The name Wotan brings up another of his attributes: his theriomorphic form is the horse. His horse is Sleipnir, the eightlegged white or black horse, swift as the wind. This indicates that while the animus is mostly a sort of archaic divine spirit, he is also connected with our instinctive animal nature. In the unconscious, spirit and instinct are not opposites. On the contrary, new spiritual germs often manifest themselves first in an uprush of sexual libido or instinctive impulses and only later develop their other aspect. This is because they are generated by the spirit of nature, by the meaningfulness inherent in our instinctive pattern. In women the spirit has not yet become differentiated and retains its archaic emotional and instinctive characteristics, which is why women usually get excited when they do any genuine thinking.
The animal aspect of the animus shows up in “Beauty and the Beast,” but this motif is relatively rare in fairy tales. A less well-known example is the story from Turkestan, “The Magic Horse.”
A girl takes a magic horse and flees from her captor, a Div, a desert-demon. She escapes temporarily but is overtaken by the demon. Finally the horse plunges with the Div into the sea, and the Div is overcome. The horse then commands the girl to kill him. When she does so, he changes into a heavenly palace, and his four legs become the pillars of the four corners. Finally the heroine is reunited with her real lover, a young prince.
Here the animus is an evil spirit on the one side and a helpful animal on the other. When the animus takes the form of an entirely destructive and diabolical spirit, the instincts must come to the rescue.
One way of dealing with the animus problem is for the woman simply to suffer it through to the bitter end. Indeed, there is no solution that does not include suffering, and suffering seems to belong to the life of woman.
In cases where a woman has to escape a state of possession by some ghost or vampire, much can be gained by an extreme passivity toward the animus, and often the wisest counsel is that she should do nothing now. There are times when one can only wait and try to fortify oneself by keeping the positive aspects of the animus in mind. To overcome possession by an unconscious content by slipping out of its grasp is as meritorious as a heroic victory. This is the motif of the “magic flight,” which symbolizes a situation where it is better to flee from the unconscious than to seek to overcome it, and by so doing avoid being devoured.
The motif of the magic flight is prominent in a Siberian tale, “The Girl and the Evil Spirit.”51 The heroine, who knew no man and could not say who her parents were, is a herdswoman of reindeer. She wanders about, keeping her reindeer by singing magic songs to them.
Here again the motif of loneliness occurs as a prodromal symptom of a special individual development of the personality. It is a situation in which a flood of inner images can rise up from the unconscious and bring about unexpected reactions. This girl is not destitute or hungry; she can cook and care for herself, and she can keep her reindeer with her by the magic charm of her singing. In other words, she is resourceful, more gifted and more normal than the girl in the foregoing tale, and her magic gifts signify that she has the ability to express the contents of the unconscious. (In analysis, one sometimes sees that a situation is dangerous because the patient’s way of conceiving and expressing the turbulent, threatening contents of the unconscious is too feeble and too narrow. This may be a poverty of heart and a failure to give love as well as a barrenness of mind and spirit; the old bottles are unable to contain the new wine.) The songs on the lips of the girl probably come from her traditional past, and this would mean that a fortunate constellation of ancestral units has been inherited by her. But she is without human connections. Being cut off from society is a great danger for a woman because without human contact she easily becomes unconscious and surrenders to the grip of the negative animus.
The tale goes on to relate that suddenly a tremendous pair of jaws comes down from heaven—an open abyss stretching from heaven to earth. This gaping, devouring mouth is the abyss of complete unconsciousness. The girl hurls her staff onto the ground behind her.
The staff is a sign of power and of judgment, two royal prerogatives symbolized by the king’s scepter. The staff is also associated with the Way and is a direction-giving principle in the unconscious. The bishop’s staff, for instance, was interpreted by the church as the authority of the doctrine, which shows the way and gives decisions. Thus in a woman the staff is a form of the animus. In antiquity, the golden staff or magic rod belonged to Mercurius and represents his ability to marshal intractable elements within the unconscious. If one has a staff, one is not wholly passive; one has a direction.
