One could ask now what would have happened if Psyche had not disobeyed her husband. The answer is that mythological laws are always transgressed, otherwise there would be no story! But there may be more to it than that. Such stages of unconscious harmony, like that in the story of Paradise, result in the stagnation of life, and naturally certain disharmonious or evil impulses are excluded. Some people by a great mental and psychological effort will sacrifice the one pole of an essential conflict in the hope of establishing peace in their souls with the remainder. For instance, in the monastic life money and sex are cut out, and with them the source of innumerable conflicts, and by retiring from these difficulties the establishment of peace in the soul is sought. The whole Christian idea of inner peace is in this direction; that is, one first cuts out a certain aspect of evil which seems impossible to integrate, and then one tries artificially to establish harmony with the remainder. All over the world mankind has a tendency to go in this direction. It is probably inevitable, for one needs from time to time to be able to set aside an insoluble problem. It is as though there were rest places where one has a moment of peace, though one has the dim feeling that the conflict is not solved and will reappear after a time. One can observe this in people who draw mandalas8 and in doing so leave a part outside. They put the dark things outside the border of the mandala and imagine that they have now reached a state of relative wholeness and totality. But in this way they exclude certain aspects, and they can be sure that this state will not last. Some of these left-out elements will break in and a new process of integration must begin. At this point we have the essence of the whole novel, for all through it (though sometimes the author seems to be gripped by feeling) a mocking, skeptical tone creeps in, a devaluating judgment which works like the knife in Psyche’s hand. When things go well, a devil whispers in our ears that it is “nothing but,” a rational devaluation which destroys everything. In a woman it is generally the animus who is the artist in this field, and in a man it is a certain aspect of the anima. The more sensitive and delicate and untouchable a man’s feeling is on one side, the more he tends to mock himself. The Swiss recognize this type of man in their poet Gottfried Keller, whose feeling, on the one side, was extremely delicate, while on the other he showed the typical mockery of an old bachelor. That was his defense against his own hypersensitivity. He drank too much and was incapable of dealing with the anima problem. Apuleius-Lucius has some of the same characteristics.
We come now to the different stages of Psyche’s journey in her search for Eros. Back in heaven, Eros is imprisoned by his resentful mother. In her despair, Psyche wants to kill herself and throw herself into a river, but the god of the running waters brings her back to the shore, where she meets Pan, the goat-god; with his great wisdom he advises her not to end her life but, on the contrary, to honor Eros, “the most exalted” of all gods, with her prayers. The great god of cosmic nature therefore helps Psyche to go on living. In between, the enraged Venus searches for her everywhere. Finally, Psyche surrenders herself to her and as Psyche arrives at the heavenly palace, Venus has her seized by her servants, Sorrow and Sadness, who torment her and then bring her back to face Venus. This part, I think, is understandable to anyone who has ever experienced an unhappy love affair. Venus then orders Psyche to sort out a quantity of different kinds of seeds during the night. The sorting out of grain is a motif found in numerous fairy tales, for instance in the Russian tale “The Beautiful Wassilissa,” in. which an unhappy girl comes to the great witch, Baba Yaga, the nature and death goddess, and there she must also sort out seeds or corn. According to Merkelbach’s interpretation, this could have to do with the Eleusinian mysteries, for corn is the mystical substance which represents the mother goddess as the goddess of corn.
A chaotic host of seeds is, in a way, an image of the collective unconscious, which seems to be, at the same time, a single essence and a multiplicity of images and creative impulses. One could say that as long as the archetypes of the collective unconscious are not realized by a human being, they are not real. They only become psychologically a reality if they are experienced by the human psyche. It is for this reason that the archetypes of the collective unconscious resemble a host of chaotically dormant “seeds” inborn in every human being, which, if not activated through contact with human consciousness, could just as well be regarded as nonexistent. We can perhaps guess what such a heap of potential archetypal contents looks like if we observe a person in a psychotic episode. On the one hand patients in this condition pour out, at terrific speed, one archetypal fantasy after the other. But two minutes later they do not remember anything they have said. The most amazing, beautiful material pours through them, but they have no memory of it. Thus the collective unconscious is seen as a kind of chaos of contents, all of which have the latent possibility of becoming something meaningful within human consciousness. But instead there is confusion, and consciousness is too weak to stop the flood.9 Jung spoke of a patient he had, a woman, who talked a lot of absolute nonsense all the time, but then she would suddenly stop and say, “Hello, yes, ah-ha, thank you.” And after this “telephone call” she would be all right for a while, and Jung would succeed in worming out of her what she was really doing, and she would say that she had been telephoning to the Virgin Mary, who was very helpful to her and who would say, “Now don’t talk so much nonsense!” And that would quiet her down for a while, but then it started again. One saw that there the normal personality somewhere still functioned but could not hold its own.
One could say that a good mind is needed to sort out the material, but that does not help either because one cannot bring any intellectual order into these things. What is needed is the feeling function, the function of choice, which says, “Now I will fish out this and discard the rest” and “I will relate to what has become conscious to me and stay with it.” Without the evaluation through the feeling function one cannot know what is important and what is not. One cannot sort the chaff from the corn in the unconscious.
