“Sailing to Byzantium” is a poem that I love to reread regularly. I think it is just perfect and I am glad Jeff decided to illuminate it for us.
Sufi mysticism has been something I have wanted to delve into for quite some time now. In this book I have come across a beautiful passage on the auditory qualities of the elements:
“The earth has various aspects of beauty as well as of variety in its sound. Its pitch is on the surface, its form is crescent-like, and its color is yellow. The sound of earth is dim and dull, and produces a thrill, activity and movement in the body. All instruments of wire and gut, as well as the instruments of percussion, such as the drum, cymbals, etc., represent the sound of the earth.
The sound of water is deep, its form is serpent-like, its color green, and it is best heard in the roaring of the sea. The sound of running water, of mountain rills, the drizzling and pattering of rain, the sound of water running from a pitcher into a jar, from a pipe into a tub, from a bottle into a glass, all have a smooth and lively effect, and a tendency to produce imagination, fancy, dream, affection, and emotion. The instrument called jalatarang is an arrangement of china bowls or glasses graduated in size and filled with water in proportion to the desired scale; more water lowers the tone, and less raises it. These instruments have a touching effect upon the emotions of the heart.
The sound of fire is high pitched, its form is curled, and its color is red. It is heard in the falling of the thunderbolt and in a volcanic eruption, in the sound of a fire when blazing, in the noise of squibs, crackers, rifles, guns and cannons. All these have a tendency to produce fear.
The sound of air is wavering, its form zigzag, and its color blue. Its voice is heard in storms, when the wind blows, and in the whisper of the morning breeze. Its effect is breaking, sweeping and piercing. The sound of air finds expression in all wind instruments made of wood, brass and bamboo; it has a tendency to kindle the fire of the heart, as Rumi writes in his Masnavi about the flute. Krishna is always portrayed in Indian art with a flute. The air sound overpowers all other sounds, for it is living, and in every aspect its influence produces ecstasy.
The sound of ether is self-contained, and it holds all forms and colors. It is the basis of all sounds, and is the undertone which is continuous. Its instrument is the human body, because it can be audible through it; although it is all-pervading, yet it is unheard. It manifests to man as he purifies his body from material properties. The body can become its proper instrument when the space within is opened, when all the tubes and veins in it are free. Then the sound which exists externally in space becomes manifest inwardly also. Ecstasy, illumination, restfulness, fearlessness, rapture, joy and revelation are the effects of this sound. “
Tibetan Prayer Flags, image credit: http://peacepeg.tripod.com/
Last month I blogged about a book on symbols that I had just started reading (https://symbolreader.net/2013/10/23/the-veiled-speech-of-the-symbol/). I have finished it now and, while I got some inspiration from it, it did not satisfy me fully. Nevertheless, the nuggets that I have gleaned from his book, I am very happy to share here. All subsequent quotes come from this book, unless otherwise indicated.
I. The word “symbol” in ancient Greek
The oldest Greek meaning of sumbola was “the assembly of the waters,” a place where various rivers, streams and other waterways meet and flow together. The word sumballein meant “to throw or cast together” and also “to exchange words with someone.” Its meaning entailed comparing two things, interpreting one thing by means of another. Aristotle used sumballein kresmon to denote “interpreting an oracle.”
Rob Gonsalves, Tributaries
I was familiar with the etymology of the word “symbol,” but this in-depth delineation inspired me further to marvel at the beauty of this word. The process of symbolization entails throwing together and creating a link between the manifested and the unmanifested, the visible and the invisible: between here and beyond. Symbols are instruments of sacred dialogue, “the living and instantaneous revelation of the inexplorable,” as Goethe said. By means of symbols we dialogue with our deeper selves. Symbols take us back to the primordial source waters; they possess an oracular function and wisdom. They connect us with our souls and are the only language that the soul understands. Symbols give us “inner powers of a purely experiential order, and not an intellectual and abstract conception of the world.” They go much deeper than culture and lie deeper than socialization. The chapter on etymology finishes with a beautiful thought:
“For those of vision, the symbol restores the spectacle of a universe in the nascent state – that universe which has become crystallized, solidified, opaque, and closed or off-limits to those of thought.”
Rob Gonsalves, In Search of Sea
II. Symbols are not abstract concepts
The roots of symbolism are simultaneously in spirit and in the body – in physical experience. James Hillman, whom the author sadly does not quote anywhere, was a firm proponent of that thought. Observing nature is indispensable to developing a symbolic sense. Also Jung always emphasized his own rootedness in mother earth: he trained as a stonemason to build his refuge – the structure known as Bollingen Tower.
“The universal language of analogy and symbols is not only the language of the gods, but also the language of nature, of the suprahuman and the infrahuman, the language of the spirit, but also of the depths of the body.”
III. The inseparability of myth and symbol
“… myths… are like those rough, uncarved stones that are not the attributes of the deity, but rather the deity itself in its immediate and sensible opacity…. A myth is nothing other than the mutation that it brings about in us when we let ourselves dissolve into it.”
Symbols and myths are experienced and lived concretely in our everyday experiences. In most of us it happens on the unconscious level but in ancient times this was the obvious truth experienced by everyone. Myths have always been inextricably connected with rituals and transformative rites. They sprung from the nourishing soil of the times immemorial: they were born with humanity, or maybe earlier. The loss of a conscious connection with myth, ritual and symbol must have resulted in the feeling of barrenness and meaninglessness typical of our times. We may be more at the mercy of symbolic forces because we do not consciously acknowledge their power.
Ancient stone in Sapa, Vietnam
IV. Understanding of symbols can put an end to the battle between nature and spirit
Symbols are great mediators between the concrete physical reality, from which their meaning sprang, and the spiritual realm of archetypes. Alleau writes: “The transfiguration of nature is … inseparable from the incarnation of the spirit.” We have lost the symbolic ear because we have alienated ourselves from the earth, from the physical realm. We have lost our concrete foundations in “the increasing abstraction of the economic process,” asserts the author of the book. Who understands symbols is free from the social and political repression and close to the ever-creative source of life. This is why those in power and obsessed with control obstinately strive to devalue any form of symbolic expression and define myth as “fiction, untruth.” Deep down they know and fear that the power of symbols is not within their grasp.
Erik Johannson, Fishy Island, via http://erikjohanssonphoto.com/
Once on a trip to Venice I wandered into a square of San Barnaba, where a scene from one of the Indiana Jones movies had been shot. I was overjoyed to find out that at that time San Barnaba’s church was housing an exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci’s machines, which had been built using his sketches and designs.