The girl runs, throwing her magic comb and her red handkerchief behind her. Bestrewing one’s trail with objects is characteristic of the magic flight. This act of throwing away things of value is a sacrifice; one throws things over one’s shoulder to the dead, or to spirits, or to the devil, to propitiate those whom we dare not face. It may seem panicky to abandon valuable possessions when one is escaping, but one who stiffens himself into a defensive attitude is easily cut down by an assailant stronger than himself, whereas stripping oneself gives mobility. There are situations in which one absolutely has to give up wanting anything, and in this way one slips out from under; one is not there any longer, so nothing more can go wrong. When one is confronted by a hopelessly wrong situation, one must just make a drastic leap to the bottom of open-minded simplicity, and from there one can live through it.
What is more, the objects which have been sacrificed generally transform themselves into obstacles for the pursuer. The comb at once turns into a forest and becomes a part of nature—the hair of Mother Earth. Its transformation into a natural object suggests that originally it was an integral part of nature. Actually, there is no thought or instrument or object that has not originated from nature; that is, from the unconscious psyche. One sacrifices to the unconscious what once was wrested from it.
The comb is used to arrange and confine the hair. Hair is a source of magic power or mana. Ringlets of hair, preserved as keepsakes, are believed to connect one individual with another over a distance. Cutting the hair and sacrificing it often means submission to a new collective state—a giving up and a rebirth. The coiffure is frequently an expression of a cultural Weltanschauung. Primitive folk tales speak of demons being deloused and combed when they are caught, which means that the confusion in the unconscious has to be straightened out, ordered, and made conscious. Because of this meaning, hair in wild disarray is often dreamed of at the start of an analysis. The comb, therefore, represents a capacity for making one’s thoughts ordered, clear, and conscious.
The red handkerchief that the girl gives up becomes a flame soaring from earth to heaven. To abandon the staff and comb meant not attempting to marshal herself or to think out a plan. Now the flame indicates that she puts an inner distance between herself and her feelings and emotions. She is reduced to a passive simplicity.
In the tale, the gaping jaws devour the forest and spit water on the flame. Water and fire battle in the unconscious, and in the meantime the girl escapes between the opposites.
Then she goes through four animal transformations, each succeeding animal being fleeter of foot than the preceding one. Now she can only rely on her inner animal side. She must relinquish all higher activities and burrow down into the instinctive level. There are moments of imminent danger when one must not think or even feel or try to escape by struggling but must go down into an animal simplicity. Supported by a purposeful attitude, this Oriental “doing nothing” succeeds where strong resistance would incur failure. The ego escapes and vanishes. And that is all the human being can do at certain times. Then the persecuting demon is left to eat up the forest and combat the flame.
The girl changes into a bear with copper bells in his ears. Bells and similar-sounding instruments are used to drive away evil spirits. (Churchbells originally had this purpose.) They also announce a decisive moment, like the roll of a drum or of thunder, and i
nduce a psychic resonance in the emotions of the hearer so that he feels that the decisive event is about to happen—for example, the triple bell in the Mass. Bells in the girl’s animal-ears exclude all other sounds, sounds that she must not listen to because their effect is poisonous, words that the negative animus whispers to her. The poisoning occurs when one accepts them and takes on convictions and ways of behaving which do not suit one. The vessel that conveys this poisonous influence is the ear, and the bells are a defense against noxious animus effects.
The tale ends with the girl falling to earth in a dead faint before a white tent, and suddenly the evil spirit stands before her as a beautiful man. She has fled from him to him. Her perseverance in the one instinctively right course has brought about the enantiodromia, with the result that the menacing demon has transformed itself into a gracious young man. In fact, his secret intention had been to bring her here to his white tent. He has three younger brothers, and from the four she may choose whom she will have for her husband. Her inner balance and her totality are expressed in these four figures. Three equal figures almost always signify a fateful constellation: the three dimensions of space and the three aspects of time—past, present, and future—are vessels of fate. Here the three brothers may be the three inferior functions of the girl; the three-plus-one, the four, portends individuation. The girl chooses the eldest because she recognizes that the realization of her fate lies in accepting the spirit who persecuted her.