In the tale Psyche cannot cope alone with the corn. But there is still something that can rescue her, for ants turn up and sort out the grain. The chaos of the unconscious always contains a relation to order as well. In talking about the unconscious one must always talk in paradoxes, and when we emphasize its chaotic aspect we know at the same time that the unconscious is not only chaos but is also order. In the last analysis, only unconscious order can overcome unconscious disorder. Man cannot do anything but be attentive and make the utmost and, so to speak, hopeless effort, until order is established again by itself.
This is something which Christian theologians would call faith. Having faith and doing one’s best, when one is faced with what seems hopeless, gives one the underlying feeling that, even when one is lost, one has at least done what was possible. This is essentially human and it is a behavior which a god or an animal could not do. Here in our story the same unconscious which is chaotic manifoldness cures its disorder by another chaotic manifoldness, the invasion of ants. We, in our Western countries, often speak of ants negatively, saying that “if we go on like this we shall soon be an ant heap.” This is naturally a negative metaphor for the complete blotting out of the individual, but the ant in itself, in mythology, is generally a positive insect. For instance, according to an Indian myth (recorded by Herodotus), it helps to carry the sun in its night journey under the earth. In Egypt the scarab does that.10 In some Greek sagas the ant extracts gold from the earth; it is the symbol of the secret orderliness of the collective unconscious, contrary to our bureaucratic state organizations. Karl Kerényi has connected the ants with the people of Myrmidones, who, according to a Greek myth, were the first inhabitants of their country:11 the Greeks believed that these people were born directly from the earth mother. Thus, in the Attic comedies, whose texts are unfortunately lost, there were antpeople, “Myrmekanthropoi,” who represented the first inhabitants. Contrary to the destructive mother Aphrodite-Venus, these “children of the earth mother
” help Psyche. The ants, and especially their cousins, the termites, have also in reality very mysterious and unexplored qualities. One knows that hundreds and hundreds of termites will build a complete architectural structure. In an experiment to try to find out how they communicate when building, a lead plate was put through the center of a termite building at its beginning; the termites of the left half built their parts for the whole building in a way that met exactly with those on the right half. One could take the plate out and the two halves fit. So one knows that they have no telegraphic signal, but work synchronously in a complete organization, which is something still unexplained. We know of bees that they signal each other when they wag their tails, but we do not know anything yet in this respect about termites. One sees, therefore, that this beautiful image is more than just a simile really, for these things also happen in reality. An artist who had lived for a long time in Bali described to me the same process: a temple had fallen into ruins, and for some reason the villagers decided to build a new and bigger one. To his amazement there was no organizer, no plan, and no architect, and practically not even a stone mason to organize. One villager sat in one corner and made a column, another sat in another corner preparing stones. No communication went on, but everybody worked extremely zealously. In the end they put the temple parts together and every stone fit! The artist could not find out how the Balinese did this. They worked together inwardly via the unconscious. The temple lived simply in their inner vision. That is the whole explanation. So one can say that in the right way faith is a great achievement, or rather pistis: loyalty to the inner law. When this loyalty or feeling constellates, it calls forth the secret order which is in the chaos of the unconscious.
After having fulfilled the first task, Psyche must fetch the golden wool from dangerous wild solar sheep, or rams, which are very difficult to approach. Here she is helped by reeds which tell her that the rams are unapproachable at midday and that she should wait until evening when they get cooled down in their temperamental wildness. If Psyche approaches them too early they will tear her to bits. The reeds, as Merkelbach points out, had a great meaning in Egypt: the hieroglyph for “reed” represents the king of Egypt and Horus, the new sun, the reborn sun god, the new king of Egypt. The reed represents the king in his rebirth form.
In many fairy tales, the reeds betray secret knowledge. In antiquity there are many stories where somebody is murdered and buried in a swamp. A shepherd comes along, cuts a reed, and makes himself a flute, and the flute sings and reveals the secret of the murder, and the murderer is discovered and punished. The reed can also betray or convey divine wisdom to man by the wind which whistles through it. There is an instinct of truth in the human psyche which, in the long run, cannot be suppressed. We can pretend not to hear it, but it remains in the unconscious. And Psyche in our story has a kind of secret inspiration about how she can solve the task. The whistling reed, like the ants, corresponds to these tiny hints of truth which we get from the unconscious. Jung always said that truth does not speak with a loud voice. Its low but unsuppressible voice announces itself as a malaise, or a bad conscience, or whatever one may want to call it. Great quiet is needed in order to feel these small hints. When the unconscious begins to talk loudly and to manifest itself with car accidents and such happenings, then the situation is already very bad. But in the normal state it has been whispering softly for years, before the thunderclap comes with accidents or other bad things. That is why we have analysis, where we try to hear what the reed says before the catastrophe comes.
