Glossary: Typology

The classification of personality based on the variation of traits among individuals; attitudes and behavior patterns are categorized in an attempt to explain differences between people. We enjoy typologies because want to understand ourselves and others, and a good type theory increases our understanding. This is doubtless why there are so many quizzes that tell you what Harry Potter character you are or what have you.

Typologies have been around for as long as humans have wondered about why we do the things we do. One example is Hippocrates' notion of the four humors, which dominated Western medicine from the time of the Greeks up until fairly recently. A model that's currently popular in academia is known as “the big 5” and consists of the following traits, which are believed to be the five basic dimensions of personality: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Other popular typology systems include the Enneagram, Ayurvedic humors, and the widely known concepts of Type A (stressed out, heart attack prone) and Type B (laid back) personalities.

Where other personality typologies are based on temperament or physiology, Jung's is based on the movement of energy (libido). Jungian personality typology consists of the two attitudes (introversion and extroversion) and four psychological functions (thinking, feeling, intuition, and sensation). There's also a typology based on Greek mythology that was developed by Jungian psychologist Jean Shinoda Bolen, but I'm not going to go into that in this post. Check out my previous blog for more information on that particular typology.

First and foremost, it is a critical tool for the research worker, who needs definite points of view and guidelines if he is to reduce the chaotic profusion of individual experiences to any kind of order... Secondly, a typology is a great help in understanding the wide variations that occur among individuals, and it also furnishes a clue to the fundamental differences in the psychological theories now current. Last but not least, it is an essential means for determining the “personal equation” of the practising psychologist, who, armed with an exact knowledge of his differentiated and inferior functions, can avoid many serious blunders in dealing with his patients.

- “Psychological Typology,” par. 986

The whole psychology of an individual even in its most fundamental features is oriented in accordance with his habitual attitude... [which is] a resultant of all the factors that exert a decisive influence on the psyche, such as innate disposition, environmental influences, experience of life, insights and convictions gained through differentiation, collective views, etc... At bottom, attitude is an individual phenomenon that eludes scientific investigation. In actual experience, however, certain typical attitudes can be distinguished ... When a function habitually predominates, a typical attitude is produced... There is thus a typical thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuitive attitude.

- “Definitions,” pars. 690f


Links:
“Personality Psychology” (Wikipedia)
"Personality Development Tools: The Car Model," Antonia Dodge (Personality Hacker)
"When You ALMOST Know Your Personality (AKA 'Between Two Types')," Antonia Dodge (Personality Hacker)


See also:
Primary function
Auxiliary function
Tertiary function
Inferior function
Introversion
Extroversion
Sensation
Intuition
Thinking
Feeling
Rational functions
Irrational functions
The 16 “Types” (MBTI)
Integrating the Four Functions

Article: "A Psychic Profile on President Donald J. Trump"

Just posting something that got my attention - I've been thinking a lot about the concentrated need for bringing balance to our culture. We've gone so far to the extreme of practicality, so far from our spiritual roots. The need is urgent for all of us to, as much as possible, get our spiritual act together.

We are in a quickened ascension process right now, which, in plain terms means we’re having to deal with a whole bunch of garbage at once, emotionally, sociologically, spiritually, and psychologically. Standard western society has taught us to compartmentalize every aspect of ourselves and our lives. Yet we are now face-to-face with the reality that mind, body, and spirit are indivisible.

Why must this lesson be driven so intensely? Because nature wastes nothing and prepares for everything, and the climate will be experiencing further changes coming up quickly where everyone’s" participation is mandatory for survival.
It is in our best interest as a species to give away the idea of one ideology, one savior, one President, fixing everything. Together we are the body of positive change, the collective mind of evolution. There is no us-vs-them.
We ARE them.

View the larger whole of President Trump for who and what he is. And view yourself for who and what you are. We are all part of the solution to avarice and world destruction.

Thanks to lessons President Trump is bringing us, publicly submitting himself for perhaps the greatest example of spiritual, emotional and social disconnection we’ve seen in decades — we grow faster, in observance. There is great gratitude to be had for his service in this regard.

Be okay to learn, and don’t always take the lessons personally that are intended for the world. That gets rough. Invoke the Law of Love — lead your own life with grace, respect, and of course, love, the greatest element on the spiritual periodic table.

All of that, met with a little good ol’ fashioned elbow grease, integrity, humility and hard work —

— and the rest falls into place, healing the world.

Because nothing is wasted.

- Danielle Egnew, "Insider Look: A Psychic Profile on President Donald J. Trump"

False promise of a Golden Age

… 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 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! 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.

- Jung, Four Archetypes, p. 154

Symbolism: Coffee

"Nighthawks" by Edward Hopper

Image from Wikipedia


Final re-post from Queen of the Night:

Coffee symbolism

I keep dreaming about drinking coffee. Coffee is a major liquid for me – I don’t drink alcohol generally; besides water, coffee is it. And I looooooove the stuff! Too much‼ Although I’ve had to switch to decaf due to sleep disturbances I could still drink (the decaffeinated version) all day long. I have to force myself to drink something else. Coffee isn’t just a drink for me though. In the way alcohol is for many people, coffee is definitely a “mana” drink for me. It’s a drink that I can get a little obsessed about. And not just me! There are actually coffee tastings, similar to wine tastings (they call it “cupping”). I can see why. It’s definitely not just a drink.

First I want to look at meanings from around the web. Probably the most obvious meaning coffee has is of energy: it's what people turn to when they’re tired and sluggish. It also often indicates that change (and therefore the hard work to effect it) is needed. Or it could also suggest the need to be more aware of things that are going on around you.

Coffee is all about get-up and go. It is a liquid that is designed to give you pep. Therefore if you have a dream where you are drinking a lot of coffee then it means that you need to continue being peppy and being a little more energetic with your life. Have a bit more energy and admit that you just need to go out and have a little bit more fun as well. Energy is always equal to fun and you will not regret going out more.

This is probably what this kind of dream is supposed to be about. It is a warning that you need to be more alert and pay more attention to your surroundings. This could mean you need to be more alert in a literal sense, where your brain is trying to tell you to stop wearing it out by staying up so late and waking up so early. Or it could also be a message that there are tons of things happening all around you that you are missing out on just because you’re slogging through life instead of going through all of the necessary motions that you should have in order to keep awake, alert, and abreast of current events.

http://www.gotohoroscope.com/txt/dream-dictionary-coffee.html

Coffee is also associated with comradeship and companionship: It’s common to drink coffee when spending casual time with others. In that way it’s similar to the family-gathering quality of meals, but coffee is less family oriented and more about friends. People talk over coffee; for good or ill, whether they’re discussing deeply intellectual topics or gossiping about their neighbors.

As suggested above, coffee is often a signifier of taste or class: do you take it black, or as a “coffee drink” (the wine spritzer of coffee); is Starbucks coffee “too strong” for you; do you even drink it at all? The most “refined”, of course, is black, unsweetened coffee. And the most hardcore is espresso!

Finally, there are traditional dream interpretations drawn from Arabic, European, and Indian cultures. The meanings are so varied that it’s hard to draw any general associations but there seems to be a thread of friendship and/or domesticity or problems with same. Perhaps this is because of domestic nature of preparing coffee, and it’s tendency to be consumed among friends (with a lot of talk accompanying it.)

My own thoughts about coffee are really different, at least as they apply to me personally. When I was first thinking about coffee and what it meant in my most recent dream I kept thinking about two things: 1) it’s dual nature (bitter/sweet), which is like salt and 2) its similarity to wine. Salt has a dual nature of bitterness vs. wisdom.

What turns the ashes of failure into the crown of victory is indicated by the fact that ash is alchemically equivalent to salt… Basically salt symbolizes Eros and appears in one of two aspects, either as bitterness or as wisdom. Jung writes: “Tears, sorrow, and disappointment are bitter, but wisdom is the comforter in all psychic suffering. Indeed, bitterness and wisdom form a pair of alternatives: where there is bitterness wisdom is lacking, and where wisdom is there can be no bitterness.” …

(Edward F. Edinger, Anatomy of the Psyche)

Coffee is similar; with coffee, the dual nature is bitterness vs. sweet. Coffee is either drunk with a lot of cream and sugar or it’s black and bitter. The thing is, it’s the bitterness of the coffee that makes it so delicious when you add fat and sugar (it’s the same reason why chocolate is so addictive – add a bit of bitter to fat and sugar and the brain goes nuts.)

The other thing coffee reminds me of is wine: Like I said, as with wine coffee is a “mana” drink. It’s basically a liquid drug. Wine, which is associated with Dionysus, is an agent of solutio; it erases boundaries and brings everything together in a blur of ecstacy (or, pushed further, into madness.) Coffee is like an anti-Dionysian liquid; it’s strongly associated with work and getting things done. But it’s a mind altering liquid just the same. Where wine is an agent of solutio, coffee is an agent of exhilaration and the motivation to go after your desires.

