Homecoming

The process of individuation draws one into a gradual homecoming. Listen to how Martin Prechtel describes his initial experience in Secrets of The Talking Jaguar, Memoirs from The Living Heart, p. 80 – 83.

“Coming into the village of Santiago Atitlan as I did that day, after more than a year of roaming on my own, was not like reaching the promised land, but more like the homecoming of a spawning fish, or a migratory bird hatched elsewhere, following its nature, flying hard, not always sure of the way, but arriving at its true indigenous place of origin. I was coming back to a home I’d only glimpsed in my sleep.

“Some say dreams come from people, from an individual’s personal life, and maybe they do. To others like myself, a dream was simply a bud on the Tree of Life, a small leak from the other world’s story, whose speech made life live. My life was a strange tale whose salient points had been broadcast to me in dreams long before I had to live them out.”

“What for me seemed overpowering was … the quality of familiarity. Never once did I feel foreign or alien in this wild enormous Tzutujil village. It was a new feeling: after being an outsider my whole life, here I felt like I belonged. Not that I fit in, because I didn’t at first; not because I was welcomed by all, because I was not. But I felt good here, on account of I was actually from here in some way that I didn’t comprehend.”

“I didn’t come to Atitlan to become a shaman or to study Mayan culture, or to learn how to be a better person, or to get enlightened. I came because I was called there, whether I knew it or not; because the spirits had carved a space for me in the matrix of my destiny and, fishing me out of the womb, had reeled me slowly but surely into this ancient citadel of Southern Quichean Mayans in a time when their own destiny was imperiled. The spirits had a job for me, and I would do my best for them.

“I knew this place. I had smelled and tasted it hundreds of times as a child, thinking it a place found only in dreams. So when I drifted into Santiago, I recognized my own arrival home, welcoming myself into my own heart…”

Image credit: Grief and Praise by Martin Prechtel.

Alchemy and Creativity

Alchemy, Creativity, Active Imagination, Transference: how do they hang together?

Jung found that the process of active imagination portrayed in the approach of the old alchemists to their material, working in their laboratories. The alchemists studied their observations and documented their ‘art’ or ‘philosophy,’ trying to come to an understanding of what they were doing. Jung realized that they were aware of the fact that their ‘gold-making’ was a psychological process.

The vas symbolizes the containing function. This does not refer only to the physical container but also to the meditative, sincere attitude to the work. Without the containing vas, the mercurial substance, the unfolding volatile process, will continue to dissolve. Without this containment there can be no coniunctio and no symbol, the work of the transcendent function. [1]

The transcendent function was an early concept which Jung later developed into his concept of the Self. Active imagination, in all its forms, was seen as the method.[2] In his paper, The Transcendent Function (1916, reworked in 1958)[3], Jung widened his original approach to active imagination to include many forms of creative expression.

In my creative approach to the unconscious, the creative space, like the vas, takes on this role of on-going containment. The space is formed, not only by the physical space and the medium, but even more so by one’s relationship to one’s inner world and one’s attitude to the creative process.

By projecting one’s mood, one ‘heats’ the work. One notes the unfolding of the image, the process, while staying with the energy; one continues to project psychic content by living with the image, paying attention to new insights and emotions, an ongoing dialogue; one endeavors to find how it is meaningful and how it wants to enter one’s life.

This special way of concentrated looking and of projecting inner content involve more than mere looking at. Jung used the word betrachten, which means ‘to look at’ but also ‘to make pregnant.'[4] We make it pregnant with material from the unconscious. Then we can see it and be influenced by it, make it conscious.

Jan Wiener finds her own understanding of the countertransference process reflected in this process. She refers to Jung’s use of the words geschehen lassen, or ‘to let it happen, to allow, to be receptive to the other,’ as the analyst’s attitude toward and involvement with the patient. Betrachten is the mutual projection of unfolding unconscious content, and sich auzeindersetzen is to come to terms with it, finding meaning.[5]

The unfolding process of the transference and countertransference, both in a single session and from one session to the next, is the analytical third or the symbol or the divine child that is slowly taking shape. This cannot be attributed only to the contribution of the therapist/analyst, for both therapist and patient are present in this container of the therapeutic relationship, consciously as well as unconsciously. Both are projecting, ‘looking at it,’ and both are trying to make sense of what is happening.

