Section V.

The Problem Of Multiple Interpretation.

After what has been said it is clear that the Parable contains instruction

in the sense of the higher alchemy. Whoever has attentively read this 4th

chapter will certainly be in a position to understand the parable, in

large part, in a hermetic sense. I do not wish to develop this

interpretation now, for to a certain extent it develops itself without

further effort, and what goes beyond that can be treated only in the

second part of this volume. I shall limit myself now to a few suggestions.

In regard to the external setting of the parable as a piece of rosicrucian

literature, we must remember that it was published in 1788, the time of

the later gold- and rose-cross societies, and in a book whose theosophic

and religious character is seen in all the figures contained in it as well

as in the greater part of the text. It is continually reiterated that gold

is not common gold but our gold, that the stone is a spiritual stone

(Jesus Christ), etc. The creation of the world, the religious duty of

mankind, the mystic path to the experiencing of divinity—all is

represented in detailed pictures with predominantly chemical symbolism.

This higher conception of alchemy, that corresponds throughout to the

ideal of the so-called old or true rosicrucian, does not prevent the

editor from believing in the possibility of miraculous gifts which are to

be gained through the hermetic art. Many parts of the book make us suspect

a certain naïveté that may go several degrees beyond the simplicity

required for religious development.

As for the origin of the parable there are two possibilities. Either the

editor is himself the author and as such retires into the background,

while he acts as collector of old rosicrucian manuscripts, that he now in

publishing, discloses to amateurs in the art, or the editor is merely

editor. In either case the obligation remains to interpret the parable

hermetically. The educational purpose of the editor is established. If he

is himself the author, he himself has clothed his teachings in the images

of the parable. If, on the contrary, the author is some one else (either a

contemporary and so [Symbol: sun] R. C. [Symbol: cross], or an old

hermetic philosopher, Fr. R. C.), the editor has found in the piece edited

by him a subject suitable to his purpose, a material that voices his

doctrines. We can evidently also rest satisfied, in order to evade the

question of authorship, that the writing itself gets its own character

from the hermetic interpretations, and shows in detail its correspondingly

theosophic material. Nevertheless I desire to show the directing hand of

the collector and editor.

Several controlling elements pointing toward a hermetic theosophic

interpretation, which the reader probably looks for in the parable, may be

shown if I mention the ethical purposes that here and there emerge in our

psychoanalytic interpretation of the parable. I might remind the reader

that the wanderer is a killer of dragons like St. George; the holy Mary is

represented standing over a dragon; also under the Buddha enthroned upon a

lotus flower, there curls not infrequently a vanquished dragon; etc. I

might mention the religious symbolism of the narrow path that leads to the

true life. Many occurrences in the parable are to be conceived as trials,

and we can see the wanderer overcome the elemental world (Nature triumphs

over Nature), wherein he is proved by all four elements and comes off

victorious from all tests. The fight with the lion in the den can be

regarded as a world test, the walk on the cloud capped wall (like the

flying up in the vessel) as an air test, the mill episode (and the flood

in the vessel) as a water ordeal, and the stay in the heated vessel as a

fire ordeal. The old miller is God, the ten mill wheels are the ten

commandments, and likewise the ten Sephiroth that create the whole world.

We are also reminded of the Ophanim (wheels, a class of angels).

Several particulars suggest the admission of the seeker into a hermetic

fraternity, which, as far as I am concerned, might be called rosicrucian.

There was also among the cabbalists, as apparently is shown by Reuchlin

(De Vero Mirifico), an initiation into a mystery. Fludd (in his Tractatus

theologo-philosophicus de vita, morte et resurrectione, Chap. XVI)

apostrophizes the rosicrucians: “With open eyes I saw from your brief

answer to two men whom you intended, at the exhortation of the Holy Ghost,

to choose to your cloister or house, that you possessed the same knowledge

of the true mystery and the same keys of knowledge that unlock the

Paradise of Joy, as the patriarchs and prophets of holy scripture

possess.” And in another place, “Believe that your (the R. C. [Symbol:

cross]) palace or abode is situated at the confines of the earthly

paradise [locus voluptatis terrestris]....” In our parable it is a

paradise of joy [pratum felicitatis] where the wanderer meets the company

into which he desires admission. He must undergo examinations like every

neophyte. The collegium sapientiae of the parable refers to the

rosicrucian Collegium Sancti Spiritus, which is actually named in another

passage of the book that contains the parable.

The blood of the lion, which the wanderer gets by cutting him up, refers

to the rose-colored blood of the cross that we gain through deep digging

and hammering. The wanderer picks roses and puts them in his hat, a mark

of honor. The master is generally seen provided with a hat in the old

pictures. “Rose garden” (the garden of the parable is quadrangular) was a

name applied apparently to alchemistic lodges. The philosophical work

itself is compared to the rose; the white rose is the white tincture, the

red rose is the red tincture (different degrees of completion that follow

the degrees of black). They are plucked in the “alchemistic paradise,” but

one must set about it in obedience to nature. Basilius Valentinus in the

third of his twelve keys writes of the great magisterium: “So whoever

wishes to compare our incombustible sulphur of all the wise men, must

first take heed for himself, that he look for our sulphur in one who is

inwardly incombustible; which cannot occur unless the salt sea has

swallowed the corpse and completely cast it up again. Then raise it in its

degree, so that it surpass in brilliance all the stars of heaven, and

become in its nature as rich in blood, as the pelican when he wounds

himself in his breast, so that his young may be well nourished without

malady to his body, and can eat of his blood. [The pelican possesses under

its bill a great pouch in which he can preserve food, principally fish. If

he regurgitates the food out of his crop to feed his young he rests his

bill against his breast. That gave rise to the belief that it tore open

its breast in order to feed its young with its blood. From early times the

pelican is therefore used as a symbol of Christ, who shed his blood for

mankind. The alchemists represented the philosopher’s stone, the red

tincture, as a pelican; for by its projection on the baser metals it

sacrificed itself and, as it were, gave its blood to tincture them. The

Christian and the hermetic symbolism are concurrent as in higher sense the

stone Christ, i.e., the Messiah, is on our hearts.] That is the rose of

our master with color of scarlet and red dragon’s blood, written of by

many, also the purple mantle of the highest commanders in our art, with

which the Queen of Salvation is clothed, and by which all the poor metals

can be warmed. Keep well this mantle of honor.”

It is interesting that dream parallels can support us in both directions

on the path of hermetic interpretation. I have in the second section of

this volume reported the “dream of the Flying Post.” I must now complete

its interpretation. Stekel writes (l. c, p. 399): “If we examine the birth

and uterus phantasies, Mr. X. Z., the dreamer, turns out to be a base

criminal. He struggles with conscious murder ideas. He is afraid he may

kill his uncle or his mother. He is very pious. But his soul is black as

the coal-dust-strewn street. His evil thoughts (the homosexual) pursue

him. He enters the mill. It is God’s mill that grinds slowly but surely.

His weight (his burden of sin) drives the mill. He is expelled. He enters

the Flying Post. It is the post that unites heaven and earth. He is to

pay, i.e., do penance for his sins. His sins are erotic (three heller =

the genitals). His sins and misdeeds stink before heaven (dirty feet). The

conductor is death.... The wheel room refers to the wheel of criminals.

The water is blood.” The perilous situation in the dream, God’s mill, the

blackness, the water or blood, which are their analogues, are found in the

parable without further reference being necessary. Especially would I

select the unusual detail of the stinking, dirty feet, for which probably

no one would see any association in the parable. It is found in the

episode of the rotting of the bridal pair in the receptacle. It is

expressly stated that the putrefying corpses (i.e., the disintegrating

sinful bodies of men in the theosophic work) stink. The opposite is the

odor of sanctity. Actually this opposition recurs frequently in hermetic

manuals. The conductor in the dream is described hermetically as a

messenger of heaven [Symbol: mercury], Hermes, conveyor of souls. His

first appearance in the life of man is conscience. This causes our sins,

which would be otherwise indifferent, to stink. In alchemy the substances

stink on their dissolution in mercurious purifying liquid. Only later does

the agreeable fragrance appear.

If we find on the one hand that the parable appears as a hermetic writing,

which allows us to develop theosophical principles from its chemical

analogues, on the other hand the psychoanalytic interpretation is not

thereby shaken. Consequently the question arises for us how it is possible

to give several interpretations of a long series of symbols that stand in

complete opposition. [If we were concerned with individual symbols merely,

the matter would not be at all extraordinary.] Our research has shown that

they are possible. The psychoanalytic interpretation brings to view

elements of a purposeless and irrational life of impulse, which works out

its fury in the phantasies of the parable; and now the analysis of

hermetic writings shows us that the parable, like all deep alchemistic

books, is an introduction to a mystic religious life,—according to the

degree of clearness with which the ideas hovered before the author. For

just as the psychoanalytically derived meaning of the phantasies does not

occur to him, so possibly even the mystical way on which he must travel

must have appeared only hazily before him. So no matter what degree of

clearness the subjective experience may have had from the author’s point

of view, we have for the solution of our own problem, to stick to the

given object and to the possibilities of interpretation that are so

extraordinarily coherent.

The interpretations are really three; the psychoanalytic, which leads us

to the depths of the impulsive life; then the vividly contrasting hermetic

religious one, which, as it were, leads us up to high ideals and which I

shall call shortly the anagogic; and third, the chemical (natural

philosophical), which, so to speak, lies midway and, in contrast to the

two others, appears ethically indifferent. The third meaning of this work

of imagination lies in different relations half way between the

psychoanalytic and the anagogic, and can, as alchemistic literature shows,

be conceived as the bearer of the anagogic.

The parable may serve as an academic illustration for the entire hermetic

(philosophy). The problem of multiple interpretation is quite universal,

in the sense namely that one encounters it everywhere where the

imagination is creatively active. So our study opens wide fields and art

and mythology especially appear to invite us. I will depart as little as

possible, however, from the province chosen as an example, i.e., alchemy.

But in two fables I shall work out the problem of multiple interpretation.

In the choice of the fables I am influenced by the fact that a

psychoanalytic elaboration (Rank’s) lies ready to hand, and that both are

subjected to an anagogic interpretation by Hitchcock, who wrote the book

on alchemy. This enables me to take the matter up briefly because I can

simply refer to the detailed treatment in the above mentioned books. The

two stories belong to Grimm’s collection and are called the Six Swans, and

the Three Feathers. (K. H. M., Nos. 49 and 63.)

Rank (Lohenginsage) connects the story of the six swans and numerous

similar stories with the knight of the swan saga. It is shown that the

mythical contents of all these narratives have at bottom those elemental

forces of the impulse life that we have found in the parable, and that

they are specially founded on family conflicts, i.e., on those

uncontrolled love and hate motives that come out in their crassest form in

the neurotic as his (phantasied) “family romance.” To this family romance

belongs, among others, incest in different forms, the illicit love for the

mother, the rescuing of the mother from peril, the rescuing of the father,

the wish to be the father, etc., phantasies whose meaning is explained in

the writings of Freud and Rank (Myth of the Birth of the Hero(3)).

According to Hitchcock, on the contrary, the same story tells of a man who

in the decline of life falls into error, takes the sin to his heart, but

then, counseled by his conscience, seeks his better self and completes the

(alchemic-creative) work of the six days. (Hitchcock, Red Book.)

It is incontestable that there is, besides the psychoanalytic and anagogic

interpretation of this tale (and almost all others), a nature mythological

and in the special sense, an astronomical interpretation. Significant

indications of this are the seven children and the seven years, the sewing

of clothes made of star flowers, the lack of an arm as in the case of

Marduk, and the corresponding heroes of astral myths, and many others. One

of the seven is particularly distinguished like the sun among the

so-called planets. The ethically indifferent meaning of the tale alongside

of the psychoanalytic and the anagogic corresponds to the chemical

contents of the hermetic writings. As object of the indifferent meaning

there always stands the natural science content of the spirit’s creation.

There is generally a certain relationship between the astronomical and the

alchemistic meanings. It is now well known that alchemy was influenced by

astrology, that the seven metals correspond to the seven planets, that, as

the sun is distinguished among the planets, so is gold among the metals;

and as in astrology combustion takes place in heaven, so it occurs also in

the alembic of the alchemists. And the fact that the sun maiden at the end

of the story releases her six planet brothers, sounds exactly as when the

tincturing power of gold at the end of six days perfects the six imperfect

metals and makes the ill, well.

In the second story I will emphasize to a somewhat greater degree the

opposition of the two contrasting interpretations (psychoanalytic and

anagogic), as I must return to it again. The story is suited to a detailed

treatment on account of its brevity. I will first present it.

There was once a king who had three sons, two of whom were clever and

shrewd, but the third did not talk much, was simple and was merely called

the Simpleton. When the king grew old and feeble and expected his end, he

did not know which one of his sons should inherit the kingdom after him.

So he said to them, “Go forth, and whoever brings me the finest carpet

shall be king after my death.” And lest there be any disagreement among

them, he led them before his castle, blew three feathers into the air, and

said: “As they fly, so shall you go.” One flew towards the east, the other

towards the west, the third, however, flew straight ahead, but flying only

a short distance soon fell to earth. Now one brother went to the right,

the other went to the left, and they laughed at Simpleton, who had to stay

with the third feather where it had fallen.

Simpleton sat down and was sad. Suddenly he noticed that near the feather

lay a trap door. He raised it, found a stairway, and went down. Then he

came before another door, knocked and listened, while inside a voice

called:

“Maiden green and small,

Shrunken old crone,

Old crone’s little dog,

Crone here and there,

Let us see quickly who is out there.”

The door opened and he saw a big fat toad and round about her a crowd of

little toads. The fat toad asked what his wish was. He answered, “I should

have liked the most beautiful and finest carpet.” Then she called a young

one and said:

“Maiden green and small,

Shrunken old crone,

Crone’s little dog,

Crone here and there,

Fetch here the big box.”

The young toad brought the box and the fat toad opened it and gave

Simpleton a carpet from it, so beautiful and so fine as up above on the

earth could not have been woven. Then he thanked her and climbed up again.

The two others had, however, considered their youngest brother so

weak-minded that they believed that he would not find and bring anything

back. “Why should we take so much trouble,” said they, and took from the

back of the first shepherd’s wife that met them her coarse shawl and

carried it home to the king. At the same time Simpleton returned and

brought his beautiful carpet, and when the king saw it he was astonished

and said: “If justice must be done, the kingdom belongs to the youngest.”