Coffee is also black. It’s a black liquid, a kind of bitter nigredo. It’s black and bitter, but it’s the bitterness of the coffee that adds flavor to life. Without the bitterness, the sweet is just overwhelming… or worse, just bland and tasteless. It’s the bitterness of the chocolate that makes it so delicious, that and the sweetness and the richness. The inability to appreciate what is bitter in our lives is a sign of childishness; to love the bitter for itself shows a maturity of taste and a sophistication in the art of living. It’s the cold night that makes the warm light so pleasurable… but the night itself has its own winter-like beauty, if you’re artistically and emotionally sensitive enough, and mature enough.

I think this idea is what all these coffee dreams may have been leading to.


(Image from Art Institute Chicago)

Symbolism: Cat

"Playing Cats" Takahashi Shotei

(Image from Etsy store ArtPink)

Re-post number 6 from Queen of the Night:

Cat symbolism

As with owls, cats are often associated with the night – both animals hunt at night, both are characterized by their ability to see well when we ourselves can’t. And since the unconscious is like the unknown night, how you feel about the unconscious will generally be reflected in how you feel about animals of the night, whether you hate and fear them or find them fascinating and helpful.

In keeping with their connection with the unknown and unseen, one idea that often crops up with cat’s is invisibility:

Albertus Magnus, the teacher of Saint Thomas Aquinas, insisted that a man could become invisible by wearing on his thumb the ear of a black cat, boiled in the milk of a black cow. Apparently the recipe was never tested; or if it was, the negative results were ignored."

The Arabs assigned very peculiar properties to such a stone [tiger’s eye]. They believed it could make its wearer invisible in battle. They also believed it could prevent an adulterous wife from conceiving children by her lover, provided her husband made her drink milk in which the stone had been dipped, before he went away on a journey. Perhaps the stone, perceived as an eye, was thought to affect various phenomena of vision and watching.”

http://www.wisdomportal.com/Cats/CatSymbolism.html

All of this is pretty obvious I think and not super interesting, the whole black cat thing and everything. The first interesting thing I found about cats was Marie Louise von Franz's description of the cat and how it often symbolizes a kind of independent femininity:

“The cat in our country stems originally from Egypt, where it was once a divine animal. There, they had a cat goddess who was the goddess of music, sexuality, pleasure in life, and life-embracing feminine fertility. The cat, in contrast to the dog, has never sold its soul to man. It has a kind of egocentric reserve. The cat says, ‘You may stroke me and you may serve me,’ but it never becomes your slave. And if you annoy it, it just walks out on you. In women's dreams, therefore, the cat often is an image of something feminine, independent and sure of itself, just what modern women so often lack. That's why the cat goddess come up in women's dreams as a positive model of feminine behavior. It is not brutal; it does not display any masculine features. It is feminine and, at the same time, very firm, very identical with itself. The cat is not very amiable, but very true to itself.

(von Franz, Marie Louise, The Way of the Dream)

Cats are usually thought of as female... which makes it a bit weird for me because most of my cats have been boys. People are always asking me how “she” is doing, even though I've told them repeatedly that “she” is a he. There's just something about cats that people intuitively feel is feminine, and, this is just based on a very small sample but my impression is that people who don’t like cats often generally don’t like “girly” things either. Cats are Aphrodite-like animals; sensual, associated with pleasure, fertility and drinking (not just Bast but Sekhmet, Bast’s blood-thirsty sun-lion twin, was only appeased by alcohol mixed with blood). Bast’s temple in Egypt was described as small but beautiful, surrounded by water on three sides (very Aphrodite).

Another god associated with cats and alcohol is Dionysus, the god of drink, who’s usually portrayed wearing a leopard skin. The Dionysus man is sensual and fascinating, like a leopard, and also as dangerous emotionally. Cats have that Dionysus quality of sensuality but without the danger. Maybe that’s what people who hate cats really hate; the desire for sensual pleasure which refuses to be controlled. That independence and refusal to be controlled is an integral part of the cat:

This calm, cool exterior bleeds over into the Tarot to convey a sleek mood of secretiveness and obscurity. The cat is an ultimate authority of its own inner realms. It needs no permission to behave in one way or another - therefore the cat must be given full reign to rule as it sees fit.

http://www.tarotteachings.com/cat-symbolism-in-tarot.html

It makes sense that under Christianity cats would fall out of favor; cats are sensual animals, animals of Aphrodite (pleasure) and Dionysus (ecstasy). Body-negating and full of hatred for earthly pleasures, such a religion would hate animals that symbolized pleasure. (“Christian: Satan; darkness; lust; laziness.”) (http://www.wisdomportal.com/Cats/CatSymbolism.html)

All these ideas of connection between human and animal were more or less diabolized under the Christian system, which regarded animals as soulless or demonic, or at the very least devoid of any feelings that needed consideration. Men, jealous of women's propensity to make pets of animals and treat them with love, soon found ways to condemn women for sensual, affectionate relationships with their dogs or cats. A woman seen fondling or talking to her pet fell under suspicion of witchcraft. Even a woman who spoke to any animal, as one might say "Hello there" to a squirrel or a bird, could be considered a witch. During the centuries of persecution, women were often burned for keeping cats, or nurturing lambs, or talking to frogs, or raising colts, or even for having mice in the house or toads in the garden.

What really surprised me about the cat symbolism in my own dreams is my sudden realization that, for me, they’re one half of a split animus complex. This may be why they’re always male in my dreams (I’m sure the fact that my cats are all boys has something to do with it… or it may be that my cats are always boys because of my complex??) I read the following recently and a bolt of realization hit me:

The animus in the dreams of a woman in psychotherapy often displays an even sharper split, appearing again as two quite different ego-projected complexes. One is the dominating, judgmental, condemning side, personified as a patriarchal father, dictator, judge or menacing animals such as a tiger or bear. These animus personifications seem to attack the woman dreamer, corresponding to involuntary thoughts that may attack her in waking life, saying, "What good are you? What could you accomplish? All you do is worthless."

In the same woman, a complementing ego-projected complex may be weak, helpless, or impotent. He may be an oversensitive artist; a deformed, crippled, or crazy boy; a distant, indifferent, or frigid man unable to love; or a weak, helpless animal.”

(Donald F. Sander & John Beebe, Psychopathology and Analysis, from Murray Stein’s Jungian Analysis, p. 312)

This is true, for me at least. In all of my dreams, whenever cats have appeared, they’re always in danger. I always have to protect them and keep them out of danger. Or if it’s not a cats it’s another weak, helpless animal. I always thought these weak animals were my inner little girl but it may be that they’re really images of the weak, helpless half of a split animus. I do know that at least part of my animus is cruel, domineering and, at least until recently, degrading. Are these cats and other helpless animals the other half of my animus? It seems so to me, right now at least.

One final facet of the cat that I’d like to explore, one which is particularly appropriate in light of the way cats are in my own unconscious: the role they play as protectors. Cats, at least in Egypt, are actually seen as protectors of the Pharaoh. Cats kill not only grain eating vermin but also snakes and scorpions. In Egyptian mythology cats were protectors of the Pharaoh; the cat goddess Bast fought Apep, the snake god of evil, and killed him: “[I]n other myths, it was the cat goddess Bastet, daughter of Ra, who slew Apep in her cat form one night, hunting him down with her all seeing eye” (and here again is the association with vision and night-sight.)

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apep)

Cats are, in an obvious way, associated with sensuality and pleasure, independence and the night. But they’re also warm-blooded protectors against that which is poisonous, or that which would devour the nourishment the unconscious depends on for life. Perhaps the independence and joy in earthly pleasures is one way of protecting ourselves from these things in our lives.

Posts:

The Cat: Redeeming the feminine

Cat hate = misogyny?

Symbolism: The Devouring Mother (the Negative Mother Complex)

Bhadrakali - The Ever Hungry Goddess

Re-post number 5 from Queen of the Night:

The hungry mouth

I get the neck of the chicken;

I get the plate with the crack.

I've been dealing with the parental wound lately; the lack of mother love. It's funny but what the ups and downs of my relationship with G have been leading me to is not my animus but my Mother. I've come to realize that the great, big, gaping hole in me - the one that howls like a starving, half-crazed wolf - is Mother Hunger, hunger for love and nourishment, acceptance. Hunger for Home.

So I've been reading books and scouring the internet for info on this particular kind of negative mother complex (there are several varieties apparently.) Some strike a chord in me... or maybe it's more accurate to say, they struck a wound.

Others suffer all their lives from a sense of their own inadequacy and inferiority; they feel that they are inevitably unacceptable, they are doomed to be outsiders debarred from normal companionship, whatever they do will be wrong, whatever they desire will be forbidden. They are accursed, alienated from God and man, and not least from themselves.