To me it is obvious that the creative process, when approached in the way I suggest, dovetails with the therapeutic process, each enriching the other. Although the creative process is enriching and supportive in its own right, it can only really come into its own when integrated into a therapeutic relationship.

References:

[1] Jung, CG. Collective Works 12 par 342 – 400.

[2] Chodorow, Joan. (1997). Encountering Jung, Jung On Active Imagination, Princeton University Press, NY. P. 5.

[3] Jung, CG. The Structure And Dynamics Of The Psyche, Collective Works 8, par 131 – 193.

[4] Chodorow 1997 p. 7. (Quoting Jung, CG, Interpretation Of Visions, Mimeographed Notes By Mary Foote, 1941.)

[5] Wiener, J. (2009). The Transference Relationship: Transference, Countertransference And The Making Of Meaning. Manufactured in the USA. P. 72 – 3.

Symbolism of the Stone

In modern culture, diamonds are often associated with making a commitment in a long-term relationship, felt to signify the rock on which it is built. A precious stone is a symbol of the lapis lazuli, the Self.

The aim of the process of individuation is to restore the relationship to the Self, an inner mystery. A positive outcome of the process may culminate in the integration of the inner opposites, symbolized as the masculine and feminine principles, in the sacred inner marriage.

‘Petra’ means rock, and Peter was said to be the rock on which the church was built. We associate the stone with permanence: something may be ‘written in stone’. Stones have also been used to shape religious objects and temples since ancient times. Stonehenge continues to leave us in awe. Meteorites were found in some ancient temples and were revered as the deity itself.

As a child, Jung loved to sit on a large stone. He used to think that he was also the stone. Then again he was the boy. He would get off the stone, feeling confused. Was he Carl, the boy, or was he the stone, old and wise? This was the beginning of what he called his number one and number two personalities, leading to his later understanding of the ego and the Self.

Later in life Jung ‘rescued’ a rock which had been rejected by the mason. It was a perfect cube, too large for its purpose, and he let this stone speak for itself. The first thing that he chiseled into the stone, was a Latin verse:

“Here stands the mean uncomely stone,
‘Tis very cheap in price!
The more it is despised by fools,
The more loved by the wise.”
MDR, p. 227

In alchemy, it was said that the cornerstone, the lapis, was rejected by the masons and was called the orphan. In therapy we often discover essential aspects of our personalities that were rejected early in life and which we rejected turn out to be the cornerstone of the individuation process and the core of the personality.

Photo credit: Marcelo Jordao, Yarden Life Center in Brazil.

Trickster creates

Feeling distressed, we might engage with a creative medium within a contained transitional space and be surprised to discover the reality of the living psyche, of unfamiliar content in the new creation, a message ‘from the deep.’

“Trickster makes this world,” he creates playfully. (Lewis Hyde, 1998) He sits on the ‘border;’ he ‘opens or closes’ the connecting door between our inner and outer worlds. He re-members or dis-members, symbolizes or dissociates us. (Kalsched, 1997, p. 197)

A playful approach to life’s difficulties allows one to play around with possibilities in difficult times, to adapt. A traumatized child has difficulty in relaxing and playing.

Trickster makes this world, he makes links, he creates. He is the driving force in what Jung described as the Transcendent Function. This function aims at restoring inner imbalance. Therefore, if there is an emotional need and if we create the right circumstances, the trickster will come, because he wants to come.

The conscious personality is goal-directed and has to adapt to the outer world; this is what it has to do. But this is often not beneficial to the whole or complete personality. Because it is mostly unconscious, it is not possible for the conscious personality to keep its own wholeness in mind. This imbalance then activates the trickster who tries to restore the balance, e.g. through a slip of the tongue, a dream image, or in symbolical creative work. The imbalance can also be mediated in the transference between analyst and analysand. (CW8:134-8)

The creative play of the transitional space produces symbolical content. A symbol is an image of psychic energy, a complex fact, not fully understood by consciousness; it portrays “an objective visible meaning, behind which an invisible profounder meaning is hidden.” (Jacoby, 1957, p. 77) It brings together conscious and unconscious content. From a conscious point of view, it often appears as a paradox.