But the two others gave their father no peace, and said that it was

impossible that Simpleton, who lacked understanding in all things, could

be a king, and begged him to make a new condition. Then the father said,

“The one that brings me the most beautiful ring shall be king,” led the

three brothers out and blew three feathers into the air for them to

follow. The two oldest again went east and west, and Simpleton’s feather

flew straight ahead and fell down near the door in the earth. So he went

down again to the fat toad and told her that he needed the most beautiful

ring. She immediately had her big box fetched and from it gave him a ring

that glittered with jewels and was more beautiful than any goldsmith upon

the earth could have made. The two eldest laughed about Simpleton, who was

going to look for a gold ring, but they took no trouble, and knocked the

pin out of an old wagon ring and brought the ring to the king. But when

Simpleton showed his gold ring the father again said, “The kingdom belongs

to him.” The two eldest did not cease importuning the king till he made a

third condition and declared that the kingdom should go to the one that

brought home the fairest woman. Again he blew the three feathers into the

air and they flew as before.

So Simpleton without more ado went down to the fat toad and said, “I have

to take home the fairest woman.” “The fairest woman, hey? She is not right

here, but none the less you shall have her.” She gave him a hollowed out

carrot to which were harnessed six little mice. Then Simpleton sadly said,

“What shall I do with it?” The toad replied, “Just put one of my little

toads in it.” So he took one by chance from the circle and put it in the

yellow carriage, but hardly had she taken her seat when she became a

surpassingly beautiful maiden, the carrot a coach, and the six little

mice, horses. So he kissed the maiden, drove away with the horses and took

them to the king. His brothers came afterwards. They had not taken any

trouble to find a fair lady but had brought the first good looking peasant

woman. As the king looked at them he said, “The youngest gets the kingdom

after my death.” But the two oldest deafened the king’s ears with their

outcry: “We cannot allow the Simpleton to be king,” and gained his consent

that the one whose woman should jump through a ring that hung in the

middle of the room should have the preference. They thought, “The peasant

women can do it easily, they are strong enough, but the delicate miss will

jump herself to death.” The old king consented to this also. So the two

peasant women jumped, even jumped through the ring, but were so clumsy

that they fell and broke their awkward arms and legs. Then the beautiful

woman whom Simpleton had brought leaped through as easily as a roe, and

all opposition had to cease. So he received the crown and ruled long and

wisely.

I offer first a neat psychoanalytic interpretation of this narrative. Like

the dream, the fairy tale is regularly a phantastic fulfillment of wishes,

and, of such indeed, as we realize, but which life does not satisfy, as

well as of such as we are hardly aware of in consciousness, and would not

entertain if we knew them clearly. Reality denies much, especially to the

weak, or to those who feel themselves weak, or who have a smaller capacity

for work in the struggle for existence in relation to their fellow men.

The efficient person accomplishes in his life what he wishes, the wishes

of the weak remain unfulfilled, and for this reason the weak, or whoever

in comparison with the magnitude of his desires, thinks himself weak,

avails himself of the phantastic wish fulfillment. He desires to attain

the unattainable at least in imagination. This is the psychological reason

why so many fairy stories are composed from the standpoint of the weak, so

that the experiencing Ego of the fairy tale, the hero, is a simpleton, the

smallest or the weakest or the youngest one who is oppressed, etc. The

hero of the foregoing tale is a simpleton and the youngest. In his

phantasy, that is, in the story, he stamps his brothers, who are in real

life more efficient, and whom he envies, as malicious, disagreeable

characters. (In real life we can generally observe how suspicious are, for

instance, physically deformed people. Their sensitiveness is well known.)

Like the fox to whom the grapes are sour, he declares that what his

stronger fellows accomplish is bad, their performance of their duty

defective, and their aims contemptible, especially in the sexual sphere,

where he feels himself openly most injured. The tale treats specifically

from the outset the conquest of a woman. The carpet, the ring, are female

symbols, the first is the body of the woman, the ring is the vagina (Greek

kteis = comb = pudenda muliebria). (The carpet is still more specifically

marked as a female symbol in that the brothers take it from the body of a

shepherdess. Shepherdess—a coarse “rag”—coarse “cloth”—in contrast to the

fine carpet of the hero.)

The simpleton is one who does not like much work. When he also ascribes

negligence to his brothers he betrays to us his own nature, in that his

“feather,” i.e., himself, does not go far, while his brothers’ feathers go

some distance. In order to invalidate this view of himself the

distribution of the feathers is put off on chance, as if to a higher

determining power. This has always been a favorite excuse with lazy and

inefficient people.

One of the means of consoling himself for the unattainableness of his

wishes is the belief in miracles. (Cf. my work on Phantasy and Mythos.)

The simpleton gains his advantage in a miraculous manner; roasted pigeons

fly into his mouth.

In his erotic enterprises he sticks to his own immediate neighborhood. He

clearly bears within himself an Imago that holds him fast. [This is an

image, withdrawn from consciousness and consequently indestructible, of

the object of one’s earliest passion, which continues to operate as a

strongly affective complex, and takes hold upon life with a formative

effect. The most powerful Imagos are those of the parents. Here naturally

the mother imago comes to view, which later takes a position in the center

of the love life (namely the choice of object).] Whither does he turn for

his journey of conquest? Into the earth. The earth is the mother as a

familiar symbol language teaches us. Trap door, box, subterranean holes,

suggest a womb phantasy. The toad frequently appears with the significance

of the uterus, harmonizing with the situation that the tale presents. (On

the contrary frog is usually penis.) The toad’s big box (= mother) is also

the womb. From it indeed the female symbols, in this connection, sisters,

are produced for the simpleton. The box is, however, also the domestic

cupboard,—food closet, parcel, bandbox, chamber, bowl, etc.,—from which

the good mother hands out tasty gifts, toys, etc. Just as the father in

childish phantasy can do anything, so the mother has a box out of which

she takes all kinds of good gifts for the children. Down among the toads

an ideal family episode is enacted. The mother’s inexhaustible box (with

the double meaning) even delivers the desired woman for the simpleton.

The woman—for whom? Doubtless for the simpleton, psychologically. The tale

says for the king, because the female symbols, carpet, ring, the king

desires for himself, in so many words, and the inference is that the woman

also belongs to him. The conclusion of the tale, however, turns out true

to the psychological situation, as it does away with the king and lets the

simpleton live on, apparently with the same woman. It is clear as day that

the simpleton identifies himself with his father, places himself in his

place. The image, which possesses him from the first is the father’s

woman, the mother. And the father’s death—that is considerately

ignored—which brings queen and crown, is a wish of the simpleton. So again

we find ourselves at the center of the Œdipus complex. As

mother-substitute figures the sister, one of the little toads.

We have regarded the story first from the point of view of the

inefficiency of the hero, and have thereupon stumbled upon erotic

relations, finally upon the Œdipus complex. The psychological connection

results from the fact that those images on which the Œdipus complex is

constructed appear calculated to produce an inefficiency in the erotic

life.

The anagogic interpretation of Hitchcock (l. c., pp. 175 ff.) is as

follows, though somewhat abridged:

The king plainly means man. He has three sons; he is an image of the

Trinity, which in the sense of our presentation we shall think of as body,

soul and spirit. Two of the sons were wise in the worldly sense, but the

third, who represents spirit and in the primitive form, is called

conscience, is simple in order to typify the straight and narrow path of

truth. The spirit leads in sacred silence those who meekly follow it and

dies in a mystical sense if it is denied, or else appears in other forms

in order to pursue the soul with the ghosts of murdered virtues. Man is,

as it were, in doubt concerning the principle to which the highest

leadership in life is due. “Go forth and whoever brings me the finest

carpet shall be king after my death.” The carpet is something on which one

walks or stands, here representing the best way of life according to

Isaiah XXX, 21. “This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right

hand and when ye turn to the left.”

The three feathers are, of course, the three principles. Two of them move

at once in opposite directions [towards the east and towards the west, as

many writers on alchemy represent the two principles or breaths, anima and

corpus or [Symbol: Gold] and [Symbol: Silver]] and so come even at the

outset away from the right path. The third, symbol of the spirit, flies

straight forward and has not far to its end, for simple is the way to the

inner life. And so the spirit will speak to us if we follow its voice, at

first quite a faint voice: “But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy

mouth and in thy heart that thou mayst do it.” (Deuteronomy XXX, 14.) Yet

the soul is not free from sadness, as the man stands still on the lower

steps of the ladder that leads up into eternal life. Simpleton is troubled

in his heart and in the humility of this affliction he discovers “all at

once” a secret door, which shows him the entrance into the mystical life.

The door is on the surface of the earth, in abasement, as the third

feather determined it in advance. As Simpleton discreetly obeyed it, he

strolled along the path that the door opened for him. Three steps, three

fundamental forces. So Christ had to descend before he could rise. The

hero of the story knocks as Christ knocks in the gospel (i.e., on the

inner door, contrasted with the law of Moses, the outer door). The big

toad with her little ones in a circle about her signifies the great mother

nature and her creatures, which surround her in a circle; in a circle, for

nature always returns upon herself in a cycle. Simpleton gets the most

beautiful carpet.

The other two beings that we call understanding and feelings (sun and moon

of the hermetic writings) look without, instead of seeking the way within;

so it comes to pass that they take the first best coarse cloths.

To bring the most beautiful ring is to bring truth, which like a ring has

neither beginning nor end. Understanding and feeling go in different

directions, the simpleton waits meekly by the door that leads to the

interior of the great mother. [The appearance of this conception in the

anagogic interpretation is also important.]

In the third test, the search for “the fairest woman,” the crown of life,

conceived exoterically as well as esoterically, the carrot represents the

vegetative life (body, the natural man), and the six mice that draw it are

our old friends the six swans or virtues, and the highest of these

compassion—or love—goes as the enthroned queen in the carriage. The

uninitiated man is almost in doubt and asks, “What shall I do with a

carrot?” Yet the great mother replies, as it were, “Take one of my

fundamental forces.” And what do we see then? The toad becomes a beautiful

maiden, etc. The man now all at once realizes how fearfully and

wonderfully he is made. Filled with reverence of himself he is ready to

cry, “Not my will but thine be done.”

Still another test remains. We must all go through a sort of mystical

ring, which hangs in the hall (of learning). Only one in the whole

universe is in a condition to accomplish it, to endure it without injury.

The beautiful delicate maid with the miraculous gift is the spirit

[spiritus or [Symbol: Mercury] of alchemy].

We shall add that the two interpretations externally contradict each

other, although each exhibits a faultless finality. I should note that I

have limited myself to the briefest exposition; in a further working out

of the analysis the two expositions can be much more closely identified

with the motives of the story.

First, then, the question arises, how one and the same series of images

can harmonize several mutually exclusive interpretations (problem of

multiple interpretation); yet we have discovered in the parable three

practically equivalent schemes of interpretation, the psychoanalytic, the

chemical (scientific), and the anagogic. Secondly, the question presents

itself more particularly how can two so antithetic meanings as the

psychoanalytic and the anagogic exist side by side.

Part III.

SYNTHETIC PART.

Section I.

Introversion And Regeneration.

A. Introversion And Intro-Determination.

The multiple interpretation of works of fantasy has become our problem,

and the diametrical opposition of the psychoanalytic and the anagogic

interpretation has particularly struck us. The question now apparently

becomes more complicated if I show that the psychoanalytic interpretation

contains an analogue that we must take into consideration. The analogue is

presented by the remarkable coexistence of symbolism of material and

functional categories in the same work of imagination. In order to make

myself intelligible, I must first of all explain what these categories

are.

In division 2 of the introductory part we have seen that the imagination

shows a predilection for symbolic forms of expression, proportionately

greater indeed, the more dreamlike it is. Now by this symbolism as we

observe most clearly in hypnagogic (half dreaming) hallucinations and in

dreams, three different groups of objects are represented.

I. Thought contents, imagination contents, in brief, the contents or

objects of thinking and imagining, the material of thought whether it be

conscious or unconscious.

II. The condition, activity, structure of the psyche, the way and manner

that it functions and feels, the method of functioning of the psyche,

whether it be conscious or unconscious.

III. Somatic processes (bodily stimulations). This third sort of objects

is closely coördinated with the other two. It is not capable of

interesting us in the present connection so we pass it by.

Therefore we arrive at two categories in which we can enroll all

symbolizing works of the imagination, the material and the functional.

I. The material category is characterized by its representation of thought

contents, i.e., of contents that are worked out in a train of thoughts

(arranged thought, imagined), whether they are mere images or groups of

images, concepts that are somewhat drawn out into comparisons and

definition processes, or indeed judgments, trains of reasoning, which

serve as analytic or synthetic operations, etc. Since, as we know, the

phantasies (dreams, reveries, even poems) are mostly inspired by wishes,

it will prove frequently the case that the contents symbolically contained

in them are wish images, i.e., the imagined experiencing of gratification.

II. The functional category is characterized by the fact that the

condition, structure or capacity for work of the individual consciousness

(or the psychic apparatus) is itself portrayed. It is termed functional

because it has nothing to do with the material or the contents of the act

of thinking, but applies merely to manner and method in which

consciousness functions (rapid, slow, easy, hard, obstructed, careless,

joyful, forced; fruitless, successful; disunited, split into complexes,

united, interchangeable, troubled, etc.). [It is immaterial whether these

are conscious or unconscious. Thinking must be taken here in the widest

possible sense. It means here all psychic processes that can have anything

as an “object.”]

Two typical examples will enable us at once clearly to understand the two

categories and keep them separate.

A. Material Symbolism.—Conditions. In a drowsy state I reflect upon the

nature of the judgments that are transsubjectively (= for all men) valid.

All at once the thread of the abstract thought is broken and

autosymbolically in the place of it is presented the following hypnagogic

hallucination:

Symbol. An enormous circle, or transparent sphere, floats in the air and

men are putting their heads into this circle.

Interpretation. In this symbol everything that I was thinking of is

expressed. The validity of the transsubjective concerns all men without

exception; the circle goes through all the heads. This validity must have

its cause in something common to all. The heads all belong to the same

apparently homogeneous sphere. Not all judgments are transsubjective; with

their bodies and limbs men are outside of and under the sphere and stand

on the earth as separate individuals.

