontaneous and autonomous projections in the strict sense
but are visualizations of conscious contents, evoked through prayer, autosuggestion, and
heterosuggestion. Most spiritual exercises have this effect, and so do the prescribed meditation
practices of the East. In any thorough investigation of such visions it would have to be ascertained,
among other things, what the actual vision was and how far dogmatic elaboration contributed to its
form.
20
Cf. Stoeckli, Die Visionen des seligen Bruder Klaus, and Blanke, Bruder Klaus von Flüe.
21
The peculiar love-story of this youngest Aeon can be found in Irenaeus, Adv. haer., I, 2, 2ff.
(Roberts/Rambaut trans., I, pp. 7ff.)
22
Cf. my “Brother Klaus.”
23
Guillaume wrote three Pèlerinages in the manner of the Divine Comedy, but independently of
Dante, between 1330 and 1350. He was Prior of the Cistercian monastery at Châlis, in Normandy. Cf.
Delacotte, Guillaume de Digulleville: Trois Romans-poèmes du XIV siècle. [Also cf. Psychology and
Alchemy, pars. 315ff.—EDITORS.]
24
Anna Kingsford: Her Life, Letters, Diary, and Work, I, pp. 130. Maitland’s vision is similar in
form and meaning to the one in the Poimandres (Scott, Hermetica, I, Libellus I, pp. 114ff.), where the
spiritual light is described as “male-female.” I do not know whether Maitland was acquainted with the
Poimandres; probably not.
25
Hubert and Mauss (Mélanges d’histoire des religions, preface, p. xxix) call these a priori thoughtforms “categories,” presumably with reference to Kant: “They exist ordinarily as habits which govern
consciousness, but are themselves unconscious.” The authors conjecture that the primordial images are
conditioned by language. This conjecture may be correct in certain cases, but in general it is
contradicted by the fact that a great many archetypal images and associations are brought to light by
dream psychology and psychopathology which would be absolutely incommunicable through language.
26
Conforming to the bisexual Original Man in Plato, Symposium, XIV, and to the hermaphroditic
Primal Beings in general.
27
The “dual birth” refers to the motif, well known from hero mythology, which makes the hero
descend from divine as well as from human parents. In most mysteries and religions it plays an
important role as a baptism or rebirth motif. It was this motif that misled Freud in his study of Leonardo
da Vinci. Without taking account of the fact that Leonardo was by no means the only artist to paint the
motif of St. Anne, Mary, and the Christ-child, Freud tried to reduce Anne and Mary, the grandmother
and mother, to the mother and stepmother of Leonardo; in other words, to assimilate the painting to his
theory. But did the other painters all have stepmothers? What prompted Freud to this violent
interpretation was obviously the fantasy of dual descent suggested by Leonardo’s biography. This
fantasy covered up the inconvenient reality that St. Anne was the grandmother, and prevented Freud
from inquiring into the biographies of other artists who also painted St. Anne. The “religious inhibition
of thought” mentioned on p. 79 (1957 edn.) proved true of the author himself. Similarly, the incest
theory on which he lays so much stress is based on another archetype, the well-known incest motif
frequently met with in hero myths. It is logically derived from the original hermaphrodite type, which
seems to go far back into prehistory. Whenever a psychological theory is forcibly applied, we have
reason to suspect that an archetypal fantasy-image is trying to distort reality, thus bearing out Freud’s
own idea of the “religious inhibition of thought.” But to explain the genesis of archetypes by means of
the incest theory is about as useful as ladling water from one kettle into another kettle standing beside
it, which is connected with the first by a pipe. You cannot explain one archetype by another; that is, it is
impossible to say where the archetype comes from, because there is no Archimedean point outside the
a priori conditions it represents.
28
Cf. Avalon, The Serpent Power; Shrī-Chakra-Sambhara Tantra; Woodroffe, Shakti and Shakta.
29
Schultz, Dokumente der Gnosis, especially the lists in Irenaeus, Adversus haereses.
30
Cf. Psychology and Alchemy.
31
Cf. the first paper in this volume.
32
The most important problems for therapy are discussed in my essay “The Relations between the
Ego and the Unconscious” and also in the “Psychology of the Transference.” For the mythological
aspects of the anima, the reader is referred to another paper in this volume, “The Psychological Aspects
of the Kore.”
1 Cf. my “Instinct and the Unconscious,” par. 277.
2 [Cf. the previous paper, “Concerning the Archetypes,” par. 137, n. 25.—EDITORS.]
3 Usener, Das Weihnachtsfest, p. 3.
1 This is the etymological meaning of the three gunas. See Weckerling, Ananda-raya-makhi: Das
Glück des Lebens, pp. 21ff., and Garbe, Die Samkhya Philosophie, pp. 272ff. [Cf. also Zimmer,
Philosophies of India, index, s.v.—EDITORS.]
2 American psychology can supply us with any amount of examples. A blistering but instructive
lampoon on this subject is Philip Wylie’s Generation of Vipers.
1 But the father-complex also plays a considerable part here.
2 [Cf. Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, pars. 16ff.—EDITORS.]
3 In the present section I propose to present a series of different “types” of mother-complex; in
formulating them, I am drawing on my own therapeutic experiences. “Types” are not individual cases,
neither are they freely invented schemata into which all individual cases have to be fitted. “Types” are
ideal instances, or pictures of the average run of experience, with which no single individual can be
identified. People whose experience is confined to books or psychological laboratories can form no
proper idea of the cumulative experience of a practising psychologist.
4 This statement is based on the repeated experience that, where love is lacking, power fills the
vacuum.
5 In my English seminars [privately distributed] I have called this the “natural mind.”
6 Here the initiative comes from the daughter. In other cases the father’s psychology is responsible;
his projection of the anima arouses an incestuous fixation in the daughter.
7 Herein lies the difference between this type of complex and the feminine father-complex related to
it, where the “father” is mothered and coddled.
8 This does not mean that they are unconscious of the facts. It is only their meaning that escapes
them.
9 This type of woman has an oddly disarming effect on her husband, but only until he discovers that
the person he has married and who shares his nuptial bed is his mother-in-law.
1 Faust, Part II, Act 5.
2 Ibid., Part I, Act 1.
3 Ibid., Part II, Act 1.
1 [Cf. above, “Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious,” par. 7.—EDITORS.]
2 Warnecke, Die Religion der Batak.
3 [A familiar figure of speech in German.–EDITORS.]
4 Buri, “Theologie and Philosophie,” p. 117. [Quoting Rudolf Bultmann.–EDS.]
5 Obviously a daughter can idealize her mother too, but for this special circumstances are needed,
whereas in a man idealization is almost the normal thing.
6“Nocturnis ululatibus horrenda Proserpina.” Cf. Symbols of Transformation, par. 148.
7 Cf. my “Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle.”
1 Cf. the Samyutta-Nikaya (Book of the Kindred Sayings), Part II: The Nidana Book, pp. 150f.
2 Cf. the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, verses 480–82: “Blessed is he among men who has seen these
mysteries; but he who is uninitiate and has no part in them, never has lot of like good things once he is
dead, down in the darkness and gloom.” (Trans. by Evelyn-White, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and
Homerica, p. 323.) And in an Eleusinian epitaph we read:
“Truly the blessed gods have proclaimed a most beautiful secret:
Death comes not as a curse, but as a blessing to men.”
1 [Cf. infra, “The Psychology of the Kore,” and Kerényi’s companion essays in Essays on a Science
of Mythology.—EDITORS.]
2 Cf. my “Transformation Symbolism in the Mass.”
3 Thus Spake Zarathustra, trans. by Common, pp. 315ff.
4 Ibid.: “An old, bent and gnarled tree, hung with grapes.”
5 Horneffer, Nietzsches Lehre von der ewigen Wiederkehr.
6 Les Névroses, p. 358.
7 The gana phenomena described by Count Keyserling (South-American Meditations, pp. 161ff.)
come into this category.
8 Ephesians 4:8.
9 “Thy soul will be dead even sooner than thy body.” Thus Spake Zarathustra, p. 74.
10
Cf. “A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity,” pars. 226ff.
11
Shvetashvatara Upanishad 4, 6ff. (Trans. based on Hume, The Thirteen Principal Upanishads pp.
403ff.).
12
Koran, 18th Sura.
13
I have discussed one such case of a widening of the personality in my inaugural dissertation, “On
the Psychology and Pathology of So-called Occult Phenomena.”
14
For the Church’s view of possession see de Tonquédec, Les Maladies nerveuses ou mentales et les
manifestations diaboliques; also “A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity,” p. 163, n.
15.
15
In this connection, Schopenhauer’s “The Wisdom of Life: Aphorisms” (Essays from the Parerga
and Paralipomena) could be read with profit.
16
This important problem is discussed in detail in Ch. II of Psychological Types.
17
Cf. the apt description of the anima in Aldrovandus, Dendrologiae libri duo (1668, p. 211): “She
appeared both very soft and very hard at the same time, and while for some two thousand years she had
made a show of inconstant looks like a Proteus, she bedevilled the love of Lucius Agatho Priscus, then
a citizen of Bologna, with anxious cares and sorrows, which assuredly were conjured up from chaos, or
from what Plato calls Agathonian confusion.” There is a similar description in Fierz-David, The Dream
of Poliphilo, pp. 189ff.
18
Cf. Emma Jung, “On the Nature of the Animus.”
19
Cf. Lévy-Bruhl, La Mythologie primitive.
20
Le Bon, The Crowd.
21
The alcheringamijina. Cf. the rites of Australian tribes, in Spencer and Gillen, The Northern
Tribes of Central Australia; also Lévy-Bruhl, La Mythologie primitive.
22
I would remind the reader of the catastrophic panic which broke out in New York on the occasion
[1938] of a broadcast dramatization of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds shortly before the second World
War [see Cantril, The Invasion from Mars (1940)], and which was later [1949] repeated in Quito.
23
Cf. “The Psychology of Eastern Meditation.”
24
Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, Part II.
25
Cf. Ruland, Lexicon (1893 edn.), p. 226.
26
Izquierdo, Pratica di alcuni Esercitij spirituali di S. Ignatio (Rome, 1686, p. 7): “A colloquy … is
nothing else than to talk and communicate familiarly with Christ.”
26a
[“Daily Conversations with Dr. Piffoel,” in her Intimate Journal.—EDITORS.]
27
A Pseudo-Aristotle quotation in Rosarium philosophorum (1550), fol. Q.
28
“Largiri vis mihi meum” is the usual reading, as in the first edition (1556) of Ars chemica, under
the title “Septem tractatus seu capitula Hermetis Trismegisti aurei,” and also in Theatrum chemicum, IV
(1613), and Manget, Bibliotheca chemica, I (1702), pp. 400ff. In the Rosarium philosophorum (1550),
fol. E, there is a different reading: “Largire mihi ius meum ut te adiuvem” (Give me my due that I may
help thee). This is one of the interpretative readings for which the anonymous author of the Rosarium is
responsible. Despite their arbitrariness they have an important bearing on the interpretation of alchemy.
[Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, par. 139, n.17.]
29
Biblio. chem., I, p. 430b.
30
Detailed documentation in Psychology and Alchemy, par. 84, and “The Spirit Mercurius,” pars.