I must say, however, that I was more awe inspired by his sketches than by the actual machines. Is this because I am more inspired by the fact that he thought these grand thoughts well ahead of his time, or maybe because his sketches are so beautiful, mysterious and “sfumato,” i.e. “without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke or beyond the focus plane,” as da Vinci himself explained his painting technique? The sketches occupied the space between a smoky dream and hard reality, while the actual machines were just, well, actual, not imaginary any more. The most inspiring for me were the sketches of wings and the flying machines. Humans took to air much, much later than da Vinci imagined it: the first manned flight in a hot air balloon did not take place until long after his death. Here’s a replica of the Montgolfier brothers’ balloon. It is really beautiful and it featured images of Zodiac signs and suns.
The first balloon launch
Recently, I was filled with joy and hot air after reading a light-hearted review of a book about a history of balloon flying. The book reviewed is called Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air and was written by Richard Holmes. I’ve read an enthusiastic review by Graham Robb in the latest issue of The New York Review of Books. The article really stirred my imagination and put me in a lighthearted, Sagittarian, mood, much welcome after a month of Scorpionic darkness. My mind wandered back to my childhood when I used to avidly read books by Jules Verne. These tales of fanciful travels took my breath away. I was not surprised to read that the first balloonists could barely contain their enthusiasm. Seeing the earth from the air for the first time made them lose their senses and common sense: they were intoxicated as their world had inflated and their consciousness had expanded. They were daring and mischievous, possessed by the archetypes of the trickster and the explorer. They were perceived as eccentric and daring, and they did eccentric and daring things. They often behaved “like irresponsible superior beings.” The review is full of delightful passages, such as this one:
“On a dark November night in 1836, the English balloonist Charles Green, accompanied by an Irish musician and a member of the British Parliament, was floating invisibly over ‘the unearthy flare of the fiery foundries’ of Belgium, close enough to hear the coughing and swearing of the foundry workers. He lowered a Bengal light on a rope until its dazzling flare was skimming over the workers’ head. Then he urged one of his companions to shout in French and German through a speaking trumpet ‘as if some supernatural power was visiting them from on high.’ He imagined the ‘honest artizans’ trembling like a primitive tribe…’”
The first years of ballooning were characterized by craze without thinking of practicalities. To this day, in fact, balloons do not have any real practical purpose, though I have read on Wikipedia they may be useful in space exploration. This is fitting, as balloons are very outlandish, indeed.
“Like a wonderful hallucinogenic cloud, the balloon was capable of generating seemingly endless novelties.”
Floating in an air balloon is not unlike floating on a magic carpet. Earthbound rules do not apply to balloons: a balloonist can leave an inhospitable spot in an instant and with style and grace:
“Once he [i.e. Holmes, author of the book] landed in a field of ‘distinctly inhospitable’ pigs…; on another occasion, he was a passenger in a balloon whose pilots attended to land ‘on the trim lawns of the National Parliament building’ in Canberra, ‘until waved away by a genial security officer who threatened to give us a parking ticket.’
I had to chuckle when I read that the most important cargo in every balloon, was, champagne, preferably a few bottles:
“While hydrogen expanded the envelope of the balloon, babbles of champagne had a similar effect on the pilots’ brains.”
“Exploring the nameless shores of the aerial ocean” in a bubbly state of intoxication surely feeds to my imagination. I am reminded of the childlike innocence of Peter Pan and his words about dying, which will be just another awfully great adventure. Holmes called the feeling of balloon flying “falling upwards,” which involved releasing the concept of direction and control and embracing the ever changing vistas and wonderful surprises. The first balloonists were awfully nonchalant about dying; they were fearless while travelling in these floating symbols of wholeness that balloons are:
“There is some haunting analogy between the silken skin of a balloon … and the thin atmospheric skin of our whole, beautiful planet as it floats in space.”
Carl Jung would call these feelings of joy and immortality “psychic inflation,” but he himself had a vision of floating in space while he was in hospital recovering from a heart attack. He described the vision in Memories, Dreams, Reflections:
“It seemed to me that I was high up in space. Far below I saw the globe of the earth, bathed in a gloriously blue light. I saw the deep blue sea and the continents. Far below my feet lay Ceylon, and in the distance ahead of me the subcontinent of India. My field of vision did not include the whole earth, but its global shape was plainly distinguishable and its outlines shone with a silvery gleam through that wonderful blue light. In many places the globe seemed colored, or spotted dark green like oxydized silver. Far away to the left lay a broad expanse the reddish-yellow desert of Arabia; it was as though the silver of the earth had there assumed a reddish-gold hue. Then came the Red Sea, and far, far back as if in the upper left of a map I could just make out a bit of the Mediterranean. My gaze was directed chiefly toward that. Everything else appeared indistinct. I could also see the snow-covered Himalayas, but in that direction it was foggy or cloudy. I did not look to the right at all. I knew that I was on the point of departing from the earth. Later I discovered how high in space one would have to be to have so extensive a view approximately a thousand miles! The sight of the earth from this height was the most glorious tiling I had ever seen.”
We are all floating in space, much like in paintings by Marc Chagall.
Marc Chagall, The Dream
Johfra Bosschart, Scorpio
There has been so much Scorpionic energy this month that it has been very hard for me to translate all that subconscious, emotional intensity and tension into language. Also in my personal astrological line-up, Scorpionic energy abounds and is going to intensify in the near future. I understand very well now that Scorpio much prefers highly charged silences to any verbal outpourings. A small collection of symbols would be enough to capture its essence – that was probably Johfra’s rationale for the ascetic feel of his Scorpio image. It seems to be a contemplation of danger, degeneration, death and spiritual renewal. As early as in the ancient Babylonia, the scorpion was a harbinger of death. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, as Gavin White writes, a Scorpion-man and a Scorpion-woman are guardians to the mythic mountain under which the sun sets every night. Gilgamesh descends under the mountain, through a tunnel and into the underworld on his quest to find immortality.