B. Functional Symbolism.—Conditions. Dreamy state as above. I reflect upon

something or other, and yet in allowing myself to stray into bypaths of

thought, I am diverted from my peculiar theme. When I want to get back the

autosymbolic phenomenon appears.

Symbol. I am climbing mountains. The nearer mountains shut out my view of

the more distant ones, from which I have come and to which I should like

to return.

Meaning. I have got off the track. I have ventured too high and the ideas

that I have entertained shut out my starting point like the mountains.

To the material category belongs, for example, the meaning of the

strawberry dream explained in the second part of the introductory chapter.

Strawberry picking is a symbol for an imaged wish gratification (sexual

intercourse), and so for an image content. The symbolism is therefore a

material one. The greatly preponderating part of psychoanalytic dream

literature is occupied with interpretation according to material

categories.

To the functional categories belong, for example, the symbolism of falling

asleep and waking up, which I have mentioned in the second part in

connection with the interpretation of the parable.

The two categories of symbolism, if they never did anything but parallel

each other, would afford us no analogues for our problem of double

meaning. Now the cases, however, are extremely rare where there is only

functional or only material symbolism; the rule is an intimate

interweaving of both. To be sure, one is frequently more emphasized than

the other or more easily accessible, but we can generally find cases where

long contexts of images are susceptible of material as well as functional

interpretation, alike in detail and continuity of connection.

The following may serve as a very simple case in point. Lying one evening

in bed and exhausted and about to fall asleep, I devoted my thoughts to

the laborious progress of the human spirit in the dim transcendant

province of the mothers-problem. (Faust, Part II.) More and more sleepy

and ever less able to retain my thoughts, I saw suddenly with the

vividness of an illusion a dream image. I stood on a lonely stone pier

extending far into a dark sea. The waters of the sea blended at the

horizon with an equally dark-toned mysterious, heavy air. The overpowering

force of this tangible picture aroused me from my half sleeping state, and

I at once recognized that the image, so nearly an hallucination, was but a

visibly symbolic embodiment of my thought content that had been allowed to

lapse as a result of my fatigue. The symbol is easily recognized as such.

The extension into the dark sea corresponds to the pushing on into a dark

problem. The blending of atmosphere and water, the imperceptible gradation

from one to the other means that with the “mothers” (as Mephistopheles

pictures it) all times and places are fused, that there we have no

boundaries between a “here” and a “there,” an “above” and a “below,” and

for this reason Mephistopheles can say to Faust on his departure,

“Plunge then.—I could as well say soar.”

We see therefore between the visualized image and the thought content,

which is, as it were, represented by it, a number of relations. The whole

image resolves itself insofar as it has characteristic features, almost

entirely into such elements as are most closely related to the thought

content. Apart from these connections of the material category, the image

represents also my momentary psychic condition (transition to sleep).

Whoever is going to sleep is, as it were, in the mental state of sinking

into a dark sea. (The sinking into water or darkness, entrance into a

forest, etc., are frequently-occurring threshold symbols.) The clearness

of ideas vanishes there and everything melts together just as did the

water and the atmosphere in the image.

This example is but to illustrate; it is in itself much too slight and

simple to make any striking revelation of the remarkable interlacing of

the two kinds of symbolism. I refer to my studies on symbolism and on

dreams in the bibliography. Exhaustive treatment at this point would lead

us too far afield. Let us rest satisfied then with the facts that the

psychoanalysts simultaneously deal with two fundamentally different lines

of interpretation in a product of the phantasy (dream, etc.), quite apart

from the multiple determinants which they can find within the material as

well as in the functional categories; both lines of interpretation are

supplied by the same fabric of images, indeed often by the same elements

of this image fabric. This context therefore must have been sought out

artfully enough by the creative unconscious to answer the double

requirement.

The coexistence of the material meaning with the functional is not

entirely puzzling to the student of psychoanalysis. Two facts must be kept

in mind throughout.

In the first place, we are acquainted with the principle of multiple

determination or condensation. The multiplicity of the dimly moving latent

dream thoughts condenses into a few clear dream forms or symbols, so that

one symbol continually, as it were, appears as the representative of

several ideas, and is therefore interpretable in several ways. That it

should be susceptible of more than one interpretation can cause no

surprise because the fundamental significance (the latent thoughts) were

the very ones that, by association, caused the selection of the symbols

from an infinite series of possibilities. In the shaping of the dream, and

therefore in the unconscious dream work, only such pictorial elements

could penetrate into consciousness as satisfied the requirements of the

multiple determination. The principle of multiple determination is valid

not only within the material and the functional categories, but makes the

fusion of both in the symbol in question to some extent intelligible.

Elements of both categories take an active part in the choice of the

symbol. On the one hand, a number of affects press on towards the symbolic

representation of objects to which they direct themselves (objects of

love, hate, etc.). On the other hand, the psyche takes cognizance of its

own impulses, play of affects, etc., and this perception will gain

representation. Both impulses take part in the choice of those symbols

which thrust themselves into the nascent consciousness of phantasy, and so

the dream, like the poem, etc., besides the symbolism of the wish

tendencies (material categories) that animate them, bears the stamp of the

psychic authorship (functional category) of the dreamer or the author.

[Ferenczi defends the view for the myth also that the material symbolism

must coincide with the functional (Imago I, p. 283).]

Secondly, it has been shown in recent times in psychoanalytic studies that

symbols which were originally material pass over to functional use. If we

thoroughly analyze for a sufficient time the dreams of a person we shall

find that certain symbols which at first probably appeared only

incidentally to signify some idea content, wish content, etc., return and

become a persistent or typical form. And the more such a typical form is

established and is impressed, the farther it is removed from its first

ephemeral meaning, and the more it becomes a symbolic representative of a

whole group of similar experiences, a spiritual capital, so to speak, till

finally we can regard it simply as the representative of a spiritual

current (love, hate, tendency to frivolity, to cruelty, to anxiety, etc.).

What has been accomplished there is a transition from the material to the

functional on the path of a determination inward or intro-determination

(verinnerlichung) as I shall call it. Later I shall have more to say about

intro-determination. For the present this may suffice for the

understanding, that the material and the functional symbolism, in spite of

their at first apparently fundamental difference, are essentially related

in some way, which is illuminated by the process of intro-determination.

The analogue of the problem of multiple interpretation unfolded in the

preceding section is shown to be a question that can be easily answered.

And we would bring our problem to a generally satisfactory position if we

succeeded in showing that the anagogic interpretation, whose alignment

with the psychoanalytic seemed so impracticable, is a form of functional

interpretation, or at least related to it. In this case it would be at

once comprehensible how a product of the imagination harmonizes with

several expositions (problem of multiple interpretation); because this

variety of sense had already operated in the selection of the symbol and

indeed, in those cases as well where we did not at first sight suspect the

coöperation of the anagogic thoughts; secondly, the anagogic and the

psychoanalytic interpretations are somehow reconciled to each other,

whereby possibly also the position of the natural science interpretation

can be made somewhat clearer.

The possibility that the anagogic has some part in the creation of the

functional, will be brought nearer by the fact that our previously offered

anagogic expositions (fairy tales, parabola) markedly resemble functional

interpretations. In the tale of the six swans Hitchcock explains the

reception of the maiden into the castle as the reception of sin into the

heart; the seven children are the seven virtues (consequently spiritual

tendencies). The small maiden is conscience, the tissues are processes of

thought. In the story of the three feathers, again, one son is conscience;

the secret door is the entrance to the inner life, to spiritual

absorption, the three feathers are spiritual tendencies, etc. In the dream

of the “flying post” conscience appears as the conductor. The “Mills of

God,” which psychologically also represents conscience, the more

strikingly because the burden of sin, guilty feeling, drives them, also

appear in the parable. The lion or the dragon which must be overcome on

the mystic path is again a spiritual force. The approximation to the

functional category is not to be denied. Processes that show an interplay

of spiritual powers are symbolically represented there. But we are at once

struck with a difference. The true functional phenomenon, as I have so far

described it, pictures the actual psychic state or process; the anagogic

image appears on the contrary to point to a state or process that is to be

experienced in the future. We shall pass over for a time the last topic,

which will not, however, be forgotten, and turn to the question as to the

point on which the anagogic and the functional interpretations can best be

brought together. This point appears to me to be introversion, first

because it is related to the previously mentioned intro-determination, and

second, because it is familiar to psychoanalysis and is of great

importance in anagogic method.

The term “introversion” comes from C. G. Jung. It means sinking into one’s

own soul; the withdrawal of interest from the outer world; the seeking for

joys that can be afforded by the inner world. The psychology of the

neuroses has led to the concept of introversion, a province, therefore,

which principally treats of morbid forms and functions of introversion.

The sinking of oneself into one’s own soul also appears exactly as a

morbid losing of oneself in it. We can speak of introversion neuroses.

Jung regards dementia precox as an introversion neurosis. Freud, who has

adopted the concept of introversion [with some restrictions] regards the

introversion of the libido as a regular and necessary precondition of

every psychoneurosis. Jung (Jb. ps. F., III, p. 159) speaks of “certain

mental disturbances [he means dementia precox] which are induced by the

fact that the patients retire more and more from reality, sink into their

phantasy, whereby in proportion as reality loses its force, the inner

world takes on a reality and determining power.” We may also define

introversion as a resignation of the joys of the outer world (probably

unattainable or become troubled) and a seeking for the libido sources in

one’s own ego. So we see how generally self-chastisement, introversion and

autoerotism are connected.

The turning away from the outer world and turning in to the inner, is

required by all those methods which lead to intensive exercise of religion

and a mystic life. The experts in mysteries provide for opportunities that

should encourage introversion. Cloisters and churches are institutions of

introversion. The symbolism of religious doctrine and rite is full of

images of introversion, which is, in short, one of the most important

presuppositions of mysticism.

Religious and mythical symbolism has countless images for introversion;

e.g., dying, going down, subterranean crypts, vaults, dark temples, into

the underworld, hell, the sea, etc.; being swallowed by a monster or a

fish (as Jonah), stay in the wilderness, etc. The symbols for introversion

correspond in large part with those that I have described for going to

sleep and waking (threshold symbolism), a fact that can be readily

appreciated from their actual similarity. The descent of Faust to the

mothers is an introversion symbol. Introversion fulfills here clearly the

aim of bringing to reality, i.e., to psychological reality, something that

is attainable only by phantasy (world of the past, Helen).

In Jacob Boehme (De Vita Mentali) the disciple says to the master, “How

may I attain suprasensuous life, so that I may see God and hear him

speak?” The master says, “When you can lift yourself for one moment into

that realm where no creature dwelleth, you will hear what God speaks.” The

disciple says, “Is that near or far?” The master says, “It is in

yourself.”

The hermetics often urge retirement, prayer and meditation, as

prerequisites for the work; it is treated of still more in the

hieroglyphic pictures themselves. The picture of death is already familiar

to us from the hermetic writings, but in the technical language there are

still other expressions for introversion, e.g., the shutting up in the

receptacle, the solution in the mercury of the sages, the return of the

substance to its radical condition (by means of the "radical" or root

dampness).

Similar features in our parable are the wandering in the dense forest, the

stay in the lion’s den, the going through the dark passage into the

garden, the being shut up in the prison or, in the language of alchemy,

the receptacle.

Introversion is continually connected with regression. Regression, as may

be recalled from the 2d section of Part I, is a harking back to more

primitive psychic activities, from thinking to gazing, from doing to

hallucinating; a striving back towards childhood and the pleasures of

childhood. Introversion accordingly is accompanied by a desire for

symbolic form of expression (the mystical education is carried on in

symbols), and causes the infantile imagos to revive—chiefly the mother

image. It was pre-eminently father and mother who appeared as objects of

childish love, as well as of defiance. They are unique and imperishable,

and in the life of adults there is no difficulty in reawakening and making

active those memories and those imagos. We easily comprehend the fact that

the symbolic aim of the previously mentioned katabasis always has a

maternal character; earth, hole, sea, belly of fish, etc., that all are

symbols for mother and womb. Regression revives the Œdipus complex with

its thoughts of incest, etc. Regression leads back to all these relics now

done away with in life and repressed. It actually leads into a sort of

underworld, into the world of titanic wishes, as I have called them. How

far this was the case in the alchemistic parable, I have fully shown in

the psychoanalytic treatment of it. Here I need merely to refer to the

maternal nature of the symbols cited: receptacle, mercury of the sages

(“mother of metals”) and radical moisture, also called “milk” and the

like.

Fairy tales have frequently a very pretty functional symbolism for the way

in which introversion leads to the mother imago. Thus the simpleton in the

fairy tale of the feathers comes through the gate of introversion exactly

into the family circle, to the mother that cares for him. There his love

finds its satisfaction. There he even gets a daughter, replica of the

mother imago, for a wife.

In the parable the wandering in the forest (introversion) is followed by

the battle (suggestive of incest) with the lion (father or mother in their

awe inspiring form); the inclusion in the receptacle (introversion) by the

accomplishment of the incest.

If it is now clear also that in introversion, as a result of the

regression that is connected with it, visions of “titanic” emotions

(incest, separating of parents, etc.) are encountered, yet it has not

become in the slightest degree comprehensible how these visions are

related to the treatment of anagogic ideas. And that is indeed the

question.

We can really understand these striking facts better if we recall what I

have said above about the type formation and the intro-determination of

the symbols, namely, that symbols can depart from their original narrower

meaning and become types for an entire class of experiences whereby an

advance is made from the material to the functional meaning. Some examples

will elucidate this.