When relating to it, inviting it into one’s real lived life, it nourishes immature wounded aspects of the personality, in turn supporting the process of individuation, of growing towards greater maturity.

In symbolical creative work one may find a window on the unfolding, lifelong process of becoming.

Symbolism of Water

We associate our emotional life with water. Without our world of emotions, we are stranded in a dry blazing desert, the world of one-sided mind. Logical thinking has its place but is often over emphasized in modern culture.

Water flows together: our emotional life unites things. When cleansed, it is nourishing. Without water, no life is possible.

Water is able to flow around an obstruction and flow on. It fills up the empty space and takes on its shape: it adapts.

Water reflects light. When we are able to relate to our emotional life, we are better able to reflect upon ourselves and our lives. Mourning forms a central aspect of the process of self-acceptance. Grief allows the old life to become compost for the new.

Water is the solvent: old structures, depleted of their content, may be dissolved in water. After a period of drought, rain brings a feeling of release, of relief of tension.

Creation myths often tell us that water was the source from which everything originated. When a pregnant woman’s water breaks, birth is imminent. ‘The waters’ have been associated with the Great Mother symbolism since ancient times: the place of the waters is the Great Mother, and the place from which we might be reborn, renewed.

Creation myths tell us about upper and lower waters. The waterfall connects the waters of above with the waters of below, it connects the higher values with the everyday world. The tree and the fountain likewise connect upper and lower; it draws up the water from below, the water of the earth, the well-springs of life, wisdom, and make it available to anyone who delve down deep enough within her/himself.

A more conscious integrated perspective on life brings the possibility of compassion that is objectively contained, water with shape, also sometimes called Eros.

Image credit: Lea van Rensburg

Symbolism of the Well

Wells have been associated with sacred ceremonial descent, ritually lived, for millennia. Like the holes in the ground, hand-dug by men and women over time, it resembles the development of consciousness over time. Over time, archetypal patterns of descent, linking above and below, ego and Self, became more fully known by humanity and potentially available to anyone who would ‘go down all the way’ to the roots, who ‘does not neglect the work.’ (1)

All over the world, wells have been dug by hand at least since the ninth millennium BCE. (2) Human settlements have always been dependent for survival on a well with a fresh clear spring, so that social structures developed around it. We depend upon it.

The symbolism of the well and the tree have something in common. The water of the well can be drawn up from the deep to serve life and growth in the community. In the same way, a tree draws up water through its roots and fibers from the deep in order to grow.

The well conveys the idea that the nourishing wellsprings of life is available to all, no matter how desperate you are feeling. It is inexhaustible. It grows neither less nor more; it exists for one and all. Generations come and go, and all may enjoy life in its inexhaustible abundance. (2)

A well needs to be maintained, cleaned, lined and so, also, the relationship to one’s deeper self. Through Jung’s psychology, the existence and mechanisms of this psychic structure was made conscious and accessible to any individual who felt called upon to undertake the work of descent. Then the inner relationship with one’s roots may be restored and the individual may find meaningful nourishment.

Our modern world is dominated by rationality and superficiality resulting in loneliness and meaninglessness, but by restoring the relationship with one’s deeper personality one may draw from the wellsprings of Life to find meaningful containment and inner guidance from your own roots.

1. I Ching, p. 185 – 6

2. Wikipedia.org, well

Symbolism of the Tree

The tree represents the manifestation of the life-force, of our ability to grow into greater maturity; when faced with an impossible life situation, one should not try to force anything, but ‘stay in one place and grow, like a tree.’ (Jung, Dream Seminars, 1929)

Growing is a slow process. Only swamp plants shoot up overnight. Inner growth may enable one to outgrow and rise above a difficult life situation, to attain a more objective perspective and discover alternative options that may have been there all along. A very large tree may grow from a very small seed.

The seed has to break open and grow towards the light, the higher values. Breaking open is painful, but necessary; without it there will be no growth. The tree roots us. Its roots stretch away into the darkness of the earth, into the shadow. Like the fountain, the tree may draw water from deep beneath the earth, from the well-springs of life, if the roots reach deep enough.