THE SCORPION
Scorpions are magical creatures. Putting their symbolism aside, it is enough to take a look at their habits and properties to feel sheer awe and amazement. I was encouraged by James Hillman, author of Animal Presences, to look at the real creature before I proceed to petrify it into its symbolic meaning. Hillman does not write about scorpions, unfortunately, because I would really welcome his brilliant insights. In my research, I have managed to come across some amazing facts about scorpions. Scorpions are very ancient creatures. The oldest fossil scorpion is 400 million years old and looks exactly like the modern one. Scorpions once existed along with dinosaurs. The ancestors of our scorpions once dominated the oceans and they could reach the length of eight meters (9 feet). The modern scorpion is extremely adept at survival: some species can live a year without food or water, and survive a few weeks under water. When food is scarce, they hibernate but become fully alert and ready to attack the moment they detect their prey. What is more, their detection skills are unsurpassed: they sweep the area like radar and can feel the tiniest flutter of butterfly wings. They are not fussy eaters: they would eat anything that falls into their clutches, including other Scorpions, which they kill instantaneously by injecting venom into their nervous system.
They are masters of energy conservation, which they achieve by building spiral tunnels where temperature and humidity remain at a constant desirable level (Scorpio is a fixed sign after all: it strives to concentrate energy). However, their mating dance can last for hours and their courtship rituals are quite extended, including “a cheliceral kiss,” which involves the male injecting the female with a small amount of his venom. When the mating is over, the male retreats quickly and does not look back, perhaps for fear of being cannibalized. Along with cockroaches, they are the only species able to survive a nuclear attack and deadly doses of radiation. Like other arachnids, including spiders, they have eight legs, fittingly, as Scorpio is the eighth sign of the Zodiac. They are nocturnal creatures; bright light is extremely unpleasant for them and that’s why they spend their days hidden in burrows, crevices and under buildings. They dislike the sun and the wind because it interferes with their sensitive detection devices. They cannot survive in environments that have no soil because they are burrowing animals.
All of the above are scientific facts, but they go with the symbolism of the Scorpio extremely well.
ALCHEMY
Rudhyar, with his talent to encapsulate the universe in one sentence, wrote this about Scorpio: “(Scorpio) deals with all that is at the foundation of being human…. It is dark and heavy, as roots are dark and deeply embedded in humus which is the product of disintegration.” He continues: “In Scorpio the individual is forced to touch bottom. He must be willing to surrender his individual uniqueness and individual prerogatives. As he does so, he descends in consciousness into the common Root of the group. He learns to live in terms of humanity as a whole. In a sense, this is symbolized by Christ’s descent into hell. Through such a descent the human depths are “redeemed;” that is, they are made significant. They are given an individualized meaning and a conscious value by this descent of the individual.” Scorpio is a sign opposing Taurus in the Zodiac. Do you remember the Taurean image (https://symbolreader.net/2013/04/24/images-of-the-zodiac-contemplating-taurus/) – the Spring in full bloom, lush green hills, Life thriving. The rich Taurean soil rests upon the dark, heavy and moist Scorpionic mud, the “long-accumulated sediment, water trapped by the coldness of ice or the heaviness of mud.” (Deborah Holding). The landscape here is stark and deathly: definitely not a place to nap, relax and unwind. In a landscape like this, one needs to stay alert and ready for a fight or a flight. This is the fundamental root, the underbelly of life, the materia prima of alchemy.
“Here destruction and creativity meet together, causing a tremendous alchemical reaction between attraction and repulsion, a transmutative force which deserves the highest respect since a negative or uncontrolled release is capable of destruction, just as a positive, controlled discharge is imbibed with the power to sweep away all boundaries of resistance. …
The Egyptians, who accorded great honour to scorpions and beetles, recognised the spiritual alliance between the creatures that dwelt beneath the earth and the magical, alchemical processes of life, death and regeneration. The most blessed state was to be born in a ‘rich compost’ of power, and the black, fertile mud of the Nile delta was their Prima Materia, the bubbling melting pot of creativity where decomposing elements underwent an attractive reaction that allowed the emergence of new life. Their word for this black, muddy earth was Kemit, adopted as khemia by the Greeks, and eventually forming the basis of the word alchemy which has dropped its spiritual dimension – but not its power to transmute and create – in the modern word chemistry. Whilst all the water signs are known for their fertile potential, it is with dark, still, muddy Scorpio that we encounter the truly powerful creative potential.”
Deborah Holding
The traditional ruler of Scorpio is Mars, the modern one – Pluto (the Greek Hades, god of the underworld and the ruler of precious minerals hidden in the earth). He was said to wear a cap of invisibility when he emerged to the surface of the earth. It is interesting that the planetary body that due to its size has lost its planetary status, has a nuclear effect when transiting the vital points in a birth chart. Similarly, the scorpion’s size has nothing to do with the deadliness of its venom; on the contrary, the sting of the smaller scorpions is actually much more dangerous. Stripped of its powers (seemingly) Pluto continues to wield his enormous influence from the underground.
Johfra chose to remain with the old ruler and hence the red Martian colour dominating the painting. To me, that red looks a lot like blood, which immediately calls to mind the motifs of passion, power, and also sacrifice. The scorpionic inferno is the inferno of passions. Blood is life itself, its unceasing rhythm, being in its totality, the vibrant flow of life. One is immediately reminded of rubedo (reddening), which is the last stage of the alchemical opus and which denotes the existence that is both spiritual and material. The final stage of the alchemical opus brings a reconciliation of up-, down-, in- and out- turning impulses that so often tear Scorpios apart.
“In stage four, the alchemist awakens to the desire to return to the earth and to fully incarnate his or her state of “illuminated” consciousness into the mind and body. …Heaven and earth in the alchemist are now united.”
Nigel Hamilton
Three stages of alchemy: Nigredo, Albedo and Rubedo
As nobody puts new wine into old bottles, the chalice of the old life is knocked down and the awakened radiant psyche, the Holy Grail, the philosophical stone, resides in a new chalice. Jung wrote of “anima corporalis that dwells in the blood;” he emphasized that the mystery of psychic transformation is located in matter. The kundalini always rises from the prima materia, the earthly body. Entering a cave is a preludium to being reborn. Caves are the ultimate emblems of mystery and of alchemical furnaces where transformation and transmutation take place. The alchemical rubedo, wrote Jung, is symbolically related to the resurrection of Christ, coming back from his sojourn in the underworld: stepping from the shadow into the light.
THE SNAKE AND THE DRAGON
In his essay “The Snake is Not a Symbol,” included in his book Animal Presences, James Hillman provides a summary of possible meanings of the snake, warning us, as he always does, that the meaning does not replace the image and, what is more, it can even take away its power. He mentions twelve possible areas of meaning for the snake:
1.The snake is renewal and rebirth, because it sheds its skin.