278ff., 287ff.
31
“Tanquam praeceptor intermedius inter lapidem et discipulum.” (Biblio. chem., I. p 430b.) Cf. the
beautiful prayer of Astrampsychos, beginning “Come to me, Lord Hermes,” and ending “I am thou and
thou art I.” (Reitzenstein, Poimandres, p. 21.)
32
The stone and its transformation are represented:
(1) as the resurrection of the homo philosophicus, the Second Adam (“Aurea hora,” Art is
auriferae, 1593, I, p. 195);
(2) as the human soul (“Book of Krates,” Berthelot, La Chimie au moyen âge, III, p. 50);
(3) as a being below and above man: “This stone is under thee, as to obedience; above thee, as to
dominion; therefore from thee, as to knowledge; about thee, as to equals” (“Rosinus ad Sarratantam,”
Art. aurif., I, p. 310);
(4) as life: “blood is soul and soul is life and life is our Stone” (“Tractatulus Aristotelis,” ibid., p.
364),
(5) as the resurrection of the dead (“Calidis liber secretorum,” ibid., p. 347; also “Rachaidibi
fragmentum,” ibid., p. 398);
(6) as the Virgin Mary (“De arte chymica,” ibid., p. 582); and
(7) as man himself: “thou art its ore … and it is extracted from thee … and it remains inseparably
with thee” (“Rosinus ad Sarratantam,” ibid., p. 311).
1 [The Dawood trans. of the Koran is quoted, sometimes with modifications. The 18th Sura is at pp.
89–98.—EDITORS.]
2 Cumont, Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra, II.
3 Cf. especially the crowning vision in the dream of Zosimos: “And another [came] behind him,
bringing one adorned round with signs, clad in white and comely to see, who was named the Meridian
of the Sun.” Cf. “The Visions of Zosimos,” par. 87 (III, v bis).
4 Matthews, The Mountain Chant, and Stevenson, Ceremonial of Hasjelti Dailjis.
5 An account of the secret doctrine hinted at in this treatise may be found in my “Paracelsus as a
Spiritual Phenomenon,” pars. 169ff.
6 The different versions of the legend speak sometimes of seven and sometimes of eight disciples.
According to the account given in the Koran, the eighth is a dog. The 18th Sura mentions still other
versions: “Some will say: ‘The sleepers were three: their dog was the fourth.’ Others, guessing at the
unknown, will say: ‘They were five; their dog was the sixth.’ And yet others: ‘Seven; their dog was the
eighth.’” It is evident, therefore, that the dog is to be taken into account. This would seem to be an
instance of that characteristic wavering between seven and eight (or three and four, as the case may be),
which I have pointed out in Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 200ff. There the wavering between seven
and eight is connected with the appearance of Mephistopheles, who, as we know, materialized out of
the black poodle. In the case of three and four, the fourth is the devil or the female principle, and on a
higher level the Mater Dei. (Cf. “Psychology and Religion,” pars. 124ff.) We may be dealing with the
same kind of ambiguity as in the numbering of the Egyptian nonad (paut = ‘company of gods’; cf.
Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, I, p. 88). The Khidr legend relates to the persecution of the
Christians under Decius (c. A.D. 250). The scene is Ephesus, where St. John lay “sleeping,” but not dead.
The seven sleepers woke up again during the reign of Theodosius II (408–450); thus they had slept not
quite 200 years.
7 The seven are the planetary gods of the ancients. Cf. Bousset, Hauptprobleme der Gnosis, pp.
23ff.
8 Obedience under the law on the one hand, and the freedom of the “children of God,” the reborn,
on the other, is discussed at length in the Epistles of St. Paul. He distinguishes not only between two
different classes of men, who are separated by a greater or lesser development of consciousness, but
also between the higher and lower man in one and the same individual. The sarkikos (carnal man)
remains eternally under the law; the pneumatikos (spiritual man) alone is capable of being reborn into
freedom. This is quite in keeping with what seems such an insoluble paradox: the Church demanding
absolute obedience and at the same time proclaiming freedom from the law. So, too, in the Koran text,
the legend appeals to the pneumatikos and promises rebirth to him that has ears to hear. But he who,
like the sarkikos, has no inner ear will find satisfaction and safe guidance in blind submission to Allah’s
will.
9 Vollers, “Chidher,” Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, XII, p. 241. All quotations from the
commentaries are extracted from this article.
10
Ibid., p. 253.
11
Cf. Aion, pars. 195ff.
12
Vollers, p. 244.
13
Ibid., p. 260.
14
Ibid., p. 258.
15
Cf. the myth in the “Visio Arislei,” especially the version in the Rosarium philosophorum (Art.
aurif., II, p. 246), likewise the drowning of the sun in the Mercurial Fountain and the green lion who
devours the sun (Art. aurif., II, pp. 315, 366). Cf. “The Psychology of the Transference,” pars. 467ff.
16
The white stone appears on the edge of the vessel, “like Oriental gems, like fish’s eyes.” Cf.
Joannes Isaacus Hollandus, Opera mineralia (1600), p. 370. Also Lagneus, “Harmonica chemica.”
Theatrum chemicum, IV (1613), p. 870. The eyes appear at the end of the nigredo and with the
beginning of the albedo. Another simile of the same sort is the scintillae that appear in the dark
substance. This idea is traced back to Zacharias 4 : 10 (DV): “And they shall rejoice and see the tin
plummet in the hand of Zorobabel. These are the seven eyes of the Lord that run to and fro through the
whole earth.” (Cf. Eirenaeus Orandus, in the introduction to Nicholas Flamel’s Exposition of the
Hieroglyphicall Figures, 1624, fol. A 5.) They are the seven eyes of God on the corner-stone of the
new temple (Zach. 3 : 9). The number seven suggests the seven stars, the planetary gods, who were
depicted by the alchemists in a cave under the earth (Mylius, Philosophia reformata, 1622, p. 167).
They are the “sleepers enchained in Hades” (Berthelot, Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs, IV,
xx, 8). This is an allusion to the legend of the seven sleepers.
17
Vollers, p. 254. This may possibly be due to Christian influence: one thinks of the fish meals of
the early Christians and of fish symbolism in general. Vollers himself stresses the analogy between
Christ and Khidr. Concerning the fish symbolism, see Aion.
18
Further examples in Symbols of Transformation, Part II. I could give many more from alchemy,
but shall content myself with the old verse:
“This is the stone, poor and of little price.
Spurned by the fool, but honoured by the wise.”
(Ros. phil., in Art. aurif., II, p. 210.) The “lapis exilis” may be a connecting-link with the “lapsit
exillis,” the grail of Wolfram von Eschenbach.
19
[The Ojibway legend of Mondamin was recorded by H. R. Schoolcraft and became a source for
Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha. Cf. M. L. Williams, School-craft’s Indian Legends, pp. 58ff.—
EDITORS.]
20
Rhine, New Frontiers of the Mind. [Cf. also “Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle.”—
EDITORS.]
21
He spoke in Kiswahili, the lingua franca of East Africa. It contains many words borrowed from
Arabic, as shown by the above example: kitab = book.
22
There are similar indications in the Jewish tales about Alexander. Cf. Bin Gorion, Der Born
Judas, III, p. 133, for the legend of the “water of life,” which is related to the 18th Sura.
23
[For a fuller discussion of these relationships, see Symbols of Transformation, pars. 282ff.—
EDITORS.]
24
Just as the Dioscuri come to the aid of those who are in danger at sea.
1 Kerényi, “The Primordial Child in Primordial Times.”
2 Der Mensch in der Geschichte (1860).
3 Psyche (1846).
4 A working example in “The Concept of the Collective Unconscious,” pars. 105ff., above.
5 Freud, in his Interpretation of Dreams (p. 261), paralleled certain aspects of infantile psychology
with the Oedipus legend and observed that its “universal validity” was to be explained in terms of the
same infantile premise. The real working out of mythological material was then taken up by my pupils
(A. Maeder, “Essai d’interprétation de quelques râves,” 1907, and “Die Symbolik in den Legenden,
Märchen, Gebräuchen, und Träumen,” 1908; F. Riklin, “Über Gefängnispsychosen,” 1907, and
Wishfulfilment and Symbolism in Fairy Tales, orig. 1908); and by K. Abraham, Dreams and Myths,
orig. 1909. They were succeeded by Otto Rank of the Viennese school (The Myth of the Birth of the
Hero, orig. 1922). In the Psychology of the Unconscious (orig. 1911; revised and expanded as Symbols
of Transformation), I presented a somewhat more comprehensive examination of psychic and
mythological parallels. Cf. also my essay in this volume, “Concerning the Archetypes, with Special
Reference to the Anima Concept.”
6 This fact is well known, and the relevant ethnological literature is too extensive to be mentioned
here.
7 Cf. “The Structure of the Psyche,” pars. 330ff.
8 Except for certain cases of spontaneous vision, automatismes téléologiques (Flournoy), and the
processes in the method of “active imagination” which I have described [e.g., in “The Transcendent
Function” and Mysterium Coniunctionis, pars. 706, 753f.—EDITORS].
9 The relevant material can be found in the unpublished reports of the seminars I gave at the Federal
Polytechnic Institute (ETH) in Zurich in 1936–39, and in Michael Fordham’s book The Life of
Childhood.
10
Berthelot, Alchimistes grecs, III, xxv.
11
Agricola, De animantibus subterraneis (1549); Kircher, Mundus subterraneus (1678), VIII, 4.
12
Mylius, Philosophia reformata (1622).
13
“Allegoria super librum Turbae” in Artis auriferae, I (1572), p. 161.
14
Texte aus der deutschen Mystik des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts, ed. Spamer, pp. 143, 150.
15
Ingram, The Haunted Homes and Family Traditions of Great Britain, pp. 43ff.
16
An old alchemical authority variously named Morienes, Morienus, Marianus (“De compositione
alchemiae,” Manget, Bibliotheca chemica curiosa, I, pp. 509ff.). In view of the explicitly alchemical
character of Faust, Part II, such a connection would not be surprising.
17
Schreber, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness.
18
For a general presentation see infra, “Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation.” Special
phenomena in the following text, also in Psychology and Alchemy, Part II.
19
“The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious,” Part II, ch. 3 [also “The Transcendent
Function.”—EDITORS].
20
Symbols of Transformation, index, s.v.
21
It may not be superfluous to point out that lay prejudice is always inclined to identify the child
motif with the concrete experience “child,” as though the real child were the cause and pre-condition of
the existence of the child motif. In psychological reality, however, the empirical idea “child” is only the
means (and not the only one) by which to express a psychic fact that cannot be formulated more
exactly. Hence by the same token the mythological idea of the child is emphatically not a copy of the
empirical child but a symbol clearly recognizable as such: it is a wonder-child, a divine child, begotten,
born, and brought up in quite extraordinary circumstances, and not—this is the point—a human child.
Its deeds are as miraculous or monstrous as its nature and physical constitution. Only on account of
these highly unempirical properties is it necessary to speak of a “child motif” at all. Moreover, the
mythological “child” has various forms: now a god, giant, Tom Thumb, animal, etc., and this points to
a causality that is anything but rational or concretely human. The same is true of the “father” and
“mother” archetypes which, mythologically speaking, are equally irrational symbols.