A tree goes through seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter. After the death-like feeling of winter, stripping away the old, new life returns, blossoming, ripening our fruit. Animals and birds may be fed and sheltered. When the time comes again, we shed our beautiful autumn colors so that it may become compost for new life. Our lives circle continuously through periods of spring, summer, autumn, winter and spring again.

Synchronicity

Synchronicity refers to two or more events that appear simultaneously, that were born from the same moment in time. It means that they are meaningfully related, although they do not originate from the same cause. (1)  

I Ching, the ancient Chinese book of wisdom, is based on an acausal system as opposed to the familiar Western system of cause and effect, and centers around the concept of what Jung had named synchronicity or meaningful coincidence.

Jung described it as “the simultaneous occurrence of a certain psychic state with one or more external events which appear as meaningful parallels to the momentary subjective state and, in certain cases, vice versa.” (2)

At Richard Wilhelm’s memorial service in 1930 Jung expressed his gratitude for Wilhelm’s translation of I Ching described it as radiating the simplicity and ‘plantlike’ wisdom of Chinese culture. It emerged, came into being, as if like a light out of thousands of years of dark background ‘horrors.’ (3)

In Western culture it answers a need, with Christianity having become ‘debilitated.’ It no longer contains us with wisdom. Western culture is tired of rationalism and intellectualism; it “wants to hear truths that broaden rather than restrict, that do not obscure, but enlighten, that do not run off them like water, but penetrate them to the marrow.” But new sensations alone will not help us; we have to “earn the right to it by working on ourselves.” (4)

Jung wrote a foreword to Wilhelm’s translation of I Ching. He viewed it as a testimony to his individual experience of the book: he asked the oracle for its judgement on Jung’s intention of presenting it to the Western mind. In answer I Ching told him “of its religious significance, of the fact that at present it is unknown or misjudged, of its hope of being restored to a place of honor.” (5)

I Ching, whose wisdom may be said to center around the principle of Tao, refers to a quest for meaning in life. This has become a collective phenomenon in our time (6).

Seen from this perspective, I Ching can be a great support to anyone seeking deeper meaningful containment.

Image credit: Bodhi Tree Leaf Yin Yang artwork from the Royal Thai Art website.

References:

1. CG Jung, CW 8 par 849.

2. CG Jung, CW 8 par 850.

3, 4, 6. CG Jung, CW 8. Richard Wilhelm: In Memoriam, par 87 – 90.

5. Foreword by CG Jung from I Ching, The Wilhelm Edition, p. xxviii.

An African Tale

Seven maidens went down to the river to fetch water. One girl went a little further. While the others were waiting, they decided to play her a trick and hid their bead necklaces in the sand. On her return, the girl trustingly believed her friends when they pretended that they threw it into the pond to see what might happen. So she threw her necklace into the pond. Laughingly they retrieved theirs and went away. In great distress the maiden cried out at the pool, a voice told her to move on and she obeyed.

At another pool she was told to enter. Without hesitation she jumped into the pool and encountered a one-legged, one-armed old woman. A cruel Dimo (1) kept the old woman enslaved and had devoured her one arm and leg. Deeply touched by her suffering, the girl cleaned her wounds. In turn, the old woman protected her when the Dimo appeared, declaring that he smelled a human and, after he had left, rewarded her richly. On returning to her village the other maidens were jealous of her fortune and thought they could also be lucky. They jumped into the pool, but they were rude to the old woman and mocked her. When the terrible Dimo appeared, she did not protect them… (2)

A tale of individual seeking and descent leads to encountering one’s own one-sidedness, the wounded old woman, in the depths of one’s being. A trusting, sincere and compassionate approach is naturally rewarded by the archetype itself. But natural resistance to “the other world,” the unconscious, often results in a self-damaging attitude of disrespect. The wounds have to be tended. In another version of the tale, it is cleaned by licking it, like an animal might do: “saliva is symbolically a healing water that we are all born with.” (3)