2. A snake represents the negative mother, because it wraps around, smothers, won’t let you go, and swallows whole.
3. The snake is the Devil.
4. It is a feminine symbol, having a sympathetic relation with Eve and goddesses in Crete, India, Africa, and elsewhere.
5. The snake is a phallus, because it stiffens, erects its head, and ejects fluid from its tip. Besides, it penetrates crevices.
6. It represents the material earth world and as such is a universal enemy of the spirit. Birds fight it in nature and heroes fight it in culture.
7. The snake is a healer; it is a medicine. … It was kept in the healing temples of Asclepius in Greece, and a snake dream was the god himself coming to cure.
8. It is a guardian of holy men and wise men – even the New Testament says that serpents are wise.
9. The snake brings fertility, for it is found by wells and springs and represents the cool, moist element.
10. A snake is Death, because of its poison and the instant anxiety it arouses.
11. It is the inmost truth of the body, like the sympathetic and para-sympathetic nervous system of the serpent power of Kundalini yoga.
12. The snake is the symbol for the unconscious psyche – particularly the introverting libido, the inward-turning energy that goes back and down and in. its seduction draws us into darkness and deeps. It is always a “both”: creative-destructive, male-female, poisonous-healing, dry-moist, spiritual-material …
Hillman also draws our attention to the extraordinary characteristics of snake obliterating its prey to pulp before devouring it: “… a snake dislocates its jaw to swallow an animal larger than itself, … its digestive system works without chewing…, like a rhythmic peristalsis that squeezes its meal against the snake’s backbones, crushing its prey into a digestible pulp.”
We can just say that the snake is symbolic of energy itself, which can be both creative and destructive. The snake embodies the wisdom of the deeps and is a guardian of deep mysteries. It also relates to the shadow archetype signifying the temptations of matter, the material lust, the lust for power, the lowest instincts and desires, and as such is related to the dragon.
Scorpio is a sign torn between spirituality and sensuality. The next part of my post will speak of initiation but I cannot help thinking that perhaps, as long as we remain on this earth, there is always a possibility of slipping back, being sucked back into the abyss of our instincts and desires. Perhaps the fight with the dragon (the smothering shadow) is a never-ending one. Can we ever purge “the dirty alleyways and swamps” of our souls? – asks Liz Greene. Only the light of insight and consciousness can guarantee victory, but the forces of darkness cannot be conquered once and for ever. That is why the archetypal theme of the hero and the dragon is so characteristic of Scorpio; the battles are not singular but recurring. We cannot forget that the hero and the monster form a unity, a wholeness. Dostoevsky, the most distinguished writer among Scorpio natives, gave a full expression to the energy of this sign in his writing. The Brothers Karamazov contains such a wealth of intense, Scorpionic quotes that it is quite hard to choose. Here is one: “Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive? I don’t want harmony. From love for humanity I don’t want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged suffering. I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it’s beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it.”
INITIATION
The mysterious yogi in the background of the image is the awakened one, who has mastered the serpent’s kundalini power. He has made a transition from the crawling scorpion to the soaring eagle, which is said to be the “higher” expression of Scorpio power. Scorpio never forgets, though, that higher does not mean better, since there is no high without low, no heights without depths and roots.
The association of the eagle with the scorpion is derived from the vision of Ezekiel, in which the prophet saw four living creatures, each with four faces: of the eagle, the lion, the ox and the man. The vision is directly related to astrological symbolism and the so-called fixed cross of matter. The four fixed signs: Scorpio, Leo, Taurus and Aquarius respectively correspond with the aforementioned four faces. Also, these four signs are related to the four evangelists and for us today the relevant evangelist is St. John – the eagle. St. John’s gospel is related to the sign Scorpio in its content: it speaks of redemption and the apocalypse (Greek for ‘un-covering’). He uncovers the deepest, esoteric mysteries in his gospel, equaling Christ with Logos. He speaks of Jesus’ Ascension and the redemption of matter through spirit.
St. John
I leave you with a quote of yet another deep “Scorpionic” individual:
“You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart.”– Franz Kafka
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Sources:
Liz Greene, The Astrology of Fate
Nigel Hamilton, “The Alchemical Process of Transformation,” http://www.sufismus.ch/assets/files/omega_dream/alchemy_e.pdf
James Hillman, Animal Presences
Deborah Holding, “Scorpio the Scorpion,” http://www.skyscript.co.uk/scorpio.html
Carl Gustav Jung, Psychology and Alchemy
Dane Rudhyar, The Zodiac as the Universal Matrix
Gavin White, “Babylonian Star-lore,” http://www.skyscript.co.uk/babylonian_scorpio.pdf
Related posts:
https://symbolreader.net/2014/03/02/images-of-the-zodiac-contemplating-pisces/
1.“As the Great Creatrix, the feminine is a vessel and passage for an alien, masculine Other that condescends towards her, enters into her, and favors her with the seed of living. Life originates in her and issues from her, and the light that appears projected on the night sky, which she is herself, is rooted in her depths. For she is not only the protomantis, the first and great Prophetess, but also she who gives birth to the Spirit-Light, which, like consciousness and the illumination that arises in transformation, is rooted in her creative efficacy. She is the creative Earth, which not only brings forth and swallows life, but as that which transforms also lets the dead thing be resurrected and leads the lower to the higher. All developments and transformations that lead from the simple and insignificant through all gradations of life to the complicated and intricately differentiated fall under her sovereignty.”
Erich Neumann, The Fear of the Feminine and Other Essays on Feminine Psychology2. “Ceres as a goddess of death functions as the matrix which receives the dead for rebirth. The entrance to rebirth is through the womb. Thus Ceres as Mother, whose blood provides the nourishment for the fertilized egg and fetus, rules over the women’s blood transformation mysteries.”
Demetra George, Asteroid Goddesses: The Mythology, Psychology and Astrology of the Re-emerging Feminine
Raymond Douillet, A Short Tour and Farewell
I hope nobody is offended by the artwork. As today’s full moon is in conjunction with my natal Moon in Taurus, I thought that this image beautifully captures the mystery of the Great Round. In The Red Book Jung wrote about “the ever-fruitful womb of darkness,“ which I think is a fitting catchphrase for today’s full moon.