22
Psychological Types, Def. 48; and Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, index, s.v. “persona.”
23
Psychological Types, ch. V, 3: “The Significance of the Uniting Symbol.”
24
Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 327ff.; “Psychology and Religion,” pars. 108ff.
25
Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, pars. 399ff. [Cf. also Aion (Part II of this volume), ch. 4.—
EDITORS.]
26
Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 328ff.
27
Higher vertebrates symbolize mainly affects.
28
This interpretation of the snake is found as early as Hippolytus, Elenchos, IV, 49–51 (Legge
trans., I, p. 117). Cf. also Leisegang, Die Gnosis, p. 146.
29
Psychological Types, Def. 51.
30
Even Christ is of a fiery nature (“he that is near to me is near to the fire”—Origen, In Jeremiam
Homiliae, XX. 3); likewise the Holy Ghost.
31
The material is collected in Psychology and Alchemy, Parts II and III. For Mercurius as a servant,
see the parable of Eirenaeus Philalethes, Ripley Reviv’d: or, An Exposition upon Sir George Ripley’s
Hermetico-Poetical Works (1678).
32
Koepgen, Die Gnosis des Christentums, pp. 315ff.
33
For the lapis as mediator and medium, cf. Tractatus aureus, in Manget, Bibliotheca chemica
curiosa, I, p. 408b, and Artis auriferae (1572), p. 641.
34
Psychological Types, Def. 48; and “Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious,” pars. 296ff.
35
Hosea 1 : 2ff.
36
Cf. Fendt, Gnostische Mysterien.
37
James, The Apocryphal New Testament, p. 11.
38
Clement, Stromata, III, 13, 92, 2.
39
The Flowing Light of the Godhead.
40
Salomon, Opicinus de Canistris.
41
Cf. the diatribe by Bishop Asterius (Foucart, Mystères of d’Eleusis, pp. 477ff.). According to
Hippolytus’ account the hierophant actually made himself impotent by a draught of hemlock. The selfcastration of priests in the worship of the Mother Goddess is of similar import.
42
A more detailed account of these developments is to be found in “The Relations between the Ego
and the Unconscious.”
1 To the best of my knowledge, no other suggestions have been made so far. Critics have contented
themselves with asserting that no such archetypes exist. Certainly they do not exist, any more than a
botanical system exists in nature! But will anyone deny the existence of natural plant-families on that
account? Or will anyone deny the occurrence and continual repetition of certain morphological and
functional similarities? It is much the same thing in principle with the typical figures of the
unconscious. They are forms existing a priori, or biological norms of psychic activity.
2 The “personalistic” approach interprets such dreams as “wish-fulfilments.” To many, this kind of
interpretation seems the only possible one. These dreams, however, occur in the most varied
circumstances, even in circumstances when the wish-fulfilment theory becomes entirely forced or
arbitrary. The investigation of motifs in the field of dreams therefore seems to me the more cautious
and the more appropriate procedure.
3 The double vision of a salamander, of which Benvenuto Cellini tells in his autobiography, would
be an anima-projection caused by the music his father was playing.
4 One of my patients, whose principal difficulty was a negative mother-complex, developed a series
of fantasies on a primitive mother-figure, an Indian woman, who instructed her on the nature of woman
in general. In these pronouncements a special paragraph is devoted to blood, running as follows: “A
woman’s life is close to the blood. Every month she is reminded of this, and birth is indeed a bloody
business, destructive and creative. A woman is only permitted to give birth, but the new life is not her
creation. In her heart of hearts she knows this and rejoices in the grace that has fallen to her. She is a
little mother, not the Great Mother. But her little pattern is like the great pattern. If she understands this
she is blessed by nature, because she has submitted in the right way and can thus partake of the
nourishment of the Great Mother….”
5 Often the moon is simply “there,” as for instance in a fantasy of the chthonic mother in the shape
of the “Woman of the Bees” (Josephine D. Bacon, In the Border Country, pp. 14ff.): “The path led to a
tiny hut of the same colour as the four great trees that stood about it. Its door hung wide open, and in
the middle of it, on a low stool, there sat an old woman wrapped in a long cloak, looking kindly at
her….” The hut was filled with the steady humming of bees. In the corner of the hut there was a deep
cold spring, in which “a white moon and little stars” were reflected. The old woman exhorted the
heroine to remember the duties of a woman’s life. In Tantric yoga an “indistinct hum of swarms of
love-mad bees” proceeds from the slumbering Shakti (Shat-Chakra Nirupana, in Avalon, The Serpent
Power, p. 29). Cf. infra, the dancer who dissolves into a swarm of bees. Bees are also, as an allegory,
connected with Mary, as the text for the consecration of the Easter candle shows. See Duchesne,
Christian Worship: Its Origin and Evolution, p. 253.
6 [See Neumann, The Great Mother, Pls. 1a, 3. This entire work elucidates the present study.—
EDITORS.]
7 Psychology and Alchemy, Part II.
8 I would refer to the thesis of my pupil Jan Nelken, “Analytische Beobachtungen über Phantasien
eines Schizophrenen,” as also to my own analysis of a series of fantasies in Symbols of Transformation.
9 Cf. Symbols of Transformation. H. G. Baynes’ book, The Mythology of the Soul, runs to 939 pages
and endeavours to do justice to the material provided by only two cases.
10
[Cf. infra, “On the Psychology of the Trickster-Figure.”—EDITORS.]
11
Theatrum chemicum, I (1602), pp. 286ff.
12
“Humanum genus, cui Deo resistere iam innatum est, non desistit media quaerere, quibus proprio
conatu laqueos evadat, quos sibimet posuit, ab eo non petens auxilium, a quo solo dependet omnis
misericordiae munus. Hinc factum est, ut in sinistram viae partem officinam sibi maximam exstruxerint
… huic domui praeest industria, etc. Quod postquam adepti fuerint, ab industria recedentes in
secundam mundi regionem tendunt: per infirmitatis pontem facientes transitum…. At quia bonus Deus
retrahere vellet, infirmitates in ipsis dominari permittit, turn rursus ut prius remedium [industrial] a se
quaerentes, ad xenodochium etiam a sinistris constructum et permaximum confluunt, cui medicina
praeest. Ibi pharmacopolarum, chirurgorum et physicorum ingens est copia.” (p. 288.)
13
“… pervenietis ad Sophiae castra, quibus excepti, longe vehementiori quam antea cibo
reficiemini…. viventis aquae fluvius tam admirando fluens artificio de montis apice. (De Sophiae fonte
scaturiunt aquael)” [Slightly modified by Professor Jung. Cf. Dorn, pp. 279–80.—EDITORS.]
14
Only extracts from the dreams are given, so far as they bear on the anima.
15
The following statements are not meant as “interpretations” of the dreams. They are intended only
to sum up the various forms in which the anima appears.
16
Cf. the third paper in this volume.
1 [First published as a lecture, “Zur Psychologie des Geistes,” in the Eranos-Jahr-buch 1945.
Revised and published as “Zur Phänomenologie des Geistes im Märchen,” in Symbolik des Geistes
(Zurich, 1948), from which the present translation was made. This translation was published in a
slightly different form in Spirit and Nature (Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks, 1; New York, 1953;
London, 1954).—EDITORS.]
2 [An Hegelian term, roughly equivalent to our “spirit of man.”—TRANS.]
3 See my “Spirit and Life.”
4 Ludwig Klages, Der Geist als Widersacher der Seele.
5 Soul, from Old German saiwaló, may be cognate with αιóλοs, ‘quick-moving, changeful of hue,
shifting.’ It also has the meaning of ‘wily’ or ‘shifty”; hence an air of probability attaches to the
alchemical definition of anima as Mercurius.
6 Even if one accepts the view that a self-revelation of spirit—an apparition for instance—is nothing
but an hallucination, the fact remains that this is a spontaneous psychic event not subject to our control.
At any rate it is an autonomous complex, and that is quite sufficient for our purpose.
7 Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, par. 115.
8 Cf. the vision of the “naked boy” in Meister Eckhart (trans. by Evans, I, p. 438).
9 I would remind the reader of the “boys” in Bruno Goetz’s novel Das Reich ohne Raum.
10
Cf. the paper on the “Child Archetype” in this volume, pars. 268f.
11
Hence the many miraculous stories about rishis and mahatmas. A cultured Indian with whom I
once conversed on the subject of gurus told me. when I asked him who his guru had been, that it was
Shankaracharya (who lived in the 8th and 9th cents.) “But that’s the celebrated commentator,” I
remarked in amazement. Whereupon he replied, “Yes, so he was; but naturally it was his spirit,” not in
the least perturbed by my Western bewilderment.
12
I am indebted to Mrs. H. von Roques and Dr. Marie-Louise von Franz for the fairytale material
used here.
13
Finnische und estnische Volksmärchen, No. 68, p. 208 [“How an Orphan Boy Unexpectedly
Found His Luck”]. [All German collections of tales here cited are listed under “Folktales” in the
bibliography, q.v. English titles of tales are given in brackets, though no attempt has been made to
locate published translations.—EDITORS.]
14
The mountain stands for the goal of the pilgrimage and ascent, hence it often has the
psychological meaning of the self. The I Ching describes the goal thus: “The king introduces him / To
the Western Mountain” (Wilhelm/Baynes trans., 1967, p. 74 —Hexagram 17, Sui, “Following”). Cf.
Honorius of Autun (Expositio in Cantica canticorum, col. 389): “The mountains are prophets.” Richard
of St. Victor says: “Vis videre Christum transfiguratum? Ascende in montem istum, disce cognoscere te
ipsum” (Do you wish to see the transfigured Christ? Ascend that mountain and learn to know yourself).
(Benjamin minor, cols. 53–56.)
15
In this respect we would call attention to the phenomenology of yoga.
16
There are numerous examples of this: Spanische und Portugiesische Volksmärchen, pp. 158, 199
[“The White Parrot” and “Queen Rose, or Little Tom”]; Russische Volksmärchen, p. 149 [“The Girl
with No Hands”]: Balkanmärchen, p. 64 [“The Shepherd and the Three Samovilas (Nymphs)”];
Märchen aus Iran, pp. 150ff. [“The Secret of the Bath of Windburg”]; Nordische Volksmärchen, I, p.
231 [“The Werewolf”].
17
To the girl looking for her brothers he gives a ball of thread that rolls towards them (Finnische
und Estnische Volksmärchen, p. 260 [“The Contending Brothers”]). The prince who is searching for the
kingdom of heaven is given a boat that goes by itself (Deutsche Märchen seit Grimm, pp. 381 f. [“The
Iron Boots”]). Other gifts are a flute that sets everybody dancing (Balkanmärchen, p. 173 [“The Twelve
Crumbs”]), or the path-finding ball, the staff of invisibility (Nordische Volksmärchen, I, p. 97 [“The
Princess with Twelve Pairs of Golden Shoes”]), miraculous dogs (ibid., p. 287 [“The Three Dogs”]), or
a book of secret wisdom (Chinesische Volksmärchen, p. 258 [“Jang Liang”]).
18
Finnische und estnische Volksmärchen, loc. cit.