These are the individuals who have never had an adequate experience of mother-love. In childhood they felt they were not wanted, and consequently in them the image of Mother is of a demanding and destructive power. But the archetypal pattern of Mother as the source of life, that Jung described in the passage quoted above, is not, for that reason, obliterated in them, but inasmuch as it has not been activated by their actual human experience, it remains in the unconscious, latent, not even appearing as an image, nor is it capable, in the most injured persons, of being projected to some mother substitute, an aunt, grandmother, nurse or schoolteacher. This positive image, however, does manifest itself, even in the most deprived individuals, as the expectation of Mother. The reciprocal of child is mother, his weakness and dependence being the obverse reflection of her strength and care. And so in these individuals, the absence of the mother-image is felt as a lack - the deprivation is felt but not the possibility of fulfillment. The child wanders in the wilderness, and remains not only deprived but actively hostile to everyone and everything, and not infrequently in his despair he becomes self-destructive as well.

(M. Esther Harding, The Parental Image, pp. 15-16)

Mothers, in many cultures, are expected to be accepting and nurturing. A woman I know has received a minimum of nurturing from her mother and has developed an intense fear of being abandoned. Thus, she has an "abandonment complex" intertwined with her negative mother complex. Her fear keeps her in a state of anxiety. Because of her over-eagerness to be accepted, she tends to drive away friends and lovers.

(Matton, Mary Ann, Obstacles & Helps to Self-Understanding)

"Obstacles & Helps to Self-Understanding" (VoidSpace.org)



Most of the things I found - and there's surprisingly little on the internet about this specific form of negative mother complex - were in this vein, but then I stumbled upon this site which contains author and analyst Jules Cashford's amazing essays (I've only read the one referenced in this post - there are many more to savor once I finish this post!) Below are (rather lengthy) excerpts from her piece on Hansel and Gretel, and the process of defeating the inner Evil Witch and restoring peace and fertility in one's life.

What struck me was the motif of the devouring mother, or the hungry mouth (the Evil Witch in the story.) I never thought of myself with a devouring mother, quite the opposite in fact as I had an absent mother, the lack of a mother. But, it seems, when the Mother archetype is wounded, she becomes the hungry maw that seeks only it's ever elusive satisfaction.

Neumann points out that ‘the destructive side of the Feminine, the destructive and deathly womb, appears most frequently in the archetypal form of a mouth bristling with teeth' (The Great Mother, p.168), as in the myths of the North American Indians, Egypt, Greece, some parts of Africa, and the Aztecs. In Aztec mythology, a gigantic open mouth is the hungry and all-consuming earth, and the death goddess is drawn with many knives and sharp teeth.

...That primary sense of life as a source of nourishment is missing.

Hansel and Grettel (Jules Cashford.com)


So what to do? For many years I thought that nothing could be done about it; certain wounds could never be healed, just managed. But the very fact that I've been lead here must mean something. So I poked around and this is what I found. The whole process of transforming the Devouring Mother into the inner source of nurturing appears to be a long and complex one, but does seem possible. I guess it's important to remember that Jung said that we never solve our problems, we just outgrow them. Continuing with Cashford's essay, let's take a look at what that might look like.

First off, there's the relationship between Logos and Eros, the mind and the heart. Originally, it's the mind that keeps us safe, but at some point we must rely on our feelings and instinct.

Hansel, who as the boy images that aspect of the new life or the Self which is the more conscious, logos-oriented way of solving this problem, manages to outwit the step-mother's particular plan the first time, but fails to follow through the implications of what she intends: that life is not safe at home. It is only when his strategy is itself outwitted by the birds that he can be, as it were, tricked into facing the problem at a deeper level. The story moves towards an intensification of the original situation for the bread house with sugar windows and a witch inside is an image at this deeper level of the sweetness of any home with any kind of mother inside, and points to the danger of fantasizing the missing aspect of the archetype. The need for the mothering that was originally withheld is both appeased and perpetuated in fantasies about the original mother, and, more subtly, re-enacted in the search for a symbolic substitute in any experience. This creates a person predisposed to dependence on the other, hungry (to return to the metaphor in the story) for love while fearful of being starved or detoured (rejected or overwhelmed) by the imagined source of it. It would seem, then, that the first stage of growth would require a distinction between the good and the bad in the actual mother, and between good and bad mothering in general - what one has a right to expect - and, more fundamentally, between the Good and the Bad Mother in the Great Mother Archetype.

So looking at the fairy tale more closely as an image of the ‘anatomy' of the psyche, what can it tell us about this stage of separation? For the children to survive with all the odds apparently against them, so we have to follow what they do and what ‘happens' to them as a model for the instinctive responses that are right for this specific situation. It then appears that the deliberate, purposive working out of the matter, which Hansel adopts, is necessary to start with, but has to be suspended at the crucial transitional point in order for the more feeling, less conscious impulses of Grettel to take over.

In the beginning Grettel can only weep and must be comforted by her brother, who provides the ‘temenos' in which she can feel safe: ‘"Be comforted, my dear little sister, and go to sleep"', and he crams his pockets with the white pebbles that glitter in the moonlight. The way he drops these signposts for their return is instructive for, apparently unnecessarily, he stands still and looks back at the house each time he drops a pebble, pretending he is looking at his kitten waving him farewell, an image, possibly, of the magnetic power of the complex. Jung writes that a ceremony is magical so long as it does not result in effective work but preserves the state of expectancy' (VIII, 46), and in Hansel's ritual we could see a reluctance to give up the former expectations from his home. The first time his plan succeeds, but it does so only to lead them back to the original situation with nothing changed, pointing to the circularity of conscious solutions to problems of feeling. The second time there is a famine, the step-mother argues still more forcefully, and this time the door is locked against Hansel's ingenuity and they are taken still deeper into the forest, ‘further than they had ever been in their lives before'. This tells us that left alone the complex gets worse. They are more lost than last time, and they have half as much bread, for Hansel has to take from his own portion to feed his strategy, the dropping of crumbs that are picked up by ‘the thousands of birds that fly about in the woods'. The beauty of this image already implies that the failures on the side of the good, that reason, ‘the ratio of what is already known' (Blake), must fail in order to call forth from a deeper level of the psyche that which is not yet known, but which knows. "Never mind", said Hansel to Grettel, "you'll see we'll still find a way out"; but all the same they did not'. This ends Hansel's effective leadership, and for three days, the time of the moon's disappearance, Jonah in the whale and Christ in hell, things get darker than ever before. Once consciousness is unable to operate, however, as in all fairy tales, the unconscious is free to surprise us with its magic, and into this gap, this desperate need for help or else they would surely perish, comes ‘a beautiful little snow-white bird sitting on a branch, which sang so sweetly that they stopped still and listened to it'. Like Orpheus, the song enchants them, end they are distracted from their hunger and their longing for a way out of the forest - their own sense of what help is needed - and when the song is finished the bird flies in front of them and leads them directly to the witch. It is obvious that the bird does not belong to the witch even though it perches on the roof of the house she has made to lure them inside, so here we see a deeper impulse in the story.

[W]hen the snow-white bird brings the children to the witch, and obliges them to confront irrevocably that which they would have avoided had they known, we can see at work the fundamental directing agency of the Self. For the superior wisdom of the Self brings together the fantasy and the reality of the mother in the children, given in the image of the fantastic house of food on the outside and the child-eating real old woman on the inside; which is to say that the Self brings together the superficial conscious attitude adopted to the deprivations suffered from the mother - that it didn't really matter - and the interior unconscious feeling - possibly, that it hurt so much it's impossible to break the spell and get away from her. For what is a witch to a child except a figure whose power is so absolute, so all-containing, that escape is unthinkable? And when the imagination fails then the spell is cast.

What is the meaning of this psychologically? Two comments of Jung are particularly relevant here: ‘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' (IX, i, 99). Also, ‘A neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering' (XI, 75). So the children must go inside the sweet-tasting house and fully experience the evil of the witch within. They must suffer emotionally to the extent of imagining being boiled alive, roasted and consumed in what they had tried to avoid feeling too deeply because it hurt. Fire is traditionally a symbol of the heating up of feeling, the intensification and concentration of the whole being so that the inessential is burnt away and only the essence remains. The alchemists insisted that the fire be kept forever burning beneath the retort lest the heart falter and become distracted.

One of the things that strikes me about the above is how the mind helps us deal with things. It's the mind that schemes and helps us avoid being truly thrown "to the wolves." Of course, the problem is that Hansel - the mind - can only bring us back to the problem, never lead the way forward. For that we need the white bird, the symbol of the Self. It's only when we follow the bird that we finally break free of the endless cycle of suffering. Of course, originally it's to more intense suffering, but it's our legitimate suffering. Unlike the neuroses that we escape to - and are trapped in - when we try to avoid our problem, this suffering is ours. It belongs to us, as ugly and as horrible as it is.