I have observed particularly fine cases of intro-determination in a series

of experiments in basin divination (lecanomancy) which I have carried on

for several years. Lecanomancy resembles crystal gazing, except that the

gazer looks into a basin of water. In the visions of my subject, Lea,

typical forms were pictured, which always recurred. Regarded as symbols

they were, as subsequent analysis showed, almost all subjected to inward

accentuation or intro-determination. Thus, for instance, a black cat

appeared. At first it appeared as representative of Lea’s grandmother, who

was cat-like, malicious and fawning. Later the cat stood for the

corresponding traits that she perceived in herself. Above all the cat is

the symbol of her grandmother, so the grandmother (or cat) is a mental

current of Lea. Frequently there appears in the image a Dyas, sometimes in

the shape of a two-headed snake, of two hands, of two feet, or of a woman

with two faces, etc. Above all, every antithesis appears to have some

external meaning, two men who love each other, etc. So it becomes clear

that the common element which finds its most pregnant expression in the

double faced woman is the Dyas in itself and that it means bisexuality,

psychic hermaphroditism. More than that it is definitely certain that the

deepest sense of the symbol means a complete dissociation of Lea’s

character into two different personalities, one of which may be called the

savage and the other the mild. (Lea herself uses the expressions cynical

and ideal personality.) In one of the later experiments Lea saw her cynic

double vividly personified and spoke in this character, which is closely

related to the “black cat.” The Dyas in the symbols has the value first of

a representation of externals (two lovers, etc.), then as symbols of

bisexuality. The sexual Dyas can again be conceived as a symbol or

characteristic of a still more general and comprehensive dissociation of

the ego. A further symbol and one still more tending towards

intro-determination was death. Starting from connections with definite

external experiences and ideas of actual death, the meaning of the symbol

became more and more spiritual, till it reached the meaning of the fading

away of psychic impulses. What died symbolically or had to die was

represented by an old man who sacrificed himself after suffering all kinds

of fortune. The dying of this old man signified, as analysis showed, the

same thing that we call the “putting off the old Adam” (turning over a new

leaf). The figure of the old man, originally Lea’s grandfather, then her

father, came to have this meaning only after a long process of

intro-determination.

A few more examples for typical figures.

In many dreams of a woman analyzed by me (Pauline, in my treatise Zur

Symbolbildung), a cow appears as a typical image. The alternation of this

cow with more or less definite mother symbols leads to identification of

the cow with the mother. Two circumstantial dreams that were fully

analyzed showed, however, that the cow and other forms with which she

alternated cannot be translated so correctly by the concept of mother as

by that of the maternal authority and finally still more correctly by

self-criticism or conscience, of which maternal authority is but a type.

Children figure in Pauline’s case as a result of various experiences, as

typical of obstacles.

In the case of another dreamer the father stands in similar relation as

the determinant that paralyzes his resolutions.

The climbing of an ascent, usually a symbol of coitus (hurrying upward

which makes us out of breath), turns out often in a deeper relation as the

effort to get from the disagreeable things of life to a place of retreat

(lonely attics, etc.), inaccessible to other persons (= thoughts); and now

we see that this deeper meaning appears without prejudice to the first,

for even coitus, like all transport, is only a special case of flight from

the outer life, one of the forms of spiritual oblivion. Hence in part the

mythologically and psychopathologically important comparison of

intoxication, intoxicating drink and sperm, soma and semen. Ascent =

coitus is in this case a type for a quite comprehensive class of

experience.

Marcinowski found in his analyses that the father in dream life often was

a “symbol of an outlived, obsolete attitude.” (Z. Bl. f. Ps., II, 9.)

Other examples of types are the phallus, the sun and other religiously

revered objects, if we regard them as does Jung (Wandl. u. Sym., Jb. ps.

F., III-IV) as a symbol of the libido. [The concept of which is extended

by Jung almost to Schopenhauer’s Will.] The typical character of divine

personalities is moreover quite clearly emphasized by Jung himself.

The snake, about whose significance as a “negative phallus,” etc.

[developed in detail by Jung], we shall have more to say, can also be

regarded as a typical image. Bull, cow and other animal forms are in

mythology as in dreams typical transmutations, with unlimited possibility

of intro-determination. Dogs are often in dreams the representations of

animal propensities. The beast is often “la bête humaine” in the dreamer’s

own inner life. We have become acquainted with the terrible lions, the

bears, etc., as father types; here we get a new perspective which makes

clear the one-sidedness of our first conception.

Since psychoanalysis has found acceptation, many of its followers believe

they are able to solve, with their work of analysis alone, all the

psychological, esthetic and mythological problems that come up. We

understand only half of the psychic impulses, as indeed we do all

spiritual development, if we look merely at the root. We have to regard

not merely whence we come but also whither we go. Then only can the course

of the psyche be comprehended, ontogenetically as well as

phylogenetically, according to a dynamic scheme as it were.

If we apply this fundamental principle to symbolism there develops

therefrom the obligation to keep both visible poles in view, between which

the advance of significance, the process of intro-determination is

completed. (An externalization is also possible, yet the internalization

or intro-determination must be regarded as the normal process.) [It

corresponds namely to the process of education and progress of culture.

This will soon be cleared up.] To the most general type belong then,

without doubt, those symbols or frequently disguised images, concerning

which we wondered before, that besides representing “titanic” tendencies,

they are fitted to represent the anagogic. The solution of the riddle is

found the instant we regard these images as types with a certain degree of

intro-determination, as types for a few fundamental forces of the soul,

with which we are all endowed, and whose typical symbols are for that

reason of general applicability. [I will therefore call these types the

human elementary types.] For example, if by psychoanalysis we deduce

father and mother, etc., from some of the symbols appearing in dreams, we

have in these representations of the psychic images, as the psychoanalyst

calls them, in reality derived mere types whose meaning will change

according to the ways of viewing them, somewhat as the color of many

minerals changes according to the angle at which we hold them to the

light. The actual father or mother, the experiences that surrounded them,

were the material used in the formation of the types; they were external

things even if important, while later the father, etc., emerging as

symbol, may have significance as a type of the spiritual power of the very

person in question; a spiritual power to be sure, which the person in

question feels to be like a father for otherwise the father figure would

not be suited for the symbol. And we can go so far as to call this

spiritual power a father image. That should not however, mislead us into

taking that real person, who in the individual case generally (though not

always) has furnished the type, for the real or the most essential. The

innermost lies in ourselves and is only fashioned and exercised upon

persons of the external world.

So then we get for the typical symbol a double perspective. The types are

given, we can look through them forward and backward. In both cases there

will be distortions of the image; we shall frequently see projected upon

each other, things that do not belong together, we shall perceive

convergences at vanishing points which are to be ascribed only to

perspective. I might for brevity’s sake call the errors so resulting

errors of superposition. The significance of this concept will, I hope,

come to have still greater validity in psychoanalysis. [This error of

superposition C. G. Jung attempts to unmask, when he writes: “As libido

has a forward tendency, so in a way, incest is that which tends backward

into childhood. It is not incest for the child, and only for the adult,

who possesses a well constituted sexuality, does this regressive tendency

become incest in that he is no longer a child, but has a sexuality that

really no longer can suffer a regressive application.” (Jung, Psychology

of the Unconscious.) It may moreover be remarked that Freud also is

careful not to take the incest disclosed by psychoanalysis in too physical

a sense.] This error of superposition is found not only in the view

backward but in the forward view. So what I, as interpreter of mystical

symbolism, may say about the possible development of the soul will be

affected by this error of superposition. It is not in my power to correct

it. In spite of everything, the treatment of symbolism from the two points

of view must be superior to the onesided treatment; in order to

approximate a fundamental comprehension, which to be sure remains an

ideal, the different aspects must be combined and in order to make this

clear I have added a synthetic treatment to the analytic part of my work.

Looking back through the elementary types, we see the infantile images

together with those non-moral origins that psychoanalysis discovers in us;

looking forward we notice thoughts directed to certain goals that will be

mentioned later. The elementary types themselves thanks to

intro-determination represent however a collection of our spiritual

powers, which we have first formed and exercised at the time that the

images arose, and which are in their nature closely related to these

images, indeed completely united with them as a result of the errors of

superposition—this collection of powers, I say, accompanies us through our

entire life and is that from which are taken the powers that will be

required for future development. The objects or applications change, the

powers remain almost the same. The symbolism of the material categories

which depends on external things changes with them; but the symbolism of

the functional categories, which reflects these powers remains constant.

The types with their intro-determination belong to the functional

categories; and so they picture the constant characters.

That experience to which the suggestions of symbolism (brought to verbal

expression by means of introversion) point as to a possible spiritual

development, corresponds to a religious ideal; when intensively lived out

this development is called mysticism. [We can define mysticism as that

religious state which struggles by the shortest way towards the

accomplishment of the end of religion, the union with the divinity; or as

an intensive cultivation of oneself in order to experience this union.] It

presents itself if instead of looking backward we gaze forward from our

elementary types to the beyond. But let us not forget that we can regard

mysticism only as the most extreme, and therefore psychically the most

internal, unfolding of the religious life, as the ideal which is hardly to

be attained, although I consider that much is possible in this direction.

If my later examination carries us right into the heart of mysticism,

without making the standpoint clear every time, we now know what

restrictions we must be prepared for.

If I take the view that those powers, whose images (generally veiled in

symbolism) are the elementary types, do not change, I do not intend to

imply that it is not possible to sublimate them. With the increasing

education of man they support a sublimation of the human race which yet

shows in recognizable form the fundamental nature of the powers. One of

the most important types, in which this transformation process is

consummated and which refines the impulse and yet allows some of its

character to remain, is the type mother, i.e., incest. Among religious

symbols we find countless incest images but that the narrow concept of

incest is no longer suited to their psychological basis (revealed through

analysis) has been, among psychoanalysts, quite clearly recognized by

Jung. Therefore in the case of every symbolism tending to ethical

development, the anagogic point of view must be considered, and most of

all in religious symbolism. The impulse corresponding to the religious

incest symbols is preeminently to be conceived in the trend toward

introversion and rebirth which will be treated of later. [Vid. note C, at

the end of the volume.]

I have just used the expression “sublimation.” This Freudian term and

concept is found in an exactly similar significance in the hermetic

writers. In the receptacle where the mystical work of education is

performed, i.e., in man, substances are sublimated; in psychological terms

this means that impulses are to be refined and brought from their baseness

to a higher level. Freud makes it clear that the libido, particularly the

unsocial sexual libido, is in favorable circumstances sublimated, i.e.,

changed into a socially available impelling power. This happens in the

evolution of the human race and is recapitulated in the education of the

individual.

I take it for granted that the fundamental character of the elementary

psychic powers in which the sublimation is consummated is the more

recognizable the less the process of sublimation is extended in time. In

mysticism, e.g., the fundamental character penetrates the primal motive

because the latter wishes to lead the relatively slightly sublimated

impulses by a shortened process to the farthest goal of sublimation.

Mysticism undertakes to accomplish in individuals a work that otherwise

would take many generations. What I said therefore about the

unchangeability of the fundamental powers or their primal motive, is

wholly true of its fate in mystical development.

The Mohammedan mystic Arabi (1165-1240) writes, “Love as such, in its

individual life, is the same for sensuous and spiritual, therefore equally

for every Arab (of an allegory) and for me, but the objects of love are

different. They loved sensible phenomena while I, the mystic, love the

most intimate existence.” (Horten, Myst. Texte, p. 12.)

The religious-mystical applications of the fundamental powers represented

by the types, in the sense of a sublimation, does not manifest therefore

in contrast to their retrospective form (titanic, purposeless form) an

essentially foreign nature; the important novelty in them is that they no

longer are used egotistically but have acquired a content that is

ethically valuable, to which the intro-determination was an aid. This

determination, whose external aspects we have noticed in the types or

symbols, is only the visible expression of a far more important actual

intro-determination whose accomplishment lies in an amplification of

personality, and will later be considered in detail.

In the psychoanalytic consideration of the alchemistic parable it would

appear that only the titanic impulses were realized there, e.g., to have

the mother as a lover and to kill the father. Now it corresponds to a

really significant intro-determination when we hear that in the

alchemistic work the father is the same as the son, and when we understand

that the father is a state, or psychic potentiality, of the “son,” whom

the latter in himself, has to conquer, exactly in the same manner as Lea

in the lecomantic study strove to put off the old man.

The alchemist Rulandus (Lex., p. 24) quotes the “Turba”: “Take the white

tree, build him a round, dark, dew-encircled house, and set in it a

hundred year-old man and close it so that no wind or dust can get to him

(introversion); then leave him there eight days. I tell you that that man

will not cease to eat of the fruit of that tree till he becomes a youth. O

what a wonderful nature, for here is the father become son and born

again.” Ibid: “The stone [that is in the anagogic sense, man] is at first

the senex, afterwards young, so it is said filius interficit patrem; the

father must die, the son be born, die with each other and be renewed with

each other.”

We must proceed similarly if we wish to interpret the parable

anagogically.

What I have already taken from the anagogic fairy tale interpretation as a

symbol of introversion shows, of course, also the character of

intro-determination.

As for the nature of the relatively unchangeable spiritual tendencies

represented by the elementary types [That can also be called in

mythological study primal motives] a simple examination of the essentials

without any psychological hair splitting, brings us at once to an

elementary scheme that will help us to understand the changes

(intro-determination) that take place in accordance with the elementary

types. We need here only to examine the simplest reactions of the

individual, necessarily produced by rubbing up again the external world;

reactions which become persistent forms of experience that are

approximately as self-evident as the libido itself. The degree of egoism

which is active in the elementary tendencies must, according to the

experience of psychoanalysis, be considered very great. For this purpose I

have selected in what follows an excessively egotistical expression for

the “titanic” aspect, the retrospective form, of the tendencies; and this

same excessive expression which would seem to be rather objectionable when

applied to the basis of a religious development, enables us, thanks to the

principle of intro-determination, to understand this development.

Starting from the libido in the most general sense we arrive first of all

at the two phenomena, the agreeableness and the disagreeableness, from

which results at once, acceptance and aversion. Obstacles may aggravate

both activities, so that acceptance becomes robbery and aversion becomes

annihilation. These possibilities can to be sure only become acts in so

far as they prove practically feasible. In all cases they are present in

the psyche, and in this crude primal form play no small part in the soul

of the child. It is indeed only a blind sentimentality that can raise the

child to an angelic status, from which it is as far removed as from its

opposite. We should be careful not to regard the crude form of the impulse

as crude in the sense of an educated humanity, which must see in the

crudeness something morally inferior. In robbery and annihilation there

exists on the primitive or childish level hardly the slightest germ of

badness. There is much to be said about the psychology and morality of the

child. I cannot, however, enter very deeply into this broad topic,

interesting though it is.