19
Deutsche Märchen seit Grimm, p. 382 [op. cit.]. In one Balkan tale (Balkan-Märchen, p. 65 [“The
Shepherd and the Three Samovilas”]) the old man is called the “Czar of all the birds.” Here the magpie
knows all the answers. Cf. the mysterious “master of the dovecot” in Gustav Meyrink’s novel Der
weisse Dominikaner.
20
Märchen aus Iran, p. 152 [op. cit.].
21
Spanische und Portugiesische Märchen, p. 158 [“The White Parrot”].
22
Ibid., p. 199 [“Queen Rose, or Little Tom”].
23
Nordische Volksmärchen, Vol. I, p. 231f. [“The Werewolf”].
24
Kauhasische Märchen, pp. 35f [“The False and the True Nightingale”].
25
Balkanmärchen, p. 217 [“The Lubi (She-Devil) and the Fair of the Earth”].
26
This occurs in the tale of the griffin, No. 84 in the volume of children’s fairytales collected by the
brothers Grimm (1912), II, pp. 84ft. The text swarms with phonetic mistakes. [The English text (trans.
by Margaret Hunt, rev. by James Stern, no. 165) has “hoary.”—TRANS.]
27
Goethe, “Die neue Melusine.”
28
Cf. “The Visions of Zosimos,” Par. 87 (III, i, 2–3).
29
In one Siberian fairytale (Märchen aus Sibirien, no. 13 [“The Man Turned to Stone”]) the old man
is a white shape towering up to heaven.
30
Indianermärchen aus Sudamerika, p. 285 [“The End of the World and the Theft of Fire”—
Bolivian].
31
Indianermärchen aus Nordamerika, p. 74 [Tales of Manabos: “The Theft of Fire”].
32
Deutsche Märchen seit Grimm, pp. 189ff.
33
In his “Cantilena” (15 cent.). [Cf. Mysterium Coniunctionis, par. 374.].
34
Prudentius, Contra Symmachum, I, 94 (trans. by Thomson, I, p. 356). See Hugo Rahner, “Die
seelenheilende Blume.”
35
Balkanmärchen, pp. 34ff. [“The Deeds of the Czar’s Son and His Two Companions”].
36
Ibid., pp. 177ff. [“The Son-in-Law from Abroad”].
37
Deutsche Märchen seit Grimm, pp. 1ff. [“The Princess in the Tree”].
38
With reference to the quaternity I would call attention to my earlier writings, and in particular to
Psychology and Alchemy and “Psychology and Religion.”
39
The oldest representation I know of this problem is that of the four sons of Horus, three of whom
are occasionally depicted with the heads of animals, and the other with the head of a man.
Chronologically this links up with Ezekiel’s vision of the four creatures, which then reappear in the
attributes of the four evangelists. Three have animal heads and one a human head (the angel). [Cf.
frontispiece to Psychology and Religion: West and East.—EDITORS.]
40
According to the dictum in the “Tabula smaragdina,” “Quod est inferius, est sicut quod est
superius” (That which is below is like that which is above).
41
Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, fig. 54 and par. 539; and, for a more detailed account, “The Spirit
Mercurius,” par. 271.
42
This unexplained passage has been put down to Plato’s “drollery.”
43
In Deutsche Märchen seit Grimm (I, p. 256 [“The Mary-Child”]) it is said that the “Three-in-One”
is in the forbidden room, which seems to me worth noting.
44
Aelian (De natura animalium, I, 47) relates that Apollo condemned the ravens to perpetual thirst
because a raven sent to fetch water dallied too long. In German folklore it is said that the raven has to
suffer from thirst in June or August, the reason given being that he alone did not mourn at the death of
Christ, and that he failed to return when Noah sent him forth from the ark. (Köhler, Kleinere Schriften
zur Märchenforschung, p. 3.) For the raven as an allegory of evil, see the exhaustive account by Hugo
Rahner, “Earth Spirit and Divine Spirit in Patristic Theology.” On the other hand the raven is closely
connected with Apollo as his sacred animal, and in the Bible too he has a positive significance. See
Psalm 147 : 9: “He giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry”; Job 38: 41: “Who
provideth for the raven his food? when his young ones cry unto God, they wander for lack of meat.” Cf.
also Luke 12 : 24. Ravens appear as true “ministering spirits” in I Kings 17 : 6, where they bring Elijah
the Tishbite his daily fare.
45
Pictured as three princesses, buried neck deep, in Nordische Volksmärchen, II, pp. 126ff. [“The
Three Princesses in the White Land”].
46
For the function theory, see Psychological Types.
47
I would like to add, for the layman’s benefit, that the theory of the psyche’s structure was not
derived from fairytales and myths, but is grounded on empirical observations made in the field of
medico-psychological research and was corroborated only secondarily through the study of
comparative symbology, in spheres very far removed from ordinary medical practice.
48
A typical enantiodromia is played out here: as one cannot go any higher along this road, one must
now realize the other side of one’s being, and climb down again.
49
The young man asks himself, on catching sight of the tree, “How would it be if you were to look
at the world from the top of that great tree?”
50
The “omniscience” of the unconscious components is naturally an exaggeration. Nevertheless they
do have at their disposal—or are influenced by—subliminal perceptions and memories of the
unconscious, as well as by its instinctive archetypal contents. It is these that give unconscious activities
their unexpectedly accurate information.
51
The hunter has reckoned without his host, as generally happens. Seldom or never do we think of
the price exacted by the spirit’s activity.
52
Cf. the Heracles cycle.
53
The alchemists stress the long duration of the work and speak of the “longissima via,” “diuturnitas
immensae meditationis,” etc. The number 12 may be connected with the ecclesiastical year, in which
the redemptive work of Christ is fulfilled. The lamb-sacrifice probably comes from this source too.
54
“Daughter of the sea.”—Afanas’ev, Russian Fairy Tales, pp. 553ff.
55
The old man puts the dismembered body into a barrel which he throws into the sea. This is
reminiscent of the fate of Osiris (head and phallus).
56
From kost, ‘bone,’ and pakost, kapost, ‘disgusting, dirty.’
57
Ka-mutef means “bull of his mother.” See Jacobsohn, “Die dogmatische Stellung des Königs in
der Theologie der alten Aegypter,” pp. 17, 35, 41ff.
58
Cf. Symbols of Transformation, pars. 370ff., 421.
59
The fact that she is no ordinary girl, but is of royal descent and moreover the electa of the evil
spirit, proves her nonhuman, mythological nature. I must assume that the reader is acquainted with the
idea of the anima.
60
“I ween that I hung / on the windy tree.
Hung there for nights full nine;
With the spear I was wounded, / and offered I was
To Othin, myself to myself,
On the tree that none / may ever know
What root beneath it runs.”
—Hovamol, 139 (trans. by H. A. Bellows, p. 60).
61
Cf. the experience of God as described by Nietzsche in “Ariadne’s Lament”:
“I am but thy quarry,
Cruellest of hunters!
Thy proudest captive,
Thou brigand back of the clouds!”
—Gedichte und Sprüche, pp. 155ff.
62
Cf. Emma Jung, “On the Nature of the Animus.”
As regards the triadic nature of Wotan cf. Ninck, Wodan una germanischer Schicksalsglaube, p.
142. His horse is also described as, among other things, three-legged.
64
The assumption that they are a brother-sister pair is supported by the fact that the stallion
addresses the mare as “sister.” This may be just a figure of speech; on the other hand sister means
sister, whether we take it figuratively or non-figuratively. Moreover, incest plays a significant part in
mythology as well as in alchemy.
65
Human in so far as the anima is replaced by a human person.
66
The great tree corresponds to the arbor philosophica of the alchemists. The meeting between an
earthly human being and the anima, swimming down in the shape of a mermaid, is to be found in the
so-called “Ripley Scrowle.” Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, fig. 257.
67
Cf. my “Wotan.”
63
1[Originally published as part 5 of Der göttliche Schelm, by Paul Radin, with commentaries by C.
G. Jung and Karl Kerényi (Zurich, 1954). The present translation then appeared in the English version
of the volume: The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology (London and New York, 1956); it
is republished here with only minor revisions.—EDITORS.]
2Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v. Kalendae, p. 1666. Here there is a note to the effect that the French
title “sou-diacres” means literally ‘saturi diaconi’ or ‘diacres saouls’ (drunken deacons).
3These customs seem to be directly modelled on the pagan feast known as “Cervula” or “Cervulus.”
It took place on the kalends of January and was a kind of New Year’s festival, at which people
exchanged strenae (étrennes, ‘gifts’), dressed up as animals or old women, and danced through the
streets singing, to the applause of the populace. According to Du Cange (s.v. cervulus), sacrilegious
songs were sung. This happened even in the immediate vicinity of St. Peter’s in Rome.
4Part of the festum fatuorum in many places was the still unexplained ball-game played by the
priests and captained by the bishop or archbishop, “ut etiam sese ad lusum pilae demittent” (that they
also may indulge in the game of pelota). Pila or pelota is the ball which the players throw to one
another. See Du Cange, s.v. Kalendae and pelota.
5“Puella, quae cum asino a parte Evangelii prope altare collocabatur” (the girl who stationed herself
with the ass at the side of the altar where the gospel is read). Du Cange, s.v. festum asinorum.
6Caetera instead of vetera? [Trans. by A. S. B. Glover:
From the furthest Eastern clime
Came the Ass in olden time,
Comely, sturdy for the road,
Fit to bear a heavy load.
Sing then loudly, master Ass,
Let the tempting titbit pass:
You shall have no lack of hay
And of oats find good supply.
Say Amen, Amen, good ass, (here a genuflection is made)
Now you’ve had your fill of grass;
Ancient paths are left behind:
Sing Amen with gladsome mind.]
7Cf. also Tertullian, Apologeticus adversus gentes, XVI.
8[Reproduced in Symbols of Transformation, pl. XLIII.—EDITORS.]
9Thus Spake Zarathustra, Part. IV, ch. LXXVIII.
10
I am thinking here of the series called “Balli di Sfessania.” The name is probably a reference to the
Etrurian town of Fescennia, which was famous for its lewd songs. Hence “Fescennina licentia” in
Horace, Fescenninus being the equivalent of øαλλικóς.
11
Cf. the article “Daily Paper Pantheon,” by A. McGlashan, in The Lancet (1953), p. 238, pointing
out that the figures in comic-strips have remarkable archetypal analogies.
12
Earlier stages of consciousness seem to leave perceptible traces behind them. For instance, the
chakras of the Tantric system correspond by and large to the regions where consciousness was earlier
localized, anahata corresponding to the breast region, manipura to the abdominal region, svadhistana
to the bladder region, and visuddha to the larynx and the speech-consciousness of modern man. Cf.
Avalon, The Serpent Power.
13
The same idea can be found in the Church Father Irenaeus, who calls it the “umbra.” Adversus
haereses, I, ii, 1.
14
For instance, the ducking of the “Ueli” (from Udalricus = Ulrich, yokel, oaf, fool) in Basel during
the second half of January was, if I remember correctly, forbidden by the police in the 1860’s, after one
of the victims died of pneumonia.