“Love sets up resonances in the deepest abysses of our being. It is a lightning flash of the eternal within the flow of time.”
Aldo Carutenuto, Eros and Pathos: Shades of Love and Suffering
Butterflies are very popular funerary motifs. The soul is like a butterfly (“Psyche” in Greek): short-lived and attracted to Light. Love and Death, Eros and Tanathos, are closely connected: in love an individual self is obliterated through merging with the beloved. Love brings mortal wounding, suffering and agony, which reminds me of a somewhat disturbing quote from one of Franz Kafka’s letters to Milena: “You are the knife I turn inside myself, this is love. This, my dear, is love.” From the heights of bliss to the depths of despair: that is Psyche’s way in the myth. Through death, which is an organic and symbolic part of life, she is born into eternal life by undergoing tests, purifications, death, resurrection, and ascension. “Death is the translation of life into soul,” beautifully wrote James Hillman in Animal Presences. Psyche is both mortal and immortal.
The last part of the story, in which Psyche has important tasks to fulfill, shows the making of her Self. In the previous two parts of the series, with a knife and a lamp she cut through the sensual oblivion of living in the belly of the uroboric monster and embarked on a journey towards separateness and consciousness. Her goal is merging with her beloved Eros but to be able to form an alchemical union with him she has to first become an individual psychological entity.
The angry and wounded Eros abandons Psyche and life loses its meaning for her. Without Love the Soul has no reason to live and she contemplates suicide. The story continues in Psyche’s Knife:
“Psyche believed that all was lost. She left the palace and threw herself into the river, but the river, fearful of offending Eros, bore her up and carried her to the opposite bank. There Psyche encountered the god Pan… When he saw the forlorn girl, he immediately knew that she was suffering the pangs of love. “Do not try to kill yourself,” he advised, “but go instead to the god of love and plead with him.
Edward Burne-Jones, Pan and Psyche
Psyche left but she wandered aimlessly. After a time, she found herself in the kingdom where one of her sisters ruled, and so she sought an audience with her. ‘I did as you advised,’ Psyche told her, “and discovered that my husband was none other than the god of love. He abandoned me with bitter words and said he knew that he had married the wrong sister. Now he means to make you his bride.’
Psyche’s sister was overjoyed by this news. She ran to her husband, inventing some excuse for her sudden departure, and then quickly made her way to the rocky promontory where the West Wind had twice carried her safely to Psyche’s former home. The sister leaped into the air, eager for the arms of Eros, and fell to her death on the crags and boulders below.
Psyche wandered on and came to the kingdom of her other sister, whereupon Psyche related the same story. This sister … met the same violent fate.”
In Asteroid Goddesses, Demetra George says that Psyche archetype is connected with psychic sensitivity, especially towards the mind and feelings of another, but also with being able to feel and communicate with nature. The meeting of Pan by the river is very significant. Pan is the faun, the god of the wild, the horned deity known for his sexual powers. Nature takes Psyche under her wing: every soul on the path of individuation is cherished by Nature. That scene is the making of Psyche in the sense that it shows her connection with Nature because the soul’s separation from nature is an illusion of the mind. By throwing herself into the river Psyche agrees to let go of the obsessive and patriarchal need to control the natural flow of life and time. She lets herself be guided by archetypal powers – Nature, the current of Life, and the gods and goddesses (our inborn archetypes). She is now grounded in Nature and ready to evolve spiritually.
What she did to the sisters may sound cruel, but from a symbolic standpoint is necessary: the relationships that do not feed our souls need to be eliminated, however harsh that may sound. As Jesus said, “I do not come to bring peace, but to bring a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household.” (Matthew 10: 34-39). Or as Emily Dickinson put it so beautifully: “The soul selects her own society. Then shuts the door.” After this purification, Psyche is now ready to meet the wrathful Aphrodite. She visits Demeter and Hera first to buy some time, but gets no help from either of the goddesses. Gods are demanding: you cannot substitute one for another, they all demand your worship.
“Aphrodite attacked Psyche, tearing her clothes, her hair, and striking her again and again. “Where is your beauty now, worthless girl? Do you have any strength, or value, or perseverance left? We shall test your mettle and see!”
Don’t we all sometimes feel lashed by the goddess of love? Psyche is tortured by Aphrodite’s two maids, Melancholy and Sorrow; after some time the goddess proceeds to assign Psyche four impossible tasks:
“In the center of the floor was an enormous heap of mixed seeds, barley, millet, and other grains, which Aphrodite commanded the girl to sort by nightfall. … Psyche sat down, bewildered and forlorn, not noticing her first helpers. An ant, followed by thousands more, crawled towards the seeds. …they sorted the entire heap into many separate mounds.”
The first lesson of the soul pertains to humility and industry, patience and determination. Ants remind Psyche that she should relinquish her sense of being special; also Aphrodite’s scorn had served the same purpose. Separation is an important stage of the alchemical process; it demands discernment and good judgement to separate the wheat from the chaff.
The next task consisted in collecting the fleece of ferocious golden rams, whose force and cruelty was the strongest at noon. Psyche was offered assistance by a green reed:
“Psyche, do not approach the rams directly. … Later, when the sun begins to set, go to the meadow where the rams have grazed and collect the bits of fleece caught on the low-hanging branches.”
Psyche is successful again thanks to achieving a taoist mindset, being at one with nature, not confronting the ferocious solar beasts openly but by gently collecting their treasures under the soft light of the moon. Neumann sees this labour as bringing fruitful contact between the masculine and the feminine, between solar and lunar consciousness.
“Symbolically, the sun emanates its light and projects its creative energy outward. The reflective quality of the moon returns the light back toward the source, thereby completing the soli-lunar circuit.”
Demetra George, Asteroid Goddesses
The third task is even more daunting:
“Aphrodite handed Psyche a delicate crystal flask. “Take this and fetch me water from the river Styx.” Psyche was aghast. She knew that its waters were poisonous even to the gods. With dread, she walked toward the place where the fierce waters tumbled over a sheer cliff into a deep gorge below… At that moment, Zeus’s eagle took pity on Psyche, swooped down and grasped the flask in his talons. Skimming gracefully next to the deadly water, the eagle filled it and returned the flask to the girl.”