The primal tendencies, when directed toward the persons in the

environment, produce certain typical phenomena. I can unfortunately

describe them only with expressions which, if the cultured man uses them,

evoke the idea of crime. An ethically colorless language should be made

available for these things. [The dream and the myth have found for them

the language of symbolism.] The opposition of a fellow man against the

working out of an impulse arouses a tendency to overcome this man, to get

him out of the way, to kill him. The type of the obstructing man is always

the instructor (father, eventually mother). That he is at the same time a

doer of good is less appreciated because the psychical apparatus takes the

satisfaction of desires as the natural thing, which does not excite its

energy nearly as much as does a hindrance to its satisfaction.

[Recognition of a good deed, thankfulness, etc., regularly presuppose

sublimation; they do not belong to the titanic aspect. A form of

appreciation of this kindness however comes to mind. Towards the mother

there occurs on the part of the child, though it has been completely

overlooked for a long time, very early and gradually increasing, a

sexually-toned feeling, although the manifestations of this feeling are

very dim and at times may completely disappear. In this “love” is

contained a germ of desire, of erotic appropriation-to-self. Any woman in

the environment and especially the mother must needs supply the ideal of

the desired woman. In so far as the father is perceived as an obstacle to

the love towards the mother he must, in the elementary tendency, be killed

to remove the obstacle, and there arises the murder impulse belonging to

the Œdipus Complex. [The child has no clear idea of death. It is only a

matter of wishing to have some one out of the way. If this primal motive

appears to us subsequently as a “killing,” it is again only because of the

error of superposition, just as in the later mentioned “rape.”] In so far

as the mother herself does not meet the desired tenderness or in refusing,

acts as a corrective agent, while carrying on the education, she, too,

becomes an obstacle, a personality contrasting with the “dear” mother, a

contrast which plunges the psyche in anxiety and bitterness. Anxiety comes

principally from the conflict of psychical tendencies, which result from

the same person being both loved and hated. The correlative to the denying

action of the mother is to commit rape on her. Another cause of the

attraction towards the mother besides the erotically toned one, is the

desire for her care, called forth by the hardships encountered elsewhere

in the world. It is an indolence opposed to the duties of life. The

propensity towards ease is psychologically a very important factor. The

home is in general the place of protection; the characteristic embodiment

of this is preëminently the mother. We speak of maternal solicitude but

less of paternal solicitude. I have noted the solicitous mother type in

the story of the three feathers, where the mother toad bestows the gifts

from the big box. In so far as the solicitous person refuses the requests

made of her and for reasons of necessity thrusts the child out into the

world, or in so far as any other obstacles (demands of life) stand in the

way of the gratification of the lazy, “feed me” state of mind, like the

angel with the flaming sword before the entrance to paradise, so far the

obstructing power appears as the type of the “terrible” mother, a picture

whose terribleness is yet intensified by the working of the incest

conflict. In this aspect therefore the otherwise beloved mother is a

hostile personality.

To the process of education on the part of the parents, felt as pedantry

by the child, or to otherwise misunderstood action, he opposes a well

known defiance, and there results, as also from the attempt to change in

general the rough path of life, the hopeful attempt to get a creative

“improvement,” which I have already discussed. The wish to die sometimes

occurs. Further the obstacles that stand in the way of the full erotic

life in the external world, in so far as they are insuperable or are not

overcome on account of laziness, lead to autoerotism. (That this is found

even in early childhood is for the mechanism of the impulses, a

side-issue. The scheme just given is not to be regarded as a historical or

chronological development, but the tendencies are quite as intimately

connected with each other as with the acquisition of the psychical

restraints that are not generally brought to view; in separating them we

commit something like an error.)

We have considered the following main forces: 1. Removal of obstacles. 2.

Desire for the solicitude of the parents. 3. Desire for the pleasurable

[especially of the woman]. 4. Auto-erotism. 5-6. Improvement and

re-creation. 7. Death wish. The following scheme shows the retrograde

(titanic) as well as the anagogic aspect of these powers, which later

corresponds to an intro-determination of the types, and a species of

sublimation of impulses.

RETROGRADE ASPECT. ANAGOGIC ASPECT.

1. Killing of the father. Killing of the old Adam.

2. Desire for the mother Introversion.

(laziness).

3. Incest. Love towards an Ideal.

4. Auto-erotism. Siddhi.(4)

5. Copulation with the mother. Spiritual regeneration.

6. Improvement. Re-creation.(5)

7. Death wish. Attainment of the ideal.

We need not scent anything extraordinary behind these

intro-determinations, as the scheme is here indeed only roughly sketched;

they take place in each and every one of us, otherwise we should be mere

beasts. Only they do not in every one of us rise to the intensity of the

mystical life.

A more careful inquiry into the mechanism of the psychic powers in the

development of mysticism, would show in greater detail how everything that

happens is utilized toward intro-determination in the process of

education. It would be interesting as an example to discover the

application of the special senses to introversion and ascertain the fate

of the sense qualities. It is quite remarkable what a prominent rôle

tastes and smells often play in descriptions given by persons who have

followed the path of mysticism. I mention the odor of sanctity and its

opposite in the devilish, evil odor. The experimenter in magic

Staudenmaier, who will be mentioned later, has established in his own case

the coördination of his partial souls (personifications, autonomous

complexes) to definite bodily functions and to definite organs. Certain

evil, partial souls, which appear to him in hallucinations as diabolical

goat faces, were connected with the function of certain parts of the lower

intestine.

Mysticism stimulates a much more powerful sublimation of impulses than the

conventional education of men. So it is not strange if intro-determination

does not accomplish its desires quickly but remains fragmentary. In such

unfortunate or fragmentary cases, the inward-determined powers show more

than mere traces of their less refined past. The heroes of such miscarried

mysticism appear as rather extraordinary saints. So, for instance, Count

von Zinzendorf’s warm love of the Savior has so much of the sensual

flavor, with furthermore such decided perversities, that the outpourings

of his rapture are positively laughable. Thus the pious man indulges his

phantasy with a marked predilection for voluptuousness in the

“Seitenhölchen” (Wound in the Side) in Jesus’ body and with an

unmistakable identification of this “cleft” with the vulva.

Examples of the poetical creations of Zinzendorf and his faithful

followers are given:

So ever-sideways-squinting

So side-homesickness-feeling;

So lambs-hearts-grave-through crawling,

So lambs-sweat-trace-smelling.

So Jesus sweat-drop-yielding,

With love’s fever trembling

Like the child full of spirit.

So corpse-air-imbibing,

So wound-wet-emitting,

So grave-fume-sniffing.

So martyr-lamb’s heart-like,

So Jesus-boy-like,

So Mary Magdalene-like being,

Childlike, virgin-like, conjugal

Will the lamb keep us

Close to the kiss of his clefts.

With us Cross people

The closet of the side often is worth

The whole little lamb.

Ye poor sinners.

But deep, but deep within,

Yes deep, right deep within,

And whoever will be blessed

He wishes himself within

Into the dear rendezvous

Of all the darlings.

Ravishing little lamb.

I, poor little thing, I kiss the ring

On thy little ringer,

Thou wound of the spear

Hold thy little mouth near,

It must be kissed.

Lamb, say nothing to me in there

For this precious minute

Thou art mine only.

On this curiosity compare the psychological explanations of Pfister.

(Frommigkeit G. Ludw. v. Zinzendorf.)

Returning to the previously mentioned “spiritual powers” I should mention

that alchemy also attempts to include in a short schema the inventory of

powers available for the Great Work. It uses different symbols for this

purpose; one of the most frequent is the seven metals or planets. Whether

I say with the astrologers that the soul (not the celestial spirit, which

is derived from God) flowing in from the seven planets upon man, is

therefore composed of their seven influences, or if with the alchemists I

speak of the seven metals, which come together in the microcosm, it is of

course quite the same, but expressed in another closely related symbol.

The metals are, as we know, incomplete and have to be “improved” or “made

complete.” That means we must sublimate our impulses.

“From the highest to the lowest everything rises by intermediate steps on

the infinite ladder, in such manner that those pictures and images, as

outgrowths of the divine mind, through subordinate divinities and demigods

impart their gifts and emanations to men. The highest of these are: Spirit

of inquiry, power of ruling and mastering self, a brave heart, clearness

of perception, ardent affection, acuteness in the art of exposition, and

fruitful creative power. The efficient forces of all these God has above

all and originally in himself. From him they have received the seven

spirits and divinities, which move and rule the seven planets, and are

called angels, so that each has received his own, distinct from the rest.

They share them again among the seven orders of demons subordinated to

them, one under each. And these finally transmit them to men.” (Adamah

Booz. Sieb. Grunds., p. 9 ff.)

In this enumeration the fundamental powers, whose partition varies

exceedingly, already show a certain measure of intro-determination. If we

wish to contrast their titanic with their anagogic aspect, we get

approximately the following scheme, to which I add the familiar

astrological characters of the seven planets.

Destroying (castration). [Symbol: Saturn] Introversion.

Mastery. [Symbol: Jupiter] Mastery of

oneself.

Love of combat. [Symbol: Mars] Warring against

oneself.

Libido. [Symbol: Sol] Sublimated

libido.

Sexual life, incest. [Symbol: Venus] Regeneration.

Hypercriticism, fussing. [Symbol: Mercury] Knowledge.

Joy in change; Improvement. [Symbol: Luna] Changing

oneself.

[Freud is of the opinion that the original inquisitiveness about the

sexual secret is abnormally transformed into morbid over subtlety; and yet

can still furnish an impulsive power for legitimate thirst for knowledge.]

Beside the partition of the fundamental powers according to the favorite

number seven, there are to be sure in alchemy still other schemata with

other symbols. We must furthermore continually keep in mind that the

symbols in alchemy are used in many senses.

In so far as the Constellations, as is often to be understood in the

hermetic art, are fundamental psychic powers, it sounds just like

psychoanalysis when Paracelsus expresses the view that in sleep the

“sidereal” body is in unobstructed operation, soars up to its fathers and

has converse with the stars.

With regard to intro-determination I must refer to my observations in the

following sections on the extension of personality. It is an important

fact that those external obstructions which oppose the unrestrained

unfolding of the titanic impulses are gradually taken up as constraints

into the psyche, which adopts those external laws, that would make life

practicable. In so far as deep conflicts do not hinder it, there arises by

the operation of these laws a corresponding influence upon the

propensities. Habit, however, can learn to carry a heavy yoke with love,

even to make it the condition of life. I have just made the restriction:

if conflicts do not hinder it; now usually these exist, even for the

mystics; and the “Work” is above all directed toward their overcoming. For

the annihilation of the opposition, the weapons aimed outward in the

“titanic” phase must be turned inward; there and not outside of us is the

conflict. [Here we see the actual intro-determination briefly mentioned

above.]

B. Effects Of Introversion.

Introversion is no child’s play. It leads to abysses, by which we may be

swallowed up past recall. Whoever submits to introversion arrives at a

point where two ways part; and there he must come to a decision, than

which a more difficult one cannot be conceived. The symbol of the abyss,

of the parting of the ways, both were clearly contained in our parable.

The occurrence of the similar motive in myths and fairy tales is familiar.

The danger is obvious in that the hero generally makes an apparently quite

trivial mistake and then must make extraordinary efforts to save himself

from the effects of these few trivial errors. One more wrong step and all

would have been lost.

Introversion accordingly presents two possibilities, either to gain what

the mystic work seeks, or to lose oneself.

In introversion the libido sinks into “its own depths” (a figure that

Nietzsche likes to use), and finds there below in the shadows of the

unconscious, the equivalent for the world above which it has left, namely

the world of phantasy and memories, of which the strongest and most

influential are the early infantile memory images. It is the child’s

world, the paradise of early childhood, from which a rigorous law has

separated us. In this subterranean realm slumber sweet domestic feelings

and the infinite hopes of all “becoming.” Yet as Mephistopheles says, “The

peril is great.” This depth is seducing: it is the “mother” and—death. If

the libido remains suspended in the wonder realm of the inner world the

man has become but a shadow for the world above. He is as good as dead or

mortally ill; if the libido succeeds however in tearing itself loose again

and of pressing on to the world above, then a miracle is revealed; this

subterranean journey has become a fountain of youth for it, and from its

apparent death there arises a new productiveness. This train of thought is

very beautifully contained in an Indian myth: Once on a time Vishnu

absorbed in rapture (introversion) bore in this sleep Brahma, who

enthroned on a lotus flower, arose from Vishnu’s navel and was carrying

the Vedas, eagerly reading them. (Birth of creative thought from

introversion.) Because of Vishnu’s rapture, however, a monstrous flood

overcame the world (swallowing up through introversion, symbolizing the

danger of entering into the mother of death). A demon profiting by the

danger, stole the vedas from Brahma and hid them in the deep. (Swallowing

of the libido.) Brahma wakes Vishnu and he, changing into a fish, dived

into the flood, battled with the demon (dragon fight), conquered him and

brought the vedas up again. (Prize attained with difficulty.) (Cf. Jung,

Psychology of the Unconscious.)

The marvel of the invigoration that can be attained in the successful

issue of introversion is comparable to the effect that Antæus felt on

touching his mother, the earth. The mother of men, to whom introversion

carries us, is the spirit of the race, and from it flows gigantic

strength. “This occasional retiring into oneself, which means a return to

an infantile relation to the parent images, appears within certain limits

to have a favorable effect upon the condition of the individual.” Of this

mine of power Stekel (Nerv. Angst., p. 375) writes: “When mankind desires

to create something big, it must reach down deep into the reservoir of its

past.”

I wish now to quote a mystic philosopher. J. B. von Helmont (1577-1644)

writes: “That magic power of man which is operative outside of him lies,

as it were, hidden in the inner life of mankind. It sleeps and rules

absolutely without being wakened, yet daily as if in a drunken stupor

within us.... Therefore we should pray to God, who can be honored only in

the spirit, that is, in the inmost soul of man. Hence I say the art of the

Cabala requires of the soul that magic yet natural power shall, as it

were, after sleep has been driven away, be placed in the keeping of the

soul. This magic power has gone, to sleep in us through sin and has to be

awakened again. This happens either through the illumination of the Holy

Ghost or a man himself can by the art of the Cabala produce this power of

awakening himself at will. Such are called makers of gold [nota bene!]

whose leader (rector) is, however, the spirit of God.... When God created

the soul of man he imparted to it fundamental and primal knowledge. The

soul is the mirror of the universe and is related to all Being. It is

illumined by an inner light, but the storm of the passions, the

multiplicity of sensuous impressions, and other distractions darken this

light, whose beams are spread abroad only, if it burns alone and if all in

us is in harmony and peace. If we know how to separate ourselves from all

external influences and are willing to be led by this inner light, we

shall find pure and true knowledge in us. In this state of concentration

the soul distinguishes all objects to which it directs its attention. It

can unite with them, penetrate their nature, and can itself reach God and

in him know the most important truths.” (Ennemoser, Gesch. d. Mag., pp.