15
Not to forget something means keeping it in consciousness. If the enemy disappears from my field
of vision, then he may possibly be behind me—and even more dangerous.
16
Radin, The World of Primitive Man, p. 3.
17
Ibid., p. 5.
18
By the metaphor “standing behind the shadow” I am attempting to illustrate the fact that, to the
degree in which the shadow is recognized and integrated, the problem of the anima, i.e., of relationship,
is constellated. It is understandable that the encounter with the shadow should have an enduring effect
on the relations of the ego to the inside and outside world, since the integration of the shadow brings
about an alteration of personality. Cf. Aion, Part II of this vol., pars. 13ff.
19
A crocodile stole a child from its mother. On being asked to give it back to her, the crocodile
replied that he would grant her wish if she could give a true answer to his question: “Shall I give the
child back?” If she answers “Yes,” it is not true, and she won’t get the child back. If she answers “No,”
it is again not true, so in either case the mother loses the child.
20
Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness, passim.
1 [Originally written in English as “The Meaning of Individuation,” the introductory chapter of The
Integration of the Personality (New York, 1939; London. 1940), a collection of papers otherwise
translated by Stanley Dell. Professor Jung afterward rewrote the paper, with considerable revision, in
German and published it as “Bewusstsein, Unbewusstes und Individuation,” Zentralblatt für
Psychotherapie und ihre Grenzgebiete (Leipzig), XI (1939) : 5, 257–70. The original English version
was slightly longer, owing to material which Mr. Dell edited into it from other writings of Jung’s, for
the special requirements of the Integration volume. It is the basis of the present version, together with
the 1939 German version.—EDITORS.]
2 Modern physicists (Louis de Broglie, for instance) use instead of this the concept of something
“discontinuous.”
3 [See also Jung’s Psychiatric Studies, index, s. vv.—EDITORS.]
4 By this I mean only certain cases of schizophrenia, such as the famous Schreber case (Memoirs of
My Nervous Illness) or the case published by Nelken (“Analytische Beobachtungen über Phantasien
eines Schizophrenen,” 1912).
5 Psychological Types, Def. 48; “The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious,” pars.
296ff.; Psychology and Alchemy, Part II. Cf. also the third paper in this volume.
6 Toni Wolff, “Einführung in die Grundlagen der Komplexen Psychologie,” p. 107. [Also Aion, ch.
2.—EDITORS.]
7 Symbols of Transformation, Part II.
8 Cf. supra, “The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales.”
9 See n. 4, above.
10
[Untitled poem (“Warum gabst du uns die tiefen Blicke”) in Werke, II, p. 43.—EDITORS.]
11
Ripley Reviv’d; or, An Exposition upon Sir George Ripley’s Hermetico-Poetical Works (1678),
trans. into German in 1741 and possibly known to Goethe.
12
Cf. the celebrated “Visio Arislei” (Artis auriferae, 1593, II, pp. 246ff.), also available in German:
Ruska, Die Vision des Arisleus, p. 22.
13
For an example of the method, see Psychology and Alchemy, Part II.
14
In my Symbols of Transformation, I have described the case of a young woman with a “herostory,” i.e., an animus fantasy that yielded a rich harvest of mythological material. Rider Haggard,
Benoît, and Goethe (in Faust) have all stressed the historical character of the anima.
15
[Psychological Types, Def. 51 and ch. V, 3c. In the Collected Works, the term “uniting symbol”
supersedes the earlier translation “reconciling symbol.”—EDITORS.]
16
[Cf. “The Transcendent Function.”—EDITORS.]
1 [Translated from “Zur Empirie des Individuationsprozesses,” Gestaltungen des Unbewussten
(Zurich, 1950), where it carries the author’s note that it is a “thoroughly revised and enlarged version of
the lecture of the same title first published in the Eranos-Jahrbuch 1933,” i.e., in 1934. The original
version was translated by Stanley Dell and published in The Integration of the Personality (New York,
1939; London, 1940). The motto by Lao-tzu is from a translation by Carol Baumann in her article
“Time and Tao,” Spring, 1951, p. 30.—EDITORS.]
2 Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 138f., 306, and Wei Po-yang, “An Ancient Chinese Treatise on
Alchemy.”
3 Psychology and Alchemy, par. 109, n. 38.
4 Caesarius of Heisterbach, The Dialogue on Miracles, trans. by Scott and Bland, Dist. IV, c. xxxiv
(p. 231) and Dist. I, c. xxxii (p. 42): “His soul was like a glassy spherical vessel, that had eyes before
and behind.” A collection of similar reports in Bozzano, Popoli primitivi e Manifestation supernormali.
5 Cf. my “Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon,” par. 190. It is Hermes Kyllenios, who calls up the
souls. The caduceus corresponds to the phallus. Cf. Hippolytus, Elenchos, V, 7, 30.
6 The same association in Elenchos, V, 16, 8: serpent = δύναμις of Moses.
7 Ruland (Lexicon, 1612) speaks of “the gliding of the mind or spirit into another world.” In the
Chymical Wedding of Rosencreutz the lightning causes the royal pair to come alive. The Messiah
appears as lightning in the Syrian Apocalypse of Baruch (Charles, Apocrypha, II, p. 510). Hippolytus
(Elenchos, VIII, 10, 3) says that, in the view of the Docetists, the Monogenes drew together “like the
greatest lightning-flash into the smallest body” (because the Aeons could not stand the effulgence of the
Pleroma), or like “light under the eyelids.” In this form he came into the world through Mary (VIII, 10,
5). Lactantius (Works, trans. by Fletcher, I, p. 470) says: “… the light of the descending God may be
manifest in all the world as lightning.” This refers to Luke 17 : 24: “… as the lightning that lighteneth
… so shall the Son of man be in his day.” Similarly Zach. 9: 14: “And the Lord God … his dart shall go
forth as lightning” (DV).
8 Forty Questions concerning the Soul (Works, ed. Ward and Langcake, II, p. 17).
9 The High and Deep Searching of the Threefold Life of Man (Works, II), p. 11.
10
Aurora (Works, I), X.17, p. 84.
11
Ibid., X. 38, p. 86.
12
Ibid., X. 53, p. 87.
13
Salniter = sal nitri = Saltpetre; like salt, the prima materia. Three Principles of the Divine Essence
(Works, I), I. 9, p. 10.
14
Aurora, XV. 84, p. 154. Here the lightning is not a revelation of God’s will but a Satanic change
of state. Lightning is also a manifestation of the devil (Luke 10: 18).
15
Ibid., XIX. 19, p. 185.
16
Ibid., XI. 10, p. 93.
17
For Böhme the four “qualities” coincide partly with the four elements but also with dry, wet,
warm, cold, the four qualities of taste (e.g., sharp, bitter, sweet, sour), and the four colours.
18
A heart forms the centre of the mandala in the Forty Questions. See Fig. 1.
19
Aurora, XI, 27–28, p. 94.
20
“Stock” in this context can mean tree or cross (σταυóς, ‘stake, pole, post’), but it could also refer
to a staff or stick. It would then be the magical wand that, in the subsequent development of these
pictures, begins to sprout like a tree. Cf. infra, par. 570.
21
Aurora, XI. 37, p. 95.
22
The lower darkness corresponds to the elemental world, which has a quaternary character. Cf. the
four Achurayim mentioned in the commentary to Picture 7.
23
The reason for this is that the lightning is caught by the quaternity of elements and qualities and so
divided into four.
24
Saltpetre is the arcane substance, synonymous with Sal Saturni and Sal Tartan mundi maioris
(Khunrath, Von hylealischen Chaos, 1597, p. 263). Tartarus has a double meaning in alchemy: on the
one hand it means tartar (hydrogen potassium tartrate); on the other, the lower half of the cooking
vessel and also the arcane substance (Eleazar, Uraltes Chymisches Werk, 1760, II, p. 91, no. 32). The
metals grow in the “cavitates terrae” (Tartarus). Salt, according to Khunrath, is the “centrum terrae
physicum.” Eleazar says that the “Heaven and Tartarus of the wise” change all metals back into
mercury. Saturn is a dark “malefic” star. There is the same symbolism in the Offertory from the Mass
for the Dead: “Deliver the souls of all the faithful departed from the pains of hell and from the deep pit;
deliver them from the mouth of the lion [attribute of Ialdabaoth, Saturn], lest Tartarus lay hold on them,
and they fall into darkness.” Saturn “maketh darkness” (Böhme, Threefold Life, IX. 85, p. 96) and is
one aspect of the Salniter (Signatura rerum, XIV. 46–48, p. 118). Salniter is the “dried” or “fixed” form
and embodiment of the seven “Source Spirits” of God, who are all contained in the seventh, Mercury,
the “Word of God” (Aurora, XI. 86f., p. 99 and XV. 49, p. 151; Sig. rer., IV. 35, p. 28). Salniter, like
mercury, is the mother and cause of all metals and salts (Sig. rer., XIV. 46 and III. 16, pp. 118 and 19).
It is a subtle body, the paradisal earth and the spotless state of the body before the Fall, and hence the
epitome of the prima materia.
25
[“Flagrat” and “lubet” are used by Böhme to signify respectively “flash, flame, burning” And
“Desire, Affect.”—EDITORS.]
26
Reference to the “waters which were above the firmament” (Gen. 1 : 7).
27
Sig. rer., XIV. 32–33, p. 116.
28
Tabula principiorum, 3 (Amsterdam edn., 1682, p. 271).
29
Ibid., 5, p. 271.
30
Ibid., 42, p. 279.
31
Four Tables of Divine Revelation, p. 14.
32
Ibid., p. 13.
33
Its official name is hydrargyrum sulfuratum rubrum. Another version of its sign is : cf. Lüdy,
Alchemistische und Chemische Zeichen, and Gessmann, Die Geheimsymbole der Alchymie,
Arzneikunde und Astrologie des Mittelalters.
34
“There is very great doubt among doctors as to what is actually signified by Cinnabar, for the term
is applied by different authorities to very diverse substances.” Ruland, Lexicon, p. 102.
35
Berthelot, Alch. grecs, III, xxix, 24.
36
Ibid., I, V, 1. It may be remarked that the dragon has three ears and four legs (The axiom of
Maria! Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 209f.)
37
Hist, nat., Lib. ΧΧΧΠΙ, cap. vii.
38
The medical term anthrax means ‘carbuncle, abscess.’
39
Antimony is also denoted by . Regulus = “The impure mass of metal formed beneath the slag in
melting and reducing ores” (Merriam-Webster).
40
Michael Maier (Symbola aureae mensae, 1617, p. 380) says: “The true antimony of the
Philosophers lies hidden in the deep sea, like the son of the King.”
41
Praised as Hercules Morbicida, “slayer of diseases” (ibid., p. 378).
42
The book was (first?) mentioned by Maier, ibid., pp. 379ff.
43
44
Also , a pure quaternity.
Táρταρος, like βóρβορος, βάρβαρος, etc. is probably onomatopoeic, expressing terror. Tάργaυoυ
means ‘vinegar, spoilt wine.’ Derived from ταράσσω, ‘to stir up, disturb, frighten’ (τάραγμα, ‘trouble,
confusion’) and τάρβος, ‘terror, awe.’
45
Rieu trans., p. 351.