When an individual with a developed consciousness feels the promise of meaningful activity stored in the animus, it is futile to take flight or to try to test its meaning intellectually. Instead, one should use the energy provided by the animus in a suitable way by undertaking some masculine activity such as intellectual creative work; otherwise, one is dominated and possessed. Similarly, a powerful mother complex cannot be subdued by the intellect alone. A tragic state of possession can be a fateful summons to commit oneself to the process of individuation. When the father or mother complex is recognized as being stronger than the ego, it can then be accepted as a component of one’s individuality.
Another ordeal of an animus-ridden woman is presented in the following tale.
The Woman Who Married the Moon and the Kele
A woman, abandoned by her husband, was so faint with hunger that she could only crawl on all fours. Twice she went to the house of the Moon-man and ate the food that she found on a plate. The third time he grabbed her as she was eating, and when he learned that she had no husband, married her.
Each day their food appeared by magic upon the empty plate. When the Moon-man went out, he forbade the wife to open a certain chest and look inside, but the lure proved irresistible and she discovered in the chest a strange woman whose face was half red and half black. It was she who had been secretly supplying them with food, but she now died when exposed to the air. When the Moon-man returned he discovered that his wife had disobeyed him and was very angry. He restored the dead woman to life and took his wife back to her father, saying that he could not control her and that her former husband must have had good reason to abandon her.
Angered by the daughter’s return, the father invoked an evil spirit to marry her. This demon, the Kele, ate men, even the woman’s own brother, whose corpse he brought her to eat. Acting upon the advice of a little fox, however, she made shoes for the Kele. When she threw them in front of him, a spiderthread descended from above upon which she could climb up to the house of the spider woman. Pursued by the Kele, she continued to climb until she reached the immovable one, the North Star, which is the creator and the highest god. The Kele, who also had arrived there, was imprisoned in a chest by the protective Polar Star. He almost died and was released only on condition that he would no longer persecute the woman.
She returned to earth and made her father sacrifice reindeer to the god. Suddenly the father and then the daughter died. (This colourless, anti-climatic ending is typical of primitive stories.)52
The protagonist is a woman abandoned by her husband, and afterwards the Moon-man declares that the husband certainly must have had reason to abandon her. Loneliness, poverty, and hunger are stressed, typical states that result from animus-possession. A woman’s attitude largely conditions the events that befall her.
The animus fosters loneliness in women, whereas the anima thrusts men headlong into relationships and the confusion that accompanies them. The hunger is also typical. Woman needs life, relationships with people, and participation in meaningful activity. Part of her hunger comes from an awareness of dormant, unused aptitudes. The animus contributes to her unrest so that she is never satisfied; one must always do more for an animus-possessed woman. Not realizing that the problem is an inner one, such women assume that if only they can go about more, spend more money and surround themselves with more friends, their lifehunger will be assuaged.
The moon god often appears as the mysterious, invisible lover of a married woman in fairy tales. The moon is sometimes represented in mythology and in dreams as a man, sometimes as a woman, and at other times as a hermaphroditic being. Perhaps we can identify what determines the moon’s gender.
The moon is closely related to the sun, but it is a lesser light, owing its light to the sun. The sun is really a divinity—the source of consciousness within the unconscious—and represents an active psychic factor that can create greater awareness. The moon, however, symbolizes a primitive, softer, more diffused consciousness—a dim awareness. When the sun is feminine, as in the German language, it means that the source of consciousness is still in the unconscious, that there is no mature consciousness but a penumbral consciousness with a welter of detail not clearly distinguished. The instinct for architectural achievement among the Balinese illustrates this condition: in Bali various craftsmen set to work at their own special building skills, undirected by any plan or architect but guided from within exactly as if they had a blueprint to follow. When the various parts of the building are assembled, they fit exactly and perfectly, although each has been made individually. In this way a temple of harmonious design is created. Like the sun lighting up the unconscious, an unconscious principle of order apparently operates within the Balinese craftsman.