906, 914.)

Staudenmaier, who has experimented on himself magically to a great extent

and has set down his experiences recently in the interesting book, “Die

Magie als experimentelle Naturwissenschaft,” thinks he has observed that

through the exercise that he carries on, and which produces an intense

introversion, psychophysical energies are set free that make him capable

of greater efficiency. Specifically, an actual drawing upon the nerve

centers unused in the conscious function of the normal man of to-day would

be available for intellectual work, etc. So, as it were, a treasure can be

gained (by practices having a significant introversion character), a

treasure which permits an increased thinking and feeling activity. If

Staudenmaier, even in the critical examination of his anomalous functions,

can be influenced by them, it would be a great mistake to put them aside

simply as “pathological.”

Ennemoser says of the danger of introversion (l. c., p. 175): “Now where

in men of impure heart, through the destructive natural powers and evil

spiritual relations, the deepest transcendental powers are aroused, dark

powers may very easily seize the roots of feeling and reveal moral

abysses, which the man fixed in the limits of time hardly suspects and

from which human nature recoils. Such an illicit ecstasy and evil

inspiration is at least recognized in the religious teachings of the Jews

and Christians, and the seers of God describe it as an agreement with hell

(Isaiah XXVIII, 15).”

Whence comes the danger? It comes from the powerful attraction for us of

that world which is opened to us through introversion. We descend there to

whet our arms for fresh battles, but we lay them down; for we feel

ourselves embraced by soft caressing arms that invite us to linger, to

dream enchanting dreams. This fact coincides in large part with the

previously mentioned tendency toward comfort, which is unwilling to forego

childhood and a mother’s careful hands. Introversion is an excellent road

to lazy phantasying in the regressive direction.

Among psychopathologists Jung especially has of late strongly insisted

upon the dangerous rôle of indolence. According to him the libido

possesses a monstrous laziness which is unwilling to let go of any object

of the past, but would prefer to retain it forever. Laziness is actually a

passion, as La Rochefoucauld brilliantly remarks: “Of all the passions the

least understood by us is laziness; it is the most indefatigable and the

most malign of them all, although its outrages are imperceptible.” “It is

the perilous passion affecting the primitive man more than all others,

which appears behind the suspicious mask of the incest symbols, from which

the fear of incest has driven us away, and which above all is to be

vanquished under the guise of the ‘dreaded mother.’ [Vide, Note D. To

avoid a wrong conception of this quotation it must be noted that laziness

is, of course, not to be regarded as the only foundation of incest

symbolism.] She is the mother of infinite evils, not the least of them

being the neurotic maladies. For especially from the vapor of remaining

libido residues, those damaging evils of phantasy develop, which so

enshroud reality that adaptation becomes well nigh impossible.” (Jung,

Psychology of the Unconscious.)

That the indolent shrinking back from the difficulties of life is

indicated so frequently in psychology and in mythology by the symbol of

the mother is not surprising, but I should yet like to offer for a

forceful illustration an episode from the war of Cyrus against Astyages

which I find recorded in Dulaure-Krauss-Reiskel (Zeugg., p. 85.) After

Astyages had aroused his troops, he hurled himself with fiery zeal at the

army of the Persians, which was taken unawares and retreated. Their

mothers and their wives came to them and begged them to attack again. On

seeing them irresolute the women unclothed themselves before them, pointed

to their bosoms and asked them whether they would flee to the bosoms of

their mothers or their wives. This reproachful sight decided them to turn

about and they remained victorious.

On the origin of the mythological and psychological symbol of the dreaded

mother: “Still there appears to reside in man a deep resentment, because a

brutal law once separated him from an impulsive indulgence and from the

great beauty of the animal nature so harmonious with itself. This

separation is clearly shown in the prohibition of incest and its

corollaries (marriage laws). Hence pain and indignation are directed

toward the mother as if she were to blame for the domestication of the

sons of men. In order not to be conscious of his desire for incest (his

regressive impulse toward animal nature) the son lays the entire blame on

the mother, whence results the image of the ‘dreaded mother.’ ‘Mother’

becomes a specter of anxiety to him, a nightmare.” (Jung, Psychology of

the Unconscious.)

The snake is to be regarded as a mythological symbol (frequent also in

dream life) for the libido that introverts itself and enters the perilous

interdicted precinct of the incest wish (or even only the life shirking

tendency); and especially (though not always valid) is this conception in

place, if the snake appears as a terrifying animal (representative of the

dreaded mother). So also the dragon is equivalent to the snake, and it

can, of course, be replaced by other monsters. The phallic significance of

the snake is, of course, familiar enough; the snake as a poisonous

terrible animal indicates, however, a special phallus, a libido burdened

with anxiety. Jung, who has copious material with which to treat this

symbolism, calls the snake really a “negative phallus,” the phallus

forbidden with respect to the mother, etc. I would recall that alchemy,

too, has the symbol of the snake or the dragon, and used in a way that

reënforces the preceding conception. It is there connected with the

symbols of introversion and appears as “poisonous.” The anxiety serpent is

the “guardian of the threshold” of the occultists; it is the treasure

guarding dragon of the myth. In mystic work the serpent must be overcome;

we must settle with the conflict which is the serpent’s soul.

Also the mystic yoga manuals of the Hindus know the symbol of the serpent,

which the introverting individual has to waken and to overcome, whereupon

he comes into possession of valuable powers. These serpents [kundalini]

are considered by the Yogi mystics as an obstacle existing in the human

body that obstructs certain veins or nerves (the anatomy of the Hindu

philosophers is rather loose here), and by this means, if they are freed,

the breath of life (prāna) sends wondrous powers through the body. The

main path in the body which must be freed for the increased life-energies

is generally described as the susumna (as far as I know, it is not yet

cleared up whether the aorta abdominalis or the spine has furnished the

anatomical basis for the idea of the central canal), and is the middle way

between two other opposed canals of the breath, which are called pingala,

the right, and ida, the left. (Here, too, note by the way, appears the

comparison of opposites.) I quote now several passages on the kundalini

and its significance at the beginning of the mystical work.

“As Ananta, the Lord of Serpents, supports this whole universe with its

mountains and its forests, so kundalini is the main support of all the

yoga practices. When kundalini is sleeping it is aroused by the favor of

the guru [spiritual teacher], then all of the lotuses [lotus here stands

for nerve center] and granthis [swallowings, nerve plexus?] are pierced.

Then prana goes through the royal road, susumna. Then the mind remains

suspended and the yogi cheats death.... So the yogi should carefully

practice the various mudras [exercises] to rouse the great goddess

[kundalini] who sleeps closing the mouth of susumna.” (Hatha Yoga Prad.,

Ill, 1-5.) “As one forces open a door [door symbolism] with a key [the

‘Diederich’ of the wanderer in the parable] so the yogi should force open

the door of moksa [deliverance] by the kundalini. The Paramesoari [great

goddess] sleeps, closing with her mouth the hole through which one should

go to the brahmarandhra [the opening or place in the head through which

the divine spirit, the Brahma or the Atman, gets into the body; the

anatomical basis for this naïve idea may have been furnished by one of the

sutures of the skull, possibly the sutura frontalis; the brahmarandhra is

probably the goal of the breath that passes through the susumna that is

becoming free.] where there is no pain or misery. The kundalini sleeps

above the kanda. [The kanda, for which we can hardly find a corresponding

organ, is to be found between the penis and the navel.] It gives mukti to

the yogis and bondage to the fools. [See later the results of

introspection.] He who knows her, knows yoga. The kundalini is described

as being coiled like a serpent. He who causes that sakti [probably, power]

to move ... is freed without doubt. Between the Ganges and the Yamuna [two

rivers of India, which are frequently used symbolically, probably for the

right and the left stream of the breath of life, ingala and ida, cf. what

follows] there sits the young widow [an interesting characterization of

the kundalini] inspiring pity. He should despoil her forcibly, for it

leads one to the supreme seat of Vishnu. Ida is the sacred Ganges and

pingala the Yamuna. Between ida and pingala sits the young widow

kundalini. You should awake the sleeping serpent [kundalini] by taking

hold of its tail. That sakti, leaving off sleep, goes up forcibly.”

(Hatha-Yoga, Prad., III, 105-111.) Ram Prasad (“Nature’s Finer Forces,” p.

189) writes about the kundalini: “This power sleeps in the developed

organism. It is that power which draws in gross matter from the mother

organism through the umbilical cord and distributes it to the different

places, where the seminal prana gives it form. When the child separates

from the mother the power goes to sleep.” Here the kundalini sakti appears

clearly in connection with the mother. Siva is the god [father image] most

peculiar to the yogis. The wife of Siva, however, is called Kundalini.

Mythologically expressed, introversion proceeds well if the hero defeats

the dragon. If this does not happen, an unsuccessful issue is the result;

the man loses himself. In my opinion this losing of self is possible in

two ways, one active, the other passive. In all there would then be three

terminations of introversion. The good conclusion is the entrance into the

true mystical work, briefly, mysticism. The bad conclusions are the active

way of magic and the passive one of schizophrenia (introversion

psychosis). In the first case there is consummated an inner reunion, in

the other two cases a losing of self; in magic one loses oneself in

passions, for which one wishes to create satisfaction magically, absolving

oneself from the laws of nature; in the case of mental malady the sinking

develops into laziness, a spiritual death. The three paths followed by the

introverting individual correspond roughly to these three other

possibilities of life, work (morality), crime, suicide. These three

possibilities are, of course, recognized by the hermetic art; it

recognizes three fundamental powers, which can give no other result

psychically. Two of these principles are mutually opposed (in the

unpurified condition of the material). We know them quite well as [Symbol:

Fire] and [Symbol: Water], etc. The third principle lies evenly between

the other two, like the staff of Hermes between the two serpents. So the

symbol [Symbol: Mercurius], as Hermes’ staff with the serpents, precisely

unites all three. In this aspect the three qualities or constituents of

matter (prakrti) may at once be substituted for the three fundamental

powers of alchemy according to the Hindu samkhya doctrine. Sattva, Rajas,

Tamas, are translated (by Schroeder) by “purity, passion, darkness.”

In the Bhagavad-Gita it is said of the happiness that these three grant:

“Where one rests after earnest work and arrives at the end of

toil,

Fortune, which appears poison at first, finally is like nectar.

Such a fate is truly good, procured through cheerfulness of

spirit. [Sattva.]

Fortune that first shows like nectar, and finally appears as

poison,

Chaining the senses to the world, belongs to the realm of passion.

[Rajas.]

Fortune that immediately and thereafter strikes the soul with

delusion,

In sleep, indolence, laziness, such Fortune belongs to darkness.”

[Tamas.]

“Passion” and “darkness,” Rajas and Tamas, (in alchemy indicated by

[Symbol: Fire] and [Symbol: Water], also often by [Symbol: Mars] and

[Symbol: Venus]) indicate the wrong way, the peril in introversion. They

lead to what Gorres (Christl. Myst.) describes as the “demoniac” mysticism

as opposed to the divine mysticism. All mystic manuals warn us of the

wrong way and emphasize often that we can easily lose the way even where

there is good intention. The evil one knows how, by illusions, to make the

false way deceptively like the right one, so that the righteous man, who

is not on his guard, may get unsuspectingly into the worst entanglements.

Careful examination of himself, exact observation of the effect of the

spiritual exercises, is to be laid to heart by every one. Yet powers come

into play that have their roots in the deepest darkness of the soul (in

the unconscious) and which are withdrawn from superficial view. [After

this had been written I read a short paper of Dr. Karl Furtmüller,

entitled “Psychoanalyse und Ethik,” and find there, p. 5, a passage which

I reproduce here on account of its agreement with my position. I must

state at the outset that according to Furtmüller, psychoanalysis is

peculiarly qualified to arouse suspicion against the banal conscience,

which leads self-examination into the realm of the conscious only, with

neglect of the unconscious impulses, which are quite as important for the

performance of actions. The passage of interest to us here reads: “There

is no lack of intimation that these fundamental facts which place the

whole of life in a new perspective, were recognized or suspected even in

earlier times. If early Christianity believed that demons could overpower

the heart of man in the sense that they assumed the voice of God, and the

man believed that, while really doing the devil’s work he was doing the

work of God, then that sounds like a symbolic representation of the play

of the forces that are described above.” The play of these forces was

indeed known to cultivated religious peoples of all times. As for

Christianity, what the author asserts of its beginnings can be accepted as

true for a much earlier time. We already know that one of the first works

of mysticism consists in the education of the conscience, in a most subtle

purification of this judicial inner eye. The claims of the psychoanalyst

are there fulfilled to the uttermost.] Instead of many examples I gladly

quote a single one, but an instructive exposition by Walter Hitton, a

great master of the contemplative life, from his “Scala Perfectionis” as

Beaumont (Tract. v. Gust. pub. 1721, pp. 188 ff.) renders it. Thus he

writes: “From what I said we can to some extent perceive that visions and

revelations, or any kind of spirit in bodily appearance, or in the

imagination in sleep or waking, or any other sensation in the bodily

senses that are, as it were, spiritually performed, either through a sound

in the ears or taste in the mouth or smell in the nose, or any other

perceptible heat of fiery quality that warms the breast or any other part

of the body, or any other thing that can be felt by a bodily sense, even

if it is not so refreshing and agreeable, all this is not contemplation or

observation; but in respect of the spiritual virtues, and those of

celestial perception and love towards God, which accompany true

contemplation, only evil secondary matters, even if they appear to be

laudable and good. All such kinds of sensation may be good if produced by

a good angel, but may, however, proceed in a deceptive manner, from the

impositions of a bad angel, if he disguises himself as an angel of light.

