Union and Deliverance

Reflections on Ch. 6 - The Battle for Deliverance from the Mother, Part II, Symbols of Transformation by Carl Jung.

It has been well established that the mother image is the symbol of the unconscious. This is not surprising given that the woman (or the mother, for the terms “woman” and “mother” will be used interchangeably for the purposes of this text) embodies chaos. Far from being a Jungian concept, this insight is reflected in Daoist philosophy as well. The Yin and Yang symbol is a depiction of chaos and order. Typically, it consists of a circle, divided by an S-shaped line into a dark and a light segment. Each segment has the “seed” of the other, i.e., there is order in chaos and chaos in order, and this duality makes up the nature of our universe and of our souls. The darker segment, Yin, symbolises chaos, and is feminine in nature. Yang, the lighter segment, symbolises order, and is masculine.

Jung extends this principle to our psyche as well. The woman is a symbol of chaos, of the unknown, and the object of desire for the hero, who plunges into her, both physically, in the act of sexual intercourse, as well as metaphorically, in the journey of life undertaken by him, wherein he ventures out into the unknown to make order of it. By the act of this union, the hero is reborn. We can see the empirical as well as metaphysical truth of this rebirth. By the act of the union of the male and female, of the hero and the woman, the son is born - the son, who is the reincarnation of his father. When the hero confronts chaos, it transforms him, and he is reborn as a reformed individual. 

The duality of chaos and order exists in the depths of our souls as well as the vast expanses of the universe. Order is embodied by our conscious, while the chaos within us is contained deep in the unconscious. Our conscious consists of our logic, our rationalistic principles while the unconscious is the seat of our instinctual intellect. It can be well understood then, why the mother is the symbol of the unconscious. To plunge into the depths of the unconscious, that is, to direct his libidinal energy towards the womb of the mother unconscious, runs the danger of committing incest as per Jungian philosophy, but it is a journey that the hero will undertake, and it is a journey that the hero must undertake. 

“MEPHISTOPHELES: How great its worth, you soon shall understand. 

The key will smell the right place from all others: 

Follow it down, it leads you to the Mothers!”

                                    - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part II.

But to undertake this journey, the hero must first break free of the maternal chains, live a separate existence, with separate value structures, and only delve into the maternal unconscious out of volition. It is the moral responsibility of the mother to foster the independence of the child from herself, lest she turn into the Terrible Mother, the Demeter. 

‘“Child” means something evolving towards independence. This it cannot  do  without  detaching  itself  from  its  origins:  abandonment  is therefore  a  necessary  condition,  not  just  a  concomitant  symptom.’

 - Carl Jung, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious.

The goddess Thetis who sends off her son Achilles to fight the Trojan war, even though she knows he will never return from it, also knows of her son’s weakness - The Achilles’ heel. The heel is symbolic of the fallibility and finitude of man. The mother who sends her child off to fight as a soldier in the war is a symbol. Essentially, it is every mother who does that, merely by birthing her child and bringing it into existence. The pain of childbirth is symbolic of the pain that the mother will have to bear when she gives precedence to the deliverance of the child over the pain of letting it go, hence the term - “labour”. 

“"Mother tells me,

the immortal goddess Thetis with her glistening feet.

that two fates bear me on to the day of death.

If I hold out here and I lay siege to Troy,

my journey home is gone, but my glory never dies.

If I voyage back to the fatherland I love.

my pride, my glory dies . . .

true, but the life that's left me will be long.” 

- Homer, The Iliad.

The act of birthing communicates the mother’s acceptance of bringing the hero into the world of pain and chaos. It is a decision in favour of living, in favour of confronting the tragedies of life with the knowledge that the hero will ultimately fall, but it will be worth it. It is the Terrible Mother who would overprotect her child to shield it from suffering to lessen her own pain of letting go. 

“So long as the child is in that state of unconscious identity with the mother, he is still one with the animal psyche and is just as unconscious as it. The development of consciousness inevitably leads not only to separation from the mother, but to separation from the parents and the whole family circle and thus to a relative degree of detachment from the unconscious and world instinct. Yet the longing for this lost world continues and, when difficult adaptations are demanded, is forever tempting one to make evasions and retreats, to regress to the infantile past, which then starts throwing up the incestuous symbolism.”

- Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation.

Before birth, the hero is entwined with the unconscious; he is tied to the mother physically through the umbilical cord at the point of the navel, and psychologically tied to the primordial mother unconscious who rules supreme over his whole being as a child and retires to the depths of his soul as he comes of age. It is no wonder then, that much of a child’s behaviour is instinctual. A child’s babble is protolanguage; a child’s first word is “mama”. A child’s drawings are hieroglyphic, uncannily similar to cave paintings and the hieroglyphs of the most ancient civilisations. The collective unconscious makes its predominance in the child known.

“When the libido leaves the bright upper world, whether from choice, or from inertia, or from fate, it sinks back into its own depths, into the source from which it originally flowed, and returns to the point of cleavage, the navel, where it first entered the body. This point of cleavage is called ‘The mother’, because from her the current of life reached us. Whenever some great work is to be accomplished, before which a man recoils, doubtful of his strength, his libido streams back to the fountainhead — and that is the dangerous moment when the issue hangs between annihilation and new life. For if the libido gets stuck in the wonderland of this inner world, then for the upper world man is nothing but a shadow, he is alrof the unconscious to be eady moribund or at least seriously ill. But if the libido manages to tear itself loose and force its way up again, something like a miracle happens: the journey to the underworld was a plunge into the fountain of youth, and the libido, apparently dead, wakes to renewed fruitfulness.”

    - Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation.

As the child ripens with age, the conscious jostles with the unconscious to occupy the psyche of the hero. Even as the unconscious descends into the depths, it makes its presence known time and again by throwing up images strangely familiar, strangely relatable, strangely universal. Across much of literature, this ambush of the unconscious is symbolised by the image of an arrow, as discussed in Jung’s text. The threatening shaft is struck from within, as we are loath to accept, rather than being aimed from without. The shaft has the potential to fertilise, as well as destroy, depending upon the willingness or reluctance of the hero to address the call.

“Hunted by thee, O thought, 

Unutterable! veiled! horrible one!

Thou huntsman behind the clouds.

Struck to the ground by thee,

Thou mocking eye that gazeth at me from the dark.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra.

Another mention of this pricking of the unconscious features in Nietzsche’s poem, Between Birds of Prey.

O Zarathustra,

Cruellest Nimrod!

Of late still a hunter of God,

A spider's web to capture virtue,

An arrow of evil!

Now

Hunted by thyself,

Thine own prey

Caught in the grip of thine own soul.

Now

Lonely to me and thee,

Twofold in thine own knowledge,

Mid a hundred mirrors

False to thyself,

Mid a hundred memories

Uncertain,

Weary at every wound,

Shivering at every frost,

Throttled in thine own noose,

Self-knower!

Self-hangman!

Why didst bind thyself

With the noose of thy wisdom?

Why luredst thyself

Into the old serpent's paradise?

Why stolest into

Thyself, thyself?...”

- Friedrich Nietzsche, Between Birds of Prey, Ecce Homo.

If. however, the child does not break free of these maternal bonds, or does so inadequately, infantilism dominates his psyche. This is what it means to “sleep with your mother”. This is the incest the Jung speaks of. In the modern context, we can see how this manifests itself as the disgust and ridicule young people in developed communities are often subjected to, if they choose to continue residing in the home of their parents, because the very idea represents lack of courage and infancy.

“It is not possible to live too long amid infantile surroundings, or in the bosom of the family, without endangering one’s psychic health. Life calls us forth to independence, and anyone who does not heed this call because of childish laziness or timidity is threatened with neurosis. And once this has broken out, it becomes an increasingly valid reason for running away from life and remaining forever in the morally poisonous atmosphere of infancy.”

- Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation.

He becomes incapable of discovering his values, taking independent decisions and lives as an instrument of his parents’ will, and covers his infantilism with the noble(?) garb of duty. 

“He who feels himself dishonoured at the thought of being the instrument of a prince, or of a party and sect, or even of wealthy power (for example, as the descendant of a proud, ancient family), but wishes just to be this instrument, or must be so before himself and before the public—such a person has need of pathetic principles which can at all times be appealed to:—principles of an unconditional ought, to which a person can subject himself without shame, and can show himself subjected. All more refined servility holds fast to the categorical imperative, and is the mortal enemy of those who want to take away the unconditional character of duty: propriety demands this from them, and not only propriety.”

    - Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom.    

Once the hero successfully breaks free of the unconscious and ventures out to discover his values, he might choose to descend into the unconscious from time to time acting of his own volition, in search of the knowledge buried within him. And of course, there comes a point in his life, when he is confronted by his mate, who first assumes a “demon-woman” image as she inflicts the harshest judgement upon him in order to coax him into action.

“This demon-woman of mythology is in truth the “sister-wife-mother,” the woman in the man, who unexpectedly turns up during the second half of life and tries to effect a forcible change of personality...The man becomes rigidly set in his previous attitude, while the woman remains caught in her emotional ties and fails to develop her reason and understanding, whose place is then taken by equally obstinate and inept “animus” opinions. The fossilization of the man shrouds itself in a smoke-screen of moods, ridiculous irritability, feelings of distrust and resentment, which are meant to justify his rigid attitude.”

- Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation.

The man resists the woman’s advance; the extent to which he does so depends on the magnitude of his infantilism, but once he takes up responsibility, the revolving ball of potential in him strives further to take action and thus begins his transformation into the hero image.

“The paralysis of progressive energy has in truth some very disagreeable aspects. It seems like an unwelcome accident or a positive catastrophe, which one would naturally rather avoid. In most cases the conscious personality rises up against the assault of the unconscious and resists its demands, which, it is clearly felt, are directed not only against all the weak spots in the man’s character, but also against his chief virtue (the differentiated function and the ideal). It is evident from the myths of Heracles and Gilgamesh that this assault can become the source of energy for a heroic conflict; indeed, so obvious is this impression that one has to ask oneself whether the apparent enmity of the maternal archetype is not a ruse on the part of Mater Natura for spurring on her favoured child to his highest achievement. The vengeful Hera would then appear as the stern “Mistress Soul,” who imposes the most difficult labours on her hero and threatens him with destruction unless he plucks up courage for the supreme deed and actually becomes what he always potentially was.”

- Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation.

Explore more:

1. Symbols of Transformation - Carl Jung

2. The Tao Te Ching

3. Faust, Part II - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

4. Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious - Carl Jung

5. The Iliad - Homer (trans. Robert Fagles)

6. Ecce Homo - Friedrich Nietzsche (trans. Anthony M. Ludovici)

7. Thus Spake Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietzsche (trans. Thomas Common)

8. The Joyful Wisdom - Friedrich Nietzsche (trans. Thomas Common)