The girl wants to retrieve her necklace. “The threaded bead necklace stands for the unifying of diversity… it becomes a cosmic and social symbol of ties and bonds.” (4) Associated with the heart chakra it represents our capacity to relate to our deeper selves and others. An apt symbol of the African concept of Ubuntu, a conscious descent may restore this sense of identity and interconnectedness. (5)

REFERENCES AND NOTES:

1. DIMO: is said to be ‘partly man, partly animal, partly spiritual’, a trickster figure. It is widely found in Africa in Swahili and the Niger-Congo basin and in Southern Africa, e.g., in Zulu and Sesotho cultures. From “Tricksters and Trickery in Zulu Folktales” by Noverino Noemio Canonici, 1995; PhD dissertation, University of KZN, SA.

2. Edith McPherson, 1919. Native Fairy Tales of South Africa, London Harrap, UK. Distributed by Heritage History. “The lost beads” p. 45.

3. Helen Luke, 1995. The Way of Woman, Double Day Publishing, US, p. 100

4. JE Cirlot, 2002. A Dictionary of Symbols, Dover Edition, p. 227

5. UBUNTU: a quality that includes the essential human virtues; compassion and humanity.

Mother Holle

A negative relationship with the personal mother may be deeply wounding, but in the tale of Mother Holle we find a relational archetypal pattern (personified as feminine) aimed at restoration and inner growth.

A maiden had a cruel stepmother who forced her to work hard and spin till her fingers bled. One day while rinsing her sore fingers, the spindle slipped from her hand into the well. Ordered to retrieve it immediately, she jumped into the well in great sorrow. She awoke to find herself in a meadow through which she started to walk. Along the way she was requested to do certain tasks which she did with compassion, as was her nature.

After a while she reached a hut where a frightening old woman lived, Mother Holle. She was instructed to shake the bedding till the feathers fly, for it brings snow on earth. She took courage and served the old woman well for a time but then she became homesick. To her surprise the old woman helped her to find her way home through a doorway where she was showered with gold.

Upon her return her lazy envious stepsister wanted her share of the gold. She stung her finger and jumped into the well. She was careless while attending to the simple tasks on her way and Mother Holle soon tired of her lazy servant. Dismissed, leaving through the doorway, she was showered in pitch which clung to her for the rest of her life.

Trying to gain approval and love a person may work hard to serve the negative mother complex, working one’s fingers to the bone and wounding oneself. All one receives in return are envy and rejection. In utter despair and great sorrow, a descent follows. One discovers a different world, and a new path unfolds where one learns to undertake tasks simply and for their own sake, ‘cooling off’ the complex.

Undertaking this service is frightening, it demands courage, but one may learn to serve an aspect of the Self truthfully. The envious stepsister, the shadow, may be tamed, and spiritual meaning may be found, extending far beyond the personal complex.

Source:

Dougherty, Nancy J.; West, Jacqueline J. The Matrix and Meaning of Character (pp. 142-144). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.

The Wounded Healer

The birth of healing power from the ‘original wound’ that we must address in the therapeutic relationship, belongs to the archetype of the wounded healer. Jung described this archetype as “the mythological truth that the wounded wounder is the agent of healing, and the sufferer that takes away suffering.” (1)

The myth refers psychologically to the capacity “to be at home in the darkness of suffering and there to find germs of light and recovery with which, as though by enchantment, to bring forth Asclepios, the sun-like healer” (2)   

Chiron, then, represents ‘the one who is wounded,’ the one who wounds self and others, ‘the wounder’, and ‘the one who suffers’ because of the wounding. (3) Asclepios, often called the Father of Medicine, was said to have been rescued from his mother’s funeral pyre and raised by the centaur Chiron, who taught him the art of healing. (4)

An archetypal image can manifest in human psychology consciously or unconsciously, but mostly as a mixture of the two, entangled with our wound and presenting us with a problematic situation which we must address consciously, both as therapist and as patient.

The therapist as the healer has his/her own wound which may be drawn in if it provides ‘hooks’ for the patient’s projections. By each working separately on the problem, the archetype is constellated within the therapeutic space, bringing movement along the path. (5)

The wound holds a key: it plays an important role in the process of individuation as that which is the source of one’s inner suffering as well as the bringer of healing and transformation, not only to oneself, but also to others, a gift in service of Life. Looking back upon wounding encounters, we might see that it brought us inner growth and a deepening of compassion.