For the devil can imitate in bodily sensations exactly the same things

that a good angel can accomplish. Indeed, just as the good angels come

with light, so can the devil do also. And just as he can fabricate this in

things that appear to the eyes, so he can bring it to pass in the other

senses. The man who has perceived both can best say which is good and

which is evil. But whoever knows neither or only one, can very easily be

deceived.”

Externally, in the sense quality, they are all similar, but internally

they are very different. And therefore we should not too strongly desire

them, nor lightly maintain that the soul can distinguish between the good

and evil by the spirit of difference, so that it may not be deceived. As

St. John says: “Believe not every spirit, but prove it first whether it be

of God or not.” And to know whether the perception of the bodily sense is

good or evil, Hitton gives the following rule:

“If ye see an unusual light or brilliance with your bodily eye, or in

imagination, or if ye hear any wonderful supernatural sound with your

ears, or if ye perceive a sudden sweet taste in your mouths or feel any

warmth in your breasts, like fire, or any form of pleasure in any part of

your body, or if ye see a spirit in a bodily form, as if he were an angel

to fortify or instruct you, or if any such feeling that you know comes not

from you or from a physical creature, then observe yourselves with great

care at such a time and consider the emotions of your heart prudently. For

if ye become aware by occasion of pleasure or satisfaction derived from

such perception, that your hearts are drawn away from the contemplation of

Jesus Christ and from spiritual exercises: as from prayer, and knowledge

of yourselves and your failings, and from the turning in towards virtue

and spiritual knowledge and perception of God, with result that your heart

and your inclinations, your desire and your repose depend chiefly on the

above mentioned feeling or sight, in that ye therefore retain them, as if

that were a part of the celestial joy or angelic bliss, and therefore your

thoughts become such that ye neither pray nor can think of anything else,

but must entirely give way to that, in order to keep it and satisfy

yourself with it, then this sensation is very much to be suspected of

coming from the Enemy; and therefore were it ever so wonderful and

striking, still renounce it and do not consent to accept it. For this is a

snare of the Enemy, to lead the soul astray by such bodily sensation or

agreeableness of the senses, and to trap it in order to hurl it into

spiritual arrogance and false security, which happens if it flatters

itself as if it enjoyed celestial bliss and on account of the pleasure it

feels were already half in paradise, while it is still in fact at the gate

of hell, and therefore through pride and presumptuousness may have fallen

into error, heresy, fanaticism and other bodily or spiritual disaster.

“In case, however, that these things do not result in leading away your

heart from spiritual exercises, but cause ye to become ever more devout

and more ardent in prayer and more wise to cultivate spiritual thoughts;

if ye are at first astonished but nevertheless your heart turns back and

is awakened to greater longing for virtue and your love toward God and

your neighbor increases more and more, and makes you ever meeker in your

own eyes; then you may infer from this sign that it is of God and comes

from the presence and action of a good angel, and comes from the goodness

of God, either for comfort to simple pious souls to increase their trust

in and longing for God, and because of such a strengthening to seek more

thoroughly for the knowledge and love of God. Or if they are perfect that

perceive such a pleasure, it appears to them somewhat like a foretaste and

shadow of the transfiguration of the body which it may expect in the

celestial bliss.” However, I do not know whether such a man can be found

on earth.

“He continues: Of this method of distinguishing between the works of the

spirits, Saint John (I John IV, 3) speaks in his epistle: ‘Every spirit

that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God’

(or as it is translated by Luther: ‘Who does not recognize that Jesus

Christ is come into the flesh’). This union and connection of Jesus with

the human soul is caused by a good will and a zealous striving toward him,

which alone desires to possess him and to view him spiritually in his

blessedness. The greater this longing the more closely is Jesus united

with the soul, and the less the longing, the more loosely is he bound to

him. So every spirit or every sensation that diminishes this longing, and

draws it away from the steadfast contemplation of Jesus Christ and from

sighing and longing like a child for him, this spirit will release Jesus

from the soul, and therefore it is not from God but the activity of the

Enemy. But if a spirit or a sensation increases this desire, fastens the

bonds of love and devotion closer to Jesus, raises the eyes of the soul to

spiritual knowledge more and more, and makes the heart ever meeker, this

spirit is from God.”

In many of the modern theosophic introversion methods, borrowed from the

Hindu yoga doctrines, we find the exhortation to attach no importance to

the marvels appearing beside the real prize, indeed to regard them as a

pernicious by-product. The Hindu doctrine calls them Siddhi. Walter Hitton

speaks of them as “inferior subordinate matters.” From the description of

them it appears that they are phantastic appearances, which partly flatter

the wish for power, partly other wishes. [See Note E at the end of this

volume.] The Siddhi are qualified to captivate weak minds with their

jugglery. Erotic experiences are connected very easily with them because,

going over into the regressive phase, they show their “titanic”

countenances. I have with some daring, but not without right, just cited

the Siddhi as the anagogic equivalent of autoerotism. The regressive

phase, however, appears as soon as one indulges in the gratification of

the Siddhi. It is not the Siddhi themselves that are the evil (I regard

them indeed as anagogic), but the losing of oneself in them. They can be

both divine and diabolic. That depends on one’s attitude towards them.

In the result of introversion, the diabolic mysticism is opposed, as we

saw, to the divine. The true mysticism is characterized by the extension

of personality and the false by the shrinking of personality. We can also

say, by an extension or shrinking of the sphere of interest that

determines the socially valuable attitude. I say advisedly “sphere of

interest,” for mysticism in the end will not merely fulfill the social law

without love, but it labors for the bringing out of this very love. It is

not satisfied with superficially tincturing the substance into gold (i.e.,

among other meanings, to get man to do good externally); but it would

change the substance completely, make it gold through and through (i.e.,

to orient the entire impulse power of man for good, so that he desires

this good with the warmth of love and therefore finds his good fortune in

virtue). Only the good and not the good fortune is chosen as the leading

star, as I must note in order to avoid a misconception about the hermetic

procedure. Happiness arises only at a certain point, and seems to me like

a fruit ripened in the meantime. The most subtle representatives of this

doctrine among the alchemists are not so far, after all, from the Kantian

ethics.

Alchemistic ethics presupposes that there is an education, an ennobling of

the will. The person that wills can learn to encompass infinitely much in

his ego. [Cf. Furtmüller (Psychoanalyse und Ethik, p. 15): “The individual

can ... make the commands of others his own.” He quotes Goethe (Die

Geheimnisse):

From the law which binds all being

The man is freed who masters himself.

The poles of shrinking and extension are the following: The magician and

the pathological introversionist contract the sphere of their interest

upon the narrowest egoism. The mystic expands it immensely, in that he

comprises the whole world in himself. The person egotistically entering

into introversion can preserve his happiness only by a firm self-enclosure

before the ever threatening destruction; the mystic is free. The mystic’s

fortune consists in the union of his will with the world will or as

another formula expresses it, in the union with God. [On the freeing

effect of the merging of one’s own will into a stronger cf. my essays Jb.

ps. F., III, pp. 637 ff., and IV, p. 629.] This fortune is therefore also

imperishable (gold). The reader must always bear in mind that the mystic

never works on anything but on the problem of mankind in general; only he

does so in a form of intensive life, and it may indeed be the case that

the powers which introversion furnish him, actually make possible a more

dynamic activity and a greater result. For my part I am strongly inclined

to believe it.

On the extension of personality, some passages from the Discourses on

Divinity in the Bhagavad-Gita:

“Who sees himself in all being and all being in himself,

Whoever exercises himself in devotion and looks at all

impartially,

Whoever sees me everywhere, and also sees everything in me,

From him I can never vanish nor he from me.” VI, 29f.

“Whoever discovers in all the modes of life the very exalted lord,

Who does not fail when they fail—he who recognizes that, has

learned well,

For whosoever recognizes the same lord as the one who dwells in

all,

Wounds not the self through the self, and travels so the highest

road.” XIII 27f.

These passages elucidate the progressive function of the idea of God in

the “work.” Incidentally, I believe that the devotional doctrines (Yoga)

which are theoretically based on the Samkhya philosophy that originated

without a God, has for good practical reasons taken the idea of isvara

(God) into its system. Concentration requires an elevated impalpable

object as an aim. And this object must have the property of being above

every reach of the power to grasp and yet apparently to seem attainable.

God has furthermore the functions of the bearer of conflicts and hopes. At

the beginning of the work indeed the obstructing conflicts still exist. A

certain unburdening is accomplished by leaving the conflict to the

divinity, and frees the powers that were at first crippled under the

pressure of the conflicts. [Cf. Jung’s Psychology of the Unconscious,

Freud Kl. Schr., II, p. 131.]

“Then throw on me all thy doings, thinking only on the highest

spirit,

Hoping and desiring nothing, so fight, free from all pain.” Bh. G.

III 30.

“Whose acts without any bias and dedicates all his activity to God

Will not be stained with evil [is therefore free from conflicts]

as the lotus leaf is not stained by the water.” V 10.

The idea of the education of the will has, of course, been familiar for a

long time to ethical writers, even if it has at times been lost sight of.

Aristotle is convinced that morality arises from custom and convention.

“As we learn swimming only in water, and music by practice on an

instrument, so we become righteous by righteous action and moderate and

courageous by appropriate acts. From uniform actions enduring habits are

formed, and without a rational activity no one becomes good ... being good

is an act. Good is never by nature; we become good by a behavior

corresponding to a norm. We possess morality not by nature but against

nature. We have the disposition to attain it ... we must completely win it

by habit. As Plato says, in agreement with this, the proper education

consists in being so led from youth upward, as to be glad and sorry about

the things over which we should be glad and sorry. But if by a course of

action in accordance with custom, a definite direction of the will has

been secured, then pleasure and pain are added to the actions that result

from the will and, as it were, as signs, that here a new nature is

established in man.” (Jodl. Gesch. d. Eth., I, pp. 44 ff.) “The energy and

the proud confidence in human power with which Aristotle offers to man his

will and character formation as his own work, the emphasis with which he

has opposed to the quietistic ‘velle non discitur’ (we cannot educate

volition nor learn to will, as later pessimistic opinions have expressed

it axiomatically) with the real indispensability and at the same time the

possibility of the formation of the will; this contention is admirable and

quite characteristic of the methods of thought of ancient philosophy at

its height.” (Jodl., l. c., p. 49.) [Velle non discitur has been

popularized by Schopenhauer.]

In Philo and the related philosophers there appears quite clearly the

thought that gained such wide acceptance later among the Christian

ascetics, that the highest development of moral strength was attainable

only through a long continued and gradually increasing exercise, an

ethical gymnastics. Philo, moreover, uses the word Askesis to describe

what elsewhere had been described as bodily exercise. The occidental

spiritual exercise corresponds to the Hindu yoga.

In the domestication of man through countless generations, social

instincts must have been established, which appear as moral dispositions.

I recall the moral feeling in Shaftesbury. The social life of man, for

instance, plays with Adam Smith a significant rôle, and yet even with him

the moral law is not something ready from the very beginning, not an

innate imperative, but the peculiar product of each individual. The

development of conscience receives an interesting treatment by Smith.

There takes place in us a natural transposition of feelings, mediated

through sympathy, which arouse in each of us the qualities of the other,

and we can say “that morality in Smith’s sense, just as Feuerbach taught

later, is only reflected self-interest, although Smith himself was quite

unwilling to look at sympathy as an egotistic principle. By means of a

process that we can almost call a kind of self-deception of the

imagination, we must look at ourselves with the eyes of others, a very

sensible precaution of nature, which thus has created a balance for

impulses that otherwise must have operated detrimentally. [Bear in mind

what I have said above about intro-determination.] This transposition

which sympathy effects we cannot escape; it itself appears when we know

that we are protected from the criticism of another by the complete

privacy of our own doings. It alone can keep us upright when all about us

misunderstand us and judge us falsely. For the actual judgments of another

about us form, so to speak, a first court whose findings are continually

being corrected by that completely unpartisan and well informed witness

who grows up with us and reacts on all our doings.” (Jodl., l. c., I, pp.

372 ff.)

The derivation of the moral from selfish impulses by transposition does

not resolve ethics into egoism, as Helvetius would have us believe. It is

“a caricature of the true state of things to speak of self-interest, when

we have in mind magnanimity and beneficence, and to maintain that

beneficence is nothing but disguised selfishness, because it produces joy

or brings honor to the person that practices it.” (L. c., p. 444.)

The ethical evolution which takes place as an extension of personality

demands, the more actively it is practiced, the removal of resistances

which operate against the expansion of the ego. It cannot be denied that

hostile tendencies, which are linked with pusillanimous views, are always

on hand and create conflicts. If they were not, the moral task would be an

easy one. Now as man cannot serve two masters, so in the personal

psychical household, the points of view which have been dethroned, as far

as they will not unite with the newly acquired ones, must be killed, and

ousted from their power. Most of all must this process be made effective

if the development is taken up intensively in the shape of introversion.

It must appear also in the symbolism.

Already in the lecanomantic experiments we are struck by the dying of the

figure (old man) that represents the old form of conscience that has been

overcome. It is that part of Lea’s psyche that resists the new, after the

manner of old people (father type). In order that the new may be

suppressed, it must be immolated; at every step in his evolution man must

give up something; not without sacrifice, not without renunciation, is the

better attained. The sacrifice must come, of course, before the new

reformed life begins. The hermetic representations do not indeed always

follow chronological order, yet the sacrifice is usually placed at the

beginning, as introversion. In the parable the wanderer kills the lion,

well at the beginning. He sacrifices something in so doing. He kills

himself, i.e., a part of himself, in order to be able to rise renewed

(regenerated). This process is the first mystical death, also called by

the alchemists, putrefaction or the blacks. This death is often fused with

the symbol of introversion, because both can appear under the symbol of

the entrance into the mother or earth. Only by closer examination can it

sometimes be seen which process is chiefly intended.

“And that shalt thou know my son, whoso does not know how to kill, and to

bring about a rebirth, to make the spirits revive, to purify, to make

bright and clear ... he as yet knows nothing and will accomplish nothing.”

(Siebengestirn, p. 21.)

“These are the two serpents sent by Juno (which is the metallic nature)

which the strong Hercules (i.e., the wise man in his cradle) has to

strangle, i.e., to overpower and kill, in order in the beginning of his

work to have them rot, be destroyed and to bear.” (Flamel, p. 54.)