The moon illustrates the same principle as the sun, but it is less concentrated, less intense; it is a light of consciousness but a milder light. (The principle of consciousness operating within the woman in the story is very indefinite. This connects with her state of animus-possession, since it is characteristic of the animus to be indefinite in his overall and long-term purposes, although he is sharply insistent when it comes to details.) In mythology, the moon is associated with snakes, nocturnal animals, spirits of the dead, and gods of the underworld. In alchemy, it is called “the child of Saturn.” To Paracelsus the moon was a source of poison, like the eyes of women when the moon is troubling their blood. He believed that the moon is a spirit which can renew itself and become a child again, and for this reason it is susceptible to a woman’s evil eye. In this way the sidereal spirit is poisoned and then casts its baneful spell upon men who gaze at it. We may psychologically interpret Paracelsus as saying that poisonous opinions emanating from the animus can go directly into the unconscious of others with the result that people seem to have been poisoned by an undefined source. Such opinions infect the air and blight the surroundings, and one breathes them in unsuspectingly. Animus convictions sink in more deeply than a merely wrong opinion and are far more difficult to spot and throw off.
The moon divinity in this tale is ambiguous; he is concealing a woman in a chest, a dark feminine side of nature. She is undeveloped, secret, buried, but also important in that she is living and is the provider of nourishment; in other words, she is a preform or a precursor of the Self. Here she stands behind the animus (the Moon-man) as a supporting figure. The mountain spirit was also a hidden vessel of energy standing behind the princess-anima, but he was a malevolent figure, whereas the woman in the box is a rather dim fertility goddess.
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nbsp; By disobeying the Moon-man and opening the chest, the heroine unwittingly kills the dark woman. Now, the transgression for which an innocent victim pays with his life is a variation of the theme of premature enlightenment, a motif that occurs in the antique tales of Eros and Psyche and of Orpheus and Eurydice, as well as in the Grimms’ “The Singing, Soaring Lion’s Lark.” The point of this is that for everything there is a season; possession often produces systematic tactlessness in a woman. Where there are any signs of life, she cannot resist poking around, and all that should remain in the dim background of consciousness—all that needs darkness in which to grow—is hauled up into the light and lost. Mothers of this disposition tend to drag out all their children’s secrets so that spontaneity and the possibility of growth are blighted. Such an interfering attitude has an unwholesome effect on the entire environment.
The woman in the tale, having been abandoned and having lost her feminine feeling, is driven by curiosity to break into the background of the Moon-man’s secrets. Wild curiosity is an expression of a sort of primitive masculinity in a woman. When possessed by such a hounding, inquisitive spirit, she does the wrong things and is always at fault.
The Moon-man sends the woman back to her father. Although the father was not spoken of earlier in the story, we may suppose that he has sown the seeds of the unhappy ending. That both father and daughter die simultaneously at the end shows how close their relationship is. After the woman is sent back to her father, it is his curse that condemns her to live with an evil spirit. According to primitive belief, an expressed wish such as this can shape unborn events and bring them forth out of the womb of time. The curse condemning the daughter to live with an evil spirit is a clear indication that the father fosters the animus’s domination of his daughter.
The evil spirit Kele is a body eater, a typical practice of the negative animus. Just as vampires drink blood, spirits consume bodies in order to become visible; they seize and feast upon a corpse to gain substance in that form. Thus spirits are bewitched into corpses. Vampires, as is well known, feed upon living people. Their urge to live on the lives of others comes from their desperation at being banished from the world of the living. An animus-possessed woman battens on the lives of those in her surroundings because her own sources of feeling and of Eros are withheld from her. Viewed psychologically, spirits are contents of the unconscious. The devouring of corpses shows symbolically that complexes and other unconscious contents strive desperately to enter consciousness and to be realized in living people. The ravenous hunger of a spirit for a body is an unrecognized, unredeemed wish for the fullness of life.
The Interpretation of Fairy Tales Page 19