The river Styx (“the river of hate”) was the boundary between the Earth and the Underworld. All the gods used to swear their oaths by it. On her path, Psyche is now integrating the archetypally masculine energies symbolized by the eagle: a solar bird of consciousness. Eagles are the opposite energy to the energy carried by the river Styx: thus this labour entails the unification of opposites. In connection with eagle symbolism, Cirlot shares an interesting thought in his Dictionary of Symbols: “… the constellation of the Eagle is placed just above the man carrying the pitcher of Aquarius, who follows the bird’s movement so closely that he seems to be drawn after it by unseen bonds. From this it has been inferred that Aquarius is to be identified with Ganymede, and also with the fact that even the gods themselves need the water of the Uranian forces of life.” The higher Aquarian waters of pure understanding are juxtaposed with the murky, toxic waters of hate flowing in the Styx. Both streams reflect the mysteries of Life and Death, as the whole myth of Eros and Psyche does.
Aphrodite did not relent and gave Psyche her last, the most formidable task. It is the fourth task, a number that Jung especially cherished: a number of completion. The mandala, the most perfect symbol of the Self (the unity of consciousness and unconsciousness) is divided into four parts. It is an image of a stable, eternal order. Also, Jung postulated that the male holy trinity needs the female fourth figure to achieve depth and wholeness, to unite the above with the below. Four is the number of matter (mother), the earth, the material manifestation.
“Psyche’s fourth and final task was beyond compare: she was to go down into the underworld and collect a beauty ointment from Queen Persephone. Psyche was well aware that no mortal ever returned from such a journey… In despair, Psyche spied a tall tower and again planned to kill herself. But the tower took pity on her and offered this advice: enter the underworld prepared with two coins for the ferryman and two honey cakes for Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guards the gates. “All along the journey,” the tower warned, “there will be lures to keep you from your purpose. You must resist each one. Above all, do not open the ointment from Persephone, for it will be deadly to you.”
A. Zick. Psyche and Charon
The tower is the first “non-organic” advisor to Psyche. It may stand for human culture and wisdom, symbolic of ascent. It is a symbol of wholeness because it is both masculine (phallic) and feminine (an impregnable fortress). It denotes self-imposed restrictions: it gives Psyche very detailed instructions which must be followed to the letter. The underworld can only be navigated with a steadfast and focused attitude. The lures that tempted her were a man whose bundle of wood had tumbled from the back of his donkey, who asked for her help; later a corpse floating on the surface of the river Styx lifted a cold hand, pleading for help. Psyche showed restraint and resolve and did not allow herself to be distracted. She knew her resources were limited and she did not squander them. She refused to dine with Persephone and made her way back with the ointment in her hand.
In ancient Greek mysteries, only those who ritually descended into Hades could be called full initiates. A collection of descent myths passed on to us is very rich: my favourite being Inanna’s descent into the Underworld ruled by her sister, Ereshkigal. The descent was prominent in Orphic mysteries as well: the original descent story being of Orpheus coming down to Hades to claim his wife Eurydice. We know very little about these fascinating ancient mysteries but what happened was probably that the hierophant was guiding the initiates into trance and through an out-of-body spiritual experience. The ultimate purpose was to lose all the earthy attachments and overcome the fear of death. The realm of Hades hides enormous riches: the new possibilities to turn our lives around, to experience rebirth and renewal, to rejuvenate ourselves by finding the greatest treasure. We descend to retrieve the lost splinters of our Self.
Paul Alfred Curzon, Psyche in the Underworld
Psyche emerges from the Underworld and the story continues:
“Then Psyche paused. She considered the jar of ointment and lifted a hand to caress her own careworn face. “Why should I simply give this to Aphrodite?” she wondered.” Why not use some of it myself, to recover my beauty so that my beloved Eros will be irresistibly drawn to me?” With that, Psyche opened the jar – and immediately fell into a Stygian sleep. At that moment, Eros felt something stir. … He scanned the landscape And, spying the sleeping Psyche, Eros kissed her awake…”
Edward Burne-Jones, Psyche Opening the Box
Antonio Canova, Amor and Psyche
Edward Burne-Jones, Eros Delivering Psyche
He flew to Mount Olympus and professed his love. Psyche was accepted among the Olympians as the new goddess. Shortly after their child was born, a girl whose name was Pleasure (Joy).
In all interpretation of the myth that I have come across Psyche is scorned for her “narcissistic” wish to be beautiful for Eros. But I think we can look at what she did form a symbolic standpoint: the soul wants to purify itself and be beautiful to in order to merge with the Beloved (understood as God, like in Sufism or Christian mysticism). She is a drop that longs after the ocean.
We can also view the myth from an alchemical perspective. The alchemists, in their quest for gold (understood as the highest unity of body, mind and spirit and the actualization of the Self) considered the world to be governed by a myriad of paired forces (opposites). They perceived the Soul to be an organ of the Spirit and the Body an instrument of the Soul. Their goal was self-knowledge and they sought to harmonize and balance the opposing forces first within themselves and then to project that inner order on the outside world. The child of Eros and Psyche is the fruit of such a union, it symbolizes the loving centre of our being. To me, Psyche is heroic but not in a traditional, patriarchal sense. She completely redefines the heroic. As Eric Neumann wrote in Eros and Psyche: “She can stand up to the disintegrating power of the archetypes and confront them on an equal footing. Yet all this does not occur in a Promethean-masculine opposition to the divine, but in a divine, erotic seizure of love.”
Paul Baudry, Cupid and Psyche
Sources:
Elizabeth Eowyn Nelson, Psyche’s Knife: Archetypal Exploration of Love and Power
Erich Neumann, Amor and Psyche
Related posts:
1. “Life happens when the tectonic power of your speechless soul breaks through the dead habits of the mind.”
John Patrick Shanley, Doubt
2. “The shadow of the light is not darkness, but illumination.”
Clement of Alexandria
These two quotes came to me this morning while I was writing the final part of my reflections on the myth of Eros and Psyche. I have always been fascinated by a quiet growth, patiently occurring in the dark, which ineluctably is going to break through the dead crust of our current consciousness.