Now that the witch can be seen for what she is, what can she tell us about the way the negative mother complex works? The story says that ‘witches have red eyes, and cannot see far, but, like beasts, they have a keen sense of smell, and know when human beings pass by'. This suggests that the complex acts relatively blindly, automatically, crudely, without differentiation and can be discerned whenever the person ‘takes things literally', recalling the literal imagination of the step-mother, who could not ‘see through' Hansel's strategy, supposing each time he was mistaking what he said he saw for the morning sun glittering on the chimney. On the other hand, she can smell like a hunting animal, which suggests her power is in the unconscious which is where she must be faced. On the surface, though, she is ‘apparently friendly', and her house likewise is a temptation to overlook what it contains, to take it literally for what it pretends to be, which is what the children do. They respond to it as though under a spell; they don't ask questions - whose house is it, will they miss the roof? Even when a shrill voice calls out from inside ‘who's nibbling my house?' the children answer: "Tis Heaven's own child, The tempest wild', and go on eating ‘without putting themselves about'. Because of their great hunger she gets them in her power, the extreme longing to be loved creates the dependence.

However, once Hansel and Grettel see the woman to be a witch, their relation to each other and to the problem change places. Hansel, as the carrier of the more conscious approach of the self, is locked up in the stable, and it is up to Grettel, the feeling powers hitherto dormant in the self, to take the active role. At first, like Cinderella, she has to serve the witch, is held in thrall to her, called a lazybones and starved of anything but crabshells, while Hansel, the imprisoned leader, is to fatten up to be eaten. Perhaps this is the testing time that is so difficult to predict. Who will win.

The tale tells us that trickery wins, that the trickster archetype is what is needed here. Both Hansel and Grettel play the witch's game, only they play it better than she does. Hansel pretends that he is thinner than he is, knowing she wants to fatten him, and holding out a bone instead of his finger, gains them time. Grettel pretends she is as helpless as she used to be - ‘I don't know how to do it; how do I get and shoves the witch in the oven instead of herself. That Grettel does to the witch exactly what the witch would have done to her may suggest that feeling must accept some identification with the dark aspect of the mother imago personified in the witch, maybe in the form that it is a greed for life's inexhaustible possibilities that contributes to the fear that they may not manifest themselves... At any rate, with the witch and Grettel before the open oven, ‘from which fiery flames were already issuing', it is not the time for moral deliberations, and we cannot but think that Grettel acts spontaneously rightly. But where does this usually weeping girl get her strength from? It seems from a combination of awareness and intensity of feeling. We are told that ‘Grettel perceived the witch's intention', and it is perhaps this moment of awareness that transfers the power of the witch to Grettel by releasing the energy trapped in her fear. At the point of immanent death she gathers enough strength, rebellion and even ferocity of feeling to say No to being devoured and this tips the balance and the negative complex is, as it were, burnt up. As with the stepmother, the witch's literal reaction to Grettel's pretense is no match for the dual perspective of awareness. Perhaps what this means is that the person trying to deal with the ‘witch' in himself or herself, since, while the witch may play a different role in the male and female psychology, there is a level at which the need for freedom from this complex is the same for both), must somehow trick the witch within, that is, withhold the habitual, automatic reaction in order to allow the feeling to deepen to an intensity that gets its power to respond from a hidden, previously submerged level of the psyche. As the trouble with this complex is that the instincts themselves have become distorted, it would seem necessary to, as it were, distort the distortion, do what feels wrong, to reach that last instinct of survival common to all animals when even a zebra will fight a lion to protect her young. It may be that in human animals this instinct has its parallel in the instinct of individuation.

Grettel flies straight to Hansel, crying: ‘Hansel, we are free; the old witch is dead', and we are told that ‘Hansel sprang like a bird out of a cage when the door is opened', a wonderful image of ‘the release of the dove'. Now appears the treasure of the Self, the pearls and precious stones disclosed in the other rooms of the house which they are free to explore once the fear has gone. Here are the jewels of the life renewed - joy, fearlessness, purpose, affection all that immersion in the waters of life makes possible. Leaving the ‘witch's wood' they come to a big lake with no bridge or ferry-boat, but just a white duck swimming in the water. The ‘crossing of the return threshold' is the hero's last trial in the hero myth (Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, p. 210-243), in which he is set the task of reconciling the truths won in the inner world with the actions he undertakes in the outer, public world. Here, some period of adjustment or some effort at translation is obviously indicated in the absence of any predictable way to cross the water to find the familiar part of the wood they came from. It is significant that at this point Hansel is the one who decides they can't get over because there is no bridge, and Grettel who sees the white duck and asks her help. The renewed feeling of the self can now for the first time exercise power for the care of life, for Grettel, sensitive to the duck's needs as well as their own, overrules her brother: "No", she answers, in total contrast to her submissiveness at the beginning of the tale, "we should be too heavy a load for the duck: she shall carry us across separately". The logos and eros of brother and sister are now in harmony with each other, such that each takes the lead when it is appropriate, and thus the original imbalance in the family is redeemed. Implicitly the story says that the killing of the witch is the death of the step-mother, for when the children run to ‘their father's house' and fall upon his neck, we are told simply: ‘but the woman had died'.

The restoration of the nourishing and healing aspect of the Mother archetype is shown in the emergence of the big lake with the bird now swimming upon it, an image of unity between nature and spirit which puts the duck, as Hermetic ferry-bird, in loving service. For the duck, white again as was the snow-white bird who led them deep into the unconscious, here ‘returns', in touch with the newly discovered waters of life to lead them back again. The treasure of the witch vanquished will buy them food to withstand any hardship, and so they are released from complete dependence on the Great Mother. But nothing is heard of the former famine in the land, and it is as though the confrontation with the reality of the bad personal mother which frees them from the negative mother complex within, activates at the same time the potency of the good mother archetype, so that from now on life may be trusted:

'Thus all their troubles were ended, and they lived happily ever after'.

Hansel and Grettel (Jules Cashford.com)

Ok, I'm kind of stuck here. Everything up to the examination of Gretel shoving the witch into the oven makes sense to me. Part of it is that I'm still pretty early in the process (basically at the point where I'm exploring the nature of the witch), but part of it is that this explanation doesn't resonate with me. This is just speculation, but my feeling is that Gretel pushing the witch into her own fire represents "burning" the witch - the hunger and desire - in it's own "fire." In other words, cooking in one's own juices. This is, in fact, the dragon's fire that I wrote about in an earlier post on snake symbolism:

[It] is hard to accept: the fire has to burn the fire, one just has to burn in the emotion till the fire dies down and becomes balanced. That is something which unfortunately cannot be evaded. The burning of the fire, of the emotion, cannot be tricked out of one’s system; there is no recipe for getting rid of it, it has to be endured. The fire has to burn until the last unclean element has been consumed, which is what all alchemical texts say in different variations and we have not found any other way either. It cannot be hindered but only suffered till what is mortal or corruptible, or, as our text says so beautifully, till the corruptible humidity, the unconsciousness, has been burnt up. That is the meaning, it is the acceptance of suffering.

(Marie-Louise von Franz, Alchemy.)


The house is a spun sugar fantasy of a relationship. It's not a real house, it's a fantastical house. When we've been driven from "home" (nurturing) by a mother who cannot give us the mother-love we need, we end up lost in the woods. And what we come upon is this faux house; it's not only not a real house, it's pure temptation. It's everything we thought we wanted, we are fed after we've starved for years (the years of famine.) But inside the house is the witch, the demonic caricature of the murderous stepmother. Something else to consider is that it's the Self itself that brings us to this deadly situation, because this is exactly what we need in order to truly resolve the problem at home. It's in the witch's house itself that the treasures of the Self reside.

Another thing is Gretel; this whole experience with the evil stepmother makes her completely helpless. When we are denied this mother-love our feelings can't function; we feel like we can't let ourselves feel, like it's all too much for us, leading us to rely on logic and reason. This can keep us out of trouble for a while but by itself it's incapable of finding a way out of the situation. The problem is that Gretel - our feelings - can't find her power until we're actually in the witch's house, i.e. the middle of our tumultuous emotional drama.

What does this mean? Is it that being in the situation with the witch puts the mind under lock and key forces us to rely on our feelings? Or is it that being in this situation allows us to bring some of the witch into us (Gretel doing to the witch what the witch had planned to do to her)? In either case the empowerment of feeling is part of the healing process as Gretel becomes more active, until at the end she tells Hansel they can't both ride on the white duck.

Gretel, as the female child, is the renewal of the feminine instincts. In the stepmother and the witch, and the presence of the famine in the land, the current female instincts (emotion, instinct) are wrong, turning them into the opposite of the nurturing mother into the destroyer. But, as with many stories of "evil" older women, their actions instigate the confrontation and change needed for renewal. The white dove is a symbol of the Goddess, and the white duck at the end is also female; with one hand the Mother Goddess drives us to wholeness with her terrifying side, and with the other she lures us to the same with her angelic side. All of this is in the service of pushing the young feminine, represented by Gretel, into her own power.