Von Franz said that, “In seeking for the meaning of your suffering, you seek for the meaning of your life. You are seeking for the greater pattern of your own life, which indicate why the wounded healer is the archetype of the Self – one of its most widespread features – and at the bottom of all healing procedures.” (6)

It might therefore be helpful to ask yourself: what purpose does my suffering, my difficulty serve?

References:

  1. CG Jung, Four Archetypes p. 136
  2. ARAS Concordance (wounded healer/TRANSFERENCE-COUNTERTRANSFERENCE): E. Edinger, Mysterium Lectures p. 317
  3. M Reinhart, Chiron and the Healing Journey p. 81.
  4. ARAS Concordance (wounded healer/NIGREDO): E. Edinger, quoting Kerenyi, Anatomy of the Psyche par 0.
  5. ARAS Concordance (wounded healer/SHRINES-AND-ORACLES-OF ANCIENT-GREECE): E. Edinger, Eternal Drama par 0.
  6. ML von Franz, Puer Aeturnus p. 114

Black Madonna, Forgotten

Between the 11th and 15th centuries, more than 500 shrines of the Black Madonna appeared world-wide, but mostly in central Europe, . Scholars suggest that she represents ancient goddesses, like Artemis, Diana, Cybele, Isis and others. (1)

Judy Zappacosta, Jungian analyst from California, researched her modern presence in Europe, she said: “I was very moved by the essence of sitting before a feminine dark figure that had such a deep interiority to her that she just pulls you in, into darkness, into silence, and actually into mystery…

“There’s an ownership that is taken up by the local people, that they are the keepers of, they say, “the Lady,” [who] is part of their lives in a very everyday way… they change her clothing; they have festivals, dances, lots of relationship to fertility, and motherhood, and things that bring them close to the people that are beyond the church’s style of owning a particular icon. The Black Madonna seems to have slipped through ownership by the church… she lives within chapels all through the places that you usually find her… way upon rural wild wilderness places, less-travelled regions… [where she] has always been discovered…”(2)

The Black Madonna can be seen as a personification of the forgotten Great Mother. Over millennia, the unconscious, personified as the feminine principle, has become gradually more suppressed by consciousness, personified as the masculine principle, in all of us. As aspects of the unconscious became submerged, it became the task of the shaman/ess to undertake the descent into the underworld, maintaining a relationship to this forgotten world. This is e.g. portrayed in the myths of Inanna, Persephone and Orpheus.

Later, even this process of descent into the underworld became forgotten, until it was made accessible again by Jung’s psychology, so that we might consciously undertake the inner journey.

The silent form of the Black Madonna may inform and contain us each on our own journey, in our dark night of the soul, as we grapple with our fate. It is her call: by heeding it, by following her lead, we each in our own way contribute to the restoration of her temple.

References:

Website of Europe up close: Article on The Mystery of the Black Madonna

Website: Depth Insights Blog: Symbolism of the Black Madonna, a Jungian Perspective, Interview with Judy Zappacosta

Aion

Only once did Jung name a book after a god; this god was Aion. Aion-Khronos represents a father-god, Greco-Roman with Persian influences. His cult, Mithraism, (100 – 500 AD) was destroyed by Christianity. (1) Jung said about Aion:

“In the cult of Mithras there is the key god Aion. He is represented with the winged body of a man and the head of a lion, encoiled by a snake which rises up over his head. He is Infinite Time and Long Duration, the supreme god of the Mithraic hierarchy, and creates and destroys all things, a sun-god. As the lion-headed god with the snake around his body, he represents the union of opposites, light and darkness, male and female, creation and destruction. He is represented as having his arms crossed and holding a key in each hand. He is the spiritual father of St. Peter, for he too holds the keys. The keys which Aion is holding are the keys to the past and future. The idea of the key is often associated with the mysteries in the cave.” (2)

In the Mithraic mysteries the serpent and the lion are opposites; to be entwined is to be devoured, to return to the mother’s womb. As a symbol of time, Aion has the zodiac portrayed on his body. Time is expressed through the dawning and extinction of consciousness, death and rebirth, to come into being through ‘infinitely long duration,’ through repetitive transformations of the creative force, libido. (3)