The story of Psyche and Eros is a tale of soul-making and deep transformation. As Elisabeth Eowyn Nelson, author of Psyche’s Knife, put it: “Just as Psyche’s fate is entwined with Eros, the soul’s fate is always erotic. We work out our fate by discovering what we desire, what we value, and what we would die for.” I like to look at mythical stories as perfect narratives that cannot possibly be improved. I am not able to judge or criticize mythical characters. Nevertheless, in my previous post I was mildly critical of Psyche when I wrote that she was in love with the idea of love rather than the “real” Eros. Actually, Psyche has been mercilessly criticized by many interpreters of the myth as meek, spineless or weak. I’ve got to confess that I adore her childlike tenderness and vulnerability. I am not wired to look for dysfunctions in mythical stories. I simply cannot blame Psyche for being vulnerable and tender-hearted, and I actually love the part of the story where she is staying in Eros’s palace, not allowed to see his face. After all, darkness, containment, privacy, exclusivity and secrecy are very much connected with Eros and erotic love. However, the intimacy shared by Eros and Psyche cannot last: it must be counterbalanced by the light of consciousness. Both characters know that, otherwise Eros would not allow Psyche to receive the visit of her sisters. I had further reflections spurred by Psyche’s stay in the palace of Eros. How does love happen? Perhaps first we fall in love with the image, the archetype of the Beloved, whose divine image is imprinted in our souls. The Beloved that we seek dwells within our own psyches, always. The union that we seek is the desire of our own wholeness and completeness. I feel that when writing about myths we should always have in mind the following words of Jung from The Psychology of the Child Archetype: “Nor for a moment dare we succumb to the illusion that an archetype can be finally explained and disposed of. The most we can do is dream the myth onwards.”
Psyche may have lived a dream life in a dream palace but the story must unfold, the sleeping must wake up. Psyche will have to leave the blissful palatial womb. Her sisters, whose intentions are wicked and dictated by envy, instill doubt in our heroine, acting as the necessary evil that spurs the character towards individuation, like Mephistopheles in Faust. Psyche is not able to see through their wickedness, inexperienced and isolated as she is. At the beginning of her story she strikes me as a beautiful incarnation of the archetype of the divine child. Children are naturally wise but they are often overlooked or patronized, as is Psyche by many of those who interpret her myth. I think it may be interesting to look at this story by viewing Eros as the primordial god and by viewing his beloved Psyche as Life, Soul and the Divine Child that emerges out of the primordial (erotic) chaos. In Essays on a Science of Mythology, Jung wrote: “The child motif represents the pre-conscious, childhood aspect of the collective psyche.” And further: “The child distinguishes itself by deeds which point to the conquest of the dark.” The special phenomenology of the child archetype is quite visible in Psyche’s story. She has an aura of specialness. From the very beginning of her story she is taken under the wing of Nature, which will be even more visible in the impossible tasks that Aphrodite will command her to fulfill. The child archetype and the archetype of the Self are closely connected:
“The child is born out of the womb of the unconscious, begotten out of the depths of human nature, or rather out of living Nature herself. It is a personification of vital forces quite outside the limited range of our conscious mind; … a wholeness which embraces the very depths of Nature. It represents the strongest, the most ineluctable urge in every being, namely the urge to realize itself…. The grandeur and invincibility of the “child” is bound up in Hindu speculation with the nature of the Atman. The latter corresponds to the “smaller than small yet bigger than big” idea. As an individual phenomenon, the self is “smaller than small,” as the equivalent of the cosmos it is “bigger than big.”
The Sun (The Star Tarot deck by Cathy McClelland, via http://www.cathymcclelland.com/enlarge_htm_pages/Tarot/sun.htm)
The concept of Atman is directly connected with Psyche’s story as this word literally means “essence, breath, soul.” Let us continue Psyche’s story, quoting from Psyche’s Knife, as in my last post. Although Eros forbade Psyche to look at him, she decides to approach her lover while he is asleep with a knife (in case he is a monster) and an oil lamp:
“As she approached the sleeper, the light revealed an astonishing sight. Her unknown husband was none other than Eros, the beautiful god of love. … When her eye caught the brace of weapons near the bed, she curiously began to examine them.
Troy Howell, Eros and Psyche
She held up an arrow, tipped with the poison that heats the blood of Eros’s victims. But because she was still trembling at the discovery of the god, she accidentally pricked a finger on one of the sharp points – and passionately fell in love with the god of love. Psyche drank in his extraordinary beauty with even more passion and began to kiss him fervently. Just then, a drop of hot oil leapt from the lamp onto his shoulder and painfully scalded his unblemished skin. Eros awakened, saw Psyche, the lamp, and the knife, and flew out of bed in a rage.
Psyche piteously clung to Eros as he flew above her head, but to no avail. He ignored her tears and pleas and scolded her in bitter words.”
Then he left, and Psyche fell into despair. Eros’s arrow is a reminder of the inevitable suffering that love entails. Psyche awakens to consciousness and she must leave the safety of Eros’s palace: her individuation path is stretching in front of her. The knife she got hold of was necessary as a way to cut through the illusion and confusion of her situation. It can be viewed as a tool of discrimination and separation. It taught her to become more discriminating. In heroic myths, the light and the knife (or the sword) are attributes of masculine heroes used to overcome dragons and other monsters of darkness. But instead of bloody combat Psyche experiences a conscious, love encounter. She encounters her inner divinity by looking at a god. You may remember from my previous post that according to Orphic beliefs nobody could look directly at the face of Eros without going blind: he was the primordial god, the light of the Self. For Psyche, looking at Eros is a moment of epiphany: all her future struggles and ordeals follow from that one mystical moment of revelation.
Psyche’s knife stands for the conflicts, tortures and agonies of love. It stands for the mind’s power of discriminating and prioritizing, and of assessing danger, which at the beginning of the tale Psyche is unable to do. The author of Psyche’s Knife devoted a lot of time to research, and conjectured that Psyche actually wielded a double-headed ax of the Goddess: the weapon common among women of the Minoan culture of the island of Crete. It was “a flat blade with two sharp edges shaped something like butterfly wings attached to a sturdy shaft.” It was the weapon of the Minoan serpent goddess and might have symbolically evoked her transformative power, characteristic both of serpents and butterflies.
Priestessess before the Great Goddess with Double Butterfly Axe, gold ring 1500 BC, via http://rolfgross.dreamhosters.com/The-Stones-of-Greece/2012StonesofGreeceEnglish/Crete/Crete.html
Nelson emphasizes the pain inherent in a butterfly’s transformation: “Literally and figuratively the caterpillar is consumed alive by transformation.” We seldom realize that the pain of the transmutation is grinding and agonizing for the caterpillar. Further, the double ax, as a symbol of wholeness, may also symbolize the simultaneous creation and destruction, the ecstasy of life and death. The knife is also an alchemical tool as it separates and differentiates. Only that which is carefully and neatly separated can be united. The coniunctio reaches its highest expression when the two principles that are to be united are uniquely distinct in the first place.