46
Hippolytus, Elenchos, V, 7, 30; Kerényi, “Hermes der Seelenführer,” p. 29.
47
Ibid., p. 30.
48
The Pairs of functions are thinking/feeling, sensation/intuition. see Psychological Types,
definitions.
49
Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, par. 329, for the a priori presence of the mandala symbol.
50
Details in ibid., par. 406.
51
Preisendanz, Papyri Graecae Magicae, II, p. 139.
52
“The Spirit Mercurius,” pars. 267ff.
53
Psychology and Alchemy, Part III, ch. 5.
54
Cf. Wilhelm and Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower.
55
Though we talk a great deal and with some justice about the resistance which the unconscious puts
up against becoming conscious, it must also be emphasized that it has a kind of gradient towards
consciousness, and this acts as an urge to become conscious.
56
The last-named refers to Rev. 21 : 21.
57
Miss X was referring to my remarks in “The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious,”
which she knew in its earlier version in Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology (2nd. edn., 1920).
58
The expressions “square,” “four-square,” are used in English in this sense.
59
The “squared figure” in the centre of the alchemical mandala, symbolizing the lapis, and whose
midpoint is Mercurius, is called the “mediator making peace between the enemies or elements.” [Cf.
Aion (Part II of this vol.), pars. 377f.—EDITORS.]
60
So called in an invocation to Hermes. Cf. Preisendanz, II, p. 139. Further particulars in
Psychology and Alchemy, par. 172; fig. 214 is a repetition of the quadrangulum secretum sapientum
from the Tractatus aureus (1610), p. 43. Cf. also my “The Spirit Mercurius,” par. 272.
61
Despite my efforts I could find no other source for the “mercury.” Naturally cryptomnesia cannot
be ruled out. considering the definiteness of the idea and the astonishing coincidence of its appearance
(as in Böhme), I incline to the hypothesis of spontaneous emergence, which does not eliminate the
archetype but, on the contrary, presupposes it.
62
Cf. the “innermost Birth of the soul” in Böhme.
63
This homo interior or altus was Mercurius, or was at least derived from him. Cf. “The Spirit
Mercurius,” pars. 284ff.
64
The lines are painted in the classical four colours.
65
The “giant” fish of the Abercius inscription (c. A.D. 200). [Cf. Aion, par. 127, n. 4.—EDITORS.]
66
cf. Frobenius, Schicksalskunde, pp. 119f. The author’s interpretations seem to me questionable in
some respects.
67
Psychology and Alchemy, par. 204; “The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales,” pars. 425
and 430; and Psychology and Religion, par. 184.
68
Psychology and Alchemy, index, s.v. “quartering.”
69
Hippolytus, Elenchos, V, 26, 1ff.
70
Cf. the “account … of a many-coloured and many-shaped sphere” from the Cod. Vat. 190 (cited
by Cumont in Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra), which says: “The all-wise
God fashioned an immensely great dragon of gigantic length, breadth and thickness, having its darkcoloured head … towards sunrise, and its tail … towards sunset.” Of the dragon the text says: “Then
the all-wise Demiurge, by his highest command, set in motion the great dragon with the spangled
crown, I mean the twelve signs of the zodiac which it carried on its back.” Eisler (Weltenmantel und
Himmelszelt, p. 389) connects this zodiacal serpent with Leviathan. For the dragon as symbol of the
year, see the Mythographus Vaticanus III, in Classicorum Auctorum e Vaticanis Codicibus Editorum,
VI(1831), p. 162. There is a similar association in Horapollo, Hieroglyphica, trans. by Boas, p. 57.
71
“The Spirit Mercurius,” ch. 6.
72
Meier, Antike Inkubation und moderne Psychotherapie.
73
Vishnu is described as dãmodara, ‘bound about the body with a rope.” I am not sure whether this
symbol should be considered here; I mention it only for the sake of completeness.
74
Michael Maier, De circulo physico quadrato (1616), ch. I.
75
Christ in medieval alchemy. Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, Part III, ch. 5.
76
The writings of the physician and philosopher Leone Ebreo (c. 1460–1520) enjoyed widespread
popularity in the sixteenth century and exercised a far-reaching influence on his contemporaries and
their successors. His work is a continuation of the Neoplatonist thought developed by the physician and
alchemist Marsilio Ficino(1433–99) in his commentary on Plato’s Symposium. Ebreo’s real name was
Don Judah Abrabanel, of Lisbon. (Sometimes the texts have Abrabanel, sometimes Abarbanel.)
77
Cf. the English version, The Philosophy of Love, trans. by Friedeberg-Seeley and Barnes, pp. 92
and 94. The source of this view can be found in the cabalistic interpretation of Yesod (Knorr von
Rosenroth, Kabbala Denudata, 1677–84).
78
This pseudo-biological terminology fits in with the patient’s scientific education.
79
Another alchemical idea: the synodos Lunae cum Sole, or hierogamy of sun and moon. Cf. “The
Psychology of the Transference,” par. 421, n. 17.
80
More on this in “On the Nature of the Psyche,” par. 498.
81
Here one must think of the world-encircling Ocean and the world-snake hidden in it: Leviathan,
the “dragon in the sea,” which, in accordance with the Egyptian tradition of Typhon (Set) and the sea
he rules over, is the devil. “The devil … surrounds the seas and the ocean on all sides” (St. Jerome,
Epistolae, Part I, p. 12). Further particulars in Rahner, “Antenna Crucis II: Das Meer der Welt,” pp.
89ff.
82
We find the same motif in the two mandalas published by Esther Harding in Psychic Energy: Its
Source and Its Transformation [Pls. XVI, XVII].
83
Naas is the same as the snakelike nous and mercurial serpent of alchemy.
84
Hippolytus, Elenchos, V, 26, 21ff. This tale of Adam and Eve and the serpent was preserved until
well into the Middle Ages.
85
Apparently a play on the words
and
(‘created all’).
Elenchos, V, 26, 33.
86
See the illustration from Reusner’s Pandora (1588) in my “Paracelsus as a Spiritual
Phenomenon,” Fig.B4.
87
In accordance with the classical view that the snake is πνευματίκώτατον ξωον, ‘the most spiritual
animal.” For this reason it was a symbol for the Nous and the Redeemer.
88
Cf. what St. John of the Cross says about the “dark night of the soul.” His interpretation is as
helpful as it is psychological.
89
Hence the alchemical mandala was likened to a rosarium (rose-garden).
90
In Buddhism the “four great kings” (lokapata), the world-guardians, form the quaternity. Cf. the
Samyutta-Nikaya, in Dialogues of the Buddha, Part II, p. 242.
91
“God separated and divided this primordial water by a kind of mystical distillation into four parts
and regions” (Sendivogius, Epist. XIII, in Manget, Bibliotheca chemica, 1702, II, p. 496). In
Christianos (Berthelot, Alch. grecs, VI, ix, 1 and x, 1) the egg, and matter itself, consist of four
components. (Cited from Xenocrates, ibid., VI, xv, 8.)
92
In Taoist philosophy, movement to the right means a “falling” life-process, as the spirit is then
under the influence of the feminine p’o-soul, which embodies the yin principle and is by nature
passionate. Its designation as the anima (cf. my “Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower,”
pars. 57ff.) is psychologically correct, although this touches only one aspect of it. The p’o-soul
entangles hun, the spirit, in the world-process and in reproduction. A leftward or backward movement,
on the other hand, means the “rising” movement of life. A “deliverance from outward things” occurs
and the spirit obtains control over the anima. This idea agrees with my findings, but it does not take
account of the fact that a person can easily have the spirit outside and the anima inside.
93
This was told to me by the Rimpoche of Bhutia Busty, Sikkim.
94
Water also symbolizes the “materiality” of the spirit when it has become a “fixed” doctrine. One
is reminded, too, of the blue-green colour in böhme, signifying “liberty.”
95
For the double nature of the spirit (Mercurius duplex of the alchemists) see “The Phenomenology
of the spirit in Fairytales,” supra.
96
Cf. the fiery serpent of Lucifer in Böhme.
97
Cf. “A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity,” pars. 243ff.
98
Elenchos, V, 26, 27ff.
99
Psychology and Alchemy, par. 457.
100
Hauck, Realencyclopädie für protestantische Theologie, IV, p. 173, li. 59.
101
Baumgartner (Die Philosophie des Alarms de Insults, II, Part 4, p. 118) traces this saying to a
liber Hermetis or liber Trismegisti, Cod. Par. 6319 and Cod. Vat. 3060.
102
— coronae.
Δαίμων ή πάντα κυβέρναι, a feminine daemonium.
104
Freeman, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers, p. 45.
105
Writings of Clement of Alexandria, trans. by Wilson, II, p. 248: “Also Dionysius Thrax, the
grammarian, in his book Respecting the Exposition of the Symbolical Signification of Circles, says
expressly, ‘Some signified actions not by words only, but also by symbols: … as the wheel that is
turned in the temples of the gods [by] the Egyptians, and the branches that are given to the worshippers.
For the Thracian Orpheus says:
103
For the works of mortals on earth are like branches,
Nothing has but one fate in the mind, but all things
Revolve in a circle, nor is it lawful to abide in one place,
But each keeps its own course wherewith it began.’”
[Verses translated from the Overbeck version in German quoted by the
author.—TRANS.]
106
Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, II, p. 102. Aetius, De plac. phil, 1, 7, 16.
A Reference to Cicero, De natura deorum (trans. by Rackham, p. 31): “Parmenides … invents a
purely fanciful something resembling a crown—stephane is his name for it—an unbroken ring of
glowing lights encircling the sky, which he entitles god; but no one can imagine this to possess divine
form, or sensation.” This ironic remark of Cicero’s shows that he was the child of another age, already
very far from the primordial images.
108
There are innumerable representations of the sun-child sitting in the lotus. Cf. Erman, Die
Religion der Aegypter, p. 62 and Handbook of Egyptian Religion, p. 26. It is also found on Gnostic
107
gems [Psychology and Alchemy, fig. 52]. The lotus is the customary seat of the gods in India.
109
[Or, as in the DV, “The wicked walk round about.”—EDITORS.]
110
Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 214f
111
This interpretation was confirmed for me by my Tibetan mentor, Lingdam Gomchen, abbot of
Bhutia Busty: the swastika, he said, is that which “cannot be broken, divided, or spoilt.” Accordingly, it
would amount to an inner consolidation of the mandala.
112
Cf. the similar motif in the mandala of the Amitāyur-dhyāna Sūtra, in “The Psychology of
Eastern Meditation,” pars. 917, 930.
113
“Monas hieroglyphica,” Theatr. chem. (1602), II, p. 220. Dee also associates the cross with fire.
114
[Cf. “Answer to Job,” Psychology and Religion, par. 595, n. 8.—EDITORS.]
115
The seven kings refer to previous aeons, “perished” worlds, and the four Achurayim are the socalled “back of God”: “All belong to Malkhuth; which is so called because it is last in the system of
Aziluth … they exist in the depths of the Shckinah” (Kabbala Denudata, I, p. 72). They form a
masculine-feminine quaternio “of the Father and Mother of the highest, and of the Senex Israel and
Tebhunah” (I, p. 675). The Senex is Ain-Soph or Kether (I, p. 635), Tebhunah is Binah, intelligence (I,
p. 726). The shards also mean unclean spirits.