As in the ancient moon mysteries, where Dionysus was sacrificed as the bull-god and son-lover of the Great Mother, symbolizing the sacrifice of animal nature, so in the Mithraic mysteries (4) Mithras overcame his immortal brother symbolized as the bull, by killing, eating and integrating him ceremonially. (1)

Jung described Mithraism as a complete solar psychology, aimed at restoring the relationship between the mortal and immortal brothers: Mithras as consciousness and the bull as the archetype, the Self. He added that the relationship in which they stand to each other is similar to the relationship between St. Peter and Christ. (5)

Aion has two keys, the keys to the past and to the future. The pattern of death and rebirth, of descend and return, is the ancient shamanic journey. We are familiar with the descent of Inanna, of Persephone, of Osiris, to name but a few. This pattern is a fundamental pattern of change and growth stretching back into the past. It is the descent and return of Christ. But it is also the key to the future. In psychology, in Jung’s work, we find a new form of the old night-sea journey.

The slow unfolding of this archetypal process, the cruel immaturity of the god, the cultural manifestation of the process, have to be suffered through by humanity over time. This is how we as humans may contribute to the manifestation, the creation, of our world.

The chaotic times which we live in may also be seen against this background.

References:

1. Ancient History Encyclopedia / Mithraic Mysteries website.

2. CW 18 par 266

3. CW 5 par 425

4. CW 5 par 659

5. CW 5 par 288

Only once did Jung name a book after a god; this god was Aion. Aion-Khronos represents a father-god, Greco-Roman with Persian influences. His cult, Mithraism, (100 – 500 AD) was destroyed by Christianity. (1) Jung said about Aion:

“In the cult of Mithras there is the key god Aion. He is represented with the winged body of a man and the head of a lion, encoiled by a snake which rises up over his head. He is Infinite Time and Long Duration, the supreme god of the Mithraic hierarchy, and creates and destroys all things, a sun-god. As the lion-headed god with the snake around his body, he represents the union of opposites, light and darkness, male and female, creation and destruction. He is represented as having his arms crossed and holding a key in each hand. He is the spiritual father of St. Peter, for he too holds the keys. The keys which Aion is holding are the keys to the past and future. The idea of the key is often associated with the mysteries in the cave.” (2)

In the Mithraic mysteries the serpent and the lion are opposites; to be entwined is to be devoured, to return to the mother’s womb. As a symbol of time, Aion has the zodiac portrayed on his body. Time is expressed through dawning and extinction of consciousness, death and rebirth, to come into being through ‘infinitely long duration,’ through repetitive transformations of the creative force, libido. (3)

As in the ancient moon mysteries, where Dionysus was sacrificed as the bull-god and son-lover of the Great Mother, symbolizing the sacrifice of animal nature, so in the Mithraic mysteries (4) Mithras overcame his immortal brother symbolized as the bull, by killing, eating and integrating him ceremonially. (1)

Jung described Mithraism as a complete solar psychology, aimed at restoring the relationship between the mortal and immortal brothers: Mithras as consciousness and the bull as the archetype, the Self. He added that the relationship in which they stand to each other is similar to the relationship between St. Peter and Christ. (5)

Aion has two keys, the keys to the past and to the future. The pattern death and rebirth, of descend and return, is the ancient shamanic journey. We are familiar with the descent of Inanna, of Persephone, of Orpheus, to name but a few. This pattern is a fundamental pattern of change and growth stretching back into the past. It is the descent and return of Christ. But it is also the key to the future. In psychology, in Jung’s work, we find a new form of the old night-sea journey.

The slow unfolding of this archetypal process, the cruel immaturity of the god, the cultural manifestation of the process, have to be suffered through by humanity over time. This is how we as humans may contribute to the manifestation, the creation, of our world.

The chaotic times that we live in may also be seen against this background.

References:

1. Ancient History Encyclopedia / Mithraic Mysteries

2. CW 18 par 266

3. CW 5 par 425

4. CW 5 par 659

5. CW 5 par 288