Again and again the masters declare that one cannot attain to true

progress except by means of the blacks, death and putrefaction.

In the “Clavis philosophiae et alchymiae Fluddanae,” of the year 1633, we

read: “Know then that it is the duty of spiritual alchemy to mortify and

to refine all obscuring prejudice as corruptible and vain, and so break

down the tents of darkness and ignorance, so that that imperishable but

still beclouded spirit may be free and grow and multiply in us through the

help of the fiery spirit, full of grace, which God so kindly moistened, so

as to increase it from a grain to a mountain. That is the true alchemy of

which I am speaking, that which can multiply in me that rectangular stone,

which is the cornerstone of my life and my soul, so that the dead in me

shall be awakened anew, and arise from the old nature that had become

corrupted in Adam, as a new man who is new and living in Christ, and

therefore in that rectangular stone....”

To the “sacrifice” of the person introverting, Jung devotes an entire

chapter in his Psychology of the Unconscious, Chapt. IV. A brief résumé of

it would show that by the sacrifice is meant the giving up of the mother,

i.e., the disclaiming of all bonds and limitations that the soul has

carried over from childhood into adulthood. The victory over the dragon is

equivalent to the sacrificing of the regressive (incestuous) tendency.

After we have sought the mother through introversion we must escape from

her, enriched by the treasure which we have gotten.

The sacrifice of a part of ourself (killing of the dragon, the father,

etc.) is, as Jung points out, represented also in mythology by the

shooting with sharp arrows at the symbol of the libido. The symbol of the

libido is generally a sun symbol. Now it is particularly noteworthy that

the VIII key of the alchemist Basilius Valentinus (see figure 3, p. 199)

shows arrows being shot, which are aimed at the [Symbol: sun] (this libido

symbol par excellence) that is aptly used as a “target.” Death is clearly

enough accentuated and correlated with the sinking of the corns of wheat

into the earth. [John XII, 24, 25, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except

a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it

die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it;

and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life

eternal.] As this rises, so also will the dying mystic rise. The grave

crosses have the form [Symbol: Fire] ([Symbol: Sulphur]); they show that

the interred one is a certain sulphur, the impure sulphur, willfulness.

The birds, from which we are to protect the grain, may in the end be the

Siddhi; they are, in the introversion form of the religious work, what

would otherwise be merely “diversions” or “dissipations.”

The mystical death is the death of egoism (in Hindu terminology ahamkāra).

Jacob Boehme writes in his book of the true atonement, I, 19: “...

Although I am not worthy, [Jesus] take me yet in thy death and let me only

in thy death die my death; still strike thou me in my acknowledged

selfishness to the ground and kill my selfishness by thy death....” In the

Mysterium Magnum, XXXVI, 74, 75: “... We exalt not the outspoken word of

the wisdom of God, but only the animal will to selfishness and egoism

which is departed from God, which honors itself as a false God of its own

and may not believe or trust God (as the Antichrist who has placed himself

in God’s stead); and we teach on the contrary that the man of the

Antichrist’s image shall wholly die so that he may be born in Christ of a

new life and will, which new will has power in the perfect word of nature

with divine eyes to see all the miracles of God, both in nature and

creature, in the perfect wisdom. For as dies the Antichrist in the soul,

so rises Christ from the dead.”

In the hermetic book, “Gloria Mundi,” it is related of Adam that he would

have been able, if he had not acted contrary to God, to live 2000 years in

paradise and would then have been taken up into heaven; but he had drawn

on himself death, sickness and calamity. Only through the grace of God was

he given a partial knowledge of the powers of things, of herbs and

remedies against manifold infirmities. “When, however, he could no longer

maintain himself by the medicinal art [in paradise] he sent his son Seth

forth to paradise for the tree of life, which he received, not physically,

but spiritually. Finally he desired the oil of compassion, whereupon by

the angels, at God’s command to give the oil, the promise was given and

thereupon the seed of the oil tree sent, which seed Seth planted on his

return, after his father’s death and on his father’s grave, from which

grew the wood of the holy cross, on which our Lord Jesus Christ, through

his passion and death, freed us from death and all sins; which Lord Christ

in his holiest humanity has become the tree and the wood of life and has

brought to us the fruit of the oil of compassion....” Adam is the

undomesticated man; this ideal must die to the moral aspirant.

The painful duty of killing a part of self is beautifully expressed in the

Bhagavad-Gita, where the hero, Aryuna, hesitates to fight against his

“kindred,” to shoot at them—the bow falls from his hand.

Dying relates to the old realms. The old laws expire to make room for the

new. The new life cancels the old deeds. (Cf. Paul, Rom. VII-VII.)

Vedanta doctrine: But as to the duty of the scripture canon and

perception, both last as long as Samsāra, i.e., until the awakening. If

this is attained, perception is annulled, and if you derive thence the

objection that thereby the veda is annulled, it must be noted that

according to our own doctrine father is not father and the Veda is not the

veda. (Deussen, Syst. d. Ved., p. 449.)

Bhagavad-Gita, IV, 37:

“Like fire when it flames and turns all the firewood to ashes.”

So the fire of knowledge burns for you all deeds to ashes.

For several reasons the father image is peculiarly suited to represent

what has to be resolved. By the father, the old Adam (totality of

inherited instincts) and the strongest imperatives are implanted in the

child. The father is also the type of tenacious adherence to the

ancestors. Again we meet the antithesis, old generation, new generation,

in ourselves after the intro-determination.

The mystical death (sacrifice) is not to be accomplished by mere

asceticism, as it were, mechanically; the alchemists warn us carefully

against severe remedies. The work is to take a natural course; the work is

also, although indeed a consummation of nature, yet not above nature.

“Nature rejoices in nature

Nature overcomes nature

Nature rules nature.”

Thus the magician Osthanes is said to have taught. And the Bhagavad-Gita

(VI, 5-7) says:

“Let one raise himself by means of self, and not abase self,

Self is his own friend, is also his own enemy.

To him is his self his own friend, who through self conquers self,

Yet if it battle with the external world, then self becomes enemy

to self.”

In the “Clavis Philosophiae et Alchymiae Fluddanae” (p. 57) we read: “So

it is impossible to rise to the supramundane life, in so far as it does

not happen by means of nature. From the steps of nature Jacob’s ladder is

reached and the chain to Jupiter’s throne begins on earth.”

The idea of self-sacrifice (with dismemberment) appears very prettily in

an allegorical vision of the old hermetic philosopher Zosimos, who seems

to have copied it, as Reitzenstein notes, from an Egyptian Nekyia. I quote

from Hoefer (Hist. Chim., I, pp. 256-259):

“I slept and saw a priest standing before an altar shaped like a cup and

with several steps by which to climb to it. [First 15, later 7 steps are

mentioned.] And I heard a voice crying aloud, ‘I have finished climbing

and descending these 15 steps, resplendent with light.’ After listening to

the priest officiating at the altar I asked him what this resounding voice

was whose sound had struck my ear. The priest answered me, saying: ‘I am

he who is (εἰμὶ ὁ ὤν), the priest of the sanctuary, and I am under the

weight of the power that overwhelms me. For at the break of day came a

deputy who seized me, killed me with a sword, cut me in pieces; and after

flaying the skin from my head, he mixed the bones with the flesh and

burned me in the fire to teach me that the spirit is born with the body.

That is the power that overwhelms me.’ While the priest was saying that,

his eyes became as blood, and he vomited all his flesh. I saw him mutilate

himself, rend himself with his teeth and fall on the ground. Seized with

terror I awoke, and I began to ponder and ask myself if this indeed was

the nature and the composition of the water. And I congratulated myself

upon having reasoned well [namely in a train of thought preceding the

vision]. Soon I slept again and perceived the same altar, and on this

altar I saw water boiling with a noise and many men in it. Not finding any

one in the neighborhood to explain this phenomenon, I advanced to enjoy

the spectacle at the altar. Then I noticed a man with gray hair and thin,

who said to me, ‘What are you looking at?’ ‘I am looking,’ I answered with

surprise, ‘at the boiling of the water and the men who are boiling there

still alive.’ ‘The sight you see,’ replied he, ‘is the beginning, the end

and the transmutation (μεταβολή).’ I asked him what the transmutation was.

‘It is,’ he said, ‘the place of the operation which is called purification

[in the original, topos askeseos], for the people who wish to become

virtuous come there and become spirits shunning the body.’ And I asked

him, ‘Are you also a spirit [pneuma]?’ ‘I am,’ said he, ‘a spirit and the

guardian of spirits.’ During this conversation and amid the noise of the

boiling water and the cries of the people, I perceived a man of brass,

holding in his hand a book of lead, and I heard him tell me in a loud

voice: ‘See, I command all those who are subjected to punishments to learn

from this book. I command every one to take the book of lead and to write

in it with his hand until his pharynx is developed, the mouth is opened,

and the eyes have taken their place again.’ The act followed the word, and

the master of the house, present at this ceremony, said to me, ‘Stretch

your neck and see what is done.’ ‘I see,’ said I. ‘The brazen man that you

see,’ said he, ‘and who has left his own flesh, is the priest before the

altar. It is he who has been given the privilege of disposing of this

water.’ In going over all this in my imagination I awoke and said to

myself, ‘What is the cause of this occurrence? What indeed is it? Is it

not the water white, yellow, boiling, divine?’ I found that I had reasoned

well.... Finally, to be brief, build, my friend a temple of a single stone

[monolith] ... a temple that has neither beginning nor end, and in the

interior of which there is found a spring of purest water, and bright as

the sun. It is with the sword in hand that one must search and penetrate

into it, for the entrance is narrow. It is guarded by a dragon, which has

to be killed and flayed. By putting the flesh and the bones together you

make a pedestal up which you will climb to reach the temple, where you

will find what you are looking for. For the priest, who is the brazen man

whom you saw sitting near the spring, changes his nature and is

transformed into a man of silver, who can, if you wish, change himself

into a man of gold.... Do not reveal anything of this to any one else and

keep these things for yourself, for silence teaches virtue. It is very

fine to understand the transmutation of the four metals, lead, copper,

tin, silver, and to know how they change into perfect gold....”

Psychoanalysis, like comparative mythology, makes it probable that the

killing or dismemberment of the father figure is equivalent to castration.

That has, according to intro-determination, an anagogic, a wider sense, if

we compare the organ of generation to the creative power, and a narrower,

if we compare it to sexuality. The wider conception does not require

immediate interpretation. With regard to the narrower, I observe that the

mystical manuals show that the most active power for spiritual education

is the sexual libido, which for that reason is partially or entirely

withdrawn from its original use. (Rules of chastity.) “Vigor is obtained

on the confirmation of continence.” (Patanjali, Yoga-Sutra, II, 38.) These

instruction books have recognized the great transmutability of the sexual

libido. (Cf. ability of sublimation in the alchemistic, as well as in the

Freudian terminology.) Naturally the reduction of sexuality had to occur

at the beginning of the work in order to furnish that power; hence the

castration at the commencement of the process. The killing of the phallic

snake amounts, of course, to the same thing. The snake with its tail in

its mouth is the cycle of the libido, the always rolling wheel of life, of

procreation, which always procreates itself, and of the creation of the

world. The same cycle is represented by a god who holds his phallus in his

mouth, and so (in accordance with infantile and primitive theory)

constantly impregnates himself. The serpent is good and also evil. Whoever

breaks through the ring frees himself from the wheel of compulsion, raises

himself above good and evil, in order to put in its place later a mystical

union [Hieros Gamos].

Regarded from the point of view of knowledge, the formation of types

reveals itself as a symbolic presentiment of an anagogic idea, not at

first clearly conceivable. For the spirit, what cannot yet be clearly seen

(mythological level of knowledge) or can no longer be seen (going to

sleep, etc.) is pictured in symbolic form. [More details will be found in

my essays, “Phantasie und Mythos,” “Ueber die Symbolbildung,” and “Zur

Symbolbildung” (Jb. ps. F., II, III, IV).] This symbol form is the form of

knowledge adapted to the spirit’s capacity as it then existed. Not that

any mysterious presentiment or prophetic gift of vision must be assumed.

The circumstance that man can get ever deeper meaning from his symbols

gives them the appearance of being celestial harbingers sent forth by the

latest ideas that they express. In a certain sense, however, the last

meaning is implicated in the first appearance of the typical symbol. It

has already been explained by intro-determination how that was possible.

The psyche, whose inventory of powers is copied symbolically in the

elementary types, knows, even if only darkly at first, the possible

unfolding of the powers. These unfoldings are originally not actual but

potential. [See Note F.]

The more then that the psyche is so developed, that what was originally

only a possible presentiment of actuality and that hence tends to come

nearer the merely potential, begins to become actual, the more symbolism

has the value of a “program.” According to Jung, Riklin, etc., the

phantasy (dream, myth-making) can be conceived not only as with Freud, “as

a wish fulfillment, wherein older and infantile material expresses the

wish for something unsettled, unattained or suppressed, but also as a

mythological first step in the direction of conscious and adapted thinking

and acting, as a program.... Maeder has discussed the teleological

functions of the dream and the unconscious. In the course of an analytic

treatment we discover the continuous transformations of the libido symbol

in the dream current, till a form is reached which serves as an attempt to

adapt oneself to actuality. There are epochs in the history of

civilization which are particularly characterized by a storing of the

libido in the sense that from the reservoir of mythological and religious

thought forms, new adaptations to the real processes and data are made. A

significant example is the Renaissance, which a study of renaissance

literature and a visit to the renaissance cities, e.g., Florence, make

evident in a high degree. The analysis of romanticism ... confirms these

processes of development.” (Zentralblatt f. Psa., III, p. 114.)

We have here the thought that the “program” is expressed in art, which

therefore has prescience in a certain degree of the coming event. Jung

(Jb. ps. F., III, pp. 171 ff.) writes: “It is a daily experience in my

professional work (an experience whose certainty I must express with all

the caution that is required by the complexity of the material) that in

certain cases of chronic neuroses, a dream occurs at the time of the onset

of the malady or a long time before, frequently of visionary significance,

which is indelibly imprinted on the memory and holds a meaning, concealed

from the patient, which anticipates the succeeding experiences, i.e., the

psychological significance. Dreams appear to stay spontaneously in memory

so long as they suitably outline the psychological situation of the

individual.”