(Image from Exotic India)

Symbolism: The Snake Pt. 2 (The Child)

Erichthonius

Re-post number 4 from Queen of the Night:

Snake symbolism: Birth of the Sun Child

Zeus is the Eagle, raising itself higher and higher; competent, bright, bringing self-esteem upon oneself. The snake is pain and difficulty, feeling helpless, lost in the dark woods. The ego naturally seeks out the Eagle... but the Self seeks wholeness, because what the ego doesn't realize is that it's in our weakness that God can enter our lives. Children are our wholeness, including what is frail, weak, stupid, helpless, and frustrating. It's our humiliation, and our uncontrolled passions. It is what is in us that is exactly what it is, regardless of what is socially desirable... or even socially acceptable. The Child, like the Ouroboros, is the symbol of wholeness.

Child, snake and lion

Very often, the snake appears in ancient mythology combined with the motif of the child. For instance, the mythical god of the Athenians was King Erechterus, who was the son of Athena and who was kept as a little child in a basket into which one should not look, for one would see a child surrounded by snakes. One cannot be sure exactly what it means, but coffrets grotesques have been found in Southern France (probably material from the Middle Ages and not earlier), in which naked children are playing with snakes. The child-god and the snake-god were very often combined like that.

The child-god is also the archetype of the poisoner, so to speak. The Cupid of antiquity has a very poisonous arrow with which he can even subdue - as the poets say - the great god Zeus, for if Cupid shoots an arrow at him, Zeus may have to hopelessly pursue an earthly woman, though he may not even like the situation... If you do like it, you will be happy and say that you have fallen in love. If you do not like it,  you will say that you have been poisoned; you are bound to do something you do not like and are forced into a situation which feels like subjection or poison to the ego.

(Marie-Louise von Franz, Puer Aeternus)

Some people have a frustrated infant within them. Usually they are very correct and polite, and make very few demands on the analyst, but being too polite and correct and considerate is always suspect. One knows that they would like to eat up the analyst completely like the lion, making childish demands and scenes, because the analyst has stopped five minutes before the time, or answered the telephone, or put off the hour, or even had the flu!

That is the symbolism of the madness in the lead, but it also contains Osiris, the immortal man, and if only you accept that spot within you, you will come to the creative content where the Self is hidden. The frustrated child could be said to be an aspect covering up an image of the Self, and the devouring lion also an aspect of the Self.

If you take the image of the devouring lion this is quite clear. If I think I ought to be top dog everywhere, have the most beautiful partner, have money, be happy, and so on, that is a paradise fantasy, and what is that? It is a projection of the Self! So actually, the childish thing is the desire to experience everything in the here and now. The fantasy in itself is entirely legitimate, it has the idea of the coniunctio, a perfect state, a state of harmony. It is a religious idea, but naturally if projected onto outside life and wanted there, in the here and now, that is impossible. The way in which the person wants to realize the fantasy is childish, but in itself it is valuable and has nothing wrong or unhealthy in it.

So just in that undominated mad spot of the person, or in the wild or problematic spot, there is the symbol of the Self. That gives it the drive, which is why people never know what to do for they cannot repress it; or if they are reasonable and just give the thing up and realize how childish it is and that one should be resigned and adapt to life, then they feel that they are cured but that they have been robbed of their best possibilities and so are frustrated.

(Marie-Louise von Franz, Alchemy)


In it's positive aspect, the child is the symbol of renewal, but the child archetype also has some negative aspects: being incapable, less than perfect, weak... and being "childish;" irrational and unreasonably demanding.



Traveling in Egypt

This is a long excerpt, but it is positively overflowing with gems of insight and wisdom. And straight up excellent advice, in general and for the different types/functions. Here von Franz talks about the value of the inferior function/the child-like parts of ourselves.

[T]he child has a naive view of life, and if you recall your own childhood, you remember you were intensely alive. The child, if it is not already neurotic, is constantly interested in something. Whatever else from which the child may suffer, it does not suffer from remoteness from life, normally - only if it is thoroughly poisoned by the neuroses of its parents. Otherwise, it is fully alive, and that is why people, thinking back to their own childhood, long to have that naive vitality which they have lost in becoming a grown-up. The child is an inner possibility, the possibility of renewal, but how does that get into the actual life of a child?...

It has to do with he inferior function - through which the renewal comes - which has remained childlike and completely naive. Therefore, it conveys a new sight and a new experience of life when the worn-out superior function comes to its end, and it imparts all those naive pleasures which one has lost in childhood. That is why we have to learn to play again, but on the line of the fourth, or the inferior, function. It does not help if, for instance, an intellectual person starts some kind of intellectual play. If a thinking type were to quote the Bible, saying that unless you become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven, and then would go to a club to play chess - that would not help at all, for it would again be on the main function. There is a great temptation to do that; namely, to accept the idea of play and of turning to something else, something noncommittal, but to do it within the field of the main function. I have often seen feeling types whose feeling functions have run out. I tell them they must do something which has no purpose, something playful. Then they propose working in a kindergarten, or something like that. But that is nonsense, for that would again be on the feeling side; that would be a half-way acceptance and an escape at the same time. The really difficult thing is to turn directly to the inferior function and play there. For this, the ego must give up its directing line, because if you touch your inferior function, it decides on the kind of play; you cannot decide. The inferior function, just like an obstinate child, will insist that it wants to play at something or other, though you may say that it is not suitable and would not work well. For example, in an intuitive, the inferior function may want to play with clay, but the intuitive person lives in a hotel room and would much prefer something clean because clay makes a lot of dirt in a hotel room! But you cannot dictate to the inferior function! If you are an intuitive and your inferior function wants to play with stones or clay, then you have to make the effort to find an ambiance where that would be possible. That is exactly the difficulty. That is why the ego always has thousands of objections to turn to the inferior side. It is always something very difficult to arrange in practical life

The inferior function is a real nuisance, just as children are, whom you cannot put in a box and take out when it suits you. It is a living entity with its own demands, and it is a nuisance to the ego which wants to have its own way... But if you accept the humiliating experience of making the ego submit itself to the demands of the inferior of childish part of the personality, then the divine child becomes a source of life; then life has a new face, you discover new experiences, and everything changes

I often notice that when the feeling type begins to think, he does so exactly like the early Greek pre-Socratic philosophers. He has thoughts like those of Heraclitus or Democritus, and such people, and is as fired by these as were the early Greek philosophers. If you read Empedocles or Heraclitus, you will find an eternal youth in the way they think. That is why I love those philosophers so much. Nowadays, it seems very like mythological thinking - not very scientific. For instance, the atomic theories of Democritus are awfully naive, if looked at according to modern theories, but there is a kind of wholeness and enthusiasm about them, together with the idea that now they see the whole picture. Naturally, the material is full of projections of the symbol of the Self, so one gets quite carried away when reading it. There is a kind of springtime of the spirit; the early Greek philosophy is like the blossoming spring of philosophy. Very often, if a feeling type gets down to his own thinking, he comes to this kind of experience; when that happens, the thinking type must retire to his own estate and not say that one knew that twenty-thousand years ago! The same thing applies to the thinking type if you get him or her to bring up naive real feeling, rather than something organized. Usually, the thinking type is so much a thinker that he even organizes his feelings appropriately, and because he does not get on with his real feelings, because they are unadapted, he generally has a pseudo-adaptation to feeling. I would say that the main method for getting to the playfulness of the inferior function is to scratch away the pseudo-adaptation with which we all cover the inferior function. The feeling type, for instance, is usually full of school and university theories and imagines that those are his thoughts. But they are not: they are pseudo-thinking adaptations to cover up the fact that his real thinking is awfully embryonic and naive. The same holds true for the thinking type who has very naive feelings; for instance, "I love you, I hate you." If he went round the world saying that, or saying, "I can't stand you," you can imagine what a stumbling block it would be! It would not work for two minutes! Even in school, you cannot tell your teacher that you cannot stand him! I am a thinking type myself and I loved certain teachers and hated others. But I would never dissimulate my feelings sufficiently; I always showed her how I felt. I knew it would have been much more diplomatic not to show too clearly how much I despised a certain teacher, but it was always quite obvious. When you become adult, you hide these reactions and acquire a pseudo-feeling adaptation. Thinking types are often very amiable and seem to have very balanced, amiable feeling reactions, but never trust that! That is just a pseudo-adaptation, because the other is so painful and helpless and childish that one cannot show it. But if you have to go to it, then you must again dig up the naiveté of your real feeling and get the crust off the pseudo-adaptation

Intuitives very often have no relationship to the body and are likely to dress badly or be dirty, but since that does not work, they learn to wash and put on nice clothes, and so on; although they may be quite correctly dressed, there is no personal style. If they would dig up their real sensation, their taste would be artistic, but weird and very much out of the ordinary. Intuitives who get down to their sensation cannot buy ready-made clothes; everything has to be made for them. Neither can they eat hotel food; they must either have a cook or they must cook for themselves, and it must be very special. It gives them a lot of trouble to discover this, and, what is worse, it is a nuisance and expensive both in money and time. You can have the tailor and the cook but that is not quite genuine, or you can go down to the inferior function, but that is the greatest time thief in existence, because it is primitively slow