Related post:
Eros and Psyche by blackeri
Plato perceived love as the desire and pursuit of the whole, as he wrote in Symposium. The tale of Eros and Psyche is a story of the soul’s desire for wholeness. It has been haunting me for years both in my conscious and unconscious (dream) life. Nothing can spoil the tale for me; its beauty is eternal, its mystery unfathomable. I would like to devote some place to that story on my blog, and I know one post will do it little justice, as it is so complex and carries so much symbolic weight.
The first thing that needs to be said is that the story of Eros and Psyche cannot be found in any Greek mythology if you decided to look it up. It is actually a part of a Latin novel The Golden Ass written by Apuleius in 2nd century AD. Apuleius recounts a story that is much, much older, dating back to at least 4 century BC and which was very important to ancient Greeks, especially those involved in sacred mysteries.
The names of the main protagonists surely stir imagination: Eros (love, desire, sexual passion) and Psyche (soul, life, breath of life, also – a butterfly). Let us look at the origins of the main hero and heroine. Eros plays a decisive role in the Orphic myth of creation, as described by Robert Graves in Greek Myths:
“Some say that all gods and all living creatures originated in the stream of Oceanus which girdles the world, and that Tethys was the mother of all his children.
But the Orphics say that black-winged Night, a goddess of whom even Zeus stands in awe, was courted by the Wind and laid a silver egg in the womb of Darkness; and that Eros … was hatched from this egg and set the Universe in motion. Eros was double-sexed and golden-winged and, having four heads, sometimes roared like a bull or a lion, sometimes hissed like a serpent or bleated like a ram. Night … lived in a cave with him, displaying herself in triad: Night, Order and Justice. Before this cave sat inescapable mother Rhea, playing on a brazen drum, and compelling man’s attention to the oracles of the goddess. (Eros) created earth, sky, sun, and moon, but the triple-goddess ruled the universe, until her sceptre passed to Uranus.”
The Primordial Eros, surrounded by the circle of Zodiac
The Orphics were a religious group in ancient Greece, revering the mythical poet Orpheus, who was said to have invented the Mysteries of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and ecstasy. The Mysteries were very much connected to the Underworld with an enormous reverence that the Orphics dedicated to the goddess Persephone, consort of Hades.
In his story of Eros and Psyche, Apuleius follows the mainstream myth and presents Eros as the son of Aphrodite. At the beginning Eros is nothing like the powerful Orphic deity. Rather, he is enmeshed with his mother and meekly fulfills all her orders. In the course of the story, both Eros and Psyche wake to their inner power and both get in touch with their inner, essential divinity. In the end Eros, the winged god, marries Psyche (butterfly), who has transformed and got her own wings as a result of her long, arduous and trying process of individuation. Two books have shaped my understanding of the myth: Amor and Psyche by Erich Neumann and Elisabeth Eowyn Nelson’s Psyche’s Knife: Archetypal Explorations of Love and Power. Neumann asserts that the myth portrays the psychic development of the feminine, while Nelson is chiefly preoccupied with the rich symbolism of the knife that appears very early in the story.
It is worth starting our exploration of the myth with Psyche’s early life. I think Nelson tells the story beautifully, so I am going to use her wording:
“In western Greece there once lived a king and queen who had three daughters. The eldest two were beautiful but the youngest, Psyche, was so incomparably lovely that no words could describe her. … the people… began to view her as a fresh incarnation of the goddess of love herself, Aphrodite … As word of her loveliness spread far and wide, travelers flocked to the kingdom to worship Psyche as the new goddess. In their eagerness, the people neglected the altars of Aphrodite.
When the true Aphrodite realized that the honors due to her were being granted to a mortal, she was outraged and vowed revenge. … Aphrodite begged Eros to fly one of his arrows and make Psyche fall in love with a vile and disgusting creature. …
Time passed, and Psyche’s older sisters eventually married noble husbands. But though Psyche grew more beautiful with each succeeding year, no man dared approach her. She was worshipped by all – and she remained untouched and alone. The king her father … consulted the oracle. To his horror he was told to dress Psyche in funeral robes to meet her spouse, for she was fated to marry a monstrous, terrifying bridegroom. On the designated day, the king and queen and all the people mournfully conducted Psyche to a high cliff, chained her to the rocks, and left the young woman to face her destiny.
Pierre-Paul Prud’hon: Psyche Abducted by the Zephyrs
Psyche waited and trembled, then felt the gentle breath of the West Wind. It … lifted her up and carried her down to a lush, green valley. When she awoke, she saw a forest with a fountain in the center and a magnificent palace… Psyche timidly walked inside and found that the rooms were filled with radiant, golden light. Then a voice welcomed her, saying, “All that you see here about you is yours. We shall attend to your every need.” Psyche looked for the speaker but saw no one. Then a different voice offered Psyche a refreshing bath, while still another invited the young woman to a banquet fit for a queen.”
At night, under cover of darkness, a stranger appeared in her bedroom and made love to her, and so it continued until Psyche’s sisters came to visit and planted a grain of doubt in Psyche’s heart. Perhaps she indeed married a monster? The truth was that the god Eros had disobeyed his mother, and having pricked himself with his own arrow, fell in love with Psyche, and wanted her for himself. He was not ready yet to disobey his mother openly.
What strikes me about the beginning of the story is Psyche’s loneliness and isolation: both as her parents’ daughter and then as the “wife.” She is a soul on the verge of her destiny: wrapped in the safe cocoon of the collective unconscious. She has not been born yet: she has not left the safe womb of the goddess. She is not in love with a person, but more with the archetype or the idea of love. She rests in the state of sweet inertia. She is not an agent, rather a passive participant in her own life. She appears to be gentle, loving, and of a very pure heart and intentions. She is all about Love, but without Judgement. According to Neumann, she is indeed imprisoned by the monster: the maternal uoroboros and the undifferentiated, unconscious state connected with it. She loves a man, but he has no face.
The story starts with the paradise-like unity, harmony and a seeming completion, but soon doubt and conflict sneak in, for such is a way of the development of consciousness. Psyche must embark on her own journey, she must extricate herself from the suffocating bond she has found herself in.
"The deepest core of life is poetry and symbol." - Dane Rudhyar
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