The reed, as we have seen, is connected mythologically with the rebirth of the sun god in the form of Horus. You will recall that in Egypt the pharaoh is the earthly representative or the incarnation of the highest god. The first time the pharaoh sleeps with the queen, the moment of the hieros gamos in which the new king engenders his first son and successor, the king personifies the god and the queen personifies Isis. The suffering aspect and all that is suppressed by the king (who is the solar principle) is personified by Osiris. Every day, for the twelve hours of the day, one is only one half of oneself. In order to be able to work, we must repress innumerable inner living reactions; one cannot even let them come up to consciousness. As long as conscious activity lasts, only one half of the psyche can constantly express itself, and the other unconscious half is in the situation of the suffering god in the underworld. When, therefore, the pharaoh ages and dies, he becomes, at the moment of death, Osiris. Thus one sees on the inscriptions their names connected as: Unas Osiris, Pepi Osiris. But at this moment the new king has already been reborn, as Horus. We will go into this in more depth later; here I only want to say that the reed is concerned with Horus, with the principle of what comes after. It whispers to us the truth and the anticipation of the future.
The ram has been well interpreted by Erich Neumann, and I think that its meaning is clear to anyone who has ever seen a horoscope. As a zodiacal sign of spring it means aggressive impulsiveness and a temperamental spirit of adventure, a kind of unreflected, naive, masculine initiative. For a woman it naturally represents the animus, but in our case it means an aggressive impulsiveness behind the anima. It would mean that one of the greatest dangers for a man, when he begins to let his anima live, is to fall into an unreflective impulsiveness. It is much more difficult for him to delay a decision than it is for a woman. In Egypt the “ram of Mendes” was always associated with Isis, so that we have here again an allusion to the end of the book. One only needs to look into our newspapers: As soon as there is any kind of difficulty, too much rain, an avalanche, too many cars, and so on, the politicians say, “We must do something; we must have a committee; the state must . . .” Nobody proposes that we wait and see what happens! One must study the origin of these troubles, but one cannot wait. Some women, of course, are also threatened by the ram, but it is more frequent for men. Of Course this animal also has a positive aspect. But it is unfavorable for the man who has to realize his anima, for under the influence of the ram he can never realize what she is. Feeling, especially in a man, is generally a slightly delayed reaction. He must be able to wait, to listen to what the feminine side might have to say. If a man overruns that, he will never become conscious of his anima. Whenever we are caught in the temperamental wish for a quick action, we then understand how difficult it is to wait, to patiently let time pass. So Psyche not only has to wait but also has to collect a handful of wool from the ram’s hide, to take something from its wool fleece.
The motif of the ram also belongs to the famous story of Phrixos and Hellé: the myth of a brother and his little sister who are both persecuted by a stepmother who wants to kill them. But they hear of it and escape on a ram, which flies with them through the sky. On the way, Hellé bends over and looks down, and falls into the sea, which is how the Helléspont came into existence; the sea of Hellé. Phrixos is saved and is ordered to sacrifice the ram and to hang up the fleece on a tree. Since then, the golden fleece has become the motif of the “unobtainable treasure” of the long journey of the Argonauts; and in later Christian interpretation, this golden fleece hung up on a tree was regarded as the prefiguration of Christ, the sacrificed lamb. This story has been very popular with the Church Fathers, with its amplification of the symbolism of Christ. Even today, among the Knights of the Golden Fleece, those of the highest rank of the Order have a golden chain with a little golden fleece;12 if they place this on any table, that table has the value of a consecrated altar.
Apuleius alludes here consciously to the story of Phrixos and Hellé. The lock of golden wool is the unobtainable treasure, and this Psyche has to obtain from the rams. Now, every powerful emotion is not only something hot; it is also something which brings light. Generally it is eighty percent destructive fire and twenty percent light. Therefore, if one is overwhelmed or attacked by a terrific emotion, the art is not to let the emotion tear one, but to find out what it could mean. For instance, you may meet someone whom you loathe. Each time you meet that person you become
exaggeratedly emotional without any visible reason. That is the reaction of the ram. Now you can either live your emotion out, and then there is catastrophe and failure, or you can repress it, but then you have not learned anything. The third possibility is not to give in to the emotion, but to pluck out its meaning, to ask, Why do I feel like this? What has got into me? Then you have really learned something. Wherever there is a destructive emotion, there is possibly also light, and the art is to perceive this light without getting pulled into the primitiveness of uncontrolled emotion. And that is the meaning of the capacity of being able to wait for the right moment in order to obtain the ram’s wool.
7
Psyche’s Tasks
The next task for Psyche is to get water in a carved crystal bottle from the ice-cold waterfall of the Styx, something which again surpasses her capacities. At this point again a typical fairy tale motif appears: the eagle of Zeus takes the bottle, fetches the water, and brings it back to her. Merkelbach quite rightly connects the Styx with the water of the Nile. At the end of the novel we will return again to the question of the mystical vessel which contains the water of the Nile; that is the unspeakable mystery of Osiris. It is the water of death and at the same time of rebirth, but here it is represented in a Greek context.
The Golden Ass of Apuleius Page 13