You know that in primitive countries it is impossible to hurry people. If you travel in Egypt, it is no good ordering the cars for 9:00 am and expecting to be beyond the Nile or in the Kings' Tomb at 10 am. Everyone who travels in the Orient knows that he must put up with being two or three hours late; he cannot arrive on time as Europeans do. But once you have made the adaptation, life is much nicer, because you have all kinds of experiences: the car breaks down and causes a lot of fun, and instead of arriving at the Kings' Tomb, you get into the desert and do a lot of swearing, and so forth. But that's life too! You cannot organize the inferior function. It is awfully expensive and needs a lot of time, and that is one reason why it is such a cross in our lives: it makes us so inefficient if we try to act through it. It has to be given whole Sundays and whole afternoons of our lifetimes and nothing may come out - except that the inferior function will come to life. But that is the whole point. A feeling type will only bring up his thinking if he begins to think about something he cannot use in this world, neither for examination nor study; but if he will think about something which interests himself - that is how to get going because it is not possible to yoke inferior playfulness to utilitarian motives. The essence of play is that it has no visible meaning and is not useful. I would tell a feeling type to learn what he needs by heart for his exams, and not try to think, because he won't be able to do so. He should make pseudo-adaptations, and if the thinking type gets into a situation where he has to behave - say he has to attend a funeral - then he must on no account pull out his personal feelings. He must just behave and do the conventional thing with flowers and condolences; that is the right pseudo-adaptation for him. To get at his real feeling, the thinking type must find a situation where he can play with it, and then it will be quite different. So the first thing to do is to take it out of the adaptation field and keep the pseudo-adaptation for those cases where it is necessary. I think nobody can really develop the inferior function before having first created a temenos; namely, a sacred grove, a hidden place where he can play. The first thing is to find a Robinson Crusoe playground, and then when you have gotten rid of all onlookers, you can begin!

(Marie-Louise von Franz, Puer Aeternus)

So basically, the Snake is also the Child, for ill and for good. It's the part of us that causes us humiliation and pain... and also the door through which God comes. It's the poisoner... and the source of new life. Its why its our weakness and imperfection that is the part of ourselves that is the most valuable.

(Image from The Shrine of the Goddess Athena)

Symbolism: The Snake Pt. 1 (Fire)

Re-post number 3 from Queen of the Night:

Snake symbolism: Dragonfire

“When a snake dream occurs, it is a signal that consciousness is especially far away from instinct; it shows that the conscious attitude is not natural and that there is an artificial dual personality which appears to be, in some ways, too well adapted and too much fascinated by the outer world and, at the same time, inclined to fail hopelessly in decisive moments. In such a case, Jung continues, we find that there always exists a sort of secret attraction to the missing inner double, which one both fears and loves as that which could make one whole. That is why the snake is essentially double in mythology. It arouses fear, brings death, and poisons; it is an enemy of light and at the same time a savior in animal form - a symbol of the logos and of Christ. When it appears in the latter form, it represents the possibility of becoming conscious and whole. Instead of intellectual understanding, it promises knowledge born from immediate inner experience: insight and secret wisdom - gnosis.”

Marie-Louise von Franz, Puer Aeternus



My recent realization about aging is actually turning out to be the perfect intro to the complex (and vast!) symbolism related to the snake. And the child archetype, the two are closely connected. It's somewhat ironic but I think aging, in our culture, represents the child/double snake archetype; it is what is unadapted to the outer world, repulsive even, but the source of renewal.

Just before his resurrection, the sun god is represented as an ithyphallic man lying on his back with erect phallus and around him is the snake which eats its own tail. The inscription merely says: "This is the corpse." You see therefore that in the underworld when the sun god has reached the moment when death and resurrection meet, when he is in his tomb at the depth of the underworld, he is represented as surrounded by this snake. According to the Egyptian text, the snake which eats its own tail is considered to be the guardian of the underworld and it is probably the snake which is invoked here.

- Marie-Louise von Franz, Alchemy


The first aspect of the snake that we see is a repulsiveness that inspires horror and revulsion. The snake represents everything that we fear, everything we try to run away from. The snake is the guardian of the Underworld; in mythologies around the world, the snake is the destroyer, killed by the Sky God in order to create a world for his people.

This is one of the most persistent themes in mythology, the antagonism of the Sky God and the Serpent. In myths around the world, the great Serpent battles the Sky God (Jörmungandr and Thor, Typhon and Zeus, Vritra and Indra, Leviathan and Yahweh, Tiamat and Marduk). The Sky God universally represents consciousness. The serpent is the chaotic origin of all life, out of which the hero God has to struggle in order to live... She's the Devouring Mother, but, at the same time, the source of all life. Leviathan "lives over the Sources of the Deep." Tiamat, the original Great Mother, who mixed fresh water and salt to produce the gods and was later split by Marduk to form the earth, the heavens, and humanity. Jörmungandr, Thor's nemesis, the tail eating "World Serpent" who holds the world together (another Ouroboros). Ophion incubating the primordial egg. And Amduat, the many coiled serpent from which all creation arose.

The other opposition inherent in the animosity of Sky God and Serpent is success vs. death, specifically the death of the ego. The Sky God represents the Sun at midday, at the zenith of it's power. But the Serpent is the fall from those heights; suffering in the deep, painful, humiliating Underworld. This is why the snake arouses such horror in us; it's everything we fear, everything we instinctively run away from. It's death... and suffering in the fires of Hell. The snake is the fire of our impurities... as well as devouring fire that burns all of our impurities to ashes.

[T]his bringing together of opposites means they are secretly one, for the fire has to be put out by fire, or has to be cooled, refrigerated, by its inner fire.

[Emotion] transforms, cooks, and enlightens, that is the way in which fire brings light: if I am emotionally gripped by something I can understand it; if I am not emotionally wrestling with my problems, or something else, then nothing comes out.

[It] is hard to accept: the fire has to burn the fire, one just has to burn in the emotion till the fire dies down and becomes balanced. That is something which unfortunately cannot be evaded. The burning of the fire, of the emotion, cannot be tricked out of one’s system; there is no recipe for getting rid of it, it has to be endured. The fire has to burn until the last unclean element has been consumed, which is what all alchemical texts say in different variations and we have not found any other way either. It cannot be hindered but only suffered till what is mortal or corruptible, or, as our text says so beautifully, till the corruptible humidity, the unconsciousness, has been burnt up. That is the meaning, it is the acceptance of suffering.

Sitting in Hell and roasting there is what brings forth the philosopher’s stone; as it is said here, the fire is extinguished with its own inner measure. Passion has its own inner measure; there is no such thing as chaotic libido, for we know that the unconscious itself, as pure nature, has an inner balance. The lack of balance comes from the childishness of the conscious attitude. If you only follow your own passion according to its own indications it will never go too far, it will always lead to its own defeat.

The fire of the passion looks for that which will extinguish it, and that is why the urge for individuation, as long as it is a natural inordinate urge, seeks impossible situations; it seeks conflict and defeat and suffering because it seeks its own transformation.

- ML von Franz, Alchemy


Fire blinds us and burns us up, consumes us. But fire also creates light, which allows us to see. We must have fire (emotion) in order to understand a thing. Our fiery, burning impurities are the prima materia, the Fruedian unconscious; double in aspect (both good and bad). Despite problems it can and does create, it's the basic material needed for individuation. If left by itself it's useless; it needs consciousness. This is why need projection (passion, love, etc.), as painful, humiliating and crazy-making as they are; only in projection are these archetypes made conscious, and consciousness is necessary for transformation. Jung said that projection can either lead to growth, or murder. Fire and suffering are the only things that can bring forth the philosopher's stone. Fire transforms a thing into a divine substance.

This is definitely what I have been going through. It is only by suffering in the torments of our passions in the Underworld that that unclean, corrupted fire can burn itself, finally purifying itself. Everyone has that one area which we keep to the side, that one little area we don't want to look at. We're willing to make sacrifices, or do the work, in any area but that one... But you know what you have to do. It's that area in which you must make the sacrifice.

If left to our own devices, we would try to stay in the Sky God's light and hide from the Snake. But delaying one's journey to the Underworld too long is the cause of our neuroses, or even if we don't succumb to neuroses, it's where we constantly seem to trip ourselves up. We become our worst enemies. It's as if there's something - or Someone - inside us which is determined to wreck everything. In those situations, where we're resisting our growth, the Self takes on the guise of the devouring serpent, but that's only because we're resisting It. Not that burning in the fire isn't painful, but that's what we're here for: to burn, to be burned, until all that is corruptible in us is burned away and the beauty we long for is born from the ashes.