116
Kabbala Denudata, 1, pp. 675L The shards also stand for evil. (Zohar, I, 137aff., II, 34b.).
According to a Christian interpretation from the 17th century, Adam Belial is the body of the Messiah,
the “entire body or the host of shards.” (Cf. II Cor. 6 : 15.) In consequence of the Fall, the host of
shards irrupted into Adam’s body, its outer layers being more infected than the inner ones. The “Anima
Christi” fought and finally destroyed the shards, which signify matter. In connection with Adam Belial
the text refers to Proverbs 6 : 12: “A naughty person, a wicked man, walketh with a froward mouth”
(AV). (Kabbala Denudata, II, Appendix, cap. IX, sec.2, p. 56.)
117
“Hyperion’s Song Of Fate,” in Gedichte, p. 315. (Trans. as in Jung, Symbols of Transformation,
p. 399.)
118
Concerning the total vision of the “Life of Spirit and Nature,” Böhme says: “We may then liken it
to a round spherical Wheel, which goes on all sides, as the Wheel in Ezekiel shows” (Mysterium
pansophicum, Sãmmtliche Werke, ed. Schiebler, VI, p. 416).
119
Quaestiones Theosophicae (Amsterdam edn., 1682), p. 23. Aurora, XVII.9, p. 168, mentions the
“seven Spirits, which kindled themselves in their outermost Birth or Geniture.” They are the Spirits of
God, “Source-Spirits” of eternal and timeless Nature, corresponding to the seven planets and forming
the “Wheel of the Centre” (Sig. rer., IX, 8ff., p. 60). These seven Spirits are the seven above-mentioned
“Qualities” which all come from one mother. She is the “twofold Source, evil and good in all things”
(Aurora, p. 27). Cf. the “goddess” in Parmenides and the two-bodied Edem in Justin's gnosis.
120
Gulielmus Mennens(1525–1608), a learned Flemish alchemist, wrote a book entitled Aurei
velleris, sive sacrae philosophiae, naturae et artis admirabilium libri tres (Antwerp, 1604). Printed in
Theatr. chem., V(1622), pp. 267ft.
121
“As therefore God is three and one, so also the matter from which he created all things is triplex
and one.” This is the alchemical equivalent of the conscious and uncon-cious triads of functions in
psychology. Cf. supra, “The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales,” pars. 425 and 436ff.
122
Mennens seems to refer not to the Cabala direct, but to a text ascribed to Moses, which I have not
been able to trace. It is certainly not a reference to the Greek text called by Berthelot “Chimie de
Moise” (Alch. grecs, IV, xxii). Moses is mentioned now and then in the old literature, and Lenglet du
Frcsnoy (Histoire de la philosophie hermétique, 1742, III, p. 22) cites under No. 26 a MS from the
Vienna Bibliothek entitled: “Moysis Prophetae et Legislatoris Hebraeorum secretum Chimicum”
(Ouvrage supposé).
123
“Aurei velleris,” I, Cap. X, in Theatr. chem., V, pp. 334t.
124
The cauda pavonis is identified by Khunrath with Iris, the “nuncia Dei.” Dorn (“De
transmutatione metallorum,” Theatr. chem., I, p. 599) explains it as follows: “This is the bird which
flies by night without wings, which the early dew of heaven, continually acting by upward and
downward ascent and descent, turns into the head of a crow (caput corvi), then into the tail of a
peacock, and afterwards it acquires the bright wings of a swan, and lastly an extreme redness, an index
of its fiery nature.” In Basilides (Hippolytus, Elenchos, X, 14, 1) the peacock’s egg is synonymous with
the sperma mundi, the
. It contains the “fullness of colours,” 365 of them. The
golden colour should be produced from the peacock’s eggs, we are told in the Cyranides (Delatte,
Textes latins et vieux français relatifs aux Cyranides, p. 171). The light of Mohammed has the form of
a peacock, and the angels were made out of the peacock’s sweat (Aptowitzer, “Arabisch-Judische
Schopfungstheorien,” pp. 209, 233).
125
Sig. rer., XIV, 10ff., pp. 112f.
126
See n. 118.
127
The carbuncle is a synonym for the lapis. “The king bright as a carbuncle” (Lilius, an old source
in the “Rosarium philosophorum,” Art. aurif., 1593, II, p. 329). “A ray … in the earth, shining in the
darkness after the manner of a carbuncle gathered into itself” (from Michael Maier’s exposition of the
theory of Thomas Aquinas, in Symbola aureae tnensae, p. 377). “I found a certain stone, red, shining,
transparent, and brilliant, and in it I saw all the forms of the elements and also their contraries”
(quotation from Thomas in Mylius, Philosophia reformata, p. 42). For heaven, gold, and carbuncle as
synonyms for the rubedo, see ibid., p. 104. The lapis is “shimmering carbuncle light” (Khunrath, Von
hyleal. Chaos, p. 237). Ruby or carbuncle is the name for the corpus glorificatum (Glauber, Tractatus
de natura salium, Part I, p. 42). In Rosencreutz’s Chemical Wedding (1616) the bed-chamber of Venus
is lit by carbuncles (p. 97). Cf. what was said above about anthrax (ruby and cinnabar).
128
Mysterium pansophicum, pp. 416f
129
The chemical causes of the cauda pavonis are probably the iridiscent skin on molten metals and
the vivid colours of certain compounds of mercury and lead. These two metals were often used as the
primary material.
130
Statistically, at least, green is correlated with the sensation function.
131
[See the index, s.v.; also Jung, “The Philosophical Tree.”—EDITORS.]
132
“Lovely laurel, evergreen in all its parts, standing midmost among many trees smitten by
lightning, bears the inscription: ‘untouched it triumphs.’ this similitude refers to mary the virgin, alone
among all creatures undefiled by any lightning-flash of sin.” picinelli, Mondo simbolico (1669), Lib.
IX, cap. XVI.
133
cf. “The Spirit Mercurius,” par. 241.
134
The colour correlated with sensation in the mandalas of other persons is usually green.
135
Cf. the Achurayim quaternity.
136
Chochmah (= face of the man), Binah (= eagle), Gedulah (= lion), Gebhurah (= bull), the four
symbolical angels in Ezekiel’s vision.
137
He gives them the names of planets and describes them as the “four Bailiffs, who hold
government in the Mother, the Birth-giver,” They are Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, and Sun. “In these four
Forms the Spirit’s Birth consists, viz. the true Spirit both in the inward and outward Being” (Sig. rer.,
IX, 9ff., p. 61).
138
The connection between tree and mother, especially in Christian tradition, is discussed at length
in Symbols of Transformation, Part II.
139
A Summary Appendix of the Soul, p. 117.
140
Forty Questions, pp. 24ff.
141
I do not feel qualified to go into the ethics of what “venerable Mother Nature” has to do in order
to unfold her precious flower. Some people can, and those whose temperament makes them feel an
ethical compulsion must do this in order to satisfy a need that is also felt by others. Erich Neumann has
discussed these problems in a very interesting way in his Tiefenpsychologie und Neue Ethik. It will be
objected that my respect for Nature is a very unethical attitude, and I shall be accused of shirking
“decisions.” People who think like this evidently know all about good and evil, and why and for what
one has to decide. Unfortunately I do not know all this so precisely, but I hope for my patients and for
myself that everything, light and darkness, decision and agonizing doubt, may turn to “good”—and by
“good” I mean a development such as is here described, an unfolding which does no damage to either
of them but conserves the possibilities of life.
142
The Secret of the Golden Flower had not been published then. Picture 9 was reproduced in it.
143
Cf. Kabbala Denudata, Appendix, ch. IV, sec.2, p. 26: “The beings created by the infinite Deity
through the First Adam were all spiritual beings, viz. they were simple, shining acts, being one in
themselves, partaking of a being that may be thought of as the midpoint of a sphere, and partaking of a
life that may be imagined as a sphere emitting rays.”
144
“Parable of the Cloth,” in The First Fifty Discourses from the Collection of the Middle-Length
Discourses (Majjhima Nikaya) of Gotama the Buddha, I, pp. 39f., modified. This reference to the
Buddha is not accidental, since the figure of the Tathagata in the lotus seat occurs many times in the
patient’s mandalas.
145
Tibetan mandalas are not so divided, but very often they are embedded between heaven and hell,
i.e., between the benevolent and the wrathful deities.
146
This is the lower triad that corresponds to the Trinity, just as the devil is occasionally depicted
with three heads. Cf. supra, “Phenomenology of the spirit in fairytales,” pars. 425 and 436ff.
147
Trans. by Wilhelm and Baynes (1967), pp. 67ff.
148
Psychology ana Alchemy, par. 338.
149
The same idea as the transformation into the lapis. Cf. ibid., par. 378.
150
Good examples are The secret of the Golden Flower and Suzuki, Introduction to Zen Buddhism.
151
Cf. the above quotation from the “Aureum vellus” of Mennens, where earth signifies the Father
and his “shadow” signifies matter. Böhme’s view is thoroughly consistent with the character of
Yahweh, who, despite his role as the guardian of justice and morality, is amoral and unjust. cf. stade,
biblische théologie des alten testaments, I, pp. 88f.
152
I am purposely disregarding the numerous arrangements in a circle such as the rex gloriae with
the four evangelists, Paradise with its four rivers, the heavenly hierarchies of Dionysius the Areopagite,
etc. These all ignore the reality of evil, because they regard it as a mere privatio boni and thereby
dismiss it with a euphemism.
153
Cf. Rahner, “Die seelenheilende Blume.”
154
Cf. Bouché-Leclercq, L’Astrologie grecque, p. 136: Cancer = “crabe ou écrevisse.” The
constellation was usually represented as a tailless crab.
155
“The crab is wont to change with the changing seasons; casting off its old shell, it puts on a new
and fresh one.” This, says Picinelli, is an “emblema” of the resurrection of the dead, and cites
Ephesians 4: 23: “… be renewed in the spirit of your minds” (RSV). (Mondo simbólico, Lib. VI, No.
45.)
156
Foreseeing the flooding of the Nile, the crabs (like the tortoises and crocodiles) bring their eggs in
safety to a higher place. “They foresee the future in their mind long before it comes,” Caussin,
Polyhistor symbolicus (1618), p. 442.
157
Masenius, Speculum imaginum veritatis occultae (1714), cap. LXVII, 30, p. 768.
158
De Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, II, p. 355.
159
Roscher, Lexikon, II, col.959, s.v. “Karkinos.” The same motif occurs in a dream described in
Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, pars. 80ff.
160
In egypt, the heliacal rising of Cancer indicates the beginning of the annual flooding of the Nile
and hence the beginning of the year. Bouché-Leclercq, p. 137.
161
[Cf. “Psychology and Religion,” p. 67, n. 5.—EDITORS.]
162
Propertius, trans. by Butler, p. 875.
163
De Gubernatis, II, p. 356.
164
The Panchatantra Reconstructed, ed. by Edgerton, II, pp. 403f Cf. also Hoffmann-Krayer et al.,
Handwõrterbuch des Deutschen Aberglaubens, V, col. 448, s.v. “Krebs.”