And Cleopatra said to them: the waters enter and awake the bodies and the weakened spirits in them since they must suffer in the underworld for a long time and then they sprout out of the underworld and come up and clothe themselves in beautiful colors like the flowers in Spring and Spring itself rejoices in the beauty which it gives them. To you who understand me, I will say, when you lift up the plants and the elements and the stones from their original places, they look beautiful but are not, but after having been tested with the fire then they acquire the beautiful color and much more beautiful glory, namely the hidden glory which has the longed for beauty, and that comes when the matter is changed by the fire into a divine substance.

- Marie-Louise von Franz, Creation Myths


(Image from The Medieval Bestiary)

Symbolism: Owl

Owl of Athena

Here's the second re-post from Queen of the Night:

Owl symbolism

[T]heir general meaning has to do with the scary/mysterious night-time knowledge, regardless of culture (with the exception of the Japanese, but that has to do with the fact that the Japanese word for owl is close to their word for good fortune, and therefore owls are associated with fortune in the Japanese culture, but that's really a one off.)

Following are the various meanings of owls from around the world.


Owl symbolism from around the world

The owl is sacred to the Greek goddess of learning, Athena and is even depicted on some Greco-Roman currency as a symbol of status, intelligence and of course, wealth. In ancient Egyptian, Celtic, and Hindu cultures the symbolic meaning of owl revolved around guardianship of the underworlds, and a protection of the dead. In this light the owl was ruler of the night and seer of souls. A misunderstanding of this necessary relationship gave the owl some negative associations with death. It should be clear that the owl was honored as the keeper of spirits who had passed from one plane to another. Often myth indicates the owl accompanying a spirit to the underworld - winging it's newly freed soul from the physical world into the realm of spirit.

A quick-list of owl symbolic meanings:
Wisdom
Mystery
Transition
Messages
Intelligence
Mysticism
Protection
Secrets

Native Americans associated the meaning of owl with wisdom, foresight, and keeper of sacred knowledge. This may largely be due to the fact that the owl is a great foreteller of weather conditions. Also its ability to see at night is legend among the Native Americans, and this attribute would be invoked during ceremonies when an oracle of secret knowledge was required. Similarly, West African and Aboriginal Australian cultures viewed the owl as a messenger of secrets, kin to sorcerers, as well as companions to seers, mystics and medicine people.

During medieval times in western and central Europe it was fabled that owls were actually priestesses (witches) and wizards in disguise. To this day the owl is considered a witch's familiar (an animal soul-spirit linked to a spiritual person via a unique, communicative bond).

What's Your Sign

Africa: Among the Kikuyu of Kenya it was believed that owls were harbingers of death. If one saw an owl or heard its hoot, someone was going to die. In general, owls are viewed as harbingers of bad luck, ill health, or death. The belief is widespread even today

The Americas: In the culture of the Uto-Aztec tribe, the Hopi, taboos surround owls, which are associated with sorcery and other evils. The Aztecs and Maya, along with other Natives of Mesoamerica, considered the owl a symbol of death and destruction. In fact, the Aztec god of death, Mictlantecuhtli, was often depicted with owls. There is an old saying in Mexico that is still in use: Cuando el tecolote canta, el indio muere ("When the owl cries/sings, the Indian dies"). The Popol Vuh, a Mayan religious text, describes owls as messengers of Xibalba (the Mayan "Place of Fright"). The belief that owls are messengers and harbingers of the dark powers is also found among the Hočągara (Winnebago) of Wisconsin. When in earlier days the Hočągara committed the sin of killing enemies while they were within the sanctuary of the chief's lodge, an owl appeared and spoke to them in the voice of a human, saying, "From now on the Hočągara will have no luck." This marked the beginning of the decline of their tribe. An owl appeared to Glory of the Morning, the only female chief of the Hočąk nation, and uttered her name. Soon afterwards she died. People often allude to the reputation of owls as bearers of supernatural danger when they tell misbehaving children, "the owls will get you."  Also, in the native Cherokee culture, as well as many other Native American cultures, owls are a very bad omen. It is said that if you are outside in the broad day light and an owl flies over your head a family member or loved one would die within the coming week.

Middle East: In Arab mythology, owls are seen as bad omens

Western culture: T. F. Thiselton-Dyer in his Folk-lore of Shakespeare says that "from the earliest period it has been considered a bird of ill-omen, and Pliny tells us how, on one occasion, even Rome itself underwent a lustration, because one of them strayed into the Capitol. He represents it also as a funereal bird, a monster of the night, the very abomination of human kind. Virgil describes its death-howl from the top of the temple by night, a circumstance introduced as a precursor of Dido's death. Ovid, too, constantly speaks of this bird's presence as an evil omen; and indeed the same notions respecting it may be found among the writings of most of the ancient poets." A list of "omens drear" in John Keats' Hyperion includes the "gloom-bird's hated screech."

In France, where owls are divided into eared owls (hiboux) and earless owls (chouettes), the former are seen as symbols of wisdom while the latter are assigned the grimmer meaning.

Wikipedia


As is pretty clear, owls are overwhelmingly associated with death and misfortune. This is probably because they're associated with the night-time "otherworld." Jung, in his autobiography, describes a trip to Africa where he spent some time with a people he felt were some of the most natural he'd ever seen. During the day, everything was good, everyone was happy. Even when pressed "What about when something bad happens," they always responded that everything was good. This changed dramatically when the sun went down which, being close to the equator, was an almost instantaneous event. Then, the world was filled with evil.

People with less less differentiated and developed ego's (like the people Jung met in Africa) and even those with highly differentiated ego's but a resistance to the unconscious (like extroverted sensation types) have problems with the things the owl, a predatory creature of the night, represents. Distinguished by it's enormous eyes and near invisibility and soundlessness, it can see and hear you but you can't see or hear it... until it's too late! This gives it the uncanniness that's often associated with highly efficient night time predators.


Owls, crones and goddesses

Something that stood out to me is how I often I was reminded of the Praying Mantis. Both are pure predators that rely on patience and an ego-less invisibility rather than flash and speed. And both have a strong association female power.

The modern West generally associates owls with wisdom. This link goes back at least as far as Ancient Greece, where Athens, noted for art and scholarship, and Athena, Athens' patron goddess and the goddess of wisdom, had the owl as a symbol. Marija Gimbutas traces veneration of the owl as a goddess, among other birds, to the culture of Old Europe, long pre-dating Indo-European cultures.

Wikipedia

The word "cailleach" in the Scottish-Gaelic means old woman! "Coileach-oidhche" is the word for owl, believe it or not it means "night-cockerel"! These birds were most often associated with the Crone aspect of the Goddess. The owl is often a guide to and through the Underworld, a creature of keen sight in darkness, and a silent and swift hunter. It can help unmask those who would deceive you or take advantage of you.

The White Goddess


And in Hinduism, with it's symbolically rich mythology, owls are associated with the goddess Lakshmi, one of the forms of the eternal female goddess Shakti.

Lakshmi is the Hindu goddess of wealth, prosperity (both material and spiritual), fortune, and the embodiment of beauty

Lakshmi in Sanskrit is derived from its elemental form lakS, meaning "to perceive or observe". This is synonymous with lakṣya, meaning "aim" or "objective".

In India, the male principle is spiritual and static, while the earthy feminine principle is active and passionate.

Shakti from Sanskrit shak – "to be able", meaning sacred force or empowerment – is the primordial cosmic energy and represents the dynamic forces that are thought to move through the entire universe in Hinduism. Shakti is the concept, or personification, of divine feminine creative power

Wikipedia entries on Lakshmi and Shakti


What this all seems to boil down to is that the dream about the owl is a kind of continuation of the praying mantis: both are feminine symbols of power, both have to do with the spirit realm, and both are distinguished by their ability to see.


(Image from The Tattoo Hut)

Symbolism: Praying Mantis

Praying Mantis, 1916

This and the next few posts are re-posts on symbolism from my previous blog, Queen of the Night; I thought it would be a good idea to bring them over here as I'm planning on making symbols a big focus of 2BiaT. Here's the first one, on the Praying Mantis.


Praying mantis symbolism

Lately I've been obsessed with praying mantises. One showed up in my dreams and it felt incredibly significant and, of course, during the course of researching the symbolism thoughts keep rising and making me even more obsessed.

In the dream I open a door and see a giant praying mantis with golden claws, which scares me and I try to run away from, but it follows me. Then I notice that it's been hurt because my cats were playing with it, and then I feel bad and want to protect it and I put it on my right shoulder.

Cats, like all warm blooded animals, represent the instinctual, emotional self, specifically the instinctive feminine. Cats are like small lionesses, the animal I associate with the hot, primitive childish emotions that I keep deep down inside me, which have been boiling over uncontrollably since this whole thing with G has started. So my instinctive, emotional self, particularly the feminine part of myself, has been wounding what is represented by the praying mantis, which at first I run away from but eventually I not only stop running away, I actually put it on my shoulder.

When you put an animal on your shoulder it's not like keeping pet dog or a cat, or a parakeet in a cage. An animal that rides on your shoulder is a companion, a familiar. It's your animal soul, almost like the "daimons" of Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass. It may even have something important to say, as if it's a part of you and can see or know things you can't.

Plants often symbolize the Self, a Self which has developed to some degree and gained a certain inner unity, when the riotous animal passions have calmed enough that all the parts of the personality can pull in one direction, that of growth. To Jung insects weren't "real" animals, who we can communicate with and are like us in their emotions, but more like plants that could move. Insects have so little sense of themselves that they'll eat parts of their own bodies if wounded.

On the one hand, it's my animal emotionalism that let's me feel sorry for the mantis, but on the other there's obviously something that I need to learn from it's impersonal, detached patience. I need to protect it, and not only protect it but carry it with me. In Jung's autobiography, he wrote about Personality No. 2, a personality that was different from the Jung who was a child at that time, had been born a certain year in a certain place, had to go to school and obey grown ups that was Personality No. 1. Instead, Personality No. 2 was an impatient, somewhat cantankerous old man, who was interested in alchemy and the occult and had very definite views about certain grown ups' stupidity. He also wrote about Personality No. 2's that he saw in others, and this had me wondering where my Personality No. 2 was, or if I even had one. I certainly never remembered having an experience like the ones he wrote about (although Jung was singular in the power and significance of his visions and experiences.) But maybe I don't have a Personality No. 2 in the sense that Jung did, but rather an animal Spirit Guide. I always wondered if the Lioness was my animal, but that doesn't feel right - I identify with her and love her, but she's not my guide. The Lioness is less a symbol of my Self and more "myself", my real self, the primitive but pure emotional self I hide deep inside myself, but the Praying Mantis just might be my guide. To the San Bushmen, the praying mantis is a manifestation of God, the "voice of the infinite in the small."

"The !Kung call themselves zhu twa si, 'the harmless people,' in contrast to non-San, whom they call zosi, 'animals without hooves,' meaning they are as dangerous as predator animals... They believe the praying mantis is a divine messenger and when one is seen, diviners try to determine the current message.

http://orvillejenkins.com/profiles/kung.html


Following are three main areas of focus in the surprisingly wide range of things that the praying mantis can represent. Each section is just made up of those quotes that felt meaningful to me at this point in my life; following these three sections I'll go into a discussion/musing about the mantis.



Zen Warrior

• Patience and balance, mindful movements.
• Fighter/warrior. Top of the food chain.
• Zen/Taoist qualities of patience, unassuming stealth, imitates nature, calm yet deadly, total focus.

Praying mantis symbolizes patience and balance, among other things. "[I]n China, the mantis has long been honored for her mindful movements...

The mantis is a predator and is at the top of the food chain within the insect world...

"Seisan" a karate technique teaches how to get inside the opponents attack while developing a strong foundation (a characteristic of a fighting mantis). In fact, the Mantis has been known to take on much larger creatures and defeat them using these described abilities. It is very understandable when observing the mantis that it is revered by the Orient, as well as, all over the world. These hunting and fighting methods have Zen/Buddhist/Taoist like qualities: of patience; unassuming stealth; imitating nature; calm yet deadly posturing; and total focus.

The Power of the Dark Moon

• Part of the cycle of life, yin/yang, the Tao. Specifically, the predatory, violent side.
• Women's power.
• Autumn. Also the cycle of life, the season of the harvest.
• The necessity of violence: it serves to protect the sustenance which is important for life. Part of maintaining harmony.

Concept of Yin/Yang

Asian Cultures strongly emphasize the connectivity of all living things and their societies are built upon this concept. The circle of life is the relationship of life and death, implying without one you can't have the other. This interrelationship is Yin and Yang... Without the predator/prey relationship there could be no environmental or world harmony...

Immortality

We can even take this a step further through deductive reasoning to state that the circle of life in essence equals immortality. After all, the continuation of the life cycle means that we are achieving immortality. However this can only be achieved with a balanced relationship. If there becomes an imbalance, then the cycle is interrupted. Thus, it is in the nature of Japanese culture to remain in harmony.

Women Power

Most western cultures associate the mantis with women power. In nature, the female mantis has been noted to eat the male mantis if he hangs around after copulation. While in practical terms that also ensures the circle of life by providing nutrients for the next generation, this threatens the western man as a symbolic reference to women having power and using it to undo man.

Autumn

...In Japanese symbolism, the Mantis represents the season of autumn. Kobayashi Issa, one of the four prominent forefathers of haiku, used the mantis as a symbol of autumn in his poems... [W]hen we see a Mantis with these other autumn symbols, we see the circle of life being represented, in particular, Autumn, the season of harvest.

[Mantises] dine on insects that may be harmful to what you are growing... In nature, the mantis's role is protecting the crops, thereby, protecting the farmer and protecting an important ingredient in the circle of life sustenance... [W]ithin the circle of life, the Mantis requires violence of action in order to maintain that harmony.

"The Voice of the Infinite in the Small"

• Mantis as God; the unblinking eye (similar to the fish eye).
• Mantis shows the way.
• The one who teaches.

The praying mantis is the oldest symbol of God: the African Bushman’s manifestation of God come to Earth, "the voice of the infinite in the small,"* a divine messenger. When one is seen, diviners try to determine the current message. In this culture they are also associated with restoring life into the dead. "Mantis" is the Greek word for "prophet" or "seer," a being with spiritual or mystical powers.

Meet the eye of a mantis and feel the presence of God. Interspecies communicator Sharon Callahan says, "the I of me, and the I of the creature became one and we rested on the breath of God." She notes that a praying mantis appears sometimes in person, other times in a dream or even in an object of art, but always with the "shiny conscious eye ~ God looking at me through the eye of the Mantis.

The praying mantis shows the way. In the Arabic and Turkish cultures a mantis points pilgrims to Mecca, the holiest site in the Islamic world. In Africa it helps find lost sheep and goats. In France, it's believed that if you are lost the mantis points the way home.

Also, there are many references to the Creator taking the shape of the Praying Mantis and teaching humans language and fire.




Is the praying mantis in my dream related to the girl with long white hair? Blind girls often show up in myths paired with the Wise Old Man; they represent Eros, blindly falling in love. The two are a pair: youth and age, male and female, wisdom and folly, detachment and complete and utter attachment. Since I'm a woman I suppose the symbol of the Self which has detached wisdom is the detached but powerful female Mantis. Like the snake/child pairing they too must be two sides of the same coin. When I drew a picture of the mantis, the blind girl was there. She may be blind but the mantis, who was perched on her head, has a gaze that never blinks. She is in fact the Eye of the Goddess, which sees everything clearly and without emotion, without compassion but also without judgment.

The Praying Mantis is woman power. Contrast her to the Cat, who's feminine instinct and passion, and the blind girl, who's young and powerless. Like a plant, the Mantis is at one with Herself, capable of doing great violence with calm and dispassion. As women age, and they change from Girl to Crone, they stop caring what people think of them and start acting like the Mantis. This may be why such powerful women tend to terrify men, as black widows and praying mantises do. A man's story is different; he has to confront the black widow, or the mantis; he has to confront the devouring snake side, without fear, without destroying life - and without letting himself be destroyed - and come into himself as a man. But a woman has her own story; she has to become the independent Mantis/Crone, without running away from life, but to preserve it. Life needs the dark side as well as the light.

Without Atropos to cut the thread of life which had finished it's course the entire web of creation would be threatened. But in order to mature into the Mantis, a woman has to develop the qualities of the Wise Crone: insight, detachment, a vision of the bigger picture, and the ability to destroy that which threatens the greater harmony of life. And in order to do so a part of her has to remain outside the sticky mess of personal feeling, not by running away from it but by living it, learning from it, and eventually being able to step back from it. As the I-Ching put it, "Retreat is not the forced flight of a weak person but the voluntary withdrawal of a strong one."

We can only become strong by living life, not by running away from it. I think the reason I'm going through all of this crazy emotional shit is because I avoided it for so long in order to protect myself. So I'm getting a really intense education in emotional upheaval and heartbreak... but this is having an effect on my Mantis. As with men and their Wise Man and Blind Girl, I have to balance the Mantis and the Lioness (also the Blind Girl): I need to stay with the relationship but not be consumed by it.

And yes, I do think the Mantis just may be my Spirit Guide; no matter how crazy I've gotten, something in me has always been dispassionate and clear eyed. But until now, it's been paired with the sour bitterness of an unlived life. I guess now by God I'm living it...


References

"Animal Symbolism of the Praying Mantis" by Avia Venefica [http://www.whats-your-sign.com/animal-symbolism-mantis.html]

"Praying Mantis" by Souled Out (Swan Raven & Co.) [http://www.souledout.org/earthday/mantis/pm.html]

"Pray for the Preying Mantis" By Ken Wilson[http://www.freewebs.com/kamakiriken/symbolupload.htm]

Praying Mantis in Totem Library [http://spiritlodge.yuku.com/topic/958#.T9K8sr8wLww]


(Image from Creatively Different Blinds)