165
De Gubernatis, II, p. 356.
166
Her horoscope shows four earth signs but no air sign. The danger coming from the animus is
reflected in
.
167
Cf. the Buddhist conception of the “eight points of the compass” in the Amitāyur-dhyāna Sūtra;
cf. “The Psychology of Eastern Meditation,” pp. 560ff.
168
I do not hesitate to take the synchronistic phenomena that underlie astrology seriously. Just as
there is an eminently psychological reason for the existence of alchemy, so too in the case o« astrology.
Nowadays it is no longer interesting to know how far these two fields are abeirations; we should rather
investigate the psychological foundations on which they rest. [Cf. Jung, “Synchronicity: An Acausal
Connecting Principle,” passim.—EDITORS.]
169
An instance of the axiom of Maria. Other well-known examples are Horus and his 4 (or 3 + 1)
sons, the 4 symbolical figures in Ezekiel, the 4 evangelists and—last but not least—the 3 synoptic
gospels and the 1 gospel of St. John.
170
[Ch. 2, pp. 211ff.—EDITORS.]
171
“On the Nature of the Psyche,” sec. 6.
172
[Pictures 18–24, which were not reproduced with the earlier versions of this essay, were chosen
by Professor Jung from among those painted by the patient after the termination of analytical work. 1
he dates of the entire series of pictures were as follows:1–6, Oct. 1928; 7 9, Nov. 1928; 10, Jan.; 11,
Feb.; 12, June.; 13, Aug.; 14, Sept.; 15, Oct.; 16. 17, Nov, all 1920; 18, Feb. 1930; 19, Aug. 1930; 20,
March 1931; 21, July 1933; 22. Aug 1933 23, 1935; 24, “Night-blooming cereus, done May 1938, on
last trip to Jung” (patient’s notation).—EDITORS.]
173
Isaiah 45 : 8: “And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way” (RSV).
174
The Golden Ass, trans. by Graves, p. 286.
175
Case material in Meier, “Spontanmanifestationen des kollektiven Unbewussten,” 284ff.;
Bänziger, “Persönliches und Archetypisches im Individuationsprozess,” p. 272; Gerhard Adler, Studies
in Analytical Psychology, pp. 90ff.
176
Active imagination is also mentioned in “The Aims of Psychotherapy,” pars. 101 ft. Cf. also “The
Transcendent Function.” For other pictures of mandalas see the next paper in the present vol.
177
[Psychologische Interpretation von Kindertràumen, winter semester, 1939–40, Federal
Polytechnic Institute, Zurich (mimeographed stenographic record). The same dream is discussed by Dr.
Jacobi in Complex/Archetype/Symbol, pp. 1398:.—EDITORS.]
178
One thinks here of a Noah’s Ark that crosses over the waters of death and leads to a rebirth of all
life.
179
In Leviticum Homiliae, V, 2 (Migne, P.G., vol.12, col. 449).
180
Ecclesiasticus 27 : 11.
181
In libros Regnorum homiliae, I, 4 (Migne, P.G., vol. 12, cols. 998–99).
1 [First published, as “Über Mandalasymbolik,” in Gestaltungen des Unbewussten (Psychologische
Abhandlungen, VII; Zurich, 1950). The illustrations had originally been collected for a seminar which
Professor Jung gave at Berlin in 1930. Nine of them (Figs. 1, 6, 9, 25, 26, 28, 36, 37, 38) were
published with brief comments as “Examples of European Mandalas” in Das Geheimnis der goldenen
Blüte, by Jung and Richard Wilhelm (Munich, 1929; 2nd edn., Zurich, 1938), translated by C. F.
Baynes as The Secret of the Golden Flower (London and New York, 1931; rev. edn., 1962);
subsequently published in Coll. Works, vol. 13. In his Memories, Dreams, Reflections Jung
acknowledged having painted the mandalas in Figs. 6 and 36 (thus also those in Figs. 28 and 29) and
the frontispiece; see U.S. edn., pp. 197, 195; Brit, edn., pp. 188ff., 187.—EDITORS.]
2 Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 122ff.
3 [Cf. Jung, Psychological Commentary on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, par. 850.—EDITORS.]
4 Cf. the preceding paper, par. 552.
5 The motif of 3½ (the Apocalyptic number of days of affliction; cf. Rev. 11 : 9 and 11) refers to the
alchemical dilemma “3 or 4?” or to the sesquitertian proportion (3 : 4). The sesquitertius is 3 + ⅓.
6 There is a very interesting American Indian parallel to this mandala: a white snake coiled round a
centre shaped like a cross in four colours. Cf. Newcomb and Reichard, Sandpaintings of the Navajo
Shooting Chant, Pl. XIII, pp. 13 and 78. The book contains a large number of interesting mandalas in
colour.
7 The Egyptian Horus-child is likewise shown sitting in the lotus.
8 Note the allusion in the name “Liver-pool.” The liver is that which causes to live, the seat of life.
[Cf. Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pp. 197f./195f.]
9 [Cf. The Practice of Psychotherapy, 2nd edn., appendix, esp. par. 557.—EDITORS.]
10
[Cf. “Psychology and Religion,” pars. 136f., 156f.]
11
[Cf. “The Philosophical Tree,” par. 336 and fig. 27.—EDITORS.]
12
Cf. Aion (Part II of this volume), ch.5.
13
Sacred Books of the East, VIII, p. 186, modified.
14
Cf. Symbols of Transformation, Part II, ch. 7.
15
Rig-Veda, X, 129, from Deussen trans., I, p. 123.
16
[Cf. Aion, pars. 181f.—EDITORS.]
17
I, 9, 3, 15ff. Trans. from Sacred Books of the East, XII, pp. 271f., modified.
18
Trans. from Sacred Books of the East, XLVIII, p. 578.
19
In libros Regnorum homiliae, I, 4 (Migne, P.G., vol.12, cols.998, 999).
20
VI, 8. Trans. from Sacred Books of the East, XV, p. 311.
21
De opificio mundi. Cf. Colson trans., I, p. 13.
22
Ibid., p. 79.
23
It depends very much on whether the swastika revolves to the right or to the left. In Tibet, the one
that revolves to the left is supposed to symbolize the Bδn religion of black magic as opposed to
Buddhism.
24
The symbol of the star is favoured both by Russia and America. The one is red, the other white.
For the significance of these colours see Psychology and Alchemy, index, s.v. “colours.”
25
Cf. the eighth and the ninth papers in this volume; and “The spirit mercurius.”
26
There is a similar conception in alchemy, in the Ripley Scrowle and its variants (Psychology and
Alchemy, fig. 257). There it is the planetary gods who are pouring their qualities into the bath of rebirth.
27
Cf. “ The psychology of Eastern Meditation,” par. 942.
28
Cf. John Read, Prelude to Chemistry, frontispiece.
29
Cf. Psychology and Alchemy, pars. 334 and 404.
The Secret of the Golden Flower (1962), p. 22.
31
Cf. the sixth and seventh papers in this volume.
32
Cf. “A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity,” par. 184.
33
I am indebted to Mrs. Margaret Schevill for both these pictures. Figure 45 is a variant of the sandpainting reproduced in Psychology and Alchemy, fig. 110.
34
The drawing was sent to me from the British Museum, London. The original painting appears to
be in New York.
35
Lucca, Bibliotheca governativa, Cod.1942, fol.37’.
36
A Summary Appendix of the Soul, p. 117.
37
Ibid., p. 118.
38
Cf. the four snakes in the chthonic, shadow-half of Picture 9 in the preceding paper.
39
Figure X from Lambspringk’s Symbols in the Musaeum hermeticum (Waite trans., I, p. 295).
40
De genio Socratis, cap. XXII.
30
1 [Written especially for Du: Schweizerische Monatsschrift (Zurich), XV:4 (April 1955), 16, 21 and
subscribed “January 1955.” The issue was devoted to the Eranos conferences at Ascona, Switzerland,
and the work of C. G. Jung. (An anonymous translation into English accompanying the article has been
consulted.) With Dr. Jung’s article also were several examples of mandalas, including the frontispiece
of this volume and fig. 1, p. 297. While this brief article duplicates some material given elsewhere in
this volume, it is presented here as a concise popular statement on the subject.—EDITORS.]
2 [Proclamation of the dogma of the Assumption of the Virgin, in 1950. Cf. Psychology and
Religion: West and East, pars. 119ff., 251f., 748ff.—EDITORS.]
* For details of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung, see end of this volume.
* For details of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung, see end of this volume.
Table of Contents
The Collected Works of C. G. Jung
Volume 9, Part I: Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
Title Page
Copyright Page
Editorial Note
Translator’s Note
Contents
List of Illustrations
I
Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious
The Concept of the Collective Unconscious
Concerning the Archetypes, with Special Reference to the Anima Concept
II
Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype
1. On The Concept of the Archetype
2. The Mother Archetype
3. The Mother-Complex
I. The Mother-Complex of the Son
II. The Mother-Complex of the Daughter
a. Hypertrophy of the Maternal Element
b. Overdevelopment of Eros
c. Identity with the Mother
d. Resistance to the Mother
4. Positive Aspects of the Mother-Complex
I. The Mother
II. The Overdeveloped Eros
III. The “Nothing-But” Daughter
IV. The Negative Mother-Complex
5. Conclusion
III
Concerning Rebirth
1. FORMS OF REBIRTH
2. The Psychology of Rebirth
I. Experience of the Transcendence of Life
a. Experiences Induced by Ritual
b. Immediate Experiences
II. Subjective Transformation
a. Diminution of Personality
b. Enlargement of Personality
c. Change of Internal Structure
d. Identification with a Group
e. Identification with a Cult-Hero
f. Magical Procedures
g. Technical Transformation
h. Natural Transformation (Individuation)
3. A TYPICAL SET OF SYMBOLS ILLUSTRATING THE PROCESS OF
TRANSFORMATION
IV
The Psychology of the Child Archetype
I. Introduction
II. The Psychology of the Child Archetype
1. The Archetype as a Link with the Past
2. The Function of the Archetype
3. The Futurity of the Archetype
4. Unity and Plurality of the Child Motif
5. Child God and Child Hero
III. The Special Phenomenology of the Child Archetype
1. The Abandonment of the Child
2. The Invincibility of the Child
3. The Hermaphroditism of the Child
4. The Child as Beginning and End
IV. Conclusion
The Psychological Aspects of the Kore
V
The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales
I. Concerning the Word “Spirit,”
II. Self-Representation of the Spirit in Dreams
III. The Spirit in Fairytales
IV. Theriomor-phic Spirit Symbolism in Fairytales
V. Supplement
VI. Conclusion
On the Psychology of the Trickster-Figure
VI
Conscious, Unconscious, and Individuation
A Study in the Process of Individuation
Introductory
Picture 1
Picture 2
Picture 3
Picture 4
Picture 5
Picture 6
Picture 7
Picture 8
Picture 9
Picture 10
Picture 11
Pictures 12-24
Conclusion
Concerning Mandala Symbolism
Appendix: Mandalas
Bibliography
Index
Footnotes
Editorial Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Appendix
Bibliography